A discount store that offers high-quality merchandise at low prices will necessarily provide minimal personal service.

Do fewer things, but do them better.

If you can’t do free, try doing inexpensive, in which case your secondary product might behave as a core product. Printer manufacturers, for example, often sell their printers below or near cost, knowing that buyers will return again and again to buy refill cartridges.

Pointing out the features of a product to customers does not mean they will understand why the features are useful; one has to explain their direct benefits. For example, call forwarding and call waiting are features; never missing another call is their benefit. Benefits, not features, ultimately sell products.

Chapter 7 bankruptcy is invoked when a business has inadequate assets, revenues, or markets to pay its debts and is unlikely to develop the ability to do so. It results in the company’s dissolution. Assets are liquidated (sold) and the proceeds are used to pay overdue taxes, wages, and creditors. Any remaining cash is paid to stockholders.

Balance Sheet: Shows what a company owns (assets), what it owes to others (liabilities), and how much equity (amounts invested by owners plus profits and losses kept within the company) the owners have.

“We survive by breathing but we can’t say we live to breathe. Likewise, making money is very important for a business to survive, but money alone cannot be the reason for business to exist.”

The Yerkes-Dodson Law says that performance increases with stress, but only up to a point. When stress is too high, performance decreases.

There are important tasks that must be done promptly, unimportant tasks that must be done promptly, important tasks with no particular rush, and unimportant tasks with no particular rush; and sometimes there are things that seem crucial but may not need doing at all.