The H Spot

Some of what Dave and his guest, Wayne Wu of VMG Partners covered in this episode includes Wayne says, "We want to get to know people and hustle to get to know folks and try to be helpful. In the spirit of meeting interesting people, we're going to make interesting investments along the way, as long as we've been genuinely trying to be additive and helpful to the ecosystem and meet a lot of interesting people and good things will happen. ----more---- About VMG Partners: VMG Partners...

Presenting one face, and the truth of the internal brand are a big part of today's discussion. Some of the highlights include where Dave brings up, "With Costco, obviously, very limited selection compared to a grocery store which will have tens of thousands of items in it. It's a direct ship model, there's no distributors and they have a very small sort of 10% to 14% margin, very straightforward with vendors. So it's a very different model. And it seems like their mantra has always...

Boards are making a lot of progress. Dave’s guest, Abby Adlerman attributes this to recent California laws: SB-826, SB-AB979 known as the Women in the Boardroom and Diversifying Boards laws. Details here Thinking about board and executive succession plans, if the CEO was hit by a bus, who would be in line? CEOs are spending more time thinking about the impact of this and putting forth their wishes, grooming them so several would be good candidates, rather than not having any choices....

Dave's guest is Abby Adlerman, Founder of Boardspan. Traditionally, people think, especially with a public company about taking care of the shareholder, but it's always been broader. The constituency's always been more than the shareholder. And thankfully just in the last couple of years, corporate America has woken up to acknowledge and recognize the responsibility for boards to go way beyond just this year. Listen to this episode if you need a board, have considered serving on a board, or...

Even if you think of a business as a game - in theory - numbers, strategy, that doesn't mean it's fun. Neal Gottlieb was part of Survivor Season 36. As you learn in this episode of The H Spot, what led to Three Twins Ice Cream, and then, sadly, to its demise. Listen to some behind the scenes stories from being on the show Survivor. You'll also hear about the aftermath of that letdown later, the excitement of building another adventure from scratch, and then being open to the next adventure...

People think because they have a recipe for a sauce that everyone raves about that's enough to pour your life savings into the launch. Dave's guest is Patrick Ford, Vice President of Ford's Gourmet Foods. Patrick attributes the success of their family business to some guiding principles that came from his grandfather, "...being from the produce side, we have a saying, 'The further you get away from cash, the worst your deal get.' Because when my great-grandfather and grandfather used to buy...

Listen to why Bob Marcucci's dad told him to be whatever you want to be, but don't be a fireman. Service was ingrained in him. The path he took was following his militant passion about public education. He whistfully wonders what would the world be like if everybody chose to come together and send their kids and spend their time and their resources into the public schools? That's what keeps him motivated. His concern and what he sees with standardized testing is this, "They publish our test...

Dave continues the conversation with his dad, famous attorney Philip Hirschkop. They cover his favorite case about opening the University of Virginia to women. They continue on a path through ending the Vietnam War, PETA, and Philip's firm principles being tested. Philip also gives us insights into practicing law. It isn't all about trials and corporate wrong-doings, and he admits, all lawyers aren't always amazing – some are just average people who are not sure what else to do with their...

Too many long water cooler conversations. I just wanted to get sh*t done." Dave's guest, Mike Burgmaier was given significant responsibility at a young age to lead a lot of projects, and learned how to bring people together. He found that at non-profits, you can be given work to do when organizations lack resources and can't pay much; he found they focused on trying to find younger talented people and then “put them to the fire” and see where they can go. Later at business school, he found...

This is the first part of an in-depth interview with Civil Rights hero, veteran, activist, advocate, and my dad, Philip Hirschkop. Some of what we covered in this episode include:

The H Spot is a peek behind that curtain with successful people in various professions and a discussion about what makes people successful, what makes them happy and what are their lives really like day to day. Are successful people really that different from unsuccessful one? Are successful people any happier? What are their challenges? Which of the actions that they take make the difference? Are they born with a success jean, lucky, more motivated, harder working, etc.? Join host Dave...