Managing a small business is more difficult than managing a large business. 

Owner managers generally start their own businesses because they are good at something and believe they can build a successful commercial business off this base. Often they are good at the vocational aspect of the business, but are virgins in others areas such as the energising of their commercial model. Just because you are a skilled operative doesn’t necessarily equip you to becoming a successful ...

Practical approach to learning.

1. People learn by linking new information or ideas to what they already know.
2. People learn by visioning “patterns and linkages that are real in their own minds. The picture in ones own mind, represents the roadmap to guide forward decisions and movements.
3. People have different capacities for learning. Some can assimilate many “angles” simultaneously, while others have to rationalise the points in logical “one on one” order.
4. The more of our five senses we use to accumulate information, ...
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   13
   NOV
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Blaise was guest speaker (along with Miriam O Callaghan and others) at the graduation cermony for Forward Steps held in Mount Wolseley in Tullow on June 14th.

Blaise use the story of his current book titled Jack to get across his nuggets of wisdom to the large gathering. He suggested that they should take just a couple of the 198 nuggets of wisdom from the book and apply them to their own lives.

Differentiate your Offering and win.

You must stand out from the crowd in your space in order to be noticed. If you are not noticed, then how can your potential customers know you exist and consider doing business with you?

Your marketing plan must be formulated and implemented in order to effectively communicate your “edge” to your targeted customers.

1. You must continue have your eyes and ears opened, so that you can recognise slight movements in the influencers of your target ...
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   6
   MAR
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Suggestion Selling?

You can sell more products to your customer aside from the item that they are currently buying. This is possible through suggestion selling. Suggestion selling is selling necessary additional goods and services to the customer. It involves selling customers complementary items that will ultimately save them time and money, or makes the original purchase more enjoyable.

For example, consider the customer who buys a lawnmower, takes it home, and only then realizes that he or she has no extension electrical ...

Great leaders become leaders to achieve something, not to be someone. 

Leadership can and must happen at all levels of your business. You must listen and understand your people. You must show them the light and what the value of their “slice contribution” to the business is. It’s this identity and ownership of their critical contribution towards the defined destination which is the real motivator. No person is an island. We all want to be part of a movement towards a ...

Opportunity.

Change the word Problem to Opportunity and everything else will change for you.

While the media and so called “experts” are scaring the socks off us, can you start providing solutions to address the problems out there being suffered by the masses?
Every time things go terribly wrong, there is a segment of the population that moves in to provide solutions to these new problems. For these people, Problems = Opportunity.
When the “herd” is going in one direction, ...

Blaise spoke at the Wicklow Management Network in the Glenview Hotel on Thursday November 26th 2009 re the importance of Benchmarking ones performance against the “best in class” in your particular niche.

He said that there was someting in our Irish culture which drove us on to “punch above our weight” when the challenge is put in front of us.

Effective benchmarking is a useful way to put that challenge in front of us. If you can find out that your competitor ...