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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
Most companies are living in a fantasy world, thinking that their “loyalty programs” are actually delivering customer loyalty. But these are not actually doing anything of the sort. They’re merely rewarding repetitive purchase behaviour. That’s not loyalty. It’s bribery. And it’s vulnerable to a better reward scheme from a competitor. Genuine loyalty comes from the heart, not the head, and it opens the wallet. Look at Apple, which (according […]
Over the years I’ve done a lot of work with people who work in the self-improvement business and many of them encounter a similar problem when it comes to getting people to refer business to them. In many cases, a referral feels natural and exciting to the other person you are talking to when you, for example, refer a restaurant that has great food or offer to help connect someone […]
If you’ve brushed up against corporate hiring practices lately, you’ve probably encountered the concept of Culture Fit—the idea that you should screen job applicants so that you only hire people whose beliefs and behaviors will integrate smoothly into your organization. It’s true that hiring people who don’t integrate well with your company culture can be highly disruptive. If you bring highly-competitive people into a highly-collaborative environment, or order-takers into an […]
With the success of companies like Uber and Slack, it would seem like there is no better time for startups. While this is true in many respects, especially in the Silicon Valley where venture capital is flowing (helping startups to scale quickly), the truth is that most startups are barely able to survive. Having a good product is an essential requirement for the startup to become successful, but not the […]
The other day I was chatting with a client in the entertainment world who was dealing with an all too common problem. His career wasn’t moving as quickly as he would like it to. When I prodded a little bit about the folks he had reached out to who could help his career and the introductions he received, I found that he had connected in person with some really solid […]
Alex Nelson is a Pregame Guest Expert and the CEO of Impact Capital Management LLC, working with business owners to secure the right funding for their startup needs. Join Alex this month at The Finance Five, our April business finance workshop on April 30 at Pregame HQ. >more info & sign up What was the motivation for your recent career move? My desire to work closely with borrowers who are traditionally ignored by the […]