An entrepreneur and a newsletter walk into a bar It's been 33 weeks since I launched nerd processor and started publishing every week. A couple of weeks ago, I did a look back on how the first 30 newsletters performed. I feel pretty good! 4 have gone viral 6 have been published and/or cited by mainstream press 10 have brought me new coaching clients 3 have turned into paid speaking opportunities I launched Viral Data Stories 101 as part of nerd processor, which captures my whole playbook for...
9 days ago • 2 min read
I hope this message finds you well! In my nine years as Textio's CEO, I wrote 1,100 messages (!!!) to reignite conversations with people who, despite initial enthusiasm and engagement, had gone ghosty on our sales team. Most salespeople will tell you that this kind of exec outreach is hit or miss. After all, if someone wanted to talk to you, they wouldn't be ghosting you in the first place. This week, I break down all 1,100 messages to figure out which patterns fizzled out and which got a 90%...
16 days ago • 4 min read
Fight me! Earlier this year, I began collecting recorded workplace meetings from as many different teams as I could. I now have over 1,100 hours of meeting data from more than 150 different teams, and have published lots of insights about it: In-person meetings are more inclusive than remote ones Women love to tell other women "I told you so" Everyone take's credit for women's ideas Your boss is the only one who can interrupt in hybrid meetings This week, we're diving back into the Big...
23 days ago • 2 min read
Buying robots from robots Last week I received the following obviously-ChatGPT-generated sales mail in my Textio inbox: What is the product? Who knows! As I've written recently, I'm currently receiving hundreds of identical-sounding sales mails every single week, most obviously written with ChatGPT or with tools that wrap ChatGPT pretty thinly. The majority of these messages are offering AI-powered sales and marketing tools. Oh, the irony. Here's what I'm wondering: Is anyone reading this...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Slack is no place for the Great American Novel(and it's terrible for that project update you just wrote too) The other day, someone asked me to read an important project update. I was interested in the project, but I kept putting it off. Every time I looked at it, a thousand words written in Slack chat, all in one paragraph, all in plain text, I felt overwhelmed. Not reading it in a timely way definitely made me worse at my job, but I just didn’t have the fortitude. Sending long status...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Selling AI sure is fun! Recently, I had a conversation with the founder of an AI startup who described an interesting dynamic: CEO of a traditional enterprise announces that every department should be modernizing operations with AI Every team rushes to investigate, including teams with limited tech expertise (think HR, finance, marketing, legal) Suddenly everyone wants to buy stuff, per the CEO mandate, so IT scrambles to assemble an AI review board, usually without experienced personnel...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Surveying VCs for Kamala Harris Two weeks ago, Leslie Feinzaig, Founder and General Partner at Graham & Walker, approached me about running a survey for signatories of the VCs for Kamala Harris pledge. As Leslie led the effort to get investors engaged with the pledge, she saw that signatories included numerous Republicans and Independents as well as the Democrats you might expect. In order to accurately represent their perspective, she wanted an independent view into what this politically...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
This is a great opportunity for you! A few times a month, someone asks me to work for free, and then is surprised when I ask about compensation. My favorite example happened back in 2019. It started with an email I got from a VC I hadn't met before. VC: "Hi! I've never met you. Will you help me?" VCs are always trying to get a look at potential investments, so cold requests to connect with CEOs are common. And as investors started ramping up their view into AI a few years back, I started to...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Think you're the fun boss? Think again! I've worked with people at many stages of their management careers, from first-timers to the highly experienced executives that I coach. It never ceases to amaze me how the problems that leaders face are so similar at every stage: how to align the right work to the right people, how to uphold accountabilities, how to build teams that collaborate, how to have hard conversations, how to listen. Here are seven things I wish I’d known about management...
2 months ago • 2 min read