(Note: I posted this last Thursday on American Express OPEN Forum. I’m reposting here.) I’m not a baseball fan and I try to avoid sports metaphors, but there are some things I love about baseball that I treasure for their relevance in entrepreneurship and business management. Baseball doesn’t pretend perfection. Pitchers get to miss their [...]
About Me
Quick Bio
I'm chairman and founder of Palo Alto Software. Founder of Bplans. Co-founder of Eugene Social. Founder of Free the Numbers. I have more info at timberry.com. And you can find me on Wikipedia too.
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I also blog at...
Small Business Trends, Amex OPEN, Up and Running, Huffington Post
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Most Popular Blog Posts
- Q&A: How Do I Sell My Idea to A Big Company?
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- A Pre-written Business Plans Is As Useful As…
- What’s Up in Colombia…
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- How to Hide Your Opinions as Data
- Do You Underestimate Time for Tasks You Like?
- Can You Guess the Happy Customer/Angry Customer Equation?
- Memorial Day, Draft Lottery, Reality TV, Flags
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- How to Calculate Hourly Cost of an Employee
- Willamette Angel Conference Invests More than $450K
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- 10 Blogging Tips. My 1,000th Post on This Blog
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Disclosures
- I'm employed by Palo Alto Software, but opinions expressed on this blog are mine and mine alone.
- I have a very small financial interest in Rebelmouse.com. More important, a personal interest: my son is founder, one of my daughters is a key employee.
- bigstockphoto.com gives me a free account for stock photos. I use them to illustrate this blog.
- I have an affiliate account with amazon.com. That means I get a percentage of sales from links out of this site to amazon.com.
- I occasionally accept free review copies of books I review on this blog.
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Things I Believe
- The best things in life aren't free, but they aren't for sale either. You have to work for them.
- Business ideas have no value.
- Time is the scarcest resource.
- You can only be one person at a time.
- An authentic original is better than a good copy.
- It's the planning, not just the plan, that makes business planning work.
- Truth reflects off mirrored surfaces and splits into specks, rays, and particles. William Blake wrote "anything possible to be believed is an image of truth" (in Proverbs of Heaven and Hell.)
- Writing skills, even -- unfashionable as this may be -- spelling and grammar, matter.
- Good writing is always easy to read.
- There are problems you can make worse, but not better.
- Successful business planning is nine parts implementation for every one part strategy.
- Angry words are not always biodegradable.
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