Business

  • Bureaucracy

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    Humans are messy creatures.  We create piles of work that needs to be done, piles of work that’s already done, and piles of work that we never want to do.  Our work spaces are cluttered, ineffective, and downright … comfortable.  Let’s face it, we like to be surrounded by a little disorder once in a

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  • Tradition

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    One of the many defining aspects of a brand is tradition. What kinds of things does your organization always do?  Many traditions seemingly have no reason, but they play a defining role in the customer experience.  When a traditional aspect of your brand’s customer interaction is missing, people notice. The interesting thing about traditions, though,

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  • How to execute a brand

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    Probably not the kind of “how-to” article title you expected to see, is it?  Nevertheless, I want to give you a short lesson. Step 1: Build up a stellar brand and either push your competitors out of business or buy them up and leverage their core competencies. Step 2: Having eliminated all of your competitors

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  • Entitlement and Cynicism

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    As a kid, I always would look up to people in higher grades and wait for the day when I, too, could be like them.  They’d get out of school earlier, or have the option of a late start, or … fill in the ellipses with whatever it was the older kids had a right

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  • Climb On!

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      Climbing is tough.  You stand at the bottom of a huge cliff and stare up at what seems to be an insurmountable object … a wall that was not built for climbing.  After all, we use stairs and elevators now, why would anyone want to climb up a cracked wall? My fear of heights

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  • Inflation?

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    As a kid, I always wanted to have the best art supplies.  Both my brother and I liked to draw, sketch, and paint.  We would fight during the summer over school supplies because we always wanted to get the best colored pencils, the largest box of crayons, and the most expensive art stock.  It was

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  • Push Me, Pull You

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    I had a long conversation with someone the other day about the differences between push and pull marketing.  It was a little disappointing, though, because they had already invested a great deal of time and money developing their pull marketing strategies under the assumption that there was no difference between the two types.  Not all

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  • Apple – Psystar

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    Long-time readers will know that I talk a lot about Apple and it’s marketing efforts. Yesterday, another ‘incident’ with Apple came to my attention, and it adds support to everything I’ve said in the past. Back in May, I made the argument that the only difference between an Apple computer and a PC was smart

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  • Brand YOU

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    When you’re looking for a job, the most important thing to understand is your personal brand.  What reputation does your name carry?  What is the first impression employers get from your resume?  What tone do you use throughout your cover letter? These are just elements of the “first impression” your brand makes with potential employers. 

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  • Ten Ways to Build a Stellar Blog

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    This blog is just a few days shy of being 1 year old.  I thought I’d celebrate the occasion by sharing some of the things I’ve learned through blogging over the past year.  Here are ten things, in no particular order, you can do to build a stellar blog: Post something every day: I realize

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