Bor­ing? Scary? Intim­i­dat­ing? Tedious? Over­whelm­ing? Or maybe even…How do I not get ripped off? What about Team Sport?

You guessed it; I am going to talk about data. I’ll keep it short and sweet and address these three areas — Why data mat­ters. What kind of data do you need? How to get your team start­ed. Why does data mat­ter. Data mat­ters because it gives you and your team…

Dur­ing my career, I have been blessed to serve my pro­fes­sion in many capac­i­ties, local com­mit­tee chair, nation­al finan­cial lit­er­a­cy board mem­ber, pub­lic rela­tions spoke per­son and active mem­ber. A few months ago, I was asked to serve in a new way. To devel­op a series of pod­casts that revealed h…

The most impor­tant F word in Finan­cial Plan­ning. When I say finan­cial plan­ning, what pops into your head? Bor­ing? Scary? Intim­i­dat­ing? Tedious? Over­whelm­ing? Or maybe even How do I not get ripped off? What about Fun?

What if every­thing I con­sid­er “neg­a­tive” is the seed of a gift? What if the uni­verse is wise? What if moments I might ini­tial­ly rebel against are actu­al­ly moments giv­en to me by a benev­o­lent uni­verse to help me become a bet­ter human. One with more patience, per­sis­tence, humil­i­ty, love, or wisdom?

Chang­ing the world with 4 sim­ple tools: Vision, Hon­esty, Plan­ning, and Pas­sion My life and my Mother’s life are just one gen­er­a­tion apart, yet they were stark­ly dif­fer­ent. When my Moth­er mar­ried, she dropped out of the work­force. It was what women

Where are you lim­it­ed? Your mind. It can be the gas in your engine of suc­cess, or it can be the brakes, stop­ping or slow­ing your progress. Your lim­it­ing beliefs show up in con­ver­sa­tion. They show up in your mind chatter.

In this series we are explor­ing three R’s to post coro­n­avirus recov­ery: 1. recov­er­ing rev­enue 2. reimag­in­ing struc­tures 3. rethink­ing peo­ple We looked at six ways to recov­er rev­enue and now we turn our atten­tion to reimag­in­ing struc­tures. Structur

How have you always thought about your company’s finan­cial strength? As a func­tion of ongo­ing cash flow? As cash in the bank? As your avail­able line of cred­it? As your debt to equi­ty ratio? As inti­mate­ly inter

I am a huge fan of goals. I believe, to reach its’ poten­tial, every small busi­ness needs a detailed annu­al plan. A plan is sim­i­lar to a bud­get, but dif­fer­ent two very impor­tant ways. A plan is all about goals and it has built in accountability.

The ide­al of a solo war­rior going into bat­tle to beat the com­pe­ti­tion is past. Now is the time for part­ner­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tion. Part­ner pro­mo­tions have exist­ed for­ev­er. But social media has tur­bo changed them. 

What is your val­ue meal? Because of the COVID virus and its relat­ed eco­nom­ic impacts, change has become the norm, not the excep­tion. As a result, the ground is fer­tile for exper­i­men­ta­tion. One easy strat­e­gy to test out new ideas that will grow your

“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is right now.” Resilience is the abil­i­ty of a sub­stance or object to return to its orig­i­nal shape after being bent, stretched, or pressed. Rev­enue resilience is the abil­i­ty of your rev­enue stream to recov­er after an unex­pect­ed eco­nom­ic event. Resilience gives you the capac­i­ty to sur­vive unex­pect­ed events, so you can thrive when the recov­ery comes.

Fric­tion is any­thing that makes it hard­er for some­one to buy from you. As you recov­er rev­enue, how can you reduce fric­tion in your sales, mar­ket­ing and pro­duc­tion process­es? Think Ama­zon one click. Find what you want, one click and it arrives at your door. How can you embrace tech­nol­o­gy to make it eas­i­er than ever for clients and cus­tomers to buy what they need, from you? Exam­ples of sim­ple new tech­nol­o­gy tools that reduce fric­tion are pro­pos­al soft­ware that gives instant and con­sis­tent feed­back, cal­en­dar soft­ware mak­ing appoint­ments eas­i­er to set up, auto billing soft­ware, con­tent shar­ing and man­age­ment tools, sales engage­ment, and of course, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­fer­enc­ing soft­ware. Begin look­ing for places to reduce fric­tion by map­ping your process from mar­ket­ing to sales, to pro­duc­tion. Deter­mine the cur­rent cost and time in each buck­et. What is your 80/20 here? What 20% of your mar­ket­ing, sales and pro­duc­tion process is drag­ging 80% of your cost and increas­ing time and fric­tion? Begin here as these are your most sig­nif­i­cant drags on prof­its. Gath­er a cross func­tion­al team and begin to deploy new ideas and tech­nol­o­gy. Keep ask­ing, what makes it eas­i­er and faster for clients and cus­tomers to work with us? Right now, change is eas­i­er. With social dis­tanc­ing and busi­ness clo­sures, everyone’s life has been impact­ed in some way. Change is no longer slow, it is fast, and con­stant. Your clients and cus­tomers are expect­ing change. And they are more will­ing to for­give you if things don’t go well the first time out of the box with a new change. For retail­ers, most bars, restau­rants and enter­tain­ment venues, the jour­ney from a customer’s home to your loca­tion is fric­tion. If this is you, health and safe­ty may be your biggest chal­lenge in reduc­ing fric­tion. Over com­mu­ni­cate and make your safe­ty process front and cen­ter to the client expe­ri­ence. Spend a few min­utes right now to cap­ture your first thoughts on areas of fric­tion in your process. Who are the best team mem­bers to gath­er for your cross func­tion­al team? Make notes now while things are on your mind. Set a time line for get­ting start­ed. Join us next for a look at Resilient Rev­enue. Mackey

Recov­er­ing rev­enue runs the spec­trum from regain­ing your cus­tomers trust in terms of health and safe­ty so they feel safe con­tin­u­ing to do busi­ness with you, to com­plete­ly rein­vent­ing rev­enue as you now know it today. The old idea, “this is the way we do it here,” must go. Along the way, attempt to redis­cov­er your passion