Episodes

Thousands of business books are published each year. Some are worthless, others have merit, fewer still have lasting value, but a handful possess the ability to transform your business (and possibly, your life). Yet with today’s busy and demanding schedules, do you feel you don’t devote enough time to reading and absorbing new ideas? Then this show is for you. Ed and Ron will explore the best business books ever written, selecting their favorite all-time business books. If you want to share your...

Welcome to “Free-Rider Friday.” Most of our shows are “topic” driven, where we dive deep into one subject. Free-Rider Fridays are designed to be “event” driven: whatever issues are in the news that we (or you) find worthy of commentary. In economics, free riding means reaping the benefits from the actions of others and consequently refusing to bear the full costs of those actions. This means Ed and Ron will free ride off of the news, and each other, with no advanced knowledge of the events eithe...

Ed and I are big Disney fans, so we are thrilled to be able to interview Lee Cockerell, former Executive Vice President of Operations for the Walt Disney World® Resort. One of Lee's major and lasting legacies was the creation of Disney Great Leader Strategies which was used to train and develop the 7000 leaders at Walt Disney World. Lee has held various executive positions in the hospitality and entertainment business with Hilton Hotels for 8 years and the Marriott Corporation for 17 years befor...

We are thrilled to have as or guest, Kevin Mitchell, president of the Professional Pricing Society. Kevin is also the Publisher of The Pricing Advisor monthly newsletter and the quarterly Journal of Professional Pricing. Kevin is a frequent speaker at pricing conferences and events in North America and Europe where he often discusses trends and demographic changes within the pricing discipline. Before joining PPS in 2007, he worked for 11 years in various Financial Management fields with Colgate...

They say you can’t turn back the clock and go back to the good old days. Yet this is precisely what is happening with the total quality service movement, the customer loyalty movement, CRM, and other philosophies that put the customer at the center of the business organization. Millions of dollars are being spent on consultants to relearn what was once common sense, practiced by the great entrepreneurs from the turn of the century to the mid-1950s. This show, the second in our Entrepreneur Heave...

The last Friday of every month Ed and Ron will do “Free-Rider Friday.” Most of our shows are “topic” driven, where we dive deep into one subject. Free-Rider Fridays are designed to be “event” driven; whatever issues are in the news that we (or you) find worthy of commentary. In economics, free riding means reaping the benefits from the actions of others and consequently refusing to bear the full costs of those actions. This means Ed and Ron will free ride off of the news, and each other, with no...

Ed and Ron will interview Brad Smith, Global EVP of Customer Experience at Sage. Brad is the executive vice president of customer experience, responsible for developing all aspects of the Sage customer experience, from product design to the invoice experience and all points in between. He has nearly 20 years of leadership in web consumer, enterprise software, and communication service provider industries. Brad is on the board of the Consortium for Service Innovation and loves talking about custo...

Winston Churchill said, Democracy is the worse form of government...except for all the others. In this episode, Ron and Ed will examine Public Choice Theory, which describes the extension of analysis to the political alternatives to markets. Many commentators talk about market failure, but far fewer ever even mention government failure. Public choice theory sheds light on how government employees face incentives as much as employees in the private markets, and how these incentives can create bad...

Are we rational or irrational? Are we more like Mr. Spock or Homer Simpson? There are compelling arguments on each side of this issue. On this show, Ron and Ed will interview one of the country’s leading behavioral economists: Dan Ariely from Duke University. Dan is the New York Times best-selling author of Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and his latest book, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty. Folks, you won’t want to miss this show!

Thousands of business books are published each year. Some are worthless, others have merit, fewer still have lasting value, but a handful possess the ability to transform your business (and possibly, your life). Yet with today’s busy and demanding schedules, do you feel you don’t devote enough time to reading and absorbing new ideas? Then this show is for you. Ed and Ron will explore the best business books ever written, selecting their favorite all-time business books. If you want to share your...

The last Friday of every month Ed and Ron will do “Free-Rider Friday.” Most of ourm shows are “topic” driven, where we dive deep into one subject.

Consulting and sales are not different disciplines, but one and the same. They are the art of enabling the best possible decisions for customers. Recognizing this reality is not easy because it requires us to rethink the paradigms and prejudices of the past. We can increase the effectiveness in working with our customers if we adopt some concepts of consulting theory. The assumptions and goals of consulting will be discussed by Ed and Ron.

In celebration of April 15th, Ron and Ed will explore the history of taxation. All good tax systems tend to go bad, and throughout history tax laws have taken away liberty more often than foreign invaders. As Charles Adams explained in his book that will be discussed on the show, For Good and Evil, The prosperity as well as the decline of nations has always had a tax factor... We will explore the priceless legacy the Enlightenment thinkers passed on to posterity that comprise the components of a...

They say you can’t turn back the clock and go back to the good old days. Yet this is precisely what is happening with the total quality service movement, the customer loyalty movement, CRM, and other philosophies that put the customer at the center of the business organization. Millions of dollars are being spent on consultants to relearn what was once common sense, practiced by the great entrepreneurs from the turn of the century to the mid-1950s. This show, the first in our Entrepreneur Heaven...

The last Friday of every month Ed and Ron will do “Free-Rider Friday.” Most of our shows are “topic” driven, where we dive deep into one subject. Free-Rider Fridays are designed to be “event” driven; whatever issues are in the news that we (or you) find worthy of commentary. In economics, free riding means reaping the benefits from the actions of others and consequently refusing to bear the full costs of those actions. This means Ed and Ron will free ride off of the news, and each other, with no...

Ron and Ed go off on a bit of a tangent on this episode and interview Anthony Clark, author of The Last Campaign: How Presidents Rewrite History, Run for Posterity and Enshrine Their Legacies. As the competition to land the Barack Obama Presidential Library heats up and Chicagoans debate contentious land use issues surrounding it, a new book about the politics of presidential libraries reveals an even more controversial, secret plan to grab thousands of acres from the US Marine Corps Base Camp P...

Ed and I will have the honor interviewing Robert G. Cross, an absolute legend in the pricing profession. Bob implemented yield management in Delta Airlines, which is fascinating since he’s a lawyer by education. He wrote a seminal pricing book about this experience, Revenue Management: Hard-Core Tactics for Market Domination, and The Wall Street Journal called him “The guru of Revenue Management.” Folks, you don’t want to miss this show, as Bob is a font of pricing wisdom, being among the pionee...

One of our all-time favorite business books is The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater and Every Business a Stage, by B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore, which was published in 1999. Dan Morris and Ron Baker developed a CPE course based upon this content, applying it to professional knowledge firms. The book has recently been updated, and we are honored to be able to have B. Joseph Pine on the show to discuss this work, along with his other books: The Laws of Managing and Infinite Possibility. ...

The last Friday of every month Ed and Ron will do “Free-Rider Friday.” Most of our shows are “topic” driven, where we dive deep into one subject. Free-Rider Fridays are designed to be “event” driven—whatever issues are in the news that we (or you) find worthy of commentary. In economics, free riding means reaping the benefits from the actions of others and consequently refusing to bear the full costs of those actions. This means Ed and Ron will free ride off of the news, and each other, with no ...

Andy Grove, founder of Intel said, Disruptive threats come inherently not from new technology but from new business models.” What is a business model? In this show, Ed and Ron will discuss innovating your business model, a process that is never-ending in sustainable businesses

Ed and I have had the privilege of posing this question to thousands of leaders around the world: Who’s in charge of value in your organization? We're usually met with a momentary staring ovation, and then someone will inevitably shout out, “Everyone!” Really? Ron lives in California, where he's told everyone “owns” the Golden Gate Bridge. He would like to sell his portion; unfortunately he encounters what economists call the tragedy of the commons. If everyone owns something, no one does. No on...

All prices are, ultimately, determined by the subjective value perceptions of the customer. This makes having a conversation with the customer to comprehend and communicate your company's value essential. Skipping this conversation is similar to a contractor attempting to build a customer’s dream home without any architectural plans. The better your company comprehends the customer’s value drivers, the more likely you will be able to create maximum value, convince the customer they must pay for ...

The last Friday of every month Ed and Ron will do “Free-Rider Friday.” Most of our shows are “topic” driven, where we dive deep into one subject. Free-Rider Fridays are designed to be “event” driven—whatever issues are in the news that we (or you) find worthy of commentary. In economics, free riding means reaping the benefits from the actions of others and consequently refusing to bear the full costs of those actions. This means Ed and Ron will free ride off of the news, and each other, with no ...

G.K.Chesterton once wrote, “Competition is a furious plagiarism.” Yet the fact of the matter is there is no such thing as a commodity.