Business Owner's Blog

Posted on : April 25, 2008
What to Learn From the Economic Mess
	This video of Dan Ariely from TEDÂ has several enlightening and surprising ideas you can use. It’s 18 min long but the last 2 minutes are an ad. Why people cheat and steal and how this can be encouraged or discouraged. The reasons are not at all what you’d expect. How these conditions were exacerbated by the [...] ...»

Internet Access Blocked by Zone Alarm plus Visa
	I had sporadic problems getting online. It would work fine for anywhere from a few minutes to an hour. Then (sometimes in the middle of loading a page) it would tell me sites were loading (no “page not found” errors) but they never loaded. This happened in all my browsers (Firefox, Chrome and IE). At [...] ...»

Two interesting (unrelated) posts
	Mark Cuban - owner of Dallas Mavericks - put an interesting perspective on the AIG bonus situation using an analogy to a free agent athelete. Did I say he owns the Dallas Mavericks? Hint - to keep good employees, financial firms will have to offer not bonuses but options. IF they do well in a few [...] ...»

Weekly One-on-Ones
	“What’s new since we talked last?” I asked. “Meetings,” she said. “I’m doing one-on-ones with my people, like we talked about.” She is a client.Â Her company makes web sites and on-line products for a specialized industry. They’ve got a reputation for high end work, solid market penetration and about a dozen employees. She is the [...] ...»

Turning Things Around
	Most of us aren’t in a position to turn the entire economy around. But don’t think you are powerless. Some people look at this situation and see all the negatives. Some people see opportunity. It’s easier to feel the fear and do the cut back thing and blame the economy. In fact, it’s both the worst [...] ...»

Part Two
	Here are two followups to two (unrelated) posts. Update to What Really Happened To The Economy? Michale Lewis, who wrote Liar’s Poker has an article on Conde Nast Portfolio.com with an inside story about what went wrong and why. You’ll be shocked, SHOCKED, to know that there was greed, short term thinking and stupidity on Wall Street. [...] ...»

What to do when the Excrement Hits the Air Velocity Accelorator
	1. Talk to people - Don’t assume Talk to your customers Ask how the current situation will impact them. Ask how you can make it easier to keep their business Talk to your vendors and suppliers (Look at point #2 before you do this so you can combine discussions as you see fit). Will they need to change terms? Tell them [...] ...»

Just go Vote already!
	My apologies to non-US readers. We sometimes do things a little strangely here. Did you US readers know that in Australia there’s a fine for not voting? or that in Canada the government just sends you a voter registration card so there’s no opportunity forÂ one party or the other to purge the rolls? And how [...] ...»

What Really Happened to the Economy?
	And is the bailout bill a boondoggle? Spend an hour with Warren Buffett. Yes, he talks in a few cutsey sound bites, but he also talks so you can understand (at least I could) what really caused the problem and why the bailout bill is/was solution. It was broadcast on Oct 1, 2008 By the way, he’s [...] ...»

How was School today, Dear?
	What a dumb question. If you’re a parent, I doubt you’ve ever gotten an answer that comes anywhere near what you’d call satisfactory. And if you’ve ever had a parent, I doubt you’ve given such an answer. Because it’s the wrong question. I was reminded of this watching the Republican political convention. For some reason we had [...] ...»

Business Owner's Blog | Cheri Alguire

Business Owner's Blog