Monthly Archives:July 2023

I had the pleasure of speaking with Emily Miller, founder and CEO of OffLimits, a brilliant cereal, toy and animation brand inside our portfolio of companies at Flagstaff Ventures. Her podcast interview on The Burleson Box launches next week. Be sure to check it out wherever you consume podcasts. She had some really interesting advice about doing big things. She said, “You almost need to be delusional going into a big new thing. If you knew how hard it was going to be, I think people would feel a lot more paralyzed to do it.” Emily leveraged her creative fashion…

Most small business owners are used to giving answers, not asking questions. If you followed around some of the world’s top CEOs and leaders, you would find the exact opposite is true. The best leaders are great at asking questions, so that the best ideas win and the best answers quickly become evident, even if they arise from the least-expected team members. Management expert Peter Drucker was well-known for asking smart questions like, “What changes have recently happened that don’t fit what everyone knows?” Read that question again and let it sink in for a minute. Most leaders start their…

This week the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) went on strike, grinding to a halt any moving part in Hollywood that wasn’t already ground to a halt by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike which now enters its third month. Not inconspicuously, CEOs, media moguls and tech billionaires arrived this week at Allen & Co.’s annual conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. Chief among them, Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, said some members of SAG-AFTRA are asking for too much. In an interview with David Faber on CNBC, Iger said, “We managed, as an industry, to negotiate a very good deal…

Doctors crave certainty. I get it. We’re scientists and we’re trained to heal patients. Unfortunately, most of the doctors reading this memo are in elective healthcare niches and must also learn how to run a business, manage employees and market their services. In dentistry and medicine, the best outcomes are achieved by following the rules in very specific and certain terms. No one wants their surgeon “winging it.” However, in the business world, the most successful thrive on differentiation and a willingness to do what no one else is doing. How would you rate your capacity to tolerate uncertainty?  How…

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