Business Owner’s Blog

Thanks to an email from Will Hill and Paul Graham’s latest essay I’ve shortened my advice (so you get to do less reading)
1. Make something people want.
As obvious as it sounds this advice is often ignored. Well not exactly ignored, but confused. Inventors especially, are apt to confuse the word “people” with the word “me”. […]

What would you pay for a tool that could transmit the wisdom of your smartest people out to everyone in your whole organization? One that is able to reduce errors in the most complex activity and achieve consistent results time after time? I’m sure you’d pay a lot, but this tool costs very little and […]

The key to growing your company is to prevent problems rather than solve them. There are two parts to this: Attitude and Skill.
Attitude - you must not like being the hero
Heroes solve problems. Usually at the last moment in dramatic fashion with a fanfare and a flourish of cape - just before they dash off […]

Lots of things. Mostly they put too much emphasis on the outcome and not enough on the process. I’m not a big fan. Yes, I know you need them if you’re going to ask for money. And yes planning is a good idea. But planning is a verb not a noun. You should engage […]

In most industries probably not. But music is different (like art and a few others where commitment and commerce are closely linked). SELLABAND has developed an interesting business model to exploit this combination of passion and partnership. Details HERE.
The idea is “believers” aka investors invest $10 in a share of a new band. When the […]

Here’s a great story by a guy whose company was off-shored out of business. In the process of going out of business he laid off his customer service department before dumping his production department, He found out that customers were happier without the customer service department. [The bigger story is here you may have […]

You’ve got something you think I’d like. You want to get paid for it. I’ve got the right to say no, of course, but why do you have to be ashamed to come out and ask? I’m upset right now because I just got a call from a public radio station I’ve supported in the […]

My natural inclination is to believe the facts but disbelieve the story. That is, I usually think there are explanations (perhaps luck, perhaps existing trends) that people don’t give enough credit to. Instead they tend to assume that everything good that happened was caused by something that they did.
Even with that caveat, Hugh MacLeod’s explanation […]

What a thrill it is when that day finally comes. That is the company founder’s joy. Also the company founder’s deception. Also (potentially) the company’s destruction.
Joy
Well duh! Now you can finally do what you know needs to be done without someone with their own agenda getting in the way. I think we can all relate […]

President Clinton was the keynote speaker at the NAA conference last week. He posed 4 questions to the audience:

What is the nature of the world in the 21st century?
What should it be?
What can be done to make it so?
What can each of us do?

The speech was basically a call to think of what we do […]