As my @Hultbiz class of 2016 gets ready to graduate later this week, I’ve been thinking a lot about what advice to give them about getting ahead professionally in an increasingly competitive world. I’d like to offer something beyond simple platitudes like “work hard,” “know what you want,” and “be your own advocate.”
Moving On Up! How To Climb The Corporate Ladder Read More »
As my graduate students @hultbiz near their graduation, I thought I’d share some practical ideas about finding a great job that I’ve be sharing piecemeal with them as they’ve asked: Build and actively manage your professional network. This is more than just going to job fairs. With apps like Meetup and incredible events and organizations, there
Better Job Hunting in 7 Steps Read More »
The opinions other people form and adjust about us can be critical personally and professionally. People’s opinions of us give us our practical authority, our ability to influence and our ability to draw satisfaction from our work. Though we may often feel powerless to shape the opinions that others have of us, the truth is that we have much more influence than
Can We Control What People Think About Us? Read More »
My MBA start-up competition @hultbiz just finished. My best teams were awesome. Every team demonstrated plenty of inspiration and perspiration, but the best teams were willing to do a few very uncomfortable things that the average teams weren’t.
In 2003, Seth Godin published an online article entitled “what should Google do?“. With something like 100 other people, I submitted my suggestions. It’s fun to go back in time. Most of my ideas seem obvious today, but none of these were available in 2003 when this was published. My suggestions are below (I fixed one
Flashback to Google Year 2003 Read More »
We all crave simplicity and causality. We want to understand the world around us. We want to believe that we do. I recently met a woman who survived an horrific workplace shooting. She never wants to feel that vulnerable again. So, she wants to have a gun with her at all times. We can all empathize.
One of my Masters students @Hultbiz asked me what advice I would offer as he takes his next step into the corporate world. Here is my advice below: 1. Define and follow productive daily routines to improve health, learning and relationships. @tferriss is a great resource 2. Your next 5 years are 99% about learning. Make decisions
My simple advice to my graduating students Read More »
Is explicit skin-in-the-game the reason that lean and agile are so novel and impactful? Would you rather fly on a plane controlled by the world’s best pilot remotely from a control center or on a plane flown by an average pilot in the cockpit of your plane? I know my answer. In the old models of building
Agile, Lean and Skin-in-the-Game Read More »
I’m currently coaching 16 MBA teams in an entrepreneurship competition. I’ve been teaching them to use Lean Canvas and lean principals to build their business cases and ultimately their businesses. Here are 3 principal insights that I use to help my students move from “why do we have to fill-out this stupid chart…” to “wow, this is powerful…”
3 Insights about Lean Canvas Read More »
Many years ago, I created and delivered training for resellers of LiveVault, one of the first online backup services. At the time, what we were selling was very new and counterintuitive to most of our target customers. We were basically telling them that what they were doing and had been doing for many years (often
The perfectly wrong person to put in charge of building a new product Read More »
I was just speaking to the founder of Ratafire. Her vision is to help aspiring artists and researchers afford the time for creative freedom through ultra-low-fee crowdfunding and commerce. We were talking about how to recruit more artists into her community and platform. She is frustrated by the relatively high cost and low conversion rates of the “now-traditional”
Finding receptive customers Read More »
I’ve been struck by how many times I’ve heard people say – “I hate marketing” or “I hate being marketed to.” While I’ve probably said the same thing myself, I feel myself nonetheless getting defensive. It makes me uneasy. I would argue that what they’re really saying is that they hate BAD marketing. They dislike being
Nobody really hates marketing, but everyone hates BAD marketing (updated) Read More »
As a group, startup founders are an incredibly diverse collection of people. If you were in a room with 50 randomly selected founders, you’d find yourself with people from every demographic group. They’d have many different skills and have had a wide variety of life experiences. Some would be introverts. Some would be extraverts. Some
What do successful startup founders have in common? Read More »
Whether you’re pitching an idea to your board, to an investor or to your manager, these tips should help increase your odds.
Top 10 Tips for Delivering Better Pitches Read More »
If you’re a startup founder looking or considering looking for funding, I’m sure you’ve heard all sorts of stories about fundraising. And, if you’ve asked (or probably even if you haven’t), I’m sure you’ve gotten all sorts of advice. Like everything difficult in life, there’s always lots of (usually bad) advice. And, getting investors to write
Why is startup fundraising so damn hard? Read More »
