HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Most businesses have finalized their income and expenses for 2009 and are putting the finishing touches on their 2010 budget. The budgets that are developed consist of a series of incremental goals that will enable them to achieve their objectives. Trying to run a business without setting…

Last month I received several phone calls and a few emails regarding my column on setting personal goals. There I outlined 10 critical goal areas that affect your life. These goals are: Personal, Health, Recreation, Family, Friendship, Community, Career, Financial, Household, and Spiritual. Everyone that responded understood the importance of…

I have a painting in my office of an old time Sailing Ship that is fighting a fierce storm. The waves have completely engulfed the ship and all you see are the sails projecting out of the waves. This image serves as a metaphor for my personal and professional life.…

NEWS FLASH … City Manager suspended for one week without pay for role in hiring policy. Have you kept up on the news regarding the expanded background checks that the City of Bozeman was requiring of all job candidates’? Those checks included asking for their personal social websites, usernames and…

If this is what you are hearing from your staff when you announce that you are having an employee meeting, something is seriously wrong. It is a fact that the vast majority of business meetings are boring time-wasters. With that I can understand why it is common to hear “no…

The last ten months of this NEW ECONOMY have proved to be a trying time for anyone working in business. Revenues have been in a free fall for some time now. Many businesses have seen revenue levels drop anywhere from 10 – 40 percent. That decrease represented the profits for…

In the spring of 1980, two years after graduating from MSU, my wife Penny and I were fortunate enough to buy an acre and a half of land. We quickly started building our dream home south of Bozeman near Hyalite Creek. Our home was completed by the end of July.…

The business news today is flooded with negative news of widespread corporate fraud, the discovery of new Ponzi schemes, and seemingly endless consumer scams. Today’s consumers are becoming increasingly cynical toward anyone selling anything, and can we blame them? From the consumer’s perspective, to blindly trust today’s retail salesperson is…