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

The Hands of Profit

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” – Winston Churchill. By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker  If you center your startup around profit, your company can use its economic strength to become an ambassador for social impact on any level, large or small. Just as [...]

By | November 12th, 2014|

Death By Passion: How I Killed My Startup

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 USI – a business based on my distinctive competence – I launched a second business called Sigma Communications Inc., or “Sigma” for short. Starting Sigma was the culmination of my [...]

By | November 10th, 2014|

The Social Impact of Profit

By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker  A profit-centered startup often suffers the mistaken identity of self-centered ambition. The truth is, when entrepreneurs diligently plan for profit, they can reach beyond themselves and support socially noble causes in their own backyards, their country, and around the world. A startup centered on social impact instead of profit [...]

By | November 6th, 2014|

Budgeting Your Brain

By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker  Every startup needs a handle on its money, but the deliberate handling of your emotional budget is important, too, and is often overlooked. In previous blogs, we’ve talked about basic competency in money as a staple of every entrepreneur’s repertoire. Budgeting is a practice that really only works if [...]

By | November 4th, 2014|

5 Indicators of Success That Angels Look For

By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker  Listen up if you are preparing to pitch your startup business to sophisticated angel investors who have access to capital, industry expertise, and substantial relationship networks. I recently attended the STAR Angel Network's Fall "Demo Day" Showcase of startups, which was held in partnership with New York City's flagship technology [...]

By | October 29th, 2014|

WANT TO BE AN ENTREPRENEUR? TRY FREELANCING!

By Omar Douglass Contributing Writer for The Purpose is Profit Blog Are you chomping at the bit to break out of the office and start a business of your own? Do you have an idea about a product or service you can deliver to a market that needs it? Does your product or service capitalize [...]

By | October 20th, 2014|

Where Are The Women?

By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker Why are men out-pacing women for tech jobs, and what is the root of this unbalance? Female Tech Skills in Short Supply Wendy Kaufman's article, "Addressing The Shortage Of Women In Silicon Valley," points out that although Google leads the industry for the highest employment of women in technology, they [...]

By | October 15th, 2014|

Act Two: Reinventing Yourself

  By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker  The cocktail party buzz shifts to the identity probe, "So, what do you do?" I draw my answer from whatever phase of life I'm in, but I have learned that the far greater question to address is the one that lingers long after the cocktail party. "What will you [...]

By | October 10th, 2014|