Let’s face it: Media failures happen to the best of us. Sometimes they’re simple mistakes that go unnoticed, and sometimes they’re catastrophic failures that can ruin a business. The vast majority of the time, though, they’re preventable.
At its core, a media failure is when the value exchange between a marketer and a media company breaks down. This can happen because a marketing strategy was poorly planned, the implementation was rushed, or the media company was unable to actually deliver the audience it promised.
That’s why at New Brave World, I always caution the teams we advise to be careful to consider legal timelines and the time and cost exposure that’s connected to custom content creation. It’s also important to ensure you’ve reserv...
More than 50 years ago, Motown transformed the music landscape forever. Berry Gordy, a music lover who cut his teeth on Detroit’s automobile business, transferred his blue-collar tenacity into building a record label that featured the unique sounds emerging from the so-called Paris of the West: Detroit.
Gordy’s moxie propelled him and fresh artists like Diana Ross and The Supremes, The Jackson 5, and Smokey Robinson and The Miracles to superstardom. Today, his legacy is woven into the fabric of Americana, and we all relish the smooth, upbeat, and personal stories those songs told.
Why am I waxing nostalgic about Berry Gordy? Well, I was born and raised in Detroit, and despite its economic ups and downs, it remains a proud city that retains ...
At first, it seemed like a match made in heaven. The book’s big, bold title grabbed your attention. The subtitle promised to solve one of the many challenges you’re facing right now. The glowing testimonials from CEOs and respected peers confirmed that it was the missing piece for anyone who hoped to be successful.
But by the time you got to chapter three it felt like a bad Tinder date. The author was repeating different versions of the same humorless anecdotes and displaying a brazen disregard for your time and attention span.
He was out of things to say.
You closed your eyes and whispered through clenched teeth:
“This should have been a blog post.” 😑
This is the big gripe readers have with business books — that they’re 90% fluff. They’re...
“I am transparent with people from day one and what we do matters to our clients. I can’t afford to work with people who are contrived, pretentious or interested in company politics. In an entrepreneurial environment, you have to lay it all on the line. If your team doesn’t always tell you the truth, your business won’t last.”
— Scott Petinga
The Scott Petinga Group
@scottpetinga
“When hiring people, I always recognize those who have diverse and interesting resumes/past experience. Young companies that are still in the process of growing need employees who are quick to adapt to new situations and ...
The difference between lying and optimism is often told in the outcome.
As Founders, we spend an inordinate amount of time telling stories about how the future of our startups MIGHT turn out. Often, those stories balance the line between being optimistic gestures of hope and a sordid tale of deceit.
When we tell our customers we'll be able to deliver a product we don't have the personnel to deliver (yet), are we lying? When we stand anxiously in front of investors boasting that we'll become a billion-dollar unicorn, are we misleading them? And when we recruit someone to leave their high-paying job to work for an idea we've barely proven, are we betraying their trust?
This is the moral dilemma we face as Founders every day while we convince ...
If you’ve decided to contract out to build a new website for your company, it may be a good idea to look at some of the most commonly made mistakes before you get started.
In the 15 years my web-design firm Intechnic has been in business, we’ve experienced every possible crazy, stressful situation, and have worked hard to find the best solution or compromise in each case. In the spirit of problem solving—and helping others avoid similar issues—I’ve provided a look at some common obstacles we’ve faced, along with suggestions on how to avoid them.
Setting objectives is not enough. Setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely) objectives is a great place to start, but you must also have a sol...
When Jason Ross packed his bags to make the big move to New York City in 2013, it wasn’t for a girlfriend, or to chase his dreams of stardom to the Big Apple. It was for a company – his company, the one he’d started building more than seven years before.
He’d sold that company, the early apparel eCommerce success story JackThreads, to an upcoming media company called Thrillist about three years earlier. The company was thriving in its new environment in New York. But back home in Columbus, Ohio, Jason started to feel like he was on the outside looking in.
“I started to realize all these meetings were happening in New York,” Jason remembers. “So you start to feel like, ‘Oh man, things are happening at my company that I didn’t put in place. ...
Some of you may be too young to remember, but the physical Yellow Pages was one of the main ways you could find local businesses. Those meaty books were a mainstay and saw frequent usage in many many households around the world. But since the late 90s and early part of the 2000s, for good measure, the books have been disappearing. Google had a big part to play in that.
Google is the de facto search engine of choice. But there was space for better discovery of local services. So Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor, Yelp and others were born.
To start, as an example, let’s take a look at all of Yelp’s local services categories in San Francisco:
Under each of these categories, you’ll find hundreds if not thousands of local busin...
Anyone can look like a hero in good times — but it's the bad times that truly forge Founders.
The good times mask bad behavior. When things are good, we can make tons of mistakes that simply get glossed over. It's not until the shit starts hitting the fan that we're really tested as Founders, and as leaders.
Have you ever noticed how every startup that just raised capital seems like they are doing everything right? They just hired a ton of staff, signed a huge new office lease, and paid for a big media splash to show off their stuff.
It's hard to feel like we're "wrong" when our coffers are overflowing with fresh capital. Any dumb hire we make or bad use of capital doesn't have a consequence — yet.
But wa...
Founders ask the big questions for our startups. Customer service answers them.
In nearly every startup I've ever built, I've always stayed incredibly close to our customers. In fact, if you're reading this via our email list, which goes out to over 250,000 Founders like you every week, you'll notice that's my name on the reply button. That's actually me. If you're one of the brave souls who have attempted to contact what you were probably assuming was a bot or some customer service queue, you were probably surprised to get a message from me instead.
We've got over 200 people, a team of marketers, a team of customer support folks, and an insane amount of infrastructure. I also own a personal assistant business in Zirtual.com — so why am I a...