Reading Time: < 1 minI’ve long said that the level of trust that I have in my team helps make my life much easier. Among other things, I know that if I send an email to one of them to get something taken care of, I don’t need to remind myself to follow-up — it gets done. However, a […]
Business
Seeing your partner’s next move
Reading Time: 2 minIn close relationships that we have, whether personal or business, being able to anticipate the next move of your partner can be very powerful. For example, in the show “The Good Place”, Chidi realizes the depth of his relationship with Eleanor when she’s able to unconsciously anticipate his upcoming sneeze. Here’s a short clip of […]
Clients, Customers, or Users
Reading Time: 2 minWho does your business serve? You know, the people that spend money on your product or service. Do you consider them to be “clients”, “customers”, or “users”? They all sound similar, and they are, but there are subtle and important differences between them. I see it roughly like this: Clients are people you know and […]
Can you do it again today?
Reading Time: 2 minYears ago, I built a very popular website that showcased interesting locations in Google Earth. It took a lot of manual labor to find and categorize things, but it was a popular destination for a lot of users. Could I do it again today? Not a chance. First, technology is different. My manual labor of […]
Is reading work?
Reading Time: 2 minIn episode 179 of The Long and The Short Of It podcast, hosts Pete and Jen argue that reading for knowledge should be considered “work”, and therefore it’s acceptable to do during the workday. I don’t disagree, but it’s tricky. I read quite a lot, and most of it is for the benefit of our […]
Backups for your backup
Reading Time: 2 minAt GreenMellen, we use Google Workspace for much of our work, including Google Drive for all of our files (totaling 173,405 files, 627,810 emails, together taking up 391 GB of storage). Google Drive is great, because it’s essentially an automatic backup of your files. If something goes wrong on your end, Google will still have […]
Efficient isn’t the same as effective
Reading Time: < 1 minI strive to be a very efficient person, as evidenced by the well over 100 posts in the “productivity” category of this blog. I try to be careful, though, as efficiency has very little to do with being effective, and the latter is far more important. Kevin Paul Scott laid this out beautifully in a […]
What type of problem is it?
Reading Time: < 1 minThe best way to start to solve a problem is to first understand what’s really being asked. In David Epstein’s book “Range“, he says: “Whether chemists, physicists, or political scientists, the most successful problem solvers spend mental energy figuring out what type of problem they are facing before matching a strategy to it, rather than […]
Important stuff can be hard to measure
Reading Time: 2 minI’m a big believer in using data to help inform decisions. From Google Analytics to our weekly scorecard, we measure as much as we can, and then take appropriate action based on the data. That said, some of the most important numbers can be the most difficult to obtain. As Albert Einstein has said: “Not […]
Early objections come from premature solutions
Reading Time: < 1 minOne thing I’ve really been working on for the past few years is listening. Listening to clients, staff, friends, leads, etc. More listening tends to lead to better results for everyone. A place I’ve really noticed this is when talking to potential clients. The more I can just sit back and let them talk, the […]