Brad is featured this month in the Details Magazine June/July 2008 issue with Christian Bale (a.k.a. Batman) on the cover.  The article Your Career May Already Have Peaked by Mac Motandon on page 113, speaks loud and clear to those Gen X and Gen Y entrepreneurs who cashed out during the first and second Dot Com Boom and now, whether broke or cash rich, don’t know what to do with themselves (I know, not too many people are going to feel sorry for them).

Being one of the fortunate ones, Brad puts his 2 cents in and comments on how to not choke when you become a first time CEO. (page 118)

Pick it up at new stands now! Enjoy!

While Americans are starting to feel the effects of the mortgage meltdown, derivatives, inflation, credit problems and a war-based economy, Germany, as of this past year, stepped into the leadership position as the number one exporter of goods in the world, a.k.a. Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Yes, little old Germany. [click here to continue…]

After turning a modest sum into a few million I realized that a close friend of mine had to have a system to explain her über success. When I pressed her to reveal the secret, she astounded me with something I always knew was there, but never awakened to. It was as if she bestowed wisdom on me with the touch of a magic wand.

“So, what’s your secret, Val?” [click here to continue…]

Mergers and acquisitions rarely work. Short term they look great, but long term always reveals that the purchaser paid way too much for a bloated carcass. Or worse yet, the two companies are incompatible. I wish that people who specialize in M&A’s would take some basic marketing classes. It would save them quite a bit of money and make them appear to be geniuses.

For seven years I was involved in a particular car company’s annual meetings. I had access to concept cars as well as the new lineups 8 months before [click here to continue…]

I realized I was getting older when I didn’t know half of the celebrities in the American Express ads. That’s right I said it, “I’m getting older.” Most of my life I tried to stay in touch with what the youth were up to, but getting up on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons, checking out Soul Train, Comedy Central and paying very close attention to who is advertising, can make a grown man tired.

Some of you were probably wondering who the hell that guy is with Jessica Alba in the movie Good Luck Chuck? That my friends is Dane Cook, a young up-and-coming comedian who seems to have arrived. His fans knew it was him, us old farts who are hip to what you youngsters are up to…well, some of us knew too.

How did he get so popular? [click here to continue…]

Imagine if Amazon decided to build bookstores in all the malls across the country. How successful do you think they would be? Not very. The simple truth is an online brand doesn’t translate into the brick and mortar world very well and visa versa. Starbuck’s doesn’t work online but is a great place to buy a cup of coffee. (I use their website to get coupons for a mocha Frappuccino.) The site becomes a support channel for them.

But what about brands that are about to be extinct due to a change in business methodologies? Companies like Blockbuster are probably not going to be around [click here to continue…]

There is only one electric company in New York City; Con Edison. When public utility brands like Con Edison treat their customers like children, what are the results? Extreme frustration from the consumer and no changes what-so-ever within the corporation. We have no choice when it comes to who our electric carrier is. They are a monopoly. Oh they may make you think you have a choice, but the reality is, it’s [click here to continue…]

Rupert Murdoch impresses me, but not for being hip and cool enough to get MySpace and what it represents, but for the simple fact that he is my father’s age. While my father is yelling at the local skateboarders to “get off my lawn!” Mr. Murdoch seems to embrace these teens without hesitation. No one else seems to understand the teen demographic better except Marvel Comics founder Stan Lee.

When I was 11, I built a tree house with my best friend Dieter Hauer. It became a sanctuary. It was our place to read comic books, check out baseball cards [click here to continue…]