LinkedIn is an amazing resource! Use it to find people who are selling what you want. Use it to offer or find jobs. But don't use it for outbound sales. It's been open season for people spamming my inbox with unsolicited sales pitches. While I'm sometimes open to...
All businesses share the same underlying foundation: a flow of money in and out. The money in has to cover the costs of the money out. It has to pay for the production of your product or service, and have enough left over to fund growth and expansion for the future....
The Chief Executive Officer is one of the most coveted titles, and least understood jobs in a company. Everyone believes that CEOs can do whatever they want, are all powerful, and are magically competent. Nothing could be further from the truth. By its very nature,...
I just returned from Black Rock City, NV, better known as Burning Man. Burning Man is an annual event where 70,000 artists, engineers, performers, and makers descend on the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. In one week, they build and inhabit a city made of...
It's an old adage that "What gets measured, gets managed." I'd like to add, "what gets managed, gets manipulated." That adage is usually used to discuss how people are paid. If you pay a bonus based on quarterly results, some people will manipulate the timing of sales...
One of the most valuable distinctions you can make about language is to develop insight into active and passive voice. “Mistakes were made” is passive voice. It doesn’t say by whom those mistakes were made. People use passive voice to avoid...
The economic playing field has gotten complicated enough that it's foolish to step on the field without some idea of how you're going to win. In sports, you have a playbook, which lists the plays you can make. In business, we call these...
This blog post was sponsored by Adobe Document Cloud. I know in my gut that business travel is what drives the paper industry’s profitability. Every step you take ends up producing a receipt, business card, or some important note scribbled on a napkin, in...
Today I'm in the Washington Post, on How not to Lose Things. Enjoy!
Cryptocurrencies and ICOs (initial coin offerings) are hot right now. Entrepreneurs are raising millions with them. But how do they work? How should investors, entrepreneurs, and markets think about them? Here’s what I’ve learned so far about how ICOs and coin-offerings work.