One of the biggest opportunities for folks who want to make an impact through entrepreneurship is to tackle things that Corporate America has gotten wrong and so we’ve asked some of the best and brightest in the community to share examples of what Corporate America is getting wrong in their industries.
Katie Olderman
There’s so much corporate America gets wrong in my industry. It’s honestly hard to think through what they actually get right! Corporate America glamorizes working hard all the time, that your worthiness and value comes from your productivity, you put yourself last and on the back burner always, and you just grind it out all the time without ever stopping. There’s never enough time, money, energy or health and you just assume everyone is just as miserable as you are. It’s debilitating. I’ve done it. Especially for highly sensitive emotional people. That’s really the start of my journey actually – it was burnout from corporate America. Read more>>
Kei Castillo
Working in the cannabis industry, even adjacently, is interesting. Since our business started in Denver, we have had a unique perspective of seeing the evolution of the American 420 industry play out in front of our eyes. As other major cities in the US acclimate to recent legalization (Las Vegas, New York City, etc), we’re seeing similar patterns emerge. Patterns of grassroots movements, especially those focusing on marginalized communities, being used as pawns to grease slow-moving governmental wheels into action, only for them to be forgotten or an afterthought after being used to gain funding or support for their platform. Read more>>
Garik Himebaugh
The main thing Corporate America gets wrong about fashion is the same thing it gets wrong about business in general, and that is that the purpose of business is to maximize profits, or “shareholder value.” The consequences of getting this wrong are far reaching and extremely problematic. This is the reason so many fashion brands today have embraced the fast fashion business model. If you can sell cheap trendy clothes, and convince consumers that their clothing is disposable (that’s right, they want you to throw away your clothes) then you can basically convince consumers to shop for clothes all the time, all year long. Fashion used to have 2 seasons a year, but in the quest for infinite profits the industry has embraced this position of trying to sell people things they don’t need, all the time. Read more>>
Lazaro Toledo
The direct lenders, we call them retail lenders, overcharge on their loans a majority of time, especially on the government loans. Government loans are USDA, FHA, and VA loans. Retail lenders do the loan themselves, such as banks, credit unions, etc. On average, we as brokers can save a borrower about $9000 compared to a direct lender. Brokers are able to shop multiple lenders at wholesale rates, which gives us a huge competitive advantage. I will give you 2 perfect examples that happened about 2 months ago. Read more>>
Jennifer Froelich
Because of the consolidation of the big six powerful publishers in New York, there’s a lack of organic diversity in fiction that is exacerbated by the tight deadlines authors are held to in order to turn a profit. The result is that many books share repeated themes, tropes and formulas, and usually only offer shades of the same political and social thinking. At the same time, talented authors with story concepts that are genuinely interesting are often rushed to churn out novels quickly rather than being given the time needed to fully flesh out engaging plots and characters.. Read more>>
Julie Miller
I think that the number one issue anyone creating handmade products deals with is the fact that we are simply not part of Corporate America, and we don’t want to be. We are not Target, or Walmart, as a potter I am not Corningware. We are not cranking out massive amounts of work in a factory with machinery, and I am by no means a production potter. We are craftsmen who create pieces with our own hands, the way things used to be made. Read more>>