Monica Gould audio story - the importance of focus

Monica Gould is the president of Strategic Consulting Partners. In this story, she talks about her early days in consulting, when she fell prey to a common mistake of consultants (I can tell you from experience): the temptation to say you can solve any problem.

Download the story here (1min 57sec).

Monica Gould audio story - can chasing a large customer simply be a time drain?

I love this story, recorded during our longer interview with Monica from 2010. It felt to me, as she was relating it, that she was discovering and analyze this situation in the moment; as if, in fact, she was coming to terms with her feelings about it just as we were talking. She argues with herself a bit: "I'm not sure it was a mistake... [but] it's just not a fruitful use of time..." just like we do when we are evaluating something that isn't working out as we'd planned. Magic!

Download "Monica Gould - realizing a strategic opportunity is actually a waste of time" (2:21)

Monica Gould audio story - learning to work with subcontractors

Monica Gould is the president of Strategic Consulting Partners. She discusses bringing on a subcontractor to help with a big project, and how she felt when she saw the sub doing things much differently from how she would have done them herself. This story came from our longer interview with Monica from 2010.

Download the story here (3min 43sec).

Charlie Crystle - investing time in someone else's dream

This story is from Charlie Crystle, who founded Chilisoft, a web infrastructure provider which in 1999 was sold to Cobalt Networks for $70 million. He and two partners later started Mission Research, which offers low-cost business software to support nonprofits.

His new venture is Jawaya.com, a social search site. You can sign up for the private beta of Jawaya here.

Charlie discusses working crazy hours for someone else, and how that experience prompted him to first go into business for himself.

Charlie Crystle - investing in someone else's dream (1:56)