From the category archives:
On the bad days, in off moments, it seems like my two years in business school were mostly about learning the definitions of a few key buzz words to use in meetings.
1. ROI
Stands for return on investment, as in profits divided by total investment. For fun in boring meetings, think of it as “run out [...]
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The most important-but-forgotten salary negotiation tip is: finish well. In sports they call it the follow-through. When it’s over, be happy.
So you wanted more, and you pushed for it, which made you nervous when you did it, but they gave you more than they originally offered, although it was also less than what you’d [...]
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I was lucky. As Palo Alto Software grew up it found some good people along the way. Some of them stuck with us, and some were related to me, a second generation. We had a sense of community that seems, now that it’s grown, vital to that growth.
But I’ve never really understood about managing employees. [...]
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Jonathan Fields, author of Career Renegade, drew out the best of me for his podcast with me that he posted yesterday. He has a real knack for getting into the bigger issues, like both sides of entrepreneurship, and how important the rest of your life is, as compared to your business.
Yes, we do talk about [...]
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Irony: seems like people who call themselves experts, gurus, mavens, and inspirational speakers usually aren’t.
Have you ever been inspired by a self-proclaimed inspirational speaker? I haven’t. I’ve been inspired by authors, writers, researchers, teachers, founders, entrepreneurs, poets, even, lately, by Presidents. But they don’t call themselves inspirational speakers.
The greatest collection of inspirational speakers I know [...]
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I saw this on Twitter yesterday, posted by Meghan Biro:
Remember that the six most expensive words in business are: “We’ve always done it that way.”–Catherine DeVrye
She makes a good point. In my 30+ years in business I’ve seen way too much of “we’ve always done it that way” and I’d like to think (maybe I’m [...]
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I’m troubled by the concept of “fit” and how it works with growing a company and hiring employees.
It’s not a new concept, and I should have figured it out, by now, since I’ve watched Palo Alto Software grow from nowhere to 45 employees.
But I haven’t. And I don’t think it’s just me. I think there [...]
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You know who you are. You hate selling, but here you are, making your way as entrepreneur, having to sell or sink.
Me? I’m a terrible salesperson. I’m also bad at networking, cocktail parties, and small talk with people I don’t know. Do I seem stuck up, aloof? Not really, just awkward.
I’m probably still scarred from [...]
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There are problems you can make worse, but not better. I call them quicksand problems, because when you’re caught in quicksand, struggling makes it worse.
Examples are hard. Sometimes even talking about them, much less writing about them, is like struggling in quicksand; you just sink faster.
Flickr image by publicenergy
But say you overhear somebody bad-mouthing you. [...]
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I caught this post on Huffington Post: Who’s Happy And Why?
One thing that struck me immediately was this, a quote from that story:
For example, studies by Dr. Ruut Veenhoven, a sociologist at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, show that the extremely poor — those earning less than $10,000 a year — may be rendered unhappy by [...]
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