Articles and excerpts

Here are reviews to be found on the back cover of Characters Who Can Make Or Break Your Small Business : "There is such an incredible wealth of wisdom in this book - and it's possible to just dip into a chapter (character) at a time. I loved the conversational,...

Think about your car’s dashboard. Depending on the model and the age of the car, the dashboard will have a varying number of dials, gauges, and digital readouts. They all tell you something about the performance of the vehicle (and sometimes a whole lot of other...

(First posted in 2017 and subsequently published by Soundview Magazine. Now repeated because the message is timeless and warrants revisiting). I was recently dismayed to discover that my favourite art supply store was no longer offering free cookies. My first stop in...

Picture yourself in a cottage in the woods. The sound of the lake lapping the sandy shore drifts in through the screen door on the warm, loamy forest air. A chipmunk scurries about on the wooden deck and beyond that, a solitary fisherman sits in a small aluminum...

If you’ve not yet experienced business banking, you might be wondering whether it’s an exaggeration to suggest that bankers and small business owners dwell in different worlds. Be assured, it’s not. Bankers live in a nine-to-five bureaucratic world of policies and...

On the day of the hearing David and I were seated in awkward silence in a courtroom awaiting the judge’s arrival. The judge entered, introduced herself, settled down behind an elevated bench and stared down at us over the top of reading glasses perched on the tip of...

One hesitates to write about a family member in the way one hesitates to prod a bear with a pointed stick—neither is going to like it and both will let you know this in no uncertain terms. Family-member business relationships are common in the small-business...

"Have a great day. I hope that meeting doesn't drag on too long this afternoon, but if it does don't sweat it. Just let me know and I'll delay putting dinner into the oven. Oh, and where's your laundry slip? I'll pick it up for you on my way home from work." The front...

Only a tiny minority of small businesses appoint outside directors, but pinning down a number is difficult. Business literature largely ignores the topic, and even sources such as the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and Statistics Canada -- which can...

A mentor’s three essential qualities The first two of three essential qualities a small business mentor must have are obvious: knowledge and experience. They’re so obvious we don’t need to explore them here. The third is not so obvious, but it’s certainly essential....

When the time comes to negotiate or renew a lease, not all landlords will approach it with the take-it-or-leave-it attitude Graham and Andrea experienced. Much depends upon circumstances such as prevailing vacancy rates in the area and the general economic outlook,...

Usually the broker’s service doesn’t cost you a penny—he or she is remunerated by the insurance company with whom your business is placed. But therein lies a potential conflict of interest and further reason to select carefully. You want to trust that your broker will...

If ever a proverb applied to small business and alarm systems, it's the one about the futility of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. To invoke another old expression, I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard about a small business calling an...

Unfortunately for this company, a benchmark for screen printing ink manufacturers had been established in my mind months before when I attended a similar meeting at an ink factory near Atlanta. The contrast couldn't have been starker. There were no ink stains on the...

The degree to which this type of business neighbour can be detrimental ranges from merely irritating to seriously destructive. Such neighbours could break your small business if, in a worst-case scenario, by their presence or behavior, they discouraged customers from...

This character is a regrettable reality with whom a small business owner is bound to cross paths—in some cases, repeatedly. I’ve chosen the burglar to represent an entire class of characters with the same objective in mind: ill-gotten gain at the expense of a small...

Their first encounter set the tone for all subsequent visits. Ryley was woken from a deep sleep in the sunbeam by a sniffing noise and a rubber cup inches from his nose. The rubber cup instantly suffered the same fate as a veterinarian’s stethoscope that was...

Now, almost four hundred years later, we still discuss and study laughter, not so much to understand its impact on human health (it’s generally accepted to be beneficial), but to understand why it’s beneficial because neuroscientists still aren’t sure what happens in...

Your small business will generally have access to one of three computer technician resources, depending where you’re located—there may be exceptions in some countries and small towns. The choice lies between sole practitioners, companies consisting of a staff of...

Emergency maintenance is required when a malfunctioning asset threatens to cause costly damage or impede operations. One good example is a restaurant freezer malfunctioning while stocked with expensive food. Another is something that happened to my business late one...

It’s one of the business world’s most common mantras: “The customer is always right.” It’s also nonsense. The customer is not always right. Far from it. This slogan-turned-mantra was apparently popularized over one hundred years ago by renowned retailers such as Harry...