StartupNation Blogs

Here is an evaluation system, albeit waggish. It’s about tipping in restaurants, and I’ll preface things by saying I don’t believe a tip is a diner’s obligation. It’s a tip—something extra that one earns if the service he or she delivers is at least good.�
Linda and I sit down for a meal in a restaurant. [...]

Here’s a remove-the-system-altogether scenario. It’s the ultimate in simplifying things. My staff and I take delight in chucking unnecessary Centratel protocols. System-elimination is great to see in personal life, too.�
The cardio room at the gym where I work out is equipped with dozens of treadmills, step climbers, and stationary bikes. It’s a busy place, so [...]

In my small business, Centratel, each of our half-dozen key management people has had several years of on-the-job experience. Training managers to operate a telephone answering service is a long, drawn-out affair because it is necessary to understand a myriad of technical details and random facts. The introduction of documentation speeds up this training process, but [...]

Sometimes we install a system and it doesn’t do much. We achieve the desired effect by the mere existence of it.

At Centratel, we knew a few of our employees spent time “cruising the net” on company time. It was impossible to track these sleight-of-hand excursions and the closest we could get to managing the problem [...]

Have you got those calls yet? You know, the calls or the in-the-grocery-store chats from your old co-workers, or ex-bosses who are looking at their jobs and thinking maybe the security of a full-time job wasn’t such a secure thing after all?
And they heard you started your own business and are doing quite well, thank you [...]

For years, a nagging problem in my small business, Centratel, was the time and effort it took to pay the monthly bills. The process did nothing for the bottom line and each month required 10 to 14 hours of my time to process 60-80 payables to various vendors. I wrote the checks, entered the transactions [...]

Not too long ago I participated in Cycle Oregon, a weeklong bicycle tour. Seventeen hundred riders pedaled an average of 75 miles each day through remote eastern Oregon. At night we camped in ad hoc tent cities planted at various locations along the route: rural high school football fields, small town parks, or wheat fields. [...]

It’s Sunday, September 6, and Linda and I are in Philadelphia. We stand in a pouring deluge – the brunt of tropical storm Hanna is upon us – as we wait to enter Independence Hall, located in the city’s Historic District. Drenched despite our umbrellas, 30 of us enter the annex of the building. We [...]

“In the past 20 years, the lure of instant gratification has gripped the youngest half of our population. For the hooked-up generation-those born after 1970 who are wedded to iPods and the immediacy/pervasiveness of the entertainment industry-it’s a stretch to go backwards to consider the root of things. The gratification of the moment is a [...]

“The quality of your communication equals the quality of your life”
-          Anthony Robbins�
The sense I have developed over the years is that quantity of communication is more important than quality of communication. Of course, this refers to sensible discourse between two parties. It is no good if one spews unlimited information while ignoring the other [...]