Business Stories

Pricing is Magic. Stranger Every Day

April 25, 2012

Pricing is magic. There are no good algorithms. No best practices. Grab a theory — competitive pricing, value-based pricing, scientific wild-assed guess pricing, you name it — and stick with it. If it works, stick longer. If it doesn’t change it.  Some reflections on pricing:  Yesterday I bought a short story,  off of Amazon.com for [...]

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True Story: Begin With a Job at a Startup, Then Start Your Own

March 8, 2012

The title of this post is taken from Martin Zwilling’s Begin With a Job at a Startup, Then Start Your Own on the Gust blog. In that post, Martin starts with this: For those of you who want to get in on the ground floor of a new venture, but haven’t yet worked up the nerve [...]

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The Joy of Startups, Revisited

March 2, 2012

Getting really into a new startup, when it goes well, is exciting like a clear mountain morning, like a warm spring rain, like falling in love. Cheesy? Sure. But I’m doing it again, and loving it. I’m not just saying what people always say; I’ve been there, and I’m there again right now. If you’re [...]

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How Contagion Can Help You Forecast Sales

February 6, 2012

Can we talk about beauty in numbers? Amidst all the nervousness about forecasting new products, does it not make sense, and add elegance too, to talk about the classic s-curve we see in nature? So many natural phenomena show an increase along a natural S-curve and bell curve  like the two shown here on the [...]

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Good Business Decisions Aren’t Made by Vote

January 23, 2012

Have you heard this? It’s not mine, I think it’s sort of common knowledge: If the decisions were made by consensus, every wall would be painted beige. As my business grew up from entrepreneurial to stable, we had to redo our decision process. Early on, we sat around, a few of us, discussed and decided. [...]

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Franchise King Echoes Mark Twain on Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

January 5, 2012

What I really like about Franchise King Joel Libava’s post Shocking Facts About Franchising Success Rates Revealed is how clearly he calls out the sleazy or sloppy (take your choice) use of very old statistics to mislead and entice people. He concludes: A simple scan of some of the cheaper-looking websites that some of the franchise [...]

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The Critical PhoneDog Noah Mistake Was Avoidable

January 3, 2012

You can read here on Mashable how a guy named Noah Kravitz worked at a company named PhoneDog, tweeting while he did as “@phonedog_noah,” and then left the company and took — or tried to — his 17,000 Twitter followers with him when he left. “Tried to” because PhoneDog is suing him for $2.50 per follower. [...]

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How Much Should You Worry About Your Competition?

October 14, 2011

I’m intrigued with Steve Thoeny’s comment earlier this week to my post about market research. Steve quoted Joel Spolsky, Co-founder Stack Exchange, and one of my favorite writers, with this suggestion: Talk to your customers. Find out what they need. Don’t pay any attention to the competition. They’re not relevant to you. I love Joel’s [...]

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True Story: A Fast Growing Company Gets Organized

August 17, 2011

This is a true story. Once upon a time, I had an interesting problem, the kind most small business owners want to have, but nonetheless, still a problem. We were growing too fast. Our sales tripled one year, and doubled the next. We didn’t want to stunt our growth. But we were having trouble getting [...]

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True Story of a Natural Networker

August 12, 2011

Coincidence or synchronicity: two days ago I had a heart-to-heart talk with somebody about partners in business, and the natural networker concept came up in reference to a specific person I know. We were talking about partners and complimentary skill sets. He does what I never could. I’m not going to give you his name, [...]

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