Customer Loyalty Begins With A Smile It was a cold, dark January morning. The clock on my truck read 5:32am as I pulled out of my garage for a business meeting over to Portland. Two tons of steel was protecting me from the outside elements and I still shivered as the ice mist hit my windshield. My brain needed a jolt so I headed over to Dutch Brothers Coffee, pulled up to the window, and was greeted with a big smile - “Good morning, what can I make for you this beautiful morning?” I’m charmed by her positive, friendly outlook. The combination...

I normally wouldn’t touch a subject like this, because as a rule I think we need less government, not more. However, the Gulf Oil Spill has become a national crisis with BP completely dropping the ball. Listening to BP’s CEO and marketing machine, it reminds me of speeches from George W. Bush where he would say, over and over again, “we’re working really, really hard…. this is a really hard problem”.  Clearly, BP just wasn’t prepared for this type of accident.  That is their biggest failure, they didn’t spend any of their $7 billion in net cash flow, each...

I’m from the camp: If your company is not growing, it ** by definition ** is dead. You just haven’t been pronounced dead yet! Change management is a critical skill every CEO must have in there tool kit. Inviting change in an organization you founded is different than walking in the door as a new CEO, with a turnaround plan in your briefcase.  The later was the case at Web Associates and Starbase where I was recruited by the BOD with a mandate to get the companies on a road to profitability, immediately. Failure would mean bankruptcy for the...