The more Attached you are to a particular idea or plan, the more you limit your flexibility and reduce your chances of finding a better solution. It’s good to be dedicated to the pursuit of your goals, but only to a point. If you become too Attached to the visions you have in your head, you’ll have a hard time adjusting to the inevitable twists and

Imagine that you provide an ongoing service to a Fortune 500 corporation that increases their annual revenues by $100 million. Is your service worth $10 million a year? Sure—after all, what company would give up $90 million in ongoing revenue? Does it matter if providing this valuable service doesn’t cost you much money? Absolutely not—even if it

Aligning interests is critical to finding Common Ground. Sales isn’t about convincing somebody to do something that’s not in their best interest. Ideally, you should want exactly what your prospects want: the satisfaction of their desire or the resolution of their problem.

An error is a set point defined as zero—any perception that’s not zero is out of control. Think of the pain receptors in your skin. Most of the time, they do nothing, which means everything is under control. If you cut or burn yourself, however, the receptors send a signal that something is wrong, and you’ll act to remedy the situation.

If you expect people to pay you perfectly good money to buy what you’re offering, you must be able to provide a Reason Why the offered price is worth paying. It’s difficult to support a price of $350 million for a rock—unless that rock is the Hope Diamond, a 45.5-carat deep-blue diamond with a long and distinguished history.

Learning how to use complicated financial formulas isn’t the same as learning how to run a business.

In Crucial Conversations, a book about maintaining a sense of Safety while discussing important issues with colleagues and loved ones, authors Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler recommend using the STATE model to communicate without provoking anger or defensiveness: Share your facts—Facts are less controversial, more

Investors increase Communication Overhead (discussed later), which can adversely affect your ability to get things done quickly.

At the beginning of every day, create a list of two or three MITs, then focus on getting them done as quickly as possible. Keep this list separate from your general to-do list or task tracking system. I typically use a 3 × 5 index card or David Seah’s “Emergent Task Planner,”7 a free downloadable PDF that makes it easy to plan your day.