While attending a funeral, I struck up a conversation with Joe, a guy I hadn’t seen in 20 years. As he learned about what I do here at Unconventional Business Network, Joe was reminded of his uncle. Joe’s uncle started with modest means in a blue-collar trade, but today is worth millions. When Joe asked about his uncle’s success, his […]

Recently, I asked my wife, Kathy, how her day went. She replied, “Frustrating. I had so many meetings that I didn’t get any of my work done.” Kathy, like many of us, loves people, but she likes to mark tasks off her to-do list. It’s easy to forget that much of our work is about the people. Although Kathy didn’t […]

A recent article from the Lean Methods Group states, “Every day, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created.”  Accessibility to incredible amounts of information feels paralyzing. Metrics, reports, figures to analyze, presentations to peruse. But where is Truth? As a nation, our familiarity and intimacy with the Truth of the Bible has woefully sunk into the sea of bytes. We […]

My wife, Kathy, loves history. She recently shared that during World War I, America discovered that the Germans were listening to the American phone transmissions. This caused great harm to American troops. A Captain of the 142nd Infantry Regiment overheard two Choctaw Indian soldiers speaking their native language, when he had an idea! He sought out as many Choctaw Indians […]

One of the earliest lessons I learned in business was the impact of buying into a fad. In 1981, Rent-a-Wreck determined that offering used cars for rent instead of new cars could be franchised across the country. With the desire to be my own boss and desperate to leave public accounting, used car rentals seemed like a ground floor opportunity […]

My son-in-law, Brian, met with a mutual friend who previously had been CFO of a well-known, publicly traded company. When I asked Brian how his meeting went, Brian replied, “He shared an idea with me that I will never forget. ‘You are never as important as you think.’” For an older wiser businessman of the stature of this former CFO […]

In an article by Lean Methods Group, uncertainty is stated as one of businesses biggest challenges.  Because of uncertainty, managers tend to hunker down and make decisions with consideration for the short-term, but not the long term issues. We can be certain of the uncertainty in business.  Yet, we can be smart to make plans for the long-term, even when […]

This week we’re discussing Carmen Gallo’s three recommendations for developing a pitch for your organization as discussed in the Harvard Business Review. Gallo’s third tip is to “Make sure your team is unified.” For a message to stick, every member on your team should know and regularly speak the same message. When the message is consistently communicated by all, others […]

This week we’re discussing Carmen Gallo’s three recommendations for developing a pitch for your organization as discussed in the Harvard Business Review. Gallo’s second tip is, “Identify one idea you want your audience to remember.” Gallo recommends that you focus on a need of your customer and focus your one idea around that need. For instance, when Apple launched their […]

This week we’re discussing Carmen Gallo’s three recommendations for developing a pitch or promoting your organization. The first tip is “Keep it Short.” Gallo illustrates his point by sharing the pitch that was used to launch Google. The founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, told an investor: “Google organizes the world’s information and makes it universally accessible.”  These 10 simple […]