Are you successful? Your inner voice probably already shouted an answer, and it likely was not ‘yes’. One of the greatest challenges in life is managing your inner voice. I think being a business owner makes this challenge all the more difficult as you don’t have any outside criteria like a job description or performance […]

I think one of the damaging myths of business ownership is that doing good work leads to more business. While the reverse is true – doing bad work will lead to failure, there are many times that doing successful work does not guarantee that you will get more business. Defining Success Let’s be clear on […]

When I mapped out this series about the things I have learned in the past fifteen years of running Spire2, I knew that this one would require some vulnerability. It has proved hard to write, because I can’t wrap it up with a clever little bow. Over time, I’ve recognized a quality that I have […]

I remember taking a prospective client out to lunch many, many years ago. The only thing he didn’t want to talk about was doing the work of his job. He was interested in the politics of the large company that employed him and in doing as little work as possible. It was a very long […]

I have recently been working with a client that is going through a significant amount of internal change. This has resulted in a major disruption of all their marketing. As I have navigated through this change, I have experienced anxiety and frustration. Part of this is coming from the natural tendency we all have to […]

As I look back, we have done a lot of work that I am proud of, but there are some clients and business relationships that stand out. It was a combination of things that made them special, but all of them share a common fate of becoming former clients. The hardest part is that none […]

Without a doubt, the last fifteen years have brought a whole ocean of change in how organizations market themselves. Websites are a perfect example; best practices in website development and strategy change every few years. Looking at a seven-years-old site is like going back to prehistoric times. The saying “what works today, will not work […]

I remember it quite vividly. An employee had a completely different idea of how our self-promotion should be executed. We discussed it and went back and forth. I suggested we sit on it and come back to the project in a couple of days. On the inside, I was frustrated.  “I own my own business, […]