Ten years ago, I visited a college campus in Denver, stood in a high traffic area, and held up a sign saying, DO YOU DESERVE A JOB AFTER YOU GRADUATE? WHAT SALARY ARE YOU ENTITLED TO? At that time, employee entitlement was the biggest challenge among the business owners, leaders, and managers with…
Ask most people under 40 to define the America Dream and you’ll likely hear them mention owning their own business and/or being their own boss. If you dig deeper and ask why so many young people want to pursue entrepreneurship, surprisingly, the first response won’t always be about making more money; in fact, it seldom…
Using a low price loss leader item and training front line employees to upsell customers to a higher margin product is a practice that’s been around since Moses played goalie for the Egyptian soccer team. It’s also one of many such tactics that millennial and Gen Z-aged employees despise. Unless they’re being closely monitored by…
On the days Josh Drean is not in class listening to a lecture in his graduate program at Harvard, he’s in a school gymnasium giving one to hundreds of teenagers. Only to his youthful audience, it doesn’t sound like a lecture. That’s because Josh is a hip, cool, relevant youth speaker who breakdances and beatboxes as he…
Walking through Denver International Airport on my way to Nashville last week, it wasn’t difficult to pick out the Southwest gates from those of all the other airlines. They were the only ones that looked like …well, like it’s late October. That’s because Southwest Airlines takes fun very seriously. They know if they promote a…
Ritz Carlton. Zappos. Starbucks. Nordstroms. Southwest Airlines. These iconic brands are legendary largely for the outstanding customer service they provide. That level of customer service is based upon a simple — but profound — leadership principle. And while the phrasing varies from one great organization to the next, the tenets of the principle don’t: Hire…
My appointment was scheduled for 9:50am and I had arrived 5 minutes early. At 10:20 I was still seated in the waiting area growing more frustrated by the minute. (Full disclosure: I’m what you might call a “Type A++”). At 10:16, I was ushered back to the dental chair and was welcomed by the dental assistant…
Just about every company in existence was started by someone (or several people) who saw an opportunity to make money in the marketplace. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that. But one company – a high tech software firm based in Minneapolis – was started by three guys (who each self-identify as ‘nerds’) with the singular goal…
It was midnight at the Omni Hotel in Amelia Island about 45 minutes from Jacksonville, Florida. I had just been dropped off by an Uber driver after a 4-hour flight from Denver and I was dog-tired. I was scheduled to speak for a large conference of 600 C-level executives the next day at this high-end…
Regardless how they obtain the skills they need for the job, employees worth their paycheck have the desire to get better at what they do. They want to acquire and develop new skills, talents, and abilities that will help them increase their value to their present employers and other prospective employers. To ignore your employees’ need…