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244 Digital and Analog Businesses with Robert Siegel, VC and Author of “The Brains and the Brawn Company”

FYD - Episode 244 Robert Siegel

Most businesses are now a hybrid of analog and digital. The question is, how do we get the right mix? Also, how do we know what and when to digitally transform, or keep parts of our business analog? These are just some of the questions that board CEOs and executive teams are grappling with. In this episode of Follow your Different, Robert Siegel will help us get a better grasp at it.

Robert Siegel is a Venture Capitalist and a Stanford lecturer. He has a new book out called The Brains and Brawn Company, and it cracks open many of these kinds of questions. It also provides real research and insight from leading companies in their respective industries, coupled with Robert’s years in Silicon Valley and the entrepreneurial world.

If you’re building companies today, or you want to build a legendary company heading into the future, you’re going to love everything about our dialogue.

Robert Siegel on Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation seems to have become a catch-all phrase that people in the industry use to describe new technology or migrating certain things online.

While it may not seem like much of an issue. It becomes a problem when the supposed “experts” start suggesting that undergoing a Digital Transformation should be done ASAP to improve your company.

“I think that what I’ve learned in my time as a venture capitalist, and also in the teaching that I do at Stanford, is that digital transformation is kind of necessary, but not sufficient. That the world that we’re living in, is increasingly a blend of digital and physical.

And so if you only talk about digital transformation, everything talks about the ones and zeros. Everyone talks about software and connectivity. But people forget, we actually live in a physical world.” – Robert Siegel

The Brain and Brawn Company

We then get into the discussion of Robert’s new book, The Brain and Brawn Company. Robert explains that having both Brain and Brawns is necessary for a company. The Brain being the creative and analytical aspects of business, as well as the digital parts of it. While the Brawn is the physical aspects, like dealing with logistics, manufacturing, and such.

So the optimal setup is having a good mix of “brains” and “brawn” in your company. According to Robert, they don’t deal with those who wish to have a pure digital software platform, because that is not a sustainable model.

“Those companies aren’t going to be successful as we get into a world where things are increasingly blended between digital and physical, and every product and service that we make is connected. And every industry is going to be impacted from not only things like mobility, but healthcare, financial services, there really is education, there isn’t an industry that won’t be impacted by this blend of digital and physical.” – Robert Siegel

Of course, there are business that can go pure digital, but companies in general still need a good blend of digital and analog systems in place to function efficiently.

The Right Mix of Digital and Analog

That said, what is a good mix of digital and analog for a business?

According to Robert, it depends for each business. One of the things to look at is how different systems work in your company. After understanding them, find out if going digital can improve the service, or make it more efficient in the long run.

Of course, there are certain aspects that still need analog aspects, even within digital spaces. Take for instance ordering online. While the whole thing can be made digital nowadays, there are still analog competencies like logistics and customer experience that need to be accounted for. Or the opposite can also be true, like adding digital improvements to delivery tracking, so that customers know the real-time location of their on-going delivery.

So in the end, it’s best to find the right mix for your own company.

To hear more from Robert Siegel and how to find the right mix of digital and analog in your business, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Robert Siegel is a lecturer in management and has led primary research and written cases on Google, Charles Schwab, Daimler, AB InBev, Box, Stripe, Target, AngelListopen, 23andMe, C3.ai, Majid Al Futtaim, Tableau, PayPal, SurveyMonkey, Medium, Autodesk, Minted, Zuora, Axel Springer, and Michelin, amongst others.

Robert is a member of the supervisory board of TTTech Auto AGopen, and is chairman of the strategic advisory board for TTTech Computertechnik AGopen   in Vienna, Austria. He is a member of the industry advisory boards for HERE Technologiesopen   and Tulcoopen, and is the copresident emeritus of Stanford Angels & Entrepreneursopen, an alumni association that fosters relationships to strengthen the Stanford startup community. Robert was on the board of SmartDrive Systemsopen   for 14 years (acquired by Omnitracs), has coauthored several articles for the Harvard Business Reviewopen   and California Management Reviewopen, and is a frequent contributor to Fortune, TechCrunch, VentureBeat and Forbes.

Robert was previously general manager of the video and software solutions division for GE Security, with annual revenues of $350 million. He was also executive vice president of Pixim, Inc., a fabless semiconductor firm specializing in image sensors and processors (acquired by Sony). Before Pixim, Robert was cofounder & chief executive officer of Weave Innovations Inc. (acquired by Kodak), a network services developer that invented the world’s first digital picture frame, and delivered photos and other digital media to PCs and internet / mobile devices.

Robert served in various management roles at Intel Corporation, including an executive position on their corporate business development team, in which he invested capital in startups that were strategically aligned with Intel’s vision.

Robert is the coinventor of four patents and served as lead researcher for Andy Grove’s best-selling book, Only the Paranoid Survive.

Robert holds a BA from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is married with three children.

Links

Follow Robert Siegel today!

Website: RobertESiegel.com

LinkedIn: in/RSiegel

Twitter: @RobSiegel

Read his new book: The Brains and Brawn Company

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on FacebookTwitterInstagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

243 The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche with Dave Jilk

FYD - Episode 243 Dave Jilk

Frederick Nietzsche was one of the most important philosophers of all time. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Dave Jilk and I talk about a new book that fuses Nietzsche and modern entrepreneurship in a fascinating, provocative, and very thought-provoking way. The new book is called Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche, and Dave co-authored it with Brad Feld (FYD 175).

In this dialogue, we go deep on many of the dichotomies we face as company founders and builders. We examine the difference between passion and obsession, and what Nietzsche means by creativity and super abundance. We also talk about how to know you should keep driving forward with your idea or maybe change course. You can also listen to us discuss how founders should evolve their role in the company that they started over time.

This is a super-smart, deep-insight bearing conversation about some ideas for company creators with a big-brain, been-there-done-that kind of guy. So fire up your cerebellum and get ready for a fun ride through thinking town!

Dave Jilk on Fusing Nietzsche and Entrepreneurship

The dialogue starts off with the elephant in the room: why fuse Nietzsche and the world of entrepreneurship? Dave explains that he wasn’t very fond of most business books, in general. For him, most of them contain a few important things, but wrapped around in 200 pages of text. Though reading them is an unavoidable occupational hazard for him and his co-author, Brad Feld.

So he and Brad got the idea of writing their own book, containing their thoughts and experiences in entrepreneurship. But they don’t want it to be just another business book. That’s where their attention turned to Nietzsche and his works.

“I was reading him (Nietzsche) a little earlier than Brad. When I was reading it, we notice things that apply to entrepreneurship. It was striking though, and of course his languages is very interesting and colorful, right? So we started playing with, “Hey, could we write something”, and we wrote a few of the essays and grabbed a couple of Brad’s blog posts and stuck them in his stories to see how that worked and, and it kind of clicked.” – Dave Jilk

From there, they managed to get enough content to write an entire book.

Nietzsche, Entrepreneurs, and Being a Little Bit Crazy

There are some people who referred to Nietzsche as sort of a crazy person. Dave thinks the better word to use is “Wacky”, and that Nietzsche himself revels in that description. As someone studying human nature, he was open to exploring different situations and experiences, which might have gotten him this reputation.

Going back to entrepreneurs, Dave thinks that one has to be a little bit crazy and explore the possibility without worrying about looking bad or weird. That is especially true for startups and early stages of most businesses.

“Some people would argue that you have to be extremely rational, analytical about this. But we say, to create something truly disruptive, you have to have a vision. You have to have a vision of what the world could be like, after your disruption is successful. What is the world going to be like, with no evidence whatsoever, no particularly good reason to believe that the world will adopt that. You have to have to be, as you say, a little bit crazy.” – Dave Jilk

Being Brave and Different

When asked if Nietzsche had been very courageous because he was challenging the preconceived norms despite the pushbacks, Dave agreed to some degree. For him, Nietzsche was more like someone who bravely dives headfirst into something before worrying about the consequences to his reputation and the like.

“Nietzsche’s essential project was to transform the moral tradition of Europe. It’s a moral tradition that that went back, at least, two millennia, and possibly longer. He was trying to dis to disrupt that, to change it to, and to explore what it would be like when it did change. And the that exploration is, was frightening to him. And he thought it should be frightening to everyone. But what he was trying to do is it was both brave, and also clueless, right? So yes, he had to be both a little crazy and a little bit courageous. And probably more than anything focused on what he cared about.” – Dave Jilk

To hear more from Dave Jilk about Nietzsche, Entrepreneurs, and their ties to Human Nature, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Dave Jilk is a former serial entrepreneur and startup CEO in information technology.

He now writes on entrepreneurship and artificial intelligence, and he enjoys writing poetry as well. Dave earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from MIT, and currently lives near Boulder, Colorado.

When not writing he is likely to be on a mountain.

Links

Follow Dave Jilk and his works!

Website: Jilk.com

LinkedIn: in/DJilk

Check out his work at Amazon Books

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on FacebookTwitterInstagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

242 Thursday Is the New Friday with Joe Sanok

FYD - Episode 242 Joe Sanok

Welcome to the first of two episodes that we are doing on the new work paradigms that are emerging. In this episode of Follow Your Different, I talk with Joe Sanok about designing a life that works for you by in part, making Thursday the new Friday.

Joe Sanok is the opposite of many hustle porn stars, who’ve been screaming at entrepreneurs, marketers, and executives to work until they drop. When in reality, if you never stop hustling, you’ll likely end up dead with nothing to show for it.

No matter what stage you’re at in your career, this dialogue with Joe will stimulate your thoughts and get you thinking…

Thursday is the New Friday

Joe talks about his new book, Thursday is the New Friday, and how the timing of it seems to be spot on.

There have always been discussions of how to balance your life between work and personal stuff. Though said discussion has hit its peak because of the current situation with COVID, and people working from their homes. People who usually spend the 8 hour daily grind have figured out that they don’t really need the whole 8 hours for it.

“Looking at Spain moving to the four day workweek, Denmark trying it out. There’s so many companies trying a four day workweek. Even if it’s not a four day workweek, to start to think about why are we working the number of hours we’re working. But then we realized that, you know, if you’re in a traditional job, you didn’t need 40 hours. A lot of people started saying, “Well, why are we working this way, our outcomes are the same, we’re doing the same or better work, working fewer hours.

“Then people with the industrialist mindset are like, “We want butts in the chairs, we want to get back to the cog in the big machine.” And that’s just not gonna work anymore. Like it’s already blown up, we’ve seen behind the curtain and things are shifting.” – Joe Sanok

Joe Sanok on the Evolution of the Work Week

Joe talks about how humans eventually ended up with our current notion of a work week. In his book, he looked into why we have the seven-day week, and how we even got to have weekends. It even delves into how Ford started the 40-hour work week.

The point of all this is that humanity, or at least the business and working people, are the ones to decide what a work week would be like. With today’s tech and the evolution of business from industrialist to a new frontier, people are looking for ways to make lives easier for everyone, without the drop in quality of work.

“I would actually argue we actually are leaving that industrialist mindset behind and that we’re in the messy middle of what’s emerging next. And we get to decide the same way the Babylonians said seven days a week, we get to decide what that looks like. And that autonomy to me is so important that we do this well, that we think about it, we look at the research, we look at case studies, we look at even just how we feel on the inside.

When I tell people I wrote a book about taking Friday’s off they’re like yeah, it’s about time because they know Fridays are a blow off day. But everyone sits there and talks for 20 minutes and we’re already blowing it off. Why don’t we actually just call it what it is and have a three day weekend.” – Joe Sanok

Joe Sanok on Hustle Culture

Joe talks about how he has dedicated a whole chapter to the hustle narrative and why it is wrong. He points out that looking at productivity alone, “hustling” is not a very efficient way of doing it.

“There’s so many better ways to do it. We see it in big businesses or community colleges. (There) are tons of the case studies that I’ve seen and researched that it actually is better for business, for mental health, and for health outcomes (not to hustle). That people actually make more money at it. So why would we keep hustling 90 hours a week so that we can have the “status that Instagram gives us” when it’s not even needed?” – Joe Sanok

To hear more from Joe Sanok and how to be more efficient and not fall into the Hustle trap, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Joe Sanok is the author of Thursday is the New Friday (HarperCollins) releasing Oct 2021. He is a keynote and TEDx speaker, business consultant, and podcaster. He has the #1 podcast for counselors, The Practice of the Practice Podcast.

Joe is also writer for PsychCentral, has been featured on the Huffington Post, Forbes, GOOD Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Entrepreneur on Fire, Smart Passive Income Podcast, and Yahoo News.

Joe has articles releasing in 2021 through Harvard Business Review, CNBC, ThriveGlobal, Inc., and Money. He is the author of five books and has been named the Therapist Resource top podcast, consultant, and blogger.

Joe Sanok helps private practitioners to find innovative ways to start, grow, and scale a private practice. For resources go to: http://www.practiceofthepractice.com/resources

Joe is also the founder of Podcast Launch School, A curriculum that teaches new Podcasters how to attract amazing guests and monetize their podcast nine months.

His podcast is available at http://www.practiceofthepractice.com/category/podcasts/

He does one-on-one consulting, Mastermind Groups, and other approaches to start, grow, and scale a practice: www.practiceofthepractice.com/apply

Links

Learn more from Joe Sanok today!

Website: www.PracticeofthePractice.com

Check out his past and upcoming books here.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on FacebookTwitterInstagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

128 The Theranos Scam: Implications for Entrepreneurs, Startups, VCs & Marketing Leaders

LOM_Episodes-128 Theranos

All of you have probably heard about Theranos by now, and the huge impact it made in the industry. Though no matter the outcome of the trials of Elizabeth Holmes ( Theranos founder & CEO) and Sunny Balwani (Theranos COO), their actions represent a demarcation point for Silicon Valley, startups, VCs, and marketers.

If by chance you don’t know this story, I would recommend you search “Theranos” on Google or Youtube and get your popcorn ready, because it is one hell of a story. Short version of it was Elizabeth Holmes offered a technology that could revolutionize healthcare, but it all turned out to be a scam. What made the story interesting is how long Theranos had strung people along, until the inevitable caught up with them and it all crashing down.

So in this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let’s dig into the three major things we should learn from in the wake of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes, and how the new line VCs need to walk because of her.

Don’t Fake It ‘Til You Make It

One of the biggest BS axioms in the industry is “Fake it til you make it”. It promotes the idea that people should project proficiency, even if they don’t have the right skill set for it. There’s actually an episode in Follow Your Different where we talked with Sabrina Horn (FYD 228) on why following this mantra is such a bad idea.

So what’s the difference between being a visionary, an optimist, a CEO, or a marketer versus being a scam artist? Let’s be crystal clear about the Difference between these 3 things:

  1. Future Vision
  2. Current Capabilities
  3. Past Performance

Is it okay to have a huge vision to have a radical category design, Hell yeah! As a matter of fact, it’s the people who have huge visions, those who allow themselves to be radical and be unencumbered by the present and the past, that create new categories and massive new value.

Though it is okay to lie about what your product or service does now? No. N.O. No way. We can’t make promises to customers that we know we cannot keep.

The Difference between Category Creators and Scam Artists

In our last Lochhead on Marketing episode, Al Ramadan (Coauthor, Play Bigger) and I unpacked Rivian and their new IPO. Though before that IPO, they also had another revolutionary idea, which was the Tank Turn. It was a cool feature to have for your car, and people where hyped for it.

Unfortunately, Rivian couldn’t make it happen. They did not have the technology for it at this time. So what did they do? Well, they admitted that they could not do it. No BS, no cover-ups. Just straight-up admission and apology.

While it did cause them to take a hit, they actually ended up building trust and affinity between them and the customers and the ideas that they are pursuing. Looking at it now, Rivian is poised to have a massive multi-billion IPO, and it’s all thanks to the trust that they have built up for being radically transparent about their mistakes and overall process.

Compare this with Theranos, who did almost the exact opposite in everything. While the initial idea for a compact medical testing machine would’ve been an amazing product, the fact that they strung investors along and straight-up faked results to keep up the facade was abhorrent.

Unfortunately, they are not the only ones who seem to operate like this.

Due Diligence and Good Governance Matters

We cannot lie about what our products and services currently does. Also, legendary companies are radically transparent. The second you know your product is not performing up to task, you have to tell people, regardless of the impact on your revenue and stock.

Due Diligence and Good Governance matters.

When asked why they turned down Theranos, Bill Maris, founder of Google Ventures, told Business Insider that there were so much misdirection and disconnect in Theranos’ pitch that it did not add up. So they sent someone to try it out, and it didn’t take long to figure out that things may not be what Theranos wanted everyone to see.

The failure of Theranos is a failure of BOTH Due Diligence AND Governance.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.

He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.

Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.

In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.

He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

241 The Korean Vegan with Joanne Molinaro

FYD - Episode 241 Joanne Molinaro

In this episode of Follow Your Different, let’s talk about food. On the base level, food is about survival, sustenance, and safety. Yet it is also a centering point for life and culture, and even expressing love. Joanne Molinaro joins us today to talk more about it.

Joanne Molinaro is a lawyer-turned-author and Tik Tok info-tainer, as well as a social media rockstar. She has developed a massive following by fusing Korean cooking, veganism, life lessons, and story-telling into a legendary stew that her fans can’t get enough of. Her food blog “The Korean Vegan” is one of the top in the world, and her social media and Tik Tok have millions of followers.

She also has a new book called The Korean Vegan Cookbook. We get into it and much more in this episode, so stay tuned.

Joanne Molinaro‘s Relationship with Food

The conversation starts off with checking in on Joanne and how she feels about her new book. Joanne shares that she’s a bit nervous since it was her first cookbook, and she’s worried that people might not like the recipes in it. Though given the quality of her content, it should not be a problem at all.

From there, Joanne shares her relationship with food, in which she loves it so much. She loves cooking, but she especially loves eating, as well as trying out new foods and cuisines. Though she realized early on that she particularly like eating her own food best.

“I realized pretty quickly that I like eating my own food best. Not because I’m persnickety about what goes into my food, although that’s part of it. But mostly because I think my food tastes the best, because I know what I like, and I know how to make my food the way that I like. I think a lot of people are like, Oh, I love eating grandma’s food, I love eating my mom’s food. And sure I love eating my mom’s food too. But a lot of times I’m like, I can make this better for me.” – Joanne Molinaro

For Joanne, food makes her very happy, and it is something she looks forward to.

Joanne Molinaro on the Contradiction of Safety and Danger in Food

For a lot of people, food gives them a sense of safety, because it gives them sustenance, and they are made with love by our parents and grandparents when we are young. It reminds them that they are loved and cared for.

Although for some, it can be a source of insecurity as well, and Joanne had to deal with both when she was younger. As society’s views on a “healthy and proper” body leaned on being slim and thin, eating and enjoying food seems like a bad thing to do. Not being to enjoy what you like can cause anxiety. Not being able to comfort that anxiety by eating your favorite food just adds to the stack.

“In the past, I’ve also had a very fraught relationship with food. I was told very, very young that part of my value was tied to how I look and how thin I was. Unfortunately, food consumption contributes to your size. And as a result of that, however much I love eating food and how much I love cooking food, it also creates a great deal of anxiety and danger. So it’s sort of that very strange juxtaposition where a bowl of kimchi-jjigae makes me feel so safe, but a bowl of kimchi-jjigae also equals calories which makes me feel unsafe.”- Joanne Molinaro

Being at the Forefront of Food Creation

Now that she has become a food superstar, Joanne feels like she has to be more fastidious about guarding against or obsessing about food she eats. While it has become an impulse that was brought on by years of being careful of what she ate, she does not want it to influence her work as a food creator.

“Now that I’m front facing about my relationship with food, and as a food creator, I feel very responsible about not just sending the correct message out into the world, but by living in accordance with that message. I can’t, on the one hand, tell people, “Hey, stop counting calories!” While I, myself, am counting calories. That doesn’t make sense.” – Joanne Molinaro

Instead of focusing on calorie counts, she dwells more on what goes into one’s diet, and how you can make an amazing dish while still keeping healthy.

To hear more from Joanne Molinaro and her thoughts on food and life, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

With over 2 million fans on TikTok, Joanne Molinaro, also known as The Korean Vegan, has appeared on The Food Network and Al Jazeera English, been featured in SalonHealthy-ish by Bon Appetit, and the Kitchn, and will release her debut cookbook + memoir with Penguin Random House this fall (2021).

Molinaro is a Korean American woman, born in Chicago, Illinois. Her parents were both born in what is now known as North Korea.

Joanne Molinaro started her blog, The Korean Vegan, in 2016, after adopting a plant-based diet. In July 2020, she started her TikTok (@thekoreanvegan), mostly as a coping mechanism for the isolation caused by the global pandemic.

She began posting content related to politics and life as a lawyer during quarantine.

However, after a single post of her making Korean braised potatoes for dinner (while her husband taught a piano lesson in the background) went viral, Molinaro shifted her attention to producing 60 second recipe videos, while telling stories about her family—immigrants from what is now known as North Korea.

Links

Connect with Joanne today!

Website: TheKoreanVegan.com

Check out her new book! The Korean Vegan Cookbook

TikTok: @TheKoreanVegan

Instagram: @TheKoreanVegan

Youtube: The Korean Vegan

Facebook: fb.com/theKoreanVegan

Pinterest: @TheKoreanVegan

LinkedIn: in/Joanne-Molinaro

More on Joanne Molina and The Korean Vegan

CBS: TikTok star Joanne Molinaro shares her Korean culture and life lessons

Today.com: The Korean Vegan serves up spicy tofu, life lessons, and stories from her childhood

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on FacebookTwitterInstagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

240 “Your Life Depends on It”: What You Can Do to Make Better Choices About Your Health with Talya Miron-Shatz , PhD

240 FYD - Talya Miron-Shatz

Nothing is more important than your health. Though learning to make smart, complex health care choices is hard and is getting harder, especially in a world of massive healthcare information, and disinformation. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Talya Miron-Shatz aims to help us make the right health choices.

Talya Miron-Shatz has her doctorate in Psychology from the Hebrew University, and studied with Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. She is also a professor at the Ono Academic College, as well as a visiting research at Cambridge University.

Talya offers a clear and useful guidance for the hardest decisions in life. We go deep into her new book, Your Life Depends on It, to find out more on what you and your family needs to know about making critical health care decisions.

Talya Miron-Shatz on Studying Happiness

Talya talks about what it meant to study happiness. She explains that the way they study happiness is not like what most people would think to do it. Rather than just focusing on what activities bring happiness, they look at various activities and find out what brings people happiness in those activities.

One example that she gives was with colonoscopy, which isn’t exactly a happy activity.

“For example, he (Daniel Kahneman) did work with colonoscopies. And he showed with Dr. Reto Meier that when the end is more gentle people remember the whole episode is better. So it can be weird because nobody likes a colonoscopy. But apparently when it’s milder, when the end is milder, it’s better. “ – Talya Miron-Shatz

Measuring Happiness

With regards to measuring happiness, there are what is called Peak and Low moments. Low moments are the parts of the activity that makes us unhappy, and we try to avoid those parts as much as possible.

Yet avoiding all lows would be impossible. Which is why Talya encourages people to cherish the peaks we experience, however small or short they may be.

“We should just cherish and be happy with those moments and sort of elevate them and give them attention. Whatever draws your attention, whatever you pay attention to, determines how you feel.” – Talya Miron-Shatz

Finding Ways to be Happy

Talya continues with how we use attention, or divert it to something else, to find a way to feel happy. One example is how people try to keep themselves busy with work or other activities when they have recently experienced something unhappy.

Some might put physical distance between their worries, and find that it helps them feel less depressed and think more clearly afterwards. It’s literally taking your mind off the thing that is upsetting.

Though there’s a part of avoidance that Talya doesn’t like, and it pertains to medicine. Particularly, the discussion of death…

To hear more from Talya Miron-Shatz and how to make better choices with your health, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

For two decades author, consultant, researcher, writer, speaker, and entrepreneur Dr. Talya Miron-Shatz has been dedicated to the issue of health and medical decision making.

The questions she asks, and the answers she gives, are increasingly larger, and relate to the intersection of psychology and medicine. How do patients make choices? What do they need to understand their care and options? How can they be brought to enjoy the benefits of digital health? How can the human touch make a difference in times when medical challenges are inevitable?

She identified barriers to better decision making and shows how they can be overcome – by patients, physicians, and healthcare organizations.

She contends that while patients experience their challenges as very personal, these are rooted in institutional practices, and need to be considered as what constitutes good care. Often, it is beyond the doctors’ control, and they too can benefit from an overhaul of the patient role.

Miron-Shatz did her BA, MA at Hebrew University’s psychology department, and worked for over a decade as an organizational psychologist. Then she returned to graduate school at the psychology department, studying heuristics and biases.

Creating and teaching a course on ‘The Psychological Aspects of Medical Decision Making’ to genetic counseling students was her first foray into medical decision making. This was in 2004.

In 2005 she completed her PhD. And went with her family to Princeton University, for a post-doctorate position with Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman, until 2009.

Together, they studied happiness. From 2008 to 2011 she taught consumer behavior to undergraduates and MBA students at the Wharton Business SchoolUniversity of Pennsylvania, and loved every minute.

In 2009 she joined the business school at the Ono Academic College, where she is now a full professor. She also became a writer for Psychology Today, where her blog, Baffled by Numbers which was read by over 130,00 people.

Since then she has written more than 60 academic papers: some on happiness, but mostly on medical decision making, covering multiple angles of the patient experience, physician decision making, and digital health.

The year 2010 marked the beginning of her now considerable industry involvement, with a white paper she wrote for Global Health, Johnson and Johnson, on The Potential of a Health Scorecard for Promoting Health Literacy. Since then she worked with PR agencies health advertisers (Edelman PRDraftFCBInTouchSolutions) on projects around adherence to medication, prescriber behavior, mechanisms of behavioral economics, and more.

Through these agencies, and directly, she worked with numerous pharmaceutical companies, including PfizerAbbvieBoringer-IngelheimBMSNovartis, and others on projects around leading physician advisory boards, designing patient outreach and communication, training sales reps, and more.

In her work with technology giants, such as NantMobile, she led teams of engineers in introducing an entire layer of psychological drivers to facilitate adherence to medication. Similarly, she has helped multiple startups—from Healarium to Glucome—hone their operating mechanisms in conveying health information to change patient behavior.

For several years, Dr. Miron-Shatz co-organized the eHealth Venture Summit at MEDICA, the world’s largest medical device exhibition (with Dr. Stefan Becker), and ran the Pharma 2.0 series for NYC’s Health 2.0 meetup.

As a keynote speaker for Donate Life America’s 2014 annual conference, she demonstrated the use of behavioral economics to get people to sign up as donors. In her frequent speaking engagements—Financial Times NY and London, Digital Health CongressNudge Portugal, and numerous academic and industry events, she demonstrates her commitment to disseminating her knowledge around improving how people engage with their medical decisions and health.

She was the CEO and co-founder of Buddy&Soul, a platform for personal development, that offered comprehensive support for behavior change, and self-management of medical conditions. This marks the evolution of her ideas around shared decision making and health habits, where good intentions don’t suffice, and people need tools and skills to achieve their health and participation goals.

In 2019, Miron-Shatz became a visiting researcher at the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, at Cambridge University. She is a full professor at the faculty of business administration at the Ono Academic College.

Her book on medical decision-making will be published by Basic Books in 2021. This is the culmination of her efforts to improve how people deal with their medical decision making, and how their physicians, and the institutions that care for them, facilitate this process, rather than leaving patients to their own devices.

Miron-Shatz and her husband have three children.

Links

Connect with Talya today! 

Website: TalyaMironShatz.com

LinkedIn: in/Talya-Miron-Shatz

Check out her new book: Your Life Depends On It

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on FacebookTwitterInstagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

127 The Electric Vehicle Category: Unpacking The Rivian IPO with Al Ramadan, CoAuthor of Play Bigger

LOM_Episodes-127 Al Ramadan Rivian IPO

The electric vehicle category is a giant new mega category that is completely changing the transportation landscape. Rivian is a startup who has yet to ship a product, yet somehow is pioneering a differentiated category in EVs. It is also on the verge of what will likely be a massive, multi-billion dollar IPO.

In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, Al Ramadan and I unpack all of it through the category lens. He has been blogging about this lately, so it seems fitting to invite him and have a conversation about it. If Al’s name sounds familiar, that’s because he and I co-founded Play Bigger Advisors, and coauthored the book, Play Bigger together.

So sit back and enjoy this dialogue between two category design enthusiasts as we share our thoughts on Rivian’s new upcoming massive IPO.

Al Ramadan on Rivian and the Upcoming IPO

Al shares his thoughts on Rivian, and what they are doing for the Electric Vehicle category. He describes its founder as something of a combination of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, and thinks he is a remarkable entrepreneur.

He then talks about the upcoming IPO they have planned to release around Thanksgiving.

“A couple weeks ago, they announced that they’re going to do this IPO around Thanksgiving. And it’s an IPO, not a spec. All of the other EVs are going out with specs. And the zinger was that the market cap was going to be $80 billion. Bigger than GM, bigger than Ford.

But it was just this moment in time where you look at this thing is like, “what, they haven’t shipped the vehicle”. And they’ve valued more than Toyota’s entire SUV line and Ford or GM, it just doesn’t make (sense). That’s just crazy. And so the category designer in me sort of took over and started dissecting all of their filings and I came up with a few insights that I think is worth sharing. ” – Al Ramadan

The Potential of the Rivian IPO

For something that has not even shipped the product yet, it seems amazing that they are valued so highly. For it to do so well at this point, it must’ve hit all the right notes and laid out its potential to be able to grab the attention of investors and consumers.

“What they miss always, is what the real drivers of market cap are. Which is, number one: what’s the potential for this category? Number two: do we believe that this company can prosecute the magic triangle company; product, company, and category and earn 76% of the economics? And number three: when we look at their numbers, metrics, financials, etc., are we comforted about the first two things? And if the answer to all of those is that you got a company who’s designing a market category, that right now looks like that has the potential of almost infinity.” – Christopher Lochhead

Al agrees with this points, and further explains how this new IPO is changing the vehicle industry, and how the transactions and support will be implemented once it comes out. Up until now, most EVs still operate in the traditional car dealership model. Rivian seeks to create a new category centered not just on the cars, but the services provided with it.

Reactions to the Rivian IPO

One of the things that piqued Al’s interest was how certain people or companies reacted when the valuation for the Rivian IPO went out. One particular instance was Elon Musk tweeting about it, saying that they should at least put out a product before the IPO.

It seemed illogical that someone like him would be alarmed by this, especially if you’re perceived as being the king of a certain category. Yet for a brief moment there, it seems that he has shown concern over the matter, and saw a challenger on the rise.

According to Al, it’s right that he would be concerned. Because if you look at it, Rivian seems to be taking the Electric Vehicle category and evolving it to something that can make their current category obsolete in the future. While the implementation of which remains to be seen, it’s definitely enough to be concerned about.

To hear more from Christopher and Al and their thoughts on the Rivian IPO, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Al Ramadan is a co-founding partner of Play Bigger Advisors and coauthor of the book, Play Bigger. He also co-founded Quokka Sports, which revolutionized the way people experience sport online.

Al then joined Macromedia and Adobe, where he spent almost ten years changing the way people think about great digital experiences. At Adobe, Al led teams that created the Rich Internet Applications category and helped develop the discipline of experience design.

In the early ‘90s he applied data science to Australia’s Americas Cup — an innovation in sports performance analytics. His work in sailing led directly to the idea for Quokka. He lives in Santa Cruz, California.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

238 Hear Yourself: How To Find Peace In A Noisy World with Prem Rawat

FYD - Episode 238 Prem Rawat

Is peace really possible? Our guest today says it is. In this special episode of Follow Your Different, Prem Rawat talks about how to find peace in a noisy world.

Prem Rawat has been teaching peace since he was a little boy in India. He became a counterculture icon in the 60s and the 70s, as Americans sought out different ideas and beliefs. He’s been a source of great controversy and massive followership over the years. Prem has been sought out and welcomed by spiritual, social and political and business leaders around the world.

Prem Rawat has a new book out, called Hear Yourself: How to Find Peace in a Noisy World. We are here to discuss all that and more, so stay tuned.

Prem Rawat on the Current State of the World

When asked about his current thoughts, Prem talks about the current state of the world. For him, it seems that there’s just too much drama and chaos in the world right now. Though the current situation right now plays a big factor as to why it may be so, people are still whipping it up and causing drama left and right.

While it is the nature of humanity to seek out exciting events and drama, it seems that we have become morbidly so, despite the situation being something as it is right now. Much so that we choose to forgo peace to chase the next drama.

Well, you know, here’s the paradox, because (when) you look at human beings, human beings are remarkable. We’ve been able to conquer disease, we’ve been able to invent so many wonderful things that that has helped other people. Though at the same time we can create medicine that can that can prolong life, we can also create machine guns that can take away the lives. So we always live in this paradox.

I always feel that we have to choose, and I talk about peace. I feel that we have to choose peace. It’s not just going to happen automatically, that is not going to drop from the sky, on people, whether they like it or not. It’s just that Something that we have to choose. And the question then becomes, is that what we’re choosing?” – Prem Rawat

Choosing Peace

Prem continues on how we should actively choose peace. Because the way we are treating it right now, it’s just something that we expect to happen to us, despite being distracted by everyday noise. If you want peace for yourself, you have to distance yourself from the noise and drama, and choose peace.

Well, peace is already within you, (but) you have to gain access to it. And that’s what this book is all about: getting in touch with yourself. Because we are so distracted. In fact, being with yourself, in an environment is considered the worst form of punishment you can possibly have. We have become so attracted to everything else that we became distracted from ourselves. That is a pretty sad state of affairs, when it comes to ourselves. That being with you, just being with you, is the worst thing you could ever do.” – Prem Rawat

Can We Really Have Peace?

Prem shares his life of going around the world and speaking to the international crowd about peace. Though he thinks that just doing that was not enough, and that is why he wrote his book. With it, he hopes that it can spark a meaningful conversation or even a debate about peace.

Though there are those who say peace is not possible, that it is in the human nature to seek conflict or drama. For Prem, this is not so, as peace is already within all of us. So for him, these people can be considered sourgraping, in a sense.

“It’s a question of sour grapes. there’s a lot of people say it this way. It’s like, oh no, peace is not possible. It’s not going to happen. But when peace is already inside of us, why isn’t that ever going to happen? And isn’t it up to us? If we can create wars, why can’t we create peace?” – Prem Rawat

To hear more from Prem Rawat and how to find peace in this noisy world, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Prem Rawat

For more than fifty years, Prem has shared his enduring message with people of any age, race, gender, nationality, religion, personal lifestyle or life condition, that peace within is possible and it is your birthright. He has reached hundreds of millions of people in over 100 countries through his powerful storytelling and profound message.

As a best-selling author and public speaker, he has adapted age-old stories for a modern audience, adding his unique perspective on the “business of life.”  These stories continue to resonate and transform millions of people’s lives. His most recent book, Escúchate (Hear Yourself), quickly reached Amazon Spain’s top non-fiction best seller’s list, and precedes the soon-to-be released English version. Other publications by Prem include: Peace is Possible (published by Penguin) previously titled Splitting the Arrow: Understanding the Business of Life, as well as the illustrated books, The Pot With The Hole, and The Stonecutter.

Prem has personally developed an innovative wellbeing series called the Peace Education Program (PEP) that helps anyone interested to discover their inner strength and reflect on their own humanity.

Around the globe, Prem has also shared his practical approach to knowing yourself through a video-based course, Peace Education and Knowledge (PEAK), available free of charge on his media platform, TimelessToday. In these challenging times, Prem’s message, his inspiration and the experience he points to, are more relevant than ever.

The Prem Rawat Foundation, established in 2001, supports charitable activities throughout the world, including Prem’s Peace Education Program, which is now taught in places as diverse as prisons, countries ravaged by war, schools, universities, police academies, veteran centers and in hospitals in over 80 countries across 6 continents. From Cape Town, South Africa to California, from East Timor to Colombia, the Peace Education Program has reached people across wide spectrums of societies and inspires them to discover their innate personal peace.

To further advance his ability to reach people interested in his message, Prem became a pilot, logging more than 14,000 hours of flying time worldwide. He is also a composer, musician, photographer, husband, father of four children and grandfather of four.

Links

Follow Prem Rawat today!

Website: PremRawat.com

Twitter: @PRBookFans1

Youtube: @PremRawatOfficial

Instagram: @timelesstoday

Check out the book:  HearYourselfBook.com

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on FacebookTwitterInstagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

126 How To Spot Legendary Startup / New Category Ideas

LOM_Episodes-126 How to spot a legendary startup

In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about how to spot a legendary startup / new category idea.

It turns out there are a few secret hiding places where these ideas hide, but they’re in plain sight. One of these ideas was shared by Avram Miller in a recent episode of Follow Your Different (FYD 234) when we were discussing his new book, titled The Flight of a Wild Duck. It is a simple, powerful, yet under-used idea for discovering massive ideas for new companies, products or categories, so we are going to talk about it in detail here. As a bonus, I’ll share one of my own as well!

So stay tuned to this episode, and enjoy.

Avram Miller on Being a Legendary Startup

When we talked to Avram Miller in Follow Your Different, we got into the discussions of why a lot of startups seemed to fail. These startups had, on paper, great ideas for products, services, and categories that should have dominated the market. Yet looking back, most of them did not achieve that potential.

So what was the culprit? It was time. Specifically, they were too early or ahead of their time. Whether it was due to being technologically early or there’s no demand for that particular idea yet, it was just too early.

One of the examples was WebVan.com. It was a startup designed to deliver groceries to your home, and it was launched in the late 1990s. If you think about it nowadays, it makes sense that it would be a successful business. Yet WebVan.com shut its business down in 2001, while the same model today made Amazon a household brand.

So if you have a legendary startup idea, one of the things you need to consider is this: is it too early, or just the right time to launch it to the world?

Never Stop Innovating

Idea no. 2 comes from me, and what I have observed upon past and existing category leaders in their respective markets. As I have discussed here in Lochhead on Marketing, and also at our Category Pirates newsletter, sometimes these Category Kings settle with fighting for a share of the market, rather than innovating and creating new markets for their own.

One of the most known examples of this was Kodak and the physical media category, which tried to adapt too little, and too late. Surprisingly, Avram Miller shares in our conversation that Intel’s CEO Andy Grove was also resistant to innovating things early on in Intel’s history, which almost led them to miss out in getting into the chipset business for personal computers.

As for a great example in the opposite direction, Victoria’s Secret got left in the dust by Rihanna’s line of lingerie called Savage. This was because it moved away from the POV of “be like these supermodels”, to more inclusive and being comfortable with their own body. This radically different POV redesigned the category. As most native digitals see exclusivity as elitist and not welcoming, it was also embraced by the market almost overnight.

So at the end of it all, would you rather be fighting to stay on top of your current market, or be the King of the Hill in a category that you have created or innovated?

To hear more ideas on how to become a legendary startup or innovate your current business, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.

He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.

Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.

In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.

He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.