I am certain, however, about one thing: the importance of growth. To me, the contrast between growth and the alternative has sharpened, and in this area, I feel blessed with clarity.

You can get good at something just by working hard at it. If you’ve got some talent at it and you work hard, you can get really good. But excellence, peak performance, being the best you can be at something — that doesn’t happen without a coach.

How about finding extra time during the holidays to stop and enjoy the season as a team, let alone finding extra time to be available for fun and family time? Not likely. But it doesn't have to be this way.

As a leader, you probably spend your work time dealing with problems and your downtime dreading them. But there’s another way to look at problems (and it can actually be a benefit to you).

In addition to all of our friends, relatives, and employees, we also send those cards to the home’s of the owners of the companies that are our company’s best customers. But we still send those cards from Butch and Carol, not from Welsch Heating and Cooling Co.

The reality is that it’s hard to manage the behaviors of your team day in and day out. After all, this responsibility spans the entirety of your business and includes every employee.

Whatever circle you focus on is the circle that grows, and the other circle shrinks. If you spend most of your day focusing on things you have no control over, your Circle of Concern will grow and your Circle of Influence will shrink.

The key to high close ratios and record sales is listening … listening to find, to be exact. Listen to understand their point of view, their challenges, their concerns, their objectives.

Here are five things you can do to grow your company’s value by boosting your profits, starting today.

A 2013 study by CEB and Google, From Promotion to Emotion, shows that we feel personal, emotional risk when making a major decision. You can lose credibility, trust — even your job — if you’re wrong.