There is a thought that each company should surprise and delight their customers. This means unexpected surprises, or benefits that occur at key points in the relationship. This past weekend, I was at my mothers house and she asked for help assembling a piece of furniture. This is not an uncommon occurrence for me […]
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For anyone who is a doomsday prepper, you’ve come to the wrong type of go bag article. Hours without wifi is more my idea of a disaster (unless I’m choosing to unplug). There are 2 bags that make all travel much easier and simpler to plan to travel. Toiletries Tech Toiletries Go Bag: This […]
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It’s 9:58a and I’ve been at my desk for 90 mins with less to show for it than I’d like. I’ve been working, but not on things that are the top priority. I hired a new developer, helped a buyer of one of the companies out, sent a few reminders following up on sales tasks… […]
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I am one of the beautiful nerds, as Roman Mars puts it, who loves 99% Invisible. It’s a design podcast that has bee around for over 330 episodes. Great way to learn about random things when you want to be curious and the day has been to serious. The most recent episode has me […]
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In 2014 I purchased and subsequently owned an operated a jewelry manufacturing company. We had a few hundred customers, mostly gift and jewelry stores but one kept outselling all of the others by multiples. We couldn’t figure out why exactly…. then I visited the store and it became clear. They really tested the product and […]
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A favorite GTD rule of mine is the 2-minute rule. The basic thought is if a task or activity can be completed in under two minutes, do it right away. Otherwise, store it somewhere or delegate it or do it another time. How often have you opened the email and looked at it for […]
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When we first start out, it is amazing to say that you’ve hired your first employee, assistant, whatever. Over time, the noise goes away and we get accustomed to things as they are. After the recent sale of a business, I started to look at the team with a fresh set of eyes. Shame on […]
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There’s a restaurant in New York, one of many, that serves average to poor quality Indian food. By all rational and reasonable accounts, it should go out of business. But there’s this one thing different about this restaurant… it looks great on camera. This is a restaurant not optimized for taste, but for […]
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We do it all the time unconsciously, and sometimes not as unconsciously. It happens when the phone rings, when we get a text, encrypted message, email, things in the mail. We’re conditioning people to act a certain way. Each time we respond in 2 minutes, we condition people to expect that response. Each time […]
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There are the customers, friends, people we interact with where everything is seamless enjoyable and we walk away wanting more. This is not about those relationships. This is about the people who take energy from you. It is either Dan Sullivan or Verne Harnish who says that there are 2 types of activities, those that […]
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When I was about 17 years old I had saved money working as a DJ. I wanted to reward myself with a nice guitar. My first Martin guitar, my first nice guitar at all, a d15 mahogany guitar, if memory serves, it was about $550 in 1998. I must have gone to Sam Ash and Guitar […]
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I recently had a Birthday. Along with that comes birthday cards from loved ones, a stream of facebook well wishes, cards, texts and even a few phone calls. One of the emails I found especially creepy was from Quicken. When we were looking to move maybe 4 years ago, we spoke to Quicken Loans. […]
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The best people stay or quit. This is exemplified best by Derek Sivers Hell Yeah or No. Don’t be half into something. If you want to be in, go for it, but don’t quit on something and stay. This applies to everyday life and work. Skip the meeting where you aren’t needed. Ignore the email […]
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Black Friday is when even the laziest marketers are sending out emails… this means there is no better time to see who’s email list you’re on and don’t want to be. With a small amount of time today (if you want to be hyper efficient, ignore your inbox until the end of the day and […]
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When people talk about software there’s a concept of total cost of ownership. This is the cost of the entire software; the implementation, maintenance costs, staff time internally and training among other things that add up tot he real cost, not just the sticker price of software. I feel the same way about napkins. To save cost, […]
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I thought I was done. At this point there are hundreds of documents in my process wiki that outline and explain every conceivable thing that could happen. There is a staff who help each other and get things done so things happen without me knowing about it. Then I had an unscheduled call with Max. […]
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Each action we take builds on the experiences we have. I was speaking with Taki Moore about this a week or so ago. He considers himself the ‘chief wanter‘, meaning it’s his job to want, not to solve the problems or be in charge of producing the result. There is value in taking longer if […]
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