Tag Archives: Competitive Advantage
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
Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting Notes for 2014
For those you have not attended a Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, picture this scene at the 2014 meeting. A stadium is filled to its capacity of 30,000 people with another 8,000 in overflow rooms at the adjacent conference center and hotel. For nearly six hours,… Continue reading
Berkshire Hathaway: If You Love the Management, Set Them Free
Private equity investors often take the “father knows best” approach to working with their management teams. To me, this is crazy — particularly when the management team has years of experience with the business, the investors are new to the business, and the track record… 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
Invest in Strength Rather Than Work on Weakness
For your business, do you believe it is more important to spend more time on your challenges or your opportunities? Similarly, do you believe that you should invest in your strengths or work on your weaknesses? The answer, of course, depends. If the challenge in… Continue reading
Investment Returns Are Not Greener by Changing Industries
It is easier to earn outsized investment returns in some industries over others — I agree with that conventional wisdom. As an investor or entrepreneur, it often pays off to think hard about which industries to enter. If you have a choice, why not increase… Continue reading
Ideal business financing for growing, profitable companies in 100 posts or less?
“Teach what you want to learn” is the theme with which I started this blog in April 2012. Since then, I have written 100 posts — which means I’ve learned for myself and shared what I’ve learned under several themes: Business financing and venture capital… 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
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