The origin of our Labour Day holiday comes from a darker time in our Canadian history. It started with a powerful movement in the late 1800s, lead by the union of the average worker, who was working a standard 12 hour days. The “9-hour movement” was born and resulted in a strike that was technically […]
Barb Stuhlemmer
Successful Transitions Focus on Growth
“Every significant accomplishment begins with one person stepping up and committing to making a difference” ~ John C. Maxwell. This is how I started an article I wrote in 2014. I commented that “there is a fear around spending more money, committing more time, giving up freedoms, or increasing time away from family and friends […]
3 Ways to Look at Being Ready to EXIT
Often, when a business owner hears what I do for businesses, they think, ‘I’m not ready to exit’. It is true that they are not looking at the date they plan on leaving their business, but there is a big problem with not being ready. The challenge with this is that being ready is not […]
In the Moment vs In the Zone
We are a very work-focused society. We want to show we are contributing, that we are competent, that we are worthy and we often guilt ourselves when we stop and take a break. Our perception of time changes as we get older. When we are an infant, we have no perception of time. We don’t […]
Give Up – Get Out – OR – Get Going
I have had a few business owners come to me recently, looking to do something different in their business and now making the money they want. Deciding on the change in one thing, but implementing it is another. It is like going back to the beginning of business, and starting all over again. So when […]
Decision Making for Best Results
Have you ever made a bad decision that had cost you more than you expected? Sure you have; we all have. As a human, we make a lot of decisions in a day. In one article I read (1) we make upwards of 35000 decisions a day, most of them as standard or autonomic actions. […]
For Less Anxiety You Need to Plan Before You’re Ready
“If I had known this before I sold my business, I could have saved myself two years of anxiety.” This is truly what a business owner said to everyone at an in-person workshop I was giving. Doris, not her real name, was present at one of these workshop events held for her networking group. She […]
Focusing on Exiting Feels Like a Loss of Business. It’s Not and Here’s Why.
| Even if you are thinking, “I just don’t feel like it” – Do it for legacy. | When we started our businesses, we knew we had to learn a lot of new things. It wasn’t enough just to be an expert around our product or service, we also had to learn how to be […]
Don’t Start with Valuation
When people come to me about preparing their business to exit, their first statement is almost always, “I don’t know what my business is worth, if anything at all”. Then they ask if I can do a valuation to see if they would be able to sell and exit. There are two issues with this: […]
How Leadership Pays Off, At All Levels – Revisited
In an article from October 2023, “A Story of Two Shutdowns And Their People“, I told the story of two very similar manufacturing companies with two very different distinct leadership styles that created two very different cultures. In today’s article, I am revisiting these two leadership scenarios with a look at how these styles affected […]