For this episode, let's revisit a Case Interview & Management Consulting classic where we look at the profile of an older MBA candidate who has extensive oil and gas expertise. We offer some counter-intuitive advice to this candidate for their career and planning. While we use an oil and gas profile, this advice is relevant to any experienced hire and we caution candidates to think very carefully about the quality of their backgrounds when applying this advice to their own needs. The quality is what matters - not the time spent in a sector.
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Welcome to an episode with a veteran Silicon Valley dealmaker, Touraj Parang. Get Touraj’s book here: https://amzn.to/3bmsDGj
In this episode, Touraj takes us through his unique, decades-long experiences as an entrepreneur and investor. He shares the lessons he learned when he sold his first startup – with no exit plan – for pennies on the dollar. It was then followed by great success with his next startup as he applied his learnings and prioritized executing an exit strategy. Touraj discussed the key things to consider and the red flags to avoid when selecting investors and co-founders.
Touraj Parang is a seasoned entrepreneur, investor, advisor, and M&A expert who has sat in every seat around the table, structuring and negotiating strategic transactions since the late 1990s, including as a corporate attorney at legal powerhouses WSGR and O’Melveny & Myers. Touraj has been a founder, executive, and trusted advisor to several fast-growing technology startups with exits to LinkedIn, Instacart, Vistaprint, Postmates, and Amplify, among others. He has also spent nearly a decade on the acquirer side of M&A deals as a corporate development executive at Webs and GoDaddy.
Exit Path draws on Touraj’s unique, decades-long experience involving hundreds of M&A transactions, strategic partnerships, and venture capital investments totaling billions of dollars in aggregate value. He is currently the President and Chief Operating Officer at Serve Robotics, a startup shaping the future of sustainable, self-driving delivery that he helped spin out of Uber, and an Operating Advisor at Pear VC, an early-stage venture capital firm, where he enjoys collaborating with and providing strategic guidance to mission-driven entrepreneurs. He earned his JD from Yale Law School and his BA in Philosophy and Economics from Stanford University.
Get Touraj’s book here:
Exit Path: How to Win the Startup End Game. Touraj Parang. https://amzn.to/3bmsDGj
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Welcome to an episode with startup entrepreneurs Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba. Get Ash and Hasan’s book here: https://amzn.to/3Q8ctPD
In this episode, we speak about the concept of unfair advantage and the process of identifying and managing it so it’s your edge over any competition. Many people have the limiting belief that they don’t have something authentic to offer, but what they don’t realize is that we all have unique skill sets and talents. It only takes self-awareness to realize that the ingredients to success are already within you.
Ash Ali is an award-winning serial tech entrepreneur and angel investor. Ash sold his first internet business at just 19 years old (and most recently, his Dubai-based on-demand mobile app startup in 2018). As the first marketing director of Just Eat UK, which IPO’d for £1.5 billion, he was included in the Top 250 Growth Hackers, as well as the Top 100 Asian Tech Stars in the UK. With over 20 years of hands-on experience creating and growing startups, he has consulted, advised, and invested in hundreds of startups at various funding stages. Ash is a highly sought-after international speaker and expert on digital disruption and tech transformation, and has spoken at numerous global organizations and conferences, including Salesforce, Ernst & Young, and TEDx. He is currently co-founder of Uhubs, a new skills training platform that helps entrepreneurs and professionals upskill.
Hasan Kubba is an author, entrepreneur, and startup strategist. Hasan is a specialist in technology startups, marketing, and fundraising. With his own London-based digital marketing business and startup investment experience, Hasan is particularly strong at breaking down complex business concepts into simple and effective strategies and tactics. His recent TEDx talk titled Startups, Entrepreneurship, and Unfair Advantages was voted the highest ever on the official TED subreddit. He is passionate about the future of entrepreneurship and digital disruption globally and is an in-demand startup mentor to early-stage entrepreneurs, workshop trainer, and international speaker.
Get Ash & Hasan’s book here:
The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed. Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba: https://amzn.to/3Q8ctPD
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Welcome to an episode with an artist, researcher, author, and educator at Northwestern University, Julio Mario Ottino. Get Julio’s book here: https://amzn.to/3spt2Nn
Individuals and organizations face complex problems and challenges today that demand a new way of thinking to grasp underlying solutions and opportunities. In this episode, Julio shares the beauty of the coexistence of art, science, and technology – rather than being separate disciplines – to navigate the complex world.
Julio was born in Argentina and grew up with twin interests in physical sciences and visual arts, finding beauty in math and art, and seeing creativity as being one thing, rather than something that lives in compartments. Art provided a cathartic means of expression while he grew up in turbulent times. He managed to create a solo art exhibit while drafted as an officer in the Argentinian Navy. When he moved to the United States to pursue a doctorate, his research achievements followed.
Most of the early attention Ottino received stemmed from pioneering work in chaos theory and a combination of scientific insight and visualization. His research work has been featured on the covers of Nature, Science, Scientific American, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, and other publications. He has supervised more than 65 Ph.D. theses, written over 250 papers and two books, and has given invited presentations at over 200 universities in the United States and around the world, as well as at organizations such as Accenture, Boeing, Google, 3M, and Unilever.
An academic entrepreneur, Ottino was the founding co-director of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems and educational and research initiatives in design, entrepreneurship, and energy and sustainability. As dean of the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, he founded educational and research partnerships with Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, Pritzker School of Law, Medill School of Journalism, Feinberg School of Medicine, School of Communication, and School of Education and Social Policy, as well as with external partners ranging from the Art Institute of Chicago to Argonne National Lab. In 2008, he was selected by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers as one of the “One Hundred Engineers of the Modern Era.” In 2017, Ottino was awarded the Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education from the National Academy of Engineering for the concept of whole-brain engineering. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and is a member of both the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Get Julio’s book here:
The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World–The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Julio Mario Ottino. https://amzn.to/3spt2Nn
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Welcome to an episode with a professor at Queensland University of Technology, Amanda Lotz.
In this episode, Amanda shares her insights as a media expert about Netflix’s recent announcement that they are introducing an ad-supported version of their streaming service. She spoke about the challenges that Netflix may face as it goes down the advertising route. Amanda discussed the pros and cons of a subscription-based model versus an advertisement-based model and what it will be for Netflix as it launches its new strategy.
Amanda Lotz is a media scholar, professor, and industry consultant. Her expertise includes media industries, digital distribution, the future of television, the business of media, and net neutrality.
Amanda leads the Transforming Media Industries research project in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology. She is the author, coauthor, or editor of eleven books that explore television and media industries, including Netflix and Streaming Video: The Business of Subscriber-Funded Video on Demand, Media Disrupted: Surviving Cannibals, Pirates and Streaming Wars, We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Television and the Internet Revolutionized It All, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, and Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television.
Her most recent books explore the connections between internet-distributed services such as Netflix and the legacy television industry, as well as the business strategies and revenue models that differ. Her award-winning book, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, now in its second edition, has been translated into Mandarin, Korean, Italian, and Polish. She is frequently interviewed by NPR’s Marketplace, has appeared on BBC, CNN's The Nineties, HuffPost Live, and ZDF (German television network), and has been interviewed for articles in the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Christian Science Monitor, the Associated Press, Wired, and Men’s Health among many others. She publishes articles about the business of television at Quartz, Salon, The New Republic, hosts the Media Business Matters podcast, and tweets about television and media @DrTVLotz.
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Welcome to an episode with the Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment at the University of Delaware, Saleem Ali. Get Ali’s book here: https://amzn.to/3eoUtTT
In this conversation, we discussed numerous examples of major problems around the world, from the resources industry, environmental conflicts, culture, and the system of order and control of many organizations, and how these issues come down to the need for literacy and proper education.
Environmental awareness is present today, however, we are lacking science or environmental literacy. Education is not an elite enterprise and someone even without formal education can be a citizen scientist who is seeing and observing the world and continuously gaining much more depth of knowledge and understanding to contribute to solving the problems of the world.
Prof. Ali previously served as chair in Sustainable Resource Development and professor of sustainability science and policy at University of Queensland in Australia. He also was a professor of environmental studies at the University of Vermont's Rubenstein School of Natural Resources and founding director of the Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security. He was also formerly on the adjunct faculty of Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies and the visiting faculty for the United Nations mandated University for Peace (Costa Rica).
Prof. Ali's primary research interests have been in the causes and consequences of environmental conflicts in the mineral sector, and the process of using ecological factors to promote peace. Some of Prof. Ali’s former research appointments include a visiting fellowship at the Brookings Institution's research center in Doha, Qatar; a Public Policy Fellowship at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia; a Baker Foundation Research Fellowship at Harvard Business School; and a parliamentary internship at the U.K. House of Commons. He has teaching experience in courses on environmental planning, conflict resolution, industrial ecology, research methods, and technical writing.
Before embarking on an academic career, Prof. Ali worked as an environmental health and safety professional at General Electric, an Associate at the Boston-based consulting firm Industrial Economics Inc., as well as a consultant for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Health Canada.
Prof. Ali is a citizen of the United States of America by birth; Pakistan by parental lineage; and Australian by naturalization. He received his doctorate in Environmental Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an M.E.S. in environmental law and policy from Yale University, and his Bachelors in Chemistry from Tufts University.
Get Ali’s Book here:
Earthly Order: How Natural Laws Define Human Life. Saleem Ali. https://amzn.to/3eoUtTT
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Welcome to an episode with bestselling author, keynote speaker, workplace expert, and resilience researcher, Adam Markel. Get Adam's Book here: https://amzn.to/3MhODjI
In this episode, Adam speaks about how he reinvented his career path through valuable lessons and eye-opening life events. He shares his experience as a Jones Beach lifeguard in New York. As a first responder in a life-and-death environment, he learned the importance of cultivating a high-performance capacity and impeccable teamwork. He learned to never let anyone go under the water, not to quit, and to keep going no matter what the conditions were. Years later, after experiencing a panic attack due to stress and exhaustion, he was reminded of another important lesson that he learned at the beach: the importance of taking intermittent breaks. Rest, recover, and recuperate, or you cannot perform well.
Lots of people think of resilience as getting up after taking a blow, moving forward after getting knocked down, and bouncing back from setbacks. Resilience is more than that. As Adam mentioned in this episode, “Resilience is not about how we bounce back. It's actually about how we bounce forward. It's not about how we endure life's challenges, adversities, and uncertainties. But actually how it is that we leverage that uncertainty for our growth.”
Adam is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and Publisher’s Weekly bestseller, Pivot: The Art & Science of Reinventing Your Career and Life. A leading international keynote speaker, he has reached tens of thousands worldwide with his message of resilience as the competitive edge in today’s complex markets. An attorney, entrepreneur, and transformational trainer, Adam is a sought-after business culture catalyst who inspires, empowers, and guides organizations and individuals to create sustainable, high-performance strategies.
Adam is also the CEO of More Love Media and host of The Change Proof podcast, where he shares his insights on pivoting and resilience in today's fast-paced market and interviews experts, innovators, and influencers in the areas of business and life.
Adam credits much of his success to the principles he learned during his eight years as a Jones Beach lifeguard in New York. He’s found that the principles of this type of culture and leadership equally apply to any business that wants to build a competitive advantage to win.
After building a multi-million-dollar law firm, Adam pivoted his own career path to become CEO of one of the largest business and personal growth training companies in the world. Here he learned that motivation and inspiration alone are not enough to effectively utilize change. It's about providing leaders, teams, and audiences with effective takeaways to sustain them over time.
Get Adam’s Book here:
Change Proof: Leveraging the Power of Uncertainty to Build Long-Term Resilience. Adam Markel. https://amzn.to/3MhODjI
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Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 256, an episode with an expert in business law and business ethics, J.S. Nelson. Get J.S’s book here: https://amzn.to/3C8am91
Managing business ethics has always been a challenge for many organizations. As unethical business conduct rises, the struggle of implementing ethics and compliance programs in organizations also increases. Business ethics can make or break your business or career. But it can be used as a competitive advantage if managed correctly and can build the most valuable asset: your reputation.
The key is to articulate your organization's values – defining who you are, what you stand for, and extending it toward every inch of your organization. It’s very important for management to cultivate a culture of openness, where people feel safe to speak up and where ethical misconduct is not tolerated. As J.S. mentioned in this episode, “the way to get the behavior that you want is to intervene early and often.”
In this episode, J.S speaks about the value of business ethics, the major schools of philosophical ethical thought, and how understanding it can help people become better at being ethical. She discusses the ways an organization can cultivate ethical behavior and how to get away from situations involving ethical traps in the modern business world.
Nelson is an expert in business law and business ethics. She is a visiting professor at Harvard Business School. Nelson was the first tenure-track appointment in a U.S. law school, specifically to teach business ethics and to develop law-school curricula around the subject.
Nelson has spent nearly fifteen years teaching at top universities across the country, including Villanova Law School, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Haas Business School of the University of California at Berkeley, Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, and the Mihaylo School at Cal State Fullerton.
Prior to her work in academia, Professor Nelson served as staff counsel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, and she clerked for the Honorable David M. Ebel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and the Honorable William H. Yohn Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. She also worked as a deputy district attorney and as a business litigator in Denver, Colorado. Nelson graduated from Harvard Law School, where she was the Supreme Court Co-Chair of the Harvard Law Review. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with honors and distinction in the major from Yale.
Get J.S’s book here:
Business Ethics: What Everyone Needs to Know, J.S. Nelson & Lynn A. Stout: https://amzn.to/3C8am91
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Welcome to an episode with the CEO and managing partner at Velocity Group, Edward Sullivan. Get Edward’s book here: https://amzn.to/3HT2Hy4
In this episode, Edward discussed the best practices that leaders and companies do to address mental health issues and the real cause of the great resignation. He spoke about the gravity of work-life balance, care, and understanding as part of an employee retention strategy.
For decades, we have avoided discussing the topic of mental health around the workplace. It was considered a weakness and could greatly derail one’s career. We operated under the assumption of manifesting the “executive presence,” which covertly added up to pressure and stress on the employees.
As companies have responded to the challenges brought by Covid in recent years, they are learning to consider mental health as a common issue in the workplace and taking employees’ well-being in a serious manner. The great resignation caused a stir in how companies view and treat their employees. As Edward mentioned in this episode, “employees are not leaving in the great resignation because of company benefits, they are fleeing from toxic work cultures.”
Edward Sullivan holds an MBA from the Wharton School and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School. His 25-year career as an executive coach and political consultant has taken him around the globe coaching and advising start-up founders, Fortune 500 executives, and heads of state of foreign nations. His work has been featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, Fast Company, USA Today, and Nasdaq, among others.
Get Edward’s book here:
Leading with Heart: 5 Conversations That Unlock Creativity, Purpose, and Results, Edward Sullivan and John Baird: https://amzn.to/3HT2Hy4
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