Negotiation is a cornerstone of success in business. Let’s start with the understanding that business is simply buying and selling. In order to successfully buy low and sell high to generate a profit, you need to be a good negotiator. If you have a small business, negotiation skill is what enables you to get the pricing you need … Read more
On business, the net and whatever, here are some posts around the web I enjoyed in the last couple days. They’re worth checking out … Garr Reynolds has a post with great tips for increasing the signal and reducing the noise of your powerpoint presentations at Presentation Zen. The before and after pics really illustrate … Read more
If you have a sick pet right now, you don’t want to hear this. And I don’t blame you one bit. But the truth is, there’s opportunity in adversity, and this story illustrates that. The world is tough. It’s even a little mean sometimes. A good friend of mine has been dabbling in online stock … Read more
Leaders, stand out. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be leaders. Leaders need to have a strength of character that goes beyond normal boundaries. A character that’s bigger than life. A character that is not embarassed or fearful, but dynamic and apart from the crowd. Gregg Hawkins talks about tactical blogging. It’s a great post with … Read more
You know when a salesperson has got a sale locked down and then they keep talking when they shouldn’t and say something that loses the sale? This is sort of like that. When you have an important, complicated, or multi-party business deal in the works, it’s best to keep it isolated. Control over who’s talking … Read more
Recipe for a good time: Get a bunch of friends together, find a beach, start a bonfire. Invite everyone who passes by to join the party. Groove with The Beautiful Girls. Mat McHugh, Clay McDonald and Bruce Braybrooke are The Beautiful Girls. And while you’re missing Sublime and waiting for a new album from Slightly … Read more
There’s a right way to cut costs. And a wrong way. The technical definition of bootstrapping has a lot of history behind it. Today, the popular definition simply means to cut costs and leverage your assets to the max. Most companies go into bootstrapping mode for one of two reasons; Either they’re a new startup … Read more
The last few weeks I’ve been floating through cyberspace and visiting many different blogs. It’s amazing how much great stuff people are writing and how many new insights I’ve gotten on a lot of things. So I started compiling a list of bookmarks of blogs that I want to check in on regularly. At the … Read more
Blame it on Wall Street. Blame it on evolution. Popularity. Blame it on whatever you want. Sooner or later every search engine stops being a search engine and becomes a portal. And then it dies. Remember when Yahoo was THE search engine on the internet? No longer. Remember Infoseek? Gone. Could the same thing happen … Read more
The power of the human fight-or-flight instinct is a good way to understand how immediate challenges dominate our actions. As a business, your immediate challengers are the competition in your industry. The people that do what you do. But there’s a bigger picture as well. Ultimately, you’re competing with every other business on the face … Read more