(Time to read this Blog section is about 60 seconds)
- This is the perfect time of year to bake cookies. This wonderful cookie recipe comes with an important business lesson. These amazing Chocolate Chip, Oatmeal and Pecan Cookies were originally made famous by a small bakery in Dorset, Ontario. We used to fly to Dorset in my brother’s floatplane just to buy them. They were that good. But, one day, the bakery owner did a costing on the cookies and determined that he was losing money. So, rather than just put the price up a bit on his best-selling item, he stopped making the very thing that made him famous.
There’s a great business lesson here for all of us, and it’s this, “Do whatever you do really, really well…and then have the guts to charge a decent price for it.” Remember, nobody will ever think you’re worth more than you do.
Anyway, back to the cookies. The lady who worked in the bakery took pity on us and secretly gave us the famous recipe…and now, we share it with you. Simply click here.
- Understand the world to thrive better in it. If knowing what’s going on in business, economics, innovation and politics around the world is important to you, I recommend ‘The Economist’ magazine. I’m not on commission here, it’s just a great magazine. To subscribe, they’re easy to find on the internet.
- Huge farm subsides. It has always fascinated me that the folks who grow the food that keeps us alive need to be subsidized to make a living, while the guy who came up with ‘The Pet Rock’ (a small stone in a box) made millions.
Almost every country in the world subsidizes agriculture in one way or another. The USA pays out $20 billion a year in farm subsidies, The EU pays farmers $58 billion in subsidies annually and relatively tiny Japan pays farmers $18 trillion a year. Many farms in Japan are just a few acres in size and make no economic sense…but the farm lobby is so powerful that no politician has the guts to go against them.
- A simple exercise to improve your business in 2019. Here’s a simple exercise that has worked well for a number of our coaching clients. Set aside one hour with some of the best minds and hearts in your business and make a list of just three things that you don’t do well enough yet…and then figure out what you’re going to do to fix that in 2019.
For each of the actions that you commit to take, determine specifically what will be done, by whom, by when, at what expense, measured how and rewarded how. Give them advance notice of the meeting and what the subject will be so they can be thinking about this and come prepared.
