It’s that time of year when businesses start making the final push for year end numbers. And it is also when we start to turn our focus to the upcoming year. Whether you have experience doing business and strategic planning or whether you just know it’s something you should be doing, this episode covers some of the common pitfalls you want to avoid.

Pricing and selling value are common topics among white collar professionals like CPA's and attorneys. But do roofers and AC repair companies need any help in this area. A couple of recent conversations show blue collar service industries deal with exactly the same issues of pricing and selling value to customers. In this episode Joey goes in depth to give real life examples of how things go wrong and what to do to fix them. 

Professionals are those who take their work to the next level. It has little to do with the color of your collar and everything to do with how much you care about the value you deliver. In this episode Joey talks about how you reward this innovative and pivotal group in your organization.

Businesses spend lots of time working on strategies for operations, customer service, sales...you name it. But how often do they have explicit strategies for CASH? Without cash your mission is put on hold. In this episode Axiom founder Joey Brannon talks about the handful of cash strategies that can improve your overall business.

When it comes to time management inside companies the boss sets the tone. Even the best time manager can become frustrated and unproductive under a boss that doesn't respect boundaries and can't understand the role he or she should be playing in the organization.

People-Process-Product is a mantra hitting prime time  on CNBC's show The Profit. But how do the 3 P's fit into business strategy?

Vertical integration is most often associated with Fortune 500 companies than with small businesses. But there are cases where vertical integration is a viable part of a small business growth strategy. In this episode Joey outlines the situations that might green light a vertical integration strategy and provides some real life examples.

Understanding that small business owners have two hats to wear is only half the battle. Understanding the difference between owner and operator roles and the necessity of switching hats is key to business growth.

The Axiom podcast is back after taking a few months off. In this episode Joey talks about what has been happening in the time since our last episode and what to expect over the next month. He also shares part of his note taking workflow and why it is so important to what he does every day.

The more experience we get with businesses that have never done strategic planning before the more we see organizations that fail to make decisions. Even bad decisions can be better than no decisions. For these companies a strategic plan provides the security that allows them to make more decisions, knowing that even a bad decision will be detected and corrected before it can do too much damage.

Few things are as important to business growth as what the owner spends his or her time doing on a day to day basis. Defining the owner's highest and best use is key to continued growth and to also understanding the maturity of the leadership role within companies. In this episode Joey walks through the six stages of leadership growth and how a business owner's highest and best use changes at each stage.

Growth requires owners to become (or hire) managers. But without "A Players" owners are stuck putting out fires and working around the inabilities of employees who need too much hand holding. If there is a common complaint among small business owners it is the trouble they have finding and retaining top talent. In this episode we tackle the greatest constraint to sustained business growth. Without the right people you will not have a prayer of reaching the next level, whether that is $2 million, $5 million, $10 million or $20 million. You need "A Players" to grow year over year and you must have them to accomplish extraordinary things.

Top-performing companies are often described as candid places to work. Team members share open and honest discussion with little posturing or hidden agendas. Building candid conversations into the culture of your organization is necessary if your team is to accomplish anything larger than the individual efforts of one superstar. In this podcast we talk about what this conversations look like, the situations where you can expect them to show up spontaneously, and how to leverage those situations into a long standing culture shift.

Some business owners smile and nod their heads when I tell them their receptionist is the most important employee in the company, but they don't get it. In this episode I talk about building internal and external culture around the customer experience.