About The Purpose is Profit

Ed “Skip” McLaughlin Ed is the founder of four businesses and is currently running Blue Sunsets LLC, a real estate and angel investment firm. He bootstrapped his first business, United Systems Integrators (USI) Corporation, a corporate real estate outsourcing firm, and grew it into an Inc. 500 company. In 2001, Ed earned Entrepreneur of the Year honors from Ernst & Young. In 2005, he sold USI to Johnson Controls, a Fortune 100 company, and at that point, became CEO of JCI’s Global Workplace Business for the Americas. A member of the Board of Governors for Tufts Medical Center, Ed founded its David E. Wazer Breast Cancer Research Fund. He graduated from the College of the Holy Cross, where he is a member of the Board of Trustees. Active in philanthropy, Ed lives with his wife in Connecticut and has three adult children. Email: Ed@ThePurposeIsProfit.com LinkedIn: www.LinkedIn.com/in/EdSkipMcLaughlin Twitter: @purposeisprofit --- Wyn is the founder of Upstart Business Planning, where she works with entrepreneurs to develop plans that answer the questions investors ask most often. Previously, she was Managing Director of Business Plans International in New York and Co-Director of the Small Business Resource Center at Norwalk Community College. Wyn has an MBA in finance and marketing from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She serves on the board of a local nonprofit she helped found, At Home In Darien. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and has two adult children. Email: Wyn@ThePurposeIsProfit.com LinkedIn: www.LinkedIn.com/in/WynLydecker

Holiday Gift Ideas for Entrepreneurs, Freelancers and Professionals

As Published in Forbes Forbes contributor, Caroline Ceniza, Levine, reports on the gifts that keep on giving long after the holidays are over. The first suggestion for entrepreneurs is The Purpose Is Profit: The Truth about Starting and Building Your Own Business. From books to services, there is something [...]

By | November 22nd, 2016|

4 Failure Points that Can Undermine Your Business – Failure Point #4: Don’t Close Your Ears to Experts

Previously Published in StrategyDriven By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker When I launched my second business, a publishing company called Sigma Communications, I was filled with passion but knew next to nothing about publishing a magazine. Without proven competence, I desperately needed guidance. Sure enough, I came to [...]

By | November 22nd, 2016|

A mandate for D.C.: Support entrepreneurs

Previously Published in Stamford Advocate By Ed McLaughlin  Bill Gates, born in Seattle, the founder of Microsoft, is an American entrepreneur. Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, born in Moscow under Communist rule, is an American entrepreneur. Elon Musk, born in South Africa, the founder of Tesla Motors and [...]

By | November 16th, 2016|

4 Failure Points that Can Undermine Your Business – Failure Point #3: The Dark Side of Bootstrapping

Previously Published in StrategyDriven By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker When we launched my publishing business, Sigma Communications, I was so passionate about the magazine, and so confident that it would be a runaway success, that I decided to self-fund. After all, I had successfully bootstrapped my first business, USI. Why couldn’t [...]

By | November 15th, 2016|

Four Failure Points that Can Undermine Your Business – Failure Point #2: Concept Validation Is Not Enough

Previously Published in StrategyDriven By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker At the time we launched my second business, Sigma Communications, and its flagship magazine, The National Register of Commercial Real Estate, the biggest issue facing chief financial officers and real estate executives was their surplus real estate. Capital [...]

By | November 8th, 2016|

4 Failure Points that Can Undermine Your Business – Failure Point #1: Follow Your Passion at Your Peril

By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker The ideal formula for business success is when your passion and distinctive competence align. Only nine months after opening my first business, USI – a business based on my distinctive competence – I launched a second business called Sigma Communications Inc., or Sigma for short. [...]

By | November 3rd, 2016|

Should Startup Fever Have a Place on Campus?

Previously Published on eCampusNews By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker The startup ambitions of MBA students and college undergrads have spawned discussion about whether aspiring young entrepreneurs should launch new business ventures while still in school. Students, graduates, professors, and investors have varying opinions on whether startup fever should be [...]

By | October 27th, 2016|

What Is An Ideal Age to START UP a New Business

Previously Published in Home Business By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker News from a recent 2015 Kauffman Report suggests that the best time for you to start your own business – at any age – could be right now. The report said we showed the greatest surge in U.S. entrepreneurial activity that we’ve had in [...]

By | October 25th, 2016|

When a Big Business Buys an Entrepreneurial Company: How to Make the Marriage Work

Previously published in The CEO Magazine By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker Most entrepreneurial companies thrive on innovation, creativity, and speed as key ingredients for driving success. Entrepreneurs are willing to take risks to increase the probability of breakthrough achievement at the cost of possible failure. In many respects, these attributes [...]

By | October 20th, 2016|