"I am Major (Ret'd) Brian Bartley. Like you, After my military service, and my career in Financial Services, I took countless courses trying to reinvent myself in the online world. I was drowning in information, paralyzed by options, unable to cross the start line. Then during a Zoom call, someone described business as 'chaotic, uncertain, and rapidly-changing.' They said we should 'fail early and pivot.' That's when it hit me—they were describing what we call 'Advance to Contact' in the military. Something I'd mastered over decades of service. I realized the step-by-step tactical methods that help soldiers succeed in chaos could transform how entrepreneurs navigate business uncertainty. Now I teach these transferable military leadership skills to aspiring entrepreneurs ready to stop overthinking, cross the Start Line, launch their business, and start commanding their business destiny.

The job of a Leader is to LEAD, not to manage. The leader's principal job is to make the decisions that will direct the organization to achieve the objective successfully. Everything else is subordinate to that task. Others can advise from the standpoint of their knowledge or specialty, and make the logistical arrangements, but it is not their job to decide what is to be done. Decision-making by consensus is also not encouraged. A horse designed by a committee often turns out to be a camel, and takes much longer to finalize ... time you may not have in our fast-paced, rapidly changing, chaotic business environment. Having taken advice, it is the Leader's job to make the plan, communicate it to subordinates in a clear, effective manner, and direct and adapt the plan after it launches across the Start Line.

Secondly, as anyone who has gone through a formal Sales Training program knows, they were great at teaching all of the technical knowledge, but they stopped at that point, and simply said, "Now you motivate the customer to buy". The digital courses I took for the most part did exactly that. They did not teach the "How" - what to do to actually build an agile, responsive business that could navigate the contemporary business envionment appropriately and effectively. They were like the back wheel of the bicycle. Without the back wheel the bicycle goes nowhere. The back wheel is not only about the product knowledge, and how to navigate the tech, but how to use it to identify and solve the problem. The front wheel steers the direction of travel, how the tech is applied to achieve the objective. In business, that is the client relationship ... helping the prospective client overcome the four core objections to making a buying decision - No Trust, No Need, No Help and No Hurry.

My background in Advanced Sales Training at a leading Life Insurance Company allows me to address that need also. The Wilson Learning programs that I taught - Counsellor Selling, Execuctive Marketing Skills, and Managing Interpersonal Relationships transformed that industry from a job into a financial services profession.

Follow the Military paradigm of The Advance to Contact, and YOU will have the confidence to make decisions with authority, turn uncertainty into advantage, and achieve your dream of having a successful business.