The Four Stages of My Life

  “What’s your normal?” The question was posed to me a few days ago. What do you mean by “normal”? Like most people, if I stop to think about what “normal” is, I come up with dozens of thoughts and simultaneously none. What’s my normal? What is normal at all? If they really knew how …

Fired. Again.

  I was fired the other day. It’s not the first time. Likely not the last. I think it boils down to my communication style being direct. I suppose I can be criticized for lacking tact and subtlety. I know I can come across as harsh. What I find bothersome is that business choices are …

Overly Examined

Socrates left us with this gem, “the unexamined life is not worth living”. As one who spends a lot of time living, reliving and imagining in my head, I concur.   I was pondering this nagging thought when it occurred to me that there is an antecedent, “the perpetually examined life becomes quite tedious and …

A Lesson From Korea

By: Joseph Lassen “So, what do you guys think?” My question was answered only by deafening silence and three pairs of Korean women’s eyes staring back at me. …I should probably give some context. When this happened I was an exchange student at Konkuk University, located in Seoul, South Korea. I posed the question above …

The Weight

  By Doug R. Wilwerding   I distinctly remember as a young entrepreneur in my late 20’s and 30’s frequently thinking to myself, ‘there is no possible way I could ever work any harder than I am working right now’. I am embarrassed to admit that I actually said this out loud more than once. …

How Curious

Doug Wilwerding - I’ve been in business full time since I graduated from grad school in 1986. Over the years I have observed a number of commonalities that differentiate those who are distinctly successful from the adequate and the unsuccessful. Drive, attitude, endurance, durability, perspective, creativity, courage, self-discipline, practicality, and tenacity all play big roles …

The Paradigm of Engagement

Joseph Lassen - Management teams must choose carefully when deciding where to headquarter their business. As I see it, there is a chasm developing between two distinct types of office spaces in the business world today; venture capital-backed spaces with ping pong tables, beer kegs, and scooters zipping around, and the exact opposite: offices that …

Space

Joseph Lassen Ÿ- Nearly every businessperson today has spent time in and around multiple offices across the Untied States, and if lucky around the world. As an employee it is easy to forget about the office and focus only on your task at hand; however, astute investors and managers should always be thinking about their …

The Founder’s Blind Spot

Doug Wilwerding - Over the past ten years I have met with hundreds of founders and entrepreneurs. I’ve listened to their passionate pitches about their fledgling businesses, reviewed their plans, and peppered them with questions on how they are going to build their businesses. In most cases they stare at me as if the answer …