Business owners need not be their company’s marketing experts. You trust your CPA to guide you on finances and your lawyer to advise on legal matters – marketing should not be an exception. Your role as a business owner is to create a vision, set goals and manage the business by hiring the best talent you can find for each part of the business (HR, accounting, sales, customer service, operations, etc.).

Imagine visiting a non-English speaking country on a tour, meeting a widowed man with an infant child, then deciding to take care of that child and never going back to the US? Literally, leaving your life behind and trading it for a strange country, new language and culture, suspicious family, and a whole lot more.

To weather the impending storm, you must re-evaluate your company's marketing. Fast forward to a time when consumer resources will be strained, when decisions will be made based on price, and when every competitor is going to fight like hell to get a piece of the shrinking pie

Here's something I don't understand: it dates way back to when our moms or dads said the same thing (but they were smart enough not to include a negative word), "just try it" and we did. Yes, it's not a comparable scenario because entrepreneurs face a financial 'risk' if they try and fail, but that's not really the point is it?

Qualifying for the race requires hard work. When you line up with other racers who qualified you earned the right to be considered by customers. But, from where I stand and what I experience every day with our clients, we must recognize that we live in a world where we have to re-qualify time and time again.

Professionals understand that the project is the whole project, not simply the fun or urgent or interesting part of the work.There are countless productive shortcuts along the way. But not finishing the project isn’t one of them.- Seth Godin

I love the “find my phone'“ feature even though I haven’t had to use it yet- but that comfort-level feeling in the event I lose my cell phone is well, comforting. How about “find common courtesy?” I miss it, don’t you?

I remember having to go to the public library for a research project. Sifting through index cards, writing down each book's location, walking around the aisles to find the book, then reading, highlighting, developing content, putting it all together, drawing conclusions, introduction, summary, the works.

How do you know you changed the story, or that the one they told themselves is no longer true? When your 'audience' (prospective and existing customers, or even just strangers) start with a 'wow' and then call their friends.

There's a lesson here that goes beyond shipping a box; I see this "miss" way too often in other areas - the restaurant that charges an extra $2 for sharing a meal, the direct seller refusing a return and pointing you to the small print no one ever reads, and the list goes on.

Getting emails to open and convert, social media engagements or anything else we're trying is brutally challenging. Everyone, from a one-man-and-a dog in his garage to a multi-million dollar business, are all using the same tools.

This isn't Harvard Business School material. It's an entrepreneurial mindset, your internal business compass reminding you that nothing- business, customers, economy or you name it- should ever be taken for granted. This is especially true when your business is doing well, growing, expanding, making a lot of money.

Two things never fail when it comes to making connections and acquiring new customers: Integrity and transparency. In simple terms, “walk the walk, talk the talk.” It’s not that difficult if you stop chasing hacks and shortcuts and just “be yourself.”

How do I know that this testimonial is real? How do I know if the person even exists? How many of the business’ friends and family posted reviews? All valid questions because trust and integrity are a real challenge in a world where anyone can post and say anything and their identity can be real or fake.

What is the equivalent of the Breathe app for business owners who get up every morning, buckle their seatbelts and go on a rollercoaster ride for the remainder of the day? I'd like to call it the "business owner's out-of-body experience"