Category: Blog

170 degrees for 30 seconds. This is how hot and how long a kitchen sink needs to run to pass an NYC health code inspection. The water from the sinks in Dave Chang’s restaurant Momofuku had just failed this test. A critical health code violation. And because this was not the first strike against the […]

A month ago, I ran a program for a group of Navy pilots and SEALs. My role was to teach them how to think and act like entrepreneurs so they could bring the entrepreneurial mindset back to their organization to solve problems, navigate bureaucracy, and communicate better. When I kicked off the session it was […]

Can a group of bankers learn video? Well, this is a trick question. Silicon Valley Bank is not your average bank. The bank has built their brand around the “innovation economy” and their primary customer is startups. So they were already a forward-looking bunch. We spent two weeks running an internal version of Minimum Viable […]

What happens when you fly to Ecuador to deliver sessions in Spanish (!) and 900 people register for your sessions? You get nervous, reframe those nerves as energy, and blow people’s minds. That’s what happened when the US Embassy Quito Ecuador, Cámara de Comercio de Quito, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, and UEM Benalcazar brought […]

A guy became a millionaire after he founded a tractor company. He made enough money that he could indulge his taste for Ferraris. He loved those cars so much that he bought two. A white one for him and a black one for his wife. But his infatuation faded when he burned out the clutch […]

How does a movie like Mad Max: Fury Road win 6 Oscars when its star has only 63 lines?  The performances of Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy are magnetic, but that’s not what makes the movie unique. The reason this film works is that it fully immerses the viewer in its world.  World-building is something […]

I was 16 and my aunt sent me a hideous sweater for Christmas. Mom insisted I send a thank you letter. By hand. And then track down a stamp, lick it (what kind of user interface involves licking?), and drop it in the mailbox. All of that effort for it to then take DAYS for […]

One minute you’re on top of the world, the next minute you’re pissed off at your coworkers. That’s where U2 found themselves after the success of the Joshua Tree album. The record made them global superstars…but they forgot a key idea. I mean, I get it. Expectations would be huge after an album that blew […]

​It was a joy to share stories and learnings from Minimum Viable Video, Actionworks’ flagship course, on such a big stage. Doug Wells and I talk about: how learning video changes the lives of entrepreneurs and knowledge workers cohort-based courses and David Perell’s Write of Passage reverse networking teaching entrepreneurship in Bogotá​ ​Listen here.

The 80s were a tough time for fishermen in New York State. The regional fishing industry struggled because stocks of cod and flounder plummeted due to overfishing. The area became economically depressed, and fishermen and their families found themselves in a bind. Enter the Cornell Cooperative Extension Division. The CCED, an economic development arm of […]