too good to pass up
From CFan's blog:
Business-speak:
- Can’t boil the ocean - "Look, sweatshops are a reality. So is the fact that Americans produce three times more waste than anyone else in the world. Why are you trying to fight it? You can't boil the ocean, buddy."
- Deliverable - "Yo, I just found some tupperware in the back of my drawer with my lunch from six months ago. That shit ain't deliverable."
- Grass roots - "Do you need grass roots to grow corn rows?"
- Huge win - "And so at that last meeting, I looked the board members right in the eyes and said, 'I've devoted fifty years of my life to convincing people that they want shit they don't need and that their lives will be better if they buy shit they really don't want. Some may call that superficial. But, thinking about how much money I've made you guys and how much lip balm I've wasted on kissing your asses, I gotta say: I think my life's been a huge win."
- Line in the sand - "Listen, your group might have blown the lid with that snappy product last year, but mine has been consistently on message and profitable for the past five. I'm drawing a line in the sand: quick profits or safe profits-- stake your soul and decide."
- Loaded for bear - "I'm meeting with a big-shot consultant tomorrow, and I'm really nervous about how she's going to peer into my soul with her hawk-eye spiritual perspicacity. So I'm loading for bear and meditating all day."
- Low-hanging fruit - "Listen, kid. The only reason we're not firing you is because it's cheaper to keep you on doing a frumpy, half-assed job than it is to lose you and do the shit ourselves for weeks while we find another quasi-intern with an inflated ego. So why don't you just make life easier for all of us – stop bitching and, at the very least, grab the low-hanging fruit."
- Mantra - "Our mantra this quarter is going to be 'Exploit! Accessorize!'"
- Mindshare - "We thought we were going to Disneyland for free because it was some amazing deal, but the bastard high-pressure salesmen were pushing a mindshare on us."
- Muddying the waters - "What? Poor people? AIDS relief? Orphans? Listen, this is M&A. We're in the business of devoting our time and values and lives to making rich people richer. Stop muddying the waters."
- Own the customer experience - "One way to own the customer experience is to make them stop thinking for themselves and to turn them into want machines! Go team! Great ROI!"
- Ping - "I need to ping my kids to let them know that they're more important to me than the 100-hour weeks I've been devoting to this deal that will enable customers to save 10% on our handbags."
- Task force - "We created a task force to implement 'fun' in the office. So, everyone, from now on you'll be forced to feign enthusiasm, and to enjoy yourself with a group of people with whom you really have nothing in common, but with whom you spend 2/3rds of your waking life."
- Ticket to the dance - "The ATARI 2600? Oh man, that was just the ticket to the dance. How could anyone in the industry have imagined that the 8-bit NES was just around the corner?"
- Unearth a gem - "I think if we bombard the community with enough inane, vapid advertising, we just might unearth a gem of a market ready and willing to buy our useless shit."