Massive Mouse

In my last post, I criticized the question, “Would you rather own 100% of a $2,000,000 company or 10% of a $100,000,000 company?” The speaker was trying to justify business partnerships by implying that they guarantee growth. Wouldn’t it be nice if growth were that worthwhile and that easy to come by? The original question [...]

You need profit. Without it, your business will die. A corpse can be in perfect, mechanical condition, but without blood — without a regular heartbeat pumping blood throughout the organism — the body will die. For a business, profit is that blood. In the software industry, there’s a ridiculous trend to structure companies that live [...]

With the arrival of a baby boy, my normally tightly-controlled schedule has been disrupted like New York in the movie King Kong. It’s been awesome. In addition to the joys of a new child, an additional, unpredicted benefit has surfaced: less sleep, early morning solitude and a one-thumb-friendly text editor has increased my available writing [...]

A friend of mine is struggling right now. It’s not the kind of brilliant, joyful struggle of a master, but the nervous, disheartened struggle of a discontent beginner. He’s not where he wants to be, he’s not sure which direction to go, and he knows any direction is going to start off with an uphill [...]

If people are telling you something can’t be done, be sure that they have the experience to know so. (And even then, sharing your ideas is risky.) Most of the time, we look for support from friends and family, hoping that they will encourage us. A lot of the time their concern for us — [...]

It usually goes like this: A small company sponsors a small group of athletes committed to the core of their sport. The company and the athletes enrich each other through their authentic devotion to the sport they love. The company and the athletes grow together in stature and, for the company, in revenue. Then the [...]

Last night, my newborn son kept me up all night, waking every hour and sabotaging my climbing plans for today. I don’t mind. He’s five weeks old; he needs my help. But it got me wondering if there are adults in my life that I help that I shouldn’t. Does my “see how much I [...]

Last Friday, I presented a fun slideshow called “Is Sponsorship a Sin?” at Canmore’s annual Night of Lies. Although couched in humor, my main complaint was that not all athletes are worthy of official sponsorship. A common comment was, “Oh well, even if they’re not worthy, I guess it’s up to the companies which athletes [...]