Wayne Madden’s Blog
Revenue growth stoppers!
What are the most common “revenue stoppers” that can block your path to continued business growth? In last week’s post, I introduced the “limits to growth” concept (see Limits to Growth). Today, I want to put this in practical terms by outlining the four most common forms these limits may impact your business. Empower yourself [...]
Limits to Growth – Avoid or Eliminate These to Keep Growing your Business
This post is about you, as a business owner, finding urgency to pay attention to how you are growing your business and what is either already limiting, or about the limit that growth. If you don’t pay attention, I can promise you, even if you believe your team is exerting maximum effort, you will [...]
Avoiding Business Fixes that Fail
The fastest way to solve a problem in your business many times is just to do it yourself or just tell your employee or team exactly what to do. So, you do that once – or often – or maybe too often! You wake up and feel like you are constantly putting out fires and [...]
Perspective – a Tool to Eliminate Leadership Acts of Insanity
You know the classic definition of insanity – "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." It makes us laugh a little, but perhaps there is some truth in this when it comes to your leadership today. I frequently encounter owners-founders-CEOs who are harboring just a bit (or a lot) of [...]
First Decision Required to Unlock Revenue Growth
If you ask this Chicago CEO to tell you what transformed his business from unpredictable and lower-profit revenue growth in 2014 (call it $4M in revenue and $200k - 5% - in profit) to predictable, repeatable higher-profit revenue growth in 2018 (now approx. $7.5M in revenue and $940M - 13%), he would start with one [...]
Transform your business to SCALE – Liberate Yourself!
Do you need liberating as an owner? If today, you have a business where the people, processes, structure, and systems can easily keep pace and, in fact, accelerate your growth, they you are likely already liberated and functioning well as an owner. If so, press the pedal down on GROWTH (see last week's post - [...]
Going to war on revenue
At certain stages of the development of your business, it becomes absolutely critical that you and your team go to war on revenue. Some of those stages are obvious - when you are launching and have not generated enough revenue to get in the black, when you hit that first plateau of barely getting by but [...]
Lead with your eyes on the mitt
You should never underestimate how your own attention, you own focus, impacts your organization. In the movie (about a baseball player), "For the Love of the Game," there is a moment when Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner's character) goes 3-0 on a hitter in his quest for a perfect game. He has lost his focus and [...]
Are you caught in the Founder’s Trap?
As Elvis once sang, "We're caught in a trap, I can't walk out, Because I love you so much, baby." Sure, he was talking about love, but did he perhaps sum up how you feel about your business today? Do you feel trapped in this business you love and you are just not seeing the [...]
One Powerful Word for Leadership
As a leader, you can focus on one powerful word to build a business culture that delivers creative and innovative ideas that drive success. This powerful word is "how." As you interact with your team in one-to-one or group meetings, resist any urge you have that make assumptions about what someone is thinking or to [...]
7 Leadership Sins to Overcome – 7 Essential Skills to Master
To be the best leader possible for your business requires that you confront leadership behaviors that may be holding you back and focus on mastering those that will build success. In this post, I will first present the seven 7 leadership sins to avoid as a leader. These sins will not only thwart sustainable growth [...]
Important questions to ask yourself as a business owner or business leader
When you are leading a business, it can be easy to get caught in the details and fail to step back every now and then to ask some important questions. Here are a few questions you might ask yourself: Are you running (tactical) your company - or leading (strategy) your company? How is the life [...]