Book Review: Rework
The real world isn’t a place, it’s an excuse. It’s a justification for not trying. It has nothing to do with you. The above quote really resonates as when you are thinking about taking the leap into business the “real world” myth always pops into a new business owners head. That’s what you can expect from the book Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. This book is chalk full of business advice that is relevant to today’s business owner and the shift that is occurring with how we do business. As the book illustrates, there is a growing number of people who are doing work and creating value
Business As Usual Is Dead
While I was getting a coffee during a recent visit to St. George, Utah, a sign from a local business caught my eye. It said that the store needed to close because they didn’t get TARP money from the government. The reality that a lot of businesses like Jolley’s Boot Town are facing is that it’s not business as usual and to survive they can’t rely on the government for help. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a shame when long time local businesses fail. You feel like a piece of your town/city dies with it. As tragic as this is, businesses need to adapt themselves to a changing business landscape.
Be Unprepared and Treat Your Customers Like Idiots- The BP Oil Story
I get a little miffed when people just outright bag on business, capitalism and suggest that business enterprises are inherently out to screw the public. This is why the BP Oil fiasco saddens me, specifically how the fiasco has been handled after the fact with such utter lack of emotional intelligence. The fact is that BP Oil had a breakdown in their process and equipment which led to the current situation that we are currently in. If you want more on the spill details go here. Companies are run by people and people make mistakes. It’s how you deal with the mistake that matters. Two big problems are evident in
Book Review: Invaluable
The uncertain economy has caused a lot of people to question previously held paradigms of what job security really is. We are learning at a rapid rate that it is up to us to create our own job security. We can do this through starting a business or as Dave Crenshaw puts it in his new book, we figure out what it takes to become Invaluable. The book centers around a particular character, Jason, that we can all relate to. He’s young, has high expectations for his career and becomes disillusioned with his initial career path. Not only is he disillusioned, he begins to take on the dreaded victim’s mentality
Creating In Solitude vs. In A Group
Everyone has a different style when it comes to generating ideas and creating. Developing new ideas and creating new possibilities is a driving force behind today’s economy. Knowing that creating and leveraging ideas is important, what keeps us from doing it? The biggest obstacle for creating starts with our mindset. How often do you hear; “I’m not good at that.” or “I never have any good ideas.” The truth is that we have lots of good ideas, we just don’t have a process for filtering those ideas. This brings me to what process we should use for innovating and creating in the marketplace. There’s a lot of conflicting information
Are You Good? How Do You Know?
If you saw the movie American Pie 2, you may recall that one of the main characters, Jim, was going to be visited over his first summer of college by his old foreign exchange friend Nadia. Certain that he was going to have sex, Jim got really excited about it and then got scared when he wondered, “Am I any good?” (I apologize if I have disturbed you with my recall of this movie, I may have seen it one too many times.) Ever had that happen to you in business? Not the sex but the doubt if you were really as good as you thought you were. This is
