Grow a Business

Find Out What People Want

Rather than stay in a rut that was taking the company's sales in the wrong direction Paul and Vicki decided that they had to come up with new products.

Be Number One

Earn your position in the market by being the best at what you do.   

Now, pictured here is the statue of Mary Dyer.  She was hanged, June 1, 1660, on Boston Common for being a Quaker. She died a martyr and became the symbol for religious freedom for this new country.   More...  (between 1:51 and 2:58 minutes)

Build Brand

When John Hawkins was able to secure 1-800-9-SHUTTLE he decided that the number 9 became an asset that needed to be exploited fully.

Choose A Visionary Banker

Pat Elmquest told us that they had bankers lined up to fund the expansion plans. More...

Do Job Loss Autopsies

When Renegade goes after a piece of work and doesn't get it, the sales person interviews the prospect who told him no.

Prepare For Perpetual Problems

Nicole Miller and Bud Konheim have taken a company from an idea to over $130 million in annual sales and they warn us all that it never gets easy. More...

Create Opportunity for Others

Ebby Halliday's strong work ethic and leadership have inspired other's to achieve their own success.

Market Your Entire EcoSystem

Fess Parker Winery teaches that selling is as much about the place as the product itself.

Create A Franchise With Systems

Start with a great product, and follow with well-defined training and procedures in place to develop a franchise organization.

Go Digital

Anne hired her husband, Michael,  because she was stuck. She was smart enough to know that her company had outgrown her ability to take it to the next level. Michael applied his knowledge of computing way before there was such a thing as the Internet.

Throw The Book At The Thieves

George Borkowski of Los Angeles, representing the Record Industry of America (RIA)   successfully sued Napster in US Supreme Court, then went after Grokster and backed them down.   More...

Date Before You Marry

Making a cool product in a lovely place has made it easy for NoUVIR to recruit talent.

Use Technology To Reduce Risk

Keith Hutton explains how XTO targets the precise location for drilling.

Make People More Important Than Cash

Founder Pam McNair  learned early that people are more important than cash.   More...

Let Customers See What You Do

Founder Mike Neary learned the hard way that marketing takes time and money.

Try A Heterarchy

At  Wahoo's Fish Taco, based in Santa Ana, California,  the owners take an unconventional path to getting things done.   More...     More on Wahoo's...

Put Systems In Place

Leaders put systems in place and when Steve Hoffman of Modern Postcard wants to work on improving systems, he has brainstorming sessions with small groups of employees.

Lead With Service

Texas Jet  is a gas station for airplanes. Fortunately, owner Reed Pigman doesn't use today's gas station as a model for thinking about his business.   Here's an employee filling a customer's tanks as there is no self-service at this FBO.   More...   Go to the homepage

Hire Your Replacement

Ken Beuchler says their product makes testing easy but building it is very complex.

Make Shopping an Adventure

There is plenty to see and buy at Jackalope.  Customers wander through acres of products organized into fascinating boutiques.

Turn Tradition Upside Down

The three brothers who founded Wahoo's agreed that the baby should be the CEO.  Meet Mingo Lee who gets to tell his older siblings what to do.   More...

Stop Doing and Start Leading

Founder Gary Salomon found a great technology which makes it easy to produce professional signs quickly and much cheaper than the old methods.  By teaching thousands of others how to sell and create the signs he has grown into a large business.

Keep Raising the Bar

Iguanas were once the new thing at Fluker Farms. Now the owners are looking for the next winning idea which they expect will be something that eats something that they sell.

Open the Books

Lorraine has monthly finance meetings where employees learn about how the business is doing.

Promote from Within

Founder of Catalina Express Greg Bombard offers employees opportunity to grow.

Mother Your Customers

Marlene McAdam and her partner were Girl Scouts leaders; and in business they are still dishing out what Moms know best how to do.

Fire Yourself

Nigel's brother, Peter Skeffington, was hired to manage so Nigel could go back to selling. More...

Be Willing To Change Everything

Bart Mahan nearly lost everything before he got his business model right.

Turn Workforce Planning Upside Down

Owner Carol Schroeder has taught her team to staff the shop on their own and she rewards them for being collaborative.

Admit What You Don't Know

Harry Rosenthal had proven himself in the catalog business and was hired by Redford to launch the Sundance Catalog  business.   More...

Go After Awards

Sohrab Voussoughi's Ziba Design became the first firm in the world to ever win four Gold Awards in one year in the annual Industrial Design Excellence Awards Competition run by the Industrial Designers Society of America.   More...

Choose Words Carefully

Everything about Tom Gegax is about expectations: from white shirts and sneakers to language that communicates and inspires.

Let Customers Build Products Online

At Modern Postcard, customers build print products online.     More...

Accept That The Devil is in Details

In the basement of an EM Rose home one sees attention to detail. This kind of work is what keeps Eric's strategic alliances in place and it causes happy customers to send him new business.

Listen To All Ideas

Marty Edelston, founder of Boardroom, Inc., says that employees want and need to be heard. 

Win High Profile Customers - John Solheim, co-founder & chairman, Ping Golf

Owner John Solheim says that famous golfers using a Ping putter on television gave the Ping an advantage because the putter looked so different from all of the others.   More...

Accomodate the Hard-to-Win

Greg Steiner is the Chief Technology Officer who works to make it easy to use eHarmony.com.

Learn from your Customers

The founder of Country Supply has to stay close to customers even if he has 500,000 of them.  More...

Commit To Powerful Technology

Bruce Camber, the founder of  this television series, knows that small business owners can perform just like a big business if they buy and implement technology wisely.

Do It Different And Do It Better

Ron Bowman grew up poor and put himself through school.  He was fascinated by an architecture course so he started fixing up houses for people.  Today he owns commercial space that he developed himself.

Get Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Word-of-mouth marketing is Kevin McGinley's strategy for growing his construction business.  You have to focus on it.  Getting customers to sell for you is the best marketing possible.   More...

Make a Product Customers Get Hooked On

Many people on the coast of Oregon say Mo's makes the best clam chowder in the world.

Know Your Customers

For Chef  Michael Gagné, there is no substitute for 100 percent homemade food and regular communications with customers he knows personally. In April 2008 Chef Gagné was named "2008 Chef of the Year" by Maine Restaurant Association.  Go to the homepage for this video...

Target Your Marketing

A.G.A. Correa & Son uses catalogs to successfully market its high-end nautical-design gold jewelry to discriminating buyers worldwide. You meet Tony and his son, Andy.

Market on the Web

Birds of a feather flock together and for lovers of fowl or the ruggedly beautiful Maine coast, the journey aboard the Hardy Boat begins on the Internet.

Treat Customers Like Family

Perry Gates, an owner of Maine Gold, produces a fantastic maple syrup that is surpassed only by the sweet smell of success earned through a loyal customer following.

Read

Marty Edelston suggests that reading is key to the success of any leader.

Develop New Products to Develop New Leaders

David LanCarte developed the salsa business so the Joe T. Garcia brand is now on grocery shelves.  Now that is near perfect timing! Today the US consumes  more salsa than ketchup!.

Listen to the Next Generation

Joe Glenn helped to reinvent the company his grandfather started and now it is positioned for growth in the old-fashioned business of metal spinning.

Deliver On Your Promises No Matter What It Takes

Mind Over Machines does complex web enabling work for the private and public sector.  Founder Tom Loveland says they strive to be the web guys people love.

Control Your Processes

Ken Duncan tired of trusting others with his art.  He decided to invest big bucks in the technology and machines needed to take his work from the camera to the customer.     More...

Adopt the Musketeer Mentality

The KMP Internet partners inspire a team approach to getting work done.

Force Marketing and IT to Work Together

Jon Keefe says his company helps clients  blend marketing and IT to increase profits.

Find the Right Mentor

Lupe is a member of the National Office Products Association and a big fan of trade association membership. This membership led him to his mentor.

Keep Improving

Bob Sakata has been working on a farm since he was 10 years old.  While other kids were reading comic books, Bob was studying tractor magazines.   More...

Make A Small Amount

Thomas Keller believes that small is beautiful. All of his restaurants and portions are small.  Customers seem to love a few bites of one thing and are happy to move on to the next tiny course. There is always a little more...

Be True to Yourself

Thomas Keller teaches us that sticking to your core beliefs may force you to leave a comfortable situation.  This is a table at the Yountville restaurant. More...

Participate in a Powerful Group

Vicky Carlson's has earned her reputation as a leader among equals.

Pay Attention to the Numbers

Vicky continues her discussion about analyzing one's financials and the need to be constantly trimming costs.  In another episode, Nancy Goshow, an architect managing multi-million dollar projects, understands that the numbers don't lie.

Achieve Digital Workflow

Steve Hoffman is in motion to achieve continuous improvement, a concept institutionalized by the success of W. Edwards Deming.   All the videos... On leadership...

Create Space that Inspires Quality

After leasing space for years and spending plenty of money to upgrade it to his standards, Steve's CPA told him it was time for him to own his own building.

Recruit Top Talent

Leadership matters and the cost of hiring experience usually pays off.  Burton May came from outside the organization while some managers worked their way up.

Make Marketing Fun and Funny

Marc Katz hands out his own currency all over town and promises a lifetime guarantee that keeps customers coming back.

Ask and Listen

The sales cycle for big projects is long and Nancy Goshow says the only way to get a large piece of work is to ask customers what they want and then listen carefully to what they say.

Land High Visibility Customers

E-Poxy's most famous customer is the Statue of Liberty.  For small business there is nothing better than credible customers which serve as a testimony to, and validation of, one's capabilities.  More...
A point of interest: 18,000+ soldiers make the largest Statue of Liberty

Think of Data As Cold Hard Cash

Visit with Vicky Carlson, owner of Office Pavilion in San Diego, and Brian Jacobsen of Madison Park Greeting of Seattle.  They both have a data protection plan in place so they never have to wonder "What would happen if I lost this data?" 

Inculcate Quality

Arnold Joseff says that every person is a quality expert.  This means that any person in the manufacturing process has the power to stop work and send back a product.   More...

Do Small Things Well

David Arnold has never tried to hit a home run. He simply wants to advance himself slowly and carefully around the bases and is happy if it takes time to score.   More...

Sell a Lifestyle, Not a Product

Wine lovers enjoy everything about wine.  They tell us to see it, swirl it, smell it, sip it, savor it and then summarize our thoughts about it. 

Spend on Quality

Quality equipment makes it possible for Jim Morris to deliver exactly what his customers demand.

Put Your Creativity On A Schedule

People who are excellent at what they do make it look easy.  Ken Done does.  Though critics are critical, the buying public has lifted him up as one of the finest artists in the world today. More...

Integrity selling is not an oxymoron.

Ron Willingham is the author of a dozen books and hundreds of courses.  Among his books  are: Integrity Selling for the 21st Century, The Inner Game of Selling, Integrity Service, The People Principle, Hey, I'm The Customer, and The Ten Laws of Wealth & Abundance (new window).