I now have a warm-weather complement to my post, “True Minnesotan,” Defined“: A true Minnesotan — if they happen to be in the landscaping business — chides you every year for hiring them instead of having your able-bodied teenage sons mow your lawn.” My standard retort: “Do you encourage all your clients to fire you?”...Read More
“Assume You Don’t Need What You Need” If you want to know how economists think, a good start is jokes about economists. So, consider this classic about a physicist, an engineer, and an economist all stranded in the desert: They are hungry. Suddenly, they find a can of corn. They want to open it, but how?...Read More
Unhelpful “Help”: Profit Center For Them, Aggravation Center for Customers Tied up in knots recently with Intuit’s “Quicken” financial software, I reluctantly popped another $35 for access to their help line for 3 months. Yup, Intuit charges for customer service (make that, “premium customer service”). Which just made me even more aggravated, given all the 27...Read More
Modern Magic “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” –Clarke’s Third Law OK, so it’s not India — Israel’s only 6,200 miles away from Minnesota, not 8,000. But, that’s where my 14 year-old son was this morning when he diagnosed and fixed my Internet connection problem (we were communicating via FaceTime, and I held up the camera...Read More
“What You See is What You Get” I’ve written previously about real estate teams (“Teaming Up“), and the pro’s and con’s. So it was interesting to me, during my most recent listing presentation (they hired me), to hear my now-client express a strong preference notto work with a(nother) real estate team. Their reason(s)? On their...Read More
