Five Reasons Entrepreneurs Need A Digital Detox 

Posted on by Steve August
forest digital detox

  Entrepreneur. Visionary. Founder. It all sounds glamorous. You wouldn’t trade it for anything. But you also know it’s a hero’s journey filled with ups and downs and stress. And sometimes loneliness.  One of the most challenging aspects of the entrepreneurial journey is getting space from the constant day-to-day demands and stress of the job to think about the longer term, big picture issues of your business.  The never-ending onslaught of emails, calls crowds out the space to think more strategically and get the perspective to make critical business and life decisions.  One way to escape the noise and regain […]

The Courage to Interrupt

Posted on by Michael Roderick
Pregame Group Action 7-13-39

In many of the interviews I do, I like to discuss the idea of turning points in people’s lives and the moment that things really changed for them. And of course, in my own life, I have many of those stories, but the one that came to mind recently was how I ended up getting started in producing and in a room with Broadway producers. Back when I was teaching, I was producing small shows at the Off-Off-Broadway level and used certain venues often. There was one venue that housed multiple theatres and I got to know the manager of […]

Don’t Let Your Business Run You

Posted on by Amy Green
business tips

The biggest mistake I made when starting my own business was letting the business run me rather than running my business. I hope to help others avoid that mistake by sharing some of my experience and what I learned starting my company, amy green design, which is now just over two years old. At the start of my business, I was doing everything, and I mean everything, on my own. From designing brochures to my website to taking all cold calls to drafting every drawing myself, it was all me. That meant the business wasn’t scalable, that I didn’t have the bandwidth […]

Remember: Business is About People, Not Numbers

Posted on by Greg Hoyos
business is about people

  The popular saying “If it can’t be measured it can’t be managed” is a dangerous premise. Seems to me I’ve only ever heard it uttered by invariably smug managers who wanted to reject some piece of qualitative research they didn’t like. Though that may simply illustrate the murky areas I’ve worked in. (In truth, there used to be a defensible mantra that the best predictor of coming consumer behaviour was past behaviour, but that was before the widespread disruption taking place in almost every category.) The problem with the “measure-to-manage” idea is that it reduces everything and everyone to […]

10 Lessons from 10 Years of Being My Own Boss

Posted on by Ciara Pressler
Pregame Group Session-3

As of this month, I’ve been my own boss for 10 years. TEN YEARS! I deserve a promotion. It wasn’t my original plan. I was laid off during the recession, and ended up landing freelance clients. In order to start a business bank account, I had to form an LLC, and thus Pressler Collaborative was born. I hate working from home, so I rented an office. (Fun fact: I was the very first person to move into the first WeWork on their opening day!) With an address and a bank account, things were starting to feel pretty official. I’ve worked […]

Owning a Third Place

Posted on by Michael Roderick
Pregame PDX Clubhouse 2016.08 (1)

When I was in high school, a large portion of the focus of the funding was on sports. Our teams always had new uniforms and the best equipment, we had pretty big pep rallies, and there was always money for trips, etc. The English Department was another story entirely. We had books that were reused year after year, very few actual trips, and even fewer actual supplies, so as a student I decided to do something about that. At the time, I had a band that I was singing in and I knew a lot of great musicians and other […]

Our Relationship with Relationships

Posted on by Lisa Wagner
KNUTSON_Lara_LightPlaid_1200pix

Part of growing our interpersonal aptitude is recognizing our interpersonal differences. From the increasing demand for Soft Skills in technical workers, to the growth in Net Promotor Score, Account Based Marketing, and other affinity-driven marketing models, relationships are everywhere in business buzz. As they should be! Little gets done in the business world without alignment and agreement. We need clients to hire us, bosses to authorize projects, loyal customers to buy, and colleagues to collaborate. Whether we work in tech, design, or politics, our best ideas go nowhere when we can’t persuade others to come along. But just as our […]

Book Brief: Girl Code by Cara Alwill Leyba

Posted on by Elyse Stoner
girl code

Girl Code: Unlocking the Secrets to Success, Sanity and Happiness for the Female Entrepreneur Cara Alwill Leyba Portfolio/ Penguin Random House, 2015, 2017 The Idea If you are a male entrepreneur, you may want to skip this month’s book review. This month, it’s all about the women, as Cara Alwill Leyba shares her coaching philosophies in the cloak of bright shininess and luxe living. This book evolved from her blog, TheChampagneDiet.com, that she created while working at MTV to track her weight loss journey. Through this journey, she discovered her empowerment, deciding that The Champagne Diet is more about celebrating […]