Discount customers are almost always the wrong customers. At best they can provide some cash flow, but the hidden costs make them more trouble than they are worth.

You Cannot Build Relationships with Discount Buyers

They are not buying you or the quality of your work. They are buying your price. As soon as someone else offers a lower price, they will be gone.

Charge what you are worth, and you will attract customers who value what you do, not how little you charge.

Most markets are not as price-sensitive as those who serve them believe. Customers find it easier to tell you that your price is too high than to say your product isn’t very good. Pricing is often the excuse, but rarely the real reason.
– The Startup Daily

That is a lot of business books making a lot of promises. Figuring out which ones are likley to be worth your time is no easy feat.

First published five years ago, The 100 Best Business Books of All Time by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten remains one of the best resources available for navigating the business book landscape. This book was an incredibly helpful starting point for me while I was conceiving the Startup Daily, and it continues to guide many of my selections today.

An updated edition of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time was recently released in paperback and for the Kindle. If you are a business book lover, this book is essential.
– The Startup Daily

Failure can be good. After all, it’s how we learn. But failing for its own sake is never the goal, it’s only the first step.

To Learn from Your Failure You Must First Identify the Cause of the Failure

Failure of Skill
The lesson here is simple. Get to work developing that skill, or partner with someone who already has.

Failure of Concept
The idea simply wasn’t as strong, or compelling, as you thought it was. Try again with a bigger idea.

Failure of Judgement
You left something in, or out, that you shouldn’t have. Did you trust your instinct? Or did you give in to pressure from others? Great artists are willing to be regarded as tyrants to keep their vision intact.

Failure of Nerve
The fear of looking foolish prevented you from fully exploiting your idea. The only solution is to face your fears head on. It requires courage, although experience helps. The older we get, the less afraid we become of looking foolish.

Failure by Denial
This is the most difficult to identify. Something was not working, and you were not able to acknowledge it. Repeated exposure can make it harder to see. Continuously changing things around is your best defense, since it forces you to constantly re-examine what’s working, and what isn’t.

Being honest about the cause of your failures is what separates those who learn from failure from those who are doomed to repeat it.
The Starup Daily

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All great relationships require productive conflict to thrive. Unfortunately, conflict is often considered taboo in the workplace. The higher up the management chain you go, the more people try to avoid the kind of passionate debate that is necessary to arrive at the best solutions.

But unresolved conflict doesn’t go away. It remains as unhealthy tension that undermines teamwork and leads to personal attacks.

Some leaders, like overprotective parents, will break up conflict as soon as it begins. But this prevents team members from developing conflict management skills and only brings artificial harmony. People need to see their conflicts through until they arrive at a resolution.

Encourage People to Argue Passionately About What They Believe

Ideally the leader should be the one filling this role, but anyone can step up and take responsibility for uncovering buried conflicts. Teams need to be reminded that working through conflict is good for the team and for the solution.

When a team knows that they can safely engage in productive conflict, they are able to resolve issues more quickly and completely.
– The Startup Daily

“The greatest opportunities around new technologies are not in making things possible, but in solving the myriad little problems that prevent widespread adoption.”

The Sony ebook reader was first released in the U.S. over a year before the Kindle. It was lightweight, used the same E Ink display technology, and was similar to the Kindle in almost every way. But it was missing wireless connectivity and the backend that enabled one-click access to the impressive Amazon catalog. Buying and loading new content was a major hassle, and the product floundered. While Sony was in the business of making e-book readers, Amazon was in the business of solving the customer’s problem of buying and reading books, even when the solution meant going outside the device.

Most Successful Products First Languish in the Marketplace, Missing One Crucial Ingredient

To find the missing element, try creating a hassle map. List every step, decision, hassle, and potential for making mistakes involved in using your product or service. The key to unlocking the market is probably on that list. The hassles most likely to be overlooked are outside of the obvious functionality of the product, but inside the experience of using the product.
– The Startup Daily

Hand a venture capitalist a copy of your business plan and chances are the first section they turn to is not going to be the one about your product, the market, or your capital requirements. They will go straight to section that describes the key people on your team.

Above All Else, You Have to Sell Investors on Your Leader and Your Team

A great team will be able to solve any technical problems that come up. If they were wrong about the market, they will find a new market. But if the founding team is not up to the task of leading an early stage startup, even the best business plan won’t save them.
– The Startup Daily

Every year people make New Year’s resolutions. They tell their friends and family, feel good about them for a few days, but before they know it they find themselves backsliding.

As a self-regulating system, we have a built-in push towards equilibrium called homeostasis.

Homeostasis Works to Keep Things the Way they Have Always Been, Regardless of Whether a Change is Good or Bad

If you have developed a bad habit, homeostasis will resist your efforts to break that habit. The bigger a change is from your normal equilibrium state, the stronger the resistance to that change will be.

So how can you make a change last?

The first step to combating homeostasis is to be aware of it. Learn to negotiate with your natural resistance. If you take one step backwards, take two steps forward. You want to push your state of equilibrium towards your goal.

The longer you are able to fight the resistance and maintain the change, the easier it becomes. Over time your equilibrium adjusts and homeostasis will be on your side. Maintaining the resolution will become easier than backsliding.
– The Startup Daily