Tag Archives: Growing a Business
Just Do It: Shoe Dog Shares Deep Stories of Business
Attending the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting this past weekend reminded me of Buffett’s book recommendation of “Shoe Dog” by Nike’s Phil Knight a couple of years ago. “Phil is a very wise, intelligent, and competitive fellow who is also a gifted storyteller,” said Buffett. That… Continue reading
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
Rational Investing vs Irrational Entrepreneurship (Admirable Idealism)
When asked at this year’s meeting, “What matters most at Berkshire Hathaway?” Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett quickly agreed: “Seeing things the way they are.” Rational As Opposed to Smart Warren and Charlie then went to one of their favorite topics about how the success of… Continue reading
A Business Strategy to Capture More Value
The best entrepreneurs and business owners know that capturing value, not just creating value, is critical to success. The phrase “capturing value” is not meant to convey a zero-sum concept of one person capturing what another person loses. It is a way of saying that… Continue reading
Disparate Data Points: Entrepreneurship Exploding or Dying?
An explosion of young companies that are bootstrapped, or financed outside of traditional venture capital (i.e., Silicon Valley) or traditional bank financing, is what I see every day. I see many companies finding their way to a point of lift-off, stability, and medium-sized revenue and profit… Continue reading
Companies and Founders Deserve Better Financing Options
Business financing and capital raising are full of contradictions. The world is awash in capital, but the availability of capital to businesses is often binary. For some, too much capital is stalking them. For others, the switch to turn on capital flow remains hidden. Size… 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
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
Old School Myths About the Ideal Time for Raising Capital (of the Right Type)
Old school myths from last century have stuck around to this century — especially about when to raise capital. Modern companies often have the freedom to make a decision about when to seek capital because they do not need capital at a certain point in… Continue reading
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