August 2018

Every day, we are met with intuitions that appear to provide the answers to questions in our lives. We step outside on a sunny day, and a nagging feeling in our gut urges us to go back in and fetch our umbrella. We watch the big fight and develop a powerful hunch early in the contest that the hometown boxer will prevail. Within 60 seconds of interviewing a candidate, we just know, beyond a shadow of a doubt — she’s the one. While the common wisdom is that we should “trust our gut,” smart decision makers know it can’t be that simple. Surely there are times when intuition guides us accurately, and other times when it leads us astray. But how are we to tell the difference? In order to answer that question, we need to, first, demystify intuition and understand precisely how it works.

1. Keep It Close  Be very careful about any outsourcing partner you work with, either domestically or overseas. Make sure they have adequate security in place to protect your IP when they work on it. As well, be careful how your IP is accessed by remote teams. Private repositories on sites like GitHub might be very convenient, but you are handing over security to a third party. - James Dixon, Pentaho, a Hitachi Group Company 2. Cover Your Legal Bases And Encrypt Your IP  When we work with a developer (local or overseas) we make to sure to have strong legal agreements in place that are enforceable in the developer’s local court system as well.  We also employ strong encryption internally for sensitive IP, and we make sure our partners employ the proper levels of encryption. It seems like a lot of overhead, but it

A bit of logic and your gut feelings tell you it's time to fire an underperforming employee, but your emotions and lack of time keep you from taking action. You're not the only one. Many entrepreneurs struggle with this decision and delay the inevitable, causing unnecessary strain on themselves, their employees, customers, and certainly on company revenues. If you have a team member who is frequently late, doesn't do the job well, is apathetic, or creates conflict, holding on to them is not a good choice. Once you've done everything within your power to coach and train them, it's time to cut the ties. A single underperformer can have a devastating effect on a company. Yet, more often than not, small business owners choose to delay the inevitable based on these emotional factors. 1. No time to find and train a replacement. Having a poorly performing on the team is

1. Customers know what they want and need You can't second guess what a customer wants. The only way to find out is by speaking to them. If you want customers to buy your product - and keep buying them - then you need to keep finding out what they want and need. If you keep this in mind, your business can only grow - in both knowledge and service. 2. Customers have the buying power If you want to alienate customers don't listen to them - it's as simple as that. If you want customers to spend their money on your product or service, find out what they want. Customers are the key to success - they're the ones with the money and they will show you whether they like your product by voting with their money - taking it to you