Articles
John writes quarterly articles which feature suggestions, insights, observations, and exercises. Bring Profit Rainmaking™ strategies to your organization today.
Profit Rainmaking: Memorializing How the Moisture is Made, Q4 2025
Mowing the grass taught me an old lesson in a new context. What started as a simple task turned into a reminder of something every business leader needs to keep front and center.
Profit Rainmaking: Exceptional Customer Service is Both Differentiating and Preventative, Q3 2025
Explore how standout service can protect your customer base—and your bottom line—with real examples from the front lines.
Profit Rainmaking: How Executing According to Your Customers’ Perspective on Timeliness Can Make or Break Relationships, Q2 2025
Timeliness is a differentiation force-multiplier. On-time delivery is an indispensable metric.
Profit Rainmaking: How to Harness Strong Organic Growth, Q1 2025
A company without a predictable revenue generating process has no future. This article offers reliable disciplines for positioning our resources for the most productive results.
Profit Rainmaking: How Polished Style and Your Excellent Product Can Increase Market Share, Q4 2024
Among the most impactful value-creation (i.e., profit rainmaking) options at our disposal are our interpersonal dynamic choices. We should always assume we are being observed by both internal and external customers and vendors. Getting “caught” doing something well may accentuate our growth endeavors.
Profit Rainmaking: How To Sell Your Company at a Premium Without Being Handcuffed To It, Q3 2024
Selling your company and leadership succession overlap in interesting ways. Both should be planned well in advance of a target date.
Profit Rainmaking: Would We Want To Do Business With Us? Q2 2024
Product/service quality has become the price of admission within our target markets. Consequently, quality only negatively differentiates by its absence. Be vigilantly curious what your customers think.
Profit Rainmaking: Change-Management or Change Management? Q1 2024
Change is inevitable. The ability to effectively navigate change is a leadership imperative. In Stephen Covey parlance, this saw always needs sharpening.
Profit Rainmaking: The “IT” Factor, Q4 2023
The “it” factor entails indispensable skills in special circumstances. A typical company unknowingly has employees with such latent talent. Leaders have some simple tactics at their disposal to know the identities of these gems in waiting.
Profit Rainmaking: The Virtues of Cost Accounting, Q3 2023
Cost accounting integrity is essential to business model stewardship, and perhaps deserves more attention. Good rigor is rooted in assumptions for key variables. The consequences include, but are not limited to, forecasting, dynamic managerial information, and profitability. This article installment offers some points to ponder.
Profit Rainmaking: Zen & The Art of Weekend Warrior DIY Maintenance, Q2 2023
Trades people are essential to a vibrant workforce. People who get too far removed from their contributions risk losing perspective on practical problem solving. This is both an homage to blue collars and an admonition to white collars on the virtues of dirt and grease stains.
Profit Rainmaking: What is Value Creation? Q1 2023
Ubiquitous terms lose their impact with target audiences when their definitions are assumed to be understood. Moreover, the “Why?” rationale should be part of effective communication. To wit, the objective of value-creation is enterprise value.
Profit Rainmaking: What Keeps You Up at Night? Q4 2022
An emerging nuisance today left unattended may lead to a crisis tomorrow. Sometimes our subconscious mind may be paying better attention to these issues than our conscious mind. This article identifies insomnia as a potential leading indicator of something which should be elevated to the stakeholder discussion table.
Profit Rainmaking: Visual Flight Rules vs. Instrument Flight Rules: How Are You Piloting Your Business? Q3 2022
This article metaphorically borrows from aviation to scrutinize both the right questions about our strategic flight plans and the right cockpit metrics for grading our flights. Much like weather reports before, and radar during flights, we should have confidence in leading indicators and process metrics for midcourse corrections in order to accomplish a predictably smooth EBITDA landing.
Profit Rainmaking: Agriculture: An Historical Productivity Benchmark of Contemporary Necessity, Q2 2022
Productivity is essential to a globally competitive country. Any business can benchmark within verticals, across vertical, and beyond borders for innovative productivity ideas. While we rationalizing global outsourcing of portions of both supply and value chains, we must consider disruptions. This article features U.S. agribusiness as posterchild of evolutionary productivity.
Profit Rainmaking: What Might Will Rogers Think of Customer Service? Q1 2022
Humorist Will Rogers imparted, “Everything is funny, as long as it's happening to somebody else.” When customers experience failed vendor value-propositions, the elixir is expedient remediation. Do your execution and customer feedback mechanisms insulate you from risk analogous to the examples shared in this installment? Assumptions may be dangerously unreliable.
Profit Rainmaking: Leadership vs. Management, Q4 2021
This article looks at the “leadership versus management” theme with supplemental points for contemplating the contrasts and complements of these two vital value-creating skills.
Profit Rainmaking: The New Labor Normal, Q3 2021
Here I explore the evolving labor market dynamics following the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing the challenges and strategies related to employee turnover and productivity.
Profit Rainmaking: Who’s Minding the Store? Q2 2021
One of the fallacies of the conventional leadership model is that it requires subordinates. On the contrary, some of the most effective leaders have no direct reports yet are often critical change agents as role models. The only real prerequisite to leadership is followers. Absent the latter, there is no leadership. Managers come with subordinates but are not necessarily leaders.
Profit Rainmaking: Is What I Think I Said What You Thought You Heard? Q1 2021
Effective communication is crucial in professional environments, yet it often suffers from misinterpretation and ambiguity. This article explores the common pitfalls in workplace communication and offers practical strategies to ensure that what you say is what others hear.
Profit Rainmaking: Bring on the New Year—and Please Hurry! Q4 2020
2020 turned the business world upside down, forcing entrepreneurs to rethink priorities and recalibrate their models. This article explores why defining your total addressable market and sharpening your unique value proposition are essential for sustainable growth in the new year.
Profit Rainmaking: Lessons Learned From a Pandemic, Q3 2020
This isn’t about COVID-19—it’s about using disruption as a lens to rethink your business model and value chain. The piece offers critical questions and practical protocols to help leaders build resilience and adaptability for the future.
Profit Rainmaking: Continuously Sharpening Your Personal Saw, Q2 2020
Stephen Covey’s timeless advice reminds us that continuous learning is the antidote to stagnation. In this installment, we explore why eclectic study—beyond business journals—fuels creativity and resilience. I also provide a curated list of books that every business leader should consider adding to their library.
Profit Rainmaking: The Role of a Board of Directors for Lower Middle Market Portfolio Companies, Q1 2020
Strong governance isn’t just a formality—it’s a value driver. This piece explores why proactive boards and institutionalized best practices matter in the lower middle market, how private equity elevates fiduciary stewardship, and why quarterly engagement is critical for strategy and leadership.
Profit Rainmaking: Manners Matter, Q4 2019
The purpose of this value-creation installment is recognizing the “tax” exacted by bad manners on personal and corporate brand equity.
Profit Rainmaking: An Ode to George (and Other Monumental Mammals), Q3 2019
This piece uncovers leadership lessons drawn from an unlikely source—my dog, George.
Profit Rainmaking: Questions that Matter to Value-Creation, Q2 2019
This installment shows how to focus on the “vital few” post-close initiatives and how asking the right questions leads to win-win value-creation opportunities
Profit Rainmaking: Tales from the Customer Service Crypt , Q1 2019
The article shows how customer service can make or break brand equity through their impact on customer loyalty.
Profit Rainmaking: The Wisdom in Acculturating a Project Management Office , Q4 2018
Project management is often underestimated, yet it’s the backbone of complex business models. Companies that embrace it internally reduce delays and cost overruns dramatically—while those that don’t risk execution failure.
Profit Rainmaking: An Oldie, but a Goodie, Value-creation Tool , Q3 2018
Sometimes the best solutions come from revisiting proven ideas. This article explores a fast, practical approach to problem-solving that helps leaders tackle challenges and unlock value quickly.
Profit Rainmaking: The Most Difficult Type of Deal Diligence , Q2 2018
Leadership diligence is critical in private equity, yet traditional methods often fall short. This article explores a practical, non-invasive approach to assessing leadership behaviors that drive execution success.
Profit Rainmaking: Designing an Organization for Scale , Q1 2018
Growth demands scalability, but achieving it starts with clarity. This article introduces practical steps—like mapping your business model—to uncover bottlenecks and build a foundation for sustainable expansion.