Posts by Jeff Burgess
The Why Factor: What Makes You Different in Business and Life
Although I am happily retired, the one thing I do miss is the thrill of the hunt. There was nothing like having your heart racing while barely beating a deadline in submitting your final proposal. Mine was generally several pages deeper than most, as I always had a story to tell. I considered it the…
Read MoreIs Artificial Intelligence Really Awful Intelligence? You Decide…
It’s amazing to believe that Artificial Intelligence was invented at an academic workshop organized by John McCarthy of IBM back in 1956, a year before I was born. Like all great inventions, this wasn’t the initial plan. They were just trying to create “thinking machines.” Fast forward 69 years, and AI is a brand name…
Read MoreThe People I Misjudged and The Valuable Life Lessons They Taught Me
Perhaps I had a healthy dose of arrogance when I founded BCD back in 1999. After all, my sales career literally started in a warehouse and grew from there. I certainly wasn’t “book-smart” in life, and perhaps I saw that as an advantage. I opened the company as a “selling CEO.” Having CEO on your…
Read MoreThe Art of Selling: Why Trust and Confidence Win in Business Every Time
The most important product a salesperson offers any potential customer is their word. This is where trust begins, and for that matter, where trust could end just as well. Confidence sells. Confidence is contagious. Confidence creates momentum. But where does that confidence come from? It comes from you! Sure, “winging it” works to a point,…
Read MoreNobody Knows the Video I’ve Seen: Inside High-Stakes Security, Surveillance, and Trust
Apparently, in some ways, the book must have failed me, as its purpose was to cleanse forty-five years within the computer industry out of my system. Yet, some two and a half years after retiring, I still have vivid memories, primarily of those BCDVideo years through my retirement in July 2023. When Reputation Beats Price…
Read MoreHow I Built a “Business Within the Business” and Turned Partnerships into Millions
I guess it’s fortunate that the older I get, age 68 as I write this, incidents happen that cause me to reflect on both my personal and professional life. Because I am left-handed, I’ve always felt the rest of the world was backward; it certainly couldn’t have been me. Whatever the reason, it seemed that…
Read MoreWhy Old-School Business Values Beat Modern Corporate Culture Every Time
I miss the old days; old for me, anyway. As much as I was surfing that wave of technology starting in the early days of my computer career – dare I say, capitalizing on it – life was so much more honest back then. And the only thing “instant” back then may have been Minute…
Read MoreHow My Dad’s Simple Rules Built a Lifetime of Character and Respect
The Character Who Taught Me Character It’s very hard to believe that my dad died twenty-four years ago, or will have on May 12 of this year, anyway. Two dozen years, and yet I still think of him every day. Some instance or situation pops in my head, and there he is, along with it.…
Read MoreWhy Trusting Your Team Is the Best Decision You’ll Ever Make as a Leader
How Trusting Your Team Builds Stronger Teams and Better Leaders While it may seem like a reach to go from never-going-to-class college dropout to founding my own technology company, I certainly wasn’t the first. If anything, the least likely. I was pretty much a fuck-up my whole childhood. Some would say, and fairly, that my…
Read MoreCreating Value: Success Happens When You Build a Team That Loves Their Work
Action breeds inspiration more than inspiration breeds action. ~ Willem Dafoe Why Trust Is the Heart of Team Building Among the joys I had throughout my forty-five years within (and withstanding) the computer industry was team building. As I began to land large accounts, it was instrumental to have a knowledgeable team as the inside…
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