Self Improvement Site
On The Internet! Take the Self Improvement Tour
On The Internet! Take the Self Improvement Tour
Articles from Donald Mitchell | Selfgrowth.com
- What Will Your Life Be like in 2030? - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2013 from Donald MitchellDue to recent cutbacks and until further notice, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off. -- Unknown If you are over the age of 55, you may assume you won't be around in 2030. Keep reading. The odds favor you being here then … unless you are already over 70. Even so, you ...
Views: 2868(2 votes) - What Is New With You? - by Submitted on Sep 26, 2012 from Donald MitchellBy staying alert to career alternatives, you can nimbly move from one occupation to another in ways that are personally and professionally satisfying and profitable. This article provides guidance for how to do so. Some people know exactly what they want ... and how to get it. They move ...
Views: 2241(1 vote) - Attract Sponsors and Advertisers - by Submitted on Jul 05, 2012 from Donald MitchellThis article examines sponsorships and advertising as methods for making cost breakthroughs and generating extra revenues. Let's start with sponsorships. What do I mean by a sponsorship? It is any way to combine recognition with providing access to desirable prospects and customers for ...
Views: 2235(1 vote) - Let Viewers See More Through Sharing a Greater Artistic Vision - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2013 from Donald MitchellArtists have long held a privileged role in society, allowing them to spend more time “seeing” what is going on than do most others. In addition, artists’ perspectives have often been sought by those who want to transcend the mundane to draw closer to the sublime. As a result, a greater ...
Views: 2222 - Seven Essential Questions for Establishing a Superior Business Model - by Submitted on Sep 23, 2013 from Donald MitchellMany people have trouble deciding where to start when considering possibilities to establish a better business model. With these questions, you'll make more effective changes ... and faster. Let me start by describing what a business model is so that you'll better understand the questions. A ...
Views: 2004(3 votes) - Get More Out Of Your Business Work - by Submitted on Jul 05, 2012 from Donald MitchellHave you ever counted the minutes until the work day was over? If so, you are not alone. Business work can be stupefying, leaving you feeling dull while randomly musing about more pleasant activities and places. That's the bad news. But... wait! There is good news, as well. Your time ...
Views: 1856(2 votes) - Do the One Thing That Makes All the Difference - by Submitted on Oct 31, 2013 from Donald MitchellWhen you watch most people working, you notice that they are doing many things at once: what is often described as multitasking. Recent research has shown that while such an approach seems to be highly efficient to the person using it, quality and quantity of results are actually less than when ...
Views: 1743 - Are You New to This? -- Seven Practices for Rapid Mastery - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2013 from Donald MitchellChances are good that you don’t know too many people who learned to run before they began to crawl. Likewise, you may not have met anyone who broke par while playing golf for the first time. As beginners, even people whose skill now causes us to marvel would more likely have produced ...
Views: 1704(1 vote) - Breaking 100 -- Lessons for Achieving Peak Performance - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2013 from Donald MitchellRegardless of ability and experience, most people wish they could accomplish more in doing whatever matters most to them. The struggling golfer dreams of breaking 100, a score that would be a nightmare for a good golfer. The solid B student fondly contemplates the satisfaction that a single A ...
Views: 1697(1 vote) - Add Grants and Subsidies to Reduce Costs and Investments - by Submitted on Jul 06, 2012 from Donald MitchellThe cost of investments that benefit many stakeholders can unfairly fall more on one organization than on another. Amtrak, the American government-owned passenger rail corporation, is an example of this problem. Amtrak was formed at a time when for-profit passenger rail operations were losing ...
Views: 1686(2 votes) - Go from Faking It to Making It in Business - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2013 from Donald MitchellWhen it comes to “making it” in business, many people feel as if they have more to hide than to display to impress employers, bosses, colleagues, and customers. To compensate for lacking credentials, skills, knowledge, and experiences some insecure businesspeople wish they had, some of them ...
Views: 1683 - Five Things No One Ever Told You about Earning a Ph.D. — A Professor Advises on How to Gain Better Career Results - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2013 from Donald MitchellIn 1900 few Americans finished high school. Those who did had a huge advantage over everyone else. By 1950 high school graduates were common, and gaining a career advantage from education required a college degree. By 1970 people with bachelor’s degrees often began adding master’s degrees to ...
Views: 1647 - Sell More Through Liking People and Encouraging Them to Like You - by Submitted on Jun 24, 2012 from Donald MitchellJoe Girard was the champion vehicle salesman for many years in the United States, averaging more than five daily sales of cars and trucks. What were his secrets? According to Mr. Girard, it was simply due to offering a fair price and being someone customers liked to buy from. Mr. Girard made the ...
Views: 1642(3 votes) - Develop the Minimum Core Offering to Reduce Costs Per Unit by 96 Percent - by Submitted on Jul 06, 2012 from Donald MitchellWe consider an older concept in this article, one that has often been applied to cost-reduction thinking: zero-based analysis. You may know this concept as "zero-based costing." Zero-based analysis reverses the usual way of thinking in which many people start by looking at how to remove costs ...
Views: 1627(3 votes) - Build Your Business Around Solving Engaging Problems - by Submitted on Jul 06, 2012 from Donald MitchellEntrepreneurial focus is immeasurably helped by finding engaging problems - ones to which you and others are irresistibly drawn. Many people make a mistake by instead picking problems to solve that are of interest only because of the potential financial gain that might result from solutions. ...
Views: 1616(3 votes) - Why You Should Turn Your Customers Into Eager Business Evangelists - by Submitted on Jul 06, 2012 from Donald MitchellEager business-evangelist customers are always telling others how wonderful your business is and encouraging potential customers to try your offerings. Most network marketing businesses are based on word-of-mouth promotion. You learn about a great product or service from a relative, friend, ...
Views: 1596(3 votes) - You Are the Only Person with a Ph.D. in Being You - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2013 from Donald MitchellMost people don’t realize how unique and valuable they are. How could personal characteristics seem to be unusual, or even rare, to oneself? After all, people are with themselves at every moment, view their own qualities as being normal, and cannot hope to perceive and understand others nearly ...
Views: 1587(1 vote) - Prepare Yourself for Entrepreneurial Success - by Submitted on Jul 06, 2012 from Donald MitchellI recently watched a televised interview with John Scully, the CEO Steve Jobs recruited from PepsiCo in 1983 to lead Apple when Jobs was twenty-eight. Reflecting on what happened to Apple over the subsequent twenty-seven years, Scully commented that Apple's board made a mistake in hiring ...
Views: 1585(3 votes) - Work Up to Having the Best Career - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2013 from Donald MitchellPeople who want to lift heavy weights usually start with light ones. After that they gradually increase how much they lift. When their muscles strengthen enough, heavy weights that were impossible to lift at first are then raised with ease. Similarly, those who want to improve other ...
Views: 1549(1 vote) - Fast-Expanding Exponential Cost Reductions - by Submitted on Jul 06, 2012 from Donald MitchellThis article describes a new concept for creating and implementing 96 percent cost reductions: fast-expanding exponential solutions. This is a subject I'm very excited about, and I hope you will share my enthusiasm for and interest in this process. When I was a youngster, controlled atomic ...
Views: 1545(3 votes) - Offer Price Incentives For Customers to Help You Lower Costs - by Submitted on Jul 06, 2012 from Donald MitchellWith so much global competition, the customer is more in charge than ever. That doesn't mean that you need to offer services that cost you a fortune: Better designed pricing can be a great help. Let's consider an industrial example. A building materials manufacturer studied its customers in ...
Views: 1544(3 votes) - Cooperate With Strangers and Volunteers and Help Unemployed People Start Complementary Businesses - by Submitted on Jul 06, 2012 from Donald MitchellThis article explores three sources of cost-reducing help that most businesses ignore: strangers, volunteers, and unemployed people. Think of the unifying themes for this lesson as helping to overcome the unattractiveness and tradition stalls. Let's begin by considering what strangers can do to ...
Views: 1528(2 votes) - Go and Get It - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2013 from Donald MitchellMany children are shy, which can make them more dependent on their parents. If a shy child wants something, chances are good that the child will ask a parent to get it … even if the item is easily accessible and in plain sight. Since most parents understand the importance of encouraging ...
Views: 1511(1 vote) - Here Is What I See - by Submitted on Aug 16, 2012 from Donald MitchellEach individual's perceptions of what's happening and why are unique. Never assume that others share your perspective unless you tell them what your perceptions are. This article contains seven rules for better communications and increased mutual understanding. It's natural to assume that ...
Views: 1511(2 votes) - Here Is What I See - by Submitted on Aug 16, 2012 from Donald MitchellEach individual's perceptions of what's happening and why are unique. Never assume that others share your perspective unless you tell them what your perceptions are. This article contains seven rules for better communications and increased mutual understanding. It's natural to assume that ...
Views: 1511(2 votes) - How To Learn More About Business - by Submitted on Jul 05, 2012 from Donald MitchellMany business founders have encyclopedic knowledge about how their organizations work, as well as how to gain and to retain profitable customers. Why? Founders have probably either designed or done all of the major tasks at one time or another and may have played a role in attracting almost all ...
Views: 1508(2 votes) - Minimize the Time Needed to Manage Your Enterprise to Develop the Minimum Business Model - by Submitted on Jul 06, 2012 from Donald MitchellIn this article, we look at how simplifying management to develop the minimum business model reduces costs for an enterprise and its stakeholders. Consider Plentyoffish dot com and its founder, Markus Frind. To wit, Markus Frind was determined to create a business that could be simply, ...
Views: 1499(3 votes) - Seven Essential Questions for Accomplishing What Others Believe to Be Impossible - by Submitted on Oct 31, 2013 from Donald MitchellSome of today’s ordinary activities were seen as “impossible” dreams just a few years ago. For example, 20 years ago decoding the human genome was viewed as being one of the world’s most difficult yet-to-be-accomplished projects. Yet today, an individual’s genome can be decoded in a few weeks ...
Views: 1490 - Get To The Top At Work, And Enjoy It! - by Submitted on Jul 05, 2012 from Donald MitchellI was inspired to write this article after reading an essay arguing for becoming a salesperson, rather than a CEO ... claiming that a salesperson's hours are shorter, the stress is less, and moment-to-moment tasks are more enjoyable. That didn't make sense to me. While I certainly know some ...
Views: 1489(2 votes) - Check And Double Check What You Do - by Submitted on Sep 27, 2012 from Donald MitchellIt’s easy to miss your most rewarding and satisfying career opportunities. Why? Most people assume that there are no better alternatives to whatever they are doing or planning. Such assumptions are almost always wrong. If people who are quick to assume they know about all the choices ...
Views: 1476(1 vote) - Eliminate More Overhead Costs - by Submitted on Jul 05, 2012 from Donald MitchellWhat is an overhead cost? Definitions vary, but most people agree that any cost not directly used to produce or to supply an offering to a customer is an overhead cost. Why begin this lesson about zero-based analysis with eliminating overhead costs? Such costs are not only large, but overhead ...
Views: 1463(1 vote) - Learn Business Online from Top Performers - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2013 from Donald MitchellWhen I was in graduate school, my classmates didn’t always like the way that the courses were taught. After leaving such a class, they often quoted an old maxim: “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” I didn’t take that saying literally until one day a law professor who was held in the ...
Views: 1443(1 vote) - Go For All Of It - by Submitted on Jul 05, 2012 from Donald MitchellIf you ask most people how they are doing, they will respond by saying something like "Good." What does that mean? Well, for some people it could mean that they aren't suffering from any illnesses, they are still employed, not one of their children is in jail, and they still have a place ...
Views: 1434(2 votes) - Make Changing Jobs and Careers Easier and More Rewarding - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2013 from Donald MitchellHollywood often captures the downside of changing jobs and careers with dramatic tales about unexpectedly losing a long-held position and not being able to find a suitable replacement. If I asked you to describe what such an experience would be like, you might choose words like “traumatic,” ...
Views: 1428 - Invent the Future to Build a Better One for Yourself by Establishing Your Own Successful Business - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2013 from Donald MitchellMany people dream of having their own successful business. Such dreams are much more likely to be filled with visions of innovative solutions for common problems that negatively affect and annoy people than with plans for effectively leading exercise classes, refilling vending machines, or ...
Views: 1410(1 vote) - Free Your Company to Do More - by Submitted on Jul 05, 2012 from Donald MitchellMany organizations seek to accomplish their purposes with so little effectiveness that it's as if they were literally chained to the past and to procrastination. Yet when away from work, and doing something they love, many of the same people act more like forces of nature... moving themselves ...
Views: 1407(2 votes) - Increase Stakeholder Value by 20 Times — Inspire Confidence through Your Vision - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2013 from Donald MitchellEntrepreneurs are rarely indifferent to how others value their businesses, but their reasons vary in why they care. For some, valuation is a primary goal. For others, it’s a scorecard delivering a sense of what progress has been made. Still others like that increasing enterprise value can help ...
Views: 1399(1 vote) - Increase Awareness - by Submitted on Jul 06, 2012 from Donald MitchellUnless you receive an offering as a gift and try it out, ignorance will keep you from using a superior choice. When such ignorance is widespread, the market will not develop to its full potential. Let's explore back surgery as an example. Until a few decades ago, patients who underwent back ...
Views: 1398(3 votes) - Develop Breakthrough Business Models Based on Superior IT Security - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2013 from Donald MitchellWhere can leaders find the next breakthrough business models and strategies that will delivery superior corporate performance? I believe that such innovations will come from having closer relationships with, greater mutual understanding of, and more meaningful interactions with all stakeholders ...
Views: 1376(1 vote) - Take Five Steps Towards a Better Career by Being an Original - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2013 from Donald MitchellHave you ever gone to a party and discovered that you had dressed quite differently from everyone else? How did that make you feel? For some people, this experience would be the height of embarrassment. For others, noting the differences might just draw a slight smile. No copycats need ...
Views: 1363 - To Move Forward in Your Career, Work with a Servant Professor — Helpful Methods for Locating One - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2013 from Donald MitchellWhat is your image of a graduate-school professor? Based on my student experiences, I think of an older person standing behind a raised lectern, well separated from the large number of students who are madly taking notes on the words that flow so composedly from the oracle’s lips. Such a scene ...
Views: 1351 - Work With Part-Time and Nonprofit Suppliers To Reduce Your Investments and Costs - by Submitted on Jul 06, 2012 from Donald MitchellIf for no other reason than expanding your business model to include new types of offerings, you will probably add new suppliers from time to time. In addition, sometimes suppliers go out of business or are unwilling to make necessary changes to improve their and your business models. In other ...
Views: 1338(2 votes) - How Can Operating Only on the Internet Enable a Low-Cost Minimum Business Model? - by Submitted on Jul 05, 2012 from Donald MitchellI was inspired to consider this question in 2008 when the two largest newspapers in Boston featured a headline that the larger of the two, The Boston Globe (which was owned by the same company that published The New York Times), had threatened to shut down the print version of the paper and to ...
Views: 1336(1 vote) - Exclusively Serve a Single Cost-Breakthrough Customer to Provide the Minimum Business Model - by Submitted on Jul 05, 2012 from Donald MitchellNow consider how to obtain one customer that changes the economic potential of your enterprise so much that it becomes practical to accomplish an overall 96 percent cost reduction after gaining just that one customer. I chose this topic after thinking about how often the conventional wisdom ...
Views: 1321(1 vote) - What Is Your Great Opportunity? - Combine Preparation with Favorable Circumstances - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2013 from Donald MitchellMany people haven’t yet found a great opportunity. In some cases they don’t even know that they are missing one. What a shame! Just in case you know someone like that, let me describe what I mean by a great opportunity so you can pass along the information: A great opportunity lifts you and ...
Views: 1318 - Build on Breakthroughs to Develop Lasting Success: A Case History - by Submitted on Jun 24, 2012 from Donald MitchellIt's useful to want to build a major business by adding onto the base of your initial breakthrough. But what does that look like in practice? Let's examine the case history of Education Management to better understand the principle involved. Commercial art had been defined historically as ...
Views: 1309(4 votes) - Eliminate More Stakeholder Costs by Helping Customers Develop Superior Business Models - by Submitted on Jul 06, 2012 from Donald MitchellThis article's topic will be controversial with some people. Why? Many business thinkers advocate that suppliers should simply work at making life easy and pleasant for customers so that they receive more and more benefits while only making minimal efforts of their own. If your customer has ...
Views: 1306(2 votes) - Search For More Of What You Like - by Submitted on Jul 05, 2012 from Donald MitchellHow can you gain enjoyment and accomplish more in your business career? It's easy: Just search for more of what you like ... and then do more of what you find. Let me explain by starting with what I don't mean: I'm not suggesting that those who love to eat chocolate ice cream at work seek out ...
Views: 1296(2 votes) - You Can Build a Better Community One Entrepreneur and One Breakthrough at a Time - by Submitted on Sep 05, 2013 from Donald MitchellI believe that you can make a huge contribution to your community through what you do. Let me describe how some individuals have greatly helped others. Can a single person make a big difference in society? Of course! Naturally, no one can do all that is required alone. Others will either ...
Views: 1289(1 vote) - Be More Cautious in Approving Cost Reduction Tests - by Submitted on Jun 24, 2012 from Donald MitchellMost business people use the same level of skepticism about everything they consider. Some are always optimistic that things will work out. Some are always pessimistic. Most people are somewhere in the middle. When a problem selecting the right choice is difficult enough, you will probably find ...
Views: 1277(3 votes) - Grow Your Business by Providing Sensible Reasons to Purchase Now - by Submitted on Oct 31, 2013 from Donald MitchellGive most executives the choice between some wild “blow-out” price-based promotion or taking time to first locate powerful new reasons to buy that are good for one and all, and the circus will soon be hired to tout the latest short-term deal. While such approaches can clearly add sales, doing so ...
Views: 1270