Entrepreneur-turned-VC, Mark Suster, recently posted an article on his blog, Both Sides of the Table, highlighting what he considers to be the essential qualities of entrepreneurship. At the heart of his post is a very, very simple philosophy: entrepreneurs just do it. For some people, this is easy. Moving ahead, pulling the trigger, motivating people [ Read More ]
Many people don’t think about it specifically, but know it intuitively: if you want good customer service, skip the big guys and go to a small company. In Small Business’ Competitive Advantage, I discuss that Customer Service is the magical pixie dust for small business. Think about your normal daily experience: if you need to [ Read More ]
I’ve been feeling nostalgic this week. After so many years in ecommerce, supporting catalogers and retailers whose year entirely revolved around the Christmas season, I am almost at a loss for what to do if I’m not running around putting out fires from Thanksgiving weekend up until the week before Christmas. Strange as it seems [ Read More ]
In Deck the Halls with Pink Slips I discuss the November round of layoffs at several big companies. Of course, part of what brought these to my attention is that a dear friend of mine got caught in the pre-holidays cut-backs at Adobe. Even worse, however, was the fact that my friend loved working at [ Read More ]
Last week I wrote an opening rant about “strategists.” In the comments that ensued, I am now inspired to clarify what I mean while I continue to write this series. I am not talking about consultants who are hired to help hone and build out a strategic vision for an organization; nor am I talking [ Read More ]
My husband constantly points out how irreverent I am. He does this mostly in a light-hearted, good natured way, but he still definitely finds it frustrating. He will often feel like I am being actively disrespectful to individuals or institutions that deserve my deference. The fact is that I am not disrespectful at all. What [ Read More ]
I’ve had an interesting few weeks. My husband and I have been dealing with a lot of things at home, hence my absence from blogging for much of the past month, and I have started a new project with the New Media (a.k.a. “web”) team at KXAN-TV here in Austin. Between getting settled into the [ Read More ]
People who did not meet me until at or around my 25th birthday would never believe it, but in school, I was the Queen of Slackers. Truly. School was too easy, too routine and I spent too long doing it to be able to breath new life into the experience. I could dodge classes, do [ Read More ]
I had a couple of discussions this week that got me thinking back to the early days of my career. Aside from leaving me feeling older than I care to think about, it did spark a pleasant memory or two that I’ve been mulling over since. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how early career choices [ Read More ]
I try to avoid ranting on my blog (which sort of puts me in the minority), but I’m going to deviate from my self-imposed rule for a moment, and I hope you’ll indulge me while I stomp my feet and jump up and down a bit, but this is something that is really sticking in [ Read More ]
In a recent conversation with a friend, we were discussing corporate blogging efforts to engage existing customers. After reading Joshua-Michele Ross‘ post recently, on the Wells Fargo/Wachovia merger blog, I was excited to see yet one more company prepare to engage customers in this forum. That is, until we started talking in more detail. It [ Read More ]
I recently put my “Sex and the City” DVDs on while doing some work around the house, and was reminded of the two things about the show that — no matter how much else about it I loved (and there were plenty of things in that category) — that bother the daylights out of me [ Read More ]