small business owner

20 Apr 2017

Show Your Humanity to Engage More on Social Media

By |2017-04-20T17:30:44-06:00April 20th, 2017|Categories: Branding, Current Events, Doug's Blog, Marketing|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Connecting With People for Social Media Engagement - Guitar on Black Background

There are two main camps in online marketing: business is business and business is personal. The first camp paints itself as impersonal, professional, and aloof. The second acknowledges that people do business with people. When done right, letting your humanity shine through your marketing messages increases social media engagement – without losing the professional touch.

3 Examples

Virgin is Human

If you are considering any of the companies in the Virgin Group, you will probably find the personality of […]

24 May 2016

How Having Momentum Behind Money and Ego Can Suck Out Your Life

By |2017-04-03T11:10:13-06:00May 24th, 2016|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation, The Good Men Project|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Man At Airport

Sometimes you can take a path in your business that isn’t right for you. Your choices matter.

I know more than a few men who’ve started what they thought was the perfect business for themselves. Once momentum kicks in it can get hard to change direction. The biggest trap ends up being the one we make in our heads.

One example is the expert industry. There are variations, but the formula is pretty straight forward. You start […]

28 Apr 2016

Your Relationship with Time and Money Is Hurting You

By |2017-04-12T11:43:17-06:00April 28th, 2016|Categories: Business Strategy, Manifast, Mindset and Motivation, The Good Men Project|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Time and Money

Your ability to invest and leverage resources determines your success in business. How do you measure up?

The Internet has taught us we can be experts in anything we choose. So we try to be experts in everything. Or worse, we learn just enough to fool ourselves into thinking we are experts because we don’t have the time or passion for achieving mastery.

I see this a lot with small business owners.

For example, they figure out how to build their website and do online marketing because […]

7 Jan 2015

Crossing The Bridge To Value

By |2017-05-30T19:20:41-06:00January 7th, 2015|Categories: Doug's Blog, Go-Giver Coach, Marketing, Sales|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Creating the Bridge to Value in Your Sales Process

In this guest post by Certified Go-Giver Coach and Business Growth Authority Doug Wagner, you’ll learn how to move the selling process from non-productive to very productive…through a simple crossing of the bridge to value. Powerful!!

Enjoy Doug’s wisdom! – Bob Burg

I was conducting some sales training over a period of 3 days this past fall and observed something happening repeatedly during the practice sessions. When I reflected on my own […]

6 Jun 2013

12 Success Attributes for an Ideal Coaching Client

By |2017-06-07T21:12:45-06:00June 6th, 2013|Categories: Doug's Blog, Go-Giver Coach, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Ideal Coaching Client Success Attributes

Are you a business coach wanting to find better clients or working with a coach and want to get more from the deal?

I was thinking about what an ideal coaching client would look like. Then I realized that the attributes of the ideal coaching client are that exact same attributes for:

  • Personal Success
  • Career Success
  • Sales Success
  • Leadership Success
  • Business Success

Yes, coaches want to work with clients who REALLY want to win, take action and apply what […]

19 Jul 2011

Are You Working on the Business?

By |2017-05-24T13:03:07-06:00July 19th, 2011|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Working on the Business|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Man On Roof - Working on the Business

What does working on the business really mean?

As a business owner (or entrepreneur) you spend a lot of time working to build your business. You are:

  • Finding new customers,
  • Keeping existing customers happy,
  • Providing your product or service to customers,
  • Hiring good people,
  • Retaining your employees,
  • Keeping on top of the finances,
  • Putting out fires,
  • And generally growing your business.

And many business owners can generate a lot of revenue and even profit doing the above. They may even significantly grow their businesses.

So isn’t that […]

21 Feb 2010

Business Strategy: What Do You Really Want to Optimize?

By |2017-06-21T15:53:41-06:00February 21st, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Leadership|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Man in Office - Business Performance - Business Strategy

Before you spend resources on improving your business performance, it is best to know where you want to go. This means getting clear on your business strategy.

Improving Business Performance

There are two main ways of improving business performance:

  • Optimization – Making things better, best practices, incremental improvements,
  • Innovation – Doing different things, doing things differently, leaping past the competition.

It is easy to think there is a magic bullet for optimizing your business’s performance. […]

18 Sep 2009

Employee Share Ownership – Alignment of Goals

By |2017-07-26T21:26:37-06:00September 18th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams|Tags: , , , , , , , , |

In my previous post on Strategy and Corporate Governance for Small Business, I talked about aligning Shareholder goals with the running of the company. This applies to employee share ownership as well.

When offering employees ownership you are making them shareholders.

Companies sometimes do this in an attempt to retain employees as the primary motive. However, there are issues:

  1. Shares in a privately held company are not the same as a cash bonus. They are a paper benefit until they can be sold.
  2. The goals of employee shareholders need to be in alignment with majority shareholders. If they are not then it might […]