EXSUM Business Coaching

01/15/2026

Meet Julie McAdoo of EXSUM Business Coaching! Julie shares how being a member of the Southern NH Chamber has supported her and connected her to new opportunities and resources.

03/24/2025

Many new business owners ask, “When should I hire my first employee (or expand my team)?”

This is the ultimate “chicken or the egg” dilemma. Once you have already broken the seal on hiring, you usually know when it is time to hire more staff.

But if you have never hired an employee or you are starting up a new division or product or service line in your business, you may be asking, “do I get customers first or employees first”?

If you have no customers yet, how can you pay for employees and what will they do while you are working on getting those first customers?

If you get customers first, how will you adequately take care of them without properly trained employees in place?

If you are facing this foundational question and want some help hiring, on-boarding, and training that first employee, give me a call. I’d love to help you with that!

03/17/2025

Many business owners wonder, “Should I focus on new customers or repeat business?”

The short answer is both!

But depending on your unique business and market, one could be more critical for you than the other.

It is a common marketing adage that it takes 7 impressions before a new customer decides to do business with you.

That takes a lot of time and money to get 7 impressions in front of that new potential customer!

For many business models, it is critical to survival to retain as many repeat buyers as possible—cleaning, lawn care, pest control, are all great examples where repeat revenue is literally money in the bank. Customer churn in those industries kills the bottom line!

On the other hand, some businesses really don’t have a great business model for repeat business—think funeral home… They do have repeat customers, but they are also always needing new customers and can’t afford not to focus on new customer acquisition.

If this is a burning question for you, let’s talk about what is right for you business and industry!

https://calendly.com/exsum/30-minutes

03/10/2025

"What are the best ways to scale my business?"

This is the second most often asked question by entrepreneurs!

There are a number of ways to scale a business.

--Maybe your business needs to grow its customer base within its current environment.

--Maybe your business needs to open an additional location in a new town to expand its possible customer base. Or maybe just add marketing to a new surrounding community.

--Maybe your business needs to expand into another marketing segment—you’ve got millennials covered, but need to expand into Gen X.

--Maybe you want to grow through mergers and acquisitions of your competitors.

--Maybe you want to find some angel investors or sharks who will help fund you and mentor you through your next stage of growth.

And many more ways to scale depending on your industry, your reach, your capacity, and many other factors!

If this is a question you have, let's sit down and explore the current size of your business and see what the opportunities are for you to scale up! The first consultation is free.

https://calendly.com/exsum/30-minutes

03/04/2025

Worried about Burning out?

Already burnt out?

Most business owners don't think about this going in--and I don't recommend you do!

But after a bit of hustle and grind, you might be wondering how you keep building and climbing AND maintain your energy and enthusiasm for it all.

Totally normal.

So how do you grow your business without burning out?

Energy Management.

You manage finance, operations, employees, time.

Have you considered managing your energy too?

That looks different for everyone. If this is a concern for you, grab a free consultation to find out how managing your energy can be a game changer in your business.

https://calendly.com/exsum/30-minutes

02/27/2025

How many have you read?

Here’s a list of 52 popular business books, covering a variety of topics including leadership, entrepreneurship, productivity, strategy, and personal development that I pulled from Chat GPT:

Leadership & Management
1. Leaders Eat Last – Simon Sinek
2. Dare to Lead – Brené Brown :)
3. The 5 Levels of Leadership – John C. Maxwell
4. The Leadership Challenge – James Kouzes & Barry Posner
5. Multipliers – Liz Wiseman
6. Radical Candor – Kim Scott :)
7. Good to Great – Jim Collins
8. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Patrick Lencioni
9. Extreme Ownership – Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
10. The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership – John C. Maxwell
Entrepreneurship & Startups
11. The Lean Startup – Eric Ries
12. Zero to One – Peter Thiel
13. The $100 Startup – Chris Guillebeau
14. The Hard Thing About Hard Things – Ben Horowitz
15. Rework – Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson
16. Start with Why – Simon Sinek :)
17. Company of One – Paul Jarvis
18. The Minimalist Entrepreneur – Sahil Lavingia
19. Lost and Founder – Rand Fishkin
20. Crushing It! – Gary Vaynerchuk
Productivity & Time Management
21. Atomic Habits – James Clear
22. The 4-Hour Workweek – Tim Ferriss :)
23. Deep Work – Cal Newport :)
24. Essentialism – Greg McKeown
25. The One Thing – Gary Keller
26. The Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg
27. Getting Things Done – David Allen
28. Make Time – Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky
29. The Now Habit – Neil Fiore
30. Eat That Frog! – Brian Tracy :)
Strategy & Innovation
31. Blue Ocean Strategy – W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne
32. Measure What Matters – John Doerr
33. Playing to Win – A.G. Lafley & Roger Martin
34. The Innovator’s Dilemma – Clayton Christensen
35. Competition Demystified – Bruce Greenwald & Judd Kahn
36. Crossing the Chasm – Geoffrey Moore
37. The Art of Strategy – Avinash Dixit & Barry Nalebuff
38. The Lean Product Playbook – Dan Olsen
39. Hooked – Nir Eyal
40. The Mom Test – Rob Fitzpatrick
Finance & Economics
41. The Psychology of Money – Morgan Housel :)
42. Rich Dad Poor Dad – Robert Kiyosaki :)
43. The Millionaire Fastlane – MJ DeMarco
44. Profit First – Mike Michalowicz :)
45. Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs – Karen Berman & Joe Knight
46. The Intelligent Investor – Benjamin Graham
47. Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits – Philip Fisher
Sales & Marketing
48. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – Robert Cialdini
49. Contagious: How to Build Word of Mouth – Jonah Berger
50. Made to Stick – Chip Heath & Dan Heath
51. Sell Like Crazy – Sabri Suby
52. This Is Marketing – Seth Godin

I have only read 9 on this list. There are several more I would add. How about you? How many have you read, and what is missing from this list that you loved?

02/21/2025

Procrastivity: What is your favorite way to put off doing what you know you should be doing by looking productive doing something else?

Mine is definitely chores of any sort—shoveling snow, dishes, laundry, clean out the fridge, vacuum the whole house…

Always busy but not getting things done? Procrastivity might be the reason!

02/12/2025

Is the price of eggs tripping you up? Now I know people are seeing prices going from $3/dozen to $12/dozen or more. And that is a huge percentage increase. If you eat a ton of eggs (or you are a breakfast joint) this is HUGE. But for many of us, we spend more than that increase on a subscription to ONE streaming service in a month.

If the rising prices are creating an existential threat to your business, I want to help.

Reach out for a free consultation where I bet I will find you an extra $10,000 to weather this financial storm in less than 30 minutes.

Call now to connect with business.

09/27/2024

I just bought a NokBox. Yesterday was Kevin J. McAdoo's birthday, so I have been thinking about him even more than ordinary (which is already every. single. day. at a minimum).

His sudden death has definitely made me a passionate proponent of making sure that key information is available and accurate for those I leave behind.

You never know when your day is due, and who wants to spend their last months doing this anyway even if they did see it coming?

Get a NokBox or create your own binder. Do something to make sure that it is easy enough on your loved ones to unwind your estate and affairs when you die. Be sure to tell them where it is...

While you're binge-watching your next series, fill this out. You'll enjoy your series and feel productive at the same time!

Estate Planning & Home Organization

09/25/2024

Hey everybody! I’m excited to announce that I am going through Ramsey Financial Master Coach training.

Going through Ramsey’s Financial Peace University (FPU) was a huge part of my business success story. We bought into all the conventional wisdom about building a business on credit until we found our limit—literally found the point where the legit banks wouldn’t extend us any more credit. I thought, “something is wrong here. I know I’m good for the money. What does this bank know that I don’t?”

About that same time I read the Total Money Makeover and started to see things differently. I signed up for FPU, and never looked back. In 18 months we had wiped out all debt aside from our mortgage and had given our family a $3,000 month raise!! At that time, it meant we were actually paying ourselves. More important, we were paying ourselves instead of banks for stuff we didn’t actually need to run a profitable business.

I help entrepreneurs and small business owners take back and take home more of what they work so hard for!!! This is another great tool in my toolbox to help business owners create a business that loves them back, giving them more time and money to spend on the people and pursuits they love.

09/03/2024

Job seekers, do you wonder sometimes why you don't get called for an interview? I've been looking at a lot of resumes lately, and here are some things that might help you.

I'm going to share a couple of quick observations about resumes that I hope will help. Here's the situation.