The six stages of leadership growth, and how a business owner's highest and best use changes at each stage.

The common mistakes and missteps when family and business intersect and how to overcome them.

They can be the best and the worst places to work. This week, we focus on the 10 best things about family businesses. This list takes on the topic from both perspectives. You may be the founder bringing children into the business, or you might be thinking about accepting an offer from "Pop" to run the show. Either way, this episode covers the things you don't want to miss about running and being a part of the family biz.

Marketing is one of those words that conjures up images of Madison Avenue wizards capable of coming up with the perfect copy with a cigarette in one hand and a martini in the other. Marketing strategy is considered beyond the reach of the average small business owner. In this episode, we strip away all the BS and get to the nuts and bolts of effective marketing inside small companies.

Pruning is a necessary part of growth. It is true in life and it is true in business. But very few businesses build a pruning cycle into their growth plans. In this episode, we talk about what to prune and how to do it. It's not just customers, although that is a big part of the pruning process. Pruning needs to be applied to every part of the business for it to remain thriving and healthy.

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.

Your receptionist is the most important employee in the company. Building internal and external culture around the customer experience.

Do you know what to do to grow your business? Most business owners do. But they haven't done it. They can't do it. They don't know why they can't. They just haven't. In this episode, Joey tackles the problem of getting out of the rut and starting to grow again. He tells you how to do it and gives you three things you can do to get your mojo back. Eminently practical this is the secret sauce for getting back on the growth train.

Creativity is often perceived to be the domain of those who accept no limits, who attack the canvas unfettered, who pound out page after page in an unbridled response to the inner muse. But perception is not reality. Creative solutions are most often found within the boundaries of very real constraints. In the real world, these constraints are the fuel that drives our creative engine. Without them, we wander aimlessly. With them, we focus on energy and come up with astounding solutions, designs and insights.

Strategic planning is fun. Implementation, not so much. When it comes to getting the plan underway, most companies fail to face down the 800 pound gorilla in the room. You know the moment if you have witnessed it. Leaders suddenly become very interested in their shoes and find it hard to speak. What is the gorilla? What do you do to face it down? This episode is all about making progress, good or bad, with your strategic plan.

Teams should not have a centralized task management system. Why not? In this episode, Joey talks about the pros and cons of centralized systems and what you will be trading if you opt for a system designed around the company's needs.

To grow, you must develop a company of leaders. But leadership is an extraordinarily complex topic. Who has the time or resources to fully understand it? Luckily, you don't have to. There are just a few key ingredients that will start to make a difference as soon as you add them to your team.

The last thing you need is more opportunity. Everyone thinks that to be successful as a small business you must be nimble, capable of taking advantage of fleeting opportunities. But that isn't true. What you need is the discipline to discover opportunity and the focus to exploit it.

Customer service isn't a strategy. It's a table stake. Few things will undermine a strategic plan faster or more completely than failing customer service. In this episode, Joey talks about the fundamentals of customer service and why you have to get it right before you start planning.

Teams that can't manage their calendars or their responsibilities have no chance of pulling off a winning strategy. In this episode, Joey covers the basics of time and task management. These essential skills must be part of every team member's toolbox.

This podcast was recorded a couple of years ago. Joey talks about dealing with adversity and resistance, both where these things originate, and how to overcome them. The kids are older and some of the examples a little dated, but the meat of the content is as relevant as ever.