Depending on where you live, you may have paid to drive on a toll road.

Toll roads have been modernized in recent years to cause fewer traffic jams while encouraging drivers to sign up for the wireless automated payment systems they support. Instead of a toll gate that requires drivers to stop and pay with cash, multiple lanes have sensors that read an in-car device’s wireless signal that identifies your car.

But changes are coming to increase toll revenue.

If you haven’t written for a newspaper or magazine, or worked for a media agency, you may not realize that many of the stories you see start with ideas seeded with press releases.

Sending press releases to your local media, and selected national media (such as the editor of a nationally-read newspaper, blog, magazine, podcast, etc) can make sense to draw attention to your business and what it’s up to, but only if you don’t make a few key mistakes.

A while back, I had a conversation with the CEO of a $60 million software company that hit me pretty hard – and the lesson is one that all business owners need to keep in mind.

This CEO was talking about how he feels constant pressure to improve himself so that he can be ready to run the company that will be waiting for him in six months or so. Given their growth rate, he fully expects the business to be 20 to 30 million larger a year from now.

Despite the proven skills he’s demonstrated for years – and used to get his company to where it is today, he still feels intense pressure to be ready to run the company his company will soon become.

What hit me hard is that despite the fact that I regularly invest a fair amount of time and cash to expand my education, I was talking with a guy who also spends a lot of time and money improving his skills and education – and he still doesn’t feel ready.

Before you know it, the long winter will be a forgotten memory – except for the powder days. As it finally warms up for good (whatever that means this year), school will be out and tourists will be inbound for another summer.

It’s almost tourist season. Are you ready?

Is your facility ready? I’m sure you have a checklist for that, so I won’t go there.

Instead, let’s discuss some steps to help you make tourist season better than expected:

Most likely you’ve heard the saying “A poor artisan blames their tools.”

Despite the ROI of blame being zero (at best), this situation goes well beyond blame.

While they vary from person to person, our values are the central driving force in our everyday lives.

These values form the context of daily decision making that drives our behavior. Quite often, these set-in-stone rules are accompanied by a set of guidelines that we adhere to, but occasionally allow ourselves to bend now and then.

When used as the lens through which we interact with clients, vendors, contractors and employees, these set-in-stone rules form operational boundaries that no situation and no person can convince our business to stray from.

While all of this is obvious, what might not be so obvious is how deep the influence of these rules can be.

As such, it’s worth considering where your rules come from and how you use them.

One of the things that separates people from most machines and systems is their ability to adapt their interactions as the relationship matures.

A tough-as-nails 61 year old grandfather who supervises workers on an oil rig in North Dakota’s Bakken adapts his communication to the recipient when training a new guy to stay alive on the rig, and does so again when chatting with his three year old granddaughter about her Hello Kitty outfit via a Skype video call.

He doesn’t coo at a young buck and he doesn’t growl at his granddaughter. He adapts. It’s common sense.

Our systems, processes and communications don’t do enough of this.

What things about your business are you fed up about?

Sometimes it might be everything or the very biggest things, but at other times, it might simply be an aspect of your business… the tiniest of things. Even in those cases, the frustration is just as strong. The only difference is the concern you have about the outcome and what’s at right.

So what do you do about it?

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Do you depend on having the best price to win business? If so, are you sure that’s really how you want people to choose your company? I ask that because if you cut your price 10%, that 10% comes out of your profit margin. Perhaps obvious, but not always something folks pay attention to – […]

There are a few commonly-used phrases in business conversation that raise the hair on my neck. Here are three of my favorites, along with one (‘innovation’) that we hear bandied about in the tech press on what seems like an hourly basis. Industry Norms Best Practices Human Capital Innovation They sound like such good things, […]

All over the U.S., winter seems to be having a little fun with us. While the Flathead mostly has fun with it – a lot of places are pretty well shut down by this year’s winter road conditions. Without the staff and equipment to handle serious (for their area) winter storms, many communities are left […]

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