The majority of VC funded startups fail and a large part of the blame should fall on marketing. Specifically, executing a flawed marketing process during the startup’s critical customer traction stage. Through running marketing at five startups for the full cycle from launch to acquisition, I’ve discovered that success at…

Negative emotions are the single biggest enemy that any of us have. If we had no negative emotions, our lives would be wonderful — as would our relationships, our health and everything else. Where Do Negative Emotions Come From? The great business of life is to eliminate negative emotions. To…

A wise person said: “To guarantee success, spend 95% of your time defining the problem and 5% of the time solving it.” I believe deeply in that quote. In my life I spend an extraordinary amount of time understanding the problem and attempting to define it clearly. …

Everyone loves growing their customer base. With new customers comes new opportunities, new engagement, and new sales. However, it costs 5 times more to attract new customers than to retain existing ones. So, why aren’t more brands focusing on keeping their current customers happy and loyal? Customer loyalty is highly…

Throughout our lives, we receive all sorts of criticism, some valid and some that are simply meant to pull us down. And yet, for many of us, the worst criticism we face is not external; instead, it’s those comments we make to ourselves that question our ability to succeed or…

Most of us have never heard of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman; if we have, we probably learned of them through Michael Lewis’s fascinating book The Undoing Project . Lewis is famous for taking wonky, esoteric topics and making them accessible to broader audiences. …

If there’s one constant to doing business in today’s global environment, it’s that things inevitably change. Of course, when it comes to change in today’s organizations, more often than not it’s sorted into one of two boxes — change that drives our efforts towards innovation, or change that we have…

Most of the flood of leader literature makes that assumption. Leaders get things done. They win wars, championships, fortune, fame. They cure sick teams, organizations, whole countries. Not by themselves, of course — we followers have a limited role, as foot soldiers, employees, voters, or, as Michael Jordan once memorably…