13 Tips to Remember From Our Jan-Feb Edition

Consider this your cheat sheet. We pulled 13 of our favorite insights from the January/February issue — quick wins, smart reframes, and a few lines worth stealing.

1. Send three genuine compliments today — to a client, a vendor, whoever. Five minutes. People remember who made them feel valued. (Calendar)

2. $20 client-retention play: Send 10 top customers a free pizza coupon. While chatting with the pizzeria owner, ask if they need menus, window graphics, or car magnets. Two birds, one pie. (Calendar)

3. Most to-do lists are fairy tales. Keep five tasks. Do them in order. When one drops off, add another. Fewer boxes, more real work. (Tip Sheet)

4. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman never says yes on the spot. His line: “Thanks for the invite. I’ll let you know.” Future-you will be less overbooked and less cranky. (Tip Sheet)

5. If your customer is texting “any updates?” you’ve already failed. Every job needs one shepherd. Over-communicate until they beg you to stop. (Ask Big Picture)

6. Stuck? Ask Tim Ferriss’s question: “If I could only work two hours per week on my business, what would I do?” Artificial constraints spark creativity open budgets never will. (Lead Story, Alternative Management Strategies)

7. Stanford’s Naomi Bagdonas found customers pay 20% more when you drop a playful line. Quote the price, grin: “I’ll throw in my pet frog.” If they laugh, they buy. (Tip Sheet)

8. Assigning tasks feels like punishment — until you see people rate the same job differently. Planning Poker reveals who finds phone calls easy and who dreads them. (Dave Bailey, Ask BP)

9. Perfection kills progress. Anne Lamott’s fix: “shitty first drafts.” Start messy, suspend the demand for brilliance, get moving. Refine later. (Tip Sheet)

10. Failure forces reflection. Success delays it. When something’s broken, owners look outward. When something works, they double down — and perspective quietly disappears. (Mark Coudray)

11. When selling, try to bundle by environment, not product. Wall graphics + floor decals + counter displays. When customers visualize their space holistically, add-ons sell themselves. (Kevin Baumgart)

12. Your life is a study with a sample size of one. No control group. No peer review. As Buckminster Fuller put it, learning comes “by trial and error, error, error.” The repetition matters. (Editor’s Note)

13. Borrow ideas from other industries. How would a packaging company approach this job? A gallery? An event planner? Fresh angles come from outside your usual frame. (Lead story, Alternative Management Strategies)