There is a big difference between being specialized and being pigeon-holed. Specialized has a positive connotation. You are so good at the thing that you do that people seek you out for that thing. Reputation and (potentially) financial rewards follow you because of your speciality. When I think of specialists, I think of people like […]
Tag Archives: Business
Lush Cosmetics – Hand-made Excellence
A few weeks ago I was introduced to a company called Lush. Lush is a global retailer in the business of hand-made cosmetics. I had a look around their site and watched the video below on their company values. It was one of the more compelling values statements I have ever seen. It’s a bit […]
Amazon Local – Groupon Killer?
I pay a lot of attention to things my wife says about business and shopping. She has a great knack for seeing things in a way that I could never have seen. She was the one that told me about Birchbox with all of the excitement of a kid on Christmas morning. Yesterday I walked […]
Understanding the Little Picture
I have been in a lot of meetings and planning sessions where the focus was on understanding the big picture. Where will we be in a year, three years, five years? What kind of company do we want to be? What are the products we want to sell? How do these five things relate to […]
Trial and Error
I was listening to the podcast from TED Global by Tim Harford on trial and error and the God complex. The basic premise of the podcast is that there is tremendous value in being willing to fail on the way to success, provided that the conclusion is not already foregone in one’s mind (having a […]
“It’s Not My Delay, It’s The Airline’s Delay”
I am on my way to Memphis today, and we were saddled with a maintenance delay out of Raleigh this morning. This was the first flight out of Raleigh this morning, so the question goes begging as to why, if there was a maintenance issue, it was not fixed overnight. But that is really secondary […]
Know Thyself
The further along I get in my venture, the more I realize how important knowing what I am good at (and as importantly what I am not good at) is. I have a tendency to think I can and should take on anything that comes across my path if it’s an opportunity to make money. […]
Lady Gaga and the Myth of Accidental Stardom
I am (obviously) not in show business or music, and so there are times when I tend to think that people that are very famous have stumbled into it. They just happened to be doing something when the right person just happened to be watching and that just happened to turn them into stars. I […]
On Amazon
Yesterday I went to sign up for Audible, the audio book site. I have never been a huge fan of audio books in the past, but I can’t keep up with all of the books I want to read right now so I am trying them again for the first time. Audible is of course […]
The Rent Economy Takes It On The Chin
Update: AirBnB to offer $50,000 guarantees I have spent a lot of time thinking about the benefits of the rent economy. I have been working through the business case for a couple of ideas of my own around the idea that people like to rent when they can. Last week I wrote about Plumgear, a […]