Posts tagged decision making
I turned down a $60k paycheck

It was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Picture this. I had just graduated from the University of Maryland magna cum laude with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. But instead of following the expected path of working at a big fancy engineering firm, I became employee #2 at a startup energy auditing company running out of the back room of a house in the suburbs.

I was living my entrepreneurship fantasy.

There was just one problem…

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Sometimes you have to smell your own feet

Six months ago, I set out to create an assessment tool in order to gain some insights that could help me help more businesses. I wanted to see what businesses were (and weren't) measuring, how they viewed the importance of process in their business, and how they made decisions about what to work on and improve.

Recently, I sat down to take a look at what the past six months of data showed. I was curious if there would be a pattern or narrative that emerged that would tell me something about how business owners grow and operate their businesses.

There was. And surprisingly enough, the pattern emerged in the first five questions…

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Three ways to look beyond ROI and make better decisions

“How is the guy who is all about systems and data looking at this decision on the basis of whether it will be fun?”

I was recently chatting with a colleague when she asked me this question about a meeting we had with a fellow operations consultant. The three of us were batting around the idea of collaborating together on a podcast or some other way to jointly promote our services.

I let out a small chuckle. Her question caught me by surprise. For a moment, I too was surprised by the words that had come out of my mouth. Was I really assessing the potential of a new marketing strategy through a lens of enjoyment rather than some calculus of return on investment?

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