New Zealand a while back
As amazing as it was, I learned that: However, people look, wherever they’re from, no matter how successful they appear, everyone wants the same thing… To be loved and appreciated… and even if they think or pretend to be logical and rational, underneath… They are highly illogical, emotional creatures that are beautiful and worthwhile… If […]
Never ceases to make me chuckle!
Those in corporate America– especially product management– you’ll especially appreciate this.
What to do when a co-founder leaves you
Many of you know that Logan Young left us to go work for a client, Tuft & Needle. This move would have destroyed our company since we built Content Factory around him– the speaking, training, and major relationships. Whether or not you agree with the ethics of that, you should already have a plan in place […]
Want to unlock awesomeness in your business? Promote your winners
Man, have I ever been so guilty of focusing on the troublemakers– the people who just can’t perform and projects that are failing. This means I neglect the performers since the “squeaky wheel” gets the attention. I’ve lost some good people because I was so busy helping the stragglers that I unintentionally ignored my top […]
6 things you should NOT ask me
I like to consider myself a generous guy and am always delighted to help others however I can. But there are 6 major fouls in my book that happen more often than I’d like, such as: Asking for money. I will “loan” money only to friends, which means I don’t expect it back, but am […]
Nobody wants to admit this, but good people are the ones who kill startups
You keep your great people and terminate the bad people- we all do that. But it’s the merely good people that will kill you. “Steve is a good guy”, you tell yourself. He didn’t do anything so egregious that he deserves getting fired. And maybe his performance will improve if you give him more time. After […]
How to scale up your agency: a fresh approach
A colleague and I were discussing “leadership” and what that truly meant. We came up with this analogy, which I hope you’ll enjoy. Imagine you move rocks for a living. The more rocks you move, the more you’re paid. You don’t move rocks, you don’t get paid. Thus, you understand the direct linkage between putting […]
As an entrepreneur, you face the most concentrated of unspoken evils.
Yes, you’re busy. But go watch this video right now, anyway: It’s 48 minutes of encouragement and perspective for entrepreneurs with Elon Musk. If you’re still reading this, go back and at least watch from 34 minutes onward. As an entrepreneur, every problem in the company is brought to you, so you end up spending […]
My favorite trick for weeding out unqualified job applicants
You probably heard of Van Halen’s 53-page contract rider and how it required a bowl of M&M’s backstage– brown ones removed. It’s not that brown M&M’s are necessarily bad. Rather, the band was checking for attention to detail. If there were brown M&M’s there, they knew to expect sloppiness in the lighting, stage set-up, and […]
Do you want to really understand Dennis Yu?
I did an experiment yesterday on Facebook. I posted a quote, unattributed. Post by Dennis Yu. And it got a few dozen likes immediately. Ironically, it was a Simon Sinek quote, which a few people spotted. Martin Luther King was able to get 250,000 people together in Washington DC on that August day in 1963 […]