Insanely Interesting People who Influence me: #4 Seth Godin

For the rest of the year, I would like to take a moment and thank the people who have had a significant impact on me as an individual. The way they have lived their lives and their body of work has had an outsized impact on how I think about life in general and and work, in particular. Some of these are contemporary thinkers and some of them are just a memory. Some of them are famous in their own rights and some of them are yet to be found by others. Some of them are young and some of […]

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 […]

Lessons from Apple and the Swiss Watch makers

Premise: I read this post that shared the fact that in the previous quarter, Apple sold more watches than all Swiss watch makers put together. I personally think that this is a pivot point in the watch industry and there is a lot that other entrenched players can learn from how the Swiss watch makers missed the plot.  Why is this important: Typically, the Swiss watch makers are considered to be the best watch makers with brands like TagHeuer, Rolex, Breitling, etc coming out from there. It took decades of innovations and millions of dollars in advertising for the Swiss […]

The Role of Marketing in Scaling a Small Business using Customer Centricity

One way that small businesses can continue to be not only relevant but in some ways even compete (or out-compete the large competitors) is through obsessing about their customers and creating meaningful experiences for them. Marketing can play a very important role in this journey by not only knowing who the customer is for their product or service but also ensuring that the entire organisation knows about it as well. This shared understanding enables everyone in the organisation to align and find ways to make a difference in the lives of the customers. – The product development team now knows […]

Finding Our Centre Of Excellence

I read a post by Mitch Joel (one of my insanely awesome people) where he proposes a 7 step model to define what could be our centre of excellence. Please do read his post here. I wanted to do this exercise and the result is as below: The Tactic: My tactic of my primary output is content, just like Mitch himself. The Format: My format is text and audio. The Frequency: This is a place where i need to improve significantly. I have committed to myself that i will create content everyday in text and at least once a week in […]