PBTO S2E8: Empathy – The Super power of a Successful FBI Hostage Negotiator or an Entrepreneur

Who is on the show today: James “Chip” Massey is the CEO of Plowshare Communications, which advises business leaders on strategic negotiations and how to accelerate the sales process by building strong, powerful, and trust-based relationships.   Why is he on the show:    For more than two decades, Massey served as an FBI Special Agent and hostage/crisis negotiator. During his tenure, his work ranged from collaborating with the CIA to crack espionage rings to high-profile corruption cases, to post-9/11 counter-terrorism investigations at key Washington, D.C. sites. As a hostage negotiator, he worked extensively in crisis situations, including international kidnappings […]

What Do You Do when you are stressed

Premise: We all live in a world where we have stressors all around us and our ability to manage stress becomes an element that determines how successful we are in whatever we do. Managing Stress: As with everything else in life, stress also has two faces. One kind of stress allows us to be alert and in the moment and leads us to be at our best. The other kind of stress takes a toll on our abilities and leads us to perform at far lower levels than we are capable of. The truth of the matter is that it […]

PBTO S2E6: The Art of Standing Out & Reinventing Ourselves

Opening music credits goes to my son Yuvan Gupta. Who is on the show: In this episode, we host Dorie Clark. She is a marketing strategy consultant, professional speaker, and frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review. Recognized as a “branding expert” by the Associated Press, Fortune, and Inc. magazine, she is the author of Entrepreneurial You (Harvard Business Review Press,), Reinventing You, and Stand Out, which was named the #1 Leadership Book of 2015 by Inc. magazine and one of the Top 10 Business Books of the Year by Forbes. Her books have been translated into Russian, Chinese, Arabic, French, Polish, Korean, and Thai. Why is she on the show: I have been reading her blog and following her work for […]

To succeed, Optimise the one variable that matters

Premise: One of the things that almost everyone of us does is to optimize. We optimise our time, our money and at times even our relationships. We want maximum efficiency in almost everything that we do. In organisations, we compensate sales guys on sales made, product managers on product development, marketing folks on leads generated, manufacturing folks on operational efficiency. Everywhere we look, we can find efforts to maximise efficiency in that part. This, in general, is our attempt to gain local optima. We try to reach optimal performance in that specific domain with no regards to the effect it […]

Entrepreneurship – Creating Opportunities Where None Exists

It was April of 1976. It was one of those evenings when Gary Dahl, an advertising professional was having beer with his friends. His friends were going on and on complaining about their pets. In jest, he remarked that he had no complains about his pet. When probed about which pet, he said, that he had a pet rock. This got a good laugh among his friends and that was that. Just like at time there is a tune or some thought that is stuck in our heads, this entire idea of having a pet rock was stuck in his […]