An interesting question that seems to pop up among many entrepreneurs I talk to “How do you manage and run such a large team?”
At the moment, Lead Cookie consists of roughly 26 team members and we are running over 70 live accounts.
That is a lot of people and customers to stay on top of.
Read MoreSo you are ready to update your website... Or create a new one...
Now the big question is: What do you actually say on your website?
There is a lot of noise on the internet about different ways to approach your website. I'm not saying that my approach is pure gold, but it has served me well.
Read MoreCulture.
In the entrepreneurial sense, it is an ambiguous thing about "how it feels to work at your company" that is rather hard to quantify.
Yet you hear entrepreneurs talk about it all the time.
While I don't believe there is any specific "how to" on building a great culture, I do think there are many things you can pick up, learn, and apply to your own company.
In this article, I am going to dive into how we have built a culture at Lead Cookie and how we are currently building one at Content Allies.
Read MoreIn this article, I need to call bullshit on myself.
About 18 months ago, I wrote an article titled Zero to $33k in 6 months - Lessons learned.
The contents of the article had a lot of valuable insights.
Read More"I can't help but wonder if all I needed to get rolling was for someone to show they believed in me." - Jess Brown, Lead Strategist at Content Allies.
Over the past two years, I have evolved from a solo consultant to running two companies with a total team size of over 30.
During that time, I've seen several of the team members I brought on board radically transform their lives and reach new levels of achievement in their careers that was unlike anything they were doing before.
Read MoreOne fear that many people have when starting an interview-based podcast is their ability to actually conduct the interviews.
Often, this fear of being a "bad interviewer" is a mental barrier that the host has to break through because, in reality, they would be great if they just gave it a shot. We see this all the time with potential customers at Content Allies.
Regardless, after 130+ interviews on my Working Without Pants Podcast, I've picked up quite a few tips on how to conduct a great interview.
Read MoreYour business model- It ultimately creates some of the biggest questions that most entrepreneurs face as they start off down the journey of building something new.
What am I going to build?
Who is it going to serve?
How am I going to package it?
It is pretty common that people ask me if I am writing and creating all of my own content.
The answer is yes.
While I am beginning to experiment with writers who will be supporting me through turning interviews into content, as of today, I write it all.
Read More"We churn ~20% of our customers off every month"
"We churn ~11% of our customers off every month"
"We churn ~10% of our customers off every month"
These are all quotes from various owners of marketing productized services.
Read MoreFor years, I would pick up and read books like crazy.
If someone recommended it to me, then I went for it.
And while there was a lot of good in this, there was also a lot of waste.
And there was a lot of mental chaos created by reading so many books ad hoc.
Getting testimonials from customers can be a pain, or kind of awkward at times.
Yet at Lead Cookie, we have built a wall of customer testimonials on our website.
The way that I get these testimonials is simple and below you will find my script.
Read More"We have a sales problem so we are going to hire a salesperson."
This is a mistake I have heard over, and over, and over, and over again from the consulting firms and agency owners I advise.
The owners have a decent business going, but they can't seem to get sales figured out.
Read More"If you were to start over again today, what would you do differently?"
This question was asked of me recently on a podcast, and I found it ironic because at the moment I am starting a new business.
After 2 years of building up Lead Cookie and scaling myself to working 5 hours per week, I have decided to build a second venture.
Read More"I feel like I am on a roller coaster ride" - This was a consistent quote from me in the early days of building Lead Cookie as I had calls with my adviser, Alex McClafferty.
Each day I woke up early and worked insanely long days, in what felt like an endless cycle of just trying to keep my head above water.
And each week, during our advising calls, Alex would have to remind me of this simple lesson:
"You are not on a roller coaster. You are in the driver's seat. You choose what business you build."
Read MoreNiching and positioning is something I see a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with. They can't seem to nail down a strong value proposition and instead want to do it all.
They read blogs on positioning, watch video courses, and seem to obsess over this...
Yet it's uncommon that I see many people finalize on a niche and positioning statement that really works.
Read MoreThere is a business concept that I learned recently which was a huge revelation for me.
It helped me optimize Lead Cookie, increase our profitability, and streamline our operations.
The concept is "The Queen Bee Role" and it actually comes from Mike Michalowicz's most recent book called Clockwork.
Read MoreIt may seem counterintuitive, but taking a vacation is one of the most productive things you can do as an entrepreneur.
As I write this, I just returned from a 1.5-week vacation where I did hardly any work. I will be honest, I checked in a couple of times, but for the most part, I was totally disconnected from my team.
On the surface, you would think that a vacation means you are not getting anything done.
Read More"Your business is a reflection of you."
This simple lesson that I first learned from my adviser, Alex McClafferty, keeps proving to be true time and time again.
Over the past few months, I found myself rather stressed and ridden by anxiety.
And as a result, that flows onto my team, and eventually onto our customers.
For the past 4 years of my entrepreneurial career, I have been on a path of building a scaleable, productized service.
For years, I stopped and started many that ended in failure.
And eventually, with Lead Cookie, I hit a pretty decent success.
"That which is measured, improves" - Peter Drucker
One of the simplest and yet most effective things you can do to improve your business is to create a metrics dashboard that measures your Key Performance Indicators (KPI's).
When you have insight into your metrics, you can see problems before they arise and course correct.
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