Posts Tagged ‘Stefan Doering’
How Do YOU Manage Breakdowns
“Plan B? We don’t HAVE a Plan B!” I said, sounding exasperated to my business partners. We were to have our big event in less than two weeks.
You see, we only had about 13 registered people for our Summit last month and we were concerned we would not fill the event, the first of its type in NYC. What message would THAT send to the world that there were not enough Green Entrepreneurs interested in scaling up.
Some of the members of our team wanted a Plan B in case our goal of 40 attendees did not happen. And I could certainly understand why. We’d invested a lot of time and energy and what if things did not turn out? How do we manage the project? Read the rest of this entry »
Is the Economy Creating Happier People?
Yesterday I met a wonderful colleague for lunch. Devin Stewart, the director of the Carnegie Council’s Global Policy Innovations.
We had just finished agreeing to work together on our next Summit in November when I mentioned I was inspired to write this week’s newsletter from one of the best articles I’ve read in a while: But Will It Make You Happy? by Stephanie Rosenbloom, in the New York Times.
He laughed and said he and his wife Ayano read the same article, inspiring them to put their two-year apartment search on hold until they sorted out some things in their lives and careers.
Six Parts to Managing a Public Crisis
For the first time in recent memory I found myself yelling at a client last Thursday. He had just finished telling a group of us on his core team that he had been withholding crucial information.
How Entrepreneurs Deal With the Challenges of Getting Funded
“I always tell my kids if you lay down, people will step over you. But if you keep scrambling, if you keep going, someone will always, always give you a hand. Always. But you gotta keep dancing, you gotta keep your feet moving.”
Morgan Freeman -1937, actor
We all know raising money can be really tough. But some entrepreneurs make it look easy. Ron and David are two of those people.
As CEO, Where Do You Spend Most of Your Time?
On Monday I had a room of 30+ entrepreneurs glaring at me. They had just been told that where they should be spending most of their over-worked and overwhelmed working lives wasn’t even close to what they have been doing.
It started when I asked them how much time they spend in the following three basic areas of (any) business:
The Importance of Being Your Word
Last night I found myself in an intense conversation at a networking event held by a friend and colleague. We were discussing what the following four organizations all had in common: BP, Goldman Sachs, Toyota, and the Obama Administration.
We agreed each had recently lost serious credibility because their actions have not been “meeting their words.”
Are You an Entrepreneur? Want a Job? Create It!
Recently I’ve met with three entrepreneurs looking for jobs. They’ve come to me somewhat frustrated and out of options, or so they feel.
The first, a clothing designer, was laid off from a major clothing design company. Since she was fairly high up in the company finding a similar job had slim pickings. After some time, she had not found anything.
The second, a recent graduate from college at a fairly reputable school, has serious overseas experience and was having the dickens of a time finding work in the business consulting world. She wanted to work for a major consulting firm here in New York, as she had some previous internship experience at one.
The third, a former managing director at a major investment bank, was recently laid after the new bank that acquired his failed company phased out his division. He has been looking for several months, but because so few jobs are available at his level, he has not been successful.
I told each of them the same thing: don’t wait for a job/position to become available, create it.
Seven Steps to Attracting Your Billionaire Angel Investor
The first time I met John I was really surprised. He was introduced to me from an investor in my new company at the time and John was an old friend of his. What surprised me about John how human he was. He was in his late sixties and somewhat stubborn and opinionated. But not it an arrogant way.
John’s wealth started with his grandfather’s company. The family ran and grew it into a conglomerate that was eventually sold. John now managed the family’s assets of over a billion dollars. I was really nervous when I pitched him, knowing what he could mean to my company. But after listening to me for a few minutes and asking a few questions, John politely rejected my request to invest.
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