I recently came across a great example of what not to do at an early stage of a startup, a stage in which it is incredibly important to nurture your organization and those who have pitched in to help build it.

This particular executive, I'll call him John, has enjoyed the dedication of many workers who have not been paid for the work they've done towards building his business, because they're waiting on fundraising.

To show his appreciation, he'd say in meetings they could reach out to him "24/7." Now, personally, this "24/7" schtick raised my eyebrows, unless, unbeknownst to me, John didn't need to sleep. At any rate, it was a nice gesture.

But, here's the part that you're not supposed to then do if your goal is to remain an effective leader. I recognized this executive could synthesize his fundraising efforts with his marketing and communications efforts, etc. I felt building his brand on social media would then, in turn, give his brand leverage over those same venture capitalists.

The idea was to begin interviewing venture capitalists for his brand's podcast (there are 2 billion websites, 1 million podcasts, so the supply and demand value proposition is obvious). The podcast invite would simultaneously serve as the first efforts towards an investment solicitation and a vehicle for content.

After an interview with a VC had been conducted, we would transcribe the interview, publish it as blogs on the website, condense the blogs into lighter reading for social media, such as LinkedIn and Facebook articles, notes and posts, then condense them even further into tweets, and use appropriate quotes to create images featuring quotes from the interview.

Not only would this synthesize the company's fundraising, marketing and communications efforts, but also show how we value the insights and experience of venture capitalists, and hopefully impress them with our efficient, unique approach to fundraising.

We set up a meeting. I told him I could get everything done in 2 minutes. When meeting time came around, this Executive wanted to move the meeting to Monday, but when I insisted we meet much sooner (this was the third scheduled meeting of ours he failed to make), he made it clear he was not available to talk at all.

This undermines the executive's goals in many ways. Most importantly, it demonstrates that he doesn't honor his word not only to those seeking his time, but potentially (in some cases) to other employees in the company, if they talk.

This could lead to less productivity in an organization. He also potentially missed out on key feedback that would give him better tools to navigate the market.