Here’s a word that either makes you cringe… or sigh with relief: “Networking”. If you’ve had a bad experience of it, you’ll get that icky feeling of trying to schmooze through fake smiles for business. But if you’ve had a great experience, you’ll think of life-long friends sharing war stories about their businesses and helping each other out. Networking done right is invaluable.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Squeeze the trigger... ‘BAM’ -- ‘ting’. There are similarities in business and in firing a sniper rifle. Hear me out.

I love speaking at live events and conferences.  But at what cost?  For about 4 years I was regularly invited to talk on stage and found myself getting more and more frustrated when I wasn’t getting enough results to justify it.  I’d spend time away from home, away from my family and away from the business work that needed to be done… 

Imagine you're 27, you've read 100 business books and just want to move on to the next step in your career… what do you do? Well, when I was 27, I was lucky enough to participate in a 3-year CEO program with my brother. He spent $35K on a coaching program because he was determined to invest in his development as an entrepreneur. And the best part, I got to join him as his +1!

Imagine taking the stage for the opening keynote of your own customer conference. Hundreds (or even thousands) of your users in front of you. Enjoying that super cool inflection point where you can literally see the community you’ve built right in front of your eyes… And at the same time, unlock a hidden series of growth levers that your competitors (who shied away from the whole conference thing) will never have a chance to pull. Pretty cool, right? Here’s a

Conferences, summits, meetups and masterminds. All things that involve you zipping up a Samsonite, kissing your family goodbye, and investing a few thousand bucks for the chance to connect with your fellow entrepreneur (while perhaps picking up a key insight or two). And maybe you absolutely thrive at these events. Or perhaps like so many others you shrink up and do your best to become invisible. But regardless of where you fall on that spectrum, one thing is absolutely certain.

Building an audience BEFORE you launch is something that I’ve done for every one of my companies and is a question that I get asked about all of the time. There’s this misconception that people think that if you can launch a product – then you’re automatically going to have success. "If you build it, they will come" is NOT true. Are you familiar with Basecamp (a product from 37signals)?

Isn't it annoying that as soon as you finish something, people always want to know "Whats next? You could've just finished climbing a mountain, running your first marathon, or selling your company... and the only thing they want to know is... what's next?!! After Clarity got acquired (Dec '14, but only announced in Feb '15) I was bombarded with this question everyday. For me, it was a conscious decision to take some time off. A whole year. After hustling back to back for

About 10 years ago I started organizing Founder Dinners after reading a book called, Never Eat Alone written by an amazing individual, Keith Ferrazzi. This book set my life on a different path. Since then, I’ve organized over 300 meals, bringing together close to 1000 entrepreneurs and CEO’s, both at home and everywhere that I’ve traveled. The power of bringing people together to break bread and have great conversation...

There are an estimated 49,256 people that move to San Francisco each year. I made that move in September 2008. To say that it was an easy transition would be a freakin' lie. After 3 weeks I hit a wall and almost returned home.