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 make a profit. This was true for a long time until Starbucks changed the rules.

So how did they convince the world to pay $3 for a cup of…

Twitter hit 100 million active users in 2011 and 10 years later have 300 million users — That is awe-inspiring growth — They are one of the most popular social media networks globally.

However, compared to Facebook, they suddenly look slow and small

Facebook hit 100 million users in 2008, and four years later, in 2012, they hit 1 billion, and today they are approaching 3 billion active monthly users.

They have just not stopped growing. Most social media networks reach a saturation point of those interested in using their service. …

Our brain reward system is designed to compete. It keeps us alive.

When our ancestors caught a wild animal for dinner, their brains sent a shot of the pleasure chemical dopamine coursing through their system.

Dopamine is one of the feel-good chemicals that our brain rewards itself with for doing something useful to keep us alive.

Our brain functions the same way in the modern world as it did 10 000 years ago and can’t differentiate between the real and virtual world.

Video games are popular for the same reason. Every time we beat the bad guy or score a…

Successful entrepreneurs are problem solvers, but one of the problems they can’t solve is that there are only 24 hours in a day.

Though, from the outside, it seems that they get more done in a single day than us mere mortals can get done in a week. But, the truth is that they have figured out how to use less time to get more done.

They generally don’t fill their days from end to end and often work reasonable hours. It’s just that they know how to use their hours better.

Decide faster

We often want to take the time to…

The relationship with your customer is like the relationship with your significant other. You have to work at it every day to maintain and improve it.

If you don’t keep things interesting and exciting, your partner will get bored and eventually move on to someone else.

You may be the best partner for them, but it will grow stale if you neglect the relationship, and they’ll start wondering what else is out there.

The same is true for your relationship with your customers. …

You hear time and time again that you should never give up. You have to go through the obstacles to get to success.

Sometimes you need to fight on despite all the difficulties, but other times it may be wiser to quit.

The sooner you quit going down the wrong path, the sooner you can start going down the right path.

You may have been lucky enough like Tiger Woods to pick your path at three years old and stay the course for twenty years until you become a world champion.

But for most of us, we may pick the…

The customer is always right is a slogan that began when customer service and modern retail stores were just coming into existence.

It was a helpful way to train someone in the 1900s who had no concept of customer service.

Now in the 2000s, we know that the customer is not always right.

Some customers can be unreasonable and sometimes downright dishonest.

You may have bent over backwards to get them to become a customer initially. Now that they are a regular customer, they may start taking advantage of you.

You have to ask yourself whether the relationship is beneficial…

When you first started, you may have gotten your first customers by word of mouth, through your personal network or walk-ins to your store.

You may now be experiencing a lull in your business, or you managed to catch your breath and are ready to grow to the next level.

The next level, though, requires a strategy — a strategy for gaining new customers.

A strategy doesn’t need to be complicated or take long to create.

The best strategies are simple and actionable.

You will generally have a sales and a marketing effort that goes into gaining new customers. …