Few business owners like to talk about day-to-day decisions or details, let alone deal with them. Instead, we prefer to talk about the big picture, the new idea, the next brilliant strategy. Yet it’s the small details, when overlooked, that lead to a business’ demise. For a sit-down restaurant, one crucial detail is a clean dining room. Recently I walked into a nationally branded restaurant and was shown to my table, one of the few clean ones within view. All around me, food

You don’t own and operate a business for 16 years without making some dumb decisions, and I’ve made my share. What led to these poor decisions? Sleep deprivation, which affects business owners every day. For 15 years, I operated my business on 4-5 hours of sleep a night (or less), leading to “impaired concentration and attention, poor judgment, relationship problems and the potential for anxiety and depression.” I was making hundreds of decisions every week without my full fa

Recognize and Reward is the fifth step of Dave Ramsey’s 6 Ways to Build a Company That Cares. The most important part of this step is to properly recognize, meaning aligned with your organization’s or business’s Premise, Promise, Sidelines and Guidelines. Tying recognition to these four meaningful elements—what I call Morphemes—reinforces the importance of these elements to your organization. On the contrary, recognizing someone for doing something in conflict with those Morp