Reading Time: 2 min When deciding what content to dig into (books, podcasts, etc), I’m often faced with an interesting decision: do I want to explore something new, or revisit an old favorite? Over the last year, I’ve been doing a lot of revisiting in place of new content. I’m still reading a few new books every month, but […]
The insatiable need to know more
Reading Time: < 1 min As 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 min People 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 […]
There’s still a world outside these walls
Reading Time: 3 min For those of you over 40, you can likely still remember the “good old days” on the internet, back when people set up their own places to visit, rather than relying on a handful of huge companies trying to lock your attention inside of their walls (which is very likely how you found this post). […]
The Sunday Summary: Social media followers, value, and half-baked ideas
Reading Time: < 1 min In an effort to help me keep up with everything I post each week, here is my latest “Sunday Summary” of my posts from the week. Mon, May 6: The value of having social media followers is plummetingMore social networks are starting to move to algorithms that prioritize content over followers, meaning any piece of […]
Every idea is half-baked at some point
Reading Time: < 1 min We’ve always heard about how bad “half-baked ideas” usually are, but every idea goes through that stage at some point. It certainly could be problematic to move forward with a half-baked idea, but having a half-baked idea means that you might be on to something good. In his book “Steal the Show“, author Michael Port […]
Learning conversations
Reading Time: < 1 min There are many types of conversations that we can have with others, but one of my favorites is a “learning conversation”, as explained by Charles Duhigg in “Supercommunicators“: Our goal, for the most meaningful discussions, should be to have a “learning conversation.” Specifically, we want to learn how the people around us see the world […]
Your future self will wonder what you were thinking
Reading Time: < 1 min For most of us, we can look back at ourselves from 10 years ago and think “wow, I had no idea what I was doing”. It’s uncomfortable to appreciate, but it stands to reason that in 10 years we’ll look back at ourselves today and think the same thing. In his book “Clear Thinking“, Shane […]
Loss leaders are aimed at dumb customers
Reading Time: 2 min Many 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 min The 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 […]