Most meetings are a waste of time.

You go in with your plan, you start to discuss the issues on your list … and somehow the focus of the meetings gets chopped and splinters into a thousand tangents. Surely, you’ve encountered this before?

At that point you have to make a choice. You can be the bad ass and slam your fist on the table and say “ENOUGH! Let’s focus” or you can sit back hoping that all the bantering and meaningless small talk will end shortly. The problem with the latter is that it just never seems to end and time continues to tick-a-way.

So unless you’re hardcore enough to jump right in front of that out of control train and tell it to stop … well, you’re pretty much screwed. Continue reading »

As I continue to work on building new businesses a formula for reaching success faster has started to emerge.

Many of you are likely familiar with it. But actually executing it takes determination and is harder said than done. Why? If everyone followed through there would be many more successful startups around.

One company that look to be executing extremely well on this formula is Japadog in Vancouver.

Japadog sells hotdogs. But from the get go they’ve taken this commodity type business and differntiated themselves extremely well. How you ask? They sell hotdogs created in Japanese style. The hotdogs are covered with Japanese mayonnaise, seaweed, Japanese pork and many other wild and wildly tasty goodness.

Back to Japadog’s model though. They seem to have started off with just one hotdog stand. They tested the waters and when things went well they opened another, and now another is coming. They started off in good locations and opened up in even better ones. Continue reading »

It’s been extremely busy with the launch of Advicetap.com the business community and directory for consultants.

Most of my writing these days has been up on Business Consulting Buzz, so for the latest articles on being a marketing consultant and the consulting business be sure to check that out.

I’ll continue to post here as often as possible. Stay tuned. Cheers!

Attended the Connect ‘09 conference yesterday. Some solid networking and presentations. Highlight of the night for me was definitely Leonard Brody’s talk on business and entrepreneurship.