Category Archives: Best business practices

Chipping away at the mountain is the only way sculpt a professional masterpiece

Every day I come to work and I have countless important things to do.  The goals of business success are clear as I have noted in a prior post.   Working day by day the small bits of progress can be … Continue reading

Posted in Best business practices, Career Development, Professional Development, Team performance | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Ethan Allen – the interesting Asia story of a venerated American Brand

Last week at the Asia Society in New York I attended an event entitled “Ethan Allen CEO – Selling ‘Made in the USA’ to China.   It featured Ethan Allen Interiors CEO M. Farooq Kathwari interviewed by Timothy Aeppel bureau chief … Continue reading

Posted in Best business practices, Brand Advertising, Business in Asia, Business in China, China, Marketing stuff | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Men’s Wearhouse debacle – What’s wrong with changing a tired face of a brand?

Men’s Wearhouse founder, CEO and longtime spokesman George Zimmer was fired by the  board last week.  The reverberations can still be felt.   I had not realized that Mr. Zimmer had been the spokesman for almost thirty years.   In fact … Continue reading

Posted in Advertising, Advertising to Millenials, Best business practices, Brand Advertising | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

The Kindle Fire can’t be the best that Amazon can do

Even before I had bought the original Kindle in 2007 (this was pre-iPad days if you’ll recall), I had been a longtime fan of Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com.   Back in the 1990’s I bought some Amazon.com stock @ $11/share only … Continue reading

Posted in Best business practices, Community, Customer Experiences, Innovation, Leadership, Mobile Communication, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Protecting your LinkedIn network is essential

I read an interesting and surprising statistic related to LinkedIn this week.    Only 17% of professional people have a LinkedIn account.   When I dug deeper for the correlating data I was only able to find an article from March 2012 … Continue reading

Posted in Best business practices, Communication, Social Media | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Thinking outside of the box is easier when you were never in the box in the first place

We’ve been interviewing a number of very smart and qualified young candidates for summer internships.   One thing that has struck me is that when we have met with foreign students (as well as American students) the foreign students have shown … Continue reading

Posted in Best business practices, Brand Advertising, Innovation, Listening | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

To become a better listener try not saying anything

I’ve always thought of myself as being a pretty good listener.   People that have been in sales-oriented careers like me know it’s obvious that being a good listener is a crucial skill.   Despite that, I know that I could be … Continue reading

Posted in Best business practices, Communication, Listening | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Free Conference call – one of the best deals around for its users

The web is rife with companies that have what seem to be unfathomable business models.   We are regular users of http://www.freeconferencecall.com and every time I use it I think what a good service it is and of course you cannot … Continue reading

Posted in Best business practices, Communication | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Taking pride in every aspect of your job will always make you a success

Last week as I arrived home in the NYC suburbs after a long day I received a different kind of gift in the form of an abject business lesson.   We have a small yard and when we bought the house … Continue reading

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Opening a business with a bad plan will always result in failure

The restaurant business is a difficult one in the best of times.  I know this from having several friends in the business – some of whom are successful, others that have been somewhat less than successful.    I am consistently amazed … Continue reading

Posted in Best business practices, Marketing stuff | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments