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Dan Newman

Entrepreneur, Professional Learner, & Proud Failure. Writes about sales, marketing, and entrepreneurship from the eyes of a learning and development nerd. Lead teams, manage people, scale a business, and learn better through the biweekly irreverent newsletter, the TL;DR.

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The TL;DR, Friday The 13th Is Your Lucky Day

A bi-weekly roundup of good fortune May 31 - June 13 The Formula to Luck Involves Saying Yes Through sheer luck, I got connected to Jeff Gibbard, a multidisciplinary kindred soul that also works with entrepreneurs, agencies, and humans who want to grow and learn. I was so dazzled by his personality that I immediately thought, "This guy is TL;DR material." I invited Jeff to provide the feature for this TL;DR since he appreciated the irony of exploring luck on a historically unlucky day and...

A bi-weekly roundup of neurochemical learning cocktails May 17 - May 30 This Brain Juice Is Worth The Squeeze, Twice What do you know about the neurochemical, acetycholine? If you forgot your Behavioral Neuroscience notebook at home, here's the refresher: acetycholine (ACh) is a chemical released in the brain to help neurons wire together. Research indicates that it helps with alertness, focus, binding certain synapses together, and suppressing other synapses from binding. It's Brain Gorilla...

A bi-weekly roundup of summertime strength May 3 - May 16 The Summer of Strengths Has Begun If you read the last TL;DR, you know that the Workforce Development Fund Express Grant program has suspended the $20K grant program until the next budget cycle. For those of you who have been in the Learn to Scale orbit for a while, you may be aware that we provide grant-funded training. The lion's share of our customers used the Express Grant to fully fund our $9K Strengths program. You heard that...

A bi-weekly roundup of birthday-related giveaways April 19- May 2 Birthday Gifts Are For Giving Last year on my birthday, I invited people to meet 1-1 with me to talk about business stuff. The conversations with the people who took that offer were scintillating. Kate, I'm looking at you 😍 This year, instead of "business stuff," I invite you to celebrate my birthday by taking some time with me to talk about anything. I got into my career because I enjoy helping people learn, sharing what I...

A bi-weekly roundup of team culture weather reports April 5 - April 18 The Forecast Is Conflict Springtime in Boston is a mess- you need snow boots, an umbrella, and sunglasses by your front door because the weather is so unexpected. One day it's sunny and 65 degrees, the next day it snows. It's also the season when it starts raining new hires. January-March is typically a good season for hiring: budgets are approved, new goals have been set, backfill roles are approved, recruiters are...

A bi-weekly roundup of rage against the LinkedIn machine March 22 - April 4 A Neverending Mostly Disappointing Buffet 431 days ago, I installed an app blocker on my phone called ScreenZen. It's a free app that is designed to add friction between the meatball that is my brain and the vibrating supercomputer designed by companies with more money than God: I installed this app because- in a rare moment of clarity- I realized that Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit was not really enriching my life,...

title "Introducing Your Fractional Team" with three professionals with varying percentages: CTO, Marketing Director, VP Of Account Management

A bi-weekly roundup of low-risk hiring strategies March 8 - March 21 Growing Bit By Bit Starting, running, and growing a business has no user manual, but if there was one, there would probably be a whole set of chapters around hiring. First off, identifying that you need to hire someone at ALL is a tough nut to crack. You're essentially gambling that the money and time you invest in finding the right person, bringing them up to speed, and trusting them to do quality work for you is going to...

The technology adoption bell curve with images of people using technology in different ways

A bi-weekly roundup of eerily similar performance reviews February 22 - March 7 Where Do You Fall On The Tech Bell Curve? There's a bell curve in terms of technology adoption: Innovators Early Adopters Early Majority Late Majority Laggards This curve doesn't only represent whether someone uses a technology or not, but also how they use it. When computers first launched there was a bell curve in terms of who knew they existed, then a bell curve of who had a home PC, then a bell curve of people...

A bi-weekly roundup of cruciferous life lessons February 8 - February 21 Balance Your Plate With Entrepreneurial Antioxidants For better or worse, I'm a boundary man. I've done enough self-reflection (including using AI) to know that I feel the most comfortable when I know where boundaries lie, the freedom within them, and the consequences for stepping over them. Like many people, I enjoy control and dislike not having it. When I started my business, one of the first things I did was lay out...

A bi-weekly roundup of holy problems and divine solutions January 25 - February 7 The First Commandment: Thou Shalt Solve Sometimes I wonder if I should start a religion about solving problems. I would call it "Entrepreneurship" and our church would be our beds at 2am, praying to the almighty Cash Flow to save us from the sins of... ...ourselves. Time and time again, I talk to new business owners, agency leaders, and Japanese entrepreneurship students that have fallen in love with their own...