Posts by Mike Hill

As a firm, we regularly poll our clients for their professional service needs. Their feedback has caused us to expand our scope to include branding, marketing & advertising, technology selection & deployment, talent acquisition, and learning & development. We are excited to announce that we have added accounting and bookkeeping services. This allows Trenton to…

As I write, it is early 2021 and I’ve just completed writing and editing my first book, The Extraordinary Business. It’s hard not to be proud because it is a lot of work to write and edit a book. I call it my Covid book because I began writing it in the early stages of the…

Throughout my consulting career I’ve learned that business owners do not like budgets. They perceive that budgets tell them what they should not spend, and I can’t disagree. So instead I  pivot the conversation to financial forecasting. What’s the difference? Forecasting focuses on the future; what we expect during a fiscal year for revenue and…

Once this crisis has passed and business begins to ramp up again, history will show that some companies will have fared better than others at crisis management. Also, it begs the question, what did their leaders do differently? They took three simple actions: 1) Think 2) Plan 3) Improve. Therefore, take advantage of unplanned flexibility…

The wide impact of the virus response is beginning to sink in with all of us. For the first time, most of us are realizing it’s going to impact us both personally and professionally. If you haven’t done so already, I recommend your company form an Emergency Response Team. An Emergency Response Team is a…

You didn’t get into your business to manage technology, did you?  But here you are with servers, security systems, backups and responsibility for software and hardware updates. Or maybe you’ve just ignored technology and your business has fallen behind in its ability to compete in our fast paced and ever-changing economy. In these situations, I…

Years ago, my first consulting engagement was helping a hospital choose a new computer system. For a 29-year-old, this business decision was both complex and tough. How would I navigate through the complexity? How could I present the choices to the board of directors in a way that was clear, concise and easy to understand?…

Setting up an annual plan for your business is especially important. For most companies, that process begins in August. Here is a typical schedule: August – Begin with a simple leadership survey on performance YTD. Next, have your accounting team prepare a financial forecast based on historical trends. Then work with Leadership and/or the Board…

From the outset, let me be clear: don’t compromise quality for speed! In a rapidly growing economy with a tight labor market, you’d be surprised that the risk of business failure can go up. Why? Everyone wants rapid growth, but it comes with real risks and here’s why. With rapid growth we often make compromises…

We all want to make more money and work less, right? The problem is, we often get so busy running our business we don’t have time to make the changes required to make more and work less. Here are a few quick tips to make more and work less: Reduce Billing Costs – Have you…