[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode # 7 – Eddie Thomason

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode # 7 – Eddie Thomason, Speaker & Inspirational Entrepreneur

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode #7 - Eddie Thomason

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The fact is, entrepreneurship might be interesting and hot right now, but it wasn’t always this way.

The fact is, being a rapper or a hip-hop musician was seen as being the way to success, not that long ago.

The fact is, becoming an athlete (particularly an elite one) is still viewed as a path to success for many people.

The fact is that these are all narrow doors.

It’s never mentioned (or rarely mentioned) in breathless articles in Inc., or Fast Company, but the vast majority of entrepreneurs would be far happier aiming at making a living creating $3 million dollars in value for clients and the market per year, than they would trying to win the start-up lottery.

The vast majority of entrepreneurs fail; the vast majority of freelancers go back to working regular jobs; and, the vast majority of people are perfectly happy being employees.

But…

If you get your head right about what exactly is on offer, and what exactly it’s going to take to attain and grow your entrepreneurial dreams, then you can stare all kinds of events, people, and incidents in the face and never blink.

Listen to the interview with Eddie and connect with him in all the ways that you can below.

And start the process of staring your dreams in the face.

Connect with Eddie all the ways that you can below:

Eddie’s Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/unlockyourselfU/

Eddie’s YouTube: https://youtu.be/rxfnHLrv2s8

Eddie’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/unlockyourselfu

 

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode # 5 – Marcus Mohalland

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode # 5 – Marcus Mohalland, Co-Author, Silly Nomads

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The nature of literacy in a digital world has changed.

Here’s a story:

I went to the New York Library last year and looked at a Gutenberg Bible. The Bible was clearly a book. You could tell just by looking at it.

The fact that I could tell it was a book is the beginning of understanding the nature and depth of literacy. The fact is, the Internet is changing the nature of literacy and my guest today, Marcus Mohalland has some things to say about that.

He’s using children’s books, connections to the education system, and his unique life story to impact how children get literate and remain so, in a world of screens, and options for distraction.

The nature of books we understand. When I went and looked at the Bible, I understood exactly how to read it, comprehend it, and how to disseminate information contained in it to others.

But we are at the beginning of the digital revolution right now.

What will we be saying in 700 years while standing at a virtual display in a virtual New York City Library, while staring at a mobile phone with Internet access from 2017?

Marcus and his co-author Jan are looking to maintain and grow the fundamentals of understanding that literacy is based on, through re-establishing the fundamentals of reading and comprehension with a generation whose attention spans might be waning.

Check out Silly Nomads for your children (or the children of people you know) and connect with Jan and Marcus in all the ways that you can below:

Silly Nomads Twitter: https://twitter.com/NomadsSilly

Marcus Mohalland on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marcus.mohalland

Marcus Mohalland LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcusmohalland/

Silly Nomads Book Website: http://mohallandlewisllc.com/home

Silly Nomads Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sillynomads

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode # 4 – Nasha Taylor

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode # 4 – Nasha Taylor, Community Connector, Networker, Cultural Strategist, Media Savvy Engager, and Entrepreneur

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode #4 - Nasha Taylor

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Connection is currency.

Connection is the currency that matters in the 21st century.

There is a network leap from Google to the “real” world is the only type of value that will matter for the 21st century.

Welcome to the show! This is Earbud_U Season Five, Episode #4!

Our guest today, Nasha Taylor, has a brain that works, as she says, “like a Wi-Fi router.”

She is a teacher, a role model, a connector, and is “work” to providing service to all in all the ways that matter.

Talking about circuitous journeys can help us discover how to connect with others in the ways that matter, help us ask and answer the right questions, and gain the courage to seek and implement the right solutions to our most pressing problems.

Helping people feel safe through change is the point of all of this, and Nasha is going to talk about all of this today on the show!

Connect with Nasha in all the ways that you can below:

Nasha’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/NashaTaylor

Nasha’s FB: https://www.facebook.com/nasha.taylor

Nasha’s LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nashataylor/

Nasha’s Coffe Business: http://nashataylor.myorganogold.com

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode #3 – Katie Vaz

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode #2 – Katie Vaz, Illustrator, Graphic Designer, and Author of “Don’t Worry, Eat Cake”

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Love is a many splendor thing.

…maybe that’s splendid…

Or so it is said.

When you get to do what you love every day, it doesn’t seem like work. But the thing is, many people don’t do what they love every day.

Many people, for a variety of reasons, do what they have to do, what they are required to do, or what they are told to do.

Our guest today, Katie Vaz, a graphic designer and illustrator, and author of Don’t Worry, Eat Cake, is living the life that she wants to live, doing what she wants to do, and creating a voice and an oeuvre of work that shows what can happen when you march to the beat of your own drummer.

And now, a word about coloring books:

There’s a growing movement of providing coloring books for adults, and Katie’s book is about tapping into this phenomenon.

I personally have never colored (with the exception of finger painting and whatever I did in college art classes for my major), but I understand the sentiment behind the idea in a world where love is the hardest thing to attain.

What the world needs now, is love, sweet love.

That, and coloring books.

And cake.

Definitely cake….

Connect with Katie in all the ways that you can below:

Etsy Store (Use code EARBUD20 for 20% off orders for Valentine’s Day): https://www.etsy.com/shop/katievaz

Website: http://katievaz.com/

Blog: http://katievaz.com/blog/

Book: https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Worry-Eat-Cake-Everything/dp/1449478123

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katievaz

Twitter: https://twitter.com/katievaz

Katie Vaz Design on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KatieVazDesign

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode # 8 – Jaimee Dorris, Web Personality, Creative, Entrepreneur

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode # 8 – Jaimee Dorris, Web Personality, Creative, Entrepreneur

podcast-earbud_u-season-four-episode-8-jaimee-dorris

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Living out loud in the American South.

Incongruity. Building for the future. Making a plan and executing. Pivoting into something else. Building a brand that lasts.

Our guest today, Jaimee Dorris, wants everybody on the Mississippi Gulf Coast to know her name. And she’ll get there. By building a stage, one audience member at a time.

The idea of “build it and they will come” is as old as—well—advertising itself.  But it doesn’t happen overnight. And that’s where the personality of an entrepreneur really has to kick in. To double-down, not on failure, but on success. And to turn seeming “dead-ends” into profitable streets that link engaged audience members to a much larger story.

This is not a political podcast, and you all don’t really care about what my personal political positions are, but…

In light of recent electoral events in United States, this interview stands as both a beacon of hope for those who are looking for hope and it stands as a refutation of realities for others.

And in a political world where it appears that the fundamentals under girding the process were changed…well…fundamentally this year, our interview is a reminder that all has not quite changed just yet.

What has happened is that, as my grandmother would say, things have become sharpened— that is, further revealed—and in that process of revelation, we must all look at ourselves closer than we ever have before.

We must examine our motives, our thoughts, our inner drives, and our outer limits, in order to build the best, most worthy, selves that we can in this challenging—and changing—new world.

That revelation should bring us all the hope we need.

Alright. Well that’s it…. Let’s get into it!

Connect with Jaimee in all the ways you can below:

Website (Home of the MS Congeniality Show!): http://www.jaimeedorris.com/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mrsjaimeed

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHxKWvXbQeWaTyKMZjHBbKw

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimee-dorris-63064914

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrsjaimeed

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode #7 – Darren MacDonald

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode # 7 – Darren MacDonald, Investor, Film/Movie Buff, World Traveler, Local Raconteur

podcast-earbud_u-season-four-episode-7-darren-macdonald[powerpress]

Movies are the stories of our lives.

Our guest today on the show, Darren MacDonald, is a local venture capital investor, film buff, and world traveler.  This is the follow-up to episode #6 featuring Darren’s unique, humorous and engaging point of view.

In this episode, Darren talks about the power of film to cut through to the heart of stories. We cover all the films that came out last year, and have a spirited discussion about who killed Han Solo.

Considering that for a moment, here’s an existential question:

If your child had gone over to the side of evil would you be able to stop them, or would the love that you feel for them—the parental bond you have—cause you to give your life for them?

Yeah. Like I said, film has the power to cut through the muck and ask—and answer—the questions that matter.

Connect with Darren through all the ways you can below:

Check out our first interview with Darren here: http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/blog/earbud_u/earbud_u-episode-1-darren-macdonald/

Follow Darren on Twitter: https://twitter.com/upwordz

Connect with Darren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenmacdonald/

Connect with the Southern Tier Capital Fund: http://stcfny.com/

Connect with the Southern Tier Capital Fund on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stcapitalfund

Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode #6 – Darren MacDonald

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode # 6 – Darren MacDonald, Investor, Film/Movie Buff, World Traveler, Local Raconteur

podcast-earbud_u-season-four-episode-6-darren-macdonald

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Intercultural context, humility, and world travel.

Capitalism, expanding your worldview, entrepreneurship, one-way traffic, and the country of India.

Our guest today on the show, Darren MacDonald, is a local venture capital investor, film buff, and world traveler.  This interview stands out as a “call back” to our very first episode of the Earbud_U Podcast, where we debuted by featuring Darren’s unique, humorous and engaging point of view.

And we’re doing it again here.

In this episode, Darren talks about finding his way from the Taj Mahal to Mumbai, his travels in India, and how to expand capitalism into other areas and explore new ideas.

One idea that we talked about extensively in this conversation was about hope. Now, hope is not a strategy, but it does lie at the core of many questions, yet to be answered, in the world of entrepreneurship globally:

How do we get hope to people?

Hope to places from Mumbai, India to St. Louis, Missouri.

Hope to places where all hope–economic, social, and even spiritual–has left.

Hope is the eraser for despair. But before we get to hope, we’ve got to identify what the problems are, why they are important to solve, and who actually has the bandwidth to solve them.

This is the first part of a two-part conversation with Darren and it’s a lot of fun, while also being sobering, inspiring, and sometimes, just downright goofy.

And there’s nothing not hopeful about any of that.

Connect with Darren through all the ways you can below:

Check out our first interview with Darren here: http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/blog/earbud_u/earbud_u-episode-1-darren-macdonald/

Follow Darren on Twitter: https://twitter.com/upwordz

Connect with Darren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenmacdonald/

Connect with the Southern Tier Capital Fund: http://stcfny.com/

Connect with the Southern Tier Capital Fund on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stcapitalfund

[Advice] Entrepreneurs Disrupted

We are at the end of about a ten to fifteen-year cycle of entrepreneurship being sexy. And now is a good time for disruption.

This is evidenced by current exits, acquisitions, and even the folding of companies. And while some VC dollars are drying up a little bit in traditional geographic locations, other dollars are moving to non-traditional geographic locations.

Like Pittsburgh.

Or Cleveland.

In those places though, where the culture of Silicon Valley (“fail fast, fail hard”) has yet to completely penetrate, two distinct phenomena are going to bump up against each other over the next few years. And this friction will occur even as breathless articles—and blog posts—will be written about the death of entrepreneurship in the major media, political, and social centers of the United States.

The first phenomena will be the mismatch between a traditional VCs perception of what the culture of investment should be, and the perception of culture in places geographically, (and culturally as well as ideologically) removed from that culture of investment. There have been a few businesses built like this in the Midwest (Basecamp, formerly 37 Signals, comes to mind) but there will be more friction in the coming years.

The second phenomena will be the mismatch between a “small business” mentality, and a “entrepreneurs” mentality. This will manifest in all kinds of ways, including work ethic, employee education level, and other localized influences. Many of these are unquestioned and “in the air” in Silicon Valley, and the mismatch is already acute outside of Silicon Valley.

Both of these mismatches can be overcome, managed, or eliminated completely through the effects of numerous, gossamer like transactions, but they all represent disruption.

That is, disruption for both the end of entrepreneurship being “sexy”, and the beginning of something else, even greater taking root in unexpected places.

HIT Piece 8.30.2016

If you want to be known, it’s not enough to build a great product.

If you want to be heard, it’s not enough to do something that you call marketing.

If you want to be acknowledged, it’s not enough to sell constantly, and be an interruptive presence in your customers’ lives.

You have to build a product, a company, and a category that occupies a space in the mind of your client or your customer. You have to build a pirate ship, in essence, to hijack that valuable mental space.

And then, you have to constantly build out that space in their minds.

Does this sound like hard work?

Well, it was just as hard 100 years ago at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, when companies, people, and organizations believed that all they needed to do was build a better product incrementally over time.

[Opinion] It’s Up to MBAs to Save the World

Business students—modern day, Internet savvy, native users of the information superhighway we’ve all built for the last twenty or so years—can save the corporate world.

The unfortunate thing is that somewhere along the way to cashing out in a cushy consulting position, or advancing in organizations by whose culture they are troubled, someone forgot to tell them.

This is not unusual. Partially it’s due to the echo chamber of higher education—the faculty who teach from a worldview and frame set on preserving the world they teach in—and partially it’s due to a corporate world still focused (in spite of all the evidence of disruption to the contrary) on achieving cookie-cutter, command-and-control outcomes on a quarterly basis.

There are, of course, a range of types and varieties of business students, from undergraduate business majors, dutifully studying their work at second, third, and fourth tier institutions, all the way to community and junior college students “older-than-average” who return to business programs to either run a small business better, or to provide for their families.

Finally, there are the top tier, classic business school students from elite institutions who are studying to become the next masters of the universe. These are the ones that we traditionally think of as dominating the salaries and cultures of corporations and organizations where MBAs are hired.

Except, at all levels, the work that matters is shifting away from what a human used to do well toward what a computer can do better. Accounting, spreadsheet analysis, financial reporting, supply chain management, and on and on, really matter less and less as topical areas of focus and interest in a world where information is changing hands faster than the left to right swiping motion on a smartphone screen.

The work that does matter, in organizations, to individuals, and the work that is going to reshape the global paradigm of the next fifty years, doesn’t show up on spreadsheet, and can’t be open to analysis. And it never did; but, industrialists of the past century who built the old paradigm want MBAs and anyone in a business program of any kind to continue to believe otherwise.

Philosophically, there must be a change in how we teach bright, young, ambitious, people at all levels (from community college programs to the Ivy League) in order to succeed with outcomes that will be measurable, not in terms of dollars and cents (though that will come) but in terms of people, connection, and the continuing malleability of human nature.

But what would a two-year immersive, MBA experience look like?

Here’s a rough idea of how practically, an MBA program would look, one focused on getting bright, ambitious, Internet native, students to develop and nurture the kind of work that will grow organizations in the 21st century:

  • Year One:
    • Semester One:
      • Ethics
      • Sustainability
      • Conflict/Dispute Resolution Skills
      • Failure, Success, and Resilience
    • Semester Two:
      • People Management
      • Psychology of Supervision
      • Storytelling
      • Listening
  • Capstone Project: Peer Reviewed and Focused on Building a Functioning Business in the Real World
  • Year Two:
    • Semester One:
      • Finance
      • Accounting
      • Supply Chain Management
      • Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis
    • Semester Two:
      • Persuasive Writing
      • Digital/Virtual Leadership
      • Organizational Culture
      • Restorative Justice
  • Capstone Project: Go and Turn Your Peer-Reviewed Project from the 1st Semester into a Business

And after all of this, there must be follow-up. But not in the traditional sense of “Did you get a job?” and “How much does it pay?” which are questions that really only interest the federal student loan originators. Instead, follow-up with these students would be focused on the only metrics that matter: failure, success, long-term growth, and connection:

  • Did you fail in 5 to 7 years after the program?
  • Did you succeed in 5 to 7 years after the program?
  • What “dent” if any, did you make in the universe?

And that’s it.

With such a program, the MBAs we are turning out from all institutions would be prepared to save the world from the current troubles and hypocrisies, that have caused many corporations to collapse under the inability to change for the future that is here.

Now.