Financially intelligent managers understand the four distinct skill sets:<ol><li>The Foundation. They can read an income statement, a balance sheet and a cash flow statement. Can differentiate between profit and cash.</li><li>The art of finance. They can identify the artful aspects of finance and know how applying them differently can lead to different conclusions.</li><li>Analysis. They use ratios, return on investment (ROI) analysis, etc. to make better decisions.</li><li>The big picture. Numbers can’t (and don’t) tell the whole story. Financial results should be understood within the framework of the big picture.</li></ol>

Four skill sets of finance and accounting

The art of accounting is taking a limited set of data to get an accurate description of how well a company is doing. Definitions to understand.<ul><li>Revenue is when a service/product is delivered.</li><li>The income statement shows sales/revenues, costs/expenses, and profit. You can often tell what’s important to a company by looking at the biggest numbers relative to sales.</li><li>Operating Expenses: Day-to-day costs needed to keep the business going, e.g., salaries.</li><li>Capital Expenditure: The cost of purchasing an item is considered a long-term investment, such as computer systems or equipment.</li></ul>

You can’t always trust the numbers

Accountants use accruals and allocations to attempt an accurate picture of the business for a month.<ul><li>Accruals: An accrual is the part of a revenue or expense item that is recorded for a specific period, e.g., product development costs. The purpose is to match costs to revenues in a given timeframe.</li><li>Allocations: Theses are apportionments of costs to different departments or activities in a company.</li><li>Depreciation: Allocated cost of equipment and other assets to the total cost of product and services shown on the income statement.</li></ul>

Spotting assumptions, estimates, and biases

Understanding how the numbers are used and what are assumptions puts you in control of the decisions. <ul><li>Goodwill: The difference between the net assets acquired and the amount of money the acquiring company pays form them.</li><li>Balance sheet: The balance sheets show the assets, liabilities, and owners’ equity.</li><li>Cash shown on a balance sheet is money in the bank and things like stocks and bonds that can be turned into cash.</li></ul>

Reason for increasing your financial intelligence


It consists of three main categories:<ul><li>Sales or revenue during a given time period. It includes sales (revenue) and Earnings-per-share (EPS)</li><li>Costs and expenses: “Above the line” are the cost of goods sold (COGS), cost of services (COS). “Below the line” are operating expenses, interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.</li><li>Profit: Profit is an estimate. You can’t spend estimates. </li></ul>Different kinds of profit:<ul><li>Profit = Revenue - expenses</li><li>Gross profit = Sales - COGS</li><li>Operating profit (EBIT) = Gross Profit - Operating expenses</li><li>Net Profit = Operating Profit - (interest + taxes + other costs)</li></ul>

Cracking the code of the Income Statement

A balance sheet shows what a business owns at a particular time. A balance sheet always balances. Assets = liabilities + owners’ equity.<ul><li>Assets: What the company owns. It is more estimates and assumptions. Assets include cash; accounts receivable; inventory; property, plant, and equipment (PPE) minus accumulated depreciation; goodwill; intellectual property, patens; accruals.</li><li>Liabilities: What the company owes.</li><li>Equity: The assets - liabilities.</li></ul>

Understanding the balance sheet

A good manager is aware of how both cash and profits affect a balance sheet. A balance sheet shows if a company is financially healthy. The balance sheet answers the following questions:<ul><li>Do the assets outweigh the liabilities?</li><li>Can the company pay its bills?</li><li>Is the owner’s equity growing?</li></ul>

The income statement always affects the balance sheet

Profit is not cash. A healthy business needs both profit and cash. Inflows: Cash moving into a businessOutflows: Cash moving out of a business Types of cash flow:<ul><li>Cash from operating activities</li><li>Cash from investing activities</li><li>Cash from financing activities</li></ul>Financing a company: Getting a company the cash it needs to start up or expand. Cash flow can be calculated by looking at the income statement and two balance sheets. When you know a company’s cash situation, you can understand what’s going on now, where the business is headed, and the priorities of senior management.

The language of cash flow

Explains what business numbers mean and why they matter, and addresses issues that have become more important in recent years, including questions about the financial crisis and accounting literacy.

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

business

Business

books

Books

Inc. magazine calls it one of “the best, clearest guides to the numbers” on the market. Readers agree, saying it’s exactly “what I need to know” and calling it a “must-read” for decision makers without expertise in finance. Since its release in 2006, Financial Intelligence has become a favorite among managers who need a guided tour through the numbers—helping them to understand not only what the numbers really mean, but also why they matter. This new, completely updated edition brings the numbers up to date and continues to teach the basics of finance to managers who need to use financial data to drive their business. It also addresses issues that have become even more important in recent years—including questions around the financial crisis and those around broader financial and accounting literacy. Accessible, jargon-free, and filled with entertaining stories of real companies, Financial Intelligence gives nonfinancial managers the confidence to understand the nuance beyond the numbers—to help bring everyday work to a new level.

Karen Berman

Joe Knight

Financial Intelligence, Revised Edition

Financial Intelligence

<ul><li>Your DNA dictates what you were born to do. Follow your passion, don’t listen to what society has to say about success.</li><li>There is enough success out there and if you want it badly enough, you will get it.</li><li>When building your personal brand, focus on the quality of the relationships with your followers and not on their numbers.</li><li>Be authentic and produce quality content.</li></ul>

Success Is In Your DNA

“There is no excuse for anyone living in the United States or anywhere else right now to slog through his or her entire life working at jobs they hate, or even jobs they simply don’t love, in the name of a paycheck or a sense of responsibility.”

Gary Vaynerchuk

“Quality is a tremendous filter. Cream always rises, my friends, no matter how many cups of coffee you pour.”

<ul>
<li>Plan to develop and grow your own brand and business alongside your current job. This is how you will open opportunities in the digital economy.</li>
<li>As long as you are working for someone else, you will never be living entirely true to yourself and your passion.</li>
<li>To monetize your personal brand, you need two pillars: product, and content. Great content is what will attract people to your blog.</li>
</ul>

A Whole New World

Someone with less talent and poor content can beat you if they work harder than you. Before you invest in yourself, you have to invest in your long-term future.When building your personal brand, focus on creating communities by starting conversations. Once you have created your online brand, do some online advertising. You can also engage in affiliate marketing.

Keep It Real

<ol><li>Identify your passion</li><li>Make sure you can think of at least fifty awesome topics and posts.</li><li>Answer the following questions: Am I sure my passion is what I think it is? Can I talk about it better than anyone else?</li><li>Name your personal brand.</li><li>Buy your user name.</li><li>Choose your medium: video, audio, written word</li><li>Start a Website.</li><li>Hire a designer</li><li>Select all of the platforms to which you want to distribute your content.</li><li>Post your content.</li></ol>

Your Personal Brand: Starting Your Thing

<ol><li>Start creating community by leaving comments on other people’s blogs and forums.</li><li>Find more blogs that are relevant to your subject on Google</li><li>Join as many active fan pages and groups relating to your blog topic as possible.</li><li>Repeat steps 11 through 15.</li><li>When you feel your personal brand has gained sufficient attention and stickiness, start reaching out to advertisers and begin monetizing</li></ol>

Your Personal Brand: Small To Big

Do you have a hobby you wish you could indulge in all day? An obsession that keeps you up at night? Now is the perfect time to take that passion and make a living doing what you love. In Crush It! Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, Gary Vaynerchuk shows you how to use the power of the Internet to turn your real interests into real businesses. Gary spent years building his family business from a local wine shop into a national industry leader. Then one day he turned on a video camera, and by using the secrets revealed here, transformed his entire life and earning potential by building his personal brand. By the end of this book, readers will have learned how to harness the power of the Internet to make their entrepreneurial dreams come true. Step by step, Crush It! is the ultimate driver’s manual for modern business.

career

Career

mindfulness

Mindfulness

Do you have a hobby you wish you could indulge in all day? An obsession that keeps you up at night? Now is the perfect time to take that passion and make a living doing what you love. In Crush It! Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, Gary Vaynerchuk shows you how to use the power of the Internet to turn your real interests into real businesses. Gary spent years building his family business from a local wine shop into a national industry leader. Then one day he turned on a video camera, and by using the secrets revealed here, transformed his entire life and earning potential by building his personal brand. By the end of this book, readers will have learned how to harness the power of the Internet to make their entrepreneurial dreams come true. Step by step, Crush It! is the ultimate driver’s manual for modern business.

Crush It!

Originality:If you are seeking to make a mark — to be noticed, recognized, distinguished from others — your first priority should be to cultivate originality. Originality happens when you see things differently than other people. You don’t need to find ideas that no one else has ever thought of. You just need to see the world in a different way than other people do and be able to express your unique perspective with data and logic.

4 Keys to Make you Stand Out of the Crowd

Out of this originality comes the second essential quality that all successful leaders share — the ability to communicate an exciting vision. This excitement is infectious. It communicates itself. Other people get excited, too, and are willing to devote their time and energy to making the vision come true.

Be Distinct in your communication

If you want to change the world, it helps to be disciplined, to sit down and do your work even if it’s tedious.  This is true for farmers, painters, programmers, writers. It takes training to create something, whether it’s a painting or a successful startup. Great success will come to those who can exercise self-control

Discipline goes a long way

Leading with excellence is a mindset. It begins with a commitment to consistency. The more consistently you provide quality products and services, the more trust you earn from those who come in contact with your work. It is more than just giving your best effort to every task. It’s about embracing a set of core values.

Lead with Excellence

Figure out what you came here to do and then focus on that with laser-like intensity. Be so good at that one thing that people can’t help but notice you. If you have no idea what your role is, then find one…and stick with it until it becomes clear that it’s time to move on.

Standing out- In Summary

Where you stand is essential to who you are. It’s a central question of creativity and an essential secret of leadership. The quality that gives each human being a unique place in the world, a useful…

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

How to stand out of the crowd

Our thinking about business is shaped by a number of delusions - ones that distort our understanding of company performance, that make it difficult to know why one company succeeds and another fails. These errors of thinking pervade much that we read about business, whether in leading magazines or scholarly journals or management bestsellers. They cloud our ability to think clearly and critically about the nature of success in business.

Business Delusions

This is our tendency to make inferences about specific traits on the basis of a general impression.In the business world, it refers to the tendency to look at a company’s overall performance and make attributions about its culture, leadership, values, and more. In fact, many things we commonly claim drive company performance are simply attributions based on prior performance.For example, if a company is profitable, people conclude that the leadership and processes must be competent.

The Halo Effect

Just because two sets of things are correlated does not mean that one causes the other to happen. Sometimes one might cause the other to happen. But we won't know which of them is the trigger. Maybe, another separate thing might be influencing both of them to happen. It is also possible that there is no relationship at all.Does employee satisfaction lead to high performance? The evidence suggests it’s mainly the other way around—company success has a stronger impact on employee satisfaction.

The Delusion of Correlation and Causality

Success cannot be usually attributed to one factor.Many studies show that a particular factor—strong company culture or customer focus or great leadership—leads to improved performance. But since many of these factors are highly correlated, the effect of each one is usually less than suggested.

The Delusion of Single Explanations

If we pick a number of successful companies and search for what they have in common, we’ll never isolate the reasons for their success, because we have no way of comparing them with less successful companies.By looking only at companies that perform well, we can never hope to show what makes them different from companies that perform less well.

The Delusion of Connecting the Winning Dots

If your data sources are corrupted by the halo effect, it doesn't matter how much data you have gathered, or how sophisticated your methodology was.Data quality and quantity are equally important when it comes to research. If one takes a wrong assumption and backs it up with some numbers, the conclusion cannot be taken seriously.

The Delusion of Rigorous Research 

Almost all high-performing companies regress over time. The promise of a blueprint for lasting success is attractive but not realistic.Success is transitory, and many companies that have outperformed in the past, won't do so in the future. A company cannot be successful forever on the basis of a few traits. Many external and internal factors affect a company and the company has to continually work towards achieving short-term and long-term success.

The Delusion of Lasting Success 

Company performance is relative, not absolute. A company can improve and fall further behind its rivals at the same time.A company’s performance should be measured relative to other similar companies’ performance as it is a competitive environment. Measuring the company in isolation in absolute terms is not of much use.

The Delusion of Absolute Performance 

It may be true that successful companies often pursued a highly focused strategy, but that doesn’t mean highly focused strategies often lead to success.Some companies have a focused strategy and some change their strategy based on competition, market, and internal factors. Some are successful and some are not due to internal and external factors..But this is not dependent on the type of strategy alone. For example, Intel decided to move to processors from memory chips and was successful. The Intel leadership was praised for this visionary move. But if the processors had not been successful, the leadership would have been criticized.

The Delusion of the Wrong End of the Stick

The study of corporate performance is not a science like physics. We wrongly believe that there are certain rules or a formula for success and if a company follows the rules or the steps of the formula, it will see all its goals being achieved. But in the real world, success is not because of a few controllable factors. There are many variables that determine the success or failure of the organization.Performance doesn’t obey immutable laws of nature and can’t be predicted with the accuracy of science—despite our desire for certainty and order.

Delusion of Organisational Physics

Controversial and iconoclastic, a veteran corporate manager and business school professor exposes the dangerous myths, fantasies, and delusions that pervade much of the business world today.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

With two new chapters and a new preface, the award-winning book The Halo Effect continues to unmask the delusions found in the corporate world and provides a sharp understanding of what drives business success and failure. Too many of today’s most prominent management gurus make steel-clad guarantees based on claims of irrefutable research, promising to reveal the secrets of why one company fails and another succeeds, and how you can become the latter. Combining equal measures of solemn-faced hype and a wide range of popular business delusions, statistical and otherwise, these self-styled experts cloud our ability to think critically about the nature of success. Central among these delusions is the Halo Effect—the tendency to focus on the high financial performance of a successful company and then spread its golden glow to all its attributes—clear strategy, strong values, brilliant leadership, and outstanding execution. But should the same company’s sales head south, the very same attributes are universally derided—suddenly the strategy was wrong, the culture was complacent, and the leader became arrogant. The Halo Effect not only identifies these delusions that keep us from understanding business performance, but also suggests a more accurate way to think about leading a company. This approach—focusing on strategic choice and execution, while recognizing the inherent riskiness of both—clarifies the priorities that managers face. Brilliant and unconventional, irreverent and witty, The Halo Effect is essential reading for anyone wanting to separate fact from fiction in the world of business.

Phil Rosenzweig

Employees were expected to climb the “career ladder,” starting as an entry-level assistant, and working their way up to individual contributor, then to manager, etc., checking off an established set of skills and accomplishments along the way.Today, that structure has changed. A sales representative might become your best marketer, a marketer can become an HR leader, and HR leaders can find their passion on the customer success team.

Careers Were Once Linear. 

Employee growth is ultimately the biggest driver of organizational growth and innovation, and the cost is higher than ever for companies that neglect the growth of their internal talent: 95% of employees are currently considering quitting their jobs, and a survey conducted at Gloat earlier this year found that the number one reason employees move on is a lack of growth opportunities. One-third (34%) of employees said their company wasn’t utilizing their full potential, and LinkedIn found that employees are nearly 3X more engaged when they see opportunities to learn on the job.

Employee Growth: Neglect At Your Peril

So how can businesses avoid getting left behind by their best talent, and support modern career development? By:<ol><li>leveling the (hybrid) playing field, and</li><li>embracing employee-led learning</li></ol>

How To Raise And Keep Talent

For many years, career mobility has often been more about who you know than what you know. Corporations have operated within established, hierarchical structures that encourage silos, and as a result, growth and opportunities often come only to those who are selected for them by someone higher up the chain.COVID-19, and the global pivot to a more distributed workforce, has only increased the chances that an organization might miss out on developing key talent simply because of where they sit and who they interact with on a daily basis.

Leveling The Playing Field

Companies should invest in new technologies and processes that give all employees visibility into emerging opportunities within the company, and the agency to pursue them.The dangers of companies sticking with an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach it that they might just lose their best people without even realizing their full potential. Employees must be engaged, no matter where they are.

Visibility And Agency

As of 2021, 80% of CEOs rank the need to teach their workforce new skills as their biggest business challenge; at the same time, research shows that opportunities for learning and development are one of the top driving forces behind an employee’s happiness and engagement at work. And yet, so often the way companies actually approach learning and development for their employees is inconsistent, one-size-fits-all, and comes from the top-down as part of an “upskilling initiative.”

Embracing Employee-led Learning

Just as career paths are becoming less linear, so, too, are the ways employees learn and develop new skills. Today, career development is complex, occurring across multiple mediums inside and outside of the workplace. It’s driven as much by employee passions and interests as it is by the parameters of their job description. Companies need to meet their employees where they are with dynamic, democratized, and data-driven growth opportunities, or they will not only risk their bottom line, but they will handicap their best talent as well.

Meet Me Where I Am

In a world where disruption is the new norm, companies need to take thoughtful risks and move with urgency. That requires them to think differently about talent management. The real question becomes: How can we deploy the talents and skills of hundreds or thousands of people at scale and with speed?

Talent Management

Companies essentially (should) want their employees to truly own their careers, applying their skills to different areas of the business and developing new skills that align to their passions. It’s really about connecting them to their possibilities. That’s a win for everyone—employees grow, business needs are met internally and of course, customers benefit from working with teams whose diverse experiences unlock more innovative solutions to their most pressing challenges.

Owning, Applying, Aligning

Career progression is no longer a straight line. In fact, employee’s career pathways are just as winding, unique and changeable as their lives will inevitably be. The companies that recognize that, and adapt to it, will be best positioned to thrive beyond this pandemic, and whatever comes next.

And All The Roads We Have To Walk Are Winding

Careers are no longer ladders—they are lattices of vertical and horizontal opportunities, shaped by personal and professional aspirations, in addition to company needs.

CEO and cofounder of Gloat Ben Reuveni says careers are no longer ladders—they are lattices of vertical and horizontal opportunities, shaped by personal and professional aspirations, in addition to company needs.


remotework

Remote Work

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

humanresources

Human Resources

Careers Are No Longer Ladders To Climb

The process design teams follow to optimize customer experiences at all touchpoints before, during and after conversion. They leverage customer-centred strategies to delight customers at each step of the conversion journey and nurture strong customer-brand relationships.

Customer Experience Design

“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around.” — Steve Jobs, Co-founder of Apple & user experience guru

Experience before Technology

Organizations must focus on areas such as advertising campaigns, customer service and consistency and adopt a customer-centric viewpoint. A brand may have a superior product but still, fail if it doesn’t reach users at their various stages of encountering it.

Building Strong Bridges between Customers and Brands

Customers develop their perceptions of products and services across many <a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/customer-touchpoints-the-point-of-interaction-between-brands-businesses-products-and-customers">touchpoints and channels</a>. Think of a brand you’ve engaged with. How many ways can you encounter it? How did you discover it? How do you feel about it? There are many factors behind how customers make contact with brands and perceive them over time.

CX Design around the Customers

You must acknowledge that customers are informed individuals. In several clicks, they’ll do extensive research.

Anticipate the customer's mindset

What customers spend depends on their impression and experience of a brand. They can leave and seek a competitor at any touchpoint, and leave bad feedback.

Customers' spending

This is the all-important sense of agency where customers feel they’re part of a conversation with a brand—i.e., that the brand speaks to them, cares about what they care about and has tailored solutions just for them. Here, you should understand a major pitfall to avoid: Regardless of the transaction-based reality of the brand-customer relationship, if customers feel your brand is just selling them something, they will lose not only that sense of agency but also trust.

Customers should feel in control

<a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/customer-journey-map">Customer journey maps</a> can help you examine customer touchpoints, understand a brand’s CX and expose gaps Customer journey maps are research-based tools which design teams use to reveal typical customer experiences over time and visualize the many dimensions and factors involved. These enable brands to learn more about target users.

Customer Journey Maps

Had a conversation with a Food Brand last week with a clear challenge in customer service experience.  They get complaints from customers every week. After so much probing I found out they have no customer experience design and customer journey map since their formation in 2014. Sharing this article was influenced by that conversation.

What is Customer Experience Design? Customer experience (CX) design is the process design teams follow to optimize customer experiences at all touchpoints before, during and after conversion. They...

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

What is Customer Experience Design?

Life is composed of systems that are yours to control or not to control.
There are two psychological approaches to finding a way to live a full and positive life:
<ol>
<li>The Freudian stance: Assumes that our past determines our present happiness</li>
<li>The cognitive approach: Our current thoughts determine our happiness</li>
</ol>
The cognitive approach is more practical as it implies that we control what happens in our lives.

Your Mindset

<ul><li>Fixing life’s problems in one swoop is impossible. You have to proceed one step at a time.</li><li>There is a direct relationship between happiness and the amount of control that we have.</li><li>To take control of our lives, we have to adopt a different perspective. We must question our status quo in relation to ourselves. It is about sorting the things that are under our area of influence.</li><li>Orderliness and attention to detail are keys to peace.</li><li>The mindset of successful people is such that they pay attention to the mechanical details of life.</li></ul>

Fixing Problems

The Work The System protocol has three main aspects:<ul><li>The Strategic Objective. This is similar to the declaration of independence. It is your mandate for a better future. It will provide overall direction to your work and personal life</li><li>The General Operating Principles document. This is similar to the constitution. It offers a guideline for future decision making</li><li>The Working Procedures. These are the laws guiding your game. These are the blue-collar fundamentals of your work.</li></ul>The world operates efficiently 99% of the time because physical laws are unchangeable.

The Three Pillars Of ‘Work The System’ Protocol

<ol><li>Internalize the fundamentals. Improve your perspective of life and business</li><li>Pinpoint the goals of your business, life, and job. This is your Strategic objective</li><li>Create your collection of General Operating Principles. Define specific systems for improvement.</li><li>Dissect each system into its fundamental aspects. Create a 1, 2, 3 step format for each subsystem in your life</li><li>Improve each step one at a time. Make your systems perfect</li><li>Document each system into a working procedure.</li><li>Put the new working procedures into play.</li></ol>

Work The System: The Essence

To end workplace chaos, get things on paper. Begin by developing your Strategic Objective document.The Strategic Objective document will become your fundamental guideline for making decisions.Without exception, the businesses that are large and successful are “working their systems.” And the ones without thoughtful direction and structured, sensible protocols—most small businesses— are struggling.

Keep Things Documented

<ul><li>Working Procedures make the system tangible, something that can be seen, touched and even perfected.</li><li>Working Procedures provide direction for flawless operation. </li><li>Be ruthless in insisting that the staff follow the set guidelines. </li><li>The procedure should be rock solid and inflexible until your management staff agrees that changes are necessary.</li></ul>

Working Procedures

<ol><li>Every recurring process requires a Working Procedure. The procedure should define the best method of doing the process</li><li>When a problem arises, your staff should use it as a cue to create or modify a Working Procedure. If the problem is infrequent, there is no need for that.</li><li>Involve your staff in creating new procedures. They are as responsible as managers for keeping the company running efficiently</li><li>Make procedures identical in presentation. This will make instructions clearer across the company</li><li>Every new procedure needs to be revised. </li><li>Sign off the procedures yourself.</li></ol>

Documenting Procedure

If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job.

If you are employed, the goal is to use the 40 hour-week to produce large quantities of superior work to ascend the management ranks, earn serious money, and call your shots. Time and money wasted is time and money gone forever. And a waste of time and money means some other positive thing that could have happened, didn’t.<ul><li>Don’t waste your time on useless content or by complaining about what you cannot influence.</li><li>Not taking action is a choice. And since you are making choices daily, why not make them count?</li><li>Point-of-sale posture: Being ready to act and on the offence.</li></ul>

Time And Money

<ul><li>Biological prime time(BPT) is all about maximizing your productivity when your brainpower is at its peak. Some people work best in the morning while others in the evening.</li><li>The concept of prime time aims at the most fundamental of systems which is our actions.</li><li>BPT is when you should create your Strategic Objective, General Operating Principles, and Working Procedures. Of course, after your initial Work the System documentation is complete, BPT will continue to be there for whatever takes focus, whatever takes the most concentration. You will learn to cherish these golden hours.</li></ul>

Biological Prime Time

Mechanical prime time (MPT) is the time spent working on system improvement and building primary systems such as your career and your business. MPT exists only if we create it. During the workday, no matter what you are doing, look at each action you take and ask yourself if it is contributing to “making more and working less."

Mechanical Prime Time

A Simple Mindset Tweak Will Change Your Life. After a fifteen-year nightmare operating a stagnant service business, Sam Carpenter developed a down-to-earth methodology that knocked his routine eighty-hour workweek down to a single hour—while multiplying his bottom-line income more than twenty-fold. In Work the System, Carpenter reveals a profound insight and the exact uncomplicated, mechanical steps he took to turn his business and life around without turning it upside down. Once you “get” this new vision, success and serenity will come quickly. You will learn to: • Make a simple perception adjustment that will change your life forever. • See your world as a logical collection of linear systems that you can control. • Manage the systems that produce results in your business and your life. • Stop fire-killing. Become a fire-control specialist! • Maximize profit, create client loyalty, and develop enthusiastic employees who respect you. • Identify insidious “errors of omission.” • Maximize your biological and mechanical “prime time” so that you are working at optimum efficiency. • Design the life you want—and then, in the real world, quickly create it! You can keep doing what you have always done, and continue getting mediocre, unsatisfactory results. Or you can find the peace and freedom you’ve always wanted by transforming your business or corporate department into a finely tuned machine that runs on autopilot!

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

A Simple Mindset Tweak Will Change Your Life. After a fifteen-year nightmare operating a stagnant service business, Sam Carpenter developed a down-to-earth methodology that knocked his routine eighty-hour workweek down to a single hour—while multiplying his bottom-line income more than twenty-fold.  In Work the System, Carpenter reveals a profound insight and the exact uncomplicated, mechanical steps he took to turn his business and life around without turning it upside down. Once you “get” this new vision, success and serenity will come quickly. You will learn to:  • Make a simple perception adjustment that will change your life forever.  • See your world as a logical collection of linear systems that you can control.  • Manage the systems that produce results in your business and your life.  • Stop fire-killing. Become a fire-control specialist!  • Maximize profit, create client loyalty, and develop enthusiastic employees who respect you.  • Identify insidious “errors of omission.”  • Maximize your biological and mechanical “prime time” so that you are working at optimum efficiency.  • Design the life you want—and then, in the real world, quickly create it!  You can keep doing what you have always done, and continue getting mediocre, unsatisfactory results. Or you can find the peace and freedom you’ve always wanted by transforming your business or corporate department into a finely tuned machine that runs on autopilot!

Sam Carpenter

Work the System

Work isn’t supposed to be fun. It can be fun, but trying to optimize for it from the beginning is only going to hurt you in the end.<ul><li>Choosing to work on “fun” projects at the expense of avoiding the hard, gritty, tedious ones will end up hurting your infrastructure, piling up your technical debt and stalling your growth.</li><li>Prioritizing the fun approach over the difficult, disciplined and results-focused one will hurt your business, it will hurt your team, and most importantly, it will hurt your customers.</li></ul>

Fun as a core value is a lie

Too many influencers build their brands on “making work fun” for this post not to be controversial. They’ll say things like “life’s too short to not have fun at work”.But fun is a deeply short-sighted priority. Consider having your short life filled with periods of hard work punctuated by intensely fun wins, rather than front-loading small bursts of fun and then paying for it with failure.

Focusing on fun is short-sighted

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

startup

Startups

Why We Dropped “Fun” as a Core Value

A business or corporation is made up of people. When only 20% of the people who make up the organization are fully engaged in their particular job in that organisation, most of the potential is left untapped. How to bring out this potential becomes a very important question.Just as a professional athlete has a recognised physical talent or a natural aptitude to be strong in some area of physical performance, so does an individual have natural aptitudes or talents inherent to his or her particular personality type. These natural aptitudes need to be recognised and employed in the person’s work.

Businesses Are Run By People So We Need To Nurture  Potential

The talent and knowledge-set of a team is identified as we determine:<ol><li>The unique direction in which each directs his or her energy</li><li>The context requirements to drive his or her motivation</li></ol>By identifying these two things we can understand their personality type and the natural aptitude of each team member including their basic beliefs, values and set of expectations about the world.

Personality Types Can Help Nurture Teams Talent And Knowledge

Jung’s theory of psychological types is perhaps the most influential creation in personality typology. One of Jung’s key contributions was the development of the concept of Introversion and Extraversion – he theorised that each of us falls into one of these two categories, either focusing on the internal world (Introvert) or the outside world (Extravert). Besides Introversion and Extraversion, Jung also coined the concept of so-called cognitive functions, separated into Judging or Perceiving behaviours that people naturally rely on in everyday situations.

What Is Myer Briggs Personality Test Part 1/2

In the 1920s, Jung’s theory was adapted by Katharine Cook Briggs, and Isabel Briggs Myers to create the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®).This is how the four-letter personality acronyms were born. We are of course referring to those mysterious acronyms like INTJ, ENFP, or ESTJ. The four personality aspects are based on Mind, Energy, Nature and Tactics. Each of these aspects is a two-sided continuum, with the “neutral” option placed in the middle. I.e. Mind consists of Introvert & Extrovert depending on your percentage in the personality test you get the first letter I or E.

What Is Myer Briggs Personality Test Part 2/2

This aspect shows how we interact with our surroundings:Introverted individuals prefer solitary activities and get exhausted by social interaction. They can be sensitive to external stimulation (e.g. sound, sight or smell) in general.They’re good at pacing, likely to listen to others more carefully and are good at reading situations.Extraverted individuals prefer group activities and get energized by social interaction. They can be more enthusiastic and more easily excited than Introverts.They enjoy pushing limits, take more initiative and rely on the world around them for validation.<a href="https://www.16personalities.com/articles/our-theory">Read more</a>

Myer Briggs: Mind Aspect - (I)ntrovert (E)xtrovert

This aspect determines how we see the world and process information: Observant individuals are highly practical, pragmatic and down-to-earth. They tend to have strong habits and focus on what is happening or has already happened. They like observable facts and more straightforward outcomes.Intuitive individuals are very imaginative, open-minded and curious. They prefer novelty over stability and focus on the theoretical- hidden meanings and future possibilities. They ask "what if" and like to connect the dots in the bigger picture.<a href="https://www.16personalities.com/articles/our-theory">Read more</a>

Myer Briggs: Energy Aspect - Ob(S)ervant I(N)tuitive

This aspect determines how we make decisions and cope with emotions. It reveals the extent to which we value emotions or rationality more when considering options:Thinking individuals listen to their head over heart. They focus on objectivity and rationality, prioritizing logic over emotions. They tend to hide their feelings and see efficiency as more important than cooperation.Feeling individuals listen to their heart over head. They are sensitive and emotionally expressive. They are more empathic and less competitive than Thinking types, and focus on social harmony and cooperation.<a href="https://www.16personalities.com/articles/our-theory">Read more</a>

Myer Briggs: Nature Aspect - (T)hinking (F)eeling 

This aspect reflects our approach to work, planning and decision-making:Judging individuals are decisive, thorough and highly organized. They value clarity, predictability and closure, preferring structure and planning to spontaneity. They would rather come up with five backup plans than deal with events as they come. Prospecting individuals are very good at improvising and spotting opportunities. They are flexible, and prefer keeping their options open. They are much more flexible when it comes to dealing with unexpected challenges and make their own luck.<a href="https://www.16personalities.com/articles/our-theory">Read more</a>

Myer Briggs: Tactics Aspect - (J)udging (P)rospecting

Tap into an employee's potential. Pinpoint the natural aptitudes of each person’s personality type for building team talent and making the best use of their potential.

Effective Team Building by Using MBTI Personality Strengths

Make it easy for people to find you and reach out to you. That means making sure you have an online presence.<ul><li>Have a website that clearly states the name of your business and what you do. </li><li>Include a contact email; not just a contact form. Reporters will likely be reaching out to multiple businesses, and they want to be able to track that they’ve reached out to you.</li><li>Make your location address prominent (if applicable). List the city where you are based and your business phone on your website where they’re easy to find.</li><li>Include social handles where you are most active so reporters can learn more about you and how you engage your audience. </li></ul>

Have a website with pertinent contact information

Reporters, producers, casting agents — all of them are scouring social channels to find their next story or star. When covering food trends, for example, reporters will search Instagram or TikTok looking for purveyors who are partaking in that particular trend.Additionally, if you build an engaged following, you become more attractive for media opportunities as publishers and producers see that you have an audience. You don’t have to be on every single channel. Pick one or two that you can consistently keep updated.

Be active on social media

Here are 7 tips on how to attract media attention for your brand 


Optimize your online presence to help your brand get media attention

Find 100+ Business Facts, Ideas & Insights - Curated from inspiring sources like Books, Podcasts & Articles - Genuine Insights from like-minded Users like You!