Greg Kihlström is a best selling author, keynote speaker, and entrepreneur. He is currently CEO and Co-Founder at CareerGig, after his digital experience agency, Carousel30, was acquired in 2017. He has worked with some of the world’s top brands, including Coca-Cola, Dell, FedEx, GEICO, Marriott International, MTV, Starbucks, Toyota and VMware. He currently serves on the University of Richmond’s CX Advisory Board. Greg’s newest book, The Center of Experience (2020) talks about how customer and employee experience can be operationalized into a cohesive brand experience. Greg’s previous book, The Agile Consumer (2019) explores the most recent shifts in the brand-consumer relationship and how companies must become more agile across their entire operation to remain successful. Greg is a regular contributing writer to Forbes, and has been featured in Advertising Age, SmartCEO, Website Magazine, and The Washington Post.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
When business started difficulties overcame:
“not knowing about business. I knew about design and the services provided but I really didn’t have a good understanding of sales, of accounting, of HR, of all of those types of things. And while we started slowly and grew from working out of our house to eventually having 20 odd employees. All of those things along the way I learned from someone. I would like to think I learned it all by myself but I really learn from a lot of really smart people that were kind enough to help and give advice. So, I think just not having a business background was probably one of the biggest hurdles to starting”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail Book by Clayton M. ChristensenFavourite Quote:
“just because you can doesn’t mean you should”
Recommended Online Resources:
- The New York Times Find breaking news, multimedia, reviews opinion on Washington, business, sports, movies, travel, books, jobs, education, real estate, cars
- Fast Company is the world’s leading progressive business media brand, with a unique editorial focus on innovation in technology, leadership, and design
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“talk to other entrepreneurs. I feel like it’s my job as CEO and as an entrepreneur to meet people and to learn from others. And it’s not necessarily always people like myself. I certainly like to meet other people that are undergoing similar challenges. But it’s important to meet other people from different backgrounds that have different perspectives whether it’s your competitors or your former competitors or your customers. So really just talk to people, get different perspectives and get out of the silo that that you can often find yourself in”…[Listen for More]
More About Greg Kihlström:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“Success is a journey, not a destination.” Ben Sweetland
Other Quotes From the Chat with Greg Kihlström:
- “talk to other entrepreneurs. I feel like it’s my job as CEO and as an entrepreneur to meet people and to learn from others. And it’s not always necessarily people like myself. I certainly like to meet other people that are undergoing similar challenges. But it’s important to meet other people from different backgrounds that have different perspectives whether it’s your competitors or your former competitors or your customers. So really just talk to people, get different perspectives and get out of the silo that you can often find yourself in as an entrepreneur ”
- “certainly, knowing about hiring the right people, I doing research, understanding the competition and really the overall industry trends that certainly would have helped… I could have foreseen a lot of things and gotten ahead of a lot of things in”
- “it’s being able to adapt and change with the times … We have to continually be able to adapt. It doesn’t mean that we change our goals and our long-term objectives. You don’t need to be an agile scrum master certified to really embrace the agile methodology of we need to continually look at what we are doing, iterate and optimise and work towards whatever goal we are working towards”
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