Is it better to be feared or loved? Do the ends justify the means? Is all fair in business and politics? Machiavelli says, “Yes.” You may have heard of the book The […]
Modern Machiavelli: How to be a 21st century prince without selling your soul
We All Know About the Same: Nothing
I’m a fraud and so are you. We run around pretending we know a thing or two about a thing or two. And we’re surround by all of these experts on subjects […]
Future Predicting: A bad business to be in
This was my tweet just minutes before kickoff of this past Sunday’s Super Bowl: Privately, also just before kickoff, I was quoted as saying, “If I was rich I would bet $200,000 […]
Strategy: Cortez the Killer
In 1519 Hernán Cortés the Conquistador led a flotilla of 11 ships to the eastern shores of Mexico against the direct orders of his superiors. You see, power and hubris had driven […]
Genealogy, Ancestry.com, and (you probably already stopped reading)…
Nothing, and I mean nothing, puts people to sleep faster than talking about the most boring of my boring hobbies: genealogy. Of the nearly 500 people in my family tree, only two of […]
Baby Brain
I’ve had some serious writer’s block lately. I’ve been tired. New assignment at work. New baby at home. So tired. In addition to a lack of blogging, I’ve noticed the following side effects […]
Leadership Style: Fake it till you make it
About a year ago, I wrote this post about how to articulate my/your leadership style. Thanks to Google, this has become my all time most viewed post with over 1,000 views. Today […]
Six Months With No TV (Kind of)
First of all, let me tell you I love watching TV. I don’t intend for this to be some high-brow TV-is-for-dummies blog post. Watching TV is awesome. Whether it’s a live NFL […]
Real World, Fake World: How to be a successful manager, leader, and person
As I detailed in this kind of weird article, the work world is not the real world. Work is a made up place, work hierarchies are made up things, and there’s really […]
It’s Only Work
Not only is business management my vocation, it’s also my avocation. In my free time I write this blog, manage two three-family investment houses, and help with two companies as an unpaid […]
Management Skills: Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick
I swore I wasn’t going to be one of those parents who would toss empty threats at their kids to try to coerce them into good behavior. You know the old, “If […]
Personal Finance: There and Back
I had a few bad years of personal finance. I was one of those guys who bought houses without any money during the Great Housing Boom of the 2000s. I bought my […]
Management Skills: Be Fit
Getting into shape is a good business decision. And this isn’t one of my weird and abstract metaphor posts that’s really about mental fitness or business fitness or something. This post is […]
Short Story: David and Gertrude
He and Jimmy drove along without talking pulled by a rig filled with ten tons of black top. His mind drifted, like it always did when he had nothing else to think […]
Not All the Turtles Make it to the Sea
Jack and I watched this movie called Tortuga, about an adorable sea turtle’s journey from birth through adulthood. The movie starts on a beach where adult female sea turtles have dug hundreds […]