Actionable business growth strategies you can put to work in your business right now, served up in 3-4 minute episodes. Are you a growth minded business owner, looking for strategies to help your business scale up? Do you find it challenging to make time for learning each week? If so, this is the podcast for you! Hi! I’m Dan Holstein, and since 2010, I’ve coached business owners to scale their businesses profitably and sustainably. In this podcast, I share some of the strategies, tactics, an ...
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Are You Annoying Your Customers? And what to do about it (and get great reviews)
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Do you know what it's like to buy from your business? Do you understand your customer’s buying journey? Do you know what hoops you make your customer jump through in order to do business with you? Is it possible that your buying process is annoying your customer? Regardless of whether you run a large enterprise or a small business, your customer's …
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With everything you have on your plate, starting a new initiative might seem like an overwhelming task. Thinking something is going to be harder than it is, might lead you to procrastinate, leading to time constraints and making that task seem ever more difficult. Sound familiar? I think we've all been there at one point or another - I know I have.…
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Are you Driven or Ambitious? And why does it matter? The first female NFL coach, Dr. Jen Welter, was the keynote speaker at a conference I attended a few years ago where she put this question to us all in the audience. It made us pause and most of us were not sure! She explained how these words define our outlook and what is really motivating us al…
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Stop Babysitting Your Team - Use the simple Five S Training Method - like a Flight Instructor Does
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Do you ever feel like you need to babysit your team because they have trouble completing some tasks successfully and consistently? I know many business owners who feel that way. And it is usually because they don't have an effective framework to train their team members, or they just don't invest enough time training them to be effective. In this w…
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How to Work Less in Your Business (and get away from the day to day operations)
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This is a critical question for you: How much are you personally needed every day in your business? How much is reliant on you, your decisions, and your experience? Are you so important that it keeps you from taking a few days off or take a holiday and completely disconnect? In this week’s video I share a practical strategy for HOW to become less i…
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Getting out of the Weeds - Making a Critical Hire
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As the CEO of your business, your responsibilities over time have likely increased in both number and volume. There comes a time when you need to make a critical hire to take many of those vital responsibilities off your plate. Once you do that, you can focus on the strategic areas of your business, and grow your enterprise. In this week’s video, I…
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Know your Numbers - What Key Metrics Can Tell You About Business Growth Strategy
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I was at the airport recently and I got thinking about the windsock as it was blowing around in the gusting winds. A windsock is a simple yet critical tool for pilots, as it tells them what direction the wind is blowing and at what speed, which is extremely important when you’re taking off or landing a plane. What areas of your business do you need…
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Have you ever been in a state of thinking that a particular situation can't change, nothing is going to work, and become resigned to the fact that this is just kinda how it is? Watch to learn the simple process to getting unstuck and achieve different and better outcomes. Connect with me on LinkedIn Watch episodes on our YouTube Channel Watch THIS …
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Robbing the Emotional Piggy Bank...of Your Customers
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Whenever we interact with our customers, we are having an impact on them. The impact is rarely neutral, and usually either positive or negative. When we have a positive impact, its like making a little deposit into their emotional bank account. Having a negative impact on a customer is like making a withdrawal from their emotional bank account. Whe…
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Consistent Execution - Don't Break Your Seinfeld Chain to Success
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I find that when talking with business owners that they find it’s difficult to get and stay consistent on their most important tasks because life just gets in the way. So I want to share with you a little story and a technique so that you can gain and maintain your consistency in doing the successful things that you need to do to achieve your goals…
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Who Hates Meetings? Turn your Meetings from Time Wasters to Productivity Makers
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Do you find meetings a waste of time and energy? Most business owners do too, because meetings are plagued with some of these chronic challenges: They never start on time. People don't come prepared. You feel like the changes discussed in the meetings don't actually happen. Participants are distracted and not paying attention. The consultation ramb…
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Different Behavioural Styles on your Team: Differences as Strengths
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This week I want to talk to you about personality styles and behavioural styles. Think about this: on your team do you have anybody that kind of drives you nuts? Are you looking at their difference as a weakness? If you are, I'd like to challenge you to look at their difference as a strength. For example, if you're high energy a lot of motion perso…
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3 Steps to Overcome Self-Sabotage: From Possibility to Probability to Profitability
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Have you ever said that you wanted to be, do, or have something and then immediately or shortly thereafter you decided that you couldn't be, do, or have that thing. And then you talked yourself out of it. What happens there? You're inspired with the idea of something that you could do, but then you made a decision that it wasn't possible for you. S…
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Interview with AIS Solutions "Firm of the Future" owners Juliet Aurora and Steve Loates
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Hear the story of entrepreneur Juliet Aurora who started her enterprise out of pure necessity in the spare bedroom of her house 20 years ago, and how she and her husband Steve Loates grew it into a national bookkeeping firm that has earned Intuit's highest Accolade: Firm of the Future. Along the way, Juliet and Steve had a lot of ups and downs - an…
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Do you ever feel nervous about trying something new in business or life? This week, my daughter Megan and I discuss strategies to push through the nervousness, jitters and limiting beliefs that can keep us from trying new things and achieving what we want to accomplish! If you've ever thought: - Can I even do it? - What will happen if I fail? - Wha…
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Are you hard on yourself? Are ya? You…I’m talkin to you. Yeah, maybe not all the time but sometimes…a little bit of that negative self-talk kickin in there about this, that, or the other thing. Maybe it’s how much money you’ve made, or didn’t. How much time you’re working in your business or not, or that thing that you didn’t do just quite right or…
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Maintaining your Mental Health. An Interview with Brian Janes of Impact Counselling
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Have you ever had one of those days where you'd prefer to just stay home, and not go into your business and deal with all the stress? I think we've all been there at one point or another. As business owners, we are subject to a lot of pressure, stress and challenges on a daily basis: Meeting client expectations, handling cashflow issues, staffing i…
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Who is Dragging Your Business Value Down? Business Value Drivers 3/10
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The effectiveness and quality of your team is a significant factor in the valuation of your business. In addition to the amazing people on your team, you might have some staff that you regard as a consistent headache but continue to keep them on. Maybe they’ve got some key relationships with customers, or they’ve been with the business for a long t…
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As business owners, it's easy (and sometimes tempting) to allow ourselves to get pulled into too many roles in our businesses. And let's face it, who doesn't like to be the person with all the answers and solutions? The challenge we have is that we can get spread too thin. The result is a business that constantly relies on us, which reduces our fre…
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Your Unique X Factor: Business Value Drivers 2/10
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Does your business have an 'X-Factor' that makes it really stand out from your competition? This week, in episode 2 of 10 in our Driving Business Value series, we discuss how to determine what your X-Factor is, and how it sets you apart from your competitors, and keeps your customers coming back to you. Knowing and developing what makes your busine…
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Zapper or Sapper? The Effects of Negative Energy People in Business
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The difference between a Zapper and Sapper is the energy the person brings to those around them. A Zapper brings energy and a Sapper drains energy from those around them. Think of the folks you enjoy spending time with - I would wager that they are Zappers - you leave an interaction with them feeling better - energized, upbeat and positive. And the…
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The Risk of Key Person Reliance - Business Value Drivers 1/10
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If you are considering exiting your business in the next few years, NOW is the time to get to work on increasing the value of your business. This week's video is episode 1 of 10 in my Driving Business Value series, and is all about Key Person Reliance. Key Person Reliance or Dependency is where any one person is too important to the business, which…
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You know effective execution is what keeps your business moving forward quickly and profitably, but sometimes getting the entire organization to execute well is a challenge. In today’s video I share the three key things to have in mind for effective execution: 1. Clear priorities for everyone 2. Measurement of progress on priorities 3. Effective me…
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What is Your Business Worth? How To Increase its Value
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Did you know that most business owners think their business is worth more than it is? The reality is your business is only worth what someone will pay for it - not necessarily what you think they should pay. If you are making decisions about business succession or transition based on guessing - you could be setting yourself up for disappointment. I…
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When you’re asked, "How’s business?" Do you answer “Busy!” Is busy something that happens to us or are we busy by choice? Often I see business owners over-commit out of a sense of service, and responsibility and obligation. As well, we are often the only ones who are able to execute on many areas of the business and we haven’t been successful at de…
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Video - Not Just for Marketing: How to use Video to Effectively Grow Your Business | Interview with Raymond Tuquero
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Video can be used to communicate with your customers, your staff, and even improve your sales processes. This week I sat down with Raymond Tuquero - filmmaker, videographer and the owner of Creative Crunch Productions to discuss how to effectively use video to grow your business. We had a wide ranging conversation that included Raymond sharing insi…
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Would you like to get an accurate idea of your business performance but don’t know what exactly to look at? In this video, I go over important metrics for measuring success in your business and how you can identify the changes that you need to make in order to scale. 👉 Subscribe First of all, it’s important to keep in mind that there’s only a few i…
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When Your Business Has Outgrown Great People | Employees That Can't Keep Up
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If you have been in business for a while, you've most likely experienced a situation where a long time team member is no longer able to keep up - and their performance is having a negative effect on the business. It could be their role has become more complex, or requires a different skillset, or a new way of thinking - and the team member is unabl…
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The Cost of Compensating - How To Handle Underperforming Employees
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We hire team members because we have a role that needs fulfilling and the folks we hire seem to be the best candidates possible. But sometimes these rock stars turn out to just 'ok' or 'so-so' performers. What to do? Sometimes as business owners, we start to compensate for a team member's weaknesses by helping them out here and there and picking up…
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How to Identify Your Business Weaknesses (And Why They May Not Be What You Expect)
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In this video, I discuss the importance of identifying your business weaknesses so that you can fix them before getting “shot down.” You see, often the areas of improvement that make businesses most vulnerable are, in fact, ones that we wouldn’t necessarily think of. The reason I talk about getting “shot down” is because during WWII, when planes wo…
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How to Shrink Your To-Do List and Achieve More
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How is your To-Do list looking? Is it ever shrinking... or ever growing? If you are like many leaders of growth businesses, your To-Do list is likely growing. However, the most effective leaders have short To-Do lists, and instead focus their time on their To-Achieve list. In this week's video, I share a simple 3 part strategy to shrink your To-Do …
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Attracting A Players - How To Attract Talented Employees To YOUR Business
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In this video I’d like to share my tips for recruiting top talent to your business. Talented employees (the ‘A Players’) can elevate your business to the next level. We all want them, but what can we do to attract them to join us rather than our competitors? PLEASE SUBSCRIBE 👈 To attract top tier talent you need to be a great leader: to know what a…
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Keeping Up With High Growth | Execution Drift
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When you’re in high growth mode, a time will come when things start to get sloppy. Deadlines start getting missed, mistakes begin to happen more often in the office and in the field - and everyone is getting a little stressed. This is when we run into Execution Drift - when things just don't work the way they used to - and you as the business leade…
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As business leaders, we all get stuck from time to time. In this video I'd like to share a problem solving framework that you can use to move through stuck points in your business. If you find this video helpful, PLEASE SUBSCRIBE 👈 The formula is called AADA which stands for: Avoidance - often if we feel stuck, or we have a major challenge in our b…
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How To Overcome The Fear Of Being Judged | Finding The Courage To Share Your Ideas
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Want to know how to build momentum in your business? Well, the key is consistent effort. When you take action day after day despite not seeing results, that work will pay off for you. -- 💥 For more tips to help your business take flight, be sure to SUBSCRIBE: -- But what is momentum in business? Well, it's essentially when everything is going reall…
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Do you Need to Be the Smartest Person in Your Business?
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Back when you started your business, your intelligence and ability to think of everything, take care of everything, and solve problems quickly was absolutely critical, and helped you get where you are now. But, is this the way forward, now that you have a team? Could you be hanging on to too much, and getting bogged down? In order to get into serio…
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Are You Making Changes For The Wrong Reasons?
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As humans, we will quickly move away from pain, just switch course, and may look to blame external factors for why things didn't work out. But if we don’t see how our own thinking has contributed to the situation, we’re going to continue to have that problem repeated over and over again. Whether it’s an issue with our team, our customers, our sales…
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Are you finding that the more your business grows, the more stretched you become? It’s common for business leaders - especially founders - to hang on to tasks and responsibilities, that really could (and should) be done by someone else on their team. As your business growth accelerates, your time, energy and effort need to be focused more and more …
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Have you ever had a meeting that ended with you believing that everyone was on point, knowing what they need to do, only to review at the next meeting, and find out that not everything was completed, because it turned out, not everyone was clear after all? This can lead to frustration, and a lot of wasted time. Holding effective meetings can be a c…
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A major challenge faced by leaders of high growth businesses is the recruiting, onboarding and retaining of great team members. One of the most critical phases here is the onboarding process. This is what the new team member experiences from their first day onward, and we need to get this right. If we don't (and maybe you have experienced this), we…
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Wanting to be liked can cause problems. If you’re more interested in being liked than in gaining respect in the workplace, it’ll interfere with your ability to make hard decisions and have tough conversations. 👉 If you find this video helpful, PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! As an example, let’s think about a situation in which there’s an employee who’s not exec…
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It seems to me that 2021 went by in an instant, and we are already looking at 2022 arriving in just a few short weeks! How has your year gone? I hope you've had a good one and are ready for a strong finish to 2021. Ending the year strong means being ready to jump into the new year with a clear vision, goals that excite you, and strategies for accel…
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Earlier this week I received a message on LinkedIn that was clearly an inauthentic, boilerplate, copy/paste script - you probably receive them all the time too. You know the type I mean... "Hi Dan, would you be interested in exploring the joys of business ownership..." But here's the thing. Authentic marketing requires authentic communication. It n…
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How to Stop Repetitive Frustrations in Your Business
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Are you frustrated with the same irritating situations that keep recurring in your business? Do you perhaps grudgingly accept and believe that “that’s just the way it is” even though you really want to figure it out? Very often, what is keeping us stuck is actually our personal beliefs about what we can change and what we can’t. In this week's vide…
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Ever have days where everything is coming at you, and it feels like you are juggling tasks and priorities the whole day? As business owners and leaders, I think we’ve all been there from time to time. Not fun! In this week’s video, I share a simple strategy to have more focused days and eliminate the juggling (well, at least some of the juggling!) …
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Three Types of Goals: How to Make Sure They're Still Meaningful
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Do you ever find yourself questioning the goals you've set for yourself? Maybe they aren't as meaningful or exciting to you as when you set them? As we grow and evolve personally, our reasons for setting particular goals naturally changes as well, and the long term goals we set in the past, may no longer be relevant to us. In this week's video, I b…
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The Power of “Yes And”: Productive Team Collaboration
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What's the “Yes And” strategy and what's it got to do with your business? Well, in this video I explain how the principles of improv comedy can enhance creativity in business. A comedy troupe is a team of performers. The group agrees to set the stage and situation. In your business, you similarly share a situation -- COVID, the economy, etc. -- and…
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One Strategy to Reduce Negativity in Your Business
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Do you ever feel like you’re carrying around a negative view on what’s going on in your business? It’s a trap I have seen a lot of ambitious business owners fall into - they don’t see the amazing progress that they’re making – instead they focus on the problems and perceived short-falls of themselves and their team. But the truth is often that you’…
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Your Business is NOT Your Identity (How To Thrive In & Out Of Work!)
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Many business owners tend to get their self identity entangled with their work identity. And it’s completely understandable. In order to build a business, it takes a whole lot of blood, sweat, and tears. There’s a certain amount of pride and attachment that naturally goes along with that kind of effort. This is what’s known as performance based est…
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Boost Staff Morale With This Simple Strategy
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The growth of your business is closely tied to the level of your team’s morale, and how aligned everyone is with the core values of your business. In this week’s video, I share with you a strategy that is easy to do, and also easy not to do - to regularly (and sincerely) recognize members of your team for the value of their work that they bring to …
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