http://www.sergiutruta.com Discover your inner potential! Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:14:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Since April 2008, I've started working from home. And by "home", I don't mean only home, but anywhere I am. As I love traveling, I take my MacBook with me and work from wherever I might be. I like this flexibility, though I work more than I used to when ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2008/06/10/working-in-an-office-vs-working-from-home/ Are there people that cannot learn? No. Are there people that do not learn? Yes. Why is that? I've asked myself this question many times. The only answer I've come up with is this: people do not learn because they do not realize they have to learn. It's not enough wanting ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2008/03/06/people-that-do-not-learn/ To test or not to test I read a great article on testing written by James Golick. There's always a debate about doing unit testing or not. Most of the we-don't-write-tests-because-we-don't-have-time-to-do-it evangelists say that they have to implement features and release the product and that's the reason they don't write ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2008/01/22/why-do-we-not-write-tests/ I've read an interesting article at ReadWriteWeb about free content and giving away for free. I'll start by saying I'm for the free content, and not against it. It seems that more and more people are against free, and against giving away for free. This whole "for free" trend was probably ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2008/01/16/the-danger-of-freenot-so-scary/ There are some basic rules that the web and branding on web works. Probably you've heard about them. Though I'll tell you that they aren't always true. I mean they're not true everywhere. There's a difference on how the web is perceived US or Western Europe, and on how it ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2007/12/09/misterious-rules-on-the-world-wide-web/ A lot of people would like to run a startup but think they don't have what it takes to succeed. They think they don't have enough experience or enough knowledge to build a startup. Though how do we get the needed experience? By building a startup, of course :). So, ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2007/11/22/to-startup-or-not-to-startup/ For any company, finding a way to align company values with the employee's personal values might be the key to become a great place to work for. This is something that some managers know and others don't or completely ignore. In the article, when I refer to the company I ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2007/11/15/company-values-and-personal-values/ Advertising on mobile phones or How to create a user-centric community - the free SMS service. Why the "How to create ... " alternative? When I think about developing a service, I think about the users of this service and I ask myself: what would be their benefit from using ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2007/05/30/advertising-on-mobile-phones/ Advertising and Communities A lot of the successful businesses have learned how to use two very important tools: the advertising industry, and the power of communities. These both become more and more important and more and more powerful. Google for example became one of the mostly known companies in the world by ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2007/05/17/advertising-and-communities-developing-a-business-plan/ I have outlined here some questions that I ask myself when thinking about a Startup idea. There might be others too, you're welcome to list them. What effort is necessary to implement the idea? How many people and how much time is needed for implementing this idea? This is important because the ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2007/05/06/how-to-evaluate-a-startup-idea/ We hear all the time people complaining about their lack of power. "I cannot change anything at my job" or "I cannot change my personal relations" or "I cannot improve my business relations". When you start thinking about some situation, never start with "no" or "cannot". The "No", stops your ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2007/05/06/find-the-power-to-achieve-your-goals/ What makes us so different? Why some of us have great careers, great businesses, great relationships and others have lousy careers, lousy or no businesses and lousy relationships? Why aren't all the children brilliant? Why aren't we all top performers? Why aren't we all very good at something? There are two ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2007/05/03/why-some-people-excel-and-others-don%e2%80%99t-mindset-believe-in-your-own-potential/ Earlier today, I was in a restaurant and I was reading an article in Business Week about the first Starbucks opening in Romania. The article was telling about the great experience that Starbucks is trying to offer to their customers. The idea behind the business is simple: selling coffee. How ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2007/05/01/startups-great-ideas-vs-great-experiences/ Most of us live our lives by some predefined patterns. We tend to do default things only because we're taught that's how it should be. Our parents, our teachers, most of our guides teach us these default things; we're always told we have to do them. They are never tagged ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2007/04/19/default-things-we-do/ What is a blog? A blog (short for web log) is a personal web site where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. It can be used as a personal diary, a collaborative space, a political space, a collection of links or memos to the world. New stuff shows up at ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2007/04/17/corporate-blogging/ What is lateral thinking? I'm pretty sure you've already heard about lateral thinking. Probably you've even read something about this. Lateral thinking means thinking out of the box, looking at problems from unusual angles. It means finding answers to your questions by thinking unconventionally. Because of our educational system, we tend ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2007/04/13/lateral-thinking/ Advertising What is Advertising? What does Advertising focus on? What is it's purpose? We all know the answers to these questions. Shortly put, advertising means letting the consumers (people) know of new products, services or even new companies. Every day we are fed different audio, video, pictures, banners, text or other ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2007/04/05/advertising-industry-crossroad-why-not-sharing-the-money-with-the-consumers/ Even though this article is mainly addressed to managers, all feedback is welcomed ;) People tend to change their jobs every one or two years. It's hard for companies to invest time and money into someone who'll leave in one year. They tend to avoid people who are not stable, ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2007/04/01/motivation-inside-your-company-creating-the-right-environment-for-a-productivity-boost/ Successful businesses and new companies have a lot of key elements contributing to their success. One of them, and a really important one too, is MANAGEMENT. Many businesses started to change the way they are managing people, or they started with a "workers as people" type of management from the ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2007/03/28/new-type-of-management-in-the-adaptability-century/ Why Motivation? Ok, I know your first question: why another blog on personal development? I know a lot of great blogs or websites focusing on personal development. My favorite ones are www.stevepavlina.com, www.paulgraham.com, www.jamesray.com and others. I read regularly blogs about personal development and the main topics are: making ... http://www.sergiutruta.com/2007/03/19/motivation/