During the first year of leading the Startup Leadership Program, we included the obligatory class on marketing. In the second year, we broke that down into acquiring buyers (entrepreneurial selling) and acquiring users (more akin to traditional marketing). We talked about SEO, retargeting of ads, and virality. It was good stuff, but somehow didn’t seem…
Early in my career, I had worked with some amazing folks. Industry giants, actually. People who would teach me a lot about business, about what it meant to be a leader, and how gave me opportunities above and beyond my experience or years. Folks like Jim Yager of Barrington Broadcasting, and Bob Pittman, Bob Sherman,…
As corny as it sounds, I already have my dream business mentor: my father. He runs a small family business in Rockford, IL. He makes metal parts, which is far from my traditional interests or ambitions. However, there’s commonality that I relish. He doesn’t have a love for formal financial statements; instead, he understands that…
As a child, we dream about being astronauts, our backyard tree house becomes an outpost in the Wild West fight between soldiers and Indians, and the only limit to what we can accomplish is chime of mom’s dinner bell (or text message). Somewhere along the way, we start becoming aware of our limitations: our intelligence,…
Our private equity partner team signs their emails with four truths: communicate fearlessly, compress time, work tirelessly, and love what you do. These truths have been good to me, helping me achieve success and accomplishment. It’s become apparent that following those truths will lead to good, but not great. If substantial success, the definition of which…
For most people, the idea of driving any significant distance is daunting. Stuck in a car, with hundreds of mindless miles stretching ahead of you, and no matter what radio station you manage to pick up – it always seems that the newest Taylor Swift song is playing. It’s not hard to imagine that would…
Jason Freedman has it right. He wrote a post recently about 42 Floors vacation policy – which consists of a mandatory two weeks of vacation on your first day. Wait, wha????? That’s right, they start paying you and ask you to show up two weeks later. The premise being that we don’t really take vacation…
A note to the graduates of the Chicago Startup Leadership Program (SLP) 2013, written March 21, 2013. During grad school, rather than wishing students “good luck” on tests, the faculty at Booth would often print the phrase “do well” next to the honor code. Luck is random; acquiring skills to be in a position to take…
I read a great article on how to reshape the traditional bonus. I can’t find the original article, but the study it was based off of was summarized in the Wall Street Journal. The article went something like this: a bonus is designed to incentive improved performance, and is paid only after certain milestones are…
People Have Money but Feel Glum—What Does That Mean for the Economy? from the WSJ. A great summary of the juxtaposition between the general malaise in consumer confidence which is contrast to all the strong metrics of the economy (hiring, unemployment, etc). How To Pass On Price Increases Without Alienating Customers – from Forbes Business Council. My favorite quote…