Coffee is a highly commoditized product. It can easily be made almost anywhere in the world with widely available ingredients at a very low cost. Coffee has been around for hundreds of years. Like salt, sugar, and rice, once these products started being mass-produced, it was a race to the bottom for prices. In business school, they'll teach you not to enter industries like this because it would be difficult to…

These so-called billionaire routines require one to get up at 4 AM to read, exercise and meditate. Neither reading, exercising, nor meditating generates any money at all. Unless you are a fitness model, no one will pay you to go to the gym. All these things will cost you time or money and sometimes both. To follow in the paths of successful people, we often try to replicate their habits. Instead,…

In 1961 John F Kennedy proposed that the US "should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth." At the time of this speech, the furthest the US had gone into space was 116 miles, and they had stayed there for a total of 15 minutes. To achieve this feat, they needed to build…

In the Kalahari Desert, there are a group of people who haven't changed their ways for tens of thousands of years. These are the San people. They are the oldest continuous inhabitants of Southern Africa. One could say that they are the first successful humans. So successful were their methods that they still use them today. Their timeless techniques can teach us something about success, both in life and in business.…

To get the most from employees, you will have to give them what they want. Just like with your customers, your relationship with your employees is based on an exchange. Sometimes, this exchange is just about money, but more often than not it's about so much more. We have to ask ourselves why someone wants to work for us and if we can offer them what they are looking for. We…

Better experiences lead to higher prices It’s quite evident that we are willing to part with more of our money when dealing with a smiling salesperson than a grumpy one. We also have upper limits on how much more we’ll pay for a comparable item. Regardless of how wide the car salesman's grin is, you are unlikely to pay three times as much for a new car. To get your customer…

We've all come to this low point in business and often enough in life. We begin to wonder whether it's worth fighting on or if we should cut our losses and move onto something else. Maybe you think to yourself that you just not made for business. On the other hand, you may be asking yourself if you are quitting right at the bottom, and things will only go up from…

Affordable marketing techniques that pack a punch We see global brands like Nike with full-page magazine ads and highly produced TV commercials that don’t sell a specific product. These ads where the runner talks about spirit and competition but never mentions the shoes. These adverts are just there to get the name or brand out there. We assume this is the best example of modern marketing and try to follow in…