A VERY PERSONAL STORY
Masterful storytelling at its best.
CAPITAL THINKING
A collection of 43 issues
Facing Reality
Institutions are a reflection of the people that run them; they experience fear, greed, uncertainty, and arrogance just as much as any flesh and blood person. Whether it's Lehman, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan, or the corner grocery store doesn't really matter.
Everybody Lies
Everybody scans the headline but nobody wants to read.
Advice, sort of...
If you haven't seen it, you might want to put this little movie on your to-do list. Spacey and Devito are at their best and deliver top notch performances.
Regret
Regret. It's just something that you learn to live with -- or you don't.
Van Halen and the Legend of the Brown M&M's*
Storytelling can often be the very best way to get your point across.
Plain talk about money
I believe in asking your customer for their "budget" number. I don't skip around it and in fact, I like to get that information as early in the process as possible. But a lot of folks are shy when it comes to talking about money. Don't be that way.
Other People's Money
Danny DeVito explains value investing in 3 minutes flat. Really.
FOR SALE: 1965 FORD F-100 PICKUP. RUNS.*
I have turned his plates in, I'm no longer paying his insurance, and he is technically no longer my dependent. I will either donate him to Durham Tech or to the local high school, where I hope he will at least take some shop classes, maybe get his GED, or learn a useful skill.
The Snake and the Stallion
If you only know the late Carroll Shelby for his tuner cars, you're missing an amazing story of how, during the mid-1960s, his little, nerd-filled race shop in Los Angeles helped Henry Ford II exercise his famous vendetta against Enzo Ferrari - Mike Spinelli
It's All About the Money
I can't stress this enough: Find a bank that WANTS YOUR BUSINESS. Don't settle for anything less. Really, just don't.
Rich or King? The Founder's Dilemma.
“There’s a line you cross where your savings alone will fund a reasonably lavish lifestyle. At the risk of sounding like George Bush, this is a Freedom Line — freedom from restrictions about what you can do with your life, family, and career." - Jason Cohen
Results or Excuses: Pick One.
Human beings’ innate resistance to change is the most perplexing, annoying, distressing, and confusing part… (but) resistance to change is natural and inevitable. To think that it won’t occur… is a fatal mistake.
One True Sentence
Getting and holding someone's attention can be as simple as speaking one true sentence.
The Power of a Personal Story
Do yourself a favor and grab a coke, a coffee, take a break, or even open this while you finish up your lunch. Maybe this could even qualify as a "lunch and learn" kinda deal. Whatever you do, just make sure you see it for yourself.
You Can't Be Everyone's Girlfriend
Once you’ve moved from novice sales rep to “Master of All Things”, feel free to color outside the lines. Until then, observe and learn from other sales folks, but remember to be yourself. Use the talents you have to your best advantage.
The Five Most Dangerous Words in the English Language
DECEMBER 31, 1999
On the Value of Train Wrecks
Once you come to terms with the fact that there will be some really bad financial days in your future, you may begin to see a way to truly understand (and compensate for) the risks you take.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Take another look at the picture at the top of this post. What do you see?
Hope and Other Casualties
Regret influences our decisions far too much and we forget that risk is the real measure we should keep our eye on.
Everybody Plays the Fool. Sometime.
Ask yourself this question: Do the people around you tell you the truth - even when they know you won’t like hearing what they have to say?
Just Your Ordinary Sociopath
Trophy board members are more concerned about their reputations than your company and will often react badly in times of crisis and challenge, which is exactly when you need your board members at your side more than ever.
Devil Take The Hindmost
All you need to know about the problems of being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong business - or being too lazy to do your own research.
Radical Candor
That’s the worst thing about managing people, is that you make your biggest mistakes on the backs of these people who work for you.
How to Sell a Used Car
Sometimes we forget that honesty is often the very best approach. And in that spirit, I give you the Used Car Ad of the Year featuring the not-so-amazing 1999 Toyota Corolla.
The Art of the Hassle Map
“But it’s a funny thing about demand: There’s often a huge gap between what people buy and what they truly want and need. That gap is revealed by the Hassle Map…” - The Art of the Hassle Map
Why No One Really Wants Creativity
Best line of the day: “People do not like being told they have to change the way they work.”
On A Dark Desert Highway
Here’s the deal. We like to bitch about poor service all the time. I mean we gripe about meals, hotels, car dealers, mechanics, plumbers, … you name it. We spend far less time talking about the times when the service is not only good, but excellent. Or, in this case, exceptional.
And so, you think Elon is cool?
Ford raised wages, set a reasonable work week, built and shipped more cars than everyone else in the world, managed to lower his costs of production by nearly two-thirds, and build one of the largest and most successful companies on the planet.
BigTime Debt is Coming Home to Toy's R Us and It Ain't Playing Around
Retail is indeed in the midst of a reset, and by extension so is retail real estate.
Signal Versus Noise
Today we all live in a marketplace that never closes and is never quiet. Everyone clamors for our attention by every means available – digital, analog, and everything in between.
The Wisdom of Building A Moat
It stands to reason that the wider and deeper your (economic) moat, the better (stronger) competitor you are (all things being equal).
How Software is Eating the World
Today, most of us believe dragons to be the stuff of legend; and nothing more than a creature created to frighten small children or for our entertainment at the movies. However, that may not be entirely true.
Why Blacksmiths Are Better At Startups Than You
Until now, they’ve always worked for approval, abstracted from results: the question has always been, Is this the answer the teacher wants? or Did the committee like it? — not Is it true? and did it help the customer? Or, even worse - will this get me re-elected?
The Biggest Rock in the Pond - Part 1*
Most of us prefer to deal with problems we can easily solve rather than face up to the really tough ones. How you choose to deal with the large rocks that come your way will define you, your business, and your future.
The Value of Partners
Darwin was correct. It's called survival of the fittest. If you can't come up with a strategy that will allow you to prosper through your own efforts, then it's doubtful you will do better when paired with other inexperienced pilgrims.
All Business is Show Business
"Little things", he said. "That's how people make up their minds about you and about your business. Little things." "So, how do you fix that?"
Better Angels of Our Nature
Perhaps, in the end, we are all “fragments of a mirror whose whole design and shape we do not know”.
Eat Your Pie Crust First*
Procrastination is a powerful enemy. It’s so easy to put off something for one more day or one more week or, …
The Rise and Fall of the Pizza Kings
Capital Thinking • Issue #11 • View online Jim is a young man on the prowl for opportunity. He sees other people working at jobs they don’t like and makes up his mind to go another way. He begins to write things down and wherever he goes, a pen and his
The Art of the Reframe*
Capital Thinking • Issue #7 • View online Do you remember the first time you saw this picture? Who did you see first – the young lady or the old woman? Was it difficult to see the other figure until it was pointed out to you? The earliest example of this optical illusion
Trust Me, I'm Lying
Capital Thinking • Issue #6 • View online Almost 50 years ago, David Ogilvy put pen to paper and produced “Confessions of An Advertising Man”. You might think such a book written so long ago has little to offer us today. You would be wrong. True, our world is increasingly made up
Toasterization? WTF?
Capital Thinking • Issue #16 • View online “To me it’s simple. Value has shifted from the PC itself to what the PC can access, meaning social media outlets like Facebook , Instagram, and Twitter, and content distribution services like Netflix and Spotify. There are equivalents in the corporate world. Many companies