“Making Harry Potter Famous” with Alan Samuel Cohen

Alan Samuel Cohen is an executive coach and author of the book The Connection Challenge: How Executives Create Power and Possibility in the Age of Distraction.

But in the late 90s he was the Director of Marketing at Scholastic, where he and his small team were tasked with the awesome responsibility of turning a first-time author’s quirky novel about a boy wizard into a global phenomenon…

And that’s precisely what they did.

I was introduced to Alan through our mutual friend Tim David, my guest on the most recent episode of this podcast, and quickly discovered we were kindred spirits.

Alan and I chat about imposter syndrome and the surprising way jealous can actually be force for positive change, the primary function of a leader and how to bring out a team’s best qualities, and Alan shares multiple stories of chance encounters with lasting impact, including plenty of good stuff about working with JK Rowling in the early days.

RELATED LINKS

• Alan’s Website
• The Connection Challenge (book)
• Connect with Alan on LinkedIn

Season 2 Episodes