What Cash Flow Can Tell You Inadequate cash flow is like Kryptonite was to Superman; without cash your business will suffer and eventually die. Yet most business owners I meet are not tracking their cash flow. They look at their P&L and balance sheet, but they do not conduct… Read More »
The Pareto Principle
Business Breakthrough #1 May 2018 The Pareto Principle I frequently talk about the 80/20 rule, otherwise known as the Pareto principle, because it’s a powerful concept that illuminates the reality of our time… Read More »
Learning the Language of Business
Learning the Language of Business I was recently sitting at the chef’s counter of my favorite restaurant, the Hairy Lobster, watching the chef and sous chefs work their magic to produce what I consider the best food in Portland, I was thinking about mastery and the language required to achieve it. These chefs have learned… Read More »
How Pruning Produces Results
How Pruning Produces Results Recently I went home to southern California to visit my mother who is 89. It’s been a number of years since I’ve been home, and she was excited to show me her roses, which were blooming profusely. She explained… Read More »
ARE YOU TRYING TO GROW A TREE IN A FLOWERPOT?
ARE YOU TRYING TO GROW A TREE IN A FLOWERPOT? When I was Chief Operations Officer for the largest deciduous shade tree nursery in the U.S. Located on 4000 acres in Oregon, we also had 85 acres in container grown trees or trees in plastic pots. We would plant fully-grown trees from our fields… Read More »
Are You Feeling Lucky?
Improve Your Odds of Success When things don’t go as we like, it’s easy to blame bad luck—it spares us from blaming ourselves! But a recent Wall Street Journal article* calls that idea into question. The writers, Janice Kaplan and Barnaby Marsh, assert that luck is a combination of random chance, talent, and hard work…. Read More »
Developing a Gratitude Framework
Developing an Attitude of Gratitude “Gratitude can be cultivated at any age,” said Jennifer Breheny Wallace in a recent Wall Street Journal article.* The author cited a 2012 national online poll of 2000 adults, which found that 59 percent of those surveyed thought that most people today are less likely to have an attitude of… Read More »
Gary Furr Consulting—The Most Helpful Family Business Professional
Gary Furr Consulting—The Most Helpful Family Business Professional At the November 2017 Excellence in Family Business Awards presented at the Austin Family Business Program, a part of Oregon State University, our client The Higher Taste, a vegan and vegetarian food processor, was awarded the Generational Development Award. In… Read More »
Make 2018 Your Best Year Ever
Make 2018 YOUR BEST YEAR EVER! As you approach a New Year, it is a good time to reflect on 2017 and ask yourself some serious questions in order to make 2018 your best year ever. This will lay… Read More »
7 Steps to Accelerated Business Growth: Step 7 – Motivation
One of the benefits of following these steps is that it motivates us to repeat the process. What is more motivating than results? It’s like going to the gym. When I exercise and start losing weight (and see those results on the scale), then I’m motivated to continue going back….Read more »