Reading Time: < 1 minI’ve shared my distain for emails coming from “noreply” many times on this blog. My general feeling is that if a company wants to reach out to send me information, they should be willing to accept an email response back from me to dig in deeper. If the content they sent to me isn’t important […]
Business
Where Google’s downfall began
Reading Time: 2 minWhile Google is clearly still a huge and impactful company, it appears things are heading in the wrong direction. If that’s true, it’s easy to point to where the slide began. Back in 2018 Jeff Bezos told his employees that one day Amazon will fail. He’s not wrong, but his intent was inspiration to keep […]
Bugging 24,990 people to make 10 sales
Reading Time: 2 minI’ve shared my disdain for cold email many times on here, and a recent video that I watched help to prove my point. Similar to how I follow both sides of political contests online, I also keep an eye on cold emailers spammers to see what their latest techniques are. I was watching a video […]
Creativity isn’t about writing or drawing
Reading Time: < 1 minI consider myself to be rather creative when it comes to solving problems, but not at all creative when it comes to art. So does that make me “creative” or not? In a fantastic podcast episode of The Futur, Blair Enns referenced Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi with a simple quote that aims to add some clarity to […]
Wantrepreneurs are content consumers
Reading Time: 2 minPeople that work to grow their business generally fall into one of two camps: entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs work with their plan, and wantrepreneurs just hope that things work out along the way. Both can succeed, but the odds are much higher for one over the other. It reminds me a bit of Antoine de […]
The insatiable need to know more
Reading Time: < 1 minAs time goes on, I’m finding that people who are always striving to learn more tend to have more success in business. From my vantage point, it seems to cover two areas: There was a point in the past where you could essentially just keep things steady, but the time for that is gone and […]
Best practices are average
Reading Time: < 1 minPeople are often advised to “follow best practices”, and it’s not bad advice. Carefully following in the steps of those that have gone before us is a safe way to proceed. At the same time, best practices are designed to be limiting. In his book “Clear Thinking“, author Shane Parrish warns that best practices are […]
Loss leaders are aimed at dumb customers
Reading Time: 2 minMany stores offer special deals on “loss leaders” — products that are sold very cheap, often at a loss, in order to entice customers into the store to buy other things that are substantially marked up in price. One store that doesn’t do this is Costco. Generally speaking, they try to simply keep low margins […]
Value is what people perceive it to be
Reading Time: < 1 minThe word “value” gets discussed and dissected in business quite a bit, but what does it really mean? At the end of the day, it means whatever the customer wants it to mean. I once bought a $5 bottle of Coke and was happy to do it. Given the situation, the value was high. I […]
Failure comes from a failure to imagine failure
Reading Time: 2 min“Be prepared” has been the motto of the Boy Scouts since 1907, and it’s good advice. Being prepared is rarely a bad idea and can help immensely when you unexpectedly need it most. In his book “Clear Thinking“, author Shane Parrish gives some examples of how being prepared makes you a better “problem anticipator”, which […]