Posts by Christopher Lochhead
185 UnHealthcare: Why The Future is “Health Assurance” | Kevin Maney Bestselling Author / Category Designer
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We continue our run on legendary, bestselling authors today with Kevin Maney. Kevin is a technology executive who’s covered tech for over 25 years for outfits like USA Today, Newsweek, and many others. He’s the co-author of my first book: Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, Innovators Create and Dominate Markets.
Today, we have a fascinating conversation about how technology is driving a massive shift from traditional approaches to health care — which Kevin sort of frames as “sick care”— to a new category that he and his co-authors called health assurance.
Conscious Capitalism
Kevin believes that consumers will start to embrace new and interesting products and services when the pandemic ends. In fact, the VC community and Fortune 500 companies started to realize a massive shift within their policies and are now focusing on conscious capitalism.
“We’re actually embarking on a huge project that has around this idea of, call it what you will, conscious capital of responsible innovation.” – Kevin Maney
From Book to New Category Design
Kevin describes how he got together with Stephen Klasko, the CEO of Jefferson Health, one of the biggest health care systems in the country based in Philadelphia. They took that healthcare chapter of Kevin’s book, Unscaled, to write a manifesto.
The manifesto is about 60 pages long, describing how new technologies can take apart the old healthcare system, which was based on taking care of people after they were sick.
“We actually tried to attempt in this book to literally create a new category of healthcare that we call health assurance.” – Kevin Maney
What Healthcare Has Become
In part, Kevin describes the word healthcare as becoming an industrial complex, in reality, is not a “healthcare system.” He further shares that the system is designed to take care of us after something bad happens to us, not to help us stay healthy. The economic incentives are around doing operations and not keeping us “out of hospitals.”
“We ended up writing about in the book, these health assurance technologies that have been in place before COVID happened. You would have been able to see the patterns happening as it shifts around the globe, in almost real-time. So we ended up redoing the book to reflect all of that.” – Kevin Maney
To learn more about healthcare and why the future calls for health assurance, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Kevin Maney is a bestselling author, award-winning columnist, and partner at Category Design Advisors (CDA). He co-authored Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets, which gave birth to the discipline of category design.
His book The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson Sr. and the Making of IBM is the definitive biography of the man who built IBM.
Maney has been a contributor to Newsweek, Fortune, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Strategy + Business, HBR.com, CNN, and ABC News, among other media outlets.
Additionally, he was a contributing editor at Conde Nast Portfolio during its brief run from 2007 to 2009. For 22 years, Maney was a columnist, editor, and reporter at USA Today.
He’s appeared frequently on television and radio, including CBS Sunday Morning and NPR, and lectures at conferences and universities, including New York University, UNC in Chapel Hill, and his alma mater, Rutgers.
Links:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.
075 Movement Marketing w/ David Sacks
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Today, we go deep on a big powerful idea called Movement Marketing with a legendary entrepreneur, category designer, and company builder turned venture capitalist, David Sacks, from Craft Ventures.
He’s written this blog post recently on this idea and it’s a simple, powerful idea that legendary innovators don’t just market a company or a product or a service, they create a movement that changes things. Frankly, it’s a seminal part of designing and dominating a new category. If you care about changing the future, this episode is pure gold with David.
Two Sections of Marketing
David likened marketing to LSAT, having math and verbal exams which ultimately give one final result. He says that marketing has a quantitative side, such as spending money on campaigns to generate x number of leads. It also has a qualitative side, which includes messaging, brand, content, press influencers, among others.
“Defining who you are to the world is one of the most important things that a founder can be doing. But the metrics are vague and elusive. So, therefore, because it’s hard to measure, I think a lot of founders don’t necessarily spend the time on it, they don’t really know how to approach it.” – David Sacks
Movement Marketing
David shares that the founders who built great companies have done more than just “create a company” or even a category. They have created a movement around their company. He wrote a blog post recently on this idea which went viral. He mentioned some great examples of CEO who have done movement marketing such as Elon Musk of Tesla and Marc Benioff of Salesforce.
“What I’ve tried to do is layout the tactics. This area of marketing is typically called earned marketing because you can’t just buy it, you have to earn it.” – David Sacks
Capturing Vs. Creating Demand
Christopher expounded on what David discuss the parts of marketing and how movement marketing is far from just quantitative and qualitative aspects of marketing. Movement marketing goes beyond capturing existing demand as it creates new demand.
“You’re creating a movement to drive a set of thinking around an idea, around a vision for the future, around a problem that hasn’t been addressed or viewed in the way that the founder views it. Or you see a possibility in the world, in the future.” – Christopher Lochhead
To know more about movement marketing, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
David Sacks is a highly accomplished entrepreneur and investor in internet technology firms.
He is a general partner of Craft Ventures, a venture capital fund he co-founded in late 2017. Previously as an entrepreneur, Sacks was the founding COO and product leader of PayPal (acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion) and Founder/CEO of Yammer (acquired by Microsoft in 2012 for $1.2 billion).
In 2016, he led the turnaround of Zenefits as interim CEO.
In 2017, Sacks co-founded blockchain startup Harbor as incubation of Craft Ventures.
His angel investments include Facebook, Uber, SpaceX, Palantir Technologies, Airbnb and Houzz.
Links:
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.
184 Create Your Own Calm | Bestselling Author Meera Lee Patel
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Today, we have a riveting conversation with bestselling author and artist Meera Lee Patel. She’s got a new book out called Create Your Own Calm: A Journal for Quieting Anxiety.
We have a powerful conversation about dealing with anxiety and why Meera thinks, “the more you run away from something, the more it follows you.” You’ll also enjoy Meera’s thoughts on self-acceptance, why journaling is a powerful conversation with yourself, and pay special attention to Meera’s ideas around “the only way out – is through.”
Dealing With Anxiety
Meera describes where she is at the moment. She is in an in-between/transition time where she is feeling overwhelmed. Further, she shares that she is struggling to be “at the moment.” She is at, exactly what Christopher describes as, the “cocoon period.”
“I feel unable to act sometimes to take action and that’s on several different levels. Personal, emotional professional, I feel like I can’t take action or make the changes that I want to make. Some of them are true, some of the limitations that I faced that we’re all facing — travel, leaving our homes, things like that. They’re real. Some of them, especially the emotional and mental ones, like, in most cases, they’re not real. They’re self-implemented and I’m working on undoing them.” – Meera Lee Patel
What You Resist, Persists
Meera describes how we are all in a constant anxious state. She reminds us of the importance of understanding why things are happening to us and the need to address this head-on to be able to work through them. She believes that ignoring what causes your anxiety will run after you in a different setting.
“I think that is far more healthy and productive and useful than simply ignoring or pushing aside, or forgetting about what’s happening. So often when people say ‘to just suck it up,’ ‘you need to move on,’ ‘don’t dwell on this.’ What they’re doing is ignoring what’s happening to them.” – Meera Lee Patel
Different Worlds and Philosophies
People are often surprised when they meet Meera as she has “different worlds and philosophies.” She has different sides that are not exactly visible on her Instagram account.
“I think in my work, my artwork especially, which tends to be very vibrant, and ethereal, expresses a side of me that would be unseen. Otherwise, that is simply the form it takes. It comes out in my painting, this very upbeat, kind of beautiful, peaceful watercolor, those aspects of my personality and my being come out in my work.” – Meera Lee Patel
Meera also talks about why journaling is a form of conversation with oneself and a whole lot more.
To know more about Meera and how to create your own calm, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Meera Lee Patel is a self-taught artist and writer who believes that anything is possible.
She is the author of My Friend Fear: Finding Magic in the Unknown (TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Random House) a beautiful meditation on fear and how it can help us become who we really are–if we let it.
She is also the author of three journals with TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Random House: Create Your Own Calm, a journal for quieting anxiety which encourages self-acceptance for quelling anxiety and stress.
Made Out of Stars, a journal for self-realization that encourages the belief that we are already whole. Start Where You Are is a journal for self-exploration that is designed to help others understand that the answers they are seeking are contained within themselves.
She is currently a core contributor to Uppercase Magazine, where she creates visual essays about the intersection of creativity and mental health.
Links:
Website: Meera Lee
Instagram: @meeraleepatel
Etsy: Meera Lee Patel
Amazon: Meera Lee Patel
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.
183 Life Is In The Transitions | Bruce Feiler, 7X NY Times Bestselling Author
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Bruce Feiler is a legendary thinker and writer and unlike in a normal interview, we go deep in this episode. Bruce has a monster new book out called Life Is in the Transitions. Today, we have a very big conversation about what Bruce calls “life quakes,” both voluntary (new job, getting married, moving) and involuntary (death of a loved one, loss of a job, divorce, etc).
We also talk about why the linear, up and to the right “hero story” we get told about life is bullshit, why C19 is a collective, involuntary, life quake, what that means for all of us, and much more!
Life Quakes
Bruce shares how all the events that have occurred in his life led to his professional career today. He shares what he calls “life quakes” which pertains to a moment of big wrenching change that happens in one’s life.
This pandemic has coincided with his book, Life is in The Transitions, which asks “how do you deal with the life quakes that happen in your lives?” Bruce even shares the “life quake” that he went through in order to have this mindset.
Involuntary and Voluntary
Bruce talks about how reading helped him discover the false narrative that is being blocked into human beings. He speaks about the narrative of life, being a linear path with only one bump along the way to success and happiness.
This has led Bruce to believe that 53% of life quakes are involuntary and only 47% are voluntary, which he further explains in this episode.
“I had to figure out what is going on now. How we see the world and how we need to update the way we look at our life. How do people tell their stories? This is what I uncovered. The linear life is dead. It’s been replaced by nonlinear life. The nonlinear life involves many more life transitions. That became the big idea that emerged from my experience.” – Bruce Feiler
Life Transitions
Bruce shares how life quakes can either be voluntary or involuntary. Life transitions, on the other hand, must be voluntary. He advises people to make decisions that will bring back the power to control one’s life.
In addition, he discusses how finding a higher calling can make you feel part of the team. A team that will help you get through your life transition together. It may rather be a rough and painful journey but it is a road paved with growth and renewal.
“If we look at life transitions as periods that we have to suffer our way through, we are wasting half of our life. If we look at them as periods, they’re going to be difficult and painful, but there’s also opportunities for growth and renewal. That’s the story of your life.” – Bruce Feiler
To know more about life quakes and the transitions that come with it, listen to this episode.
Bio:
BRUCE FEILER is one of America’s most popular voices in contemporary life.
He is the author of seven New York Times bestsellers; the presenter of two prime-time series on PBS; and the inspiration for the drama COUNCIL OF DADS on NBC.
Bruce’s two TED Talks have been viewed more than two million times. Employing a firsthand approach to his work, Bruce is known for living the experiences he writes about. His work combines timeless wisdom with timely knowledge turned into practical, positive messages that allow people to live with more meaning, passion, and joy.
His new book, LIFE IS IN THE TRANSITIONS: Mastering Change at Any Age, describes his journey across America, collecting hundreds of life stories, exploring how we can navigate the growing number of life transitions with greater purpose and skill. “One of those books that’s so profoundly aligned with the zeitgeist that you end up underlining the whole book,” wrote Arianna Huffington in Thrive Global. “Bruce Feiler is the perfect person to lead us on this journey.”
The book was a Top 10 New York Times bestseller.
For more than a decade, Bruce has explored the intersection of families, relationships, health, and happiness. His book THE SECRETS OF HAPPY FAMILIES collects best practices from some of the country’s most creative minds. The book was featured on World News, GMA, and TODAY and excerpted in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Parade. THE COUNCIL OF DADS describes how, faced with one of life’s greatest challenges, he asked six friends to support his young daughters.
The book was profiled in PEOPLE, USA Today, and Time and was the subject of a CNN documentary hosted by Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Links:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.
182 From Unicorn Companies To Camels w/ Matthew Cowan, Next47 Venture Capitalist
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Today, we have none other than Matthew Cowan of Next47. Matthew and Chris have known each other for almost 20 years now. He’s been both an investor and an entrepreneur and has invested in a lot of category queens and kings companies.
In this episode, we have a wide-ranging conversation with Matthew about venture capital, entrepreneurship, and a whole lot more.
How The Future Looks Like
Matthew shares that the first question we have to take into consideration is with respect to opportunities. Every evaluation should start with the question: can businesses scale and grow in the current economic environment?
He cites his company as an example, Visible, a platform that has an event management software. Prior to Covid19, they had their fair share of challenges. However, they found themselves on the positive side of this “new normal” as most companies shifted their conferences and events virtually.
“All of our customers said, ‘look, I know we can’t do these events in person, we still have to do these events. These are mission-critical for our customer relationships, and our forward progress. So we need you to help us figure out how to do events in a virtual construct.’ So very quickly Visible figured out a way to deliver you know, near term and experience that satisfies, you know, the key market requirements, and they just closed their best quarter ever by a factor of two x.” – Matthew Cowan
Invest In Product Development
Today is a great time for investors to think about the early stages of a new product. Further, Matthew says this is a good time to invest in a team of engineers, lock them in, and come out with a new product to launch. He further shares why this stage of focus is critical for businesses.
“It’s okay to lose a lot of money building a company you have to, but if your unit economics have never been positive, the only metric you’re going to do is figure out how fast you can burn cash.” – Matthew Cowan
The Wrong and Right Way In Investing
Chris cites that there is a wrong and the right way in investing. Obviously the right way is investing in things that hopefully payoff overtime and the wrong way is in unit economics that will not be fixed. Matthew agrees to Chris saying that the greater fool theory is asking: “how do I just get this to the next level and get someone else to buy it — market investors, private equity firms, and others.
“I think we’re at the beginning of what’s going to be an incredible wave of continued consolidation. We’ll probably see that with the scooter companies, as well. Ride-sharing. Companies have to figure out how to create, you know, improve utilization. The way that these businesses could succeed is delivery, density, and utilization. For them to figure out a way to keep the cars full.” – Matthew Cowan on Uber
To know more about Matthew Cowan and unicorn and camel VCs, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Matthew joined Next47 in 2018 and is based in Palo Alto. His investment focus runs the gamut from the high-growth supply and logistics market to vertical software applications for the enterprise.
Though Matthew is a General Partner in the U.S., he also leads the firm’s activities in Israel and views the region as a vital source for deep tech startup activity.
Before joining Next47, Matthew was the CEO and co-founder of Breezeworks, a mobile CRM platform for small business owners.
Prior to Breezeworks, he was the co-founder of Bridgescale Partners, a late-stage venture capital fund with investments in companies such as BitGo, Jasper Wireless, Plum Organics and Proofpoint.
Matthew was also the founding General Partner of Bowman Capital’s venture capital group, where he was responsible for leading investments in Arrowpoint Communications (sold to Cisco), Atheros (NASDAQ: ATHR), Broadbase (sold to Kana), epinions (sold to eBay), FastForward Networks (sold to Inktomi), Onebox (sold to Phone.com), ONI Systems (sold to Ciena), RemarQ (sold to Critical Path), SupportSoft (NASDAQ: SPRT), Sycamore Networks (NASDAQ: SCMR) and The Street.com (NASDAQ: TSCM).
Matthew spent the earlier part of his career at Intel Corporation, where he was responsible for investments in CMGI (NASDAQ: CMGI), CNET (sold to CBS), Geocities (sold to Yahoo!), Illustra (sold to Informix), iVillage (sold to NBC), Launch Media (sold to Yahoo!), Liquid Audio and Sportsline, among others.
Matthew holds a BA from Tufts University.
Links:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.
074 Marketing is Sales at Scale
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Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. In this episode, Christopher Lochhead answers the question, what is the most important skill for marketers to have?
Sales Skills
Christopher shares that his frequent answer to the most important skill for marketers to have is sales skills. He says that a lot of marketing people have no sales experience at all.
“Marketing is actually sales at scale.” – Christopher Lochhead
The Best Marketers Are Salesmen
Christopher recounts that the best marketers he know are those who have sales experience even at a young age.
“I think legendary marketers, and frankly, legendary executives, for that matter, regardless of what part of the business you’re in, have a base level of a solid foundation of sales skills. So if you can’t sell one on one, then you can’t market at scale.” – Christopher Lochhead
Marketing People Are A Joke
Second prime importance why sales is the essential skill to have as a marketer, is that many salespeople think marketers are a joke.
“I know this is harsh, but it’s true. And the reason for that primarily, is that many people in the sales organization realize that many marketers suck in front of customers. And if you suck in front of one customer, how can you market to thousands or hundreds of thousands of potential customers.” – Christopher Lochhead
To know more why marketing is sales at scale, 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; was 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.
181 How To Build Legendary Software | Tim Tully CTO of Splunk
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Tim Tully is one of the most legendary technologies and product leaders of this generation. He is the Chief Technology Officer of $35 billion market cap company Splunk. He also runs the engineering, product, and tech operations.
In this episode, we get into all of it, how to execute a big, bold product vision, what it takes to run a major technology organization in the era of COVID. Find out why Tim thinks that software needs to be indulgent in the way that it delivers an experience and much more.
Born To Code
Tim was at Yahoo for years. He did a ton for Yahoo’s modern business. Most notably, Tim was on the team that helped to create the open-source database Hadoop. If you’re in the tech world, you know how big a deal that is. If you’re not, well Google it and you’ll see but Hadoop is a major contribution to the data world.
He shares in this episode how he grew up from a “tech household,” as both his parents were programmers from Silicon Valley in the 70s.
“Obviously coding is one way that I can do a lot of things in a very flexible way and have a lot of control over a system.” – Tim Tully
Inside Tim’s Mind
Tim shares that his thoughts are classified into two things: what he wants to try to do next or what am he wants to try to improve. He is in constant search of how to improve things and how to solve a problem in front of him. He shares that although its innate in him to solve problems on his own, the real challenge of leading a team is how to help your team solve the problems with you.
“If you’re like a true engineer, it’s really hard to let go of just solving every problem yourself. You have to very quickly learn that there’s a team that needs to get the job done. You’re not helping the team by solving the problem for them. What your job is to remove roadblocks and help them solve the problem and bring them along.” – Tim Tully
Leading The Team
Tim also shares how he as Splunk’s CTO is responsible not only for vision but also for delivering products since he is also the head of engineering. He gave a great insight into how his team works and ultimately, how he leads his team of champions.
“I learned over time is the very best architects that you can have in a company, I think we have that here at Splunk. You know, they obviously have high IQ, but they have to have high EQ because the problem is they have to be able to influence and persuade large swaths of people without directly managing them.” – Tim Tully
To know more about Tim Tully and how to build a legendary software, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Tim has served as Splunk’s Chief Technology Officer since 2017.
Prior to joining Splunk, he spent 14 years at Yahoo in various roles, including leading engineering for the Media Organization, where his teams developed leading brands such as Yahoo.com, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Fantasy, Tumblr, Huffington Post, and Flurry.
He previously served as Yahoo’s Chief Data Architect, where he led architecture across all data teams and developed much of that stack as well.
Before that, Tim served as a Member of Technical Staff at Sun Microsystems in the JavaSoft team.
Tim holds an M.S. from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S. from the University of California, Davis.
Links:
Linkedin: Timothy Tully
Splunk CEO Doug Merritt on Episode 166
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.
180 Feel Good Voting | Andy Roo Forrest
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Today, we speak with entrepreneur turned activist Andy Roo Forrest. He is the founder of a fascinating nonprofit called FeelGoodVoting.org who is on a mission is to get more people in the United States to vote. We dig into why there is a low voter turnout in the past elections, and most importantly, what can be done about it now.
Andy and Chris also talk about how political attacks actually destroy the category called “politician.” Moreover, why this “attacks” drives disengagement and dissatisfaction among the voters. Lastly, find out how Feel Good Voting is creatively and innovatively using social media to encourage people to register and to vote.
Apathy For President
Did you know who won the last election in the United States? We all know that President Donald Trump won the electoral college and that’s why he’s president, garnering a total of 63 million votes. Hillary Clinton got 66 million votes.
“But here’s the truth. Neither one of them is the real winner of the last election in the United States. You see, apathy got 100 million votes because 100 million people did not vote in the 2016 US presidential election in the United States.” – Christopher Lochhead
Age and Family Background
Andy shares about a recent study from Knight Foundation, surveying 14,000 people and why they didn’t vote. One thing was clear, most of those belong to the 18 to 30 age group. The participants also noted a few more reasons such as “my vote won’t matter,” it doesn’t make a difference,” or “I don’t understand what’s going on,” and “I shouldn’t vote because I don’t know enough.”
“A lot of people voted because they grew up in a family where their parents took them to the polling station. They remember their mom voting, and they went into a booth and pulled the curtain, and flipped the levers. A lot of people who don’t vote have no tradition of that in their family.” – Andy Roo Forrest
Old, White Voters
There are a lot of factors at play for the upcoming elections since Covid-19 happened. The average voting age is 58 years old. It can be noted that over 65-year old, white voters take a huge chunk of the voting turn-up.
“It boggles some of our minds that there’s many white, older Americans who are right now deciding whether they’re going to vote for Trump or Biden, that might seem that decision might seem preposterous to many of us. But most of the money in this campaign, upwards of $2 billion is going to be spent on that demographic because they show up and vote. – Andy Roo Forrest
To know more about Andy Roo Forrest and his organization Feel Good Voting, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Andy Roo Forrest is a serial entrepreneur, songwriter, and social change activist.
He has created restaurants, nightclubs, design studios, publishing companies, Disney Theme Park attractions, and a few experiences that don’t have names.
In 1999 Andy co-founded the world’s most prolific board game design studio, which he sold in 2019.
At the moment, he is currently the Executive Director of Feel Good Voting, an issues-based media initiative dedicated to the advancement of social justice and environmental action.
Links:
Feel Good Voting 3-minute video
Feel Good Voting Strategy Brief
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.
179 Black Entrepreneurs Matter / Women Entrepreneurs Matter w/ UCSC Prof. Robert Fairlie
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Why is there a disproportionate impact against Black-owned and Women-owned Businesses?
Today in Follow your Different, Robert Fairlie, a professor at the University of California and a researcher for the National Bureau of Economic Research, shares his research on the impact of Coronavirus on small businesses and black and women-owned businesses.
Impact of COVID-19
Rob shares the alarming figures that small businesses faced. From 15 million active businesses to 12 million, to the 15% unemployment rate in just one month (Bureau of Labor Statistics), Rob gives us facts and figures how devasting Covid-19 has impacted businesses.
“I think they are starting to get become more attention focused on the business side of it and the importance of business owners. Not only do they create a route out of poverty or an alternative for income but they also create jobs.” – Rob Fairlie
Impact on Black-owned Businesses
Prof. Farlie says that there is a hugely disproportionate impact between White-owned businesses and African American-owned businesses. According to the data found from February to April, there’s a 41% decrease of active African-American business owners compared to a 17% decrease of active White business owners.
“I’m just worried that this is going to increase racial inequality and gender inequality. It’s not just going to be for a few months as we deal with COVID, but it’s going to be longer. Retirements kind of maybe setting us back and that’s a bigger, much bigger worry.” – Rob Fairlie
Impact on Women-owned Businesses
One of the reasons why there is a bigger drop in women-owned businesses is because they are in industries that cater to personal services that were shut down because of health risks. Another reason is that women-owned businesses are often smaller in scale and they do not have the resources to face all the regulations to operate during the pandemic.
“There has been some new research and I’m working with a couple of co-authors to try to do a little more work on this. This shows that mothers are taking a disproportionate hit compared to fathers in terms of reducing their hours of work, dealing with children, dealing with homecare. This isn’t just evidence from the US, this is evidence from a lot of countries around the world.” – Rob Fairlie
To learn more about Prof. Rob Fairlie and the impact of COVID-19 on Black and Women-owned businesses, download and listen to this episode.
Bio:
Robert Fairlie is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Research Associate, NBER.
His research interests include entrepreneurship, education, information technology, inequality, labor economics, and immigration.
Further, he received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Northwestern University and B.A. with honors from Stanford University.
In addition to this, he has held visiting positions at Stanford University, Yale University, UC Berkeley and Australian National University. He has received funding for his research from numerous government agencies and foundations.
He has testified to the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Department of Treasury, and the California State Assembly regarding the findings from his research, and received a joint resolution from the California Legislature.
Links:
UCSC Economics Faculty: Professor Robert Fairlie
Research Papers on Impacts of COVID-19 on Small Business Owners
Senate Bill referencing research
THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS: EVIDENCE OF EARLY-STAGE LOSSES FROM THE APRIL 2020 CURRENT POPULATION SURVEY
IZA Institute of Labor Economics: Robert Fairlie
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