I've always felt sorry for myself because I don't have a business partner. But in this episode, Erika helps me see the benefits of going it alone!

In this episode we discuss how important it is to have a mentor in your life and career. Is education overrated in today's instant information age? We also wonder whether it's important to simplify your language when trying to communicate a message.

I just read Seth Godin's book This Is Marketing and I wanted to find out if somebody who works in 'Community Building' has the same philosophy and mindset as a marketer.

In today's multimedia rich immersive digital world, it is becoming increasing possible to gain and more tacit knowledge without actually physically experiencing it on location.

 

 

Erika told me about an idea which I really liked and wanted to take on for myself. It's a simple idea: pick a word you want to have as your guiding principle for this year.

In the marketing and advertising world, I have made many pitches and presentations.

In the startup world, Erika has been on both sides of the pitching and presenting process.

I thought it would be nice to discuss what kind of patterns we've noticed in things that make a good pitch.

In the words of Napoleon Hill, 'What is your definite major purpose?'

People often put off answering this question - believing that first you must 'find yourself' or do a large amount of soul searching or study in-depth analytics and scrutinize all the options. Shouldn't it be a simpler process? And worse still, after we answer it, shouldn't we be able to remember it?

I live in Greater Helsinki which is the place that came out number 1 on the list of 'Top Ecosystems for Local Connectedness' published in Startup Genome's GSE Report 2018.

Meanwhile, I had recently noticed quite a few 14-18 year olds in my own circle of friends (and friends' children) talking about how cool Elon Musk is and how cool the tv show Silicon Valley is.

When I was 16, I don't think I knew how to spell entrepreneur. 

So I wanted to see what Erika thought about all this.

In personal development as well as in business, every task, every concept can be made complex - that's the norm. 

How about making things simple? If I break every problem down to its fundamental building blocks, I always find the first decision that needs to be made is whether to accept or not to accept. 

Erika wrote an article on Medium that touches on this, so that's what we decided to discuss this week.

Tant notices how you can find an opposing point of view to anything; whatever beliefs or mottos you live by, there are people out there for whom the opposite beliefs and mottos work better.

He discusses it with Erika.