Jim Randel's (jimrandel) Blog

There are a lot of people (including me) second-guessing decisions made in the last decade. Here are a couple of my reflections:1. Forget the old saws -“Stocks in the long term always go up” was disproved as we ended the decade with all major indices lower than they were in January, 2000. If you ...

I’ve just added a new favorite book to my top ten list: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, PhD.The premise of this book is that in our increasingly complex and pressured world, we often make decisions by falling back on instinctive patterns. Cialdini has identified six ca...

Last night at midnight I was sound asleep. Then the phone rang. Within seconds I had picked up the receiver and determined it was a wrong number. But now I was wide awake.Since I had to be up early this morning, I started fretting. I worried that I would not fall back to sleep – which worry, of c...

I have always been interested in magic – especially “close-up” magic, card and coin tricks when the audience is just inches away from the magician. In fact, I have done card tricks since I was a teenager. Now (a few decades later), as I research a book on the subject of persuasion (how to get peo...

A friend of mine recently ran for public office. He certainly did not lack for things to do and nor does he need the attention. He is a retired senior executive of a large corporation with a nice pension and plenty of financial security. He has consulting assignments if he wants them and offers t...

Being an entrepreneur is tough… very tough. There are many reasons some entrepreneurs make it big, and others do not. Tonight I would like to speak to the organic, the personal, reasons that some entrepreneurs fall short of their promise. This is not about capital, which is a challenge for all en...

Sooner or later, we have to talk about the economy and there are perhaps no greater influences on thinking in Washington today than Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” and Keynes’ “animal spirits.” Let me outline for you the difference between the two:Adam Smith: Smith believed that the result of lots ...

I represent a group of six doctors who formed a partnership to buy a medical office building. And, they formed a partnership of another type: these doctors have a pact. If any one of them starts to lose his ability or drive to provide top-flight medical services, the other five can force him to r...

I don’t even like the sound of the word: WHO – BRIS.Hubris is an overarching self-importance. Someone who thinks that he or she is different from (a better version of) the rest of us.Oftentimes hubris is the result of some high level of success. That to me is particularly galling because after st...

Everyone sets goals at one time or another. Some people reach them, others don’t.A major reason people give up on their goals is that they underestimate the length of time it takes to achieve whatever they are seeking.Yesterday was the New York Marathon. All the runners in the race understood tha...