Consider two hypothetical restaurants: type one and type two.

Restaurant type one: Imagine yourself wandering the streets of a new city. You could be on Ocean Drive in South Beach, or Piazza Navona in Rome. You're thinking about dinner, and you come across a restaurant conveniently located on a busy...

Around this time last year, I wrote about how we need to get back to allowing conversation to occur without texting, emailing, browsing, Tweeting, Facebooking, or doing whatever else zeros and ones can do these days on smart phones, iPads, notebooks, etc. I am as guilty as the next person...

To attract and retain great people, several things need to coalesce. From the extrinsic reward of a salary to the more nuanced (and more important) intrinsic reward of people feeling that they have a meaningful role, it requires thought and a proactive approach to keep talent once you've got it.

One of my greatest mentors was the late Jay Chiat of TBWA Chiat Day, an iconoclast in the field of advertising with a constant imagination for possibilities in business and life. Jay embodied the three traits of a "lucky attitude" that I described in my last post: humility, intellectual curiosity,...

Some business builders just seem to have more luck than others. In fact, many of the entrepreneurs and business builders I know say luck is a driving factor in their success.

But luck in business isn't entirely, well, luck. There's a popular saying that "you make your own luck." This...

For Harvard Business Review's April issue on failure, I penned a piece on the experience of going through a failed IPO. In one context or another, you've likely failed, too. You may have chosen to frame it some other way ("experience," "lessons learned," etc.), but it was failure.

First, welcome...

I spent time with each of my team members recently to focus on the top priorities for our firm Cue Ball and to make sure we were all on the same page. I asked each person to prepare a list of their top five priorities. In our individual review sessions,...

In my last blog, I shared with you one of my partner's sayings that he learned from his uncle, "play stupid, and win smart." His uncle was a skilled poker player with an uncanny ability to hide his emotions. Other players bought into his "play stupid" routine, and he'd later...

Poor first impressions are avoidable. I'm amazed by some of the really unfortunate mistakes that people make during important first meetings, whether it's a job interview, an important pitch, or other high stakes first-time business encounters. The secret to avoiding these mistakes is to spend time preparing before the meeting.

One of the "golden rules" of investing we have at our firm, Cue Ball, is that we value the business model over the financial plan. In fact, we value the business model over any particular sector for investment and like to say that we are "business model driven" (versus sector-driven)....

Last week NBA legend-turned-entrepreneur Magic Johnson sold his Starbucks franchises back to the corporation for a reported $75 million. Rumor has it, he's freeing up some cash to invest in a professional sports team (he also sold his stake in the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team).

About 12 years ago,...

In both entrepreneurial and larger companies, we too often spend time focusing on the desired financial performance target, rather than the inputs that drive those numbers. Because boards, investors and management demand an objective way to measure performance, we often go right to the result without focusing on what caused...

This blog was co-authored with Tsun-yan Hsieh.

Do a quick Google search of any prominent entrepreneur, and you will see at least one story about the role of luck in his or her success or failure. Uncertainty is at the heart of entrepreneurship and business building. Without it, there would...

Every start-up entrepreneur has an overwhelming amount to get done -- the "to dos" are constantly outrunning the "dones." It is easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and endless hours, and you often forget that running really hard does not necessarily equate with running in the right direction....

I have had the privilege of spending a lot of time as a strategic advisor and investor across the size spectrum -- from small early-growth companies to large Fortune 500 companies. The basic tenets of growth strategies are common: establish a clear and compelling vision; define a durable competitive advantage;...

In the days of the Wild West -- at least the West according Clint Eastwood and Hollywood -- the pinnacle of a challenge was the high-noon, quick-draw showdown. "Let's do it then, high noon, tomorrow." And two men, starting back-to-back, would count fifteen paces and turn around to fire at...

This guest post was written by Tsun-yan Hsieh.

Early in my consulting career, the late Marvin Bower, one of the early pioneers and legends in management consulting, shared a story that inspired me. He told me he had decided to write a letter to a CEO, challenging him to consider...

There is a new social entrepreneurial movement afoot, which seeks to find cures to some of the world's most challenging diseases. Medical entrepreneurship is, in my view, the very best hope we have for accelerating the pace of finding medical cures. A good example and arguably the pioneer of this...

While I've tried hard to not be part of the peanut gallery throwing advice Tiger's way, I like the guy too much not to take advantage of my pulpit to offer a few thoughts. On the golf course, Tiger has proven time and time again that one should not count...

If you think of the venture investment cycle as finding a deal, managing a deal, and then finally "monetizing" or exiting from a deal, then an interesting question is what is the most difficult part of this investment cycle? While critical to success, the first part of the cycle --...