Podcasts about their radically rational blueprint

Neste episódio Pamela Macedo e Paulo Leite falam sobre alocação de capital, o processo pelo qual uma empresa investe os recursos financeiros de que dispõe. Discutem decisões relevantes como: investir no próprio negócio, comprar outras empresas ou devolver dinheiro aos acionistas. A alocação de capital desempenha um papel crucial na criação ou destruição de valor a longo prazo. Esta é uma das decisões mais importantes que as equipas de gestão têm de tomar. Referências bibliográficas: The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success, William N. Thorndike Jr.

Cedric Chin is a writer, researcher and operator whose Commoncog newsletter is dedicated to finding useful, practical ways to accelerate business expertise. He joins us to discuss some of the most potentially transformative concepts he's uncovered, from the business expertise triad to naturalistic decision making. Important Links: Cedric's Website (Commoncog) Are You Ready for the Great Reshuffle? The Naturalistic Decision Making Podcast Wisdom Unleashed Show Notes: Commoncog's Rabbit-Holing Origins The Business Expertise Triad Quality Engineering & Process Control The Effectiveness of Naturalistic Decision Making Expectancy, Intuition & Investing How to Stay Open-Minded Trial & Error, Knowledge Shields & the Power of Reading Protocols & Pattern-Matching Cedric as Emperor of the World MUCH more! Books and Articles Mentioned: The Tricky Thing About Creating Training Programs; by Cedric Chin The Business Expertise Series; by Cedric Chin The Oxford Handbook of Expertise; edited by Paul Ward, Jaan Maarten Schraagen, Julie Gore and Emile Roth Accelerated Expertise; by Robert R. Hoffman, Paul Ward, Paul J. Feltovich, Lia DiBello, Stephen M. Fiore and Dee H. Andrews The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success; by Will Thorndike Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon; by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos; by Donald Wheeler The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World; by David Deutsch The Hound of the Baskervilles; by Arthur Conan Doyle What Works on Wall Street: The Classic Guide to the Best-Performing Investment Strategies of All Time; by Jim O'Shaughnessy

Think of CEOs who have made strong rates of return for investors and built durable businesses. What strategies do you associate with their success? Investor and author William Thorndike studied eight CEOs who outperformed the market and their peers. The group included big names, like Warren Buffet and Katharine Graham, but also other leaders who are virtually unknown today. One example is Henry Singleton, an MIT-educated electrical engineer who led Teledyne Technologies from 1960 to 1986. Thorndike noticed that these eight iconoclastic leaders all took a similar approach to capital allocation. They focused on investing their companies' profits to repurchase their own stock when prices were optimal. But they generally avoided very large acquisitions, accruing debt, and paying dividends. In this episode, you'll learn how effective capital allocation strategies, like the ones used by these leaders, can generate wealth for shareholders. Thorndike is the author of The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success. Key episode topics include: strategy, strategic planning, entrepreneurship, operations and supply chain management, leadership, capital allocation, debt, dividends, stock buybacks, acquisitions. HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world's top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week. · Listen to the full HBR IdeaCast episode: How Unusual CEOs Drive Value (2014)· Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org]]>

Darryl Lindie did a geo-constrained search in Rhode Island to acquire a sign business with $650k of SDE & 25 employees. Topics in Darryl's interview: His background in the Navy How getting an MBA might slow you down Searching in a small geographic radius Buying a signage company Valuing a business with a lot of cash transactions Getting comfortable with project-based revenue Mistakes in due diligence Improving the culture in 100 days Hiring a supplier to be his GM Raising a fund for New Majority Capital References and how to contact Darryl: LinkedIn darryl@newmajoritycapital.com New Majority Capital Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?: How Reginald Lewis Created a Billion-Dollar Business Empire The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success Get a complementary pre-acquisition HR & PEO review for your target business:Contact mark@aspenhr.com or visit Aspen HR  Get complimentary due diligence on your acquisition's insurance & benefits program:Oberle Risk Strategies - Search Fund TeamConnect with Acquiring Minds: See past + future interviews on the YouTube channel Connect with host Will Smith on LinkedIn Follow Will on Twitter

What I learned from reading The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William Thorndike. ----I use EightSleep to get the best sleep of my life. Find out why EightSleep is loved by founders everywhere and get $500 off at eightsleep.com/founders/----Get access to the World's Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at FoundersNotes.com----(5:00) Tom Murphy] gave me one of the best pieces of advice I've ever received. He said, 'Warren, you can always tell someone to go to hell tomorrow'...You haven't missed the opportunity. Just forget about if for a day. If you feel the same way tomorrow, tell them then-but don't spout off in a moment of anger." All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger – A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense by Peter Bevelin. (Founders #286)(5:15) Thirty years ago Tom Murphy, then CEO of Cap Cities, drove this point home to me with a hypothetical tale about an employee who asked his boss for permission to hire an assistant.The employee assumed that adding $20,000 to the annual payroll would be inconsequential.But his boss told him the proposal should be evaluated as a $3 million decision, given that an additional person would probably cost at least that amount over his lifetime, factoring in raises, benefits and other expenses (more people, more toilet paper).And unless the company fell on very hard times, the employee added would be unlikely to be dismissed, however marginal his contribution to the business.— A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers From Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Peter Bevelin. (Founders #202)(7:30) The autobiography of the founder of CBS: As It Happened A Memoir by Bill Paley (9:00) The goal is not to have the longest train, but to arrive at the station first, using the least fuel.(10:00) Tom Murphy's simple formula:1. Focus on industries with attractive economic characteristics.2. Selectively use leverage to buy occasional large properties.3. Improve operations.4. Pay down debt.5. Repeat.(13:00) The business of business is a lot of little decisions every day, mixed up with a few big decisions.(16:00) He quickly indoctrinated Burke into the company's lean, decentralized operating philosophy.(17:00) I had an appetite for and a willingness to do things that Murphy was not interested in doing. Burke believed his job was to create the free cashflow and Murphy's job was to spend it.(19:30) Stay in the game long enough to get lucky. The most important thing that he does happens 30 years into his career.(21:30)Q: Is this a case of leading by example?Murphy: Is there any other way?(23:30) Decentralization is the cornerstone of our philosophy. Our goal is to hire the best people we can and give them the responsibility and authority. They need to perform their jobs. We expect our managers to be forever cost conscious.(24:00) Repeated by Murphy: Hire the best people and leave them alone.(24:00) An extreme decentralized approach keeps both costs and rancor down.(25:00) Murphy delegates to the point of anarchy.(26:00) The best defense against the revenue lumpiness inherent in advertising supported businesses was a constant vigilance on costs.(30:00) Why Capital Cities had low turnover: The system in place corrupts you with so much autonomy and authority that you can't imagine leaving.(35:00) To learn more about a Capital Cities like company listen to The 50X Podcast.----Get access to the World's Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Leadership is more than a title. Leadership is getting things done. David Dodson spent three years studying successful leaders and identified 5 skills critical to effective leadership: building a team, seeking and taking advice, managing time, obsessing over quality, and setting and adhering to priorities. David joins Kevin to discuss these essential leadership skills. He shares advice on hiring practices and offers valuable tips on time management, including strategies to trim meeting durations. David and Kevin also tackle the unique challenges of steering remote teams in the ever-evolving post-pandemic landscape. Meet David Name: David Dodson  David's Story:  The Manager's Handbook: Five Simple Steps to Build a Team, Stay Focused, Make Better Decisions, and Crush Your Competition The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Successby William N. Thorndike Jr.  Related Episodes Learning Lessons from a Four-Time CEO with Howard Green Lessons that Drive Business Success with Kim Lorenz How to Thrive in Uncertain Times with Larry Robertson Join Our Community If you want to view our live podcast episodes, hear about new releases, or chat with others who enjoy this podcast join one of our communities below. Join the Facebook Group Join the LinkedIn Group   Leave a Review If you liked this conversation, we'd be thrilled if you'd let others know by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. Here's a quick guide for posting a review. Review on Apple: https://remarkablepodcast.com/itunes    Podcast Better! Sign up with Libsyn and get up to 2 months free! Use promo code: RLP  

…but something else will bloom instead. Plus, this is why Europe can't have nice things. And the Cable Cowboy kills cable. Discussed: The Hottest Coach in Sports: Coach PrimeHow Deel Became Payout Provider for Prop Trading Firms, Including Site Frozen by CFTC John Malone's Charter Squeezes Disney at Vulnerable Moment Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success How Taylor Swift Ditched Dealing With Hollywood Studios to Release the ‘Eras Tour' Film With AMC Show Notes: [00:01:59] CU Buffs winning football game. [00:06:30] Prop trading as Ponzi scheme. [00:08:30] A hidden Forex trading industry. [00:10:38] Robo spam being cracked down. [00:14:08] Subscription business models. [00:18:31] Europe's impact on app monetization. [00:22:18] The digital market act. [00:24:12] Implications for big tech gatekeepers. [00:29:31] The future of niche apps. [00:30:01] Subscription services reaching scale. [00:33:11] How do you make money? [00:36:28] Rethinking success for consumer businesses. [00:39:52] Cable subscriptions and user experience. [00:43:23] The fascination with fax machines. [00:45:22] Old and new combined. [00:47:57] Taylor Swift's movie theater success. [00:50:46] More in-person collective experience.

Chapter 1 What is The Outsiders Book "The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success" is a business book published in 2012. It explores the strategies and management principles employed by eight exceptional CEOs who have achieved remarkable long-term success. In "The Outsiders," Thorndike challenges the conventional wisdom of traditional management practices and focuses on CEOs who took a different approach to running their companies. He selects a diverse group of CEOs from various industries, including capital allocation experts like General Cinema's Richard Smith and growth-focused leaders such as Tom Murphy of Capital Cities Broadcasting. The book highlights the common traits and unconventional strategies these CEOs employed that set them apart. These executives prioritized capital allocation, making rational decisions about how to allocate resources, whether it was through acquisitions, share repurchases, or investments. They were also adept at managing their boards and fostering a culture of accountability and decentralization within their organizations. Thorndike provides a detailed analysis of each CEO's tenure, examining their track records, strategic moves, and overall performance. Through extensive research and interviews, he presents valuable insights and lessons for readers interested in understanding successful long-term management practices. "The Outsiders" has received positive reviews for its thought-provoking content, unique perspective, and practical takeaways. It offers a fresh outlook on business leadership and serves as an inspiration for executives and managers looking to challenge conventional wisdom and learn from unconventional CEOs who defied industry norms to achieve outstanding results.Chapter 2 Is The Outsiders Worth ReadWilliam N. Thorndike Jr.'s book "The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success" is definitely worth reading. The book provides valuable insights into the strategies and management styles of eight exceptional CEOs who achieved remarkable success in their respective companies. Thorndike explores the unconventional approaches these leaders took to drive long-term performance and create shareholder value. By studying the practices of executives such as Warren Buffett, John Malone, and Tom Murphy, readers gain a deeper understanding of the principles that guided their decision-making and helped them outperform their competitors. "The Outsiders" offers a refreshing perspective on corporate leadership and challenges conventional wisdom regarding managerial practices. It emphasizes the importance of capital allocation, a disciplined focus on generating cash flow, and prioritizing the long-term interests of shareholders. This book is highly recommended for entrepreneurs, investors, and anyone interested in learning from the experiences of successful business leaders. By examining the unconventional strategies employed by these CEOs, readers can gain valuable insights that they can apply to their own professional endeavors.Chapter 3 Summary of The Outsiders In this article, we delve into William N. Thorndike Jr.'s groundbreaking book, "The Outsiders." Offering a comprehensive summary, we explore the key insights and strategies employed by some of the most successful CEOs in history. Discover how these unconventional leaders defied industry norms, focused on capital allocation, and achieved outstanding long-term results for their companies. Join us as we unveil the secrets behind their extraordinary achievements and learn valuable lessons...

On this episode of ADI Book Club we review The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William Thorndike.Thorndike studied Warren Buffett, John Malone, and other outsider CEOs that compounded capital at high rates over the long-term. The book covers stock buybacks, acquisitions, hurdle rates, management styles, and other strategies that these outsider CEOs implemented into their businesses. It's a great book and there's a lot to learn from it.The Outsiders - https://www.amazon.com/Outsiders-Unconventional-Radically-Rational-Blueprint/dp/1422162672/Follow Karan - https://twitter.com/KaranMGurnaniFollow Jason - https://twitter.com/afterinvestor

When evaluating a company, getting a clear picture of all the relevant factors can be challenging. That's why today's guest, Scott Hendrickson, heavily emphasizes management quality and companies where diligence can provide a high level of conviction.   As a Columbia Business School graduate and adjunct professor, Scott is both a practitioner and a teacher. He has been an integral part of the investing program for almost a decade.   Scott Hendrickson is a Partner and the Co-Founder of Permian Investment Partners, a $1.2 billion management-focused global long/short investment fund. Before co-founding Permian, Scott worked as an Investment Analyst at Brahman Capital. Prior to Brahman, Scott worked as an Associate at Industrial Growth Partners, a middle-market-focused private equity fund. Scott started his career as an Analyst in Merrill Lynch's Investment Banking Program. Scott graduated from Emory University with a BBA in Finance in 2000 and Columbia Business School with an MBA in 2007. Scott serves on the Columbia Business School adjunct faculty, teaching Applied Value Investing since 2014.     In this episode, Scott, Tano, and I discuss Scott's journey to a career in investing, why Permian has management as their core focus, the three main business quality metrics they employ, risk management for short interests, characteristics of transformational acquisitions, how teaching has expanded Scott's perspective, and so much more! Key Topics:   How Scott's interest in investing evolved from his love for music (1:57) Scott's learnings from his time at Brahman Capital (5:35) Criteria Permian seeks in longs and shorts (7:01) Why Permian has management as a core focus (8:08) How the quality of Permian's LPs has become an advantage (10:53) Permian's approach to screening (12:49) The three main business quality metrics employed (15:38) Permian's portfolio construction and power rank system (17:20) Breaking down the four short frameworks (22:01) Risk management for short interests (24:46) Factoring in the macro view (26:31) How Permian applies value-added research (30:00) What it means to be “diligence-able” and why that matters (33:38) Characteristics of transformational acquisitions (37:22) Differentiating between structural and fixable costs (39:41) What's behind the long-term underperformance of European stock markets (42:35) How teaching has expanded Scott's perspective (44:54) Scott's recommendations for investors to improve the odds that they will be successful over time (46:26) What keeps Scott up at night and excited about the future (47:23) Scott's book recommendations (50:16) And much more! Mentioned in this Episode:   William N. Thorndike's Book | The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success Jim Rogers' Books Investment Biker: Around the World with Jim Rogers Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip Hernando De Soto's Book | The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else Joel Greenblatt's Book | You Can Be a Stock Market Genius: Uncover the Secret Hiding Places of Stock Market Profits Seth A. Klarman's Book | Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor Thanks for Listening!   Be sure to subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And feel free to drop us a line at valueinvesting@gsb.columbia.edu.   Follow the Heilbrunn Center on social media on Instagram, LinkedIn, and more!  

On The Dan Bradbury Podcast this week, we're talking ways business owners can avoid getting into legal trouble.In this episode we discuss: - Technology is moving fast, can the law keep up? - Can you get sued for using Chat GPT? - Alex Jones files for bankruptcy after Sandy Hook verdict - How to solve your legal problems with clarity - London leaseholders win rare victory in battle over service charges - And much more!---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Take this quiz to see how you score on the 7 critical areas of business finance.https://danbradbury.co.uk/scorecard-finance/The average score of a CEO generating 8-figures or higher is 84%. Think you can beat them? Go here to find out.https://danbradbury.co.uk/scorecard-finance/---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Book of the WeekThe Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Successhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Outsiders-Unconventional-Radically-Rational-Blueprint/dp/1422162672/My Books...Turnover Is Vanity, Profit Is Sanity: 9 1/2 Steps to Improving Your Profits & Cashflowhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Turnover-Vanity-Profit-Sanity-Improving/dp/1691215333/Breeding Gazelles: Fast Growth Strategies For Your Businesshttps://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01F2R0MG2/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0​

In today's episode of Category Visionaries, we speak with Laura McGee, CEO Diversio, a diversity, inclusivity and equity platform that's raised $3 Million in funding, about why she believes data holds the key to realizing a genuine diversity agenda and building a better business environment for everyone, regardless of their background. It's common knowledge today that a more inclusive workforce leads to improved business outcomes, but not many companies out there have really shown themselves able of fulfilling loft commitments made to shareholders and ethics boards. By combining comprehensive experience insights, pain point identification and practical recommendations for action to address problems, Diversio promises a new way of approaching the diversity agenda for the entire business community. We also speak about Laura's work in the female entrepreneurship space, how Diversio developed its unique inclusivity metrics, why their systematic problem-solving approach has been a big hit with their growing customer base, and how a scrappy bootstrap start without much capital helped them develop a market-leading product which would propel them to strong growth. Topics Discussed: Laura's passion for the DEI agenda, both working with Diversio and in her capacity as an expert on womens' entrepreneurship Why companies' ability to achieve genuine inclusivity is still lagging behind their commitments, and why that needs to change How Diversio's systematic approach, from gathering insights to offering recommendations, is defining the corporate inclusivity agenda How a bootstrap start for Diversio ultimately helped them develop a market-leading product and provided the impetus to get things right first time Why Laura is happy to see a proliferation of startups in the diversity and inclusion space, but why she feels Diversio still manages to set itself apart The current state of diversity across the business board, and why Laura believes we all have a reason to be optimistic   Favorite book:  The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success

Rozhovor s investorem Petrem Horáčkem o společnosti RCI Hospitality Holdings, jediným strip klubem obchodovaným na burze. Jaký je její business model, proč tato společnost udělala více jak devítinásobek za poslední dva roky, představuje tato společnost stále zajímavou investiční příležitost a jaká rizika jsou s touto investicí spojená? Více o RICK a dalších akciích ze svého portfolia prozradí Petr Horáček. AKCIE: RICK, ČEZ, BTI, WBD, ICE, BAMBIO: Petr koupil první akcie v roce 2017 a od té doby ho investování pohltilo. Sám o sobě přemýšlí jako o poučeném amatérovi, který se snaží neustále vzdělávat, aby se v investování dále zlepšoval. Akcie často probírá na twitterovém účtu a od letošního roku i na svém Substacku https://petrhorek.substack.com/. V roce 2017 dokončil vyšší odbornou školu obor personální řízení, od té doby pracuje v rodinné obchodní firmě. Kromě vzdělávání ve volném čase rád hraje golf.   V PODCASTU SE DOZVÍTE:Jak se dostal k investování (0:40)Zhodnocení za loňský rok (4:37)RCI Hospitality Holdings popis společnosti (5:42)Akvizice a nová strategie (11:31)Konkurence (16:37)Druhý segment - Bombshell (19:16)Tržby (22:16)Náklady (24:25)Management (26:54)Rizika (29:45)Plány do budoucna (33:30)Co způsobilo devítinásobný nárůst ceny akcie za poslední dva roky (36:07)Fundamenty, které ho přesvědčily k investici (40:04) Další akcie z jeho portfolia (41:44)Akcie přidaná na watchlist (49:37)ODKAZY:Více o RICK naleznete v Petrově newsletteru zdeKniha: William N. Thorndike Jr. The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for SuccessTwitter: @HoracekPetr22Jaroslav Vybíral: Analýza společnosti DisneyDominik Filip: Analýza společnosti CarMaxZPĚTNÁ VAZBA:Vaše zpětná vazba je pro mě důležitá. Máte-li k podcastu jakékoliv poznámky, zašlete mi je, prosím, na lenka@schanova.com nebo na Twitteru @lenka_schanova. Děkuji.

Bruce Cazenave is the Founder and Principal of Inflection Management LLC, a company that specializes in helping businesses survive challenging periods and mentors freshmen CEOs. Before Bruce founded Inflection Management LLC, he held multiple leadership roles at companies including Black and Decker, Timberland, Dorel Juvenile Group, Nautilus, and Bluestem Brands. Bruce takes pride in being a turnaround specialist with a proven track record of uplifting organizations and their leadership. In this episode… Are you a leader of an organization that's facing tough times? Have you been able to identify the problem? As a veteran turnaround specialist, Bruce Cazenave has experienced many crises, from bankruptcy to negative work cultures to high turnover. So, how does senior leadership rise above when it seems there is a point of no return? Bruce explains that it starts with diagnosing the situation.  In this episode of the Talent Wins podcast, host Chris Mursau sits down with Bruce Cazenave, the Founder and Principal of Inflection Management LLC, to talk about building competent teams when organizations face detrimental challenges. Part of rebuilding includes integrating a thriving company culture, a rigorous hiring process, and a CEO and CHRO partnership. Plus, Bruce offers CEOs advice on how to scale a company and more. Let's get started! Resources mentioned in this episode: Chris Mursau on LinkedIn Topgrading on LinkedIn Topgrading Email Topgrading: Info@topgrading.com Talent Wins podcast Bruce Cazenave on LinkedIn Inflection Management Six Sigma Special Mentions Culligan Water Capital One TD Industries Books Mentioned The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William N Thorndike That Will Never Work by Marc Randolph Work Stronger: Habits for More Energy, Less Stress, and Higher Performance at Work by Pete Leibman The Story of the Wright Brothers: A Biography Book for New Readers by Annette Whipple Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W Chan Kim The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary Into the Extraordinary by Mark Sanborn

Uncertainty and volatility are increasingly the new normal in today's investment markets. This has led many investors to seek out new asset classes that are not only stable and generate attractive returns but are also backed by structural growth trends. One asset class that meets these criteria is infrastructure.  In this episode, Rusty and Robyn talk with Ken Baumgartner, Investment Director at Wellington Management. In his role, Ken provides business management and strategic oversight for asset allocation, inflation hedging solutions, and strategic solutions for multi-manager platforms. He works closely with portfolio managers to evaluate and communicate portfolio characteristics, performance, and market outlook to external constituents.  Known for his expertise in inflation hedging, Ken talks with Rusty and Robyn about infrastructure as an asset class, the biggest themes in the infrastructure market today, and how infrastructure can help hedge inflation. Key Takeaways [02:45] - How Ken got into financial services. [04:49] - What makes Wellington Management unique. [06:47] - How infrastructure can help hedge inflation. [08:46] - Infrastructure as an asset class. [11:34] - What makes public infrastructure different from private infrastructure. [13:38] - The biggest themes in the infrastructure space today. [15:41] - Why electric utilities may be key to the energy transition. [17:34] - Risks associated with lower volatility asset classes. [19:13] - What impact has the boom in commodities had on Wellington's outlook on energy? [23:21] - The impact of midterm elections on infrastructure. [24:27] - How Ken maintains his mental and physical well-being to perform at a high level. [25:54] - Ken's content recommendation. Quotes [07:55] - "Compared to potentially other higher beta volatile asset classes, such as natural resource equities or commodities, the performance of the infrastructure profile will be much more stable." ~ Ken Baumgartner [13:47] - "One of the biggest themes across global markets is the idea of decarbonization. Here you have a multi-decade secular growth in both the transmission and the renewable space. And the best way to invest is through the regulated utilities that own the wires and the transmission and are also investing in renewables to bring their power production footprint." ~ Ken Baumgartner [16:45] - "Carbon should not necessarily be thought of as dirty. People are too quick to cast aside some of these companies that today might still have some carbon in their power production stack but are doing more for the world to decarbonize than any of the cleanest and greenest." ~ Ken Baumgartner Links  Ken Baumgartner on LinkedIn Wellington Management Mr. Brightside by The Killers Everlong by Foo Fighters T.N.T. by AC/DC Goldman Sachs New York Islanders Harvard Business School John Hancock Investment Management Podcasts - Freakonomics WellSaid - The Wellington Management Podcast  The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success Connect with our hosts Rusty Vanneman Robyn Murray Subscribe and stay in touch Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts 2003-OPS-10/25/2022

Most of this comes from the book: “Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business” by Mark Robichaux  “The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success” by William Thorndike John Malone Operating ManualEnroll in Colin's Acquisition Course & Community at IndiePE.com.Reach out to Colin Keeley and Brent Sanders on Twitter with any feedback. Sell your SaaS at VerneHQ.com 

Warum Startups mittlerweile 40% seines Vermögens ausmachen, verrät Fondsmanager Daniel Kröger in dieser spannenden Podcastfolge. Neben seinen privaten Business Angel Investments investiert er über den ELM Global TICO Aktienfonds in spannende Aktien aus aller Welt. Shownotes Daniel auf Twitter: https://twitter.com/eflation Daniels Podcast: https://diesacheistdie.de/ ELM Global TICO: https://ehrke-luebberstedt.de/investmentfonds/globalfonds/ Buchempfehlung: The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Art of Disruption: hhttps://amzn.to/3BNrwIz * Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success: https://amzn.to/3H6qoRj * The Gene: An Intimate History: https://amzn.to/3Id3fOm * * = Partnerlink

What I learned from reading The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William Thorndike.Subscribe to listen to the rest of this episode and gain access to 230 full length episodes.WHAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE SAYING:“Without a doubt, the highest value-to-cost ratio I've taken advantage of in the last year is the Founders podcast premium feed. Tap into eons of knowledge and experiences, condensed into digestible portions. Highly, highly recommend. “Uniquely outstanding. No fluff and all substance. David does an outstanding job summarizing these biographies and hones in on the elements that make his subjects so unique among entrepreneurs. I particularly enjoy that he focuses on both the founder's positive and negative characteristics as a way of highlighting things to mimic and avoid.”“I just paid for my first premium podcast subscription for Founders podcast. Learning from those who came before us is one of the highest value ways to invest time. David does his homework and exponentially improves my efficiency by focusing on the most valuable lessons.”“I haven't found a better return on my time and money than your podcast for inspiration and time-tested wisdom to help me on my journey.“I've now listened to every episode. From this knowledge I've doubled my business to $500k a year. Love your passion and recommend your podcast to everyone.”“Founders is the only podcast I pay for and it's worth 100x the cost.”“I have listened to many podcasts on entrepreneurship (HIBT, Masters of Scale, etc.) and find Founders to be consistently more helpful than any other entrepreneurship podcast. David is a craftsperson, he carefully reads biographies of founders, distills the most important anecdotes and themes from their life, and draws commonalities across lives. David's focus is rightfully not on teaching you a formula to succeed but on constantly pushing you to think different.”“I highly highly recommend this podcast. Holy cow. I've been binge listening to these and you start to see patterns across all these incredible humans.”Listening to your podcast has changed my life and that is not a statement I make often.“After one episode I quickly joined the Misfit feed. Love the insight and thoughts shared along the way. David loves what he does and it shines through on the podcast. Definitely my go-to podcast now.”“It is worth every penny. I cannot put into words how fantastic this podcast is. Just stop reading this and get the full access.”“Personally it's one of my top 3 favorite podcasts. If you're into business and startups and technology, this is for you. David covers good books and I've come to really appreciate his perspective. Can't say enough good things.”“I quickly subscribed and it's honestly been the best money I've spent all year. It has inspired me to read biographies. Highly recommend.”“This is the most inspirational and best business podcast out there. David has inspired me to focus on biographies rather than general business books. I'm addicted.”“Anyone interested in business must find the time to listen to each any every Founders podcast. A high return on investment will be a virtual certainty. Subscribe and start listening as soon as possible.”“David saves you hundreds of hours by summarizing bios of legendary business founders and providing valuable insight on what makes an individual successful. He has introduced me to many founders I would have never known existed.”“The podcasts offer spectacular lessons on life, human nature and business achievement. David's enthusiasm and personal thoughts bring me joy. My journey has been enhanced by his efforts.”"Founders is the best self investment that I've made in years."Sign up to listen to the rest of this episode and get access to every full episode. You will learn the key insights from biographies on Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, John D. Rockefeller, Coco Chanel, Andrew Carnegie, Enzo Ferrari, Estee Lauder, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Phil Knight, Joseph Pulitzer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Alexander Graham Bell, Bill Gates, P.T. Barnum, Edwin Land, Henry Ford, Walter Chrysler, Thomas Edison, David Ogilvy, Ben Franklin, Howard Hughes, George Lucas, Levi Strauss, Walt Disney and so many more. You will learn from the founders of Nike, Patagonia, Apple, Microsoft, Hershey, General Motors, Ford, Standard Oil, Polaroid, Home Depot, MGM, Intel, Federal Express, Wal Mart, JP Morgan, Chrysler, Cadillac, Oracle, Hyundai, Seagram, Berkshire Hathaway, Teledyne, Adidas, Les Schwab, Renaissance Technologies, IKEA, Sony, Ferrari, and so many more. Sign up to listen to the rest of this episode and get access to every full episode. 

Customer Obsession with Charlie Herrin In this episode of the CrossLead podcast, host David Silverman speaks with Charlie Herrin, President of the Technology, Product, Xperience organization within Comcast Cable. They focus on the leader's role in creating a compelling vision and building a narrative in support of it. Charlie talks about his obsession with the customer and how technology can meaningfully improve a customer's life. He also discusses his personal routines and leadership development philosophy as well as his approach to leading change at scale and how you measure progress.“For me, innovation is not feature matching. Innovation is making someone's life better.” – Charlie Herrin [14:26]“People need to have purpose in what they're doing and it's not just a job. It's not just working on technology. It's not just writing code or creating a design. You're doing it for an end goal.” – Charlie Herrin [18:59]“The role of the leader is to lead and to model the behavior they want to see.” – Charlie Herrin [22:47] Resources A Walk Across America by Peter JenkinsCenter For Creative LeadershipTeam of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman and Chris FussellThe Outsiders : Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William Thorndike Want to discuss some of these topics directly with Dave? Join the CrossLead LinkedIn Group. Episode Transcript DaveWelcome to the CrossLead podcast. I’m your host, Dave Silverman at CrossLead. We exist to help teams, individuals achieve and sustain optimum performance. In today’s episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Charlie Herrin. Charlie serves as the president of the Technology Product Experience Organization within Comcast Cable.When I first met Charlie in 2015, he had just transitioned to the role of leading the customer experience division. He knew the team tasked with the largest NPS implementation in North America at the time. In today’s episode, we focus on the leader’s role in creating a compelling vision and building a narrative in support of it. We talk about his obsession with a customer and how technology can meaningfully improve a customer’s life. Charlie discusses his personal routines and leadership development philosophy. We talk about his approach to leading change at scale and how you measure progress. A proud father, husband, outdoorsman, an amateur photographer. Charlie’s humility and empathetic leadership style makes him a truly world class leader. Thank you for tuning in. Hope you enjoy the conversation that I have with my friend and mentor Charlie Herrin.Good morning, good afternoon, welcome to the CrossLead podcast. Today, we’re joined with Charlie Herrin, who serves as the president of technology product experience for Comcast Cable. Today we’re going to talk about leadership and we’re going to go back and talk about the leadership development from Charlie’s perspective over his career. So, Charlie, thanks for joining us today. I really appreciate you being here now.CharlieThank you. David, it’s good to be here and appreciate it.DaveSo let’s, let’s go through your life journey and example of leadership, but take me back to where you grew up in, and some of those are formative early experiences in your life.CharlieI grew up in a town called Ponca City, Oklahoma. My dad was a chemist and Conoco had their big R&D facility there. So it was a good town to grow up in a lot of opportunities for kids. Oklahoma was, you know, like most kids, I was sort of bored of where I grew up. I was really, really focused on backpacking and camping.I had read a book called Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins, and it really, I just woke me up to the idea of outdoors because my dad is not an outdoorsman.DaveHow old were you when you read that book?CharlieI was 13 and 13. It’s actually I read the National Geographic articles. That he wrote first and then. And then read the book. But you know, that got me into scouting, which I joined largely because they were going backpacking. In New Mexico, and I wanted to do that. And my other passion was soccer. I play a lot of soccer. I was I’m old enough to remember it was actually the first time they had. Started in my city. So I was like on the first team.But I spent a lot of time doing that. And so I was always outside. And when I went to college, which was at the University of Washington, it was largely to go to the Pacific Northwest again. I had this kind of bug for being in the outdoors, and I just wanted to to be someplace where I could experience a lot of adventure that way. Toyed with soccer at the University of Washington, but they’re far better than I am. So I did not go down that path.DaveSo when you got to when you got to Washington University. Talk about, you know, what was your major? I know you were an economics major, but talk about how that sort of shaped you from a from a leadership perspective.CharlieYeah, I went in to college thinking I’d be a history major and kind of pre-law kind of thing and was a pretty good writer. And that’s sort of what I was drawn to. But I ended up taking some economics classes and microeconomics classes. And I was just fascinated by the idea of. Evaluating how consumers make decisions, which is essentially what the, you know, that’s essentially what microeconomics is. Again, I just loved it. And so I kind of really leaned in. But I think from an early point in my life, I was fascinated with the idea of what consumers wanted and how they evaluated their options. And and I think that has served me well. I actually think as I got into the product game. And and consumer experience game and things like that. Is give me a lens that I think a lot of people just don’t use or maybe think about as a first lens. And that’s always my first lens is, you know, how would this benefit me as. A consumer and how would this benefit my family as a consumer? How would this benefit, you know, consumers in my community? And so it was a really formative for me.DaveYeah, it’s amazing that your college major actually was relevant to your job. So I was an oceanography major in college and other than the fact that I like to surf and I was a navy seal. There wasn’t a lot of overlap there.So the fact that you actually took core lessons from that and were able to apply it to to your to your world is pretty remarkable. You come out of university. And what was your first job out of college?CharlieWell, my first job, actually, I thought I was still going to do pre-law. I had taken the LSAT and done extremely well and kind of was off to going to go to law school. Just on a whim I interviewed at Andersen within was Andersen Consulting, its Accenture now. I remember that I took the interview because I was really tired of eating 19 cent boxes of macaroni. I was really, really living on the edge in terms of finances, and I thought, Well, you know, my assets are good for five years and I’ll just go to this interview. But I didn’t really care because I’ve been accepted to law school. And so I just. Sort of answered. However, I wanted to answer.It was a little bit like that Seinfeld episode where George Costanza sort of says the opposite of everything he thinks he should say. And it works for him, and it worked for me. They call me back and said, You hired the guy we hired. And so I went into Accenture Anderson at the time as a developer because that’s how they started everyone.You know, it’s interesting to me, but I found out pretty. Quickly I was in a great developer, but when I was really good. At was requirements and interfacing with with the clients. And again, I think that sensitivity to what they really wanted and needed and being able to add value there. That’s really what drove me. And so I was there for the typical two years and then hired on at McCaw Cellular. Which was the client I was working at. It was exciting. It was an exciting time.DaveAnd when was this, roughly?CharlieWell, this would have been about 94, I heard. OK. Yeah, yeah. What I loved about it was, I don’t know if you guys remember, but you know, in the early, early days of mobile. It was seen as a huge luxury and car phones and the big Motorola brick phones and the average consumer was sort of on to it yet.But I remember in employee orientation there, they showed a video where they told the story about what people really want. And how important communication is and how how important mobility is. Sort of the nomad. They kind of pinned it into, you. Know, we love travel, we love kind of moving around. It got me to really think about an inspiring vision about what you’re doing and how you’re sort of aligning to Age-Old truths about what people have always wanted. It opened up for me the idea of narratives. I mean, I could keep going. I mean, AT&T ended up buying us that I again was able to start to craft why that was good for them, how that can bring mobility really to the mainstream and got to work on some really interesting projects to to do that.It also showed me some things I didn’t. Want to ever do, which is like gigantic meetings. I remember going with b four of us and like 50 others. At the end of the introduction, the introductions alone would take half an hour. But but that got me to really start to understand teamwork and bringing together lots of different disciplines.And I was there for a few years and then I then I came to Comcast.DaveThen you came to Comcast. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Why did you come to Comcast? What brought you there?CharlieWell, I mean, like, like a lot of people that have been fortunate in their career, I had some great mentors. And one of the mentors I had was a guy named David, and he had come from a McCaw cellular at AT&T and had come over to what at the time was Comcast Cellular business. They ended up selling part of that off. And he went to had the broadband business, and he called me up and he said, You know, you should come over here. It’s just like mobile. You know, mobile was in the beginning seen as a luxury, but.I really think this can can impact people’s lives. And so that’s that’s what really. Got me over again. Just this notion of technology. Improving people’s lives. It’s really been a constant theme in my career.DaveYeah, you’ve been at sort of the vanguard for that in some massive spaces, so what year was it that you went over to Comcast that like late nineties, early 2000?CharlieYeah, it was a 96.DaveAnd so broadband internet was it was just sort of appearing on the yeah, on the landscape.CharlieYeah, it really was. And, you know, we didn’t have it at the time. There was no self install option we had was one of the people on the team that were that were driving that project. It was early, early days. No retail to speak of certainly wasn’t mainstream. So again, a lot of that playbook that we had in mobile could be applied to to to this technology and this value proposition for customers.DaveSo you get to Comcast, what’s your first job when you, once you’re there?CharlieBut my first job was business development, I think director of business development you know, at the time, the cable companies had a venture with together. With this group called. At Home, and it was in the heyday of the internet. The first heyday of the. Internet, I should say. And so it was a lot about you know, establishing relationships and things like that but when at home faced financial difficulties and ultimately disbanded.I was given the task of trying to figure out what our portal was going to be. Email, all of that because I’d had some coding background at Accenture, you know, as a business development that you do a lot of those kinds of things. So we decided to go it alone and stood up our own portal and email, and it was really hard. But that’s ultimately what became. The seed for what became a lot of our interactive properties and and ultimately our product development teams and approach was that interactive group.DaveAwesome. So who is your competition then when you were going to what was it? That was it the Microsoft and Google of the world?CharlieOr, you know, it was AOL, you know, they were huge.I remember, I remember, you know. You know, why are we trying to do this? Let’s just do a deal with AOL and be done and I’m like, you know, look, we’re installing this stuff. It’s a great touchpoint for our customers. Let’s, let’s hold on to it and see what we can do, and sure enough. You know, we could compete there and we won by focusing on what we were trying to do, which was connect up homes and connect people to a vastly bigger world through broadband internet. And it was a little less about, you know, being the portal. It was, it was, you know.Sure, we had one, and we made money on it and things like that. But the real focus. Was just connecting this home, and then we started to put services on top of our portal like. Video and flash players and things like that that were really exciting. That gave us a lot of confidence to go kind of further into the interactive space.DaveAnd then from Biz Dev, what was your next stop in your career?CharlieLet me think. Well, I mean, it became product, essentially. You know, I was running the product. Yeah, it was, you know, running Comcast portal and interactive properties. And, you know, the features that went along with them, which at that time were things like email and personal web pages and stuff like that. And then that evolved into. You know, are you working on the TV products and working on the Infinity Home products and things like that? But it was it was definitely start to run product teams and user experience teams.DaveI think when I met you, you just come out of having run the Xfinity program, which at the time was the most successful product that Comcast had launched, both from an experience standpoint and just from a technology innovation standpoint. Maybe maybe talk about that experience and how that sort of shaped everything you’ve done since.CharlieYeah, I think, you know, when we decided to redefine television and really put the experience and delivery up in the cloud, which we call our X1 experience.I did not start that. That was already started by some really smart folks. But what I did do as I was brought in, we put a new UI on it and we spent a lot of time trying to solve, you know, the discovery and content and put that in quotes that customers have, which is there’s so much on how do I really kind of get to it quickly? How do we make it really welcome and an advanced sort of experience versus what existed before? And so I did run that product team and to your point, that was really successful. You know, I still think it’s one of the better UIs out there, and we really did it by focusing on the content itself and our Mission. Our mission was, A: to put a TV in every pocket, so we focused a lot on the streaming and, and mobile pieces.It was B: to get you to your content that you want faster. And so we spent time on search and discovery and different ways to do that. Whether it’s, you know, rotten tomato listings or whether it’s we had some really cool ways of searching, and then adding things like the voice remote ultimately was sort of the last thing that I was I was involved with.And also looking at that screen as kind of more than what’s on TV like, you can use that screen to, you know, see your security cameras, you can use that screen to interact with customer care, and that’s still something I believe strongly in. We’ll keep, we’ll keep doing that.But the focus and the mission that I gave the team was literally and we headed it at the beginning of every meeting. This slide was like, we’re here to change people’s lives and we’re here to to implement our version of innovation. And for me, innovation is not feature matching. Innovation is making someone’s life better. It can be complex technology that does that. Or it could be something as simple as, you know, sticky coats. But the focus is, you know, making life better and that the job of a good product person.I used to tell this story. My youngest bet you’ve met, Mave.She was four or five and she was opening this present, you know, excited like a kid always is. And she said, I never knew I always wanted this. And I thought it was proof that that’s exactly what a good product person should be doing. And so this idea that we’re constantly trying to figure out ways of making someone excited about what they’re using and have them to start to think like. I can’t imagine my life without this, like, what did I do before? It’s just such a… it was such a, It still gets me super excited just thinking about it. And so and so that is my passion and spent a lot of time there and, nd based on that success. They said, Hey, we have another problem for you, which is the customer experience piece that we’ve been trying to turn around for a while. Could you come in and and Focus on that? And I remember when I first got that gig, lots of things. First of all, that’s where I met CrossLead and you. But I remember getting a lot of questions like, Well, look, you’re not the customer care guy. Like, you don’t have customer service experience. Why are you in this role, right? And my point of view was. Well, customer service is what happens when the experience breaks. So we’re going to go fix the experience which is in the product. It’s in the sales journey, it’s in all of those things. And how do we make those things better so that customer service is reserved for this truly important times when you need it?And look, we’ve got a lot. We’ve got a lot to go for sure. But we made good progress. And what attracted me to that opportunity with Neil Smith, who brought it to me was it was really the chance to change our influencer culture. I wouldn’t say change because I think that the Comcast has always been really focused on customers and wanting to to do right by them. But it was a chance to influence a culture so that you could put some of the metrics around customer experience a little more, you know, in the decision making, in the business. And so that was really, I view that as sort of my experience with sort of culture and bringing people along together, like how do you bring, you know, tens of thousands of people along on this journey and get them to think about it similarly and value the same things? And then recently, I’ve been back in the product world looking back in the product.DaveYeah, yeah, yeah, it’s a remarkable story I remember. I remember the first time I came downstairs on a weekend when I told my kids they could go watch a show and I just sort of marveled at how they navigate it to a show and I’m like, My son can’t read into that voice remote. Was like, I think I was hacking the system by just talking into it. And he was like, Yep, that got me to the the picture. I wanted and then was able to click and much to my horror. I was like, Wow, you know, he’s now fully exposed to the whole world pretty quickly. So to the extent that you want your product to work for a five year old like mission accomplished, that was pretty, pretty remarkable.Go back to the vision statement. I think that’s really I think that’s a really interesting point to dig out on a lot of times, you know? You know, part of the role of the leader is to inspire people towards a new vision. The fact I’d love to hear more how you think about the repetitiveness, how often you to do that, to sort of actually unlock that capability set for an organization?CharlieYeah, I think what I learned was a lot of us, I think, make the mistake we put. We we put effort into these mission statements. Maybe you see them once or twice a year. You know, you couldn’t walk around the halls of those companies and ask them with what the mission statement is, what they’re there to do. Why are they there? And here’s similar things you’d hear very, very different things. I don’t know if you always hear the exact same thing. But I learned that pretty early on, Jim Barksdale was the president at McCaw Cellular, and he brought a lot of things from his time at FedEx. In terms of how you shape culture. And I just remember being struck by how everyone embraced it because they used it all the time because they saw it was in front of them all the time.And so when I was really trying to build out a product culture at Comcast. The idea that people need to have purpose in what they’re doing and it’s not just a job, it’s not just working on technology, it’s not just writing code or creating a design. You’re doing it for an end goal, and having an inspirational end goal is A: important so that everyone’s excited about what they’re doing. And B: is something I learned from from you guys. Having a common mission. And a common understanding allows you to make better decisions down in the trenches and within the teams. And so that to me, was was was really important. And what I found is you just can’t do it once in a while. You literally have to repeat it all the time, which is like all my own hands. Yeah, all the time. You can’t say it enough. And so I’ve taken that to heart and really think if you’re going to try to build a different culture, really get people to live up to your mission, they have to see it constantly. It can’t just be at the budget time or on a poster in the break room. You really need to sort of reinforce it and show that you’re living it and show that you’re excited about it.DaveYeah, no. 100%. If you think about the probably the most influential leadership lesson from from these last couple of experiences at Comcast, maybe tell a story around it that really helps, helps, helps the audience personalize it. If you could.CharlieI probably should have thought about this a little more. I mean, there’s so many. I’m the kind of person that thinks about these moments, and I just dwell on them all the time. I will say one thing I learned about what two things one is I was in my early forties because before I really am in my early fifties now, before I really realized that leadership was a discipline, you could practice and try different hats on. I assumed prior to that the people were either natural leaders or they weren’t.And yeah, and so I went through some leadership courses and Center for Creative Leadership was one. And I realized, you know, it’s. It’s it’s a lot about what you’re saying to the team, how you’re listening to the team. It’s a lot about communications and you should try some things.And so I forced myself in these all hands to try to be a better speaker to try to, you know, I tried a lot of different things. And so that’s one: one is that, you know, I came to realize that leadership was something that you could practice and you should look to others, read books about it and etc. I just it wasn’t in my sort of DNA at that time. It is now. And one of the there’ve been so many great leaders that I’ve worked for, but one that stuck with me because he was very different was Neil Smith, and what I remember from him was sort of just an unwavering courage and optimism about the mission and just extreme focus.But done in a way that was very friendly and collegial and collaborative. I remember when he offered me this role. He said, I think this is going to be a lot of fun. It’s also going to be really hard. And so, you know, I’m thinking to myself, OK, Neal. He’s a seal, former seal. So if he says something’s going to be hard, it’s going to be really hard. But that got me excited. And I remember that.DaveWhat do you mean by hard Neal? I wonder if we have the same scale for what that means.CharlieExactly. But I remember the look in his eyes that he’s genuinely jazzed about it, and that was the moment I flipped as like, OK, I’m all it. And so.DaveThat’s great.CharlieLeadership vision or leadership principle, I learned from that and, there were others, obviously great, great mentors. I’ve had the fortune to work for. But I just took that to heart and said you know what? The role of a leader is to lead and to model the behavior they want to see. And I think he did that really well. And so it doesn’t serve a leader. Well to sort of get down or get exasperated or, you know, they really got to show that. They are excited about what they’re doing and confident that it can be done. And so that’s one lesson I’ve definitely taken, I take it to heart.DaveTalk to me about your personal habits, like how you sort of set yourself up for your day, for a week, for your month, for your for your year. Are there specific things that you do that are so unique to you that may be perceived as quirky?CharlieNo, I would say, yeah, I do have a bit of a habit of it’s quirky now, but it’s it’s what I don’t have is, I think, what I aspire or aspire to.Which is sort of you probably wake up early and work out really hard and get your day going. I do that in spurts. And actually during this pandemic, I’ve been pretty good. So my day typically starts at five or earlier. I sleep less as I get older. But and I’m not a kind of guy that can get up right away at work. I’m just not. And so the one habit that I do have, which my wife teases me about, she calls it puttering around. But you know, I get my coffee. I read some email and I always I always read the news or watch the news, BBC or something like that or NBC.For me, it’s just having an hour and a half of quiet time to kind of think about the day. And actually a lot of the stuff I think about. I process emails and stuff like that but a lot of this stuff I think about is what we’ve talked about a little here today, which is like, how am I going to sort of. You know, support the narrative I’m telling in the meetings that I have today? You know, where where are there opportunities to influence, you know, towards the mission of what we’re trying to do?It’s a bit of a reminder of really what I’m all about and what I’m here to do I love that. And then, you know, it’s awesome. And then, you know, I have during, especially during Kovner, because I’m not an early morning workout person. I did start blocking seven to eight to work out, and so I’ve been pretty good about that, but other than that, I do have a lot of like quirky habits or. I find a lot of quirky habits, but not on a daily basis But now and then, I’m a big fan. Like, I’ve got four kids and in the evening, you know, try to get as much done. During the day so that I can have some time with them. You know, we’re big, big family dinner, people.DaveOh, that’s great. That’s great. If you go back to your early days as a as a scout and I know, I know you’re very successful, you went on to to to get your Eagle Eagle Scout badge. Maybe talk about what was like one of the core takeaways that you still live today from from those experiences is as a child.CharlieYou know, I would think, well, first of all, I was again very focused on the camping aspects of being a scout. So to me, it was it was about getting a bunch of skills that I wasn’t going to be able to get from from my dad. And know I would say. And I went on. My son is an Eagle Scout. I went on to help with his troop. I would say what I took from it was a notion of civic responsibility and just just the idea of. You know, doing things for your community I did not. And we’ve talked a lot about it. I did not go on to serve in the forces or anything like that, which has been a minor regret of mine but I do. Feel like as a, as a person in society, we we owe something to the community.And I think that scouting experience fostered that and then I would say as an adult leader in the scouts when my son was in it, when I was amazed by is just how accomplished and. Thoughtful these young men and women can be. And the potential is so much greater than I. Think we give kids credit for. And so I was I was.Truly inspired by the accomplishments of some of these, you know, 16, 17, 15 year olds in terms of what they knew about.DaveYou know.CharlieEverything you know, they just attacked it and with such a curious mind. And so that was that was really inspiring to me.DaveYeah, it’s awesome. I mean, obviously, the hope he prepared peace plays and it sounds like he’d do that every morning. I love the fact that you connect. You take the time to be thoughtful about your day in looking at the various interactions you’re going to have and saying, All right, how do I take that, that vision and weave that into these meetings? That’s that’s that’s that’s extremely thoughtful, makes a ton of sense and probably a practice that everybody could probably apply.CharlieI think you can take that into sort of your your your goals, too. Again, I’m a big believer in keeping track and keeping score. And so every quarter when it I say my goals were how my grading myself and I, you know, send that to my boss. And one, it helps the scope creep. It helps to remind your boss. What you said you were going to do. And two, it keeps you honest and it makes you a person of your word and transparency. Look, I’m not. I’m not getting this a goal done.CharlieAnd for these reasons, but I think it’s important to constantly revisit what you’re where you’re trying to do.DaveYou talked earlier or we’ve talked earlier about, you know, the importance of teams and sort of your your sort of development around those concepts specifically in this role because I think it was it was interesting. I think to be good for the audience to hear kind of unique is that position because you weren’t really in charge of anything, right? But you had influence over sort of everything. And so you really had to work in that distributed almost team of teams and time. Maybe maybe talk a bit more about, you know, some of the key things you took away from trying to drive a transformation from a centralized resource with a very strong incumbency in that, you know, and the respective silos and disciplines of the organization?CharlieYeah. And to me, that was a really fun moment, actually. And I’m not. Saying that’s just because I’m on a CrossLead podcast. But as you know, the story was you guys had given me the. Galleys of team of teams to read, and I was always away on a vacation and so I had this role and I had some ideas of things I wanted to do the piece that I hadn’t figured out as like, how am I really going to get all of these different disciplines to to chase the same vision and figure out how to do that?And in reading that book. I was so excited, like I wanted to leave vacation right away because for me, it unlocked the idea. That you can create a shared consciousness in greater context around a mission with some pretty simple communication tools.Some simple sort of team decision making tools and so that was an, you know, you were there. As we launched. You know what we called the forum, which was our sort of our company once a week meeting where we invited everyone to participate. And what it taught me was the context is so critical to the teams making decisions and it can turn things from adversarial. Into sort of pure alignment with just understanding a little more context and that’s that’s something I’m really driving.As I focus on teamwork now. Very smart folks on the team are very focused on their area of the business, not coming together regularly to understand other people’s parts of the business. This notion of a quarterly business reviews where everyone sits in and again, I pull those lessons from from CSX that. If you really want to give people the license to do what you want them to ultimately do, you need to give them full context and a very clear mission that we all agree on. And once that happens, magic because, you know, it just starts running itself. That’s what I learned. You know, one of the things that I chose, why I chose. The NPS system to implement was not sure. The score is important and the question is important. But to me, there were two. Factors that were the most important that I wanted to kind of get into the culture one was the idea of.Following up with customers calling them, you know, getting more feedback from them and using that rich, rich data to wine solve their problems, but then start to really look at it at a.DaveIt initiated their own priorities.CharlieYeah, I mean, I think it’s really easy to to look at machine data and believe your own data. You can’t argue. People’s perception because that’s what they have, you know, and so that’s important to have their perception is as a measure or marker of where they are with your brand. The other component and the most. Exciting component was this notion of Ian, the employee NPS about what you’re doing. And what you do in that process. You use. Surface, you have them surface at a very local level issues that are keeping. Them from accomplishing the mission. When you address them. And what I liked about NPS is it put everyone at a senior leadership team. On notice and accountable for solving those problems.They have to to, you know, because we elevate them, we track them we make sure everyone knows them.And it’s basically an insurance policy to make sure you’re listening to your to your employees because they know what to do. They want to do right and they know how to solve the problem, and you’ve got to sort of listen to them. Yeah.And so that was that was really important. And I think the whole stakes. Journey also taught me just the importance of, you know, your frontline workers in terms of listening to their ideas and trying to make their job easier so they can do the job that you want them to do, which is take care of the customer. And that, to me, is. More important than any kind of score is. That we have a system now and when I walk I guess I haven’t walked through the halls in a while, but when I used to walk through the halls. The things that made me the most proud about that. Whole period of my career was hearing. People in meetings talking about in peace as part of their decision making or product feature or whatever, and it’s in every single meeting, in every single function, you know, legal, finance. Billing and that to me was OK. It’s part of our DNA, is part of our culture. That’s the most proud thing I have of that whole period.DaveYeah, that’s a great example of culture change right there. You know, being on a sort of management and it’s hard to quantify culture, oftentimes it’s sort of like oxygen. You don’t really notice it until it’s missing, right? When you get that, when you get those insights just by walking around. We used to call it troop in the line, right? You go out and they’re in their foxholes, in the front lines and just sort of hear what the men and women are talking about. And and when you hear them repeating back narratives that you’re trying to push at the top, you feel you feel great.CharlieYeah.DaveWho say it’s not important who I am and what you’re saying. And that’s great. It’s awesome. OK? As you think about. So I mean, that’s a good segue way into the last year and a half have been incredibly challenging for a lot of people. And I know, you know, specifically the work environment I’d love to hear, you know, specifically how you guys have sort of dealt with the pandemic and and how you’re thinking about your team and Asia as it sort of return to work opportunities, startups and how you’re thinking about best practice coming out of that?CharlieWell, the first thing is we’ve always placed. Employee safety as a as a super high priority. So that is guided everything for us. And so early on, you know, it was like, All right, how do we keep our employees. Safe and. Still try to. Accomplish the things we want to do as a business and get customers hooked up to, you know, because now they’re even more focused on on staying connected. So one of the things I’m really proud of is we moved, you know. Tens of thousands of employees to work from home within 60 days. And we did it in a secure way with a scalable VPN and a lot of creative technologists and just hard elbow grease to get that done. And with with the idea that we can make them productive and happy at home.And not place them in harm’s way by having them come in to sort of open floor plan call centers and things like that. So that I think going in, we didn’t know how easy or hard. Well, we knew it’s gonna be hard. We didn’t know how successful we were going to be, but we were very successful. And I think the employees reflected. That terms. We love that you’re focused on us, that you’re focused on our safety and health. And then talking about doing.Doing a good job and as a as an employee. And I just think that that was. Such a proud moment for us to be able to do that. The other the other one was, you know, again, some the network performed really well amidst a huge surge in traffic, and we were able to deploy some really smart technology and AI into our network to to make sure that it continued to do that.And so I think it showed us that preparing your core. Assets and applying technology in a smart way, you know, for these unexpected moments is just so critical. So we learned that about ourselves as we think about. Coming back to the office. You know, first of all, working remotely. And using the software we use as Microsoft Teams. Just I think it surprised everyone. We how good it was in terms of being able to. Accomplish our goals, launch products remotely, you know, gather as a team to to make decisions, and it’s just really positive experience.And so as we come back into the office because we do feel like, you know. The collaboration and co-location and things like that are very important will be. Will understand how to be more flexible. But I think what it’s. Taught us is the importance of distributed locations. How do you include, you know, your, your development centers. In. India or Israel or Denver and really bring the teams together? That’s been a lesson we’ve learned. But I think as we go back, we are looking forward to getting. Back and being together and driving those that teamwork. But we’ll have some tools, some extra tools. To be even more connected and even more flexible, and we need to be.DaveAwesome. Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. I was having this conversation with some, some other executives recently as they think about navigating this. And I think a lot of a lot of people, specifically, they’re in a position to make decisions around this are sort of wrestling with, is it back to five days or is it only going to be a hybrid or whatever else? And you know, my my thought is once people learn a new skill and learn new muscle like they’re never going to go back to exactly the way it was just going to have an expanded toolkit to do stuff. And I still think the most effective form of communication is in person face to face. Yeah. So for those you know, those really, you know, high, impactful sessions that are needed, just they’re still going to be a requirement to do that. But I think we’ve all learned that there’s the ability to sort of operate, like you said, in a distributed manner, be effective going back to, you know, the team, a team story for a second. You know, we we set up our physical infrastructure around the globe realizing that the majority of the people that need to be involved in the night’s operation. We’re not going to be physically present, not because of some pandemic, just because of. Right, right. The laws of physics and distribute. So we actually designed our spaces with that in mind, meaning like we knew that most of our conversation was going to be have to be in a virtual setting and the people in the room were important, but you know, it was trying to. Index to make sure they were inclusive was what I love about what I love about how teams and when you go to fully virtual is not everybody has the same experience because they’re through a common platform coming back to some hybrid model where you’re going to, you’re probably going to have a scenario where. You got some people in the room and other people out of the room, but you still got to get the same thing done. It’ll be interesting to see how people people sort of navigate that, but that was like, you know, a critical insight because it was just a constraint that existed for us. So it wasn’t an option to get it the other way.CharlieYeah, I think two things. one is we’re also sort of retooling our rooms for this notion of a more inclusive environment with remote workers, whether they’re individually promoting or. Or, as I mentioned, one of our dev locations that. The key one of the things that we’re doing, which. Is the key thing that I think everyone feels like they really missed was especially on engineering side, it was this kind of whiteboarding. I think that virtual whiteboard. Is just as hard. As you get your whiteboard there. So one of the things we’re doing is. Setting up cameras on the whiteboards and we’ll see. How we’re going to how that goes. And we’re going to we’re going to start going In some of us just to test it out here and a little bit.But I do think I think the second thing is, I think all of. The participants of a meeting are going to be a lot more in tune with the fact that there are remote folks. Prior to COVID, we had have all these sort. Of we try to have these rules of, Hey. If you’ve got someone remote, don’t forget to ask them their opinion. You know, we had these, you know, don’t close that meeting without asking anyone on the phone, you know, their thoughts. That kind of thing, because we were trying to reinforce this notion of, don’t forget. And I think. That will be a problem anymore. So I’m looking forward to.That better, better team cohesion. But it is going to be, you know, we don’t know yet. We’re going to learn. Our way through it. Like, think most like most of your companies?DaveAwesome. So to last question. first of all, what are you guys working on now? Like, what are your top, you know, key priorities and you know, on your own leadership development, like what do you what do you kind of like focusing on are finding the time to read or think about now?CharlieWell, as I as I set up the structure, it’s really trying to figure out how do I drive more contextual, better alignment with the teams, including some of our stakeholder partners? That’s like not a new problem, but it’s I’m sure that we are persistent or that you’ve always got to work on and you can always get better at. And I think it doesn’t get better without a very. sIntentional way of doing it. So I’m looking at some training to help with that.You know, I think, you know, a lot of that. We did a lot. Of listening sessions with our DNI efforts. Listening sessions are actually part of NPS. We call them huddles. So some of the training I’m looking at. Is how to have conversations. How do you have really honest, hard conversations, but not in an adversarial way? And there’s. There’s some good. Material out there, so I’m going to be kind of focused on that. And then the second thing we’re focused on is how do we really set our. Ourselves up for the future of what the home is going to be and spending a lot of time really looking at really, really where customers are going to want home? How are they going to?What kinds of entertainment are they going to want and getting. Back to some some strategies? One of the things I’m interested in doing.Is is driving sort of a ten year strategy cycle within the group. A lot of companies will do five year plans or three year plans. And how do you sort of have a rolling ten year kind of plan on on again?Less about the finances, but more about where.Consumer trends are going to be and how do we really make sure that we’re applying our innovation and our resources in a smart way to make sure that those are seen and worked into our products in a real way?So those are sort of the two big.Sort of new cultural things I’m working on.And then other than that, we’re going to keep driving.Connecting homes, you know, and people, whether it’s some of the mobile products we’re launching now.Or.We’re going all broadband and some of our new forms of entertainment, you know, it’s just it’s a busy, busy world as you as, you know, lots of product changes. But it’s.Exciting. And so, you know, continuing.To focus on what we want to do and not kind of chasing what others are doing is always about.Also making sure that you’re staying true to what you think you can build as is key to me.DaveThat’s great. That’s great. What’s the most recent like book you’ve read or the movie you’ve seen or show you’ve watched or something? That’s that you found interesting that maybe the audience could benefit from?CharlieYou know, I was trying to look at I was trying to look up the title of this book I read, I will get it to you. But it was really about.Successful leaders and CEOs.And how they thought about.Capital allocation.Again, I apologize. I can’t think of the title I need to look at because.DaveThe main theme in a couple of months. The main thing was, look here eight CEOs. And they were some of the most successful CEOs in history. And they may not have been the high flying ones you’ve heard of. But they really return shareholder value because they thought constantly about how they were allocating capital and just sort of the thought process that they went through and I think that is increasingly. Something that I’m certainly spending more time thinking about as well because you do, you have to shut down. Some things to start new with new things, and that’s hard. But you know, the people that either through instinct or. In this case, you know, just really good studying of where things are going. They’ve been able to make those those choices. So I apologize. I don’t have the name of the book, but all I know.Is we’ll make sure we capture it in there and in the of notes. That’s awesome, though. It’s awesome, and I think it makes a ton of sense, you know, thinking about prioritization and how you make some decisions about, you know, at the local level.But then at the more strategic level where you’re at, it really comes down to where are you going to make that capital wise and in bringing out the right process that’s actually driving that ten year vision you’re talking about is is. Really important. Try. Thanks so much for taking time with us today. We really appreciate it was awesome having you on the CrossLead podcast. Any final thoughts or comments?CharlieNo. Again, I appreciate and honored that you asked me to participate. I’ve learned so much from listening to others. Talk about their experiences. Certainly learned a lot from you.Just how hopeful can be helpful to someone again. The notion of high performing teams and how you organize that is is, to your point, it’s a persistent problem. So I think you’re doing good work and it’s critical.DaveIf the listeners want to learn more about you or follow you. Is there even a way to do that given your own position? Yeah, people are going to love this question.CharlieYeah. And honestly, you know, I’m not active on the social media platforms, so I think you probably just need to look for. I know that, you know, I’ve got some some of my keynotes out there. You can watch them. And, you know, once COVID kind of gets better and we’re traveling more, I’m sure I’ll be. I’ll be doing some conferences and things like that.DaveAwesome. All right. Well, thank you, Charli.e. I really appreciate you spending time with us today.CharlieLikewise. Thank you.Daveone more thing before we finish the episode, the CrossLead podcast is produced by the team at Truth Work Media. I want to make this the best leadership podcast available, so I would love to get your feedback. Our goal this season is to have authentic conversations with special operators, business leaders and thought leaders on the topics of leadership and agility. If you have any feedback, suggested topics or leaders that you want to hear from these, email me at contact@crosslead.com. If you found this episode interesting. Please share it with a friend and drop us a rating until next time. Thank you for joining.

Activist investing is the new frontier for value investors, allowing them to be the agents of their own returns.   Today we're continuing our examination of the activist style of investing by exploring the intersection of two important trends in the money management industry: activism and environmental, social, and governance investing.   Impactive Capital's Lauren Taylor Wolfe joins us to share her perspective and Impactive's unique approach to creatively incorporating environmental, social and governance (ESG) into activism.   Lauren is co-founder and Managing Partner of Impactive Capital, an activist investment management firm that currently has more than 1.5 billion in assets under management.  Prior to founding Impactive, she spent 10 years at Blue Harbour Group where she was a Managing Director and Investing Partner. Lauren earned her M.B.A. from The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. magna cum laude from Cornell University.    In this episode, Lauren, Michael and I discuss her non-linear journey to investing, what she learned from working in different industries, how she became interested in activist investing, what Impactive is doing to improve diversity in the industry, and so much more!   Key Topics:   Lauren's first business endeavors (2:05) Lauren's work experiences after graduation (3:13) Why Lauren was drawn to value investing early in her career (6:16) How TurboChef raised Lauren's interest in activist investing (8:57) Why many executives struggle with capital allocation (11:49) Impactive's focus on business quality and time horizon (14:13) The evolution of activist investing (16:25) Impactive's approach to working with management (18:21) Idea screening and ESG considerations (20:33) How Impactive values businesses (21:24) Thinking about business resilience (25:13) Portfolio construction and sizing (26:40) Lauren's thoughts on luck and skill (30:22) Creating a diverse workforce in investment management and our support industries (32:08) Impactive's approach to idea sourcing and prioritization (34:30) HD Supply's business background (37:39) HD Supply's move from Home Depot to private equity and back (40:49) KBR's transformation into a high quality business (46:16) The opportunities Impactive identified with KBR (49:30) Lauren's perspective on meme stocks and SPACs  (52:41) Opportunities and risks on the horizon (54:47) Books that Lauren is reading (57:01) And much more!   Mentioned in this Episode:   Impactive Capital William Thorndike's Book | The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success Robert G. Kirby's Article | The Coffee Can Portfolio Annie Duke's Book | How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices Scott Page's Book | The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy Scott Page's Book | The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies Bill Gates' Book | How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need Kazuo Ishiguro's Book | Klara and the Sun Ted Koppel's Book | Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath   Thanks for Listening!   Be sure to subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And feel free to drop us a line at valueinvesting@gsb.columbia.edu.   Follow the Heilbrunn Center on social media on Instagram, LinkedIn, and more!

Years ago, Facebook did the work for brands in terms of customer acquisition, but iOS14 forced brands to have to know their customers better. It's challenging at first, but taking the time to learn what motivates your customers ultimately yields the best results.In this episode, the Founder of Enquire Labs, Matt Bahr, talks about effective ways of getting and using attribution to maximize for your business. He walks us through different attribution categories and how to maximize them.KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODEGet to know your customers.Do not use the word “survey” because it has the connotation of “doing research”.The important question categories are attribution, segmentation and personalization, CROs, and customer research.Qualitative questions are helpful to get insights from your customers.Work with methodologists to craft effective questions.Find reputable models and be comfortable executing them.Learn strategies that allow you to dive into direct from customers (DFCs) data.Recommended app: Screenshot XRecommended Book: The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Successhttps://www.amazon.com/Outsiders-Unconventional-Radically-Rational-Blueprint/dp/1422162672Today's Guest:Matt Bahr is the Founder of EnquireLabs.Enquire Labs is a post-purchase survey platform. They help thousands of Shopify stores (750+ Plus stores) solve attribution, CRO, personalization, and customer research.Connect and learn more about Matt and Enquire Labs here:Website: https://www.enquirelabs.comLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewbahr/Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/mattrbahrToday's SponsorHelpFlow provides 24/7 live chat and customer service teams to 100+ eCommerce stores. HelpFlow's team of agents maximize conversion by recovering checkout abandons, integrating with cart recovery emails, and helping engaged website visitors overcome what's stopping them from entering the checkout process.Website: HelpFlow.comDownload HelpFlow's Free Resource - How to Predict and Save Cart Abandons with Live Chat at https://helpflow.net/mindfulWe love our podcast community and listeners so much that we have decided to offer a free eCommerce Growth Plan for your brand! To learn more and how we can help, click here:https://mindfulmarketing.co/growthplan-applyIf you've been paying attention and your brand is ready to GROW, apply now to be the one new brand we take on this month!https://mindfulmarketing.co/apply

A special episode with William Thorndike, founder and a managing director of Housatonic Partners, a private equity firm and someone with a laser focus in all things investing and leadership. Author of The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success, the book has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide and was #1 on Warren Buffett's Recommended Reading List 2012. Learn about what makes a great CEO, where you and your business are currently at and where you should be aiming for.

In our first book review, we look at key lessons that we've pulled from William Thorndike's The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success.For any comments, questions or feedback please email mark.lamonica1@morningstar.comAdditional resources from our episodes are available via our website: https://www.morningstar.com.au/credit/article/invetingcompass/214638Please follow us on Instagram: @morningstarinvestorau

This episode talks about Vell's take on this one time he wish he would have had sex with this one lady from his past. The Good Read for this episode is The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William N. Thorndike. What makes a successful CEO? Most people call to mind a familiar definition: “a seasoned manager with deep industry expertise.” Others might point to the qualities of today's so-called celebrity CEOs—charisma, virtuoso communication skills, and a confident management style. But what really matters when you run an organization? What is the hallmark of exceptional CEO performance? Quite simply, it is the returns for the shareholders of that company over the long term. What's popping in Vell's World consist of team USA Basketball are ASS, COVID cases are spiking, Future suppose to spent $5k on sex, and more. Follow on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @VellsWorldPodcast Email vellsworldpodcast@ldmonger.com with any comments, questions, or concerns you would like mentioned in our upcoming episodes. To sponsor an episode send us an email. Don't forget to subscribe, tell a friend, and follow on all social media platforms. You can leave a voice message and become a monetary supporter for as little as .99 cent on the anchor.fm. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vellsworldpodcast/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/vellsworldpodcast/support

Josh Schultz is a master of SMB Operations. This episode is a deep dive into SMB Operations and how Josh analyzes businesses in order to optimize operations to greatly scale SMB's. They discuss his journey of joining his father's company, expanding into the Mexico market, living in China to learn the nuances of the international supply chain and manufacturing practices before ultimately leading the sale of the business and his current role as an SMB ops consultant. They also discuss prioritizing KPI's, beneficial softwares for SMB's and his forthcoming cohort for business owners led by him and previous FORT guest Rich Jordan. Enjoy! Follow Chris on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/FortWorthChris Learn more about Chris Powers and Fort Capital: www.FortCapitalLP.com Follow Chris on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/chrispowersjr/ Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/E_76qTSmt2g Josh on Twitter The SMB Ops Letter by Josh Schultz (01:52) - Joshua's Background and Career (05:04) - What was the state of the company when you joined your father? (08:08) - What's unique about how you look at businesses? (09:30) - What systems did you implement and what things did you change in your father's company? (12:03) - How did your process of systematizing communication help with growth? (12:45) - How did you implement a culture of adopting technology? (14:44) - Expanding into Mexico (17:44) - Living in China and Learning the International Nature of Supply Chain (22:21) - What's the playbook for a new business owner that needs to start working with China? (24:12) - What is “The Chinese Way”?  (27:34) - The Process of Selling the Business in 2019 (31:47) - Why does every small business not see these obvious operations optimizations? (36:49) - What type of businesses do you specialize in with your consulting? (40:45) - How do you create an environment where employees feel comfortable bringing operational frustrations to your desk? (42:26) - Prioritizing What to Tackle First (47:33) - Should every business have a way to submit anonymous feedback? (48:36) - How should people decide what software to use in a no-code world with limitless options? Bubble.io  Trello Glide Zapier (50:16) - How do you know what KPI's matter? The 4 Disciplines of Execution (56:44) - Accountability for KPI's  (58:19) - Why does nobody look at dashboards? (1:00:07) - SMB Cohort with Rich Jordan - Crucible (1:05:16) - 90% of Business is Boring!! (1:07:57) -  How and Why to Ask Questions (1:11:16) - What's next for Joshua? (1:16:37) - What are the biggest mistakes from an ops perspective that most SMB's make? (1:20:03) - What's the bridge between Sales and Operations? (1:21:11) - What happens at a business where your skillset is no longer valuable? (1:22:43) - Is there a great ops book you recommend? Plain Talk by Ken Iverson The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success By William Thorndike (1:24:41) - Do you have an operational person you look up to? (1:25:28) - If you had a billboard you could put anything on, what would it say? The FORT is produced by Straight Up Podcasts

Different social media platforms play a huge part in the E-commerce business growth that most of the time, we become overly dependent on the metrics that they provide us with.In this episode, Devin O’Brien of Askov Finlayson talks about why businesses shouldn’t just rely on platform attribution models. Devin shares the strategies that worked to help him exit his DTC brand and now grow Askov Finlayson based on his long-time experience in eCommerce, he was on Shopify in 2011! We hope you enjoy this episode!KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODEYou cannot buy customers forever.Deep intimate connection with people brought together by shared purpose and cause resonates deeply beyond anything you can do digitally.Take whatever works organically on Facebook and Instagram and turn it into an ad.Empower people and give them a clear vision of their role and how it can contribute to the business's success, then get out of their way.Podcast: The Meateater Podcasthttps://www.themeateater.com/listen/meateaterBook: The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Successhttps://www.amazon.com/Outsiders-Unconventional-Radically-Rational-Blueprint/dp/1422162672TODAY’S GUESTDevin O’Brien is the VP of Marketing of Askov Finlayson. Askov Finlayson is a Northern outfitter and Minneapolis-based fashion brand on a mission to keep the North cold.Connect and learn more about Devin and Askov Finlayson here:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/devinbobrien/?hl=enLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devin-o-brien-1a342020/Website: https://askovfinlayson.comWe love our podcast community and listeners so much that we have decided to offer a free eCommerce Growth Plan for your brand! To learn more and how we can help, click here:https://mindfulmarketing.co/growthplan-applyIf you've been paying attention and your brand is ready to GROW, apply now to be the one new brand we take on this month!https://mindfulmarketing.co/applyThe landscape of E-commerce is changing, and what used to work may not be working (or working as well as it used to)! So.... join us in hearing from e-commerce experts (Ezra Firestone, Ryan Mckenzie, and Sean Holladay, to name a few) at the E-commerce Executives Virtual Roundtable Spring 2021 event on May 26, 2021!

หนังสือ The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success ของ William N. Thorndike Jr. - คนที่โดดเด่นจริง ๆ ที่ทุกคนควรจะมีในองค์กรคือคนแบบไหนกันแน่ - คนนอกและคนใน ทำไมถึงมีความหมายที่แตกต่างกัน เราจงทำเหมือนเป็นคนนอกจะได้เห็นคนในชัดเจนขึ้น - ผู้บริหารที่ดีคือ ผู้บริหารที่สามารถจัดการปัญหาของตัวเองได้อย่างดีเยี่ยม ไม่เพิกเฉยต่อการพัฒนาตนเองและคุณภาพของสังคม - การเห็นตัวอย่างที่ดี มันจะทำให้เราอยากจะทำตามคนเหล่านั้น จงแสวงหาตัวอย่างผู้บริหารที่ดีให้จงได้ แล้วเราจะเป็นผู้บริหารที่ดีตามไป - ความพยายามที่จะหลีกเลี่ยงความล้มเหลว นั่นไม่ใช่วิถีของผู้บริหารที่ดีเลย เพราะการรับความล้มเหลวคือหนทางของการดึงทักษะของผู้บริหารสืบไป

On today’s Tank Talks we have Braughm Ricke, founder and CEO of Aduro Advisors, which is a platform that allows fund to streamline accounting and operations.Braughm’s Background:CEO and Founder of Aduro Advisors in Denver, CO. Former Founding CFO of True Ventures with over 20+ years of VC experience. He began his career in venture capital in 1999 and was the Controller at Sofinnova Ventures. Before working in the venture industry, he was an Accounting Analyst at Fidelity Investments. Braughm launched Aduro as a tech-enabled Fund Administrator and has grown to over 300+ Firms and over $30 Billion assets under administration and works with top tier managers like Lowercase Capital, Homebrew, and Craft Ventures.In this episode we discuss:01:46 The spark to leave True Ventures and start Aduro03:14 What emerging managers ask when starting a fund04:15 Defining fund administration06:04 How Aduro handles the boring things while managers source deals06:57 The opportunity for technology to disrupt the VC world09:18 How Aduro scales with clients11:16 LPs and how they are adapting to the surge in emerging managers13:13 Fundraising and timing the market15:56 Launching an institutional fund on Angellist17:13 How new crowd equity platforms will effect emerging managers19:16 The rise of co-investing20:32 Emerging managers of fund of funds21:24 Breaking up the VC oligopoly with data23:57 How using tools like Aduro gives managers and LPs more confidence25:15 What funds will look like moving forward27:01 The push for data standardization across the industry29:47 Giving LPs clarity as dilution and other factors happenBooks Braughm recommends:The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan HolidayThe Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William N. ThorndikeReady Player Two by Ernest ClineFollow Matt Cohen and Tank Talks here!Podcast production support provided by Agentbee.Agency This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tanktalks.substack.com

In this episode, I chatted with Nic Barlage, Cleveland Cavaliers' President of Business Operations. We talked about his first steps in the industry as an intern with the Alexandria Beetles in the Northwood National Baseball League and how that experience helped him get where he is today. He shared four tips for a successful career, his view on dealing with failure, and more. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a five-star iTunes review.  ********************************************************************* "Failure, if channeled from a positive perspective, becomes an opportunity for all of us to get better." - Nic Barlage. During his internship working for the Alexandria Beetles, Nic did almost everything. Like players' laundry, on-stage host for the games, taking care of the ballpark hanging fence signs or pumping the water out of it if there was heavy rain the previous night. He would also sell the ballpark putting together promotions, making hotdogs, and the list goes on and on.   Nic learned a lot from his experience of the 18+ hours internship working for the Beetles; still, one of the biggest lessons would come after sending over 172 resumes and getting zero response. Far from regret doing that, he believes that that was the first step to start developing patient persistence and fortified determination.  He also referred to how it was for him and his team Lebrons' departure from Cleveland and the things he thinks they could've done differently. We talked about the importance of changing our mindset and treating challenges as opportunities to become better at what we do, turning something that could be considered harmful into something positive. Nic also highlighted the importance of networking in the industry, and he talked about how vital human relationships are.  He shared his four cornerstones for a successful career in the sports industry and the best way to value and take the maximum out of our time; some of his favorite books and the leaders he likes to get inspiration from.  Resources: Book: William N. Thorndike - The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success Book: Stephen A.Schwarzman - What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence Book: Leander Khaney - Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level Book: David Goggins - Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds Book: Robert Iger - The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company Book: Adrian Robert Gostick - All In: How the Best managers Create a Culture of Belief and Drive Big Results Book: Phil Knight - Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike  

My guest today is Carlos Cashman,  co-founder and co-CEO of Thrasio an acquirer of third-party Amazon sellers. In a surprising departure for a high growth company, Thrasio has been profitable since its founding in 2018 and was most recently valued at $1 billion. In our conversation we discuss the full spectrum of the Amazon third party seller ecosystem, the effects of globally commoditized manufacturing, and the terms of Thrasio's acquisitions of Amazon businesses. I hope you enjoy this great conversation with Carlos Cashman.     For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content check out https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/28372673/cashman-lessons-from-the-amazon-ecosystem   This episode of Founder's Field Guide is sponsored by Klaviyo.  Klaviyo is the ultimate marketing platform for ecommerce. With targeted segmentation, email automation, SMS marketing, and more, Klaviyo helps you create your ideal customer experience. See why Klaviyo's trusted by more than 50,000 brands, like Living Proof, Solo Stove, and Nomad to help them grow their business.   For a free trial check out https://www.klaviyo.com/founders.      This episode is also sponsored by Vanta.  Vanta has built software that makes it easier to both get and maintain your SOC 2 report, at a fraction of the normal cost. Founders Field Guide listeners can redeem a $1k off coupon at vanta.com/patrick.    Founder's Field Guide is a property of Colossus Inc. For more episodes of Founder's Field Guide go to https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes.    Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week.  Sign up here - https://www.joincolossus.com/newsletter.   Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag Follow Colossus on Twitter at @JoinColossus   Show Notes [00:02:44] – [First question] – Origin of Thrasio [00:07:27] – The types of business they work with [00:11:19] – Challenges for smaller businesses selling on Amazon and when they need a Thrasio [00:15:31] – How the Amazon ecosystem has changed since they started [00:18:14] – The capital sourcing side of their business [00:19:49] – Future of the ecommerce space that has them excited [00:27:20] – What makes the major online powerful so powerful for DTC companies [00:32:18] – How edge erodes on spend when people crowd into a platform [00:34:46] – Building the recognition of the Thrasio brand [00:44:06] – His history as an entrepreneur and what was the common thread in these businesses [00:45:47] – Getting customers early on [00:46:47] – Knowing when something will fail [00:48:48] – Downside of MBA’s [00:50:07] – The importance of people in building a company [00:51:01] – Effectively hiring people [00:52:37] – What has to remain with the founder             [00:52:50] – The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success [00:53:53] – Other places in ecommerce that fascinate him [00:56:36] – What are the risk factors that he worries about [00:59:12] – Kindest thing anyone has done for him

My guest this week is Lauren Taylor Wolfe. Lauren is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Impactive Capital. Prior to founding Impactive she spent 10 years at Blue Harbour Group, a $3 billion activist investment firm. Our conversation is on the modernization of the activist investor playbook—how investors engage with companies to make them better and improve long term outcomes. We discuss the entire activist toolkit, focuses on what has changed the most in recent years. I’m also very excited to announce a new initiative. After years of building, operating, and investing in software, we are launching Positive Sum, a new early stage equity investing firm. You can read a bit more at positivesumadvisors.com. Now, please enjoy my conversation with Lauren Taylor Wolfe.   This episode of Invest Like The Best is sponsored by Canalyst. Canalyst is the leading destination for public company data and analysis.  If you’re a professional equity investor and haven’t talked to Canalyst recently, you should give them a shout. Learn more and try Canalyst for yourself at canalyst.com/Patrick.     For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes (2:31) – (First question) – Her background and how she landed at Impactive Capital (6:25) – Impactive’s strategy vs the stereotype of the activist investor (10:55) – Potential candidates for what they do (13:26) – How they view the small cap tech world as the space is dominated by huge companies (15:24)  - How capital allocation has evolved over her career             (15:30) - The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success (17:38) – Best capital allocation strategies and mistakes that most companies make (18:48) – The levers activists pull: cap structure; capital allocation and operating structure (22:00) – Major lessons from earlier in her career (23:25) – Major changes in Governance as part of the ESG strategy (26:13) – The issue of dual-class in the space (27:35) – Features of a pristine healthy board (28:40) – Board’s role setting incentives and objectives for management (29:55) – How she thinks about the E&S in ESG and how it helps shareholders (32:56) – Applying her strategy in a real-world example (37:40) – What they look for in a business when it comes to sum of the parts (40:29) – Businesses that are misunderstood and what she looks for in that category (41:39) – How she manages relationships with the boards (45:11) – What she has learned transitioning business models (47:08) – The rise of employee activism (50:02) – What she’s seeing in terms of diversity and inclusion in board rooms and C-Suites (53:32) – Best practices and ways to disrupt hiring (57:48) – Something she doesn’t understand well today that she wishes she did (58:59) – Kindest thing anyone has done for her   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag

On today's show, Jason introduces the Superinvestor Sip, he talks about the new Scuttlebutt series on the website, he covers the recent tech drop and shares his plans with Apple, and then he talks about his new investment in Discovery (DISCA) and why he thinks it's a high uncertainty, low-risk situation.The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville by Warren E. Buffett - https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/sites/valueinvesting/files/files/Buffett1984.pdfScuttlebutt - https://afterdinnerinvestor.com/category/scuttlebutt/John Malone interview - https://youtu.be/HIM71DNF08kDavid Zaslav interview - https://youtu.be/XOL4sT6ok-oThe Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success - https://amzn.to/3m7Nyh8

David keeps seeing principals who get someone else to run their firm, which is not a good idea. Then he gets Blair's thoughts on why he thinks it happens.   Links David C. Baker Seminar Win Without Pitching Workshops with Blair Enns Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You by John Warrillow Entrepreneurial Operating System Traction Library The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William Thorndike

CEO and Head of Research Ross Glotzbach and Vice-Chairman Staley Cates interview Will Thorndike, author of The Outsiders – Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success and Chairman of CNX Resources. They discuss progress at CNX, whether energy companies can be considered “good businesses”, the importance of a capital allocation mindset in commodity businesses, frothiness in the private equity world and the characteristics and long-lasting benefits of “Outsiders” in the US and overseas.

keywebco.com list of Top Five Books For Business! These are the books that I have found most influential in running and growing my business Keywebco.com. Number 5. "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu. Written in the 6th century BC, Sun Tzu's " The Art of War" is still used as a book of military strategy today. Napoleon, Mae Zedong, General Vo Nguyen Giap and General Douglas MacArthur all claimed to have drawn inspiration from it. And beyond the world of war, business and management gurus have also applied Sun Tzu's ideas to office politics and corporate strategy. Number 4. "Business Adventures" by John Brooks. What do the $350 million Ford Motor Company disaster known as the Edsel, the fast and incredible rise of Xerox, and the unbelievable scandals at General Electric and Texas Gulf Sulphur have in common? Each is an example of how an iconic company was defined by a particular moment of fame or notoriety; these notable and fascinating accounts are as relevant today to understanding the intricacies of corporate life as they were when the events happened. Note: Bill Gates wrote in his blog, gatesnotes, Gates writes that more than four decades after it was first published, "Business Adventures" remains the best business book he's ever read. Number 3. "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham. The greatest investment advisor of the twentieth century, Benjamin Graham, taught and inspired people worldwide. Graham's philosophy of "value investing" - which shields investors from substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies - has made " The Intelligent Investor" the stock market bible ever since its original publication in 1949. Note: Warren Buffett refers to "The Intelligent Investor" as the "best book on investing ever written." Number 2. "The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business" by Clayton M. Christensen. Offering both successes and failures from leading companies as a guide, " The Innovator's Dilemma" gives you a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation. Note: Steve Jobs used this book as an explanation for one reason Apple needed to embrace cloud computing and is frequently associated with both Jobs and Jeff Bezos. Number 1. "The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success" by William N. Thorndike. What makes a successful CEO? Most people call to mind a familiar definition: "a seasoned manager with deep industry expertise." Others might point to the qualities of today's so-called celebrity CEOs - charisma, virtuoso communication skills, and a confident management style. But what really matters when you run an organization? What is the hallmark of exceptional CEO performance? Quite simply, it is the returns for the shareholders of that company over the long term. Note: "The Outsiders" was #1 on Warren Buffett's recommended reading list in the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholder Letter (2012). --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/roger-keyserling/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/roger-keyserling/support

Vieraina ekonomisti, yksityissijoittaja Mika Hyttinen, pääekonomisti Heidi Schauman Aktiasta ja pääanalyytikko Sauli Vilén Inderesiltä. Heidi Schaumanin kirjavalinta on Carmen Reinhartin ja Kenneth Rogoffin teos This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Schaumanin mielestä kirjan velkaantumiseen ja kasvuun liittyvät teemat ovat erityisen ajankohtaisia, koska houkutus ottaa lisää velkaa on Suomessakin suuri. Mika Hyttinen nostaa esille Nassim Nicholas Talebin kirjan Musta joutsen - Erittäin epätodennäköisen vaikutus. Taleb käyttää monipuolisessa kirjassaan esimerkiksi käsitteitä mediokristan (ei-mittakaavaton) ja extremistan (mittakaavaton), joihin liittyviä ajatuksia myös Hyttinen hyödyntää omassa sijoitusstrategiassaan. Sauli Vilénille tärkeä kirja on ollut William Thorndiken teos The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success. Kirjan ajatukset pääoman mahdollisimman tehokkaasta allokoinnista ja omistaja-arvon kasvattamisesta ovat Vilénin mielestä ilahduttavan yksinkertaisia, mutta eivät helppoja toteuttaa. Toimittajana Mikko Jylhä.

My guest this week for the third time is Michael Mauboussin. If there is a major question about markets and investing, Michael has usually written one of the best pieces of research on that topic. Today’s conversation is a mix of several of his research pieces, but focuses on the sources of alpha. The framing of the conversation is the brilliant question “who is on the other side” of a given trade. If you are buying, who is selling, and why? Knowing the answer to this question is one key to understanding where excess return comes from. As is usual with Michael, we also explore tons of other interesting ideas that will serve as food for thought. Please enjoy. For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes 1:23 - (First Question) – An outline of the syllabus for the course he teaches 4:02 – What are smart people missing when it comes to decision making 5:33 – Why Michael went down the path of defining major investing concepts             7:41 – On the impossibility of informational inefficient markets 9:14 – Beware behavioral finance 12:03 – What are the behavioral errors that people can take advantage of in a trade 15:14 – Timing opportunities             17:25 – Modest Proposal Podcast Episode 17:47 – Where the analytical edge comes from 21:16 – Is there an advantage to exhibit time arbitrage 23:53 – Technical arbitrage 29:34 – What impact do flows into ETFs play on the market 32:25 – Informational edge and how you source that edge 36:39 – Biggest changes that he has seen on the buy side 43:18 -  How would Michael apply this as a sports GM 48:35 – His views on stock buybacks             51:02 – The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success 52:55 – EBIT to EBITDA paper             54:43 – What Does a PE Multiple Mean? 59:28 – The concept of benign myths 1:02:06 – What the future holds of Michael             1:04:17 – The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.  Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag

In today's episode of The Art of Passive Income, our newest coach Mimi Schmidt joins Mark and Scott and gives them an in-depth look into her land investing journey. Mimi was part of customs and border protection for the Dept. of Homeland Security. She managed data analytics teams who looked for weapons of mass destruction, narcotics, and terrorists. While she found her job with DHS interesting it was also very demanding, stressful, and the commutes were grueling… taking valuable time away from her family. Mimi found Mark through the podcasts she listened to during her long commutes and Mark's method of creating passive income through raw land investing really piqued her interest. So she decided to give land investing a go. Three years and 9 Bootcamps later, Mimi has officially replaced her income at DHS through land investing and was able to quit her J.O.B. to take on her business full time giving her more freedom and time to spend with her family. How did she do it with very limited time and all the while trying to prove to her family that it is a legitimate business capable of producing enough income that she needed to leave her job? One word: GRIT— firmness of mind or spirit: unyielding courage in the face of hardship. The grit you just can't give up. You have to set your expectations that you're going to do this until you are succeeding. ~Mimi Also, discussed in this episode: Mimi's bold move at her first Bootcamp How she bridged the gap between her super-analytical side and her entrepreneurial side Mimi's witches brew of a land investor How Mimi utilized her limited time to learn the business What she took away from coaching that was monumental in her success Plus, the guys share stories about Mimi and so much more!  Mimi's story is an inspirational one that speaks to so many. Part of what made her successful is that she didn't use time as an excuse and she never set any artificial time horizons. By taking time out of the success equation, she not only proved to her family but she also proved to herself that with hard work and determination you can do anything, you just have to set your mind to it and don't give up! Listen in as Mimi shows us why she is the epitome of grit! TIP OF THE WEEK Mark: Read the book, The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William M. Thorndike. Scott: For website contact forms, check out JotForms.com and HelloForms.co. Mimi:  For your terms deals, Geekpay is truly the best solution. But for your cash deals, wholesale deals, and for paying your state-side VAs use Facebook Messenger. It's 100% free! Isn't it time to create passive income so you can work where you want, when you want and with whomever you want?

Kamiu Lee is the CEO of influencer marketing company, ACTIVATE which helps brands and influencers identify opportunities to partner together and tell engaging and compelling stories across social media, at scale. In the last 12 months, ACTIVATE has engaged over 75,000 influencers, from nano-influencers to macro-creators, publishing more than 6,500 pieces of collaborated content per month. Kamiu is an expert in the field of influencer marketing and is frequently quoted and interviewed in publications such as Fortune, Entrepreneur, Digiday, PR Week, eMarketer, BusinessInsider, The Business of Fashion and more. Show highlights 1:04 Kamiu introduces ACTIVATE. 3:32 The current trends with influencers and content creators. 6:25 The main social platforms where brand collaborations are taking place. 16:04 Where influencer marketing sits within the wider marketing industry. 21:08 Influencer fraud and what to do it about it. 27:044 The professionalisation of influencers. 33:15 To work with nano-influencers or micro-influencers or both? 35:00 Where a brand should start in influencer marketing. 39:45 Where someone should start if they want to become an influencer. 45:43 The future of influencer marketing. Resources/People/Articles mentioned in podcast ACTIVATE INFLUENCE blog Bloglovin' The Blonde Salad The Skinny Confidential The Snowball The Outsiders Kamiu's book recommendation The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success Amazon Kindle EditionThorndike, William (Author)English (Publication Language) View on Amazon Podcast transcript Stephen Davies: Kamiu, welcome to the podcast. Kamiu Lee: Thank you. Thanks for having me. SD: Glad to have you on. Can you give us some background on ACTIVATE, what it is, how it got started and what you guys do? KL: Yeah sure. At ACTIVATE we are an influencer marketing technology and strategy company. So what that means is we have both a fully end to end platform that supports everything from influencer discovery, workflow management, influencer relationship management - a CRM to keep track of all your relationships with different creators, as well as measurement and amplification of that content to the right audience. On the strategy side of things, we have what we call ACTIVATE Studio. We have a team of in-house influencer specialists ranging from folks who started working with digital creators since the very beginning when it started out with macro much larger creators. Today we tap these micro and nano-influencers as well in very scaled programs. Where we started out vis-a-vis a lot of the other influencer marketing players that have popped up in recent years, we actually started out quite some time ago as Bloglovin' which is an influencer platform that started about ten years ago for bloggers and a way for them to discover great content that the community was publishing. Bloglovin' continues to be our owned and operated media platform and is a way for us to promote and co-partner with creators within our network. In our mind, as a company we're really built around the influencer so from a content, promotional and audience development standpoint on the Bloglovin side to various brand partnership opportunities, whether it's financial monetisation through sponsored content or organic relationships with brands as well, that's what the ACTIVATE platform really helps to support so we are really influencer centric as a company. SD: So you guys really cover the full spectrum of the influencer landscape.

LINKS "The Great Convergence Is Upon Us" by Blair Enns "CRM: The Train Coming At You" by Blair Enns AltGroup.net website "Eight Gauges on Your Agency Dashboard" by David C. Baker The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William Thorndike "Rising From the Ashes: A New Agency Model" by Blair Enns   TRANSCRIPTION DAVID C. BAKER: Blair today we're going to start over. Both you and I are going to start over. We're going to pretend to start over anyway, and the topic is If I Were Starting a Firm Now. In other words this is a firm that you and I work with, and the folks who listen to this podcast generally. If I were starting a firm like that now, what would I do differently? We're going way back in time because I ran a firm ... you worked at multiple firms, and I started and ran a firm for six years. My goodness, I would do so many things differently. If we talked about this 10 years ago, the answers would be different. If we talked about it 10 years from now, the answers would be different. But at this moment in time, what would we do differently if we were going to start a firm now? Are you up for that topic? BLAIR ENNS: I am up for it, and as you've pointed out I have never owned a firm before. I've run a small office, I've been the number two in a larger office, but I've never owned a firm. So I'll try it one, let's do this. DAVID: Okay. We're going to ping pong with some questions here, and I'm going to start by asking for your opinion on something that's really the big umbrella here. The reason I want to ask you is because you recently wrote a lot about this, and it was a provocative article the things that you talked about. I haven't talked with you to see what kind of feedback you got about it, but here is the question; what category of firm would you start? Would it be a digital firm? Or a dev shop? Or a UX shop? Or a PR firm? How would you start a firm from a category standpoint if you were starting over? BLAIR: I think the piece you're referring to is something I wrote called "The Great Convergence Is Upon Us." The convergence I was talking about is the convergence of design, which is often UX design, software engineering, and business consulting. I'm seeing most of the best lucrative, most thriving, most impactful firms that we're working with these days are in that space. I think it's really hard to think of starting a new firm today that doesn't combine those three skills, so I absolutely would combine those three skills because I think that's where the big opportunity is in the market place but that doesn't really narrow things a lot. If I look at what I know the world of selling, and also some of the world of marketing ... what I've been interested in for a bunch of years is this intersection of sales and marketing. I wrote something on this ... oh man, it's probably approaching 10 years ago now. I think it was called "CRM: The Train That's Coming At You." BLAIR: CRM as a customer relationship management software was becoming more prevalent and powerful, it's driven by the internet changing the way people buy, and the way we sell, and the way we use marketing automation. The biggest way sales and marketing has changed in the era of Google is that lead generation has moved from a sales function to a marketing function. When that happens, that changes the nature of what selling is, and it changes the nature a little bit of what marketing is. One of the implications is actually sales and marketing in your client's organizations are getting closer and closer together, and they're overlapping. That article I wrote about CRM was that the CRM application is actually the place in your client's organization ... and I know it's not an application, isn't really a place. But it's the place where sales and marketing are overlapping. BLAIR: Even pre-CRM days when I was working in the agency business, I as somebody who comes from the world of sales, I always felt like in a new business opportunity, if I could get the chief sales officers in the room as a decision maker, and I could convert him or her, if I could win him or her, I would win the account. There's just something about ... this is a long rambling answer, but there's something about where sales and marketing overlap, and the technology that's required, and the way those two different departments work together. I would focus on that space. So where sales and marketing overlap in my client's business, it would be tech heavy. A lot of that tech would be CRM. I would have this converge firm that had high level of business consulting, had technology chops like software engineering, and had really good design UX skills. I would go after sales driven organizations, and I guess the classic label would be a B2B firm. I would specialize in B2B because in a lot of B2B organizations you have this kind of handshake, or overlap in sales and marketing. Did that make sense at all? DAVID: It did. I kept thinking of things I wanted to interject, but I decided just to let you talk because it did make perfect sense. It overlaps with something that we've also seen in this industry for many years, the CMO, the person that we typically would get hired by ... you know these agencies we get hired by the CMO, was losing power for so many years and that's been reversed. About two years ago it was reversed, and really dramatically. The reason it was reversed is because the CMO took over more of the technology spend at large companies, which really dovetails with what you are talking about. The other thing that hit me too as you were talking is that so many of my clients do not understand that world, they don't even use a CRM themselves. It's not as if they need a CRM because they don't have that many clients or prospects to keep track of, but they aren't even using it enough to understand it and to speak that language. DAVID: It feels like the world around these firms that you and I talk to a lot, has changed and these firms haven't really kept up that we need some ... it'd be interesting to talk at some point about maybe the professional education, professional advancement, how do these firms learn and catch up in that space? BLAIR: Yeah. I think if your firm is positioned in any way as B2B, you have to be in the CRM space in some way because you can't be a good B2B firm without having CRM chops. You're going to be operating within your client's CRM application, everything that you do campaign-wise is going to push through that application, and there all kinds of opportunities within that space. As you've pointed out, most firms like the B2C firms if CPG is your focus, you don't need to worry about CRM. But if you're at all into B2B space you need to be using a big robust CRM package, probably sales force just because you're going to need to be able to provide that expertise at some level. You can go as deep into it as you want, but you're going to need to be able to provide that expertise at some level to your clients. DAVID: Yes absolutely. And also sales force is so easy to use, and the interface is so wonderful ... I'm just kidding in case anybody didn't capture that. BLAIR: Let me just put a shout out to ... I've been using HubSpot CRM for a project I'm involved in lately, and I've checked it out every 18 months or so, and it's always been, "Yeah, it's coming along nicely." And we're not into plugging things here, but I was so impressed with the user interface and how easy it is to use. Then I'd go back to my Salesforce instance and I think, "I like the robustness of sales force, but even the new lightning interface is not as good as HubSpot CRM." Okay that's enough plugging things. Let me ask you a question, if you were starting a firm today, size ... is there a target size you would shoot for? Is bigger better? Or would you limit the firm to a certain size? DAVID: I started as one person, just myself. The second person, we didn't have an office at the time, and he was really tall, and he kept ... whenever he stretched ... we worked in our bedroom, and we moved out of our bedroom and that's where we moved the office. Whenever he stretched he'd get his arms caught in the ceiling fan, it just brings back memories. Then we moved into an office, and eventually grew to be 16 people so still really small. I did not understand at the time the implications of size, I thought that having more people meant making more money and that's a pretty tenuous connection there. The way I would answer this question is very different now than it was then for sure too. If you want to be vertically positioned, and hold an AOR place in the client's mind, you can't reliably do that below about 40 people except for really small clients.  DAVID: If I wanted that sort of a relationship I would aim to get bigger, but I also feel like now there is much less stigma around being smaller and if you are not as caught up in doing implementation, and if you're positioning is really really powerful, and it's almost all around strategy, then I probably would aim to be about six people, or I would be over 40 people. I would try not to be in that middle size, that's how I would answer that question. BLAIR: Okay. DAVID: Does that surprise you? BLAIR: The six surprises me. We've had conversations about what's the ideal size of a firm before, and I know that our friends that design business association in the UK has done a little bit of work on this ... and this data is a little bit old, but I remember being told that their research showed that the most profitable firm per capita was 11 people. DAVID: Yep. BLAIR: That fits nicely with your functional model where you say essentially there are 12 roles in the firm, and then once you get past the 12 roles now you're into middle management, right? DAVID: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And you can have very pure roles where nobody has to wear more than one hat at about 22, 23, 24 people, something like that. My own research shows that there is a deepened profitability from about 10-15 and then above that there is another corresponding increase in profitability per employee. But there's so many exceptions to that, it's really hard to say that you would necessarily avoid a particular size. But I think I would be intentionally small, six or so. Or I would be intentionally large if I were starting over. That's just me answering the question, right? BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: And none of these are like, "This is what you should do." This is just what I would do, that's how we're answering these questions. If you were going to start a firm would you want to have done anything else first? For example, would you want to have worked on the client side first? Or would it be important for you to have worked at another agency first? Or maybe a consulting practice? I want to just get a feel for whether it would make sense if you had a real objective view of things, and you're out of grad school say, and you're faced with these options; to work for a consulting firm, a client, or another agency. Which one of those would you do before you started your firm? BLAIR: This is a real tricky one because you have to try it on for what's best for you. If I remove the question for me, if I think okay I would be ... in that converge model, I would be the consultant, but I don't have the pedigree to bid for boutique consulting firm experience, I have faith in my ability but I don't have that background so I would say somebody like me if I were thinking of a career path which ... if we could hindsight being 2020, and I was pursuing this model, I would do the MBA, and then go work in a consulting company, and then ... I think that would be the most valuable experience, would be consulting company experience. Not necessarily agency or creative firm experience, and I don't think client side experience is actually necessary. In fact a lot of people would disagree with this, but I think we in the creative profession spend too much time listening to client say what they want. I'm not saying we should ignore that completely, but if somebody is on a stage saying, "Here is what I want from you people." BLAIR: I just don't trust that that's actionable advice, to listen to what somebody says they want generally from agency partners, and then build your business around that. That's probably another podcast. But no, I think of those three options whether I had agency experience, client side experience, or consulting experience. For somebody like me, I would see myself as the head of the firm, and I think the head of the firm in this new converge model, you're probably best off with somebody coming from the consulting background. DAVID: That is exactly how I would have answered the question as well because for the same reason you gave about the client side, and because I want to build on my own after I leave the consulting firm as an employee. I want to build a consulting practice working in the areas that you mentioned in the first answer that you gave. I have noticed though that a lot of principals struggle when they have never worked for another good firm before, and the way they get around that is they hire people who have so that they can learn from them. But if the end look of your firm is more of a consulting firm than say a marketing or a design firm, then working for those would be great. I was just thinking to myself as you were answering that, there is no college degree for consulting. That's really odd, isn't it? There's so many things that people are doing, and there's no degree for it. BLAIR: Well isn't that the MBA? Isn't that one of the paths coming out of the marketing focused MBA? Or even a financed focus MBA, is to go on the consulting side? DAVID: Yeah. I mean you learn about business, but you don't learn how to do the craft. They don't teach you that in school, that's pretty interesting. BLAIR: I agree. We're talking about if I were starting over, or if I were starting a firm today, and I'll put the question to you. What you asked about prior experience, I'll ask you about preparation before the launch. Would you raise money? How would you go about getting your first clients? And how would you generate leads if you're starting from the beginning? DAVID: This assumes that I'm doing something else while I'm ramping up, and I'm ramping up probably in the evenings, or on the weekends, or something like that. I would have at least two to three months worth of my living expenses saved up, that would be the most important thing for me if I were starting over. The reason is because I think ... at least for me, that the father of compromise is really financial pressure, and so I would not want to face that pressure so I would have that saved up. The other thing is that whatever I was going to be doing ... well, obviously my positioning would be very nailed down, but whatever I was going to do for lead generation I would have that up and ready to go where all I had to do was flip a switch rather than starting to do that at the beginning. I wouldn't be sitting there with nothing to do, and smiling and dialing looking for work, I would have all of that ramped up partly because I want to be prepared, but partly because I want to test my own resolve. DAVID: How committed am I to this new venture? Am I committed enough to it to do all this disciplined work around lead generation for myself? And am I committed enough to it to put money aside. Because if I fail ... and there is a chance that I will in this new venture, I don't want to lose any more than what I've saved up. I can then say, "That was a good college try, and I lost everything I saved up, but no further damage was done." That would be my perspective on it. BLAIR: Would you consider outside sources of money? DAVID: Only if it was free, in other words somebody thought I'd... BLAIR: So no? The answer is no? DAVID: Not in the real world. The answer is no, that's right. I would definitely not borrow money, and any money I got would have strings attached to it, so I would absolutely not do that. BLAIR: But do you think that's the right universal advice? Or does that speak to your risk profile? Because as you were describing essentially hedging your bet and starting the firm, I was thinking, "Yeah okay, I could see that." But I would probably go the other way, I would probably burn the ships and go all in, and force myself to succeed. I don't know that that's the right way, and I don't know that I would give advice to others to do that. But I feel like that's the way I like to operate, push all the chips in. DAVID: Well, I may take bigger risks than most people on the planet. On the other hand I couple that with a very different perspective about debt, in that I think debt is a very bad instrument for anything except for appreciating assets like a home, or a building, or something like that. Because debt enables you to cover up things that need to be looked at in different ways, it keeps you from having to make the tough decisions, and it forces you to clean up the past if things go bad. I never want to do anything but clean up the future. I'm a huge risk taker, and I take a lot of risks with money. I spend a lot of money, but it's money that I have saved up that I feel comfortable wasting if I need to. BLAIR: How many tractors do you own? DAVID: Let's not go there.   BLAIR: What's next on your list here? DAVID: All right, next this one's for you. This is about web presence. You've given me some hints that your thinking has changed in this area that's why I thought it would be interesting to ask you this question. So you're building a new website for this new venture, how extensive would the website be? Would it be one page? Or 100 pages? How much content? Would that content be gated or not? Would you talk about your service packages? Would you say anything about pricing even in ranges? would you use marketing automation? Just what would the role of your website be in this new venture? BLAIR: I've hinted at this, and I've actually put out there on social media that I'm going to publish some content on this. It's a little bit late, and there's a reason why it's late and I'm not going to day what it is but it's coming. There's been a shift in content marketing, and lots of people have seen it, but some people are oblivious to it. I don't want to give too much away here. DAVID: Oh come on you woos, just say it. BLAIR: Yeah yeah. I do want to say that I still ... I think we've talked about this before, but I think the best marketing agency website out there is altgroup.net and that's the Alt Design Group out of New Zealand where it says ... I mean it's been this way for 10 years, this page intentionally left blank and then an address in the bottom left hand corner. I look at that website and I think that is brilliant, and it's built on the idea that the most powerful thing in marketing is mystery. So I would build some mystery around my marketing. I might publish a book initially, I might put something out there in the world but what I wouldn't do is the way that I started to build the lead generating machine, or the marketing machine for Win Without Pitching back in the early days and we still do it today even though we also do other things like this podcast. I wouldn't focus on building a list, and I wouldn't focus on emailing people, I wouldn't focus on content marketing. BLAIR: There's a shift in the way that people are consuming information, which has implications on our heretofore need to collect all the data on who is interested in us. The shift is more towards audio and primarily video, that's the big shift that's coming. If your target market is of a certain age, the video is coming a little but later. If they're younger, video is more prominent now. As you move to publishing content, instead of thinking of content as typed words, and read words, you think of it as what we're doing here in the podcast, or what you might do in a YouTube channel. If you're pushing content that way, now you actually have to force yourself to let go of all of that data you're used to having of who is interacting? And how or when are they interacting? There's a lot more trust that has to happen, there's a lot more letting go of the data and using these platforms. Other than the people who have reached out to us and said, "Hey, love your podcast." Or, "Hate your podcast, but I listen to it." Whatever. We don't have any data on who's listening to this, right? DAVID: Right. BLAIR: But on who those people are, we get numbers so that's part of the shift. Content consumption is rapidly moving away from reading to watching and listening, and the platforms of watching and listening are increasingly not your platforms. You push it out there on these other platforms, so you have to be comfortable with not having the data. Probably if I were staring today, I would let go of email marketing altogether. Now I say that knowing that maybe there's a 40% chance if I did that I might change my mind really quickly. DAVID: Just kidding right? BLAIR: I have a hard time seeing it going away, email marketing continues to get less effective, interruption marketing. I think you need to put a great valuable content that people are drawn to, and again let go. Then we've got privacy regulations that are catching up with our own personal discomfort around how much data people have on us, so I think if I was starting out today I wouldn't over-invest in the website in any way. I would build mystique mystery, and I would push content out there other than via email, and I would let go of the need to collect all of the data around who is interacting with my content. But I might fail because of it. DAVID: Well, that's okay 'cause you're not pressured to test that idea for sure. Thinking about this podcast for instance, you and I exchanged an email about this of all the things you do and all the things I do, and then we do this together, this takes the least amount of time, it costs the least amount of money, and it is the most effective, and yet we have no idea who's listening. BLAIR: Yeah. It's been a big shift for us. I mean you and I are both readers and writers, right? DAVID: Right. BLAIR: So for ... along with time, and our clients who are our age, or older, even just a little bit younger, they probably still think of content as reading and writing. I'm not going to drop them here, but some of the prediction, some of the stats on the percentage of content that will be consumed in just a couple of years that will be video is far beyond the majority. It's way above 50% of all content consumed will be video, some numbers put it as high as 80% of all content. DAVID: But nobody will be listening to this podcast if you and I hadn't been doing email marketing for 20 years either. BLAIR: Yeah, there's that. Let me ask you about client base. So you're starting a new firm, you're not borrowing any money, and you're thinking you've got this vision of the firm that you're trying to build a certain size. Let's talk about the size of your clients, how many would you have? What would the nature of those relationships be? Would it be AOR longterm relationships? Would it be more project based? And what types of clients? That's a lot of questions. DAVID: That's all right, I'll try to answer these. I would have fewer but larger clients. By larger I mean larger as a percentage of my practice in this field. I would not go after the largest clients though, I think they have so much power, and they push you around and don't need you as much. Nor would I go after the smallest clients that are not as sophisticated, and for which the money they're spending hurts them a little bit more. I would aim solidly at the middle-sized clients, and then I would ensure that each client I got was a fairly large part of my business. So I would probably aim for six or eight clients, something like that. I would aim to have more of a SWAT team approach, where I dropped in and did really amazing work for them that moved a needle and helped change their thinking, and maybe that engagement lasted six months, or two years, or something like that.  DAVID: Then I would not feel any compulsion to do the implementation, in fact I would encourage them to do some of the implementation or I would introduce them to other people without fear that somehow they wouldn't call me back at some point. That would be my thinking in terms of how I would approach this. It's a little bit terrifying because I know a lot of our listeners are not interesting in putting that many eggs in one basket, they really want to spread out their client base and typically they're going to end up with 25 clients which is too much, right? Anyway, that's how I would answer that. BLAIR: I would agree with almost all of that too, I like the small size of the client base. I was thinking 8-10, you said 6-8 short-term projects six months to three years. I wouldn't pursue some sort of longterm relationship like that too. Let's we how we can do here, what's next on the list? DAVID: Okay. How would I earn money, or how would you earn money in this case? Would it be fee for service? Would it be guaranteed results? Variable pay for performance? List solutions? We talked a lot about this in some of the events that we've done, and you've had some time to think about this. How would you structure your arrangements with clients? BLAIR: I love this question, and people who think I would say value based pricing, pricing a value, the real answer is ... and this is a proper answer for anybody who's running a consultative services, I wouldn't have a universal pricing model. I would reserve the right to price the client, not the job and every different client I would price differently. I think Ron Baker, and it might be Tim Williams, and the two of them work closely together on pricing stuff. I've heard one or maybe both of them say that you should think of your client base like your investment portfolio. You have this overall risk profile, and each client represents, in this case an investment. So you would have some high risk investments, or you would have some high risk compensation plans. High risk high reward, and you would have low risk low reward. You would have this range of risk levels in each of the engagements, but together they need to balance out to meet your overall risk profile. BLAIR: I actually think it's a mistake to have a single pricing model where everything is performance pay, or everything is price certainty, we deliver price certainty based on deliverables, or everything is priced on inputs, etcetera. I think you really do need to look at each engagement separately, and the context around the engagement, what's your current financial situation? And decide in that situation how much risk you want to take on. So the short answer is it really needs to be a blend, and it's one engagement at a time. You figure out what the best pricing model is for that engagement. DAVID: That surprises me, I thought you were going to say that they all looked pretty similar, you thought through it very carefully, and then you stuck with the same thing. That's a surprising answer for me. BLAIR: I think we got a couple more questions we can get in here. What are the ratios? You're the ratio guy, if you're flying this new firm like it's a plane, you're looking at your dashboard, what's on the dashboard? DAVID: The most popular article I've ever written on the site is "Eight Gauges on Your Agency Dashboard," but I can narrow that down to three and it would be these; don't pay more than 45% of your fee base to unburden comp ... and if folks are wondering what that means, they can go to the website and read it. But it's essentially without taxes, or benefits, and so on, or bonuses. That's the first one. Second, have three to four months worth of your overhead set aside in cash, not receivables, not line of credit so that you have that cushion to work from if things go south temporarily. The third would be watch the fee billings per full-time equivalent employee, and we've talked about this in a previous podcast. I would aim to always be above 200, and overtime me quite a bit higher than that, that's what I'd be aiming for. BLAIR: Good numbers. DAVID: Okay. The question for you next is how would you focus on creating future value? 'Cause you talk a lot about how that is the primary role of a principal of a firm, recognizing that, an if you believe it then how do you find the time? How do you do the research? Who do you hang around? What to read? This might even be an entire podcast episode at some point, but- BLAIR: Yeah, let's do a podcast on that. I'll give you the short answer, two things. Number one, a strong number two. So strong COO. There's a great book called The Outsiders, and I think it's William Thorndike. It's Warren Buffet's favorite book where he profiles all of these different leaders who have publicly traded companies, who are the most successful in the history of the New York stock exchange. He asses what they have in common, and one of the things they have in common is they ave a really strong operations people to whom they delegate a lot of operational responsibilities. That's number one. Number two is I would travel, that's what I do in my business. I have a strong number two, she's my business partner and my spouse. I've been home for two months over the summer, I'm just itching to get on a plane. I provide the most value to our business when I'm not in the office. I get out there speaking, meeting people, working with some clients, building relationships. Those two things, strong number two, and travel. DAVID: Great. BLAIR: Let me ask you about employees. Employees don't stick around like they used to, how do you think about your employee base in this new firm in this new ... it's not just millennials anymore, but there's a new work environment where people have different ideas of what work should be, how it should be done, and what they should get out of it, or how it should serve them. DAVID: And I would shut the hell up, and quit whining about this. That's the first thing I would do. BLAIR: Amen. We should appreciate that these people are teaching us something. DAVID: Yeah, it's fantastic. At first, I was thinking we've got to fix the culture so that they'll stay around, well that is not going to happen folks because people's career ladder involves inevitably moving to another place. That is how they make more money, that's how they stay interested, and so on. I would develop a model of employees that was excited about this, in other words I would beef up my training so that it wasn't as big a problem. I would force some sort of people going away. Maybe sabbatical is too long a word, but at least a couple of weeks where everybody's email and their contact with the office was completely shut off so that it forced us to have better systems in place. I would have ways for them to capture their first impressions at the firm, I would celebrate their departures, I would encourage them to come back at some point because when they come back their dabble is beneficial to the firm when that happens. I'm writing an article on this. Essentially I would embrace it and be very excited about it. BLAIR: Those are all very exciting progressive ideas. One of my other recent article is "Rising From the Ashes: A New Agency Model" where I talk about the importance of flexible two-way scale. The idea that you need to be able to flex up and down, and you need to recognize the trends that are driving today's modern workforce, and you need to essentially build your agency around that. Hey, let's do two more questions. You're starting a new firm, would you go into this with and end date in mind? Would you have an expiry date? Would you have this idea, "I'm going to get out at X point."? DAVID: I would, yes. It probably be somewhere in the 8-10 year range because I'd hit my stride about a year and a half, or two in. Then I would be maximizing revenue opportunities and taking advantage of all the marketing that I've done, and then I would move on and do something else. So 8-10 years is probably what I would plan on. What about you? BLAIR: You know what? When I started Win Without Pitching originally it was a consulting company, I thought, "I'm going to do this for two or three years. Learn everything I need to learn, basically nail this and then go do something else." It's been over 16 years, and I feel like I'm just scratching the surface, so I would not put an expiry date on it. I would do this until I died, and that's my plan with my current business. I've written about that too about not having an eye on the exit, but I'm not sure that that's ... no, actually I think that's actually universally pretty good advice. DAVID: So would you start a firm? BLAIR: You know I've said for a long time that I wouldn't start a firm, but I used to think of creative firms as an ad agency, a design firm, etcetera. I wouldn't start an ad agency, I wouldn't start a CPG design firm, I wouldn't start a web design firm, I wouldn't start any of those classic marketing or creative firms. But all of these new hybrid firms with a new working models, they excite me greatly. I think I wrote in an article recently that I wouldn't start a firm, what I said is I'd start a really small one and lean on flexible scale. So would I start a firm if I can go back in time and think, "Yeah, I had a little bit of the right experience in the business in the beginning."? Yeah, I think I would. I might change my answer tomorrow, but I wake up this morning and I look around at what's going on in the spaces that we serve, and I think, "There's a lot of really exciting stuff." And then there are people who are stuck, who just haven't seen the trends, who are struggling in their business. BLAIR: It's not those people I'm thinking about. The ones who are really seeing the trends, the ones who are doing things different, these hybrid firms I think they're super exciting. So my answer today is yes I would. How about you? DAVID: I would. But the last half an hour discussion has gotten me more excited about the idea than I would have been at the beginning of this. So yes I would. If for no other reason, then I just want to bury your firm because if we're both starting firms, you are going down okay? 'Cause every piece of advice I've given is bad advice hoping that you'll follow it. BLAIR: You're on. Let's go. Lets' go brother, it's a throwdown, my firm will crush your firm. You heard it here first people. DAVID: This has been a fun discussion, thank you Blair. BLAIR: Yeah, I got to go register a domain name, I'll talk to you later.

Why should you invest in companies? You have other options.. Cryptocurrency, real estate, gold, silver, etc. But why invest in companies?? Book: 100 Baggers: Stocks That Return 100-To-1 and How to Find Them: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019978QJQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 The Intelligent Investor: https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Collins-Business-Essentials-ebook/dp/B000FC12C8/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1535575493&sr=1-4&keywords=intelligent+investor The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success https://www.amazon.com/Outsiders-Unconventional-Radically-Rational-Blueprint/dp/1422162672 website: http://www.valueinvestor.org facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vi1949 twitter: https://twitter.com/vi1949 instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_vi1949/

There are so many great investing and business books out there that sometimes it's hard to know where to start, and often, finding the time to finish them is equally as challenging. This episode we review some of the books we've finished reading over the last month or so, to give you some of the great lessons learned. In this episode you will learn: • The biggest risk is not investing • Why young people must start investing early and buck the conventional market wisdom • Why picking 'the hottest' stocks may lead to meager returns • Why you should not judge investing books by their shocking covers • How the founder of Nike is inspiring Equity Mates • (if Alec's tip for the Swans to beat Hawthorn by 30 points came off) Stocks and resources discussed: • Millennial Money: How Young Investors Can Build A Fortune (Patrick O'Shaughnessy) • The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success (Harvard Business Review Press) • The Black Swan: The Impact Of the Highly Improbable (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) • Trade Like A Stock Market Wizard: How to Achieve Super Performance in Stocks in Any Market (Mark Minervini) • Shoe Dog (Phil Knight)

My guest this week is a bundle of curiosity, and that is one of the nicest things I could say about someone. For several years, Tren Griffin has been writing a weekly blog post that highlights things he has learned from various investors, businesspeople, musicians, comedians, and more. Lately, he has also been tackling individual businesses, and broad topics like scaling, competitive forces, and product market fit. Tren’s full time job is serving as a director at Microsoft. He’s also worked with or for several well know businesspeople and investors like Craig McCaw, and written several books including one on lessons for entrepreneurs, one on Charlie Munger, and another on negotiation.   We discuss value creation vs. value capture, alpha in investing, sales, hip hop, and why he’d teach high school students about convexity through a drunk driving analogy. I could have talked to Tren for much longer than I did, but sadly, we both had flights to catch.  If you take anything away from this, I hope its just how much fun it is to just be curious about business, and how you can learn a tremendous amount if you just keep reading about the things that interest you and talking to others. Please enjoy my conversation with Tren Griffin. For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes 2:26 – (First question) –  key levers of the universal business model 4:26 – How do you know when you’ve achieved real value creation 6:24 – Importance of value capture and how they enhance value creation              6:31 – Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future 9:08 – Price power 10:28 – Are discussions of moats more useful to businesses than to investors 13:12 -  What Tren learned during his early years working with Craig McCaw             16:28 – The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success 16:36 – The skill of capital allocation 18:37 – How would Buffett and Munger bet on tech if they were starting out today and their philosophy of betting against change 21:57 – How Tren became so fascinated with Charlie and what he’s learned from him             22:32 – The Alchemy of Finance             23:17 – Damn Right: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger             23:19 – Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger 25:21 – Most memorable moment or lesson from Charlie 28:19 – There are more pockets of Alpha 19:20 – How he thinks about factor investing 31:25 – What are the scalability features that make a business attractive 31:28 – A Dozen Attributes of a Scalable Business 35:37 – Exploring some of the other important levers of businesses, such as subscriptions, customer acquisition cost, and more.             36:20 – Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In 37:11 – Wholesale transfer pricing 39:18 – Pros and cons of subscription business models 43:14 – Magic of getting products distributed 44:58 – Best sale Tren’s ever made 46:46 – Most important lesson for young people 49:01 – Any businesses that are piquing Tren’s interest right now 50:16 – Tren’s interest in hip-hop and how it helps him reach more people 53:49 – A look at some interesting quotes from Jim Barksdale 58:22 – Learning by doing             1:00:48 – Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed 1:01:06 – Period of his career that he felt most alive 1:03:03 – Advice for young people thinking about business and entrepreneurship 1:04:56 – Why are so few people passionate about what they do for a living 1:10:44 – Kindest thing anyone has done for Tren   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.  Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag  

This week’s conversation is an ode to old school, fundamental public market investing. My conversation is with IMC’s Connor Leonard, who spends most waking hours thinking and reading about markets. His mandate is to invest purely as if it was his own money, with no pressure to hug a benchmark, and no pressure to do much of anything other than earn strong long-term returns. The portfolio that results from this approach is highly concentrated and unique. Connor’s strategy is to sort companies into four categories based on their type of sustainable competitive advantage. As you’ll hear, the vast majority fall into the first category, which means they don’t have such an advantage and therefore should be largely set aside. We spend the majority of our conversation talking about the other three categories: 1) companies with a legacy moat, 2) companies with a re-investment moat, and 3) an interesting category Connor calls “capital light compounders,” which we explore in detail. When you step back and think about public markets, you realize how amazing it is that we can, from afar, buy an interest in so many companies around the world. A select few go on to deliver outstanding returns. This conversation highlights how hard that can be, but also how fun and ultimately rewarding. Please enjoy my talk with Connor Leonard.                                                For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. To get involved with Project Frontier, head to InvestorFieldGuide.com/frontier. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Books Referenced Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success        Links Referenced Pat Dorsey Podcast Episode David Tisch podcast    Will Thorndike Podcast episode   Show Notes 2:31 - (First Question) –   Trends in value investing             2:52 – Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor 4:43 – A look at Connor’s backstory and the history of IMC, parent company of Golden Corral 8:01 – Why Connor loves the public markets so much   9:21 – The concept of intrinsic value when looking at companies 12:36 – How Connor categorizes MOATS             13:21 – Pat Dorsey Podcast Episode 14:27 – Legacy MOATS 16:11 – Reinvestment MOATS 17:58 – Capital light compounder MOAT 20:00 – Why classifieds are an interesting business model 25:12 – Looking at platform businesses 26:56 – Looking at companies in the 500 million to 5 billion range and what makes it so enticing 30:34 – What is the process that gets Connor to find investment opportunities             35:53 – David Tisch podcast   36:15 – How Connor looks at industry classifications 41:30 – Connor’s strategy for running his portfolio 46:36 – The circumstances in which Conno would buy a legacy MOAT company             46:49 – Will Thorndike Podcast episode             46:51 – The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success     49:21 – How do you pick managers that will beat the markets 52:21 – Second reason to buy a legacy MOAT 54:48 – Comparing the reinvestment MOAT and Capital A compounder in Connor’s portfolio 58:16 – Connor’s Mt Rushmore of Capital Allocators 1:00:03 – Impactful mentorships for Connor 1:01:52 – kindest thing anyone has done for Connor 103:04 – What in the discussion with founder of IMC got him the job   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.  Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag

In this episode of the Maven Money Personal Finance Podcast… Andy is joined by fellow prolific reader, John Ndege. Tune in as they discuss the books YOU need to be reading. Quick Preview of the Podcast: What insights are to be gained from books like these? Discussion around different authors' attitudes to wealth creation Andy & Johns #1 book recommendation 10+ incredible reads for you to take away Top 10 Books: Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets The Ten Times Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure Smart Couples Finish Rich Simple Wealth, Inevitable Wealth A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy The Automatic Millionaire: A Powerful One-Step Plan to Live and Finish Rich Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win your Inner Creative Battles Honourable Mentions The Number: What Do You Need for the Rest of Your Life, and What Will It Cost? The Behaviour Gap: Simple Ways to Stop Doing Dumb Things with Money Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Outliers: The Story of Success Lessons of History The Dip: The extraordinary benefits of knowing when to quit (and when to stick) Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future Rich Dad Poor Dad How to be Rich Other Links: https://www.youtube.com/user/schooloflifechannel https://www.mavenadviser.com/blogcontent/2017/2/25/what-i-learnt-at-the-school-of-life So sit back and enjoy unrivalled words of wisdom from Andy Hart - host of the UK’s premier personal finance show. Is there a topic you’d like Andy to cover? We’d love to hear from you! Contact Andy Hart directly with any comments / feedback on team@mavenadviser.com. Alternatively you can reach out on Twitter @MavenAdviser. 

Who is my guest for this episode?On episode 16 I have Dave Barr, the CEO of PenderFund Capital, as my guest. Dave is the co-chief investment officer at Pender and manages 4 investment portfolios. He was awarded the Lipper Award for best Small Cap Fund in Canada in 2015.  Why did I bring Dave onto the show? I brought Dave onto to the show because I had the pleasure of working with him for 2 years prior to launching this podcast. In the two years I worked at PenderFund Capital, Dave instilled a lot of knowledge to me about the investing that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I thought it would be useful to have him on the show to share some of wisdom with you.  Dave was awarded the Lipper Award in his category, which is the most prestigious investing award you can receive in Canada. Dave is a regular guest on the Business News Network where he provides advice on Canada’s small cap technology stocks. He’s been featured in Canada’s top newspapers and has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to investing.  He’s passionate about his craft and having him on the show was an opportunity to share some of his expertise with you.   In this episode you will learn: Dave’s investment strategyWhy you need to be adaptive because things aren’t going to go as planned in businessThe value of having a contrarian mindsetLooking at investing from the standpoint of a business ownerThe importance of patience “A lot of people will stick to a plan, go down a course for too long, where all the evidence is banging them over the head saying this isn’t going to work. You have to be very self-aware, you have to be honest and you have to evaluate the information, to know when it’s time to fold up shop or pivot into a new direction.” - Dave Barr Dive into the episode to hear more. Time Notes How Dave’s science degree helps with investing – 4:13 Why you need a vision for your business and why you need to be adaptable – 5:28 Assessing early stage companies from a risk standpoint – 6:13 Why being a contrarian is important to Dave – 7:04 TIO Networks – 8:55 Entrepreneurs are contrarian by nature – 10:30 Looking at businesses from an owners standpoint – 14:55 Why Dave invests in technology – 16:00 Value investing and Warren Buffett – 18:15 Keys to Buffett’s success – 20:11 The importance to having balance – 23:00 Be patient – 27:28Contact Info Dave can be reached through LinkedIN or on Twitter @PenderDave For more information on the portfolios he manages check-out the following links: Pender Small Cap Opportunities Fund Pender Value Fund Pender Canadian Opportunities Fund Pender Select Ideas Fund Mentioned in the Podcast: TIO Networks – one of Dave’s investments that went from $0.20 to $2 The Intelligent Investor – the investment book Dave recommends to everyone starting off class Warren Buffett The Warren Buffett Way – the first investment book Dave Espial Ben Graham – author of the Intelligent Investor Charlie Munger – Buffett’s business partner The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success Steve Jobs Elon Musk John D. Rockefeller

En zetatesters hemos creado un sesgo cognitivo propio: cuando falta Ludo, hacemos un episodio sobre Errores de lógica :-). Y ya van cuatro, ¡oiga! En esta ocasión tratamos los siguientes sesgos cognitivos: El efecto Dunning-Kruger. La tendencia incentivo-superrespuesta. El error fundamental de atribución. La maldición del conocimiento. Errores de lógica (IV) [Web] Quora - Red social basada en preguntas. [Audio] The Interview Master: Cal Fussman and the Power of Listening - The Tim Ferriss Show Podcast (¡chupito!) [Libro] The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success de William N. Thorndike [Web] ClassDojo - Aulas más felices. [Libro] El Arte de pensar: 52 errores de lógica que es mejor dejar que cometan otros - Rolf Dobelli [Libro] Cambia el chip: Cómo afrontar cambios que parecen imposibles - Chip Heath y Dan Heath. [Episodio] ZT 06 Proyectos personales y "Cambia el chip" de los hermanos Heath. [Libro] Ideas que pegan: Por qué algunas ideas sobreviven y otras mueren - Chip Heath y Dan Heath. [Vídeo] Peer Instruction for Active Learning - Eric Mazur https://youtu.be/Z9orbxoRofI [Artículo] Cómo lograr que recuerden tus ideas (IV): Sé concreto - Presentástico Os recordamos que tenemos tres episodios más sobre errores de lógica... ZT 11 Errores de lógica y “El arte de pensar” de Rolf Dobelli: Sesgo de confirmación. Efecto ancla y Error de la escasez. Efecto encuadre y Prueba social. ZT 14 Errores de lógica (II) y “Decídete” de Chip Heath y Dan Heath Pereza social El efecto de la mera exposición Aversión a la pérdida Falsa causalidad El efecto de dotación ZT 22 Errores de lógica (III) y “The War of Art” de Steven Pressfield Reciprocidad La falacia del coste irrecuperable (sunk cost fallacy) El efecto halo. El efecto de progreso otorgado (endowed progress effect) Somos zetatesters Esperamos vuestros comentarios, sugerencias y críticas por las vías habituales. Recordad que podéis enviarnos también notas de voz si lo preferís. Gracias por participar, aportar recursos y opinar sobre zetatesters.

Jessica Mah Founder of Indinero (Featured on Inc Magazine For Growing Her Biz By 2,685.6%) Shares Financial Planning Secrets Share This Episode Click To Tweet Share on Facebook Resources Mentioned http://productiveinsights.com/hire http://www.indinero.com/ http://jessicamah.com/ http://www.inc.com/magazine/sep-2015 Books Mentioned    The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success Related / Mentioned Podcast Episodes: 002. James […]

Microsoft hits a 14-year high.  Wal-Mart goes after GameStop.  And Starbucks bets on wine and beer.  Our analysts discuss those stories.  Plus, best-selling author Will Thorndike shares some investing insights from his book, The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success.

Moe Abdou, Founder of 33voices, interviews William N. Thorndike Jr., author ofThe Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success.

Amit Mukherjee ( https://www.nea.com/team/amit-mukherjee ) is a Partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA) ( https://www.nea.com/ ) , one of the premier and global venture capital firms that invests in all stages. Amit focuses on investing in consumer technology. He is a Board Observer for Casper ( https://casper.com/ ) , MasterClass ( https://www.masterclass.com/ ) , Brandless ( https://brandless.com/ ) , and The Players' Tribune ( https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us ) , and was previously a Board Observer for Jet.com ( https://jet.com/ ). Amit has led a number of seed stage investments for NEA, including Aquabyte ( https://www.aquabyte.no/index.html ) , Holloway ( https://www.holloway.com/ ) , Yumi ( https://helloyumi.com/?adgroupid=65231950007&adid=309071533816&campaignid=1621091754&gclid=Cj0KCQiAn8nuBRCzARIsAJcdIfPsfOzPD4g6KRHeE4HUZHh6Gz52XZz2_-ciRS-Ad60BQWclRTVfRv8aAuyaEALw_wcB&utm_campaign=Yumi-Evergreen&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_term=Brand ) and PumpUp ( https://www.pumpup.com/ ). You can follow Amit on Twitter Here ( https://twitter.com/AmitMukherjee ) , where he posts a ton of great thought-provoking content about consumer and venture capital. If you would like to follow your host, Mike, for updates on the show, you can follow him Here ( https://twitter.com/MikeGelb ) on Twitter. In this episode you will learn - * How Amit made his way into venture capital and what attracted him to consumer investing. In the pitch and his due diligence process, how he determines if there is a real pain point? How to evaluate two companies in the same space when there isn't much data? * Difference when evaluating startups when it's a serial entrepreneur vs. first time founder? How he thinks about the investment landscapes today? Cold/No introduction vs. warm introduction - how should founders reach out to VCs? * How he deals with time allocation across his portfolio? One thing he would change about venture capital? * How he thinks about the D2C landscape today? Trends in consumer that he is most excited about. The Gen Z consumer and characteristics he focuses on? One company that he worked on or invested in that he's proud of? One company that in retrospect wish he did invest in? A business book that Amit would like to recommend is The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success ( https://www.amazon.com/Outsiders-Unconventional-Radically-Rational-Blueprint/dp/1422162672/ref=asc_df_1422162672/?adgrpid=69543898472&hvadid=344057888328&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9061089&hvnetw=g&hvpone=&hvpos=1o1&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvrand=11308545222476361085&hvtargid=aud-801381245258%3Apla-404766147279&linkCode=df0&psc=1&ref=&tag= ) by William N. Thorndike A book that helped shaped him personally is 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found a Self-Help That Actually Works ( https://www.amazon.com/10-Happier-Reduced-Self-Help-Actually/dp/B00I8NLVFY/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2HMN3IVGRM1CZ&keywords=10%25+happier+by+dan+harris&qid=1574086867&s=books&sprefix=10%25+happ%2Cstripbooks%2C220&sr=1-1 ) by Dan Harris.

*Gautam Gupta* ( https://www.m13.co/team-members/gautam-gupta/ ) *is a Partner at* *M13* ( https://www.m13.co/ ) *and founded and previously was the CEO of* *Naturebox* ( https://naturebox.com/ ) *.* *M13 is a venture fund headquartered in Los Angeles that has invested in some of the most innovative consumer companies like Pinterst, SnapChat, Lyft, Bird, and Ring.* *Naturebox, a subscription online delivery service that home-delivers all-natural snack foods. Before that, he started his career as an early stage investor at General Catalyst when he was just 18.* *If you would like to keep up to date on Gautam, you can follow him* *@gramblings* ( https://twitter.com/gRamblings ) *.To follow along behind the scenes of the show, you can follow* *@mikegelb* ( https://twitter.com/MikeGelb ) *and* *@consumervc* ( https://twitter.com/ConsumerVc ) *.* *A book that inspired Gautam professionally is* *The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success* ( https://amzn.to/2O9WxPT ) *by William N. Thorndike. A book that inspired Gautam personally is* *Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike* ( https://amzn.to/35kPdGH ) *by Phil Knight.* *In this episode you will learn -* * *When did he know that he wanted to be an entrepreneur? What got him into Venture Capital? What made you want to leave venture capital to found NatureBox?* * ** * *I think you're the first guest I've had on this show that started his or her career in VC, then became a founder/CEO then came back to VC. The learnings and takeaways when he founded his own company that impacted him as an investor? Why he decided to join M13? What's his advice for founders that live in secondary and tertiary markets that are outside LA, SF and NYC? How should founders think about board construction for their companies? What are changes in consumer behavior that he is focused on? What's one thing he would change when it came to venture capital?* * ** * *What is his most recent investment and what makes him excited about it? One company that he had the opportunity to invest in, didn't and in retrospect wish he did?* * ** * *What is one learning that was impactful and could be helpful for founders of venture backable B2C consumer companies?*