New Books in Business, Management, and Marketing

In this interview, Richard and Kimon speak with David Regn, CEO of Stream Companies. Collectively, David oversees about 600 employees, generating an annual revenue of around $225 million.Growing up in a middle-class family, David got his first job at age 14. He worked at a grocery store, starting as a bagger, before quickly being promoted to run the in-store bakery. He worked in the bakery for five years, growing its weekly revenue from $300 to $3,000 a week. He left the grocery store once he started college, and after an internship, David realized that he didn’t want to work for someone else or a big corporation. Instead, he opted for the more challenging path of entrepreneurship.Along, with his best friend Jason Brennan, David began doing independent marketing consulting for small companies owned by friends. This was in the mid-90s when many small businesses did not have any presence on the internet. At first, they helped small business owners like landscapers and physicians produce and distribute brochures.David humorously describes how the first advertisement he ever took out was in the Yellow Pages phone book. Stream Companies had a phone number, but they used David’s mother’s home as their business address. From this ad, they got their first significant client. The marketing deck they produced made its way to a VP at Motorola, who reached out to David and Jason about additional marketing work.One of their first significant clients was a small gym franchise of five locations owned by his brother. Over the course of the partnership, the franchise added an additional seven locations. This experience helped their company learn more about retail and how to work effectively with smaller owners. Over the course of the interview, David continues to emphasize the importance of developing and maintaining relationships with clients over time. Many of David’s clients have worked with him for 20+ years. As these companies have grown, so has Stream Companies.David also discusses cultivating and developing talent. He says that any boss and business owner should think about how to adequately care for employees, seeing them holistically instead of as just cogs. In the lead-up to the shutdowns from the pandemic, David and his executive board took pay cuts to ensure that as few employees as possible would be hurt by any declines in revenue. As David says, you have to “put people before profits.”At the end of the interview, David talks about more recent developments, including recently selling a majority share of the company. This has given the company more room to grow. Jason concludes with some advice on what entrepreneurs need to succeed:1. Grit2. Positive attitude3. Be passionate about workIn 1996, David Regn and his lifelong friend and business partner, Jason Brennan, founded Stream Companies. In only a few short years, Stream Companies was recognized and awarded as one of the fastest growing, privately held entrepreneurial companies in Philadelphia and has continued to win awards like Inc. 5000, fastest-growing private companies and Best Places to Work in Pennsylvania multiple times over.Find links to past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today I talked to Roger Blackwell about his new book Objective Prosperity: How Behavioral Economics Can Improve Outcomes for You, Your Business, and Your Nation (Rothstein Publishing, 2022)Contrary to conventional wisdom, about 90% of billionaires are self-made as opposed to people who inherited their wealth. Why did they succeed? That’s the question this book explores at both the individual and at the countrywide level. Values and skills revolving around knowledge, a strong work ethic, delayed gratification, and more, provide much of the answer, as does access to mentors. Or to put it another way, as today’s guest alludes to – you could do worse than follow the advice of Wendy’s founder, Dave Thomas: Work hard, and be nice. Income inequality, immigration, college debt forgiveness are among the topics covered in this wide-ranging conversation with Roger, who has been an exemplary educator across the globe.Roger Blackwell is the author of 40 previous books, and a retired professor from The Ohio State University where he taught in the business school as well as course for the Medical School and as part of the Black Studies faculty. In addition, Roger has taught and done research in 39 countries and for the inmates at the Federal Correction Institution in Morgantown, West Virginia.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). His newest book is Emotionomics 2.0: The Emotional Dynamics Underlying Key Business Goals. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jack discusses different health care markets around the globe, including why there are 20 markets he would sooner want to enter than the European market.Evolution Surgical owns the full value-chain from end-to-end, meaning they are a manufacturer and a distributor. This allows them to more sensitively listen to customer feedback, which allows them, as as smaller company, to compete with big, multinational corporations.Founded in 2014, Evolution Surgical was never meant to grow to the size it is today. The original founder, intending to work with just a few clients, quickly found that there was significant demand for the products Evolution Surgical designed. This rapid growth is what lead Jack to be able to come in as the new owner and CEO. The founder is able to focus on working directly with surgeons, allowing Jack to focus on management.Evolution Surgical makes tools for spinal fusion, customizing devices to the exact specifications as requested by surgeons in Australia.In this wide-ranging conversation, Richard and Kimon explore what it takes to run a company that makes critical devices for people in need. Jack is insightful, modest, and an example of a great entrepreneur.Jack Lancaster is a highly experienced healthcare leader with a broad background across the sector globally. He is currently CEO Evolution Surgical, an Australian manufacturer and distributor of spinal devices. He is passionate about the role private sector organisations can play in improving outcomes and value for Australian patients.Evolution Surgical uniquely works across the full device value chain in Australia of design, manufacture, regulate, and distribute; and is very closely involved with the Australian clinical, academic, and manufacturing sectors to enable this success.Jack spent the early parts of his career working with the NHS deploying efficiency initiatives as well as in developing countries setting up programmes for large-scale disease elimination. Prior toEvolution Surgical he worked in the Sydney office of Boston Consulting Group in the healthcare practice. Jack has an undergraduate degree with Honours from St Andrews, and an MBA with a concentration in health strategies from Cambridge University.www.evolutinosurgical.com.auStanford Resources on Search FundsBuying your way into entrepreneurshipAbout NBN:The NBN Entrepreneurship and Leadership podcast aims to educate, inform and entertain, sharing insights based on the personal stories of carefully selected guests—all in an informal atmosphere of unscripted conversations and open, personal accounts.Find links to past episodes here.About our Hosts:Kimon Fountoukidis:Kimon is the founder of both Argos Multilingual and PMR. He founded both companies in the mid-90s with zero capital, and both have gone on to become market leaders in their respective sectors. Kimon was born in New York and moved to Krakow, Poland in 1993. He is passionate about sharing his success with others and working entrepreneurs of all kinds to help them achieve their goals. Richard Lucas:Richard is a business and social entrepreneur who has founded or invested in more than 30 businesses, including Argos Multilingual, PMR and, in 2020, the New Books Network.Richard has been a TEDx event organiser for years, supports the pro-entrepreneurship ecosystem, and leads entrepreneurship workshops at all levels. He was born in Oxford and moved to Poland in 1991, where continues to invest in promising companies and helps other entrepreneurs realise their dreams.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Economists and other social scientists are used to working with data that comes nicely organized into a table with a series of variable names across the top and a list of observations or datapoints down the right hand side. Data also naturally falls into this format when it comes from surveys we run. But the vast amounts of data generated by businesses and by all our online activities are usually organized in different ways. In corporate settings that first step of getting the right data and putting it into a table where it can be analyzed can be as important and challenging as the subsequent analyses. SQL (Structured Query Language) has been the standard language for accessing information in databases since the 1980s.In this episode I interview Renee Teate, also known as “Data Science Renee” on Twitter, about her new book, SQL for Data Scientists: A Beginner’s Guide for Building Datasets for Analysis (Wiley, 2022). I learned about Renee from her popular blog and podcast, “Becoming a Data Scientist,” in which she talked about the paths she and others took to becoming a data scientist. While she was coming from more of an engineering background, many economists have been becoming data scientists from the other direction. They are building up their skills with databases and programming to complement their statistical and social science training, either because of new jobs in the tech sector or because of the new academic research possibilities this opens up. SQL is a crucial part of this toolkit, and this book is a great way to get started learning it.In our conversation, we also discuss her current role as a lead data scientist at higher education analytics company Heliocampus, and some of her tips for aspiring data scientists as they apply for and interview for their first jobs.Host Peter Lorentzen is the Chair of the Economics Department at the University of San Francisco, where he created a new Master’s degree in Applied Economics designed specifically to train students in a combination of economics and data science skills that equips them to succeed in the new digital economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An explosive, deeply reported exposé of McKinsey & Company, When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm (Doubleday, 2022) by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe (Doubleday, 2022) highlights the often drastic impact of the most prestigious consulting company in the world. McKinsey's vaunted statement of values asserts that its role is to make the world a better place, but what does it actually do? Often McKinsey's advice boils down to major cost-cutting, including layoffs and maintenance reductions, to drive up short-term profits, thereby boosting a company's stock price and the wealth of its executives who hire it, at the expense of workers and safety measures. McKinsey also collects millions of dollars advising government agencies. Bogdanich and Forsythe have penetrated the veil of secrecy surrounding McKinsey by conducting hundreds of interviews, obtaining thousands of revelatory documents, and following the money. When McKinsey Comes to Town is a landmark work of investigative reporting.Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Hermes in Pittsburgh. He can be reached at DanielxPeris@gmail.com or via Twitter @HistoryInvestor. His History and Investing blog and Keep Calm & Carry On Investing podcast are here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today I talked to James Hurman about his new book Future Demand: Why Building Your Brand among Tomorrow’s Customers Is the Key to Start-Up Success (Previously Unavailable, 2022).Marketers aren’t always very good at marketing, ironically enough, as today’s guest candidly admits. Among the most amorphous terms tends to be branding, for which James Hurman has a pithy, memorable and very practical definition: “The simple idea at the heart of a company,” an idea that informs all the decisions the company subsequently makes. To succeed, what’s necessary? Clarity and an animating purpose, certainly, as well as at least two other key qualities. The first is not giving in to short-term thinking, whereby the pursuit of profit and the churning rotation of ever new campaign ideas mean that nothing gets the chance to sink in and resonate with the target market. Second, the need to develop a sense of what emotional space or category you’re operating in as a company. In other words, what emotion are you “selling” or nurturing, e.g., in the way that Dove emphasizes inclusivity.James Hurman is the founding partner of the innovation studio Previously Unavailable and the co-founder and director of TrackSuit, a brand health tracking company. An award-winning ad agency planning director, James is also the author of a previous book, The Case for Creativity: The Link Between Innovative Marketing and Commercial Success.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). His newest book is Emotionomics 2.0: The Emotional Dynamics Underlying Key Business Goals. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What exactly can artificial intelligence do? It’s an issue some of the professions are grappling with – on the face of it, law is an area that rests on fine human judgment – but in fact many of tasks it involves can be performed by AI and if that is true for law then presumably it is also true for many other areas too. Daniel Susskind of Oxford University discusses his book The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the World of Human Experts (Oxford UP, 2022),Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today I talked to Chris De Santis about his new book Why I Find You Irritating: Navigating Generational Friction at Work (Ampify, 2022).Soon, those who qualify as Millennials or part of Gen Z will constitute 70% of the workplace in America. What kinds of work environments and interactive styles will appeal or repel them most? Among the suggestions that Chris De Santis makes is to have a mentor or mentors with whom you feel an organic connection help you “interpret” your latest performance review. Why? The answer is that such reviews are by their very nature political documents, a set of opinions as more or more than they tend to be a helpful pathway forward in your career. Rather than numbers that deliver a series of grades, better would be comments or adjectives that serve as dialogue cues, as in you’re “good” at this and this, with both of those instances being ways in which you’re “lopsided” in favor of what you enjoy doing well and will be well-served to do more of. In this and other ways, the author’s goal as evidenced in this interview is to create a more democratic, more just work environment.Chris De Santis is an organizational behavior practitioner, speaker, podcaster, and author, working primarily with clients in professional services firms worldwide. Chris holds degrees from Notre Dame, the University of Denver, and Loyola University.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). His newest book is Emotionomics 2.0: The Emotional Dynamics Underlying Key Business Goals. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Digital platforms controlled by Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Tencent and Uber have transformed not only the ways we do business, but also the very nature of people's everyday lives. It is of vital importance that we understand the economic principles governing how these platforms operate. Paul Belleflamme and Martin Peitz's book The Economics of Platforms: Concepts and Strategy (Cambridge UP, 2021) explains the driving forces behind any platform business with a focus on network effects. The authors use short case studies and real-world applications to explain key concepts such as how platforms manage network effects and which price and non-price strategies they choose. This self-contained text is the first to offer a systematic and formalized account of what platforms are and how they operate, concisely incorporating path-breaking insights in economics over the last twenty years.Martin Peitz is professor of economics at the University of Mannheim (since 2007), a director of the Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation – MaCCI (since 2009). He has been member of the economic advisory group on competition policy (EAGCP) at the European Commission (2013–2016), an academic director of the Centre on Regulation in Europe, CERRE (2012–2016) and head of the Department of Economics (2010–2013). Martin has widely published in leading economics journals. He also frequently trains and advises government agencies in Europe and abroad on competition and regulation issues.Peter Lorentzen is economics professor at the University of San Francisco. He heads USF's Applied Economics Master's program, which focuses on the digital economy. His research is mainly on China's political economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In The Handbook of Banking Technology (John Wiley & Sons, 2021), Walker and Morris provide a first comprehensive view of the systems that support a bank. During the interview, they bring out the interactions of these components and how the themes they touch on in the book come together. Years of first-hand experience combined with detailed research come together to explain the intricacies of the technological architecture of modern banking. Quite often the authors provide a long-term perspective of how these applications develop in order to provide a better understanding of how we got to where we are. The other podcast mentioned in this interview is James Bessen "The New Goliaths". Bernardo Batiz-Lazo is currently straddling between Newcastle and Mexico City. You can find him on twitter on issues related to business history of banking, fintech, payments and other musings. Not always in that order. @BatizLazo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices