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figuring out who should buy your business

Do These Pants Make Me Look Thoughtless?

Everything you ever wanted to know about apparel manufacturing but were afraid to ask can be found in Steven Kurutz’s American Flannel. Yet you’d be forgiven for not wanting to be exposed to any of the facts reported therein. How over the past four decades, we’ve gone from about 70% of what we wear being made in the US to…

Skulking Around the Hedge Fund

“The great thing about Bridgewater stories is I never have to exaggerate a single thing for it to be totally insane.” -Anon. Here’s to the inside sources, tipsters, and whistleblowers who helped make The Fund by Rob Copeland possible. The above quote is from the Acknowledgements, and it captures what we learn over the preceding 300 pages: Bridgewater Associates, aka…

Please Tell Me There’s More

It all started with a raucous, drunken conversation. Throwing back cocktails one evening with two close friends, Alisha Fernandez Miranda started dreaming aloud about different careers she’d like to explore. Egged on, she eventually put her duties as London-based consultancy CEO and on-call mother on hold to pursue internships, and the result is the entertaining and informative My What If…

A Sucker’s Bet for Easy Money

“I was the perfect target for an MLM, which preys on the cultural epidemic of isolation.” So confesses Emily Lynn Paulson, author of the exposé Hey, Hun. Now, if you’re lucky enough to not know of what she speaks, it’s multilevel marketing, and bully for you for never having brushed up against such a societal scourge. Call it direct selling, network marketing,…

I’m Gonna Need You to Go Ahead and Come In Tomorrow

The theme of Michael Bungay Stanier’s new book, How to Work with (Almost) Anyone is building what he calls the Best Possible Relationship (BPR), be that with a boss, subordinate, colleague, or client. “Most working relationships aren’t disastrous,” he writes, “but every working relationship has its share of hurts and misunderstandings and frustrations.” Surely we agree that Shirley from sales…