12 Ways Best Blogging Practices Aren’t
By Tim Berry
I like Blogger Brad Shorr‘s list of 12 Most Horrible Pieces of Blogging Advice (no longer available online). It’s a good list, well worth reading, good food for thought. More important, in my opinion, is that it’s also an eloquent reminder of the essential case-by-case rule that applies not only to business blogging but also to all... 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 »
The Thin Line of Fremium Strategies
By Tim Berry
It’s not like I’m going to say “poor Tripit.” Tripit was purchased last year for $120 Million in cash and stock. So I presume it generated a collection of happy founders. But the pressure on so-called fremium sites, like Tripit, must be tough. I’m getting emails now offering enticements to upgrade. I like Tripit. I’m... 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 »
Some Suggestions for Family Business
By Tim Berry
I’ve done business with my wife, daughter, son-in-law, and various mixtures of those. Of course the classic advice on this is not to mix business with family. But people do. I read somewhere that 62 percent of the gross national product of the Western world is produced by family businesses. Furthermore, I don’t believe (much) in... Read More »
The Paradox of Profits
By Tim Berry
We take it for granted. One of the main goals of a business is making a profit. Right? Maybe not. Answer this question: What makes a business more valuable? Is it profits, or growth? Or future prospects? And then this question: Don’t you have a straight trade-off between profits and growth? Assume you have money... Read More »
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