Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things. – Robert Louis Stevenson
Phil
172 posts
Hang out with winners. I’ve heard this a million times, but now and then I get a tangible reminder of why it’s true. Today I got some free sales advice from a distant colleague-of-sorts. It seemed smart enough and I was probably going to make it part of my plan. […]
Bad marketing is when you convert someone who doesn’t know you into someone who knows you but doesn’t like you.
“You have to like helping people.” Today I heard that twice in the span of two hours: the first time from a bridal consultant, and the second time from a hotel concierge. They both love their jobs. They can’t imagine being successful or happy in any service job without having […]
“Welcome to Great Harvest Bread Company! Would you like to try a free sample?” If you’ve been to one of their franchises, you’ve heard the welcome. When my cousin Rich was younger, he’d go into the Chapel Hill NC store and ask for a big slice of bread, which he’d […]
Business thinker must have a million 2×2 grids for classifying things. While chatting with my B-school advisor some years ago, I theorized that most business thinking has to get reduced to a 2×2 grid, because people can’t get their minds around anything bigger than what they can draw on a […]
For some reason, I dip into this book again and again. Lewis writes about his time at Salomon Brothers in the early 1980s, but the stories still seem painfully relevant, 25 years later. I’m glad I don’t work on Wall Street. How about you? When it came to speculation, European […]