Ray Edwards

You probably know about the Pareto principle. It’s the principle discovered by the Italian mathematician (whose last name was, surprisingly enough, Pareto) that states something like the following: 80% of the results in any system arise from 20% of the inputs in that system. In the world of business, the Pareto principle is commonly invoked [...]

Add this book to your list of must-reads: The Ultimate Sales Machine, by Chet Holmes. If you haven’t read it, move it to the top of your list. If you have read it and haven’t yet implemented every single strategy inside its covers, read it now. Again. Probably my favorite passage from Chet’s masterful business [...]

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” William Shakespeare I will leave the discussion aside as to whether William Shakespeare is indulging in moral relativism. I think he is not, if one reads the above quotation in context, but I do think the quotation illustrates a basic principle we, as [...]

It happens more and more often these days, for some reason, that I get private e-mail and telephone requests from people wanting me to give them money. While I do my best to be generous, is becoming increasingly obvious to me that I simply don’t have enough money to give some of it to everyone [...]

I recently visited a local coffee shop, and happened to overhear the customer in front of me mispronounce the name of one of the beverages on the menu. “Can I please have a tall LOTTY?” she asked. The barista did not quite sneer, but managed to convey that emotion when she said, “Oh, you mean [...]

“Pig Pen, this here is Rubber Duck. We ain’t gonna pay no toll…” CW McCall, “Convoy” Who would have dreamed, in the 1970s, that anything would ever replace the CB radio? Some readers will, like me, be old enough to remember the CB craze. We will all remember, for instance, that the “main channel” on [...]