The Freestyle Entrepreneur

A Conversation with Nicholas L. Gregory Responding to a 1979 Stanford Research Institute survey, 37,000 affluent individuals said they were frustrated with too many financial services companies with too many poorly trained high-pressure sales reps pushing too many prepackaged products.  In 1982, a young Ohio financial advisor, Nicholas Gregory, read that survey and realized this [...]

Curious which are the worst airline pilots?  (Korean.)  Ever wonder why some musicians are wanna-bes and others are superstars?  (Ten thousand hours.)  Or why the majority of National Hockey League players are born in January or February? (Age cut-off dates when they were children.)  Do you know why New York’s top merger lawyers are Jewish?  [...]

This is one of those books, The E-Myth Revisited,  that you almost love to hate.    You hate it because the author, Michael E. Gerber, has a smarmy I’m-right-you’re-wrong attitude about him.  (His examples tend to be stories about borderline stupid business owners who he sets straight.)  You love him (well, maybe love is way [...]

I’ll get to the title in a minute.  First, I must start by saying that I love to hit the floor running hard every day in the quest for business.  I also love to end the day exhausted, spent, without anything left to give.  Family and friends have told me there’s only one thing worse [...]

If it’s the little things that count, here’s one big little thing: I’ve noticed that, of the many successful business people I’ve met over the years, perhaps half of them keep a little notebook in their shirt pockets.  Tell them something of interest or when they think of a potentially good idea, and they pull [...]

I know.  I know.  The customer is king.  But for a moment, consider two things:   Your customers have a need for your product.  They will buy it somewhere, either from you or from a competitor. They will buy it from you if you can demonstrate not that you’re great, but that you’re better than your [...]