Welcome to SmartsMatter

Five frogs are sitting peacefully on a lily pad. One decides to jump into the water. How many frogs are left? If you answered four you

Candace is struggling. She is going through a bitter divorce, was laid off from a job she loved, and her two kids are fighting incessantly because

If you’ve ever traveled by motorcycle, you know stopping for gas can be time consuming. Dismount, take off your helmet and gloves, unzip your riding pants,

The date is January 28, 1896, a frigid Tuesday in the small English village of Paddock Wood. Walter Arnold is feeling frisky, so he decides to

“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person.” Jeff Bezos Last week I wrote an article about the failure of Zillow’s home buying

Did you hear the news about Zillow? It finally admitted what I’ve been saying for years – its home flip business is a flop.   Zillow’s stock

I’ve read hundreds of business books over the years. I remember when Dad gave me my first one, How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

At the age of 12 I had become an incessant chatterbox, often to the irritation of my dad, Chubby. One Sunday afternoon in 1960 I was in

Sara was a pretty good student at Florida State with a dream of becoming an attorney…until she took the dreaded LSAT to determine her aptitude for

In 2007 Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were roommates in San Francisco, and they had a problem…they couldn’t afford their rent. The roommates had met in

Lori Holden had the same fears most children experience growing up (meeting other kids, speaking in front of her class, trying new things). Her dad taught

A few days ago a friend sent me an article titled Americans Haven’t Been This Down on the Housing Market Since 1982. The crux was “how fast

Patrick was the oldest of three boys, born in 1988 in a small village in Ireland.  His mother, a microbiologist. His father, an electrical engineer. Patrick took

Jim invited his mother over for dinner. When Mom arrived she was a bit surprised to meet Jim’s breathtakingly beautiful roommate, Krista. Mom had assumed her

They tried to keep it a secret. But the word leaked out. The company would release its first cell phone. Underground photos circulated around the

Yes, you read that right…Spongmonkey.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuPTZWhz46M I know, the name alone might make you cringe. Spongmonkeys were the pair of horribly annoying, disfigured, singing rodents that appeared

Have you heard the joke that marketing is like sex? Every company thinks they’re good at it…but few actually are.  That joke is usually followed by

When Robinhood launched in 2015 with $3 million in venture capital, established stock brokers  laughed it off as just another fintech fad, much the way taxi drivers

During the height of the Cold War in the 1960s nuclear paranoia was at an all time high. I remember those scary “duck and cover” drills we

The Boston Globe named his company “the Apple of its time,” calling it “a juggernaut of innovation.” When Harvard scientist Edwin Land founded the company in Cambridge,