by Mark O'Brien | Feb 20, 2015
Hunter Thompson died by his own hand nine years ago today. I found out at about 10:00 the next morning. Despite my brute incomprehension of what I was reading, it struck me as a rather Thompsonesque moment: It was snowing — bleak, cold. I’d gone to my...
by Mark O'Brien | Jan 16, 2015
I have four dental crowns cemented into my noggin. I’m completely familiar with every step of the procedure for getting them in there: the prepping of the tooth; the creation and application of the temporary crown; the molding of the permanent one; and the implanting...
by Mark O'Brien | Jan 15, 2015
When my younger son, Quinn, played basketball at Salve Regina University, I noticed something: When things went badly during a game, the coach would call a time-out and summon the team to the sideline. As the players assembled, he’d pull an index card out of the...
by Mark O'Brien | Dec 9, 2014
If you publish an article like this, complicating otherwise simple, intuitive logic, you should expect some push-back. Here it is: The article’s subtitle is “All Value is Subjective”. Of course it is. If it weren’t, no one would pay for The War...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 20, 2014
Human psychology doesn’t play nice with the relationships between price, cost, and value. To illustrate the point, I offer this letter to a hypothetical client, a company with no brand recognition in its target market. The company is reluctant to commit to an...
