I Really Don’t Like All This Sh*t

By Tim Berry

Some of the best and brightest, some of the most educated people I know, have decided that it’s cool to use the word “shit” to replace the old-fashioned words “things,” “stuff,” “work,” and so on. That’s too bad. Of course I remember “get your shit straight,” a phrase that’s as old as the golden age... Read More »

Make Your Rebelmouse Website Real-time

By Tim Berry

(Update: Rebelmouse is still going strong in 2021, but the main content of this 2013 blog post has been vastly updated since then.) Traffic on Rebelmouse.com has soared to more than 15 million unique visits monthly, and some major brands and media (Time, NBC, Burger King, ESPN) have caught on and are using it regularly.... Read More »

Some Recent Blog Posts Elsewhere

By Tim Berry

Because you might be interested in these … I posted How to project expenses for a new business overnight on the SBA (small business administration) Industry Word blog. It’s a step-by-step how-to piece on exactly what it says in the title. Yesterday and today I posted two different posts on James Altucher’s Ultimate Cheat Sheet on Starting a... Read More »

Management And the Art of Saying No

By Tim Berry

Do you recognize this tactic? I was at the Apple Latin America headquarters in 1984 for an appointment with Hector Saldana, general manager. I arrived on time for a meeting, Hector came out of his office and welcomed me, walked me to the place to get coffee, and left me in a conference room, promising... Read More »

The Vital Fresh Look for Business Survival

By Tim Berry

The artist knows the scene. He lives there. But he closes his eyes, squinting, to get a fresh view of it. Sometimes things get too familiar.  Back in the 1970s when I was a foreign correspondent living in Mexico City, I dealt frequently with an American diplomat who provided information about Mexico’s increasing oil exports,... Read More »

Which is Worse: Making a Mistake or Losing an Opportunity?

By Tim Berry

What a great thought: how people approach failure is a key to success. That comes straight from Why Failure Drives Innovation, an article by Baba Shiv, Professor of Marketing, published in the Stanford Graduate School of Business news page. Consider this: “Failure” is a dreaded concept for most business people. But failure can actually be a... Read More »

Backroom Backbiting Will Bite You Back

By Tim Berry

There’s a coffee shop in the Portland (OR) airport with the tagline “good coffee … no backtalk.” It’s hard to see in my picture here, but there it is. What I make of this is a reminder about a fundamental business practice that way too many business owners forget. You can’t, simply can’t, let your... Read More »

Be a Fly on the Wall as Wall Street Crumbles

By Tim Berry

I watched Too Big to Fail last night. It’s a 2011 made-for-HBO movie that makes a great drama taken (or so it seems) from actual events. I watched like a fly on the wall as then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsen and others dealt with the financial meltdown of 2008. The first reason I liked it... Read More »