When your friend starts his journey as entrepreneur do you merely support him with words of encouragement or your deeds as well? Your friend sure as hell needs money when he sets on his own. So, if you need or want a product he's selling buy it! Heck, pay extra! This is the biggest support you can offer. Saddly, it's often the other way around. Friends often ask a new entrepreneur [...]
Once an organization reaches scale, particularly if it feels like a monopoly, it’s tempting to “take profits.” This means less investment, fewer staff and a lot less care. Those things are expensive. Easier to simply keep the money. And those things involve emotional effort. Easier to simply point to the bottom line, as if that’s the point. Lazy managers dump the emotional labor on overworked frontline staff instead of creating systems [...]
How much is potato worth to you right now? What about if you were full? And if you haven't eaten for 3 weeks? So, do things even have an objective price? No, we're ready to pay the price, no matter what it is, if we have enough money AND if we can't get the thing that we're buying elsewhere for cheaper. If you live in the developed world you probably spend less [...]
Media praises entrepreneurs as people who pulled it off in spite of all the odds against them. Surely, entrepreneurs are risk takers, right? If there is a 90+% chance that you lose your earnings, reputation, career opportunities, possibly even your family, you must be a lunatic to do it, right? It depends. If entrepreneur is motivated by some external reward (money, career, status, fame) then yes, he has to be an [...]
Author: Herman Hesse (translated by Hilda Rosner) ISBN: 978-0811200684 Story of a young aristocrat, who is trying to renounce sensual and material pleasures and discover ultimate spiritual truths. A classic. EXCERPTS [Buddha = Illustrious One = Gothama The young man/ aristocrat/ traveller = Siddharta = Samana] That was how everybody loved Siddhartha. He delighted and made everybody happy. But Siddhartha himself was not happy. Siddhartha had one single goal—to become [...]
I've recently read an article in which the author mentioned a story. There was an elephant trainer, who kept his elephants captive by only a thin string. A curious man asked him, howcome the creatures don't simply tear the string and escape. The trainer answered that young baby elephants are tied up with the same string. When they're young, the string is strong enough to withstand their attempts to tear it [...]
Goalkeepers have a problem. They are rately appreciated for the work that prevented the disaster from happening. Also, it is in human nature to crave for shocking news and it is normally the failure that we perceive more shocking than successes. So, when they do a mistake, they are often made a scapegoat for everything that went wrong. Is there a solution? I have yet to find it. But it is good [...]
Producers and sellers of technical goods (bikes, electronics, machines, cars etc.) are constantly persuading you that there is a best Price/ Performance product. Is that truly so? Let's say a Tour de France rider and average Joe were buying bikes and they both had only 20.000 EUR to spend for every need and want they have. Would they both be looking for the best Price/ Performance bike? Yes, they're both rational. [...]
We don’t pay surgeons by the hour. And if the person who cuts the lawn shows up with a very fast riding mower, we don’t insist on paying less because they didn’t have to work as hard. Often, what we care about is the work done, not how long it took to do it. And yet, some jobs, from law to programming, charge by the hour. When you sell your time, [...]
If your product is truly unique (or as long as it is), then you don't need marketing. You only need advertising. When you get competition, you need to start telling a story that will set you apart from your competition - you need to start marketing.