Business
Justin Palmer and the crew over at Jaded Pixel have gone live with Shopify. The goal of Shopify is “to making e-commerce easy.” While I haven’t evaluated Shopify in much depth from what I have seen it provides:
- a very nice UI interface for managing an online store
- a robust theming engine
- paypal & authorize.net payment options
- and a seemingly reasonable price structure
So if your looking for a hosted online store solution give Shopify a look.
Note: Those of you with a good memory might remember that Justin did some design work for me on ActiveType a while back. It’s based on this experience that I recommend giving his latest endeavour a look.
A leader is…
- Wise
- Intelligent
- Tactful
- Patient
- Assertive
- Passionate
- Experienced
- Creative
- Decisive
- Observant
They have…
- Character
- Integrity
- Respect
And…
- They listen.
- They empower.
- They direct.
- They guide.
- They decide.
- They criticize.
- They motivate.
- They respect.
- They think.
- They clarify.
- They encourage.
- They beleive.
And they do it because…
Great leaders help their team kick ass.
Kathy has an
interesting post on her
Creating Passionate Users blog about how performance reviews typically lead to mediocrity.
Maybe instead of working on our weaknesses, we should be enhancing and exploiting our strengths? What if the price for working on weakness (and who even decides what is and isn't a "weakness"?) is less chance to be f'n amazing?
She
suggests that be focusing on our "areas of improvement" we end up
becoming more mediocre. If instead we focused on how we could be "f'n
amazing" we could gain much more benefit. Would you rather be well
balanced or f'n amazing?
One of the companies that I’ve been most impressed with over the last couple of months is
37signals. They just get it. They’ve build a very powerful platform in
Ruby on Rails, launched a bunch of very useful applications, and shared a lot of their wisdom via their
Signal vs. Noise weblog. Yesterday
Jason Fried wrote about keeping things simple. In the software industry we spend too much time thinking and not enough time doing. Jason realized that he could spend another 3 months thinking and talking about the affiliate program that they’ve been wanting to do, or he could keep it simple and build something over the next week that could actually be put into use.
Definitely well done. It’s refreshing to see a company throw out the short term financial impacts of a decision and instead focus on what the right thing is to do for the customer. Very well done.
Marhsall Brain has posted a talk that he presented at Duke University on How to Make a Million Dollars. Within the talk he presented several ways to make a million dollars. His key point was that you need to create a business in order to have a chance at making a million dollars (unless you have $5/day and 42 years to spare). Very interesting read. I was most interested in some of the book recommendations he had, as I've already read and/or heard the same basic points from many other people. If you're interested in making a million bucks just go to the site, within minutes you'll be on you're way. Ok, yeah, I'm lying. There is some interesting stuff though 
Rich dad, poor dad, by Robert T. Kiyosaki - A perfect book for getting you head in the right spot to start a business.
The automatic millionaire, by David bach - Teaches you how to manage your finances. A basic guide to "saving $5 a day to become a millionaire in the future." See also Understanding and controlling your finances.
The one minute millionaire, by Victor Mark Hansen - a little over the top, but encourages you to think differently about starting companies and building wealth.
How to be a billionaire, by Martin Fridson - Really makes you look at the world differently.
- The Warren Buffet Way, by Robert Hagstrom - Not light reading, but helps you see how one of the richest men in the world thinks about the business world.
- Never Eat Alone, by Keith Ferrazzi - Helps you to think about business relationships differently.
- The Sam Walton Story, by Austin Teutsch - Tells how Sam Walton went from being a guy with one little store in Arkansas to the richest man in the world.
- Dave's Way, by David Thomas - The story of Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's. He started as an orphan bussing tables in a restaurant, and he went on to create an empire.
- Built from scratch - the subtitle says it all: "How a Couple of Regular Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 Billion"
- Nuts!, by Kevin Freiberg - The story of Southwest Airlines.
- Be my guest, by Conrad Hilton - The story of Hilton Hotels.
This morning I came across an interesting "article" entitled, "Small is the new big" (via microsISV) written by Seth Godin (rss).
Small means the founder makes a far greater percentage of the customer interactions. Small means the founder is close to the decisions that matter and can make them, quickly.
Small is the new big because small gives you the flexibility to change the business model when your competition changes theirs.
Small means you can tell the truth on your blog.
Small means that you can answer email from your customers.
Small means that you will outsource the boring, low-impact stuff like manufacturing and shipping and billing and packing to others, while you keep the power because you invent the remarkable and tell stories to people who want to hear them.
I think he sums it up perfectly with...."Get small. Think big."