Being welcomed and given opportunities to speak, write for some of Pittsburgh’s most important publications and consult and coach several local businesses has been a gratifying and invaluable opportunity for me to learn how the town works and has succeeded so well. Being invited to join the Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence and most recently being accepted into Leadership Pittsburgh’s class of 2011 are profound honors.
I want to thank all the business leaders who have encouraged me to make a positive impact on the region by helping Western PA businesses grow as I did in Ohio.  Furthermore, I want to accelerate my assimilation into the Pittsburgh community and apply my business growth skill set to other organizations where I can help.  Pittsburgh is clearly a community of dedicated, progressive professionals working together to create regional success.  I want to quickly understand the deep roots and collaborative nature of my new home to help small businesses and other organizations uncover your Best and Highest Use®.

Looking back, it’s been a great privilege to help you grow by over $400 million and I look forward to continuing to do so. Being recognized as an asset to Northeast Ohio’s economy was a great honor and I hope that you will reach out to me whenever you and your business needs my specialty of empowering optimism and helping you and your business discover and leverage your Best and Highest Use®.

My role as a catalyst for many NEO business owners to develop the courage and conviction to invest in themselves has been my life’s work. I have profoundly enjoyed helping stalwart business leaders see past their limitations and grasp and commit to opportunities to take their businesses to the next level. While there are many organizations and associations I have helped lead, my biggest contribution has been working directly with the business owner to accomplish their ends, rather than by joining organizations to create the means for economic development.  By taking this contrarian approach and investing hundreds of pro bono hours annually, I was able to have a direct effect on many small businesses that I could not have had by working “within the system.”  As the number of business owners I helped grew, my work was recognized by all of Cleveland’s mainstream business media and organizations that focus on small business.

My biggest challenge was continually finding the strength and conviction to help these businesses take responsibility for their own success despite extreme economic pressure to do the opposite.  While thousands of businesses went bankrupt, I fought with and for scores of firms that survived and are contributing taxes, employment and hope to a region reeling from economic decline.

If I have one parting wish for Northeast Ohio, it would be that it rejects its reliance on traditional practices, leaders and ideas for solving the insidious challenges it faces and engages new methods, voices and solutions quickly.

I’d like to point you to a piece I’ve just written titled, “Entrepreneurs and Defining Points: Have You Had Your Popeye Moment?” At some point in everyone’s life – you reach a defining moment.  Take, for instance, the examples below:

“In the fifth game of the 1986 World Series, Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner flubs the game’s final grounder, igniting a Mets comeback that not only wins the game but ultimately the Series. From that moment on, Buckner is forever branded as the goat of the game.

In the epic play Les Miserables, the hero Jean Valjean, confesses to his pursuer, Inspector Javert, and then saves his foe’s life. This selfless gesture of grace lifts Valjean up from his life’s fate but drives his captor to question his very purpose and ultimately to suicide.”

Have you reached your defining moment? That moment in time when you’re summoning up the strength to overcome what seems like insurmountable odds?  Much like Popeye proclaiming, “That’s all I can takes, because I can’t takes no more!”  Have YOU cracked open YOUR can of spinach?

*NOTE: This article is originally published at American Express OPEN Forum*

In November of 2008, I published A Small Business Owner’s Prayer for Obama naively hoping that, despite a recession, illiquidity, and change at any cost, small business would always be valued and nurtured as the sacred golden goose of job creation and innovation.  How wrong I was!

Today I think we small business owners are facing 3 threats.  Those threats are coming from the unholy alliance of big corporations and government.  Across political parties — both Republican and Democrat — there’s an increasingly toxic environment for small businesses, making it ever harder to be successful.

Our desire to innovate is being sapped by increasing taxes and compliance rules, not to mention vendor programs and slow paying government and corporate customers.  I call these the 3 Deadly Threats Against Small Businesses Today. Read them and my remedies, and tell me if you agree, or what your remedies are.

I’d like to point you to a piece I’ve just written titled, “Take This Quiz to Assess Your Strengths as a Business Owner,” in which I share a quiz I created to give small business owners a clear idea of their strengths and weaknesses.  I’ve titled it “The Growth Analyzer Quiz.”

I created The Quiz after having worked with and interviewed over 5,000 small business owners over a period of 20 years:

“It outlines 45 business-owner characteristics. You are asked to check the boxes next to any of the 45 statements, if they are true and apply to you.  After you’re done, you’ll instantly see the results.”

If you’re a small business owner looking for ways to build upon your personal strengths, you may want to take a minute to take The Growth Analyzer Quiz and read the entire piece titled, “Take This Quiz to Assess Your Strengths as a Business Owner.”

*NOTE: This article is originally published at Small Business Trends*

In an era where buyers need complete confidence in their business relationships, most favor vendors they can trust to provide the most understandable and least risky solutions possible. This is not surprising considering how much new technology and science is now built into most products and services they buy.  And there’s much more on the way. The US News and World Report’s latest report of top careers shows why. Nearly every emerging job is in a narrow technical specialty that is exponentially creating knowledge that will need to be understood by untrained or educated buyers.

Capable buyers know they must process technical information that’s flooding in from all sides. To do so they will need more interpreters, advisers and reconcilers who can instill confidence by comfortably explaining how a technical product meets a layman’s objectives. But from where? In business it seems there is a widening gap between those who can invent technology and those who buy the results of technology. Historically only large corporations have employed staff who are technically educated, can sell product features, and then train a user in how to make money. These “sales engineers” who can leverage and communicate what they know have always been in great demand. But smart business owners like you have always served as your firm’s “sales engineer. You can seize this opportunity if you find and train sales people to sell like you do. Your sales ability, product knowledge and confidence built your business and its success. Now it is time to pay your knowledge forward. To profitably grow to the next level, you need to leverage your expertise and experience through your emerging employees. So take the cue of the sales engineer. You’re your most empathetic people and enhance their grasp of your products or take your technicians who are friendly and communicative and give them more opportunities to teach, train and sell.
In an environment where more things are being bought by buyers only as needed rather than being than sold to consumers acting on impulse, the best way to increase your sales and protect your margins is to sell your expertise and improving the experience of your customer. Do this by teaching and projecting what you do before it’s too late.

Recently, I ranted about how blogging and tweeting are often incompatible with generating qualified leads or closed sales (“To Tweet or to Sell”).

But if you run a business, how do you know if your tweeting and blogging are making you money?

To read the rest go HERE.

This article is published on the AMERICAN EXPRESS OPEN Small Business Forum.

Recently, Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends interviewed me during our recent webinar and came up with several excellent ideas for you including 45 ways you can improve your profitability in 2010.  Read More…. 

Best and Highest Use^® is when you look at your company and its impact on your customers. Is it still helping resolve their pain, achieve their opportunities, and succeed as much as it used to?
Or despite continuing to deliver more and more are your customers paying you less and less?
Watch my video on Achieving Your Best and Highest Use^®

Pricing has always been one of the greatest games in business. In times of scarcity, this is ever so true. The price you offer has to reflect value, convey trust and cover costs of sales, delivery, and unfortunately, collections. And you have to be able to get your price.

How do you know when a price is right?  Let’s say that you meet a prospect for lunch in an attempt to close a deal.  When you finally come to the point of stating your price, one of three things happens:

• Your prospect immediately says no, stands, and walks away.
• Your prospect immediately says yes, shakes your hand, and treats you, the waiter, and everyone at the surrounding tables to champagne.
• Your prospect contemplates the offer.  The long silence feels like an ocean in your head until you hear that magical word: Yes!
In two of the three situations you closed the deal, but only in the third have you done it right.  If the prospect rejects the offer out of hand, he believes the price is too high, which means that you have failed to sell the benefits of what your company provides.  If the prospect takes the offer immediately, you have given away too much value for too low a price; your prospect feels like he’s discovered a Van Gogh original at a garage sale!  You know you’ve got it right when your prospect accepts your offer only after some deliberation.  In this case, he knows the value he is losing if he says no.  Ultimately, your price is your demonstration of value. If you are getting your price in difficult times, congratulations, for you are truly valued for your value.