Your job as a marketer isn’t to convince people to want what you’re offering: it’s to help your prospects convince themselves that what you’re offeri… - Josh Kaufman

At the core, all successful businesses sell some combination of money, status, power, love, knowledge, protection, pleasure, and excitement. The more clearly you articulate how your product satisfies one or more of these drives, the more attractive your offer will become.

Accountants and finance professionals rely on a system called Segregation of Duties to prevent all sorts of shady activities. The system, which is intended to reduce cases of fraud and theft, limits a single person’s ability to complete the following business processes: 1. Authorization: reviewing, approving, or overseeing a Transaction. 2. Custody: receiving, accessing, or controlling any assets related to that Transaction. 3. Record keeping: creating and storing accounting records related to each Transaction. 4. Reconciliation: verifying that two sets of records, like internal company Transaction records and external bank statements, match with respect to timing and amount.

I think it’s undeniably true that the human brain works in models. The trick is to have your brain work better than the other person’s brain because it understands the most fundamental models — the ones that do the most work. — CHARLES T. MUNGER,