I get a lot of email. And a lot of that email reflects pretty poorly on the sender. Some of the emails I receive wouldn’t even make the cut as amateur ransom notes. They are often laden with misspellings or typos. Frequently they fail to make a succinct point. They routinely seem to be disorganized [...]
May 2011
I spent the past couple of days in some pretty lofty atmosphere. Not just because I found myself in the Mile High City, but because Eric Norlin put together another fantastic conference. Glue 2011 brought some really smart geeks to Denver to talk about the latest tools, tricks, and tactics that can be used to [...]
Last night I ended up at the bar of a mass production restaurant in Broomfield, CO eating unhealthy food of marginal quality while drinking club soda with some of the saddest looking pieces of lime I have seen in a while. No, I’m not a down-on-my-luck recovering addict, just a guy who really wanted to [...]
I like to think that I have learned a lot in managing business teams for nearly 15 years. One area where it is particularly evident – at least to me – that I have grown is in the area of collaborative planning. When I first became CEO of a company in 1997, I largely kept [...]
One of the hardest things I do for work is attend cocktail receptions. Yeah, I know, poor me. Go somewhere for free food and drink and casual conversation. It’s the same look I get when I complain about having to travel to Key West to speak at a conference in the dead of winter. But [...]
Many entrepreneurs assume that to be successful they need to be acquired or go public in an IPO. Netscape, Google, and more recently LinkedIn teach us this, it seems. High-tech companies, then, are often built to sell. That tends to mean a focus on revenues over profits. It drives fundraising activity, as acquirers and public [...]
For the last couple of years, I spent more than 200 days a year on the road. That’s a grueling schedule that doesn’t lend itself to healthy habits – especially for someone like me who has a lot of friends in the restaurant industry and a passion for trying great food. Despite the challenges – [...]
I’m an early morning person. I generally rise around 5:30 AM. In fact, even on vacation I’m hard-pressed to sleep in beyond 6:30 or 7:00. One of the reasons I like getting up early is that it is quiet. At home, the wife and kids are still asleep. It gives me a chance to knock [...]
Most successful startups have a sense of urgency about them. It is something that individuals can exhibit and can be manifested across an entire team or company. Urgency can help breed success. Misplaced or misunderstood urgency can be extremely damaging, however. In my experience the sense of urgency in business is often not well comprehended. [...]
Anyone who has ever worked for me knows that I love data to help me make decisions. Sure, I use my gut feelings a lot, too, just like any entrepreneur, but when I have access to good data and it makes sense, I want to use it as an aid. Often, data conflicts with anecdotal [...]
