About Atul
Atul Minocha is a partner at Chief Outsiders, a marketing consulting firm that helps CEOs accelerate growth through strategic planning, customer insight, and disciplined execution of well-crafted marketing plans. With experience in startups and Fortune 500 companies like Honeywell, Kodak, and Toyota, Atul works in a wide range of industries, from automotive and healthcare to industrial goods and technology.
Atul has a degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and an MBA from Yale University. He is a professor at the Hult International Business School, a mentor and an angel investor with Sierra Angels, a Vistage speaker, and a Forbes contributor.
Interested in booking Atul for speaking engagements? Reach out here.
A Trusted Guide on the Side
Atul uses his knowledge, training, and experience for the benefit of others
Consulting: More than billable hours
Atul’s role as a consultant has remained constant over his 10+ years consulting — To use his knowledge, training, and experience for the benefit of others. “It’s not about selling billable hours at all”, Atul says. He’s a professional problem solver without a cookie-cutter, one size fits all approach. Each problem deserves a customized solution specific to that organization or issue. These principles enable Atul to help companies of all sizes grow their revenue and reach. It’s an open-handed approach to consulting that’s helped Chief Outsiders grow to nearly 100 experienced CMOs.
Our CMOs are experienced marketing leaders who have been in operating roles most of their professional careers. They know what it takes to deliver.
Teaching: Getting paid to learn
Growing up among an extended family of educators, including a father who was a professor of economics, teaching is in Atul’s blood. It’s an upbringing that’s given him a unique approach as a scholar—To be more of a ‘guide on the side,’ rather than a ‘sage on a stage.’ As a Professor at Hult International Business School, Atul guides a diverse group of students through courses in marketing, marketing analytics, strategy, pricing, financing, and economics. Just don’t call it a side gig. For Atul, his teaching and consulting are harmonious and complement each other.
Likewise, he never stops learning. Even as a professor, Atul says he’s never taught a class where he didn’t also leave with something new that he didn’t know before. From his perspective, the only difference between him and his students (besides age) is that he’s the one who gets paid to learn!
This endless curiosity is a thread that weaves through everything Atul does.
Investing: COMPLETING Peter Lynch
Atul started investing in the ‘90s along with the masses following the Peter Lynch model— investing only in companies he knew and respected. When the dot-com crisis happened, Atul knew he needed to shift his strategy. He still believed in the Peter Lynch model, but knew something was missing. After several years spent studying the market, Atul came to three realizations:
The Peter Lynch model was incomplete and couldn’t compete in a hedge fund dominated world
Hedge funds weren’t just throwing around their financial weight. They frequently led with their egos which, when aired publicly, created greater shifts than fundamentals ever could.
It was critical to know what hedge funds were doing in addition to what they were saying.
Atul’s answer to these realizations was to create his own indicator called VIXEK—a combination of VIX (A common indicator in use today) and EK (Emotional Kinetics). VIXEK enabled him to read the movement of a market driven largely by the emotions of hedge funds. His new method proved invaluable during the Great Recession of 2007-2009. You can read more about VIXEK on Vixek.com.
He has also brought this mix of analytics and human behavior to his angel investing.
Since 2010, Atul has also been an active member of Sierra Angels—One of the West Coast’s premier Angel groups. In this role, he’s mentored, advised or invested in over 70 start-ups. But, it’s about more than passing on his knowledge or getting in on the ground floor. Working with start-ups exposes him to creative and innovative ideas. After all, if you want to teach, you first have to learn.
Traveling
If he’s not leading an international group of students through a lecture, or guiding a company achieve its growth objectives, good luck finding Atul. He’s likely off-roading in the western United States or in some remote region of the world feeding his ceaseless curiosity with indigenous culture, flora and fauna. Travel may be a hobby for some, but it’s a defining characteristic for Atul.
As a child, his parents would plan yearly trips throughout India exploring the different regions and cultures. It’s these travels that turned a healthy inquisitiveness into an insatiable appetite to learn and experience new things. Over the years, Atul has visited 47 countries and as many states in the US.
Follow Atul’s Newest Pursuit: Publishing a Book!
Lies, Damned Lies, and Marketing
When it comes to your relationship with marketing, it’s time to wipe the slate clean.
You’ve been promised big results with a quick turnaround. You’ve been told that social media is a silver bullet for increased sales (so far, you haven’t seen an impact). Your marketing team and vendors have overpromised and underdelivered, and you’re disappointed. You’re frustrated. Perhaps you’re close to giving up on marketing entirely, but something tells you that you shouldn’t—you just need to know how to use it wisely.
In Lies, Damned Lies, and Marketing, Atul Minocha reveals the root causes of your frustration and provides you with the insight you need to utilize your marketing dollars for real results. He helps you understand why you need marketing, the important distinctions between marketing and sales, and how to attain the right blend of hard data and softer creativity to persuade your audience. Bringing with him more than thirty-five years of experience, Atul shows you how to make marketing work for you and finally achieve the results you’ve been waiting for.
Other Published Works
Hold ‘em: Three M's of Success for CEOs
If you are a start-up or a small business, you probably have more on your plate than a reasonable person can be expected to handle. Or at least handle in an effective way without going insane. So what should a small business leader focus on? How should you identify the really important ones from those that are merely, well, important?
Over the years as a business executive, entrepreneur, investor and advisor, I have been able to distill it down to three keys. Let’s call them the Three M's of Success.
A Look Back From 2030: What Changed In 2020?
Imagine it is 2030. You have decided to reflect and trace back the origins of business trends that are now commonplace in 2030. What are you likely to discover?
For one, I believe a lot of inflection points in our business (and consumption) habits will be traced back to 2020. Here are seven significant trends that originated or got a boost as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic of 2020.
14 Overlooked Business Development Strategies
The prevailing wisdom in business is that risk should be worth the reward. Companies are less likely to explore new approaches if a business development strategy has been proven to work. The reasoning is clear—if something works, why change it?
The important issue to consider is that by risking time and money on new strategies, a company might perform even better than it does when using its tried-and-true methods. If a business intends to adopt a new approach, it should at least be tested and proven to work. To help, 14 members of Forbes Business Development Council investigate commonly overlooked business strategies that never got a chance to shine, despite having the potential to be as successful as proven methodologies.