Small Business

Regular readers of this blog know that I am an avid gardener, a weekend activity that has taken on a more prominent role for me in recent years. Prior to my early 40s, I wanted nothing to do with gardening… it was too closely associated with “weeding,” a weekend assignment from my youth that left […]

Long time readers of this blog know that I am a regular (but not constant) amateur poker player. I have a regular game with a group of friends, and our low-stakes game will range from one table of 6-8 players, to occasionally multiple tables with 12-20 players. And once per year, on the first Saturday […]

Quite some time ago, we got some bad news from a vendor we used to work with. A major deadline was going to be missed, and a deliverable we were counting on was not going to arrive on time. We had discussed this deadline with our vendor openly and emphatically as being important to us. […]

Keeping your energy level up all the time is hard. We all get tired. We all get frustrated. We all get sick of our work/colleagues/friends/family/selves. And when we are sick of any of these things, and our energy level drops, so too our productivity suffers. One of the best quotes I have ever heard (well… […]

We had a great interaction this week, a story worth sharing. We heard from a guy who had been in one of our workshops in 2010, back when he was with one of our biggest client companies. He left that company in 2011, which is probably the last time we had any contact with him […]

Sometimes certain phrases get repeated so often, they become more than cliche. They become indisputable fact. But that doesn’t mean such statements are always correct. Like many cliches, “the customer is always right” has a great deal of truth to it. The customer knows what they want or need, and the customer is entitled to […]

I recently got a great email from a client named Colin. We’ve done extensive work with his company over the last five years, and Colin will occasionally reach out and give me a great idea for a blog post or a podcast. Colin listed for me the ways that his colleagues can reach him: work email (which he […]

Any good coach will always do their best to understand the unique circumstances of the person they are coaching. No two people are the same, and therefore, no two coaching assignments are the same. You have to meet the person you are attempting to coach “where they are,” because a good coaching relationship is exactly […]

When I first started The Latimer Group, nearly twenty years ago, I worked from home full time. The company was a “group” in name only, and it was just me for several years. An office wasn’t necessary… or affordable. But as we grew, an office became an imperative, and it has now been nearly thirteen […]

Maintaining relationships from distance is hard. Very hard. Whether it was the high school relationship you tried to keep together when one or both went off to college… or a marriage put to the test because of a job relocation… or a best friendship tested when one of you moved across country… there are countless […]