Ivy League Business Consulting

10/06/2026

I am excited to finally share something I have been working on for some time. THINK BUSINESS is about moving beyond theory and developing the practical skills, clarity and confidence to run a stronger, more profitable business. You will leave better equipped to run your business.

09/24/2026

09/23/2026

Business owners don't need another course. They need answers.

There is no shortage of business training available today. You can attend courses, listen to podcasts, read books and collect more information than you could ever use. The real question is what applies to your business, what needs to change, and what you should do next.

THINK BUSINESS
with Dr. Urma Mollema

Think Business is a multi-week program for a small group of business owners. It brings together practical business skills training, group sessions and one-on-one time with me, where we will work specifically on your business.

We will look at the areas that directly affect how a business performs, including profitability, pricing, customers, people, structure, leadership and growth. But learning is only part of it. You will apply what we cover to your own business, look at your numbers and challenges, and work through the decisions that may have been sitting on your desk for far too long.

My goal is simple. I don't want you to finish THINK BUSINESS with pages of notes and more things to think about. I want you to walk away with answers, greater clarity about your business, and a clear direction for what comes next.

I will be sharing more about THINK BUSINESS soon.

09/15/2026

A solid business starts long before growth becomes the conversation. It starts with three fundamental questions: What will we offer? How will we play? And how will we stay? You need clarity about the product or service you are taking to market, where you will compete and why customers should choose you, and what will allow the business to remain profitable and relevant over time. This is the foundation I help business owners build. I have helped entrepreneurs develop new business models, rethink products and services, establish pricing and positioning, put the right structures and processes in place, and turn ideas into businesses that can actually perform. I have also worked with established businesses that had grown without this clarity and needed to go back and strengthen the foundation. A good business is not built by simply opening the doors and finding customers. It is built by making deliberate choices about what you will do, how you will win, and how you will keep winning.

09/14/2026

Your Business Needs More Than Your Time. It Needs Your Thinking.

One of the most expensive habits in business is also one of the easiest to overlook: constantly doing without spending enough time thinking.

Business owners are usually very good at being busy. We answer emails, deal with staff, solve customer problems, attend meetings, check numbers and move from one issue to the next. At the end of the day, we can point to everything we accomplished. But there is a question I think we should ask more often: How much time did I spend actually thinking about my business?

Thinking is work. Some of the most valuable work a business owner can do happens when very little appears to be happening. It is the time spent questioning why something is done a certain way, looking carefully at the numbers, considering the consequences of a decision, or asking whether an opportunity actually deserves our time and money.

This becomes even more important as a business grows. Decisions become bigger, mistakes become more expensive, and simply working harder is no longer enough. We need to think carefully about where the business is going, what is producing results, what is draining resources, and what needs to change.

Too often, we try to solve problems by adding more: more people, more marketing, more technology, more products or simply more activity. Before adding anything, perhaps we should ask better questions. What problem are we actually trying to solve? What evidence do we have? What assumptions are we making? What will this decision cost us if we get it wrong?

Good strategy starts with making the time to think.

On Friday, I will take this one step further and share a practical framework you can use to structure your thinking around your business. Not theory and not another complicated planning exercise, but a clear way to slow down, ask better questions and make better business decisions.

I’ll post the full article on the Ivy League Business Consulting LinkedIn page and on my business page.

Call now to connect with business.

09/02/2026

BUSINESS NEEDS BOTH THINKERS AND DOERS

I have always believed that business needs both thinkers and doers. I spent most of my career building and working in businesses long before I completed a doctoral degree, and much of what I know about business came from actually doing it. When you are responsible for employees, customers, expenses, growth and ultimately whether a business succeeds or fails, you learn lessons that are difficult to learn from a textbook. That experience has enormous value, and I would never suggest that someone needs a degree to become a successful businessperson.

At the same time, doing can become a habit. We find something that works, we repeat it, and eventually we stop asking whether there may be a better way. This is where I believe thinking becomes important. Completing my doctorate did not suddenly teach me how to run a business. What it did do was force me to question more, research more and look at problems from different angles. It reminded me that experience is valuable, but experience should never become an excuse for believing we already know the answer.

The same applies to education. We can study business, understand strategy and know every theory, but eventually somebody has to put those ideas into practice. A strategy that looks excellent on paper still has to work with real customers, real employees, real budgets and real problems. That is why I don't believe the conversation should be about education versus experience. There is value in both, and there are many ways to learn. Some people learn through university, others through mentors, books, customers, mistakes or simply years of building something themselves.

Perhaps what matters most is whether we remain willing to learn and willing to act. Think about what you are doing, question it when necessary, listen to people who may know something you don't, and then get on with it. Business needs people who can think, but it also needs people who are prepared to do the work and take responsibility for the outcome. The real value comes when we are willing to do both.

08/04/2026

Over the years I have written more business plans than I can remember. Some were for companies just starting out, others for organizations looking to grow, reposition themselves, or recover from difficult periods. One lesson has remained constant throughout every one of those experiences: a business plan has very little value if it is only opened once a year.

Every Sunday afternoon I sit down to plan my week. Before I open my calendar or write my to-do list, I place my business plan on the desk beside me. It serves as a reminder of where I said I wanted the business to go. Every commitment, meeting, project, and conversation is measured against that direction. If an activity does not contribute to a strategic objective, I ask myself why I am making room for it.

That weekly planning session is followed by a few minutes of planning at the end of every day. I review what was accomplished, what has changed, and what deserves my attention tomorrow. More importantly, I write down SMART goals for the next day and the week ahead. I want every goal to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound because vague intentions rarely produce meaningful results.

I have learned that businesses seldom drift toward success. They drift toward distraction. Every day presents new opportunities, unexpected problems, and requests that seem urgent. Without a plan, it becomes remarkably easy to spend an entire week being busy while making very little progress.

Planning is not about filling a calendar. It is about protecting your priorities. It is about making deliberate decisions before someone else's priorities make them for you. The business plan provides the destination, while weekly and daily planning become the roadmap that keeps you moving in the right direction.

I often encourage business owners to keep their business plan within reach when planning their week. You may be surprised how many activities disappear once you ask one simple question: Does this move my business closer to the future I said I wanted to build?

07/27/2026

There are times when reaching the end of a major chapter prompts us to ask different questions.

Over the past few weeks, I have found myself reflecting on what completing my doctorate has really meant. Waiting for the final approval has given me the opportunity to look beyond the qualification itself and consider how the experience has changed the way I think.

When I started my doctoral research, I expected to gain knowledge. I knew it would require discipline, persistence, and many hours of reading and writing. What I did not expect was how often I would have to challenge my own thinking. More than once, I found myself revisiting ideas I had accepted for years and asking whether there was a better explanation or a different perspective.

That habit of questioning has stayed with me.

Throughout my career, I have worked with leaders who face complex decisions every day. Experience matters, but experience alone is not enough. We all have blind spots, and we all develop assumptions that deserve to be examined from time to time. My doctoral research reinforced that for me.

As I reflected over the past two weeks, I kept returning to one question: How do I use everything I have learned to serve my clients more effectively?

For me, that is the value of this doctorate. It is not another title after my name. It is an opportunity to combine years of practical experience with evidence-based thinking so that the advice I give is more thoughtful, more relevant, and better informed.

I believe reflection is an essential part of leadership. It gives us the chance to examine our thinking before we influence the thinking of others.

Has there been a time in your career when looking back changed the way you moved forward?

07/02/2026

The Best Business Advice You Will Ever Receive Is the Advice You Don't Need

There is something I see on social media that has been bothering me for quite some time. Someone proudly announces that they have started a business, and almost in the same breath asks, "What advice do you have to help me become successful?" Every time I read one of those posts, I find myself asking a different question: if you need the crowd to tell you how to make your business work, are you really ready to build one?

Don't misunderstand me. I am one of the biggest believers in asking questions. I have built my career by asking them. The difference is that the quality of the question matters. There is a world of difference between asking someone to challenge your thinking and asking them to do your thinking for you.

Business has never been a collection of tips, shortcuts, or motivational quotes. It begins with understanding a problem so well that you become convinced your solution deserves to exist. It requires spending hours wrestling with difficult questions, testing assumptions, listening to customers, and accepting that many of your first ideas simply won't survive. That process is uncomfortable, but it is also the part no one can do on your behalf.

What concerns me is that advice has become a substitute for preparation. We have become so accustomed to crowdsourcing answers that we sometimes forget every person giving advice is speaking from their own journey, their own industry, and their own definition of success. If you haven't done the work to develop your own thinking, how will you know which advice fits your business and which advice could quietly take you in the wrong direction?

The entrepreneurs I respect most are incredibly curious, but they don't ask broad questions hoping someone will hand them success. They ask precise questions because they have already done the heavy lifting. They know where they are uncertain. They know what assumptions they need to test. They know the difference between seeking wisdom and seeking direction.

Perhaps entrepreneurship has never really been about finding the right answers. Perhaps it has always been about learning to ask the right questions. Once you can do that, advice becomes incredibly valuable because it sharpens your thinking instead of replacing it.

I would love to hear your perspective. When someone asks social media how to become successful in business, are they demonstrating curiosity, or are they revealing that the real work has not yet begun?

06/25/2026

The Businesses That Grow Ask Better Questions

One of the conversations I have most often with business owners begins with what seems like a simple question: What makes your business different? Almost without exception, I hear the same answers. We provide better service. We have more experience. We care about our customers. We always go the extra mile.

None of those things are wrong, but none of them are unique either. They are qualities every customer hopes to find. They are expectations, not differentiators. If your competitors can make the same claims with a straight face, then those claims are unlikely to become the reason someone chooses you.

I think many entrepreneurs spend too much time trying to find better answers and not nearly enough time asking better questions. We ask how to get more customers before asking whether we truly understand the customers we want to serve. We ask how to increase sales before asking whether we are solving a problem that people genuinely care about. We ask how to beat the competition before asking whether we have created something worth competing for in the first place.

The businesses that continue to grow are rarely the ones with all the answers. More often, they are led by people who have developed the discipline to question their own thinking. They are willing to challenge assumptions, examine decisions that have become routine, and admit that what worked two years ago may no longer be enough today. That takes humility, but it also creates clarity.

Your unique selling feature will almost never be discovered during a brainstorming session about marketing. It is far more likely to emerge when you become curious about your customers. What frustrates them? What costs them time, money, or peace of mind? What have they accepted simply because nobody has offered a better way? Those are the conversations that uncover opportunities. Marketing can communicate your value, but it cannot invent it.

I sometimes encourage business owners to imagine that their company disappeared tomorrow. Would customers actively look for a way to replace what they lost, or would they simply move to the next available option? It is not the easiest question to answer, but it is one of the most revealing. If people can replace your business without noticing much difference, then the challenge is probably not your marketing. It is your positioning.

The longer I work with businesses, the more convinced I become that growth is rarely limited by effort. Most entrepreneurs work incredibly hard. Growth is often limited by the questions they never stop to ask. The quality of those questions shapes the quality of their decisions, and the quality of those decisions ultimately shapes the future of the business.

So before you invest in another advertising campaign, redesign your website, or chase the next growth strategy, stop and ask yourself one difficult question: What problem do we solve so well that our customers would genuinely miss us if we were gone? The answer to that question will tell you far more about your business than any marketing slogan ever could.