I volunteered to serve as a judge for an Alpha Kappa Psi business case competition, so this past weekend Bryn and I traveled to Reno for the fraternity’s western regional conference.
Having no experience in judging these sorts of things, it was a pretty cool experience. I was impressed with the analysis and insight offered by [...]
This week I was interviewed and photographed by the San Francisco Chronicle for an article on California’s proposed “Amazon tax.” Obviously I don’t get a lot of press so I thought it was pretty cool. Hopefully Gov. Schwarzenegger will veto this bill again if it passes. The full article is available here.
The photographer, realizing this [...]
To err is human. But apparently people believed Toyota was inhuman, incapable of making mistakes. I’m surprised by the media and public outrage over their recent brake recalls.
Yes, the brakes are obviously a critical part of the safety system and yes it’s tragic that people died. But it’s not like Toyota intentionally set out to [...]
You heard it here first:
By the end of this year, “strategic default” will be a familiar media buzzword describing the next phase of the foreclosure crisis.
In a strategic default, mortgage borrowers who owe more than their house is worth, but who can afford their loan payment, decide it is simply smarter to stop paying. In [...]
Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace was recommended in The 100 Best Business Books of All Time. Author Gordon MacKenzie was a 30-year veteran of Hallmark, and offers up a unique perspective on navigating the corporate landscape and climbing the proverbial ladder.
It’s clear from the very beginning this is [...]
It was the summer of 2005. I can’t remember the exact text message my friend sent me, but it was something along the lines of:
“Up $5k for the month.”
What?! I knew immediately what he was talking about: affiliate marketing. Here I was having just moved all the way across the country to start work at [...]
Yahoo has been losing market share to Google for years, and now is determined to fight back. In a bold move that surprisingly has garnered zero press and somehow went unnoticed by the few remaining Yahoo searchers, Yahoo has increased the maximum length of description text for search advertisers from 70 characters to 71 characters.
That [...]
I’m kind of pumped about my new business credit card Capital One is sending me. I uploaded the Shoes ‘R Us logo — which will probably be unreadable on the actual card depending on the resolution — and picked this out of control orange background.
Awesome. And even more awesome, it’s free. I think it’s pretty [...]
At its most basic level, business is about:
Taking inputs,
Producing something of value with them,
And then selling the outputs for more than they cost to make.
Few businesses do this more conspicuously than Coinstar. Their gross profit margin is visible to everyone: 8.9%. Feed $100 into their machine, and it will hand you back $91.10. But [...]
Hope your holiday is stress-free and filled with family, friends, and love.
Impressive how this Green Chri$tma$ song was recorded over 50 years ago, but still rings true today.
“What’s the percentage in that?”
