Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster. —Sun Tzu, The Art of War I fight fuckery and build belonging for a living. If you’d like less of the former and more of the latter, read on. It doesn’t matter if you’re pitching a product or selling […]
Fighting Fuckery 101 Read More »
“Where do you see yourself in five years?” This question is so common, it’s become an interview cliché. But the first time I was asked, I didn’t know about any of that, I was simply unprepared. I didn’t have a good answer, nor did I want to. Five years seemed like forever, and I hadn’t
Life is What Happens While You Were Making Other Plans Read More »
Don’t forget to add humanity to your marketing plan. I’ve seen too many marketing strategies which were proudly focused on numbers, trends and financials. They impressively calculated expansion, development, growth trajectories and a whole bunch of other objective and impersonal issues. But this approach lost sight of a critical perspective: Marketing at its core is
One-Minute Marketing: Marketing to Humans Read More »
As I have continued making my way through Charles Duhigg’s excellent book The Power of Habit, I happened upon a very interesting anecdote about Rosa Parks. Most of us have heard that name and one specific story about the woman that is taught to us in our history books which is that she did not
The Day Rosa Parks Went Viral Read More »
Funding ain’t easy. Technology makes it seem easy, especially with platforms like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, and GoFundMe holding the promise of access to new fans with open wallets. Of course, it takes a tipping point of personal contacts funding a project to a certain dollar amount in order to access your yet-unknown audience. Which means outreach
Putting Crowdfunding in Perspective: Respect Your Audience to Maximize Your Results Read More »
Scaling is a funny thing. It’s almost a religion in the world of entrepreneurship. Scaling has its benefits, but has its shortcomings as well. Not every business needs to scale to a massive degree. Not every business needs to have world domination as their number one target at the expense of all else.First things first.
To Scale or Not to Scale? Read More »
When I was raising money for Broadway shows, I was approached by a LOT of creatives who would ask me to consider raising money for their project. In many of these instances, these individuals would spend most of the meeting explaining to me how their show was a “surefire” hit and how if they just
But Would Anyone Buy a Ticket? Read More »