Business Tips Archives - Chris Carosa

The Last Manila Folder

By Chris Carosa on September 29, 2026

You may not have seen me around recently. That’s because it’s September. Or at least it was at the time I wrote this. It may be October by the time you read this.

Doesn’t matter. Every year around this time, I start filing away manila folders. It generally begins in mid-September, with the last one archived by the first week of October.

What’s in these mysterious folders?

A very small slice of my life.

Small.

But intense.

For, though the time may seem short, the mileage isn’t. And, if there’s one thing you have to remember, it’s not about the time, it’s about the mileage.

Now, here’s the misleading thing: this collection of folded manila card stock doesn’t even tell Continue Reading “The Last Manila Folder”

Posted in Business Tips, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged AI, Albany Business Review, authority, Bullfinch Fund, Carosa Stanton Asset Management, Catskills, East Aurora, Greater Western New York, Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel, networking, New York Press Association, organizing, Preemption Line, Rebecca Capparelli, SEC, Utica, Walter Thorne

My Life With AI—Part VIII: The Fallacy Of Grading GenAI

By Chris Carosa on August 4, 2026

Lured you, didn’t I? When I said last time, “Eventually I realized the problem wasn’t GenAI. It was my prompt. I wasn’t asking it to preserve my voice. Once I explained that preserving my voice was part of the assignment, the results improved dramatically.” You no doubt thought, “What was his prompt?”

There is an art and a skill to training AI. That’s a bit involved and definitely depends on your use and needs. It’s also not the subject of this column. Rather than discussing how to train GenAI, I want to discuss something just as important: how to evaluate it.

Every semester, students receive report cards. Imagine how little a report card would tell you Continue Reading “My Life With AI—Part VIII: The Fallacy Of Grading GenAI”

Posted in Business Tips, Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Anthropic, artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Copyedit, excel, fact-checking, Gemini, GenAI, Google, Grammarly, Grok, hallucination, Microsoft, OpenAI, Perplexity, Pinpoint, Powerpoint, presentation, proofread, ProWritingAid, research, SpaceXAI, voice, Word, X

My Life With AI—Part VII: The Joy Of Discovering The Hidden Value Of GenAI

By Chris Carosa on July 28, 2026

Have you ever hired an intern? Besides having a good heart, you probably also hoped to get more work done. An intern can help you do it.

Hold this thought. I’ll come back to it in a moment.

Despite piquing my curiosity, I quickly abandoned the first generation of GenAI platforms. They were too inconsistent. That frustration led me to build my own local AI environment, which taught me Python but also taught me how demanding AI infrastructure really is. Ironically, while I struggled to Continue Reading “My Life With AI—Part VII: The Joy Of Discovering The Hidden Value Of GenAI”

Posted in Business Tips, Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged AI, artificial intelligence, Charles Dickens, English teacher, Ernest Hemingway, GenAI, generative AI, Hamburger Test, hidden value, intern, Python, resources, speed, voice, William Faulkner, writing

Are You A Promoter Or A Closer?

By Chris Carosa on April 28, 2026

They don’t teach you this in business school. But they’ll still give you an “A” for it.

The textbook teaches you how to draft a presentation. It doesn’t teach you how to deliver it. Here’s what happened in real life:

The MBA course focused on communications. It wasn’t a marketing course; it was a corporate governance course. The professor assigned a final project requiring us to form teams, with each team offering their presentation to the class.

We had a week to complete the presentation. It was the week I was away attending my company’s annual strategic planning meeting. I couldn’t help craft the presentation. This was OK. I was the only one on the team willing to give the presentation. I’d be back in time for that, but not back in time to rehearse.

One of my teammates didn’t like that. She was nervous about the grade. The other teammates apparently trusted me and let me go in front of the class.

I gave the performance you’d expect from a former AM disc jockey. It mentioned all the facts, but it was animated, entertaining, and completely different from what the class expected. My nervous teammate fumed.

The professor gave us an “A.”

Here’s the funny thing. I may have hit it out of the park in front of the large group, but if the Continue Reading “Are You A Promoter Or A Closer?”

Posted in Business Tips, Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life Tagged air force, army, business, closers, dealers, finishers, marketing, promoters, promotion, public relations, sales, selling, Simon School

Optimal Teamwork Relies On Every ‘I’ In Team

By Chris Carosa on September 30, 2025

How many times have you applauded optimal teamwork that performs beyond expectations? You say something like, “They’re a well-oiled machine,” or “They’re perfect cogs running like clockwork.”

Every workgroup aspires to reach this level of efficiency. Managers have visions of their employees acting as a team. A winning team.

And you know what they say, don’t you? They say, “There’s no ‘I’ in team.”

And they would be correct. But not in the way they think.Continue Reading “Optimal Teamwork Relies On Every ‘I’ In Team”

Posted in Business Tips, Gray Matter Musings, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged athlete, Bickering Bills, Buffalo Bills, business, coach, company, corporation, ego, employee, individuality, Josh Allen, leader, leadership, manager, Marv Levy, orchestra, organization, Self-Interest, Selfishness, talent, team, teamwork, worker

The Side Hustle Juggle: How A Fair Game Taught Me The Secret To A Happy Life (Part II)

By Chris Carosa on May 13, 2025

Dawn’s glow broke at 5:30 am, heralding my latest side hustle juggle. As the sun peeked above the horizon, the whine of the laser printers wound down. The parlor-converted-into-a-newsroom fell silent, but the hot, inky tang of the freshly printed pages lingered. The pages themselves sat neatly arranged on the brightly lit layout table. Hours earlier, my co-publisher scoffed, ‘Chris, it’s impossible,’ and left for bed. Her husband stayed to help finish a job that couldn’t be finished.

The paper was done. The deadline achieved. The fumes of adrenaline pumped through my veins. Juggling a newspaper, a job, and grad school, sleepless for twenty-four hours, most people would have flopped into bed at this point. I didn’t.

I couldn’t.

Everything was working just as the system promised. An outside observer would not have Continue Reading “The Side Hustle Juggle: How A Fair Game Taught Me The Secret To A Happy Life (Part II)”

Posted in Business Tips, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, AI, Al Ries, artificial intelligence, carny, Custody First, entrepreneur, InDesign, Jack Trout, Lifetime Dream Process, marketing, Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel, Pagemaker, parallel entrepreneur, Pre-Cana, side hustle, Simon School, start-up, technology

The Side Hustle Juggle: How A Fair Game Taught Me The Secret To A Happy Life (Part I)

By Chris Carosa on May 6, 2025

“Guess your weight! Guess your age!” the carny’s side hustle pitch barked with enthusiasm. The hint of a playful southern drawl made it all the more alluring.

To this day, I love watching people play the “Guess Your Weight” game. There are several variations on this theme. The barker can guess your weight, or your age, or your birth month. With all those combinations, it’s got to be a surefire winner, right? And just look at those huge Continue Reading “The Side Hustle Juggle: How A Fair Game Taught Me The Secret To A Happy Life (Part I)”

Posted in Business Tips, Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged baseball card, Butera, carnival, carny, Carosa, dealer, entrepreneur, erie county fair, game, grandpa, Guess Your Weight, Hak Aaron, Leon Tec, Lifetime Dream Process, market research, Pete Rose, Pizza Stand, political polling, Roberto Clemente, Salvator's Pizza, Salvator's Pizzeria, side hustle, Student Polling Services, Targets

Lessons From Failure Of Burning Barn Productions Unlock Success Rules That Drive You Forward (Part II)

By Chris Carosa on April 15, 2025

Inspired by such classic films as The Battle of the Bulge, Burning Barn Products reached its peak with the release of The Battle of Dortmund Circle. Still from the movie.

As revealed previously, (see “Lessons From Failure Of Burning Barn Productions Unlock Success Rules That Drive You Forward (Part I),” Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel, April 10, 2025), we couldn’t move forward towards success without understanding the initial lesson. After learning our first success rule—get one ally before rallying the group—we were ready to turn dreams into movies. Convincing your peers to jump into the unknown isn’t easy. That’s what my brother Kenny and I faced when our neighborhood film making ambitions took off.

With my brother backing me, it was easy to convince the other boys to go along.

Hmm, maybe not that easy. There were initially too many objections. Remember, we were Continue Reading “Lessons From Failure Of Burning Barn Productions Unlock Success Rules That Drive You Forward (Part II)”

Posted in Business Tips, Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged 1973, Alien, Ask Big Or Go Home, Battle of Dortmund Circle, Battle of the Bulge, Bigger Better Be Better, Bruce, Burning Barn Productions, carnival, Chili, Chili Avenue, Clint Eastwood, Dad, David, Dortmund Circle, Estes rockets, failure, Feed Their Imagination, Jack, Kenny, movie, Mr. Voegtle, NASA, Novelty Excites, operation sandtrap, Peter Principle, Proof Beats Doubt, robot, sci-fi, Stick to Your Strengths, success, tank, Twilight Zone, World War II

Lessons From Failure Of Burning Barn Productions Unlock Success Rules That Drive You Forward (Part I)

By Chris Carosa on April 8, 2025

The sun shone brightly in this opening still from 1973’s surprise hit Operation Sandtrap

Admit it. You’ve never heard of Burning Barn Productions—and frankly, why would you? It never made the Oscars. Heck, it never even made VHS. But its epic failure holds the keys to your next big win—because sometimes the lessons hidden in our disasters burn brighter than our successes ever could.

More likely, you looked at the title and instantly thought, “What is Burning Barn Productions?” You couldn’t care less about it failing—companies fail all the time—you just wanted to know if it produced movies or television shows. You were curious if you’d ever seen one of their productions.

Chances are, and I can almost guarantee this, you never saw either of the two movies that made it out of the production room. Yes, they were shown to live audiences, but if you’re Continue Reading “Lessons From Failure Of Burning Barn Productions Unlock Success Rules That Drive You Forward (Part I)”

Posted in Business Tips, Memoir of a Real Life Tagged 1973, Battle of Dortmund Circle, Bruce, Burning Barn Productions, carnival, Chili, Dad, David, Dortmund Circle, failure, Jack, Kenny, movie, Mr. Voegtle, operation sandtrap, success, tank, The Godfather, The Wingman Principle, Treehouse Club, World War II

The Power of a Promise: Why Keeping Your Word Matters

By Chris Carosa on December 30, 2024

What ever happened to Sundays? I used to lie on my stomach on the couch and read the voluminous New York Times spread on the rug below me. Then I’d roll over to my back and watch the Buffalo Bills on TV. After the Bills game, I’d keep football on and yank the extra-large NY Times crossword puzzle out of the magazine section. With the sounds of the gridiron grunting comfortably in the background, I’d meticulously complete the puzzle. In pen.

Ah, for those lazy Sundays…

Those lazy, inefficient Sundays.

Those lazy, inefficient Sundays whose only legacy is a bare, faded memory that’s almost gone.

I’m much more productive now. Life has a way of forcing that on you. It’s even better when you enjoy it.

And I enjoy it. The fruits of that production aren’t mere memories, but tangible relics that I can share with others. It’s the sharing I enjoy the most. I realize now I can’t share when I Continue Reading “The Power of a Promise: Why Keeping Your Word Matters”

Posted in Business Tips, Gray Matter Musings, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Buffalo Bills, commitment, critical path, crossword, efficiency, failure, football, goal, goal-setting, milestone, New Year's resolution, New York Times, NY Times, production, promise, self-confidence, SMART