What's your brown paper bag?

Thanks go to Verne Harnish for this little story:

Craig Hodges, Managing Director of Australia-based King Content (http://www.kingcontent.com.au), suggested the best business question I've heard in 2010 -- "What's The Brown Paper Bag in Your Business?"

As the story goes, Craig was in NYC and managed to garner a dinner reservation at the famous Gramercy Tavern. One thing led to another and he ended up closing the place down, enjoying beers with the staff (what Aussie's do best!). As he was leaving, the staff handed him a brown paper bag and said it was a little something for breakfast the next morning. He started to look inside, but was instructed to keep it closed until the sun came up. Delight Inside -- when Hodges was ready for breakfast the next morning, he found inside the properly sealed bag a freshly baked muffin, muesli, and an orange juice -- a welcomed delight.

It was then that he wondered "what was the brown paper bag-equivalent in his business?" He wondered how his business could generate the same word-of-mouth promotion he's given Gramercy Tavern as a result of something so simple, yet memorable?
What could be your brown paper bag?

Why? What's your Purpose?

My last post was on this subject and I decided I needed to take some time alone and determine what My Why is.

The purpose, the driving force behind what I do and why I have such a passion doing it. What is it that really gets my juices flowing and why am I in the coaching profession and love what I do so much?

After really focusing on this for 30 minutes or so it occurred to me.

I love to learn and I love to teach

Whatever position I had held over the years I seemed to always seek out books and seminars to learn how to do it better. I always loved to teach and share with others what I had learned.


It all makes sense, now I'm doing just that as a business coach.

My father, grandfather and his two brothers were all entrepenuers. They started and ran their own businesses. Yet while it was "in the blood" I took the safe road and worked for corporations all my life.

So now I have come back to my roots and have found a way to continue to doing the things I love by helping small business owners find their purpose, their Why and build successful businesses around that Why.

I keep learning and at the sametime can share that learning with my clients who don't always have the time to seek out these concepts and processes nor the methods to follow through and make them work.

To teach you have to have a book. So I put together a Free Ebook that contains some of my best learnings on transforming a small business. These things work, that's a fact.

Click here to hear the 10 minute audio introduction ( to get a flavor)

http://www.box.net/files#/files/0/f/31291448/1/f_501256882

and/or download the Free Ebook

" Why Successful Small Businesses Struggle and how to make them soar again" at


http://www.next-level-coaching.com/