5 Hard Truths About Why Most Businesses Will Fail — Having been around professional services for the better part of 3 decades now, I’ve seen enough to recognize repetitive patterns. Oftentimes, it’s like watching a train wreck happen over and over again. While there are many patterns that I could touch on today, I’ll save most for another post (or…

Hourly rates are for rookies, shady motels, and sweatshops. Screw that! Even Ron Burgundy is with me here. But I get it… Hourly rates are easy to understand. I used them for years. But they absolutely limit your potential. And customers often expect them. Yet ONLY because you haven’t…

If you only prize revenue per client, your business will suffer — Big customers can bring big revenue… and big headaches. While growing my first software services business, big companies felt like the holy grail of customers. I saw revenue potential and chased it. And it nearly killed my startup business. I was lucky — my business survived. I eventually grew it…

Learn how to grow your team and business sustainably — You need to embrace processes. That’s it. That’s the lesson. Not helpful? Not actionable? Let me explain. Even if you do “custom” development, you need to have a guiding framework around it to drive predictable and highly valuable outcomes. “Process” doesn’t have to be a dirty word. In fact, if…

If you’re neglecting profit, you’re neglecting your business — Profit will come “someday”. My business will be profitable “later” once I: bring on that one critical hire hit my next revenue goal secure external funding And the list goes on. All lies we tell ourselves to make up for the fact that we did not prioritize profit from day…

5 payment strategies to help protect your cash flow — Outside investment is NOT a good option for most businesses, especially software services firms. Yet it gets the lion’s share of words written about it and works spoken about it. First and foremost, protecting your equity should be a critical focus for anyone growing a business. After all, you’re the…

Little things done well can create huge value — Great onboarding helps clients AND employees yet we tend to undervalue it for both audiences. Stop right there. Clear your mind then think back to the most recent employee you hired. Would you have known what to expect if you were in their shoes? For the interview process? Leading up…

Discovering value upfront is critical to aligning with customers — Most of us started the same way — selling our time for an hourly rate. Yet it created some ugly behaviors almost immediately, like: Our clients second-guessing our motives and scrutinizing our hours We started looking at every non-billed hour as a lost opportunity And, as our productivity improved, our…

What you need to know so you can go big on your own too — Less talk, more action. He is proving one person can accomplish a lot on their own. Like a business that has grown to high six-figures in just a few short years. So, it’s time to put our talk aside and get started. Brett Williams runs DesignJoy, an unlimited design service…