In the first few years after founding AP Logic, I went from being a dreamer and a creative person who was proactive to being someone who was drowning in a box of requirements and “to-dos”. Like any new business, there were things that weren’t working.  I needed to learn and needed help. But in getting...

Have you ever wondered why many startup software engineering and tech projects go sideways at the 80-90% completion mark? Just as it seems like all the pieces are coming together . . . there are unexpected delays, errors and team frustration. Most software projects broadly traverse 3 phases: First is the Concept/Design phase (highly interactive)....

Mozart, Einstein, George Patton: All were people who lived far from the average, “middle-of the bell-curve” and accomplished incredible things. These outlier team members help make so many start-ups exceptional. But these same outliers run into challenges that extend from their out of the box thinking. Founders often fall into this category as well. So,...

Article written by John Burley, Principal, Burley Consulting for Inc.com Not too long ago, I wrote about some surprising reasons that a company can be undervalued. One of them was the owner being too important–the company expert, the oil in the well-oiled machine, the chief problem solver, the one who holds the relationship with the customers. Here, we explore...

Walt Disney was told he was “uncreative” prior to founding Disney. Colonel Sanders of KFC Chicken didn’t succeed until age 65.  Judi Sheppard Missett founded Jazzercise after she quit being a professional dancer and was failing as a dance instructor.  She now has 7,500 locations.  What do all these people have in common?  They had...

During the early days of AP Logic, I had an employee come to me and ask for a demotion. I had promoted this person from a web development role to a project management position. Shortly after, I found that he was stressed out, customers were not getting consistent feedback, and I was frustrated by the...

I was participating in a board meeting for a young software company and the CEO was asked by an investor how long their average sales cycle lasted. The CEO started to respond, corrected himself several times and finally shared that once he got in front of the right person he could get their eyes to...

A few years back, I was out of town visiting a national distributor to sort out an eCommerce project. Driving to their office, I was on the verge of a breakdown because we were caught in between two warring factions in the client’s company – the engineers versus the sales and business team. Then it...

1. Female Entrepreneurs Rising. Last year, for the first time ever, we did more business with female entrepreneurs than with males. While we’re a very small sample size, we still think that we represent a larger trend in the economy. Our female clients often perceive nuances in how people learn and buy that help them build...

I know what you’re thinking: “Encourage employees to quit? That’s ridiculous! Everyone knows how stressful and expensive it is to deal with high turnover!” Stay with me for a minute. Encouraging employee turnover at your company may be the best move you can make to build a hard-working team culture, and it might just boost...

Tech support is generally synonymous with a bad experience in today’s standard of software support. We usually consider ourselves lucky if we can understand the accent of whomever is asking us to turn our computer off and on again, and it has come to the point where support that meets basic expectations is exulted as...

Have you ever seen the above cartoon? More to the point, have you ever lived it? And if you have, you’ve probably lost a few years of life trying to understand how something seemingly so simple could… not be so simple! From my standpoint as an engineer, it boils down to things not being communicated....

As you would expect, at AP Logic, we get a ton of requests for mobile app development, but interestingly, very few clients know which device form factors (sizes) they want us to build for. Why does it matter? Have you ever observed people taking notes during a presentation or conversation? Recently at a business symposium,...