Writing

As a VP I made many mistakes. Not knowing how to negotiate executive comp packages, not taking big enough swings, etc. So, I wrote a series of playbooks to help VPs avoid these mistakes and accelerate their careers.

→ HOW TO BE VP: Compensation Edition

→ HOW TO BE VP: Hiring Edition

→ HOW TO BE VP: Communication Edition

→ HOW TO BE VP: Culture Edition

Armchair Consulting is a series of articles where I make marketing suggestions for businesses I love, purely for kicks and giggles.

→ MasterClass just raised $100 million and here’s how I would spend it

→ If I ran the NYT Crossword app during COVID-19, here’s what I’d do

→ Alec Baldwin has the best interview show in the world and more people should listen to it

Boardroom Confidential is a collection of wild-but-true stories from the careers of me and my friends.

→ The one where I have diarrhea during my own keynote

→ The one where Rick wakes up on Excalibur’s lawn in Vegas

→ The one where Sam closes a $17M deal at a bar in San Francisco

→ The one where we fire Ian for doing shrooms on the company camping trip

→ The one where Ed runs up a $2,700 dinner on his wife’s credit card

→ The one where the Italian CEO calls me “Fantozzi”

→ The one where the company loses $600M due to a bad review on Glassdoor

→ The one where Susan saves her job with Google Sheets

→ The one where we pull the plug on a $20M acquisition

→ The one where we accidentally order 20,000 fidget spinners

→ The one where Magnus goes skinnydipping at Del Coronado

I have written two somewhat popular (read: not popular enough to be stopped in a Barnes & Noble) thrillers under the pen name D. Melhoff.

→ GRIMM WOODS

→ Come Little Children

Also under the pen name D. Melhoff, I have written four illustrated kids’ books, as well as a viral Dr. Seuss parody about COVID-19.

→ The Easter Witch

→ House Thirty-One

→ Turkeyton Town

→ The Toymaker

→ How COVID Stole Christmas!