The Ideal Business Meeting

October 23, 2009 in lessons learned
Tags: ideas, management

I’ve been working with Kelly Karius for the last six weeks on a series of projects, and the trip to Melville, SK is nearly at an end. So we met a couple nights ago at the Waverley here, and she urged me to have the steak, renowned throughout these parts.

Tough customers

August 6, 2009 in lessons learned
Tags: ideas, stuff to sell

Well, maybe not tough. But the condition of the economy makes it a bit tougher for us to tell which customers are genuinely struggling – and need a break – and which are just plain cheap. Just a bit tougher.

609 Media goes live

May 31, 2009 in entrepreneurs
Tags: 609, ideas

The 609 Media Solutions Web site went live today, which in my mind makes us a real company now. I wrote its first blog post, with tentative principles we’ll apply to Web site design.

The Ideal Pocketknife, phase one

March 4, 2009 in lessons learned
Tags: engineering, ideas

The picture you see here is of a girly pocketknife, shown to me by a teenage barista at the local Starbucks. It was interesting because of the contents I’d not before seen in a pocketknife, and which I think are visible here:

Learning Sales: the Secret of the Short Sale

January 23, 2009 in entrepreneurs
Tags: ideas

I could explain the theory behind the short sale very simply: someone negotiates with the bank holding your (subprime) mortgage, getting you a (lower) payoff amount that the bank can live with, and lower monthly payments; this negotiation acting as an alternative to

you losing your home in a foreclosure, and
the bank going to no [...]

Add 1 tsp Tincture of Hypocrisy…

January 18, 2009 in admin
Tags: ideas

Today, I’ve been watching men pray for President Obama, while they were convinced God would not bless him. I hate that.
But for years, I’ve had to suffer through a presidency that betrayed my own interests, and (in my mind) the interests of the entire nation. In that time, I lost interest in praying [...]

The Great Myth of Customer Service!

December 8, 2008 in design notes
Tags: ideas

This article is sponsored by designnotes.com, “what electronic hobby stores used to be.”
The Great Myth of Customer Service is very simple: “the customer is always right.” This old saw was coined by one Harry Gordon Selfridge, in 1909 the owner of a London department store.
I’m not going to go into why this axiom is wrong. [...]

What you really need to protect!

November 15, 2008 in design notes
Tags: ideas

This post is sponsored by designnotes.com – “what your electronic hobby stores used to be!”
I hang out with people who sometimes invent things.
(I could easily have been one of those people too. You know how, whenever you see a new invention, you say to yourself “I had that idea years ago! Whodathunk I [...]