John Cox

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FPA Journal - Personal Financial Ratios: An Elegant Road Map to Financial Health and Retirement

This is a directory and informational resource from the Financial Planning Association designed to help people find and understand when to work with a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® professional. The site emphasizes that CFP® professionals can assist with various financial needs—from setting goals and managing investments to retirement planning and debt elimination—and recommends interviewing multiple planners to find the right fit for your specific situation.

Permalink retirementadvicepersonal finance

weblogs.sqlteam.com

Due

Wesabe

I don't have an actual article to summarize here. What you've shared is the homepage and editorial standards page of Due, a retirement and personal finance publication. To provide the kind of summary you've requested, I would need the text of a specific article that was saved—for instance, a particular piece about a retirement strategy, investment approach, or financial planning topic. If you could share the actual article content, I'd be happy to summarize it in the format you've described.

Permalink retirementadvicepersonal financeinvestment

davidmaister.com

David Maister > Articles > Why (Most) Training is Useless

Most business training fails because companies use it as a standalone event disconnected from organizational systems, management alignment, and reward structures—when it should be the final step in a carefully sequenced change program that first addresses why people should care, what behavior will be measured and rewarded, and what systems support the new practices. Training is fundamentally a skill-building exercise requiring hands-on practice and emotional development, not merely intellectual understanding, yet it's typically delivered as educational content by academics disconnected from real workplace application. Effective training demands that senior leaders visibly commit, operating groups train together with their managers present, participants prepare rigorously beforehand, and the organization immediately applies and monitors the skills in their regular work.

Permalink trainingleadershipadvicebusiness

www.i-resign.com

www.escapefromcubiclenation.com

Escape from Cubicle Nation: Open letter to CEOs, COOs, CIOs and CFOs across the corporate world

J. Timothy King argues that the optimal company size is between 20-30 employees, beyond which management becomes burdensome and less rewarding than smaller operations. He contrasts this positive experience with his subsequent move to a larger, more stable corporate employer, suggesting that the trade-offs of corporate employment may not be worth the security they promise.

Permalink leadershipadvicebusinessentrepreneurship

www.fastcompany.com

The Five Most Common Lies in Business

Paul LaFontaine, who left a major music company to consult on business honesty, identifies five pervasive lies in corporate culture: claiming people are a company's most important asset (when financial assets actually are), presenting decisions as rational when they're really personal preferences, judging performance objectively when favoritism determines outcomes, separating business from personal stakes (when everything in business is personal), and prioritizing customers over self-interest (when people actually prioritize themselves). He argues that these lies persist because executives avoid honest conversations about what's really motivating their decisions, and that genuine candor—even anger—handled directly would be more truthful than the euphemisms that typically cloak business dealings.

Permalink culturecommunicationleadershipadvice

www.stevepavlina.com

10 Stupid Mistakes Made by the Newly Self-Employed

# Summary This article distills lessons from 14 years of self-employment into ten common mistakes small business owners make: being selective about customers rather than pursuing everyone, finding the balance between frugal and wasteful spending, avoiding pretense about your business size or capabilities, recognizing that contracts matter less than the relationships behind them, trusting your intuition about people and deals, staying human and informal rather than overly corporate, letting your personality shine through rather than adopting a generic "businesslike" persona, and focusing on genuine value creation rather than just making sales. The final two lessons emphasize that while value creation is essential, you must also continuously optimize your processes to deliver that value cost-effectively and sustainably.

Permalink productivityadvicebusinesspersonal finance

blog.guykawasaki.com

Bona tempora volvant--by Guy Kawasaki: How to Prevent a Bozo Explosion

Guy Kawasaki identifies fourteen specific warning signs that a successful company is experiencing a "bozo explosion"—the decline into mediocrity that often follows rapid growth and IPO success—including overuse of buzzwords like "partner" and "strategic," excessive perks, hiring based on credentials rather than merit, and management arrogance. He then prescribes seven remedies: hire people better than yourself, eliminate arrogance, deliberately understaff and undergrow rather than chase growth at all costs, look beyond résumés when hiring, diversify your workforce, and promptly remove underperformers rather than hoping they'll improve.

Permalink leadershipadvicebusinesshiring

slackermanager.com

blog.guykawasaki.com

The Art of Execution

Guy Kawasaki's "The Art of Execution" offers practical guidance on moving from fundraising success to actual business execution, arguing that entrepreneurs must set specific, measurable, relevant, and "rathole-resistant" goals with clear accountability rather than vague aspirations. The piece serves as both a startup manual and a corrective for organizations that have lost focus, emphasizing that getting the money is only the beginning—the harder work of disciplined execution and goal-setting follows.

Permalink productivityleadershipadvicebusiness

paulgraham.com

How to Do What You Love

Graham argues that finding work you love is essential for both happiness and excellence, yet most people are systematically misled about this possibility through childhood education that frames work as tedium, social pressures to pursue prestigious careers, and financial anxieties that push them toward money over passion. He distinguishes between two viable paths—the "organic route" of pursuing what you love directly, and the riskier "two-job route" of working for money while building toward your passion on the side—and emphasizes that the ability to produce concrete work and resist prestige are key tests for discovering what you truly want to do. The essay concludes that while finding such work is genuinely difficult and often takes decades, recognizing it as possible and maintaining awareness of what genuinely appeals to you, rather than what you think you should want, significantly improves your odds.

Permalink philosophyadviceeducationbusiness

GarrettDimon.com

Garrett Dimon / The Time is Now for Front-End Architects

Front-end development has become sufficiently complex—spanning HTML, CSS, JavaScript, accessibility, usability, and integration with backend systems—that most teams need a dedicated front-end architect rather than leaving these concerns to either backend engineers or markup-only developers. The author argues that current enterprise frameworks like ASP.Net and Websphere demonstrate the consequences of treating frontend technologies as an afterthought, producing substandard markup and failing to separate concerns properly. True front-end architects must understand both client-side and backend technologies well enough to make informed decisions about implementation approaches and communicate effectively with engineers across the stack.

Permalink designarchitectureadvice

www.to-done.com

Tips for getting to sleep faster & sleeping better

Josh describes his lifelong struggle with racing thoughts that keep him awake for hours despite not having clinical insomnia, then offers six practical remedies he's collected and tested. The advice ranges from avoiding screens thirty minutes before bed (because their light mimics daylight) to drinking milk for its tryptophan content, going to bed only when genuinely tired, reserving the bed primarily for sleep, practicing meditation or progressive muscle relaxation, and exercising during daytime rather than evening.

Permalink healthwellnesssleepadvice

www.sitepoint.com

Why Small Web Design Firms Should Think Big

Neitlich argues that most freelance and small web design firms fail to achieve significant growth because they think too small—setting timid goals, avoiding new strategies, and refusing to invest in marketing or business development. He outlines five concrete steps for scaling a web design business to seven figures: setting ambitious goals, prioritizing business development and professional positioning, developing a clear strategic foundation that identifies target markets and unique value, building leveraged assets like marketing systems and strategic partnerships, and taking consistent action rather than remaining passive. The piece emphasizes that success requires commitment to comprehensive solutions and proactive marketing rather than waiting for clients to discover you.

Permalink advicebusinessentrepreneurshipmarketing