I hear it all the time…Most entrepreneurs are so busy working in their business, they don’t have time to work on it. In other words, they don’t have time to do any more sales, marketing or follow up.

In a day and age where it takes far longer to get a client or make a sale than it used to, this really worries me.

Because if you don’t devote enough time and energy to growing your business, it’s going to stay just like it is right now. If you’re satisfied with that, congratulations! If not, then you need to take action and make changes. [Read more...]

…doesn’t always means it’s a duck.

Doing the right thing often isn’t enough. Presenting the public face of your business also requires “keeping up appearances.” [Read more...]

When you launch a new idea or project into the world, you’ll probably use connections to what has come before as a way to tell your story.

Caribou Coffee, for example, uses all sorts of metaphors and cues and even verbal tropes that we learned from Starbucks. These signals help us understand that the place we’re about to enter isn’t a steakhouse, isn’t a shoeshine stand and isn’t a massage parlor. It’s a place to get a latte.

Books that want to be bestsellers work hard to look like previous bestsellers, from the store where they are sold to how many pages long they are to how much they cost. These signals help us determine that this object is something worth buying and reading.

Cable TV does this, politicians do this, computer resellers do this.

Here’s the thing: you can’t stand out if you fit in all the way, and thus the act of deciding which part isn’t going to match is the important innovation.

[Read the rest at Seth Godin's blog]