Author, Investor, Speaker, Mentor
For the final post in my series on attending a conference and event, I think it’s important to focus on something that most people neglect: Follow-up. Assuming that you’ve attended the event, built relationships, and collected business cards, your final step is to “fix” the value of those new contacts by following up. In-person events … Continue reading Always follow up the first day after a conference or event
Even though I believe that one good conversation beats 100 business cards, collecting cards still has its place. First, while people won’t necessarily remember you after a single encounter, my philosophy is that you need three casual encounters to build familiarity. Even if a person doesn’t remember you after an initial meeting, it still counts … Continue reading Why collecting business cards makes sense
I’m on my way to an VIP advisory board meeting in another city. The annual meeting stretches out over two days–Wednesday evening and all day Thursday–which means that many people won’t get in until Thursday. Networking newbies probably think, “I need to be there on Thursday, when there are more people.” But I know that … Continue reading Network at small events, not big ones
The Verge recently ran a great longform article on the birth and death of Everpix, a startup that created a product that its users loved, but which couldn’t grow beyond its cult status: http://bit.ly/1hjPzTd The always-insightful Andrew Chen penned a great analysis of what went wrong from a growth hacking standpoint: http://bit.ly/16GNHwJ “The problem with … Continue reading Design Your Products for Delight and Growth
I’m torn about what to write about IfOnly, a new service I ran across last night: http://www.ifonly.com/ IfOnly is an incredibly cool service. It allows you to purchase unique experiences like a group swim clinic for up to 10 of your friends with Olympic champion and TV broadcaster Summer Sanders–a mere $8,000. I immediately looked … Continue reading The Silicon Valley Luxury Trap
I recently ran across an awesome New York Times editorial by Erin Callan, who was the CFO of Lehman Brothers in 2008 (she had the foresight/luck to resign a number of months before the financial crisis brought down the firm): http://nyti.ms/1b2a4wr In particular, I’d like to draw your attention to two passages: “I didn’t start … Continue reading You Can’t Balance Your Life By The Decade
The research finding of the day comes courtesy of Eric Barker and Bakadesuyo: “Ed Diener and Martin Seligman screened over 200 undergraduates for levels of happiness, and compared the upper 10% (the “extremely happy”) with the middle and bottom 10%. Extremely happy students experienced no greater number of objectively positive life events, like doing well on … Continue reading Happiness Doesn’t Depend on Events
Here’s a great item from Eric Barker’s Bakadesuyo blog: http://bit.ly/HxinYf “People were asked how much they trust others on a scale of 1 to 10. Income peaked at those who responded with the number 8. Those with the highest levels of trust had incomes 7% lower than the 8′s. Research shows they are more likely … Continue reading Trusting Too Much Is Better Than Trusting Too Little
Keith Rabois touched off a mini-Twitter firestorm the other day when he posted a tweet saying, “I don’t know of a single successful CEO or entrepreneur who blogs regularly.” http://bit.ly/1b0gv4V Sadly, as I often note, 140 characters isn’t enough for a nuanced response, which this topic deserves. Here are my (often conflicting) thoughts about whether … Continue reading Should entrepreneurs blog?
The classic saying about networking is that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Sadly, this gives people the impression that networking is all about who you know. The true master networker isn’t someone who knows a lot of people; it’s someone whom a lot of people trust. If a “master networker” can’t … Continue reading Networking *isn’t* about who you know