Eric - I'm just beginning to "get" the sales thing. Like you, I've always equated it to used car sales. Of course, I'm also a huge introvert; gotta work on those people skills. It'd be cool if you could blog about how you came to love "the close."

• 1 hour ago

Yes to all of the above, Amrita. Guy Kawasaki has inspired scores of budding entrepreneurs and getting to spend some time with him, if briefly, in his backyard...well, his enthusiasm is contagious offline as well as on.

Hadn't heard of Anita's book but will check it out. Thank you for recommending it, chica!

• 12 hours ago

Such a good story! Reminds me of another, less honest story about a friend of ours in Japan. He'd been in Japan 7 years and was making BANK. Every time he went to meet with a prospective client (usually a team) they'd take him out to dinner. He'd pretend like he didn't know how to use chopsticks. They'd teach him and felt the trill of showing a gaijin something about Japanese culture.

Moral to the story? A half-truth in order to win people over may not be right for everyone, but it can certainly empower your audience to teach you something. Plead ignorance and let people teach you about their craft...who knows, you might actually learn something!

• 12 hours ago

when i try to use "boulder, co" it replaces it with some funny "code" and still shows denver. does setting the location not really work yet?

• 1 day ago

Yeah – this one seems to be a polarizing issue, especially among the people who think Ayn Rand writes philosophy!

I think “bankruptcy” is misunderstood. There’s a huge difference between a liquidation (Chapter 7) and a controlled Chapter 11 where the US government provides the DIP financing, wipes out the value of the common stock, provides capital for a real restructuring, and preserves the appropriate pension liabilities. I’d never suggest that we should liquidate these companies. Nor do I really think I know the answer. However, I do believe that “just giving them $10 billion per company” isn’t likely to solve much of anything the way things have played out in the past.

That was what really prompted my “Take Responsibility For Your Actions” comment. I’ve been an investor and an entrepreneur in a number of companies that have failed. Whenever they failed, there was pain and I lost all the money I had invested in them. I recognize this is on a smaller scale, but I take every failure personally and try to learn from it. It doesn’t seem like any of the current leadership of these companies really understand this, especially when they are – in the words of someone I heard today – totally “tone deaf” about things like flying from Detroit to DC on private planes. It’s a picky detail, but a symbolic one.

• 1 day ago