What do you think of when you see the acronym “BS?” Do you think of business strategy? Maybe you should. I have nothing against real business strategy. I’ve posted on
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The crumbling of mainstream journalism worries me. But am I just being nostalgic? Was it really that good in the past? The Portland Oregonian, one of the grand old daily
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Who do you want running a startup: innovator or CEO? I answer that question with a question: are those the only options? I’m fascinated by a comment from venture capitalist
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I was delighted to catch Sometimes You Have to Scramble in my blog feed yesterday. That post on smallbizclub.com was written by Pro football hall-of-gamer Fran Tarkenton, who was famous
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I just read The Perils of Renting Mailing Lists: Bank Mailer Sent to “Slut” on Small Business Trends: A San Francisco freelance writer got a credit card offer in the
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I liked this question on Quora: My new year’s resolution for 2014 is to create a plan and stick to it. I haven’t been particularly good at it in 2013
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Over the holidays I received this question from my ask-me form on my timberry.com website: In todays economy with corporate streamlining and all that technology has to offer, how can
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I wish there were a better term, but differentiator is the best I’ve got. It’s what makes you different. It’s also called your secret sauce, and sometimes your competitive edge.
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What Makes a Sales Forecast Credible
So for me, what makes a sales forecast credible? It starts with product market fit. I want to understand the story of the need, and not necessarily big numbers, but
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I don’t want to be a strategist. Yeah, like you, I like to be a thinker. I like analysis. And strategy sounds cool. But the term strategist is too much
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This interesting book review came out this morning on slate.com: In her new book, Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, Washington Post reporter Brigid Schulte
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This is me giving back, making it up to all the spreadsheet haters. It’s a non spreadsheet: lists, tables, yes; but no formulas, functions, or programming. It just adds the
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Throw away the script; give your people more autonomy to identify and solve problems. — Shep Hyken (@Hyken) March 4, 2014 Not that long ago I discovered, to my dismay,
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Problem: one of the things I really like about startups and small businesses is also a frequent problem with the way they make decisions. Let me explain. I love how
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I admit, when I started reading this book I was skeptical. I’m a social media pro. I thought I knew all about it. But no, as it turned out, I
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Lately I’ve been working with very good friends to develop a new startup. It’s not ready to go yet and it’s not the subject of this post, so I’ll offer
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Pam Slim’s new book Body of Work is out. You may already know of Pam as the author of New York Times bestseller Escape From Cubicle Nation. This one takes
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Don't Believe Failure Rates Stats
The mythology of failure rates is greatly exaggerated, I think. Not that you’re not going to do it anyhow, just like I did, but, for the record, you know they
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I see this confusion a lot: People use the terms “venture capital,” “venture capitalist,” and “VC” to apply to any outsider investing in a startup. However, it’s really useful to
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The question: I need your recommendation as to what program we should invest in that would be most appropriate. When I googled “How to…marketing plans” Whoa, lots of options and
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The infographic here reminds me of the 1970′s movie Rollerball, in which the world was controlled by seven corporations: food, energy, entertainment, transportation, etc. It seemed at the time, when
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For a good time take a look at the answers to this question on Quora: What are some classic examples of a founder letting his or her ego get in
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Have you dealt with this in management? After serious discussion, consideration of pros and cons, you make a difficult strategic decision. So you want to move on, but somebody you
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I just caught this one by Marketing Profs, what professional marketers say about content curation. Far from consensus on how much or how often, but 74% agree that curation is an important part of content strategy; and 73% agree it's also a valuable part of the marketing mix.
Marketing Profs is reporting on a study by Trapit. ...
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Posted by Have Presence
Here’s some great insight on the evolution of business plans and business planning, from Joi Ito, Director of MIT’s MediaLabs: Ito urges us to follow a compass rather than a
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Websites are visual. They are optimized for graphics and viewing. We have become very accustomed to interpreting our data as visual images, and the numbers in your Web plan should
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Do you do what I do? I suspect a lot of us do. With me it’s not just what’s urgent or important, but also what’s on the screen, which window
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For some really good startup advice, and lots of good reminders, here is Guy Kawasaki’s Top 10 Mistakes Made by Entrepreneurs, on YouTube, courtesy of Stanford Business. I don’t agree
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In the consulting and services industry, pricing is your buyer's best indication of your value. People buy on confidence, reliability, name and assurance, not on price.
I love this quote: “I remember a great quote from Paul Berry, former CTO of the Huffington Post, which went something like ‘Lets have an idea on Monday. Instead of
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I received this question over the weekend via my ask-me form on timberry.com. I modified it slightly to not include private information. It’s about a web software business. It reads
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