August 2009 Entries
The irony of the commercial food business is that we have focused so much on creating efficiencies that we have depressed prices lower, squeezing margins even more. That means volume is the only way out. So we look for more and more ways to get the cost of the raw material down, and the yields up. It is obvious now that both nutrition and food safety have suffered along the way.
TIME magazine’s cover story this week The High Cost of Cheap Food, explores the primary drivers for our very cheap food. It further points out that not all calories are created equal, since fruits...
We all know that networking is one of the most effective things you can do in your pursuit of business (or personal!) success. Your ability to approach networking effectively however is dependent on your personality, your intuition, and what you have been taught by your mentors along the way.
There is a great deal of information on the web about networking. Perhaps too much. It can be a bit overwhelming, so here are some tips from a variety of sources to get you started (or fine-tuned, as it were):
Feel free to talk to anyone about anything. You certainly don’t have to be an...
I’ve been meaning to post this commentary all week.
All of us have this problem. Some more than others. Don’t know what it is. We know what we need to do. We know why we need to do it. We even (often) know the steps we need to undertake to get it done. But we don’t. We rationalize; we cajole ourselves into inaction; we visualize us being more motivated tomorrow to do what we need to do today…every day.
If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. A recent study shows that it is actually on the rise. (The study to determine the underlying factors of this trend was postponed indefinately…)
Karen Leland...
Last night my Film and Food meet-up group went to see the film Food, Inc. We typically see films to learn and discuss technique, storyline, and film-centric subjects. It’s not often we get the opportunity to combine our interest in film with our passion for food, so this was a very well attended event. Afterwards, the film energized the majority of us to enthusiastically discuss the problems and issues it profiled, and to try and understand what it was trying to say, and what we as consumers should do about it.
As someone who has spent his life (virtually) in the food industry, I...
As somewhat of a follow-up to the “Ten Second Elevator Speech” blog from last week, I wanted to share some additional tips from Geoffrey James BNET blog on writing killer sales messages.
Rule #1: Tell a story about the customer… not the supplier (you). Focus on how you can help your prospect, not on how great your company is, how big it is, or how it’s a leader in its industry. Those claims are not important at this stage.
Rule #2: Use colorful words rather than biz buzz words. If I hear “synergy” or “collaborate” in a pitch, I turn off the volume. You can...
Right now, the hot topic and social networking tool is Twitter. Early last year it was MySpace, followed (and overtaken) by Facebook. Second Life was in there somewhere as well. Digg, FriendFinder, Delicious, LinkedIn…yada, yada. The list of social networking must-be-on technologies gets longer every day.
"…there are so many networks and tools…how am I supposed to keep up?"
The short answer is “you can’t”. Even the professionals have trouble keeping up. So let yourself off the hook. Keeping up is about following someone else’s agenda. According to consultant Alexandra Samuel “…the minute you stop trying to keep up, you open a far more exciting possibility: focusing on what matters...