Get Out of the Weeds: How to Balance the Day-to-Day with Overarching Strategy

Get Out of the Weeds: How to Balance the Day-to-Day with Overarching Strategy

One of the most frequent struggles I see with entrepreneurs and business owners is this tension between managing the day-to-day operations of the organization and focusing on overarching strategy. Many business owners who seek coaching or peer advisory boards know they’re not spending enough time on strategy, and they can’t figure out how to shift the balance. 

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How to Raise Prices Without Losing Customers 

How to Raise Prices Without Losing Customers 

If you’re in business long enough, one thing is inevitable. At some point, you’ll need to raise your prices. Business owners are often afraid of making that change, worried their customers will leave and revenues actually decline. The truth is, customers can weather difficult changes when businesses approach the issue with the customers’ needs in mind.

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How to Run a Successful Family Business

How to Run a Successful Family Business

Since I began Trajectify, I’ve had the opportunity to coach a number of family-owned businesses, from intergenerational companies to husband-and-wife teams. In some ways, they face the same challenges as any other business. They have to figure out how to maximize their cash flow, hire the right people, and scale their business.

Family-owned businesses also have their own particular set of challenges.

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When to Hire Your First Employee (and the One After That)

When to Hire Your First Employee (and the One After That)

Cost is the biggest reservation we hear from founders and entrepreneurs who are contemplating their first hire. Affordability is obviously a critical part of the hiring analysis — and there’s a lot more to it. Whether you’re ready to hire and (perhaps the bigger question) who you should hire depends on multiple factors.

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How to Delegate Like a Boss

How to Delegate Like a Boss

At some point, that do-it-all person will have to stop doing and start delegating. Otherwise, they’ll begin to feel like they’re on a hamster wheel — doing what they’ve always done but suddenly getting nowhere. Making that shift is challenging. In fact, it’s one of the most difficult, yet important, transitions founders go through.

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What Does a Good Business Coaching Relationship Look Like?

What Does a Good Business Coaching Relationship Look Like?

The concept of a coach used to be reserved for athletes. Now you can hire a coach to help you with everything from weight loss or parenting to public speaking and career transitions. So with all these coaches running around, how do you know what’s a worthwhile investment of your time and money?

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What Percentage of Profits Should You Reinvest In Your Business?

What Percentage of Profits Should You Reinvest In Your Business?

Managing your business’s finances might not feel intuitive. Many of us begin our entrepreneurial careers with a great idea. We spend the rest of that career trying to understand all the moving pieces that will make it profitable. There are people that will give you numbers. The truth is that there’s no clear rulebook. These profit and investment calculations are individual to each business.

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What’s the Antidote to Pandemic Fatigue? Pandemic Accountability.

What’s the Antidote to Pandemic Fatigue? Pandemic Accountability.

Here’s the truth: Our plans for 2020 got blown up. Everyone’s plans. We didn’t plan for our lives or our businesses or our cultures to get this disrupted. Back in the spring, we got scrappy. We came together. We figured out new ways to do things. Back in the spring, we thought we were trying to weather something that would be a few months long. Now, we’re tired. So, what’s the antidote?

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The Passion Trap — When to Let Emotion Take a Back Seat

The Passion Trap — When to Let Emotion Take a Back Seat

Many entrepreneurs believe that being led by their passion is a prerequisite for starting a successful organization. Definitely for starting one that they’ll enjoy running. The problem with this narrative is that passion does not equal success. In fact, I would argue that too much passion in a business leads to failure.

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How You Can Harness Workplace Conflict to Help Your Organization Thrive

How You Can Harness Workplace Conflict to Help Your Organization Thrive

Conflict is inevitable. Everyone is different—different backgrounds, different scripts, different personalities, and different goals. Difference creates conflict. If we’ve learned anything from the last few months of civil unrest, it’s that embracing differences in our lives and in our organizations is critical. Workplace conflict will happen. By treating it as an opportunity for growth, we’ll help ourselves, our organizations, and our employees.

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Your Growth Strategy Stopped Working. Now What?

Your Growth Strategy Stopped Working. Now What?

Any successful business that’s been around for more than a few years has found themselves on that plateau, trying to figure out why their growth stalled or why they feel stuck. The plateau itself isn’t a problem. In fact, it may create an opportunity to look at your business, your product, or your market through new eyes.

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Isolation Will Kill Your Business Faster than a Pandemic or an Economic Collapse

Isolation Will Kill Your Business Faster than a Pandemic or an Economic Collapse

Uncertainty is frightening to anyone. But many business owners — especially the introvert entrepreneurs out there — go deeper inside themselves during times like this. They isolate — because stepping out of their comfort zone and into this vast uncertainty threatens things many of us believe we need, including to be in control, to be safe, to be right. What if by reaching out, we expose ourselves as not knowing the answer, as being vulnerable and afraid?

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Four Top Challenges of Leadership and Business Growth

Four Top Challenges of Leadership and Business Growth

As a business grows, its leaders face new challenges, often in strategy, organizational development, and values and culture. They may be faced with complicated decisions regarding capital, partnerships or corporate structure. In November, we hosted our Fall Leadership Retreat where Trajectify coaches were joined by CEOs and business owners from a variety of industries. In focused, mastermind-style discussions, each leader took turns sharing business challenges they are facing. The group got a chance to provide feedback and offer outside-in perspectives to their peers.

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