{"id":20294,"date":"2016-08-19T00:50:14","date_gmt":"2016-08-19T07:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=20294"},"modified":"2016-08-18T15:42:17","modified_gmt":"2016-08-18T22:42:17","slug":"summits-sage-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2016\/08\/19\/summits-sage-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"Summit\u2019s sage advice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gwyneth Paltrow, left, and Zooey Deschanel at the Sage Summit in July. (photo by Dave Gordon)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Some 15,000 entrepreneurs gathered in Chicago July 26-29 for the Sage Summit, to hear keynote speakers, network and browse the exhibitors\u2019 stations, which spanned the length of 10 football fields, according to Sage chief executive officer Stephen Kelly, who oversees the accounting software giant.<\/p>\n

Celebrity speakers included entrepreneurs and actors Gwyneth Paltrow, Zooey Deschanel and Ashton Kutcher, all of whom have Jewish connections.<\/p>\n

Paltrow, most known lately for her role as Pepper Potts in the Iron Man film series, was also the head of Goop, which touts itself as a \u201cweekly lifestyle publication.\u201d (She left the publication days after the Summit.)<\/p>\n

\"photo
Some 15,000 entrepreneurs gathered in Chicago July 26-29 for the Sage Summit. (photo by Dave Gordon)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe more you create a vision of where you\u2019re going, the more you can create a vertical. Where do you want it to be, where do you imagine it to be, and ask people \u2018where do you want it to go?\u2019 \u2013 that\u2019s how you form an execution strategy,\u201d she advised entrepreneurs at the Chicago gathering.<\/p>\n

She also offered a morale boost for budding entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnwavering self-belief is everything. Everyone\u2019s going to tell you why you can\u2019t do it, and you have to know in your bones that you can do it \u2026 and take disappointments with as much grace as you can,\u201d said the actress, whose late father, film director Bruce Paltrow, was Jewish.<\/p>\n

Paltrow\u2019s co-panelist, Deschanel of television\u2019s New Girl, is founder of the website Hello Giggles, an online magazine for young women launched five years ago and acquired by Time Inc. in 2015. She has also invested in a hydroponics company that grows sustainable and eco-friendly organic food.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrust your gut and be yourself \u2013 and watch your bottom line. Customers will thank you for that,\u201d said Deschanel, who converted to Judaism last November.<\/p>\n

Chiming in about knowing one\u2019s limits \u2013 and about social media engagement \u2013 was Kutcher, who has invested in high-tech ventures including Skype, FourSquare and Airbnb.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned by sitting in the rooms being the dumbest person in there and asking a lot of questions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Kutcher last year married Jewish actress Mila Kunis. He has been a student of kabbalah and has visited Israel several times.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was aggressively into social media early on,\u201d he said at the summit. \u201cFrom a business perspective, I think it\u2019s valuable from a customer service, customer relations perspective. Building a social media environment for their feedback in a dramatic and visible way creates transparency and delivers a high-quality product and service. From a marketing perspective, if used right, it can be beneficial.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, he noted, there\u2019s a critical caveat regarding marketers.<\/p>\n

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Aston Kutcher with Yancey Strickler of Kickstarter (photo by Dave Gordon)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThey come up with these elaborate social media marketing plans, which inevitably fail along the way,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause marketers tend to forget it\u2019s a conversation, and they don\u2019t account for feedback.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kutcher cautioned against having fingers in several social media platforms, noting it\u2019s more about quality than quantity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel a lot of people aggressively chase the latest in social media marketing and waste a lot of time in it. It\u2019s this sort of race to be on the cutting edge, but, in another sense, it\u2019s time on inefficient platforms. It\u2019s like in acting \u2013 the fans don\u2019t go to the actor, the actor should go to where the fans are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twitter, Instagram and Facebook already have \u201chuge swaths of people and have really great tools for targeting,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Co-panelist Yancey Strickler, one of the three founders of Kickstarter, which he described as \u201cthe world\u2019s largest funding platform for creative projects,\u201d has also been the crowdfunding site\u2019s CEO for the past three years.<\/p>\n

Despite Kickstarter\u2019s online base, Strickler had his own warning about social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think social media is bad for our brains, and it\u2019s hard to have introspection on these platforms.\u2026 I wouldn\u2019t doubt, in 20 years, if they found what social media does to our brains is what smoking does to our lungs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m worried about my brain now,\u201d Kutcher retorted.<\/p>\n

Dave Gordon<\/strong> is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than a hundred publications around the world. He is the managing editor of landmarkreport.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gwyneth Paltrow, left, and Zooey Deschanel at the Sage Summit in July. (photo by Dave Gordon) Some 15,000 entrepreneurs gathered in Chicago July 26-29 for the Sage Summit, to hear keynote speakers, network and browse the exhibitors\u2019 stations, which spanned the length of 10 football fields, according to Sage chief executive officer Stephen Kelly, who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[6171,3129,6170,5322,6168,6169],"class_list":["post-20294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-ashton-kutcher","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-gwyneth-paltrow","tag-investing","tag-sage-summit","tag-zooey-deschanel"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}