Tag Archives: Execution
Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch
The massage school where I am a co-owner, the National Holistic Institute, recently had our annual all staff gathering in Northern California. It is a big investment, but also a critical culture investment to get everyone on the same page. In a school, the interactions… Continue reading
Dodging Bullets Keys Investment Success
Great investors have skills to seize opportunities and get into good situations. Equally as important can be the skill at “scrambling out of bad situations,” as Charlie Munger would say, or “dodging bullets” as it sometimes feels when helping companies solve challenges. At the Berkshire meeting… Continue reading
Wonderful Competitive Advantage Through A Unique Distribution Channel
Sustainable competitive advantage — a goal which will be always sought and ever elusive in business. It is difficult to define. Yet, we often know it when we see it. People attempt to draw-up lists in an effort to understand and remember the types of… Continue reading
Owners’ Words Best When Reflect Both Noble Purpose & Bottom-Line
This revealing story was told by speaker Lisa McLeod at the recent Murphy Conference for their impressive network of business brokers across the country. McLeod gave a very nice talk based on her book Selling with Noble Purpose. McLeod was facing a conundrum in her… Continue reading
Business Improvements in Marketing As Well As Factory
W. Edwards Deming went from the USA to Japan after World War II and his ideas about continuous business improvements came back to the USA from Japan as a business management tool — kaizen: daily small improvements building a better process over time. See Deming. … Continue reading
Managing Business, Managing Time, and the Case for Doing Nothing
Balance is an elusive concept — and so relevant to so many business situations. I have enjoyed adding to our series on Balance — last year, we identified more than 20 things a business owner must balance. Should we focus inside or outside? Should we… Continue reading
Path of Equity Value Creation Not Easy to Plan or Pace (see Disney)
Equity value creation, in my experience, does not follow a smooth, straight path or a predictable timeline. It zigs and zags, stalls and spurts. Therefore, forcing a company into a certain path of possibilities or tight timetable is often counter-productive. I have found it to… Continue reading
Competitive Advantage Leads to Persistently Good Performance — Like Top Tier VC Firms
It is good to be the incumbent. Usually. They have often built competitive advantages over time. Except maybe in the ever-changing world of technology, it is usually an advantage for a business to have been around a long time and to have established customers, suppliers,… Continue reading
Joys of Ice Cream, Apple Pie, and Recurring Revenue
Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, once told a friend of mine that if Charlie were a young man, he would be “trying to find online recurring revenue businesses” — like many that are being built and growing today. The combination of recurring revenue… Continue reading
Binders Don’t Make Employees Safe
I am all for employee safety, but paperwork in a binder doesn’t cushion any accident. This story may be an example about how worker’s comp is broken. I am not an expert on worker’s comp nor do I want to spend lots of time figuring… Continue reading
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