Category: Business Training

  • Five Steps to Building Your 2011 Financial Projections

    Gene finally got it.  His IT consulting business has been constantly pulling his attention from what he has known he needed to do:  develop his financial picture, both historic and forecasted. Until September, he never gave developing his forecasts time, since last-minute crisis or unexpected challenges were constantly coming up.  Instead, each week we spoke…

  • How to Avoid Being a Shooting Star Company

    My wife and I were walking around our neighborhood in Brooklyn this weekend.  She wanted to get a new pair of eyeglasses.  In one store we thought that looked good, she found a pair she liked. When we started talking pricing with various features the clerk asked if she had insurance.  My wife explained this…

  • Why Rapid Business Decisions is Crucial and How

    As he walked into a meeting in the 64-room Georgian Mansion on 5th and 91st St. in Manhattan, he knew he was about to have one of the most important meetings of his life. Napoleon Hill, then 25, was about to interview Andrew Carnegie, then 73.  The year was 1908 and Carnegie’s estimated worth was…

  • #1 Secret to Selling Effortlessly

    #1 Secret to Selling Effortlessly

    This morning I did my usual routine of going to the gym.   Except it was anything but usual. Here I was, on the stationery bike, doing my normal intense 30-minute ride, so engrossed in beating my previous time on the bike that I didn’t notice the two people in business suits standing there.  Nor did…

  • How to Break Out of the Financial Rat-Race

    How to Break Out of the Financial Rat-Race

    Today I read an article written by a woman who spent her professional career taking care of the elderly just before they died. Helping them prepare for death. In these last weeks of life they would go through any combination of these emotional experiences: denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. She found…

  • Spend Everything You Have This Holiday Season!

    I wrote this article a few years ago.  Thought I’d update it a bit and resend.  Very timely message. My wife came home last night all misty-eyed.  She had quite an amazing thing happen at the office, where she works for one of the top acupuncturists-chiropractors in New York City. A very humble woman had…

  • Are You Raising Capital For Your Company? Who’s Your Lead Investor?

    Are You Raising Capital For Your Company? Who’s Your Lead Investor?

    I felt like a little kid waiting for that letter from Santa. I kept checking the mailbox. A few days earlier I completed the legal terms and amount from my first investor for my newest company, the Shift Group. My investor told me he was sending the check and our contract in the mail. More…

  • What to Do When You’re Totally Out of Ideas?

    What to Do When You’re Totally Out of Ideas?

    Even before I opened my eyes, I knew I was screwed. Opening them only confirmed it.  The guy I was traveling with had drugged and robbed me of everything I had. I was in a dangerous city in a foreign country, didn’t speak the language and now with no passport, travel visa or money. And…

  • How To Stay Focused On the Important Stuff

    How To Stay Focused On the Important Stuff

    Last Friday, I sat among others in the waiting room of an incredible organization that helps people with hearing loss. The Center for Hearing and Communication is a century-old not-for-profit that has been instrumental in helping me hear and relearn to communicate after my near-death experience in 2002. Disturbing the quiet of patients waiting to…

  • Knowing When Your Business Strategy Isn’t Working

    Knowing When Your Business Strategy Isn’t Working

    In late February Trayvon Martin, a 17-year old black male, was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old Hispanic, in Central Florida. And while recent evidence suggests Zimmerman did not act in a racially-motivated way, this tragic story has our nation up in arms yet again over the issue guns and race. Zimmerman claimed…