Do yourself a favor. Do your employees, coworkers and associates a favor. Do your clients a favor. Take a break. Take a walk, play with the dog, practice your clarinet, read a book. Take the afternoon, the weekend or a cruise. Sure you are behind. Gotta catch up. Just gut it out, get it done, man. Go! [...]
Two of the most basic tenets in football are keep your head on a swivel and keep your feet moving. These are not simply bromides: they apply both to the gridiron and the pressure cooker that is business today. Keep your head on a swivel reminds us to be situationally aware, constantly scanning the field for [...]
There is an old joke in business: Good/Fast/Cheap. Pick any two. What if you took one off the table? What is everything you offer has to be good? Then it can be fast, but not cheap. Or it can be cheap, but not fast. So you get paid well for working under pressure (which feels good), [...]
After the startupworkgrab, you know, the first months or years when a new business will take any paying work, there has to be a time of self reflection. You now have some data and you need to ask yourself some questions. I suggest that you pose these questions as negatives: What work is the least [...]
Social Entrepreneurship is a business concept that places public good over corporate profits. A lot of businesses have been founded on social entrepreneurship ideals in recent years TOMS is a well known company founded by Blake Mycoskie that donates a pair of shoes with every pair that's bought. Jacqueline Novogratz founded Acumen, which provides "patient capital" to [...]
A five-minute interruption is not five minutes. It is at least 10 minutes and can be as long as 30 minutes. Why? Because once you off task it takes a few minutes to remember what you were doing and refocus. People do favors for me all the time, for which I am grateful. I like to [...]
I take issue with modern psychology. Sure we want to uncover repressed issues and deal with them, but discussing a problem ad nauseam hardly seems like the path to peace of mind. After all, nothing makes a wound fester like scratching at the scab. Let's say you bought a baby cobra (yes, a cobra, stick [...]
Marketing is simply a way to get attention for your business, charity or organization. A way to stand out from the crowd, to create a story that attracts customers to your door (or website). Some gimmicks are personal in nature: Slash's top hat, Angus Young's schoolboy outfit, Richard Simmons' striped short-shorts, Steven Tyler's scarves. Some [...]
Several websites including Google, PayPal, GoDaddy, Uber, OKCupid and Spotify have banned white supremacist groups from using their services. Clearly, no sane person supports these morons, but trying to censor them out of existence is a bad idea: It encourages their sense of martyrdom and provides a common enemy (in this case, the entire world), [...]
All virtues have a vice flip side. Thrift can turn to greed. Self respect can turn to pride. Righteous anger can turn to wrath. And so it is with marketing. Marketing is meant influence behavior, to change people. Through empathy, generosity and vulnerability, trust in the marketer grows and the student-customers can be influenced to [...]
You may not be familiar with the initials ACC. ACC is Anthropogenic Climate Change, more commonly called Man-Made Global Warming. There are a lot of people who are deeply and sincerely concerned about the effects of ACC, and rightfully so. The stakes are high. Without taking a side, however, it is clear that ACC supporters [...]
Feeling overwhelmed? It happens all the time, you are not alone. I suggest you do what is in front of you. Today. Right now. And nothing more. If you feel freaked out, this is not the day for big decisions. Give it time. It will pass. And the big decision will make itself.
There are some fine blogs out there, well written, thoughtful and authoritative. Too bad nobody reads them. They are just too long. I realize that Twitter's 140 characters may be too few to make a fine point, but holy smoke, 500 words? Every day? Here's a hint: if you write something so long that the reader has [...]
Apropos of my post on modern marketing, I saw the strangest thing yesterday. A billboard on U.S. Route 1 in Lawrence Township. Advertising an Advertising and Marketing company. A billboard is relatively expensive and it is designed to market to a large audience, so it is most helpful if your customers are well, everybody. Big [...]
My first full time job after college was with the late, great Ben Danskin. Ben was a long-time Monmouth County politician, and one of his favorite sayings was, "Smile 'em to death." Ben, of course, was talking about real or potential political enemies, inside and outside his party. There is never any shortage of these [...]
