Bootstrapping Your Way to Success
April 30, 2018
Hosted by Whitney Johnson
[Download MP3] [itunes] [Bookmark Episode]
Guest Information
Episode Description
Susan Petersen started making baby moccasins in 2009 after becoming frustrated by the lack of well-designed baby shoes. Using her second child, Gus, as a mocc-tester, and a bag of scrap leather she picked up at a yard sale, she began experimenting. Working at her kitchen table, Susan persisted until she had created a pair of moccasins that not only looked adorable on Gus’ chubby little feet, but stayed on as well. Money was tight at the time Susan started and in order to earn money to start her business she got resourceful. Her brother owns a window installation business and in the summer of 2009 she convinced him to let her keep the old windows that he was removing from the houses. She spent a whole summer banging the glass out of the windows because they were encased in aluminum frames. At the end of the summer she took the aluminum window frames to the scrap yard and recycled them to get money. She made $200 dollars and with that literal sweat equity, she started her business.
Disrupt Yourself Live
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Business Channel
Change is necessary, even desirable, but when it happens so fast, it feels like it is happening to you, not for you. That’s scary. But it shouldn’t need to feel this way.
What Whitney Johnson has learned, having been an analyst on Wall Street, and co-founding an investment firm with Harvard’s Clayton Christensen, is that the framework of disruptive innovation, that we apply to companies, is, at a high level, a framework for managing change, beginning with the individual.
She’s spent the last five years researching and codifying a framework of personal disruption, so that whether you are scaling a business, trying to get your people to be more innovative, or just trying to manage your career you have a structure for doing this.
Tune in to Disrupt Yourself Live with Whitney Johnson on VoiceAmerica Business for stories from the front lines and practical tips on how to not only cope with but harness and ride the waves of change.
Whitney Johnson
Whitney Johnson was named one of the world's thirty most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50 in 2017. She is the author of Build an A Team (Harvard Business Press, 2018) and the critically-acclaimed Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work (2015). Publisher's Weekly described it as "savvy, often counter-intuitive, superb" while the Boston Globe called it the "What Color is Your Parachute?” career guide for the entrepreneurial age.
Through writing, speaking, consulting and coaching, Whitney works with leaders to effectively lead through change. She formerly was the co-founder of the Disruptive Innovation Fund with Harvard's Clayton Christensen. She was involved in fund formation, capital raising, and the development of the fund's strategy. During her tenure, the CAGR of the Fund was 11.98 percent v. 1.22 percent for the S and P 500.
She is also formerly an award-winning Wall Street analyst. She was an Institutional Investor-ranked equity research analyst for eight consecutive years and was rated by Starmine as a superior stock-picker.
Whitney is a frequent contributor for the Harvard Business Review, she has over 1.2 million followers on Linkedin, and her LinkedIn course The Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship has 1 million plus views. She is a member of the original cohort of Marshall Goldsmith's top 100 coaches.
Episode Directory
April 2018
- 4/30/2018: Bootstrapping Your Way to Success Listen Now
- 4/23/2018: Constraints as Tools of Creation Listen Now
- 4/16/2018: Leadership and The Importance Of Playing To Your Strengths Listen Now
- 4/9/2018: Play Where Others Aren't Playing - Embrace Market Risk Listen Now
- 4/2/2018: Thriving Through Change With the Disrupt Yourself Framework Listen Now
