Ever wake up in the middle of the night, startled, sweating, and on the brink of lunacy, wondering why on earth no executives who helped cause our recent global recession have done even one day of jail time? Well kids, Jesse Eisinger has answers to that question and more in his 2017 corker, The Chickenshit Club. He ends Chapter One with a…
Book Report – Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard
Under the tree this past Christmas was my very first piece of Patagonia clothing: a greyish quarter-zip, as I now know them to be called. Late to the party, I’ve only recently become aware of how special the Ventura, CA company is when it comes to charitable causes, treatment of its workforce, and manufacturing sustainability, so getting some sort of…
Seven-Year Glitch: Patience & Other Lessons
In the winter of 2011, I received an inquiry from three brothers who owned an irrigation company. They had come off another monster season of installing and servicing systems (and then plowing snow to continue to pay the bills) and they were wiped out. Already having surpassed 20 years in business together – and far more than that in the…
Book Report – Evicted by Matthew Desmond
Ten years ago, Matthew Desmond climbed deep inside grim, impoverished Milwaukee, WI to study its fraught real estate market. The result is the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize winning Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City and it is a monster to get through, not due to its style (entirely gripping) or length (just 341 pages, including the About This Project…
Book Report – Blue Ocean Shift by W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne
What’s worse than having to ruthlessly fight for your next deal? Okay, global famine, dictatorships, and Jimmy Fallon are, but perhaps we can agree having to constantly compete (and concede) to win business is awful, exhausting. INSEAD professors of strategy W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne coined the term “blue ocean strategy” – and 13 years ago published an international bestseller by…