I was recently able to listen in on a conversation between two of my friends. One of them is a successful business owner, and the other is a corporate employee looking to get out of the rat race. The advice of the business owner was to put it all on the line and quit his job to start a business,…
Last week I posted about the book Great By Choice and sort of summarized it’s primary points. There is one part of that book that I keep pondering, though, and I wanted to explore the idea a little more. The idea I’m talking about is the “20 Mile March” concept. Collins explains that we should all be making advances in…
While most business authors tend to explain their concepts and argue their points by using their own personal experience and wisdom as their source, Jim Collins provides roughly 100 pages of research citations in the back of each his books. He isn’t selling books because of some larger than life personality, but because no one’s research is more thorough. Because…
When Fulfillment by Amazon came out I was extremely weary. I was doing quite well fulfilling all my orders myself, and they were throwing numbers at me telling me this would instantly increase sales dramatically. This was before most people had heard of Amazon Prime, so at first I admittingly shrugged it off. Eventually I decided to give it a…
As much as one can, I’m beginning to fall in love with economists. In this obnoxious political climate, it’s refreshing to hear arguments brought forward through actual objective facts that don’t pander to either political party. Tim Hartford has done a masterful job of this in Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure. Tim begins his book by sharing fascinating…
This has been a question I’ve asked many times over the last few years as our inventory has been accumulating. I’ve attended many conference sessions and roundtable discussions and have heard some good suggestions. I’ve summarized the best strategies I’ve heard in this post. Of course, there’s no magic solution and the method depends on how quick you need to…
I recently came across a great new resource for Amazon and Ebay sellers, called AmazonGenius.com. These guys aim to provide free practical information to sellers out there, and I suggest you check them out. Here is their press release: In July of 2012 AmazonGenius was founded to inform sellers of the latest news, services, and software for more efficient…
When it comes to outsourcing, I’ve seen people at both extremes. There are those who believe they can outsource every aspect, and those who think they need to do everything themselves. The brave souls who believe they can outsource everything are most likely limiting themselves in growth because they are probably not actively finding problems and solutions within their businesses,…
I’ve heard this phrase “The Paradox of Choice” many times, I’ve read about it in books, heard in mentioned in conversation and there was even a Ted talk on it. I understood what the basic concept was, which is that more choice creates more uncertainty and less happiness, but not until recently did I pick up the book to get…
Over the years I’ve become obsessed with efficiency. I think that time is ultimately our most valuable resource, and we waste too much of it. I think this goes both ways too, we can sit at our desk and stare at Facebook at work, thereby ruining our productivity, and we can also waste our leisure time, by doing subpar activities.…
