Fire and Knowledge

The world you inhabit is the world you make. Your reputation precedes you, biasing the way new colleagues deal with you. Your first moves, friendly or hostile, tip the balance for future interactions. When you exhibit trust, you will most often find trustworthiness. When you are selfish, you will most often find selfishness. When you compete, others must resort to competition. If you choose to play the game strictly for your own advantage, your attempts at collaboration will indeed be, [as Thomas Hobbes said], “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

—Rodd Wagner & Gale Muller, The Power of 2 (2009), p. 95

A man ought to be a friend to his friend and repay gift with gift.
People should meet smiles with smiles and lies with treachery.

—Edda, a 13th century collection of Norse epic poems, as quoted in Rodd Wagner & Gale Muller, The Power of 2 (2009), p. 94

A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.

—John D. Rockefeller, as quoted in Rodd Wagner & Gale Muller, The Power of 2 (2009), p. 35

The more good partnerships you have in your life, the more likely you are to say that you experienced the feeling of enjoyment much of the day yesterday, that you recently learned something interesting, and that you’ve been doing a lot of smiling and laughing — all key measures of your happiness. Even having one strong partnership markedly increases your well-being over those who have none.

In the workplace, employees with just one collaborative relationship are 29 percent more likely to say they will stay with their company for the next year and 42 percent more likely to intend to remain with their current employer for their entire career, compared to those with no partnerships. Those who feel well-teamed with one or more colleagues are substantially more engaged at work. They generate higher customer scores and better safety, retention, creativity, productivity, and profitability for the business — and a greater level of happiness for themselves.

—Rodd Wagner & Gale Muller, The Power of 2 (2009), p. 4

I’m excited to announce the launch of Beacon Ad Network! Beacon is division of Rainsong Media, my design company. Beacon puts Christian ads on Christian blogs. We make it easy for advertisers to purchase ads on a wide range of niche sites with readers who would be interested in them.

Be sure to check out the site, and let me know what you think!

There are three questions you have when you’re hiring a programmer (or anyone, for that matter): Are they smart? Can they get stuff done? Can you work with them?

Someone who’s smart but doesn’t get stuff done should be your friend, not your employee. You can talk your problems over with them while they procrastinate on their actual job.

Someone who gets stuff done but isn’t smart is inefficient: non-smart people get stuff done by doing it the hard way and working with them is slow and frustrating.

Someone you can’t work with, you can’t work with.

—Aaron Swartz, “How I Hire Programmers“

If you are a one-person company, you must spend at least 60 percent of your time getting and keeping customers. Companies do what the boss does. So, if you are the CEO of a 10-person company or a 100-person company you must spend 60 percent of your time getting and keeping customers. You must do this so everyone else will do it. You must do this continuously, regularly, vigorously.

—Jeffrey Fox, How to Make Big Money In Your Own Small Business (2004), p. 27.

Tim Ferris has a great article on the art of negotiating. This is something I’ve never been good at — it’s an uncomfortable skill to learn, but it can definitely be worth it!

Here are his five basic principles, in order of use:

1. Negotiate just prior to the other side’s deadlines.
2. Make them negotiate against themselves.
3. Use a “flinch” whenever someone mentions their first discounted offer.
4. Increase value while lowering price.
5. Never be the ultimate decision maker.
6. Use intelligent “bracketing.”
7. Practice using the “firm offer.”