Erich Stauffer

Category: Management

  • Organizational Habits

    The Power of HabitI recently read The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg after Zac said, “I have a book recommendation for you, and I won’t take ‘No’ for answer.” It came out in February of 2012 and is both timely and historical in it’s references. There seems to be a bit of bias towards events of the 1980’s, which leads me to believe the author was probably born in the 1960’s. In fact Charles Duhigg was born in 1974 and is a reporter for The New York Times who studied history at Yale and received an MBA from Harvard Business School. The core ideas in this book center around the habit loop, which contains a “cue”, “process”, and “reward.” The scary part is that no one ever really loses a habit – they can be re-instituted at any time with the right cue. The hope is that the middle process can be reprogrammed to take advantage of an existing habit.

    Habits are good. We need them to free up our thinking so we’re not always having to figure out how to put our shoes on or brush our teeth. But most of the time you hear about habits is when they refer to something bad. Obviously not all habits are bad and in an organization, they can help employees to do their jobs faster or be used to get along in the “secret hierarchy” that often exists within an organization. When an employee is first hired, their brain hurts because they are having to learn so much information so quickly. This is because nothing they are doing has become a habit yet. This startup area of work has been a focus of mine for a while and so learning more about this process helps me to understand how better to create employee manuals, corporate intranets, and business process design.

    Organizational Habits

    One term used over and over again in the book is “organizational habits”, which are like unwritten business processes. My twitter bio says I’m, “an IT business analyst in Indianapolis..I’m a Organizational Development and Leadership Consultant,” and I’m currently working on developing a new company centered around how people and technology work together. The socioeconomic effects of people and technology in business is really my core focus and so this book really intrigued me in several ways. As I learn more about Business Process Management and it’s subsequent tools of business process mapping, monitoring, and engineering, I can’t help but think how to integrate this new type of organizational hierarchy that exists in the form of organizational habits into my field of study.

    An Evolutionary Theory of Economic ChangeThe Power of Habit references a book called An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (1982) by Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter where their central conclusion was that, “Much of firm behavior is best understood as a reflection of general habits and strategic orientations coming from the firm’s past rather than the result of a detailed survey of the remote twigs of the decision tree.” In other words, it may seem like most organizations make rational choices based on deliberate decision making, but that’s not how most companies actually operate. Instead, companies are guided by organizational habits, patterns that emerge from employee’s independent decisions.

    Duhigg goes on to give examples of how companies do not act as a single organization moving towards a singular goal of ever-increasing profit, but are more like a group of internally-fighting factions all vying for more power and responsibility. I have seen this with my own eyes while working at two large, regional banks. At each bank, I was not allowed to talk to another department unless I first talked to my supervisor and then the other department’s supervisor. The trouble was hardly ever worth it even though the knowledge transfer may have helped the company as a whole. Although no one died as a result of the lack of internal communication, Duhigg cites examples from Alcoa to a Rhode Island hospital to a London subway where lack of internal communication between workers resulted in deaths. More recently I have witnessed, at one of our biggest clients, people moving offices simply because a bigger one becomes available. What does the size of an office have to do with that employee making the company more money? It has only to do with power and prominence.

    Probably the most well known example of failures in intercommunication between departments was highlighted in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Government agencies were not able to communicate with each other because they either didn’t have the same radios or access to the same databases. They couldn’t talk to each other because before then, they weren’t supposed to. That was the primary reason behind the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the reason you see new radio towers all over the Interstate System in the United States. But one other suggestion came about after 9/11 that hasn’t came to fruition – at least not how it was proposed. The thought was that maybe big cities were a bad idea and that maybe we should have several smaller cities separated by distinguished, un-populated areas. The idea was that maybe bigger isn’t better.

    ReworkI would argue that companies may be better off to not grow, but to peel off, keeping the groups small, like the smaller, walled off cities suggested after 9/11. Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson certainly argue for this in their book, Rework, which I also recently read and may write about in the future. they believe smaller companies can be better companies because they are more nimble and responsive. It has nothing to do with profitability as a small company can be as profitable or more profitable than a bigger company. Instagram had 13 employees when it was acquired by Facebook for 1 billion dollars. However, even in groups as small as 12, there are still those looking to be the greatest. In the Bible, at the Last Supper when Jesus was telling his 12 disciples that he was about to die, “A dispute also started among them over which of them was to be regarded as the greatest” Luke 22:24.

    Successful Organizations

    As I learn more about human behavior I get discouraged that there may not be anything that can be done to change things – for people to think less of themselves and more about each other for everyone’s benefit – but Duhigg offers a possible solution. He states, “Creating successful organizations isn’t just a matter of balancing authority. For an organization to work, leaders must cultivate habits that both create a real and balanced peace and, paradoxically, make it absolutely clear who’s in charge.” The “peace” alluded to here is in response to an earlier claim that businesses act more like they are at civil war with themselves – each division vying for more power and responsibility. And it’s from this truce that is part of the solution as well as making sure that when someone needs to be in charge, there will be someone. In this way, it’s more like business continuity planning where you have event-based hierarchy established before things go wrong so that when they do, everyone knows who is in charge. Daily habits get us by and can help us along, but when the cue, reward, or circumstances change, habits break down and so a clear path to leadership helps at these times. The key is that when the leaders are established for the one-off event, there are trickle-down effects that ripple throughout the whole organization, causing them to be more successful all of the time, not just during special or hectic events. Duhigg calls these “keystone habits”.

    Keystone Habits

    In Success by Management I share that The E-Myth Revisited and Good to Great are both excellent books for those wanting to grow or manage large companies, which you can read more information about in 13 Books for Every Entrepreneur. In Goals as a Function of Success, I wrote, “All team members must buy into the goal. If they don’t then they shouldn’t be a team member.” In other words, the company must have a central goal, like Alcoa had when Paul O’Neill championed “SAFETY”, and those that don’t buy into this goal get fired, like the Alcoa executive in Mexico who didn’t report the safety incident. Once a company has a central goal, the processes inside existing habits are changed. The cues and rewards stay the same – only the middle process is changed. You cannot change a habit, you can only change the process inside it. You cannot change a company, you can only change the people inside it. That is because companies are not whole, they are made up of parts – human and technological – and they all have habits and routines. A strong leader + a strong cause + changed processes = a successful organization.

    More to the Book

    The Power of Habit BookThere is much more to this book than business topics and if you are interested in learning about how to lose weight or stop smoking, this book may be beneficial for you too. I took from it what I wanted based on my experiences and my topic of interest, which is human behavior in business and how technology can be used by these people to make more successful organizations. It also talks about how habits are used in advertising, which helped me learn things like how suds are not really necessary in toothpaste, shampoo, or laundry detergent, but they are the “reward” people are looking for in a habit and if you don’t learn anything else, just remember that all habits have a cue, process, and reward and that you can’t change the habit, but you can change the process in the middle by hijacking either the cue or the reward.

  • How I Use Evernote

    I’ve recently started using Evernote as an experiment on how it might improve my workflow and as a way to keep up to date as a technology consultant. I knew kind of what it was, but had no idea what I would use it for. I didn’t know why you would use Evernote instead of Notes on your iPhone. It seemed that everything Evernote did, there was already something out there that already did that, albeit separately.

    I admit I am late to the game as its been around for a while. Evernote was launched in June of 2008 and was made famous by Tim Ferriss in 2011 when he famously told CBS “I couldn’t do my job without it.” My friend, Jason, uses Evernote fanatically and his incessant pitch of the product eventually led me to see what all the hype was about.

    If It Aint Broke

    EvernoteI was used to emailing myself to take notes or storing ideas in Google Sites via Google Apps or creating Google Docs or by creating Word or Excel documents on my computer that I would then sync using Dropbox. It is/was a mess of a system, but I wasn’t really looking for a better way. You could say I was perfectly content in my mess, but I guess I just didn’t know any better. Consultants like David Allen’s Getting Things Done don’t require a specific set of tools like a Franklin Covey Planner or a Moleskine, but that you use a particular method of location-based activities; sorting; decision making; and action. Evernote can help with all of that, and here is how it is different than using separate apps on your iPhone.

    How I Use Evernote

    I am by no means an Evernote expert. I don’t even know everything there is to do with Evernote, but here is how I’ve been using it. I’ve started replacing emailing myself notes to making notes in Evernote. I didn’t know how this would benefit me, but I just did it anyway (asah shamah) and the immediate benefit was a cleaner inbox. All I was really doing by emailing myself was creating subsequent cleanup and organizational work later when I would have to reparse the information into either a document or a Google Site. By storing the notes in Evernote I was skipping a step because the note and the repository of the notes were one in the same.

    The second benefit of using Evernote was also discovered by accident. I wasn’t sure how Evernote was that much different than making notes on the iPhone Note app. On the surface it is not. Both take text and allow you to send it out. Technically both are available online if you have iCloud enabled and enabled to sync your notes, but here’s how Evernote is different: Evernote allows you to put more than just text into a note and it allows groups of notes to be stored in “Notebooks”. It’s an undercover project management tool that’s accessible from any device. You can put images, files, and even voice recordings all inside one note. That’s pretty different than iPhone’s Note app.

    Summary

    While I haven’t yet figured out how to share notebooks with other people, I have had them shared with me and I have shared individual notes with other people using text message and email. There is a paid version, which may be required to do more sharing, I’m not sure. A quick browse of their website indicates Premium is required for allowing others to edit notes and for storing larger files within notes. While on the site I also noticed Evernote has more products so that might be worth exploring too. For right now I have more than enough to explore and use in the free app, which is available for iPhone, Android, PC, and Mac. You can use it to take notes on any device, which means that your notes are available almost anywhere you go. That’s powerful and that’s how I use Evernote.

    Update 8/30/2013

    I’ve been throwing everything into Evernote lately because ‘it’s better than having it sit in my inbox’, but what it’s now starting to feel like is that ‘the action of putting things into Evernote’ is starting to replace actually doing something with the information.

    To come at this topic from another perspective: I hardly ever use my Evernote as a reference – I still just go out and Google again or wait for things to come to me. Maybe this will change over time, but I have to keep in mind the main thing, which is:

    I’m not using Evernote to store information, I’m using it to help me get stuff done better because of it’s organizational power. If I’m not actually getting any more done because of it, I might as well be printing out the web and storing it in a file cabinet.

    I sent this to a friend who said, “I tend to find Evernote is best at info you can’t find anywhere else again. So, paper receipts, bills, work orders, or logs of conversations with vendors all go great in Evernote particularly with OCR.”

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  • E-Commerce Blueprint

    While this isn’t a technical ‘how-to’ list on how to start an ecommerce company, it’s the top 10 list I’ve developed on how to start an ecommerce company in 2013:

    • Give back – be a socially conscious company with a cause
    • Use keywords in your titles (the most impactful part of SEO)
    • Make it shareable and shareworthy (Gamification/viralness)
    • Write about peoples problems (and how to solve/escape them)
    • Go small within a niche first – build up a “beachhead” then expand
    • Repurpose your content (ex. record you reading a blog post)
    • Build a platform for marketing (ex. a website + social media)
    • Be a real, transparent person (as a opposed to just a company)
    • Don’t worry about anything you can pay for (ex. design elements)
    • Start with the product first, then build out from there #sellfirst

    As I wrote on my Twitter profile, I am “an IT business analyst in Indianapolis specializing in WordPress web design & technology consulting & I’m now building an ecommerce business.” I have decided to document the building of this ecommerce business on this blog and a lot of these ideas have to do with content development, which I have talked about in customer development and how to get more customers. It’s really about creating systems for ecommerce and developing success by management. According to Steve Blank, startups are simply a, “organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.” An e-commerce business is not a startup because it is already a well-defined business model that is proven and repeatable. The only question is to how you will run your e-commerce business. This is not a search for a new way of making money, but of your way of making money. Essentially it’s a question of how you will run, or manage your business. In other words, it’s a search for your internal business model, or management style, that can be repeated and replicated within your own company (or e-commerce business). This above list on how I choose to run my e-ecommerce business is a glimpse into the how I think an ecommerce business should be ran.

  • Success by Management

    I believe the most important factor in success is management

    I am well aware of the downsides of management, or “over-management” as there is a point where all you are doing is managing. At some point this breaks down because someone has to do the work. Levels of bureaucracy that have built up over the last century have recently started to collapse, but management is still important. I don’t refer to management only as “supervision” or even as “leadership” but as “resource allocater”. By that I mean that management is more about measuring and reacting. In practice that means collecting information, understanding vision from leaders, crafting a plan of action, and then ensuring supervisors and production workers act appropriately. This method of management is at its very core what separates a hobby from a business. Happy is a plan implemented – a plan brought about and executed through great management.

    Take two business owners as an example: the first business owner keeps mostly to himself, but expects his workers to know exactly what he wants and how to do it. When things go wrong he has no idea why and so his only response is to fire and replace staff who in his mind will do a better job. The second manager leads his staff with a clear vision, meets with them regularly, and makes small, iterative changes to craft his organization into the company he wants it to be. When his staff aren’t operating by his standards, they are given helpful feedback and training. At the end of the year, he’s got a loyal, well-trained staff all moving in the direction he set forth. Meanwhile the first manager is now contemplating more turnover to ‘finally’ get the staff he needs to do the job the way he wants it done. Which type of manager are you? Which type would you like to be?

    While these traits and outcomes may seem obvious to the observer, they an be less so when the owner, manager, supervisor, and production worker are you or when all of them are the same person. How many solopreneurs do you think take the time to ‘meet with themselves’ to go over strategy and vision? How many take time to stop and review reports and other insightful information? And how many just spend their time working without any real sense of direction? What you’ll most likely find is that most people in this position pick one of those things to do 80% of the time. This means that roughly a third of business owners spend so much time thinking about their business that they hardly ever do any ‘work’. On the other hand, a third are people stuck in ‘analysis paralysis’ going over the data without a clear direction. It’s important to set your direction early on, do the work, then use the reporting time to periodically check to see how effective your work is moving you towards the goal. All three parts are necessary, but don’t let anyone go too long without doing the other. This is just good management.

    How important is management, really?

    Recently Steven Van Zandt from Bruce Springsteen’s East Street Band was on NPR’s Fresh Air and he stated that management was more important than talent. He said that his band was not the best musicians even on his block, but because of their management team they were able to become a commercial success. Now it is one thing to base a statement off your own experiences, but there is music manager named Lou Pearlman who had an uncanny ability to turn musical acts into cash cows. Regardless of how you feel about New Kids on the Block, N’SYNC, or the Backstreet Boys, their ability to make money seems to have more to do with Lou’s management formula than with available talent. In other words, those who know how to make money will continue to make money because they are active and intentional about their process. This is another way to describe management.

    Take Donald Trump for example. One could easily argue that he is a great manager. Regardless of what you knew about his personal management style, you would intrinsically know that in order to keep an empire of hotels, resorts, and casinos in daily operation one would have to at the very least be an adequate manager. But consider the fact that Trump has made a fortune and ‘lost it all’ – only to turn around and build it right back up again, you begin to wonder if its not the man, but the system the man employs. It’s more than mindset, it’s a business model. Donald Trump knows how to make money a certain way. Think of this “way” as a function. If you knew that by simply putting time, money, and dedication into a validated function that the return would always be greater than the input, would you keep doing it? That’s what great managers do. They don’t spend time re-inventing new functions.

    Consider the man who discovered a great treasure in a field and sold everything he had to buy this field. He didn’t say to himself, “If I sell everything I have I will use it to think of a way to turn it into a great treasure.” No! The great treasure already existed, it only required changing the way in which he managed his personal finances in order to obtain that great fortune. One might say that his greatest fortune was discovering the treasure in the first place, and I would say that this was but the first step in the three-step management process. If the man had not taken the time to set a direction and been walking that path (doing the work) he would have never been able to report the findings he had. You see, all three steps of management are necessary and useful for success. No one is more important than the other, but they are all required.

    There is another story about a man who found a rather peculiar rock in his back stream and although it was slightly ugly, he thought it unique enough to place on his fireplace mantle. One day a visitor with some geology experience noticed the rock on his mantle and realized the true value of this find. It was in fact the largest diamond ever to be found in North America and that’s where we get the expression, “diamonds in your own backyard” (a variation of the Acres of Diamonds story). The moral of the story is that nearly everyone has something within their skill set, background, or location that will lead them to their own success. Most people are simply ‘diamonds in the rough’, but with the discipline of management to their own lives, they could be more successful.

    Success itself is hard to define because of its relative nature. For example, you could decide success as where you are right now, but most people define it as something more or something better than where they currently are now. Management can help you achieve success (however that looks to you) because it will help you define what success looks like, ensure you do the work, and measure and monitor the results. However, the biggest obstacles when attempting to meet your goals are self-doubt, lack of accountability, and limited resources. This is why it’s so hard for solopreneurs to achieve success. When there is no one to report to, it’s easy to let yourself down. Realizing this is an issue is the first step, but ultimately you have to just do the work.

    You may have heard that “No man is an island” or “behind every great man is a woman” or that most big companies were the result of two-man teams as co-founders (1,2,3), but why? What does a partner have to do with becoming a great company? It doesn’t take a great leap to realize that successful business owners have to have someone to bounce ideas off of, to keep themselves from veering off the initial path, to keep them accountable, and to share their achievements with. Even single founders have strong “number 2’s” or life partners to play the role of co-founder. Regardless, role of the owner(s) is to execute the strategy and ensure it stays on track. They are the ultimate managers of their business and their ability to manage effectively has more to do with the success of their business than their product, their location, or their customers.

    Do not be afraid to manage yourself, your company, or your product lines. You are not wasting time or ‘building a bureaucracy’. You are building an internal business model for the success of the-way-you-do-business and only you can be the one to do it. You are the only one with your unique ‘backyard’. In that stream or in that field lies your treasure. It will not come easy, but the rewards will be great if you can learn to manage your business in a definable, repeatable way. For more ideas on how to do this, consider reading The E-Myth Revisited or Good to Great. Both are excellent books for those wanting to grow it manage large companies, but for solopreneurs, I recommend reading The 4-Hour Workweek. You might also like reading my post on customer development.

  • Forex Tips for Beginners

    Top 15 Forex Terms

    Forex TermsIf you are new to forex trading, check out this forex glossary of terms. Here you will find all the definitions you will hear/see while trading in the forex market. You might also check out Investopedia’s Top 300 Forex Terms [PDF]. If these are too much for you all at once, focus on learning these top 15 Forex terms:

    Ask Price – the price using of which trader can purchase the base currency.

    Base Currency – the first currency which is listed in any currency pair used for trading in the forex (FX) market.

    Bear Market – a market with pessimistic diagnoses and declining prices.

    Bull Market – a market with rising prices and more optimistic trends.

    Bid Price – usually displayed as the ‘left quote’ stands for the price traders may use in order to sell any base currency

    Counter Currency – the second currency in a pair and usually its value is predetermined by the opposite base currency’s value

    Cross Rate – a price quote composed of any currency which is quoted against any other currency which can’t be related to USD. This quote is the combination of the individual rates for exchange 2 currencies against USD.

    Day Trading – intra-day trades based on opening and closing his trading positions during one trading day and to the end of this day a trader has no any position open.

    Fed – short for Federal Reserve which in its turn denotes the central banking system effecting significantly on the trends of the Forex market.

    Leverage – the loan a trader takes for the FX broker which allows trading only having a small capital. In such way one can increase his profits but the risks get higher as well.

    Margin – another term every trader should understand and it denotes the minimal amount of cash deposit a trader can put up for a certain transaction.

    Pip – the smallest price which can be found in the last number of the currency pair rate. Commonly it is the 4th digit located after the decimal point.

    Price Trend – a stable movement of the currency prices with a certain direction. Spotting trends can capitalize the potential.

    Spreads – the differences between the ask and the bid prices.

    Stop Loss – the trade order which closes an open trading position in automatic way for preventing losses if the FX market fluctuates against this chosen position.

    Practice on a Demo Account

    For every new forex beginner, besides learning forex basic knowledge, practice on demo account is very important. They can gain real trading experiences from this process. Most forex brokers offer a practice account or demo account these days. Try trading on a few different ones and see which platform you prefer. The modern day demo account is akin to what is referred to as “paper trading”. It is always wise to gain some familiarity with the investments you want to trade, and nowadays, with with the trading platforms available. All the platforms function differently so if you have chosen one, stick with it, you will only confuse yourself if you keep changing.

    If you are considering moving on to the real thing, choose a platform that offers good support. If you are in doubt you could always research the reviews on a company but typing the ‘name of company’ followed by ‘review’. It is very important to choose a demo account provided by forex broker that is very similar to the real account. When you practice on demo account a while, it will be easier for you to switch to trade on real account. PROFIFOREX is a good broker which provides good demo account for beginners. Demo account is exactly the same as real one and they provide good services.

    Read a Good Forex Trading Book

    I have mentioned several forex trading books on this site, but one of the best is The 10 Essentials of Forex Trading: The Rules for Turning Trading Patterns Into Profit by Jared Martinez who is known as the “FX-Chief”. He is the founder of the Market Traders Institute, the worldwide leader in Forex education and frequently blogs on JaredMartinez.com. According to the book description, “No matter your level of trading experience, you can develop the skills you need to become a consistently successful foreign currency trader-from using the right trading tools and balancing equity management to trading in buy and sell zones and identifying trends and trendlines. You’ll discover what drives the Forex market and how to navigate the three stages of Forex trading: acquiring new trading rules, controlling disciplined thought, and implementing disciplined action.” One reviewer said, “This book encourages you to have a trading plan; using a selected number of indicators looking for a convergence between them. It also focuses very heavily on your mindset which is paramount for success. Irrespective of your level of knowledge and trading experience in Forex…this book is great value for all traders.”

    Top 5 Common Mistakes Forex Traders Make

    If you’ve ever heard the quote, “Smart people learn from their mistakes, geniuses learn from the mistakes of others,” you’ll pay attention to the mistakes forex traders have made before you so you don’t have to make them yourself. Here is a list of the top 5 most common mistakes forex traders make:

    • Inconsistent Trade Strategy
    • Lack of Knowledge
    • Lack of Discipline
    • Not Using a Demo Account First
    • Analysis Paralysis

    In other words, educate yourself as much as possible. Read everything you can get your hands on and practice with demo account. The more knowledge you have, the more confident you will become in making trade decisions. Education is the best investment you can make before leaping in at the deep end. You might also want to check out forex forums like Forex Tips.

  • Why Google and Facebook Might Not Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years

    Forbes recently wrote an article about Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years, which had echoes what Malcolm Gladwell wrote about in Outliers, when it said, “Your long-term viability as a company is dependent on when you were born.”

    The author (and Forbes) were getting ripped on this article on Hacker News – but no one can predict the future – we can only look at the past – and even though the timeline is short (15 years), history says Facebook and Google will fail unless they [can] pivot. The gist is that they can’t pivot. It’s not in their paradigm to accept what’s next. Can you?

    But the statement, “X will fail unless they can pivot” is true for every company. The companies that make up the Fortune 500 don’t have a long life on the fortune 500. To say that the web will die out and vanish is reaching, and to say that it will in the next five years is really reaching.

    Does the author (or any analysts) really expect mobile usage to dry up the well of search advert dollars or that mobile apps will eliminate the public/customer need for search?

    The anti-trust lawsuit that is being dredged up against Google will do more to slow them than anything else in the next five years.

    And, to say that Facebook can’t have staying power because MySpace didn’t is far from an analysis.

    I do agree that the web is not dying – all apps need a website even if they think they don’t. Facebook will do (and has done) better than Myspace because they are a software company first, ran by programmers who have kept Facebook constrained, which has helped it grow.

    The problem is that Google only got into social because they were chasing Facebook, just like Microsoft went to the cloud to chase Google. And Facebook only got into mobile because the people demanded it – but they were (and are) late to the game. They are buying Instagram because they are scared of it – not because it will help them grow.

    I read something from Seth Godin today that said basically that not all companies can grow. Some do better when their small and can’t scale across that middle “dead zone” to be a big company. Some companies don’t work as a big company either (like web or graphic designers – at least not using the business models in place now).

    “Perhaps getting a little bigger isn’t what you want, and it might not even be possible.” -Seth Godin

  • Forbes Gets Jeff Bezos

    I’ve written on Amazon before and about CEOs I admire, but until I read Forbes’ April 2012 article on Jeff Bezos entitled Jeff Bezos Gets It, I didn’t realize how much I admired the man behind the company. Bezos seems to embody Steve Blank’s ideas of customer development by making the customer first in all business decisions.

    Out of Jeff Bezo’s Top Ten Maxims, a third of them center around the customer. Number 2 is “Obsess over customers,” number 5 is “Determine what your customers need and work backwards,” and number 9 is “Everyone has to be able to work in a call center [for humility and empathy for the customer]”.

    Credit: Forbes

    It’s not just Bezo’s customer-centric approach to business that has my admiration, but his culture of innovation and his data-intensive decision making that make me so fond of his way of doing business. Forbes’ writes, “Data reigns supreme at Amazon, particularly head-to-head tests of customers’ reactions to different features or site designs. Bezos calls it ‘a culture of metrics’.”

    Forbes’ continues, “For Bezos a data-driven customer focus lets him take risks to innovate, secure in the belief that he’s doing the right thing.” Bezos is quoted as saying, “We focus on what is going to be good for the customers. I think this aspect of our culture is rare.” Rare and profitable.

    I’ve joked that Amazon has two departments, one that creates ideas on how to make money and another that says, “Yes.” From Amazon Web Services to Lab 126 Amazon has continued to create new revenue streams beyond the giant retailer that it has become. As an Amazon Associate, I get to piggyback on that success.

    Forbes’ spends some time putting Bezos on a pedestal where Steve Jobs once stood, calling Bezos, “the corporate chief that others most want to meet, emulate and deify,” but in my mind I’d rather keep those two separate as Jobs tended to make products for customers, Bezos tends to make products because of them – and those are two completely different ways to run a business.

  • The Harvest: A Simple, Step by Step Strategy for Making $300 Per Week Trading the Foreign Exchange

    A simple, step by step strategy for making $300 per week trading the Forex.

    Most people believe that it is our natural right as human beings to benefit from our hard work. In days past, farmers would till the soil, sew the seed, wait for rain, weed and tend their crops and then late in the fall when the time was just right, harvest what was hopefully a bountiful crop.

    Believe it or not the Foreign Exchange, as with any market, can operate the same way. If we prepare correctly, sew properly, tend our crops and then harvest in a timely fashion, every week we can enjoy a small bounty of what has become an almost four trillion dollar a day currency market.

    Here’s what one reviewer had to say, “I am new to the Forex market and read eleven books on the subject over the past two months. This book is great!!! The advice, the content and the step by step instructions are clear and to the point. I did not apply the techniques to a live account yet but in my demo account I am 11-4 with a total profit 320 pips(10 trading days).
    As great as the book is the real value for me was the author. Cecil responded to my every email (3 or 4) within two hours.
    I cannot believe the book is only $0.99. Talk about an undervalued commodity!”

    Here’s what another reviewer had to say, “I am very pleased I bought this book. There is so much phoney material in Forex and you never know what you are going to get. This book is short but has real substance. The trading method Cecil Selkirk describes is easy to understand and truly helped me. His strategy is simple and straight forward, I was able to make exactly $300 the first week, just as promised. I recommend this book to anyone who is tired of all the hyperbole out there in the Forex world. Its true he does offer an indicator package for sale at the end of the book, but its only $3.00! And it includes three great indicators and an excel calculator for position sizing. When I wrote him a question about his strategy he wrote me back within 24 hours AND he sent me the indicator package for free. No up selling, he really is just an intelligent guy trying to help others. Really a great strategy and a great, easy to read book.”

  • Trading in the Zone: Master the Market with Confidence, Discipline and a Winning Attitude

    Mark Douglas uncovers the underlying reasons for lack of consistency and helps traders overcome the ingrained mental habits that cost them money. He takes on the myths of the market and exposes them one by one teaching traders to look beyond random outcomes, to understand the true realities of risk, and to be comfortable with the “probabilities” of market movement that governs all market speculation.

    Mark began coaching traders in 1982, and has continued to develop seminar and training programs on trading psychology for the investment industry, as well as individual traders. He has been a frequent speaker at seminars across the world, as well as in the U.S., teaching traders how to become consistently successful.

    If you are like most people, after your first few losing trades you set about to learn better market analysis. After your next string of losers you learned about risk management. But there’s still one more challenge to conquer&emdash;yourself.

    That is the major premise of this book. If it sounds like wishy-washy psycho-babble to you, I’ll only say that I would have agreed — four months ago, before I quit my 20-year technology career, obtained a Series/7 license and joined a professional day-trading firm. I now believe most people would lose money if you gave them 50/50 odds on whether or not it was going to rain tomorrow.

    In other words, successfully forecasting the market is not enough. Why not? Well, this book explains why not. It has to do with one’s sense of self-worth, one’s moral judgment of money, one’s work-ethic, one’s tendency to focus on good news while ignoring bad, and other things.

    “Zone” was recommended to a friend of mine by a professional floor trader who told him, “I wish I had read it before starting two years ago. Don’t place another trade until you do.” Well said. Does this apply to investors as well as traders? Oh, absolutely! If you have ever said to yourself, “I’m not selling that stock while it’s down, I’ll wait until I have a profit in it,” then for the love of money, read this book.

    Finally, read “Zone” before Douglas’ earlier work. If you still want more then read “Disciplined Trader” for a general review plus a deeper exploration into the author’s philosophical and meta-physical theories.