I have always believed the only way to find peace and happiness is
to strike a balance in all the various aspects of your life. You must
feed your emotional, physical, spiritual, and intellectual sides every
day to remain in balance. When we fail to do that, we slip into a state
where any equilibrium in our lives is [...]

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The other day I addressed the topic of making sure that when you lose employees you lose them from the bottom
and not the top. I ran across the statement I used for the title of
this post again today and it reminded me how true it is that we as
managers determine who stays and who goes [...]

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My father always used to preach that those who understand money earn
interest, those who don’t understand pay interest. I think that’s
pretty good advice, especially in today’s world. Though I’ve lived that
philosophy in both my personal and professional lives, I’ve often been
challenged by entrepreneurs about the concept’s validity for small
businesses. In fact, I remember one very [...]

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From the time we’re born until the time we die, our day’s are filled
with negotiating.  It starts, literally, when we’re born (I’ll stop
crying if you’ll feed me and change my diaper,) and continues on
throughout life.  We negotiate with our bosses, our employees, our
children, our spouse, the guy at the grocery store, and everyone in
between.
Some people [...]

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I worked with a company last year that had several problems: they
had way too much inventory, they had no systems in place (purchasing
systems, inventory control systems, etc.,) and they were in need of
some marketing help.
Somewhere along the way, the owner finally realized he needed a
high-powered marketer.  Now, we’re talking about a company that had,
historically, way [...]

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Several years ago, I worked with a company that felt the answer to
all its problems was to sell to Wal-Mart.  They felt that if they could
just knock over this one customer, all their dreams would come true. 
After all, Wal-Mart buys millions of dollars worth of product every
year.  What could be the down-side to that?
My client [...]

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I just read a great post by Anne Warfield over at Anne Warfield’s Presentations Skills Blog entitled “Do Ethics Only Count When People Are Looking?” and it reminded me of a similar situation I witnessed the other day in the grocery store.
I was in line between a mom with small children and a couple of
teenagers.  [...]

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I just returned from the beautiful Rexburg, Idaho campus of Brigham
Young University where I was a guest judge at a business plan
competition hosted by the business department at the university.  What
a great experience that was.  If you haven’t experienced the energy and
enthusiasm of business students who can hardly wait to take the world
by storm, you’re [...]

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As I talk to young entrepreneurs, partnerships are a common topic. 
There seem to be a lot of questions about when and why to take a
partner.  After 30 years of watching partnerships (and being involved
in several,) I have strong feelings about the subject.
When my son came to me a few weeks back asking if he should [...]

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Seth Godin has a great post on why you don’t need a resume. The part that really caught my eye was this comment:

“Great jobs, world class jobs, jobs people kill for… those jobs don’t get filled by people emailing in resumes. Ever.”

I know that’s been the case in my career. When I need [...]

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