Using AI as a Thought Partner in Marketing Strategy
I recently tried something different while working through a business problem: I used ChatGPT as a panel of experts to help refine our Black Friday skydiving sale. Instead of just asking for ideas, I framed a structured discussion, much like I would with real marketing advisors. Here’s how it worked—and how you can use the […]
Who Jumps Out of a Perfectly Good Airplane?
I spend a lot of time looking at numbers. It’s a habit that carries over from investing in small businesses to running a skydiving drop zone. The numbers tell a story—sometimes, one you expect, sometimes, one that surprises you. Recently, I pulled the age distribution of customers at Skydive Indianapolis. No surprise, the bulk of […]
2023 Annual Meeting
The partners of Little Engine Ventures are invited to gather. We will confront our progress and blunders over the last 12 months and try to explain how our thinking has evolved since launch and where that may take us on our journey ahead. No questions are off limits. Come early. Stay late. Enjoy our city […]
Imprimatur
An imprimatur (sometimes abbreviated as impr., from Latin, “let it be printed”) is a declaration authorizing publication of a book. The term is also applied loosely to any mark of approval or endorsement. Wikipedia Imprimatur has become a weird but helpful internal codeword for me and Daryl to use in the office. Daryl and I […]
2022 Annual Meeting
The partners of Little Engine Ventures are invited to gather. We will confront our progress and blunders over the last 12 months and try to explain how our thinking has evolved since launch and where that may take us on our journey ahead. No questions are off limits. Come early. Stay late. Enjoy our city […]
Creating a liturgy for your business
I’ve been in a low church tradition for 20+ years. Folks in our strain of Christianity have a sense of pride around our lack of formal rules in how we worship. But, we know a high church tradition by its formality and ritual practices. But I’ve come to understand that every church has its liturgy. […]
2022 Book Club
2022 is our book recommendations’ fourth year (2019, 2020, 2021). I strolled through our monthly offers from our newsletter over the past year to remind myself of the books we’ve been reading. Daryl and I traded a few messages. This is what made our list for this year. Managing for Results Investing Between the Lines […]
Learn broadly by reading specifically
Alex Bridgeman recently asked what niche publications his followers find most interesting. I replied with one of my favorites that we receive at the office. And a snarky comment. It is Twitter, after all. We talk about books we’ve read quite a bit. We’ve even talked about old academic papers. Niche trade publications are also […]
Relationship Business
Are you in a relationship business? I had lunch the other week with a commercial banker friend. He mentioned how important relationships are to his business. A few days later I had coffee with an insurance brokerage friend. He mentioned how important relationships are to his business. When each guy said it, the thought in […]
Aspiring Industrialist
I am a willing participant in our capitalist system. Despite that, I’ve not studied intently past participants in this system to look for skills worth copying and any decisions to avoid. The book American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism 1865-1900 seemed as good a place as any to work on that study. The book lays […]