Always the notorious red-light district of sports, boxing today is as troubled as it was even in the days when the Mob called the shots. There are too many lawsuits and too few heroes. Absurd mismatches and fraudulent rankings by unaccountable offshore sanctioning bodies have disgusted fans.
Drilling is risky because finding oil is only half the job. The real challenge is finding the money to pump the oil.
A company logo may be the last thing cost-conscious CEOs focus on when they're looking to jump-start growth. Which is perhaps why it took more than two decades for White Mountain Footwear, a privately held shoe manufacturer based in Lisbon, N.H., to finally give its own emblem some serious thought.
Edible Arrangements will have to beat back some rivals, including a handful of mom-and-pop vendors and a company in Pennsylvania called Incredibly Edible Delites. And there's always the chance that a deep-pocketed national florist like FTD will decide that pretty produce is profitable and jump into the mix.
Oil wells never really run dry. A big company will drain maybe 40% of a field. Pulling out the rest of the oil, which requires an outlay of incrementally more cash per barrel, often proves uneconomical for big companies with big overheads.
Customers are enormously punishing when companies don't meet their expectations.
A company's logo can be a visual ambassador, one that goes on everything from business cards to delivery trucks. When used effectively, it can be the window into the soul of a brand.
Networking is never easier than when people are coming to you.
Schmoozers are brownnosers, sycophants more suited to middle management than to the Wild West of the entrepreneurial world.
Since its founding, Brooks Instrument has been producing devices that measure and control the flow rate of fluids used in manufacturing processes. And for all those years, the company has relied on the standard marketing package for its sector: earnest, information-crammed manuals and brochures.
Take information technology. We have winners implementing CRM (customer relationship management systems) and losers implementing CRM. What mattered in technology is that the technology actually drives either cost reduction or superior strategy execution.
ReadyMade's first three issues dished out instructions for all sorts of kitschy crafts and odd projects: homemade wallets, Adirondack chairs, even taxidermy.
One of the first acts during the second coming of Steve Jobs as CEO in 1997 was a major board overhaul.
When designing your product, go beyond consumers' current knowledge base. Design, test, and dig deeper than almost any client would pay you to do.
Fred Segal was founded - by none other than Fred Segal - as a tiny jeans retailer in 1968. In the 1970s Segal, began selling space to employees, starting with his nephew Ron Herman.
Spirituality is a growth industry. And nothing illustrates that better than the burgeoning crop of colossal sanctuaries sprouting up in suburbs across the land.
No sport - maybe no business - is more entrepreneurial than boxing.
Quality that significantly exceeds the customer's expectations doesn't seem to pay off. This 'delight the customer' stuff isn't rewarding. One has to be careful about delighting customers too often, because it sort of reshapes customer expectations.
While professional basketball, football, and baseball players make millions and their salaries represent well over 50% of the billions generated by those sports, the spoils of boxing don't often make it to the boxers.
The role of president, as George W. Bush commented in 2000, requires vision, management, and an eye for talent - not so different from that of CEO. But during the first years of Carter's presidency, his Cabinet was anything but businesslike, beset by infighting and meetings that ambled.
