A question I get a lot is: “How do I pitch myself to ___________ podcast, article, investor, etc.?” And this for many people is the holy grail of attention. If you can get someone to share your ideas with their audience or invest in you it certainly does help. But I see many people going […]
It’s been 10 years since acclaimed author and CEO Chip Conley’s best-seller PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow, compelled a generation of leaders to increase employee performance and engagement by creating a culture of purpose. Yet today, when 66% of employees and 68% of executives surveyed agree that businesses don’t do enough
Six Employment Engagement Tips to Give Your Small Business a Competitive Edge Read More »
Last week, I sat in huge ballroom full of entrepreneurs and cringed as a white male CEO gave a TED-style talk on how he solved diversity. Yeah, that happened. You see, he has realized his business – oh! also his industry – oh oh! also his city – were too white and too male, and
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 »
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 »