DW's Blog

Holy Moly

by DW Green — May 28, 2025

“We exist only by chance, after all.”

Elsewhere in the universe, a star many times the mass of our third-rate sun is living out its final moments in a wild spin before collapsing into a black hole. Its final exhale bends spacetime itself into a well of nothingness that can swallow every atom that ever touched us and every datum we ever produced—every poem, statue, and symphony we’ve ever known. This entropic spectacle remains insentient to questions of blame and mercy, devoid of why. Holy Moly!In four billion years, our own star will follow its fate, collapsing into a white dwarf. We exist only by chance, after all.

Read More – The Calming Effect Of The Grocery Store Produce Sprayers

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by DW Green — May 21, 2025

We’ve been seeking through external circumstances has been our nature all along, waiting patiently for us to return home to the eternal present.”

In our fast-paced world of constant notifications, deadlines, and expectations, we often forget a profound truth about our existence: peace, undisturbable peace, which is independent of circumstances, is our inherent and ever-present nature.This isn’t just a comforting thought—it’s a recognition of something fundamental about who we are beneath the noise of daily life. We spend countless hours chasing happiness through achievements, possessions, or relationships, yet what we’re seeking has been with us all along. Thus, peace and happiness, in all circumstances and under all conditions, are two ever-present qualities of our Self.Why, then, do we feel so disconnected from this natural state? The answer lies in our relationship with time. Our minds construct an “imaginary self”—one that exists primarily in memories of the past or projections of the future. Such is the fate of this imaginary self, to be forever escaping the Now in favor of a past or future where we long to be.When we reminisce about better times or anxiously anticipate what’s coming next, we abandon the only...

by DW Green — May 14, 2025

“I love those competitors that won’t sell the neat stuff, I call them Sales
Preventions Managers.”—Wise retailer.

There’s no guarantee of keeping a customer for life. However, having an unconditional product and service guarantee can go a long way in maintaining your base of loyal primary shoppers. A guarantee is a promise or assurance that a company will stand behind the quality of products it sells or services it performs. Guarantees build trust and loyalty with consumers. In essence, a guarantee is a company’s commitment to the well-being of its customers.5 Reasons Why A Guarantee WorksFirst, it pushes the entire company to focus on customers’ definition of good products/service, not an executive’s assumption. Second, it sets clear performance standards, which boost employees’ performance and morale. Third, it generates reliable data (through payouts) when performance is poor. Fourth, it forces an organization to examine its entire service-delivery system for possible failure points. Finally, it builds customer loyalty, sales, and market share.What Makes a Good Guarantee?A good guarantee is:

Unconditional
Easy to understand and communicate
Meaningf
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Coper River Salmon

by DW Green — May 7, 2025

“I love those competitors that won’t sell the neat stuff, I call them Sales
Preventions Managers.”—Wise retailer.

Salmon from the Copper River in Alaska could be the world’s best tasting fish. It’s truly a very special early summer treat. I remember back in the late 1980’s, suggesting a Copper River salmon promotion to an Alaskan retailer. The owner said, “No way Jose. They wouldn’t sell. Because everyone who lives in Alaska, catches their own salmon.” After some arm twisting, a couple shots of bourbon and a small wager, he agreed to promote them. It was a huge success and they continued to promote Copper River salmon every year thereafter. Now days, the cost of procuring Copper River salmon is the reason cited by retailers not to promote them. They are expensive, nearly $50 a pound retail in California.“I love those competitors that won’t sell the neat stuff, I call them Sales Preventions Managers.” Funny yet true. How many times do retailers discourage or prevent sales? Fear of loss always prevents gain.The Copper River salmon season in 2025 officially begins on May 22nd with a 12-hour opener for sockeye and Chinook salmon. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) anticipates a strong sockeye run, forecas...

by DW Green — April 30, 2025

“By practicing stillness, we don’t retreat from life—we dive more deeply into it.”

In our perpetually busy world, stillness is often misunderstood. Stillness is not emptiness or absence—it’s presence in its purest form. Like a serene pond whose surface barely ripples, stillness may appear quiet on the outside, but beneath teems with vibrant life and profound connection.When we allow ourselves to be still, we create space to discover what already exists within us. Life is within. Love is within! By pausing and becoming still enough to notice the love that dwells both inside us and all around us, we engage in an act that is simultaneously personal and revolutionary. This practice of intentional stillness becomes a deeply powerful and countercultural statement in a world that values constant motion.Most contemporary society operates on the assumption that movement equals progress—that we must continuously move quickly and climb upward. Stillness challenges this deeply ingrained notion that being busy and occupied is inherently better than being present and attentive. It refuses the constant call to distraction and the expectation that we remain perpetually plugged in to the digital stream of information and stimuli.When we embrace...

by DW Green — April 23, 2025

“Activities are the building blocks of your business model and the foundation of
your competitive advantage. They answer the question:
“What do we actually do?”

In marketing, we often focus on traditional metrics—brand awareness, customer acquisition costs, conversion rates—but there’s a more fundamental metric that deserves our attention: activities.Beyond the Status Quo:Most businesses operate within established industry norms. They analyze competitors, observe standard practices, and make incremental improvements to existing models. This approach inevitably leads to imitation rather than innovation.True differentiation comes not from doing things marginally better, but from doing fundamentally different things— or doing the same things in dramatically different ways.Activities as Competitive Advantage:Activities are the building blocks of your business model and the foundation of your competitive advantage. They answer the question: “What do we actually do?”Consider Southwest Airlines. Their market position as a low-cost carrier isn’t just a tagline—it’s built on specific activities:

Using secondary airports
Em
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The Wisdom of Little Eyes

by DW Green — April 16, 2025

“I found myself wondering how much richer our lives might be if we could reclaim even a fraction of that child-like perception…”

Last Saturday, I found myself sitting across from my old friend Rich on his back porch. The afternoon sun filtered through the oak branches as we sipped coffee and caught up on life’s latest chapters. Rich’s face lit up when he mentioned his four-year-old grandson, Ethan, who had been staying with him for the week.“You know what’s strange?” Rich said, leaning forward in his chair. “Yesterday, I was having a rough morning— nothing major, just feeling a bit off. I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, was just going through the motions making breakfast. Ethan walked into the kitchen, looked up at me, and asked, ‘Grandpa, why are you sad today?’”Rich shook his head in wonder. “I hadn’t said a word about being upset. My wife didn’t notice anything different about me. But somehow, this little boy picked up on something in my expression or posture that gave it away.”As Rich continued sharing stories about Ethan’s uncanny perceptiveness, something clicked for me—a realization that felt like a gentle wave washing over my understanding of human consciousness.Children like Ethan exist in...

by DW Green — April 9, 2025

It’s been my experience that following the status quo promotes imitation rather than innovation.

It’s been my experience that following the status quo promotes imitation rather than innovation.I was reading an article on leadership the other day. The following from Bill Taylor, cofounder of Fast Company, makes really good sense to me.“The true mark of a leader is the willingness to stick with a bold course of action—an unconventional business strategy, a unique product-development roadmap, a controversial marketing campaign—even as the rest of the world wonders why you’re not marching in step with the status quo. In other words, real leaders are happy to zig while others zag. They understand that in an era of hyper-competition and non-stop disruption, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to stand for something special.”It’s been my experience that following the status quo promotes imitation rather than innovation. Leadership is about discovering and performing different activities from rivals or performing similar activities in different ways. Differentiation arises from both the choice of activities and how they are performed. Activities, then, are the basic units of competitive advantage. Overall advan...

by DW Green — April 2, 2025

Our dreaming mind might be showing us something profound about reality that our word-saturated waking mind often misses.

During our recently completed Dreams and Zen retreat, participants explored a fascinating territory that many of us overlook—the profound differences between our waking and dreaming minds, and what these differences reveal about the nature of reality itself.The Word-Soaked Waking MindIn our daytime consciousness, words and concepts dominate our experience. We narrate constantly, labeling, categorizing, and explaining our reality through language. These words seem to express our whole experience, yet they actually limit our awareness in subtle but profound ways.Our waking self-identity becomes wrapped in verbal constructs—stories about who we are, what we want, what we fear. We soak our experience in words until the direct encounter with reality becomes obscured by our descriptions of it.The Dreamworld’s Wordless WisdomBut at night, something remarkable happens.In dreaming, we fully experience a concentrated presentation of reality that operates largely without words. We enter what feels like a collective storehouse of pure experience where we interact directl...

by DW Green — March 26, 2025

The emotions we experience, though very real, originate from within ourselves, not from external circumstances.

When we say things like “My work is overwhelming” or “My boss is frustrating me,” we’re making a fundamental error in how we understand our emotions. These external factors—work tasks or another person’s behavior— don’t actually have the ability to create feelings within us. They exist outside us and cannot access our minds.The emotions we experience, though very real, originate from within ourselves, not from external circumstances. This insight was central to Stoic philosophy, which used the term “hypolepsis” (meaning “taking up”) to describe how our minds process perceptions, thoughts, and judgments.What we assume and what we generate in our minds belongs to us alone. We cannot legitimately blame others for making us feel stressed or frustrated any more than we can blame them for our jealousy. The true cause of these feelings resides within us—external factors merely serve as the targets of our emotional responses.