Paying it Forward
One of my former bosses told me about a small tech start-up in Miami that needed help. They had a great tech team and the CEO was the sales force. They needed someone who could come in and help with everything else. I agreed to a large number of projects in exchange for equity. I helped them build out the rest of the sales team, a marketing team, operations, and a bit of human resources until the pandemic sent everyone home.
In nine months, I identified key verticals and built targeted pitch decks, drafted and launched email and call campaigns, defined clear objectives and held people accountable through weekly meetings, took over final negotiations and contract approvals, designed and delivered training for the people I hired in marketing and sales, and mapped a new sales process and Statement of Work to streamline our efforts. MQLs and ARR both jumped dramatically.
When the pandemic hit I decided to invest my savings account in a new venture - Grand Dude Studios. The goal of this organization is to teach children (and the adults who are reading to the children) how to effectively overcome common social and emotional challenges. This is done by using our dog, Rabbit, as a behavioral model. Children see that Rabbit the Dog faces the same types of problems that they face and they see how Rabbit applies evidence-based research findings to those issues. This is the model I followed as a social worker in the 1980’s and 1990’s. It works.
I also revived my consulting practice that lay dormant while I was a senior executive at Bayview. Through this website (but mostly through word-of-mouth) I get a couple of Advice requests each week, a training request or two each month, and I am selling some informational and entertaining books.
