Category Archives: Helpful Hints

Get Off Your Butt

The hardest thing about being an independent consultant for me is business development.  Not on behalf of others, but for my practice.  It’s not that I can’t do it or that I don’t know how.  After all, I spent a good portion of my early career doing just that for ABC and CBS with excellent results.  It’s more that I’d prefer to spend my time working on my clients’ business and not on my own, I’d guess.  Maybe I need to be more selfish.

Gym Free-weights Area Category:Gyms_and_Health...

Image via Wikipedia

A good friend who has been on his own for 30+ years told me early on that this would be the hardest part and that there would be anxious months with not enough work.  He was right, as usual, but the remedy is something far simpler than anti-anxiety drugs or meditation and is applicable even to those of you that live in the corporate world and is something I want to share since it goes beyond business as well.
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Filed under Helpful Hints, Reality checks

Fuzzy Strategy

Sometimes I’m convinced that the most successful businesses have no idea what they’re doing.  Oh sure, if you asked an executive about their strategy, he or she would probably give you whatever is in their planning document verbatim, but I think that’s crap.  I think they’re telling you what they believe to be the truth but in fact may only be accurate in their minds for that moment.  Instead, I think the most successful companies are masters of dealing with the utter chaos of the business world and not being too anchored to any one detail of a plan.  Yes, planning is important, but so is reality, and that often means dealing with something for which we had no plan. So why bother planning? Continue reading

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Filed under Helpful Hints, Thinking Aloud

Friendors

To end the week in our usual food-themed way, I want to talk about a piece of advice I was given a long time ago.  I thought it concerned shopping and it turns out it’s important business advice as well.  I’ll admit that it was given to me in a different time, when much of the food didn’t come from a supermarket the size of several airplane hangers.  Shopping involved going to the butcher or the cheese store as well as the larger store where one would get grocery items and the advice was to make friends.  Despite the change in store sizes, it’s still great advice for shopping and business.  Let me explain.

A couple of Butchers at work.

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Filed under food, Helpful Hints