Business

Great/sad/frightening/disturbing article from one of my favorite writers, Norm Brodsky. All about recent “run ins” with picket lines and inflatable rats at one of his building sites…
I’ve been thinking a lot about rank-and-file union members lately, and I have to say it’s a shame how the guys at the top have let them down. Union [...]

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This entry caught my eye, make up your own mind…

Why aren’t more consumers boycotting them? Businesses should be accountable for not having unions. Wal-Mart was in the wrong for not using unionized cleaners. And they are not the only ones guilty. McDonalds is notorious (read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser) for opposing unions. How [...]

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Nice post at Passionate about “Rubberducking and Creativity.” It’s about creative problem solving for programmers, but it’s a killer app for small business owners, as well.

One of the first things I learned as a new programmer was the technique known as “teddy bear programming”. A story about this is in the book The Practice of [...]

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When I’m called in on a rescue mission — “my small consulting business needs to start making more money yesterday!” — the first and biggest problem always rests with this understanding:
The real money in any consulting business is not in doing what you do, it is in becoming better at marketing what you do.
The notion [...]

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This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Jeff Cornwall’s Entrepreneural Mind.

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Great post from Evelyn Rodriguez on the importance and value of business writing:
Isn’t Writing a Blog A Waste of Time?: “Time spent writing ‘pays’ for itself multifold. There is no process better for crystallizing your ideas. Writing is thinking, as Harry Beckwith says. The process of setting it down polishes the idea and reinforces its [...]

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The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about “peering” — a new trend in the wealth-management business where wealthy families pay money to meet other wealthy families. The happy group then bands together to swap ideas and advice.
This is the Napoleon Hill Mastermind principle at work, using the fee and 3rd-party introduction model [...]

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Google has had a long and semi-public battle with search engine optimizers and spammers – folks who use various strategies and tricks to get ranked higher in the results pages. But will unintended consequences hurt them long term? And how much easier will it be for MSN to take away their golden goose?
This year, the [...]

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One of the first lessons independent consultants learn is how to screen out undesirable clients. Sure, some will match “nightmare client” criteria, but more often they are not “bad people” … they simply bring baggage or requirements with them that you are not willing to accommodate.
Better to find out BEFORE they become clients and turn [...]

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