A SEAT at THE TABLE: Helping business leaders grow their influence

Every technology company has the same challenge. You’ve built a great product. You’ve got a strong sales team. Your demos are polished. But your prospects are hearing exactly the same thing from your competitors. So the question becomes… Who do they believe? They don’t believe another product demo. They believe another customer. The most powerful sales asset you have isn’t your software. It’s the...

The apparel industry is entering a new age of discipline.  Growth at any cost is giving way to focus, profitability and execution.  It’s a trend that could get the industry back onto a steady trajectory of not just growth, but profitable growth. Welcome to our July Inside Fashion Market Briefing.  I’m Jane Singer and rather than simply talk about ‘what’s happening, I’ll be sharing insights and per...

Is your organization running on a Franken-stack. That unmanaged tech stack that is layers of disconnected software tools piled on top of each other.  In the race to add more technology as companies scale, managing tech stacks doesn’t look like a priority. And yet, vital customer data - that kills net margins - can get dropped between marketing attribution and CRM logs.  Today we’re joined by Laura...

Silicon Valley starts ups are wrapped in a kind of mystique that gets better with the telling.   Unless of course you’re actually running one of those startups.  Then things look a bit different.  You’re not living the dream.  You’re trying to survive heartbreak, near misses and boardroom crises.  And yes, occasionally a big win. For nearly three decades, Mike Grossman has been at the center of th...

Everything you believe about building a powerful brand is probably wrong. It might not have been wrong a few years ago.   But, a lot has changed. For one thing, the market has gotten hyper competitive - and deafeningly noisy. To win, you need to get out of the mainstream.  Get off the road that’s a giant traffic jam of millions of people pitching like mad – and selling very little. In this episode...

In a hyper competitive market, you need to differentiate in any way that you can. Visibility and ultimately 'authority' are a proven way to drive B2B sales – and justify more premium pricing. The goal is to get out of what Seth Godin refers to as ‘sort by price’.   That happens when every product looks the same, so buyers simply choose the cheapest one. Good marketing is the way to avoid...

What if we are missing the point about AI’s real role in the future of work? The narrative is that AI will wipe out most jobs as bots and AI agents take over the world. However, in the many conversations I’ve had with people inside AI development, the story is very different. And it’s a story that gets far less publicity than the doom and gloom sci-fi version that dominates mainstream discussions....

You’re trying to develop a marketing program for your company and you're stuck. You have a general idea of what you want to do.  But for some reason you just can’t get started. You find yourself spending way too much time staring at a blank screen - and getting more and more frustrated that you’re not making progress. You’re not alone.  I have faced this more often than I like to admit. Espec...

It's a story I hear all the time.   We have a great product, but our sales are not where we want them to be. Your customers know you, but let's be honest, your product is not seen as the market leader.  It's not seen as the 'gold standard'.  It's not the one that comes to mind first when people think of your category.  You might jokingly refer to your product as &apos...

When your image, presence, and brand aren't aligned, the cost isn't always visible, but it shows up in the rooms you're not invited to, the leadership that gets overlooked, and the opportunities that go to someone less qualified. Meet Jenny Dewberry, an image consultant who works with Individuals, high achieving leaders, corporate professionals, and visionary CEOs to use their image...

This is a short executive briefing built for sourcing leaders at brands and suppliers who need a fast read on where the market stands right now. The core message from Inside Fashion's June coverage is that conditions feel less chaotic than they did earlier in the quarter, but the market has not actually become easy again.  What has changed is the mindset. The industry is moving away from pani...

  Everyone feels that agentic AI is the next big thing and that they need to make haste in order to stay ahead of the curve - or at least not be left behind. However, the tremendous benefits of using agentic AI also come with an increasing amount of risk.  And that risk is not being discussed nearly as frequently as it should be.   Today we’re joined by the highly accomplished Michael Chua, an AI...

If you’re like most leaders, you’re facing an increasingly business landscape which is making leadership even more challenging. The popular narrative is to develop a more resilient mindset.  The reality is “how exactly do I do that?” Today we’re joined by Courtney Seard, a senior executive  advisor and leadership development expert who helps organizations build future-ready, high-performing leader...

There’s an abundance of information about how some of the newer tech solutions work.  What tasks we need to consider automating and macro views of how AI could reshape work. Yet most business leaders are less certain than ever about what technology they need - and how to integrate it into their organizations. Today we’re joined by Muhammad Atif, President and Chief Technology Officer at PureLogics...

If you’re like most of us, being able to destress your life - or at least your work life -  is something we only dare to dream about . Today most of us are running on all cylinders.  Goals are set high. Winning is everything and so everything is seen as a contest - including personal interactions. What if there was  a philosophy that provided a framework for reframing everyday situations from angs...

Are you the person who everyone else leans on — steady, capable, high-functioning? To the outside world you appear to be unshakable.  Yet, inside there’s a gap between how competent you appear and how uncertain - or even lonely - you sometimes feel. Today we’re joined by the incredible Emily Fanjoy, a whole-person coach and facilitator who helps values-driven leaders stop performing and start lead...

Most of us have used ChatGPT, Claude, CoPilot or one of the many AI platforms.   Yet few of us really understand how to integrate AI into our organizations so that we get maximum benefits with the fewest possible disruptions. Meet Dr. Michael Kollo,  Chief of AI Transformation at Qualitas and author of "Future-Ready with Generative AI".  He spent over 20 years in quantitative finance at...

How often have we experienced a meeting that we think went really well.  Everyone on the team agreed what needed to be done.  But then nothing actually got done.  Or work was started but goals were not met. Why? How did the train  jump the track after everyone seemed to understand what to do? Today we are joined by the fabulous Amie Fox.  Amie helps leadership bridge the gap between ‘good ideas’ a...

If you’re like most senior executives, you never get enough rest.   I know I rarely do. There’s always 10 more things that need to be done – and another 10 ready to add to that list. We think that we can handle an ‘always on’ schedule, but what looks like high level productivity might actually be making us less efficient. Today we’re joined by the fantastic Shalece Daniels, who specializes in help...

One of the most difficult things to do is  build  successful tech products.  That seems counterintuitive at a time when its seems that everyone - from tech giants to a guy in his bedroom - is rolling out apps, setting up platforms and launching what they hope will be the next big thing. In reality, developing a product that can both attract users - and keep them - is a massive challenge, that most...

One of the biggest challenges for growing companies is not having the staff to help the business get to the next level.  And not having the bandwidth to fill multiple positions at the same time - even though you really need people in those roles. The answer is increasingly to work with consultants, agencies or other third party providers - who can bring in the right expertise without requiring the...

Marketing these days feels overwhelming.  Most companies lurch between scattered marketing efforts with no clear path to take them from where they are to where they want to be. Yet in today’s hyper competitive market, marketing is no longer a ‘nice to have’.  It’s a ‘need to have’.   To make marketing work, companies need simple marketing systems that help them stay consistent and stay on brand. T...

We all want to grow our businesses, but often get stuck trying to make that happen. This can be especially true for leadership at smaller to medium sized companies that are trying to scale but struggle to find ways to differentiate themselves in a hyper competitive market. Today we’re joined by the remarkable Ian Wilby, a founder-coach who helps entrepreneurs and senior leaders scale their busines...

Most companies don’t realize that  bad UX shows up in support ticket patterns before it shows up in their metrics. As more organizations lean into greater automation, a poorly designed UX results in slowdowns and user frustration, as support teams scramble to respond to a surge in support tickets. If you are in charge of enterprise systems or evaluating new IT installations, then this is the podca...

What if we are hardwired to fall victim to data illusions? Those spurious patterns, those misleading headlines, and and those cognitive traps  - often result in costly human mistakes. It turns out that we can avoid these mental traps once we understand the statistical principles underlying games, chance and the role of luck in various aspects of life. Today we are joined by Dr. Michael Orkin, a re...