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Continue reading →: How to Make a Movie.
Admittedly this is a topic I don’t know much about. But my friend Anita Allison does! She made a movie! This weekend was her movie premier. Cuffe: Taxed is the story of Paul Cuffe, who was the richest (most successful) Black (actually ½ Black, ½ Native American) Entrepreneur during the…
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Continue reading →: How to Pitch for Investor Trust.
Earlier, I wrote about how trust plays a huge factor for investor decisions (during the pitch). So what makes investors trust you? Promised you the specifics. There are several obvious ones. And some not so obvious. In other words, you need to look like someone who would listen to them…
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Continue reading →: How To Make MORE Value.
How To Make MORE Value – By Working Together My negotiation class is not a sit in the back and surf the web class. This is a-learn-by doing class. Perhaps the biggest negotiation lesson to be learned is how to work in a group. When I set groups out into…
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Continue reading →: How To Improvise -The Specifics
I recently shared my list of the 5 Habits of Highly Successful Improv Comics [below]. It’s what I teach execs around the world who want to improvise. You too can learn too. With practice, you too can be an improviser! Maybe not a comic, but, hey, one step at a…
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Continue reading →: How to Create Value
Trading Paper Clips to…Whatever You Can Get One of the most fun and invigorating exercises I do in my course at Harvard is to give assigned groups of students a paper clip. They can make as many trades as they can, to “maximize value,” whatever that means to them. They…
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Continue reading →: How To Make Money
How much money can you make with $5 and 90 minutes? That’s one of the first challenges I give my negotiation students. But I’ll be honest. I stole this exercise from Stanford University. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery Tina Seelig! I hope she agrees. I gave my students…
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Continue reading →: Transform Conversations with Improv Techniques
Teaching Improv to Business People Think back to your last “If Only I Had Said That” moment. Frustrating, yes? I can teach you how not to have those moments ever again! I’ve taught this to literally 1000s of business execs, from Goldman Sachs to Novartis and even the CIA. How…
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Continue reading →: Larry Summers…like Trump: When men tell you who they are…believe them.
Believe Men! The #MeToo movement sparked this novel idea: when women tell you a man did something bad to them…you should believe them. Then how come we don’t use the same logic for men? Men’s bad behaviors towards women, bad words to women, bad opinions about women are all ignored.…
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Continue reading →: Essential Tips for Winning Investor PitchesMy friend Insa called the other day, asking for some help with their investor pitch – they were a finalist in a pitch competition. Real Cash Opportunity! Now they just had to win over the investor judges. She sent over their ‘draft’ pitch, which was good, but not great. Missed…
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Continue reading →: The Rise of Entrepreneurial Kings: Lessons from Shark Tank
When I was doing stand-up comedy in Los Angeles (yes, you read that right. I was doing stand-up comedy in LA.), there was a show going on at the time – that they turned into a movie – called The Kings of Comedy starring some of the very best in…
Hello,
I’m Lakshmi
Welcome to Just Say Yes, And, my long considered, deliberated and finally sharing spot on the Internet dedicated to all the things I have researched, pursued, determined and decided! When I was growing up, Nancy Reagan had “Just Say No” as the motto to fight drug use. I invite you to revisit that thinking with the rule of Improvising: Say Yes, And!
I have taught this rule of improvisation, along with the other lessons of improvisation through a course I created called Improvisational Leadership at Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, MIT Sloan School of Management as well as numerous organizations. I have my PhD and have taught and researched Entrepreneurship, Negotiation and Management as a tenured Professor. Most recently I spent three years in federal government working on innovation policy culminating in a bucket list experience of a trip to the White House!
Early in my career I worked in venture capital – at the first women owned, women focused fund in the country. I spent 20 years exploring the gender gap for women in entrepreneurship…and I got tired of hearing all the Nos for why things haven’t changed. I ran for local office (was “mayor” of my town) and performed stand-up comedy and improvisational comedy in Los Angeles and San Diego. So, indeed, my life has been a lot of Yes, And to trying new things.
I invite you to join me on a journey of reflection as well as learning as to how opportunities play out when you Just Say Yes, And!
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