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Do You Want to Spend Your Life as a Hunter and Gatherer of Income?
The title of the post, is straight out of Thomas J. Stanley’s ‘Millionaire Women Next Door.’ In his introduction he talks about hunter gathering, versus cultivating wealth. He questions whether we would like to continue hyperconsuming versus becoming financially independent? His question is a deceptively simple one, especially if you’ve built a reputation, a business,…
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Don’t Let Writers and Influencers Control Your Narrative
Jessica Grose’s recent New York Times review of Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation she describes a memoir that wants to be purely personal yet repeatedly drifts into the language of 12-step recovery and spiritual self-help. Gilbert insists she isn’t offering a program, but her story leans heavily…
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The Visionary Who Forced Madison Avenue to Take Black Buying Power Seriously
Picture America in 1970. Corporate boardrooms were almost entirely white and male. Major advertisers on Madison Avenue—the nerve center of U.S. marketing—saw the “general market” as code for white consumers. Black households, though representing billions of dollars in purchasing power, were either ignored or caricatured. Into that landscape stepped Earl G. Graves Sr. Brooklyn-born to…
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How Quickly Can You Dismantle Democracy Within an Organization?
Timothy Ryback’s The Atlantic piece, How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days, is a case study in speed and strategy. In less than two months, Germany’s democratic Weimar Republic—complete with constitution, free press, and elections—was hollowed out and replaced with a dictatorship. This isn’t about comparing leaders to Hitler. It’s about recognizing how systems…
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The Brilliance & Breakdown when Scaling
Leo S. Maranz was one of the earliest and most successful franchisers in American business. A mechanical engineer by training, he invented an automatic ice-cream freezer that could produce soft ice cream continuously—technology that didn’t just make dessert; it made a new kind of business possible. From the start, Maranz knew what he wanted and…
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The Consulting Crash We Were Warned About
In 2005, Martin Kihn cracked open a world that, until then, largely operated behind frosted-glass conference rooms and perfectly bound slide decks.His memoir, House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time, was part confession, part dark comedy, and part industry autopsy. Kihn wrote from the inside. As a…
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Building from Brilliance
Some communities have developed recognizable economic signatures. Jewish merchants, shaped by centuries of restrictions on land ownership, mastered literacy and finance, creating networks of trade and professional services. Indian diaspora families, carrying memories of colonial merchant roles and extended kin systems, now own large shares of global hotel and corner-shop markets. Ethnic Chinese networks, long…
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The Hidden Tax of Influence and the Real Cost of Outsourcing Transformation
In a recent New York Times Magazine interview, [you can listen to the interview here], Brené Brown named something rare that and also costly. She described the “care tax”—the hidden toll of being treated as a national therapist, expected not only to share ideas but to absorb people’s deepest stories of pain and trauma. After…
Clarity BEFORE Execution. Structure BEFORE Speed
If you could better understand one thing about your business right now….
Most costly decisions begin with
an inaccurate understanding of the situation.
I help leaders understand what is actually happening before major decisions are made or
resources are invested in solving the wrong problem.
Giselle Hudson | Pre-Decision Diagnostic Advisor | Sensemaking for high-stakes business decisions 