Episodes

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.

Ed and Ron will interview Dr. Jules Goddard, author of one of the best business books we read in 2014: Uncommon Sense and Common Nonsense. Dr. Goddard has many profound insights into corporate strategy, value creation, efficiency vs. effectiveness, and much else. This promises to be an insightful and educational conversation.

Ron and Ed interview Adam Davidson, a journalist focusing on business and economics issues for National Public Radio. He is currently one of the co-hosts of the Planet Money podcast. Previously he has covered globalization issues, the Asian tsunami, and the war in Iraq, for which he won the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. His work has won several major awards including the Peabody, DuPont-Columbia, and the George Polk Award. brbr Adam came to our attention when he mentioned the VeraSage Institut...

Ron and Ed will interview Dr. Thomas Sowell, world renowned economist, social theorist, political philosopher, and author. His appearance on TSOE coincides with the release of a new edition of his international best seller on economics, Basic Economics – 5th Edition (Basic Books, December 2014). In this soon-to-be released volume, Sowell revises and updates his popular book on common sense economics, bringing the world into clearer focus through an understanding of the fundamental economic princ...

On Friday's episode, Ron and Ed will interview Jody Thompson, the Co-Founder of CultureRx® and Co-Creator of the Results-Only Work Environment™ (ROWE™), along with Cali Ressler. CultureRx® is the sole global authority on ROWE™ and the sole executor of organizational and individual certification. Thompson provides domestic and international keynote presentations on the 21st century workplace and has been featured on the covers of BusinessWeek, Workforce Management Magazine, HR Magazine, and HR Ex...

On Friday's show Ron and Ed will interview Tim Williams, a noted author, international speaker, and presenter for major advertising associations, agency networks, universities, and business conferences worldwide. brbr He is author of the book, “Take a Stand for Your Brand: Building a Great Agency Brand from the Inside Out” ranked by Amazon as one of the top ten books on brand building. His booklet “Defining the Agency Brand,” published by the American Association of Advertising Agencies is regar...

On Black Friday, the biggest Holiday shopping day of the year, Ed and I thought it would be fun to review the book, Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Presents for the Holidays, by Joel Waldfogel, published in 2009. Waldfogel estimates that giving gifts nobody wants is a deadweight loss to the economy to the tune of approximately $12 Billion, mostly on credit cards. Money we don’t have to buy things people don’t want. As he writes, when you say to your mother-in-law, “A cribbage board. You sho...

Charging different prices to different customers is the definition of price discrimination, a term coined in 1920 by Arthur Cecil Pigou in The Economics of Welfare. Price discrimination occurs when a good or service is sold at different prices that do not reflect differences in production costs. Companies engage in this practice in order to extract the consumer surplus from various customers. It is worth noting that price discrimination does not imply discriminating against people based on race,...