Toccara Karizma is a digital marketing consultant and business growth strategist. She is the CEO of Karizma Marketing, a full-service digital marketing agency dedicated to growing elite eCommerce brands online through email marketing, social media marketing, PPC, SEO, website conversion optimization, and more. Having built her own successful eCommerce business back in 2007, Toccara is now considered one of the world's top eCommerce marketing experts. Her out-of-the-box approach to digital marketing and expertise in the online business growth space is why I've asked her to join me today. The biggest, most critical failure with customers I have a two-fold failure. The biggest failures are taking on clients without the bandwidth, without the support system that I need. We are in demand and are blessed to be in demand. At some points, we want to take on clients when we just don't have the right support team in place. And that's not a fair thing for us to do because when we do that, we don't give them the best results or the best client experience with us. We want to be the Four Seasons of ad agencies. The second failure would be taking any client, especially when you’re newer. That was when we failed because we weren't working with a partner that had everything in place. It was kind of like putting a Ferrari engine in a VW Bug. Biggest success with customers I stand for full reporting. When we talk to our customers, it's almost like we're flipping all the ways in which they were mishandled and mismanaged by other agencies and saying, “You deserve this.” We do full transparency. We'll tell you when we're wrong and when we've done something wrong. We want to meet with you regularly and build a long-term relationship. We're always on camera with them. So, it's doing business with people. My son was working on a project at school. (He’s in high school now.) He was using a video editing software. I looked up that video editing software’s ads because I ran ads, and I realized that they were struggling. They just did not have great customer feedback. I went directly to this company, it's a SAS company, and said, “Can I get connected with your director of digital marketing?” I got the client, and I think it's funny because I had just interviewed someone for my own YouTube.   Michael Cannavo started his career on social media. He was able to infuse his own understanding of viral content, social platforms, and demographic interests into Super73, causing it to accelerate the growth and visibility of the company. As the company grew, so did his social media presence. With 500,000 followers online, Michael has been able to pull back the curtain on what life is like within Super73, how the company has succeeded, and where it is going next. The biggest, most critical failure with customers I think it’s a matter of really understanding what they want. Early on, we had this idea of what we wanted to do, and we kept trying

Rick Elmore is an entrepreneur, sales and marketing expert, and former college and professional football athlete. As the Founder and CEO of Simply Noted, Rick developed a proprietary technology that puts real pen and ink to paper to scale handwritten communication, helping businesses of all industries scale this unique marketing platform to stand out from their competition and build meaningful relationships with clients, customers, and employees. Founded in 2018 and based in Tempe, Arizona, Simply Noted has grown into a thriving company with clients of various sizes across the country including in hospitality, real estate, insurance, nonprofit, franchise, B2B, and others. Rick has served as the company’s CEO since its founding, for more than three years, and has over a decade of sales and marketing industry experience.   most passionate about My background is in athletics. I played college and professional American football. When I got done, I made the transition into sales and marketing. I started with medical companies in the United States, Stryker and Straumann, and in orthopedics and dental. I had a pretty good career. I'm currently doing Simply Noted. We help companies send and automate real, genuine handwritten notes with technology and have been doing that for the last three and a half years. We have developed technology – a handwriting robot that puts real pen to paper and helps businesses connect on a more personal level, building relationships with their clients. Rick’s career and story During my MBA, we had to start a project. When I was recruited in college, the coaches who always stood out the most to me were the coaches who sent handwritten notes. One year, in 2016, my wife and I had 400 clients. We tried sending out 400 printed holiday cards. All we did was hand-write the envelope and it took us over two weeks. I was like, “There has to be a better way.” So, I started researching. I looked up some technologies that were available. It wasn't until 2017 that I dove into it for a school project, but, really, I’d researched the technology for about a year. Best advice for entrepreneurs A lot of people want to become entrepreneurs or start a business, but they have analysis paralysis, overthink They think, 'I can't do it.' They think they have to have all the answers, but really, it's just taking that first step and getting started. Absolutely build the best relationships you can with those first clients. Those are your lighthouse customers. Those are the risk-takers. Those are the ones who are going to give you an opportunity. You have to make sure everything goes through. The biggest, most critical failure with customers I would say scaling a company is really hard. I'm struggling with figuring out how to scale a service like this when you're selling a $2 and $3 item. We want to help every client out, and we need to figure out an effective, efficient, really personal way of doing that. Biggest success with customers Something that I'm really good at is perseverance, relentless competition. That’s just baked into who I am. Being patient is important. When you're an entrepreneur and starting a business, it's really hard to be patient because you have bills to pay. Rick’s recommendation of a tool Zapier it's a platform that allows you to automate tasks between software....

Rhonda Petit is a Sales and Business Peak Performance Coach with 35 years of Sales and Sales Management experience in Corporate America in the life sciences and diagnostic markets. She has experience working with Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies. Today she works enthusiastically with Corporations and Individuals with champion mindsets, who know school is never out, who want to continually grow to unleash and activate more of their true potential and power. She helps people discover their deepest desires, leverage the untapped potential in their hearts, activate their potential and achieve their personal and professional goals so they can create the life they want and realize true fulfillment. Rhonda is a seasoned Sales Professional, a certified coach, leader, in-demand speaker, and author of “The Spirit of Selling.”   Most passionate about I am most passionate today about helping people realize the potential that lies within them, especially given the fast-paced changes that are occurring in the world today. I'm passionate about selling. I wrote a book about selling and how you can tap into the subconscious mind and your potential by understanding it and understanding more about the divinity within you. Rhonda’s career and story I intended to be a chemist, but I got a double major in business because I was always fascinated, especially living in the United States, with free enterprise, being an entrepreneur, and building my own business. I was working as a chemist for chemical company and called the representative for J.T.Baker. The chemical company had been promoted and, there, the sales position was open. My lab manager knew I liked the business end of things. My position was eliminated in 2019 and I had been going to coaching school because I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I had my own business when they informed me of the news. I looked up at the sky and said, “Okay, I guess it's time for me to do this now, as opposed to later.” That's when I started my coaching business. Best advice for entrepreneurs Recognize that your business is serving people and what the value of your business is. Know your worth and the impact you can make on other people with your services. Don't be timid or scared to step out and do what you love. The biggest, most critical failure with customers In the beginning, I was caught up in a lot of the mechanics and the details. Because I was not aware of, and really conscious of, the value of my service, I would let people off the hook. If they came up with an objection, I would be timid, stand back, and listen to what they were saying. Biggest success with customers The greatest success is when you deliver a service and feel the energy from the people who got something from it. You see they've had an alteration and a shift that has put more life into them. They're excited that they've had a breakthrough. They recognize something that was holding them back and now they see why it was holding them back and how they're going to proceed. They're lifted, like virtual chains are coming off. Rhonda’s recommendation of a tool Zoom Having a Zoom meeting is much more impactful than when you had meetings on the phone. Rhonda’s one key success factor I find that my biggest strength is when I really get present and honest with myself. I

Jake Jorgovan is a Serial Entrepreneur, Podcast Producer and Business Advisor. He is the Founder of Content Allies and Lead Cookie. Through these companies he has generated $40M+ in sales for his clients. Jake is the host of the Working Without Pants Podcast, and Leaders of B2B Podcast. He also shares the raw lessons of his entrepreneurial journey at Jake-Jorgovan.com. Jake is the producer behind podcasts for brands such as Facebook, Siemens Energy, Stampli, and more. Jake’s professional focus is to build companies that enable freedom of time and financial profitability. He does that by being an active entrepreneur in the trenches and through training others on entrepreneurship, leadership, sales & marketing. Jake has degree in entrepreneurship from Belmont University and has been awarded Nashville’s Youth Entrepreneur of the Year. He has spoken at conferences such as SXSW and has been featured in publications such as Inc & Forbes. Jake lives a nomadic life and has traveled the world while running multiple companies. Current location: Barcelona, Spain   Most passionate about I currently run Content Allies, which is a podcast agency. I'm really passionate about building this business up. Then, personally, on the side, I'm really passionate about playing with synthesizers. We produce revenue-generating B2B podcasts. That means we work primarily with businesses. These would be companies that are looking to launch a podcast. They tend to be of a decent size. Jake’s career and story I have been in entrepreneurship for about 12 or 13 years now and have been in a video agency for a while. I got really into the event, industry, and music industry early in my career. Then I went off and did freelance digital marketing—various iterations of digital marketing agencies. Eventually, I decided: Okay, I want to focus at the agency on content. My previous agency wasn't lead generation and got heavily disrupted; it kept changing the game. I started Content Allies. We did a bunch of different iterations of content offerings and eventually landed on podcasting as our core service, with a full suite of content marketing. We found that podcasts are growing. There are tons of stats out there, saying that every year podcasts are growing and that more people are listening to them. What is really interesting for B2B companies is that podcasts can become the epicenter of their content strategy. Out of a podcast, we'll create videos, we'll create articles, we'll create social posts, we'll create quote blocks, we'll create short, social videos, and YouTube videos. We'll also often lead that into collaborations with the guests to post content on their site. Best advice for entrepreneurs It helps to launch a business in a rising tide, like in a rising wave. We're doing the same thing with podcasting right now. It's like podcasting is a wave and we're riding that. At some point, that will plateau or stabilize and commoditize as any industry does. The biggest, most critical failure with customers One of the things that's hard about being an entrepreneur is that you have to learn every facet of the business. People deny this early on. I'm not a finance guy; that's how I started. So, I tried to hire out the job of keeping my books to the cheapest person I could, but that meant I didn't have visibility into finances. Not knowing at least the basics led to...

Dan Zavorotny is the co-founder of NutriSense – a metabolic health company that utilizes Continuous Glucose Monitoring (GCM) technology to provide real-time data to clients. He launched 3 months before Covid, and he has grown the company from an idea to over $150 million valuation in just 26 months and 120 employees. Previously, he worked as a management consultant for KPMG where he consulted for 3 out of top 5 hospitals in the world. When Dan’s not working, he loves to travel, and he has been to over 100 countries before the age of 30.   Most passionate about I was working in healthcare consulting and saw a trend over and over. We saw people, hospitals, and insurance companies spend more money every single year on healthcare. I ran into one of my friends who was wearing a device called a continuous glucose monitor. It tracks your glucose in real-time, 24/7. I put on a device and it completely changed the way I looked at health. We said, “Let's start a company around it.” We basically launched in two weeks. I quit my job and then we just started going, going, going. Since then, we've gotten to an over $150 million value. Dan’s career and story We immigrated from Ukraine. My parents didn't have much money. So, I picked jobs in corporate finance that let me live in France for a year. Then I focused on my career. I said, “How do I become the best employee possible?” I was doing healthcare consulting. I quickly realized that there are fundamental shifts in the industry of healthcare that need to happen, and there's not enough drive or change inside. So, that has to happen from external forces. I started looking at, like, “What can I start? How can I help this industry?” This was when I ran into my friend, Alex, whom I started a company with and who was an acknowledged expert. We brought in a third person, Kara, who's our head of nutrition. We can focus on the business, the software, and the human capital in this area to change behavior. That's been guiding us. It's been very effective by focusing on hiring the best people. Best advice for entrepreneurs The first one is, in every business, there are always two things that are most important. It's either build the product or service and offering or sell that product or service and offering. You must always say who's doing the first and who’s doing the second. Remember, no matter what you're doing, always focus on those two functions at the beginning. Number two is, you just gotta go and try to sell this to someone to see who wants it. The goal here is to get them to put their credit card in. Always focus on credit. Until someone's putting a credit card down, they're not actually your customer. To me, the signifier is, did you collect their cash? If you did, your product has value. The biggest, most critical failure with customers It's that we listened to the customers who are the loudest customers, but they might not be our main customers. It’s important to remember that just because someone is very loud as a customer, that does not mean this is the person you should be billing for it. I think that's a mistake we made. It doesn't sound that bad, but if you actually think about it, we're a software company. We're telling our engineers to build something and retain all that money on salaries, product development, and a user experience for this one individual, while the other 99% of people might be less vocal. Oftentimes, they're the silent majority. We're basically neglecting them because every time we're building for this one individual, we're...

Five years ago, I started my podcast REACH OR MISS for entrepreneurs. Two hundred sixty episodes to date and counting. I took something from any episode, and, of course, many taught me something new. However, three past episodes are the core of entrepreneurial marketing. In today’s episode, I invite you to listen to these three thought-leaders and find the difference between what you do and what they talk about. Choose one thing that you will do differently from today. I think that will help you become a better entrepreneurial marketer. And every entrepreneur should also become their own marketer.   John Lee Dumas John Lee Dumas: John is the host of EOFire, an award winning podcast where he interviews today’s most successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders. JLD has grown EOFire into a multi-million dollar a year business. with over 2000 interviews. He’s the author of The Freedom Journal and The Mastery Journal, two of the most funded publishing campaigns of all time on Kickstarter. All the magic happens at EOFire.com! Fire Nation (EOFire) John’s best advice about approaching the customer Number one, you need to know who your perfect customer is, the ideal customer, your avatar. Once you know who that person is, you can start creating free valuable, and consisting content for that person. Then you want to make sure you are getting it in front of them, so you have to find them and put that content in front of them. And, of course, they will be attracted to that content because you are creating it for them specifically. Then, once you have the opportunity to get in front of them, ask them a question, send them an email, newsletter, or a social media message, you have to ask: What are you struggling with? Then you can start to understand your ideal customers, what their pain points, obstacles, challenges, and struggles are, so then you – the person that, by the way, has been delivering them free value and assisting content, can provide the solution in the form of a product, a service or a community. You are not just somebody pitching them something; you are somebody that already provided them value, who they are growing to know, like, and trust, who asked them what they are struggling with, who listened to them when they were telling their pain point, and who now says: ‘Hi, you told me you are struggling with this, here is the solution, and I’d love to offer it.’ That’s the way to approach your customer. Biggest failure with customers This is a big mistake that I made, and it was a big waste of time, energy, effort, and money. It goes back to 2013. Many people said they love my podcast and love to create their podcasts. I wanted to create an entire platform where I would create other people's podcasts for them. I’ll host their shows; I’ll edit their podcast. I’ll make their show notes; I’ll do it all. I called it PodPlatform. Everybody that heard the idea said it’s a great product. I made all the arrangements and invested so luckily it was the perfect number…which quickly let me realize I don’t want to be in this business; I don’t want to edit other people's shows, upload their outro and intro, and host that for them. And I went back to this one person, here is your money back, but this isn’t the kind of business I want. But I wasted so much time, so much energy, and money. And actually, I could say if anybody telling me they want...

For over 17 years, Lucas Root led numerous teams on Wall Street. After establishing a consistent track record of success, Lucas started his own consulting business. Lucas works with strong brands with a well-funded great idea, who doesn’t quite know how to execute. Since early 2019, Lucas has had the wonderful opportunity to speak to numerous audiences in North America, Australia, and Europe, as well as partner with both businesses and VCs for mentoring.   Most passionate about I launched my consulting company and was really focused on the thing that I got paid for on Wall Street. On Wall Street I was hired to execute the strategies they would come up with and to give them constructive feedback. I've partnered with the NCN university, which has one of the largest MBA programs in the world. They strongly encourage their MBA students to start a business while they're going through the MBA program so that they can test out the things they're learning in the program real-time, live, in their own business. They support them with this program called The Launchpad. Three years ago, I decided, for better or worse, “I'm doing good things here.” So, I started focusing on women entrepreneurs. I found that there are significant barriers to success for women. I wasn't happy with that. Lucas’s career and story I was on Wall Street for 17 years doing mergers and acquisitions. I always had a side project. My first two side hustles were real estate businesses and they were great. My third side hustle was a food blog where I wrote about recipes and food. I shared my passion with the world and it was wildly successful. Once I was satisfied that I knew how to create a marketplace and have people get excited to show up and have that conversation with me, I decided it was time for the next thing, not a side hustle. So, I left Wall Street. Best advice for entrepreneurs To be a successful business owner, you must be able to create a conversation with a marketplace and have people excited to show up and have that conversation with you at its very core. That's what it is to be a business. Get started. Go out, start your idea, bring it to the market. Find a team that believes in you and supports you, and just start doing something. Don't get stuck trying to create some version of perfection just to get started. The biggest reason that businesses fail is not the thing you see in the newspapers. The newspapers are lying to you. The magazines are lying to you. The entrepreneurship books that you're buying from Barnes & Noble are lying to you. The biggest reason that businesses fail is that the founder didn't have enough money to pay their own bills, their rent, their food, their cell phone. The founder didn't have enough money to pay their own bills for at least two years when they started. What can be done about that? Make sure, number one, that you have a plan in place to have your bills paid. Let's be honest: Your business is probably not going to be ready to pay your bills for you in the first two years. The biggest, most critical failure with customers One of my first businesses was a real estate business, as I mentioned. It was amazing. I had a really cool idea. I was a really smart analyst. I found a market where I could invest a certain amount of money and that money would turn into a profitable opportunity very quickly. This doesn't always exist. However, I made two big mistakes with that business. Number one, I went in from an analyst perspective and didn't learn my lesson

One of the most popular questions on my REACH OR MISS podcast for entrepreneurs is the question about the biggest, most critical failure with customers. I often think about my biggest failure with customers. It was when I promoted my online course. Five years ago, a short while after I started my podcast for entrepreneurs, I decided to create an online course for entrepreneurs and teach them the secrets of entrepreneurial marketing. I invested in a rather expensive online course to study how to create my successful course. I learned every aspect of creating the course, and I studied four different ways to promote my course. The expert I learned from about creating an online course had a very clear recommendation about promoting the online course: he warmly recommended not using webinars to promote and sell my course. Webinars are too complicated, he said, and you should use a better, easier way to sell your course. But I didn’t listen. I listened to another mentor who was a great believer in webinars. On my first webinar, I had 25 participants and not one sale. I had 12 participants and not one deal on the second webinar, and on the third and last webinar, I had 4 participants and not even one sale. You got it right; my webinars were a total failure, and although I tried again two years later, I didn’t manage to use webinars to sell my course. The reason for my failure: I didn’t focus on the one most important challenge of selling my course. Instead, I wasted a lot of energy and time learning how to make webinars. It took me a while, and I found a different successful way to sell my courses. But this was a fundamental lesson for me. In today’s episode, I chose to focus on the stories of six successful entrepreneurs who shared with me the stories of their biggest failures and what they learned from them. Failures are an excellent opportunity to learn. Don’t be afraid to fail; dare to win!! &nbsp; &nbsp; Khaled Maziad is a marketing consultant who specializes in the Psychology of persuasion and high-ticket sales. He helps coaches transform their uncharged-non-monetary offer into a high-ticket one without having Tony Robbins like Brand. He shares his story on struggling to give away his stuff for free to charging high-ticket offers and helping his clients from all around the world do the same. He is known as the Copy &amp; Messaging Alchemist. He has been featured in FOX as one of 21 Entrepreneurs You Need to Know About in 2021. He has also been featured in ANLP, Fox, CBS &amp; NBC. Khaled is a professional member of ANLP International CIC, a certified Master of NLP, and holds a degree in Civil Engineering. Before becoming marketing, Khaled worked with traders and professional fund managers, helping them master their mental edge in trading and life. He also had over 15 years of experience as a Project manager, where he managed multi-million dollar projects on 3 continents. Khaled lives with his wife and two kids in Sydney, Australia. &nbsp; Khaled’s biggest, most critical failure with customers One of them was not testing offers before validating them. I worked on a product once that I was perfecting and I didn’t show it to anyone. I didn’t get any feedback. I didn’t ask anyone if they wanted it or not. I worked for about a month on it. When I put it out there, no one even cared about it. The tool was a really big failure. &nbsp; &nbsp; <img class="aligncenter...

Robbie Samuels is an author, speaker, and business growth strategy coach recognized as a networking expert by Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Lifehacker, and Inc. He is also a virtual event design consultant and executive Zoom producer recognized as an industry expert in the field of digital event design by JDC Events. Robbie is the author of "Croissants vs. Bagels: Strategic, Effective, and Inclusive Networking at Conferences" and "Small List, Big Results: Launch a Successful Offer No Matter the Size of Your Email List." He is a Harvard Business Review contributor. His clients include thought leaders, entrepreneurial women, associations, national, and statewide advocacy organizations, women’s leadership summits, including Feeding America, California WIC Association, and AmeriCorps. Robbie is the host of the On the Schmooze podcast and #NoMoreBadZoom Virtual Happy Hours. &nbsp; Most passionate about I have multiple tracks in my business. I do one-on-one coaching, group programs, all about helping people build an audience before they try to launch an offer. I also work with my virtual event clients on bringing their events online with less stress and greater participant engagement. What had been somewhat dormant, but is just starting to come back, is working with organizations around their in-person events to help them become more engaging and to really support their participants through what, for many, is their first experience at an in-person event. Robbie’s career and story I spent 15 years organizing fundraising events and doing major gift work. On the side, I started speaking and showing people how to network. I was working with boards of directors and foundations. I did both of those things for about five years. Eventually, I realized that there was a possible career in doing this full-time. In 2015, I left my comfortable and safe career to really see if this thing I'd been doing for five years was going to turn into something. That's when I decided to launch a podcast, which came out a year later. I launched my first book, which today has 191 reviews on Amazon. I then got a chance to do a TEDx. Every year, I had different opportunities. I was well on my way to being an overnight success, 10 years in the making, when everything got upended in March 2020. Best advice for entrepreneurs My second book is called Small List, Big Results: Launch a Successful Offer No Matter the Size of Your Email List. That subtitle belies the fact that, a lot of times, as entrepreneurs, as experts, we get really excited about some kind of solution, some kind of offer. We get some kind of program offer—an online course app, whatever the modality is. And we rush out to market to tell people about it. The marketplace basically responds with “Who are you? What is this? Nope, I don't need this.” And we're just shocked. I think the better approach would be to not create solutions in a vacuum, but to invite input from your most likely prospects. The biggest, most critical failure with customers I mentioned this in my latest book. When my first book came out, I didn't have a very clear plan for what kind of offer would come from it. But I had a pilot in mind, and I did run a successful pilot. I got great feedback. When I went to sell the next iteration, I created a landing page and took video testimonials and written testimonials from the few people who'd gone through the initial pilot. I had 250 people view the landing page. But they did not contact me to learn more about the program. So, the problem wasn't my ability to...

For 30 years Chris Beall has led software start-ups as a founder or early-stage developer. He believes the most powerful part of a software system is the human being, and that the value key is to let the computer do what it does well — go fast without getting bored — in order to free up human potential. Chris is currently CEO of ConnectAndSell, Inc., based in Silicon Valley, and hosts a podcast at MarketDominanceGuys. &nbsp; Most passionate about What I'm doing now, and I’ve been doing for quite a while, is running a company called It helps companies dominate their markets by leading with the human voice. I've been passionate for a long time about having computers and humans work together in a way that unleashes the strengths of each. Chris’s career and story I was raised out in the desert in Arizona, pretty far away from most people. I was raised by animals—by horses and dogs and cats and goats and all manner of creatures like that. I think that's how I learned how to sell. My first sale ever, where I was successful, was getting a bridle on a horse when I was seven years old. I was very interested in mathematics and the physical sciences. Kerry Wilcox took me aside and said, “I want to let you know something that might change your mind about teaching.” Here I was with this dream of being a teacher. She said to me, “You are an entrepreneur by nature.” “I invest in my former students' companies.” This was all a revelation to me, that she was an angel investor. She said, “You can teach if you want to, but I don't want you to go off into industry, get a job in some field where there's a lot of opportunity.” I reluctantly followed her instructions when I got a job at an NCR computer company in 1979. Sure enough, I was dissatisfied. That led me down a path where, within four years, I was starting my first company. Best advice for entrepreneurs One thing I find that's the number one mistake that entrepreneurs make is that they build the product before they sell the product. I think you should do it the other way around. I highly recommend that any entrepreneur who wants to be a product entrepreneur, especially in B2B, start by having conversations—sales conversations, not survey conversations. If you're not doing it under pressure, you're probably not really doing it. So, try to sell your product before you build it and be serious about it. The biggest, most critical failure with customers I can go back to 1984. The company was called Unison software. Unison was an ERP system before there were ERP systems. So, it was called an MRP II system. It was intended to help primarily manufacturers with their processes around Bilson material and so forth, but it had a complete accounting system in it. The biggest failure was that we could go after two kinds of markets. We had discrete manufacturing folks who put parts together in order to make up a product. And then there was what's called continuous or flow manufacturing. So, there are no parts; there are inputs and outputs and then control conditions and all that kind of stuff. What we failed to do, rather dramatically, was focus on one or the other. We could have done very well. We had impatient investors who drove us down a path that was impossible. It ended up shrinking the software. Biggest success with customers It was in 1998 and I was at a company called Requisite Technology. Requisite had the world's most advanced (at that time) electronic cataloging...

Lisa Staff is a master photographer, former fashion model, and expert interior &amp; exterior designer. She has had success at every turn in her entrepreneurial career due to her ability to connect and understand people on all levels. She embodies the metaphor of meeting people where they are and turning their lemons into lemonade. Deevo is a thought leader, photographer, videographer, blogger, serial entrepreneur, ex-college athlete, former corporate executive, a single father of two promising young ladies, and now an emerging strategy consultant and paid speaker, who is fast making his way as an expert in creating digital architecture to help small businesses and entrepreneurs’ brand and market. In 2018, Lisa &amp; Deevo founded Sprout Connectors, a full service creative agency with a focus on social media management and content storytelling. They mix an efficient blend of content savvy with a relentless creative lavishness and depth of imagination to serve up an inspiring brand community. &nbsp; Most passionate about Business-wise, I am running my photography agency, which I've been doing since 2003. About a year and a half ago, Lisa and I partnered and formed a new business called Sprout Connectors. It’s a branding and marketing acceleration agency for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We are also launching some training workshops, working on a TED Talk proposal, and traveling the planet as much as we can, given the closures all over the place. We’re just trying to live our life. Best advice for entrepreneurs First and foremost, as it pertains to your customer perspective, you must develop, if you haven't already, the ability to listen. There’s a fine line between adding your own unique twist and approach to things and melding that metaphorically with what your client wants out of the situation, being able to look at that intuitively and intraoperatively and clearly understanding what their vision is, what their business objective is. At the core of that, you need to be able to read the room and understand that everyone you engage with is uniquely qualified and uniquely different in their own sense. The biggest, most critical failure with customers For me, it's the ego piece. As a business owner. If you can't tell, I'm very firm on my approach to everything. I have very specific ideas about how things should function. And because I've had a decent amount of success in my businesses, I come to the table sometimes thinking that I know the way to do things. That's really just my ego talking. Biggest success with customers The accomplishment is the fact that we've been in business collectively for over 20 years and we've launched a new brand together. In our first year of business, we were already profitable. Being able to pivot into a new business model, adjust that, and have an impact right away with our clients was a big success for me. Still having the understanding and humility that we have a lot of room to grow and being able to do that has been monumental in my business. Lisa &amp; Deevo’s recommendation of a tool I use HoneyBook for my photography business. We use it for onboarding as well. It's CRM and workflow software that you integrate with your back-of-the-house procedures. Contact information, databases, email systems—any way that you communicate with your clients, not only does it enable you to track it and keep an inventory log of your conversations, history, contracts, all that sort of stuff,...

Patrick B. Parker is an accomplished Tech Executive turned Founder with domestic and international experience in operations, custom software development, multichannel product distribution, and marketing involving both start-up and growth operations. He has bootstrapped companies he founded to millions ($MM) in ARR and has raised venture capital to build out teams, to refine product features and user experiences, and to execute go-to-market (GTM) strategies. Today, his company works with amazing entrepreneurs that are looking to make a major impact within their industry. Thoroughbred Solutions helps clients with everything from business ideation to product/service development to building scalable marketing strategies and everything in between. &nbsp; Most passionate about I'm extremely, deeply involved in Software As A Service. I love technology and Those are definitely my passions, but my purpose is really helping young entrepreneurs and brain builders with building out their businesses—helping to make them successful and to de-risk the process. Patrick’s career and story I was a software architect before launching my own business. Then I started building out entreprise software, web apps, mobile apps, things of that nature. From there, I got into branding business building as well, being involved on the software side. We've gone above and beyond to bring in experts and all of the various functional domains so that we have that expertise in-house. Best advice for entrepreneurs The biggest thing is to just start now. Start having those conversations with people in your target audience. Start understanding what challenges they're facing and then what possible solutions might look like. The biggest, most critical failure with customers We've had one customer, out of several hundred, that has opted to leave and go work somewhere else. The struggles I've had have not been with customers as much as with market conditions. As a serial entrepreneur, starting businesses from a young age, I've failed a lot. It’s been more about being able to bring on capital or manage cashflow—things of that nature. Biggest success with customers I've launched a ton of different ventures. The first one, I launched as a side hustle was a staffing company. I grew it to a million in revenue within the first year. That allowed me to have the seed capital to start my next venture, which was a software development company. That has probably been my greatest success story. My greatest personal success, or the greatest reward, that I see is being able to help my clients and customers realize their dreams. Patrick’s recommendation of a tool CRM HubSpot It helps you track that customer. It helps you create touchpoints around that customer's experience and journey. Patrick’s one key success factor The biggest thing, especially when we're working with clients, is that there's so much noise going on in the world about what works and what doesn't work. We stress to clients that they need to understand that no two entrepreneurial journeys are the same. It's the same for your backstory as it is for your roadmap of where you're going. At SAS Partners, we use proven frameworks to help entrepreneurs focus on the activities that are...

Mark Colgan is an entrepreneur and revenue leader responsible for increasing revenue across a small portfolio of companies where he leverages his 13 years experience of B2B Sales, Marketing and Recruitment. Mark currently splits his time as Co-founder of Speak On Podcasts, mentoring B2B Startups via GrowthMentor and ScaleWise, The Product Onboarders and coaching 100’s of SDR’s through his Outbound Prospecting and Cold Email Bootcamp course via The Sales Impact Academy. He’s a Techstars 18′ Alumni and a regular speaker within the B2B SaaS industry, his work has been published by SaaStock, Mailshake, Pipedrive, LeadSift, Lemlist, SugarCRM and Baremetrics to name a few. Mark currently lives and works from Lisbon, is addicted to travelling and exploring new cultures and places. You’ll often hear him saying “por que no?” (why not?) to anything that sounds fun or gets the heart racing like wingwalking, skydiving and paramotoring. &nbsp; Most passionate about We are building an agency, which is completely remote. And we're in the podcasting world. We help people secure interviews on relevant podcasts so they can get their brand message out there and build awareness about that. Mark’s career and story I studied marketing at university, but as part of my degree, we had to work for one year in a company. I actually got a job in recruitment and I did so well in that year that I was invited back to the company once I graduated. I spent the first two to three years of my career in recruitment, working for some of the largest recruitment companies. I started to teach myself digital marketing because it was all very new back then. I managed to get a role in a separate company as the first digital marketing person. So, I got very good at implementing CRMs and marketing automation, as well as a lot of the technology and putting that all together. I realized, once I was traveling, that I didn't really want to go back to a nine-to-five job. I enjoyed the freedom. And I enjoyed the ability to be able to travel and work from wherever I wanted. So, I set up my own consultancy, focusing on HubSpot CRM and marketing automation, all of the things I love building together – building things and putting them together. I managed to be invited to work for a company as their chief revenue officer, which meant essentially that I was looking after marketing sales, customer success, and product. In this case, the product was the service. I did that for just over a year which brings us up to June 2020, when I left that company to start speaking on podcasts. This is the agency that I currently focus and spend most of my time on now. Best advice for entrepreneurs I’ll split my answer into two parts, but it's pretty much the same answer: Focus on the customer. What I mean by that is to really understand who it is that you are going to be working with. What are their problems and their challenges, and can you build a solution to help them overcome some of those challenges and problems? The second part is to then think about distribution. What I mean by distribution is how you can get in front of as many of those ideal customers, whom you’ve defined, as possible. The biggest, most critical failure with customers My most critical failure would be not focusing on the client delivery part of the business. It's one thing to market and sell to people. It's another thing to actually deliver on the promise that was sold. I've been in situations where I wasn't focusing on that because it wasn't really supposed to be part of my job, but then I...

From homeless to hero, Michael Unbroken, is the Founder of Think Unbroken, best-selling author, award-winning speaker, podcast host, coach, and advocate for adult survivors of childhood. Since 2016, Michael has empowered over 100,000 trauma survivors to get out of The Vortex, learn to love themselves, and become the hero of their own story. Michael has written multiple books including the best seller Think Unbroken: Understanding and Overcoming Childhood Trauma, spoken in over 80 countries, won investments from Undercover Billionaire Grant Cardone, and is on a mission to end Generational Trauma in his lifetime. About Think Unbroken: Our mission is to empower trauma survivors with the tools and curriculum of Think Unbroken to get unstuck, learn to love themselves, get "Out of The Vortex" and reclaim their power. We believe that by creating palatable and practical tools that Trauma Warriors around the world can overcome their past, heal from trauma, and BECOME THE HERO OF THEIR OWN STORY! &nbsp; Most passionate about One of the two biggest things that I'm moving toward right now is having the number one mental health and personal development podcast on the planet. The other biggest goal is to be in the best physical, mental, and emotional shape of my life this year. Michael’s career and story I spent the majority of my childhood being homeless and deeply in poverty. I started doing drugs when I was 12 years old. I was expelled from school when I was 15 years old and I spent a lot. As I headed into my later teen years, I thought about life from the perspective of “What is the solution for poverty? What is the solution for abuse?” “How does somebody really get out of this?” I decided it must be money. So, I made a decision that I would chase money, but do it legally. I started learning skills. I started learning leadership. I started learning how to be productive with my time. I started learning how to manage cash flow and P&amp;Ls and inventories. And I worked for a fast-food restaurant. At 18 and a half, almost 19 years old, I had 52 employees underneath me. So, I started learning about legit business. In a couple of years, I was working for a Fortune 10 company here in America. No high school diploma, no college education. I started making six figures. That just destroyed my life because money is not the solution to your problems. And, in that, one of the most beautiful things happened. I remember I was lying in bed the next day, eating chocolate cake and watching the CrossFit games. And I'm like, “Hold on, something here is not right. There's something really wrong with everything in my life.” I went into the bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror, and asked myself, “What are you willing to do to have the life that you want to have?” And the answer was “no excuses, just results.” It started me on this beautiful journey where now, 11 years later, I am talking to you. That has been a process of healing, of discovery, of therapy and coaching, and education and investing in myself, investing in my community and my businesses. Best advice for entrepreneurs If I were an entrepreneur at the beginning of this, if I rewound my life 15 years, the first thing that I would tell myself is, “You need to learn to be okay asking for money. You need to put yourself in a position where you move through the discomfort of not valuing yourself for what you are. Charge what you are worth.” In that, because it is a trade-off, you have to bring massive value to your customer. You have to take care of them. You have to be their best friend. You have to follow through. You have to do what you say that...

Robyn Johnson has been heralded as one of the country's foremost leaders on the topic of selling and marketing products on Amazon.com. Robyn has been a guest on shows like Entrepreneur on Fire, Confessions of A Marketer, and is a SEMrush Academy professor. Robyn is the co-founder of Marketplace Blueprint, a digital agency that specializes in listing optimization and advertising on Amazon. She has over a decade of experience of selling online on Amazon, eBay, and other eCommerce venues. &nbsp; Most passionate about I get to help people who have physical products market those products on Amazon. We have an agency that helps run the ads and does the listings for people. I'm also really passionate about Disney, Star Wars, and my kids. We try to squeeze in as much travel and adventures and board games as we can. Robyn’s career and story I had no intention of doing this. I had no marketing experience about 11-plus years ago. I was working in a church but you don't get paid a lot and my son got sick. There was a moment when they were testing him and I knew that the test was going to cost a certain amount. I took a hundred dollars out of our emergency fund. I can still remember the five twenties in my hand. It felt like a million dollars. We started buying things at garage sales and then reselling them on Craigslist. From that hundred dollars, we built a million-dollar business selling physical products on Amazon. We moved from buying used items to buying things in retail stores to wholesale. I started coaching other high-volume Amazon sellers and we realized what a big problem Amazon was for brands. About five years ago, we started our agency. Now we get to work with brands that are “Shark Tank”-size companies and some publicly traded companies. Best advice for entrepreneurs When you're looking at customer approach, make sure that you're offering what your customers really want. Make sure you're really keyed in to what's going on in your buyer's mind. Don't try to skip steps. Enjoy each moment. The biggest, most critical failure with customers The thing that set us back the most was related to cash flow. I hired somebody who was supposed to manage our cash flow but I wasn't monitoring it well enough and it got us in some trouble. Then it took us quite a long time to get out of it. And it added a lot of stress. It made the business very much not fun for a long period of time. Biggest success with customers The biggest success is when we've gone out of our way to provide off-Amazon connections or use the resources in our network to help other sellers. There was a publicly-traded company that had worked with an agency previously. They're a large company, so they had significant sales on Amazon. By communicating what changes we needed to make and reassessing and changing their approach to their ads on Amazon, we were able to grow their year-over-year sales by 118%. That extra revenue helped them get another round of investment that netted $40 million for the company. Robyn’s recommendation of a tool If you have a physical product, go to your product on Amazon and your competitors' products on Amazon. Look at your website, then review their website and reviews. Copy and paste all of them in Google Word Cloud. Robyn’s one key success factor My key success factor is...

Among all the challenges entrepreneurs are facing getting more clients is the challenge that is mentioned most. Customers are the oxygen of any business. And yet, we often think about getting customers and sales as a given. Surprisingly, in most cases, focus on getting more customers to grow your business is much easier than most entrepreneurs think. But often, they prefer to focus on finding a cheaper manufacturer or making changes in the product, or replacing the team rather than increase their leads and customer base. Why? Probably because customers’ marketing and sales are something most business owners are not certain of. They are not aware of the speed and volume of growth they can get through focus on the right customers to generate more leads, and sales In today’s episode, I chose to focus on the stories of three successful entrepreneurs who realized that focusing on the customer is the easiest and fastest way to win. &nbsp; Karl Maier: “The customer is critical. One of my mentors said, many years ago, that nothing happens until you sell something. So, obviously, that starts with the customer.” Karl Maier has been part of the leadership team in six established companies which have at least doubled sales in two years. Leveraging his successes, Karl developed the Abunden Framework© and led the development of the practical management tools in the Abunden Tools App. These online SaaS (Software as a Service) tools build the management structure for companies to grow and succeed. &nbsp; Karl’s best advice for entrepreneurs The customer is critical. One of my mentors said, many years ago, that nothing happens until you sell something. So, obviously, that starts with the customer. I think the principal is to talk to a number of different potential customers and really understand what their problem is. Can you solve it in a way that they're willing to pay for? That's the most fundamental part of starting a business, in my mind. Then you have the option to be Hands-on all the pieces of the company, but that limits your growth, or are you willing to transform and delegate it to other people to grow the company? I think that’s a very fundamental choice, one that I would encourage people to reflect on and decide which way they really want to go. The biggest, most critical failure with customers My first software startup was during the dot-com boom. Everybody said, “Technology is going to solve all the problems.” I think I got sucked into that and I really didn't understand my customers. I was ignoring how the products were actually bought and sold. In the end, the company failed because of that. So that's a lesson. We remember failures better than our wins, I think. Biggest success with customers We had a service company in the health safety industry. I was part of the C-suite management team. And we really did build a team. There was great communication and connection. People respected each other. They worked hard and were able to really understand what our customer's problem was. High-value people were getting malaria and getting sick. We were able to come in and cut their malaria rate in half the first year and then half again the second year. So we clearly were solving their problem. We were able to come in and solve a problem, do it effectively. We were able to grow the company. We grew it in four years by a factor of seven. &nbsp; <table...

There are a few reasons why so many entrepreneurs fail, and around 90% of the entrepreneurships fail. However, many of the most successful entrepreneurs I interviewed for my podcast told me the same thing; Keep going. Only those who quit fail. In today’s episode, I chose to focus on the stories of three successful entrepreneurs. The main reason for their success was their state of mind; no matter what happened and how big the failures they experienced were, they never ever gave up until they succeeded. I think you will find those stories very inspiring. Brian Roland: “A lot of failures look like trial and error. It's an iterative process. It kind of hits the failure category but we learned so much through the process that it's hard to see it as a failure.” Brian Roland is a Social Entrepreneur and Founder of Abenity, the 6x Inc. 5000 Company that’s powering corporate perks for top brands including U.S. Bank and MasterCard. And while Abenity provides millions of subscribers with private discounts, the company’s social mission is fighting extreme poverty with every program they deliver. Abenity recently exceeded a million dollars of total giving and hired a CEO to accelerate growth with their fully remote team. Brian lives in Scottsdale with his wife and 3 daughters and is investing his time in efforts that help like-minded entrepreneurs establish a social mission of their own. &nbsp; Most passionate about In 2006, my brother and I built a SAS company (software as a service) that helps large corporations offer employee perks and benefits to their people. We've negotiated discounts on everything from pizza and the zoo to movie tickets, oil changes, car rentals, and hotels. We put it all in one spot for our clients and brand it to look like the company and the employees saved coupons all over the United States and travel offers across the world where they can enjoy special corporate perks. When we founded our business, we really wanted to stand for something outside of our industry. So, we built our business with a social mission. There was an output to our cause for every input into the business. That is what gives me the most passion and mission at this point in my career. Brian’s career and story As a third-grader, I was making laminated folders because my folders would tear apart. I started playing the trumpet when I was young. It teaches you to be the entrepreneurial solo artist, where you're running the show and everybody's looking at you. It teaches you to be a team player, where you're sitting in the symphony and blending in so that nobody notices your contribution, but they hear it, they see everything. That led to teaching trumpet lessons, which led to making a CD and moving to Nashville to go to school, which led me to sell cell phones—having the a-ha moment that the music industry is actually not that entrepreneurial. In that role, I discovered this gap: Companies would love to offer perks and benefits to their people but they had a hard time finding the perks to offer and vetting the purchase to make sure they were good. That's how we built Abenity. We've probably built five or six businesses inside of it. This is what led me, two years ago, to realize that the business had grown to a certain level of maturity where the number of businesses that I could launch within Abenity reached its peak in terms of what the team could have accomplished in a healthy way. There was this moment...

Miriam Schulman is an artist, author and founder of The Inspiration Place and The Artists Incubator Coaching Program where she helps artists (from amateurs to professionals) develop their skills, tap into their creativity, and grow thriving art businesses. Her podcast, The Inspiration Place, is on the top 1% of all podcasts globally and is listened to in over 40 countries. Miriam has been featured in Forbes and has been a guest on numerous podcasts. Her art has been featured in The New York Times, Art of Man, and Art Journaling magazine by Stampington, as well as seen on NBC’s “Parenthood” and the Amazon series “Hunters'' with Al Pacino. Her forthcoming book on how to “make it” as an artist is scheduled to be published with HarperCollins Leadership in February 2023. &nbsp; Most passionate about I have been working on a book for Harper Collins. It's a traditionally published book. I've been writing a book called Artprenuer to help artists learn how to earn a sustainable living from their creativity. Miriam’s career and story I wanted to be an artist when I was young. When I left college, I figured, “Well, if I have to make money from what I'm doing, where can I make the most money?” So, I went to work on Wall Street instead. It took me a while, even after I had that awakening, to realize that, yes, I could turn my art, my painting, into a sustainable living. It was about 20 years ago that I started down this path, truly learning how to apply those marketing skills. It was about not just becoming good at my craft and becoming good at art, but also becoming good at being an entrepreneur. I got involved online. First, I was selling my artwork online. Then, in 2012, I started teaching online art classes. Best advice for entrepreneurs What I've taken from that time when I was on Wall Street and that I still use now, which I feel is critical in everything I do and for every business, is focusing on customer experience. I think of every touchpoint that happens along the customer experience and pay attention to that. You need to make sure you're building customers rather than just focusing on sales. The biggest, most critical failure with customers There are two that I'm going to offer. The first one is not building an email list from the very beginning. I had so many sales and I couldn't imagine a time when I wouldn't have that stream of customers coming to me, so I didn't build an email list. Another thing is something that a lot of us have to work on overtime, and that is understanding how to price your offerings with an abundance mindset, not a scarcity mindset. It’s about understanding that customers are not always looking for the cheapest price. There are many times when not only will customers be suspicious if the price is too low, but they also prefer to pay more money. Biggest success with customers I would love to tell you a story about one of my clients. I took her through this process. When my client Fay came to me in 2020, in the last year she had lost her job during the pandemic and was going through a divorce. She was a painter and had two children. She could turn her creativity into a full-time job. But the problem was that she was pricing her art at $50 per painting—and, in fact, sometimes less. We had to work together to build her mindset and teach her that it

Khaled Maziad is a marketing consultant who specializes in the Psychology of persuasion and high-ticket sales. He helps coaches transform their uncharged-non-monetary offer into a high-ticket one without having Tony Robbins like Brand. He shares his story on struggling to give away his stuff for free to charging high-ticket offers and helping his clients from all around the world do the same. He is known as the Copy &amp; Messaging Alchemist. He has been featured in FOX as one of 21 Entrepreneurs You Need to Know About in 2021. He has also been featured in ANLP, Fox, CBS &amp; NBC. Khaled is a professional member of ANLP International CIC, a certified Master of NLP, and holds a degree in Civil Engineering. Before becoming marketing, Khaled worked with traders and professional fund managers, helping them master their mental edge in trading and life. He also had over 15 years of experience as a Project manager, where he managed multi-million dollar projects on 3 continents. Khaled lives with his wife and two kids in Sydney, Australia. &nbsp; Most passionate about We focus on what we call transformation – transformational entrepreneurs or transformational cultures. We specialize in helping people make their email entertaining and persuasive, in a way that helps them feel their products. Khaled’s career and story I started as a civil engineer many years ago. It had nothing to do with marketing or anything like that. I was working as a site engineer and had a project manager who was very influential and charismatic. He knew how to manage people. When they chose someone to manage the project, they didn't go with someone who was just an expert. They chose someone who was a leader, someone who could manage. This is something that helped me when I started. When I became an entrepreneur, I was doing something called trading psychology. I was helping people trade in the stock market. Best advice for entrepreneurs The biggest advices I have for entrepreneurs is about one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs often make. You can't go against the market. You can't fight against it. You need to clearly know what they want and then give it to them. The biggest, most critical failure with customers One of them was not testing offers before validating them. I worked on a product once that I was perfecting and I didn't show it to anyone. I didn't get any feedback. I didn't ask anyone if they wanted it or not. I worked for about a month on it. When I put it out there, no one even cared about it. The tool was a really big failure. Biggest success with customers We had a product that helped people by working on their messaging. We did a beta test first at a lower price, just to test how it worked. When we took a small group for the beta test, we were surprised that the people got value from the test. When we published the course and pushed the program, some of the beta testers asked to pay full price. Khaled’s recommendation of a tool The best tool is more about how to do market research. There are many forums out there. Khaled’s one key success factor You need to believe in what you're doing. You need to believe that you will succeed. &nbsp; Khaled’s Mountain Since we believe that the...

Mark Lachance is a serial entrepreneur, strategic thinker, and investor. He possesses a deep understanding of blitzscaling companies. Having owned and operated several businesses that have experienced hypergrowth through creative business development and lead generation, he is a master of sales and marketing and continues to apply and grow his expertise through current projects. Mark is currently the CEO and lead investor of Maxy Media Inc., one of the largest TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, and Google Display Network performance marketing agencies in the world. Currently, Maxy Media is the number one advertiser in terms of monthly spend on the TikTok platform in Canada and top ten in North America. In 2016, Mark successfully sold EVO Payments International Canada, an end-to-end payment solutions provider and merchant acquirer which he founded in 2009. He guided the company from its inception with one employee to over 200 employees across Canada.  Prior to founding EVO, Mark was one of the founding members and president of VersaPay Inc, a payments solutions provider, which was taken public in 2010. Before joining VersaPay, Mark was a founding member of Pivotal Payments, which is now a multi-billion-dollar public company. He helped set the foundation and drive the company's sales and revenues before his successful exit from the company in 2006.  Mark has made several other highly successful investments in various industries such as payments, cryptocurrencies, marketing, nutrition, fitness, and sports. Over the past twenty-five years, he has invested in and consulted for dozens of other ventures, which have resulted in highly positive returns. Mark speaks and travels the world with his wife, Sonya, and their two boys. &nbsp; Most passionate about I've just launched a book called The Lucky Formula. I also run a digital media agency. Mark’s career and story I went to a university in Boston. Right after school, there weren't a lot of great opportunities. So, I had to go to work with my father in construction. I absolutely hated that. I got into sports and was a sports agent for about seven or eight years. It was a lot of fun. I represented professional ice hockey players. I started a company in Boston. Then, I was able to get clientele all across Canada. I had four successful exits in the payment space. Sandwiched in between there was an unsuccessful venture in real estate, a colossal failure. From there, I got into the digital media space. We've grown from two employees – myself and my business partner – to over 350. We're going to hit this year. We're targeting 50 million in revenue. We want to grow this to a billion-dollar valuation in the next two to three years. Best advice for entrepreneurs If you want to scale your business, my biggest advice is, and I learned this myself the hard way, is “don't fall into the trap.” You don't need to be the smartest person in every department and everywhere. You should hire the smartest people to do what you're not the best at. Stay in your lane. The biggest, most critical failure with customers Back in 2006, I was fresh off an exit from one of the companies that I was a founder of and that I was able to sell. I was able to sit on millions of dollars. I mistakenly took those millions and plowed them into real estate. I remember exactly where I was in 2008, with the financial collapse. You remember the real estate marketplace. I intelligently, at that time, rolled all of my money. I basically put all my chips on red. It went

My name is Parham Albadvi. I’m a copywriter and brand strategist serving conscious businesses. I spent my formative years in Iran and moved to Canada eager to work for purpose-driven tech and B2B companies, but soon became disillusioned… I love working with conscious entrepreneurs - people who share my values and vision for the world. Clients that I feel energetically aligned with, and who believe in making profit and impact. That’s why together with my partner, I founded Mocho and Co, the first full-service digital agency exclusively for conscious businesses and disruptors. I’m committed to helping businesses of all sizes realize Fred Kofman’s vision of businesses “conscious of inner and outer worlds… taking into account body, mind and spirit in self, culture, and nature.” But we can't do it alone. We need a vibrant community of conscious, aligned entrepreneurs - people like you, who know their skills are better served somewhere else... somewhere they haven't found yet. &nbsp; Most passionate about I'm leading Mocho and Co, which is an integrative digital agency serving conscious businesses—businesses that truly see business as a force for good. At this point in our journey, we are taking a reflective break for December to think about how we've served our customers so far and how we'd like to serve them moving forward. We're at the stage of reflecting and taking more conscious action forward rather than taking many steps forward in December. Parham’s career and story I was a lost 20-year-old boy who had just graduated university and had a lot of passion. I wanted to work for technology companies, and in my university years, I had been in the sales and marketing world. Initially, I wanted to be more independent in my own business. I wanted to determine my own schedule. I wanted to visit my family that I had back home and in Europe. From there, I noticed that working in corporate was not a long-term solution for me. So, I initially had that itch of going completely freelance and starting my own business and building from scratch. I started with freelancing, taking on clients that were in the conscious space and that were using business as a force for good. After seeing them coming back to us with stories about how they'd been able to grow their business from 10K to 40K per month, and above and beyond, we were really motivated to serve as an extension of their marketing team to be growth partners. That's what shifted into me starting Mocho and Co. Best advice for entrepreneurs I think it comes down to taking conscious steps forward as an entrepreneur and realizing that you can't do everything—rather, really putting out the most minimum viable product that can make the maximum impact. The biggest, most critical failure with customers I don’t personally view it as a failure, but I do think at the time it was easy to label it as a failure. One that comes to my mind was when I was working at Vidyard. I was doing business development at the time and I noticed that, for a lot of our prospects whom I was reaching out to, I was not getting a high conversion on the outreach. What I noticed was the power of personalization and your approaches—not approaching customers to sell anything, but just approaching them to add value. Value itself will play a big role in your relationship with a potential customer. You need to develop that relationship and build that trust rather than always looking at it as a transactional relationship. Biggest success with customers

Tim Cakir is a growth consultant who helps companies, entrepreneurs and students achieve fast and consistent growth. Working with 17 startups to date, some of his best achievements include helping two startups receiving 1.7 million euros in Horizon 2020 funding, increasing MRR of one startup from $80k to $300k in less than 18 months and completing projects such as implementation of OKRs, building company dashboards, rebranding and product launches. In addition to that, Tim’s passion for helping people realize their potential to bring their ideas to life means that he also teaches Bachelor and Masters programs at two universities in Barcelona, ESEI International Business School Barcelona and Geneva Business School. &nbsp; Most passionate about I'm very passionate about education at the moment. About 30% of my professional time, I dedicate to teaching. I teach in two master's programs in two different universities. I usually teach around digital marketing, online growth, and some business intelligence. I really love any kind of high-tech, deep-tech startup, trying to solve some of the problems that must be solved by technology. That's where my passion lies. Tim’s career and story When I was about 17 or 18, in California, I sold Turkish and Persian-made carpets. It was a bit of telesales, a bit of door-to-door sales, trying to book appointments with people who visited Turkey before. In California, I would visit them and try to sell them carpets. This was, I think, my first business venture. When I moved to London, I really got into creative marketing, media marketing. I helped a few publishing companies digitalize their magazine offerings from the offline world to the digital world. That's where I switched myself, big time, to digital marketing. I was lucky enough, about five or six years ago, to move to Barcelona, Spain, where I'm residing right now. I became a sound engineer. I studied media production, concentrating on audio technologies, and found myself in the music world, which was always a passion. Best advice for entrepreneurs My biggest tip would be to focus on the problem. Why does that customer have a problem? What is the problem? Don't be obsessed about the problem, because if you obsess about the problem, the solution will change over time. The solution will get better and better, what you're building. But if you focus a lot on the solution, that's where you're not innovating anymore. You get stuck on the solution that you've already come up with. The biggest, most critical failure with customers I'm going to look at the perspective of when we targeted the wrong customers. In one of the businesses, which was the B2B SAS, we had a technology for e-commerce businesses and targeted the wrong segment. We targeted big e-commerce shops. We were closing deals, but it was very slow. I think the biggest mistake that I've made was not thinking about different customer segments or testing or experimenting with the messaging to different people. Biggest success with customers One of the greatest successes that I was involved with in a company was when some drama happened in the world – actually a major problem around the world. We had an e-commerce and we were setting products in America. There was a bigger movement of Black Lives Matter, as you're aware. We donated some money to certain charities or projects that we believed in. A percentage of our client base suddenly turned a bit racist and we started getting hate messages, hate...

Brian Fritton is the founder of Havoc Shield, which is a cybersecurity program as a service where he brings the founder’s perspective to cybersecurity in an increasingly complicated and risk-filled environment. Brian has built products and led engineering, design, and IT teams at companies with credentials such as Fortune’s 500 Fastest Growing Companies, the Inc. 5000 List, and Entrepreneur’s 100 Most Brilliant Companies. &nbsp; Most passionate about I built Havoc Shield, which is a cybersecurity program as a service. It helps you holistically protect your business from attacks as well as win new business with security-conscious customers like government organizations or larger enterprise businesses. At the beginning of 2020, we went through an accelerator called Techstars and, about this time last year, raised a $1.5 million round. Right now, we are selling primarily into financial services but really our goal is to protect other founders and small business owners. Brian’s career and story I've always been a little bit of a nerd, I guess. I taught myself how to program. I was very fortunate to have a computer pretty early as a child and taught myself how to design websites and to program. I was always very interested in the security side of things. I had a website design and development firm that was doing other websites for small businesses. Through that, I learned how to manage clients, price my products, manage my time, and all of that sort of stuff. Most recently, I started a startup with my brother called Patch of Land, which was a real estate crowdfunding investment business. We took the Kickstarter model of investing fractions, little small amounts and larger projects, and applied that to giving normal people the ability to invest in real estate. We recently sold that business and I moved back to Chicago from Los Angeles, where I was at the time. I took a job with a data science software maker in Chicago. They work very heavily in the political space. When I came on as the VP of engineering, I quickly inherited it and got put in charge of cybersecurity in front of the midterm elections in the States in 2018. Trying to put together a professional cybersecurity program that would protect us and help us win new customers was a really difficult thing to do. I left that job and started Havoc Shield. Best advice for entrepreneurs For a while, we were trying to sell to what I would call Main Street businesses—less technical companies. We explored very technical startups, but more broadly than any one industry and a couple of other things. Don't be afraid to narrow. You want your business to grow and do more. I think the fastest and highest-quality way is by focusing first on a smaller group of people who will love your product and represent your product, whom you can speak very clearly to. The biggest, most critical failure with customers In businesses in the past, I've certainly spent less time than I should have on listening to people whom I want to solve a problem for—understanding how painful the problem that I think I'm solving is for them and what problems they have that are related to it and that may actually be more top of mind for them. Without listening carefully, without interviewing people whom you're trying to serve, it's very difficult to build the right thing. And that is how companies die. Biggest success with customers The managed plan is driven by our internal client success team, which uses a very well-oiled,...

Scott Turman is an IT expert and entrepreneur that has been writing code and cryptographic systems for the last 25 years for the likes of NASA, the Department of Defense, Disney, and other Fortune 500s. He is the founder and CEO of BrightRay Publishing, an all-in-one writing and publishing service for busy entrepreneurs like himself. He lives in Florida with his wife and son. &nbsp; Most passionate about About a year ago, we started a company called BrightRay Publishing. We're the writing partners for CEOs, founders, and anybody trying to build their brand. Typically, the book can be a vector onto podcasts, interviews, and the news. We've been doing this for about a year now. We've hired our ninth employee and things are going swimmingly. Scott’s career and story Twenty-five years ago, I started my career at NASA, as a software engineer. I have a history at NASA. My father was an engineer during Project Mercury, which was America's first foray into space. I started my consulting company. We grew to 25 consultants and that was great. Then, about a year ago, I realized I was sick to death of technology. I was absolutely done with it. I wanted to start something more interesting. I was writing a book on negotiating for nerds – “A Nerd’s Guide to Negotiating.” I'd been trying to write it for 10 years but I just could not get it done. My daughter’s friend was a writer, so we started working together during the pandemic, via Zoom. We got the book done pretty quickly. When I published it, friends asked, “How the heck did you get a book published with how busy you are?” Then someone said, “Hey, would you write my book?” We took the same process. And then we did another one, and another one. And here we are, a year later. Best advice for entrepreneurs At every point in your journey, make sure the customer is first. Entrepreneurially speaking, my advice would be to start now, fail quick. The quicker you get to it, the quicker you understand the challenge. Start all those things that it takes to run a business as quick as possible. Having great ideas and not executing is like not having ideas at all. You have to just start. The biggest, most critical failure with customers In the last 10 years, I started a consulting company called BrightRay Consulting. We would have these projects involving two or three engineers. If you're not trying to please the C-level executives at a company, you're going to fail no matter how happy the senior management is. It's just a matter of time. In the past, I really can't tell you who, but there was a fortune 500 top company, where everybody was just thrilled with us, except the C-level managers. The problem was not reporting correctly. We were not sharing our successes correctly with them. And as a result, we shuttled out of there. Biggest success with customers It was the birth of BrightRay Publishing. We started with one client and then two and then five and then 10. I handled new customers correctly. As a result, we've exploded in growth. Scott’s recommendation of a tool HubSpot It allows you to send emails and have the right people in your house. It's definitely changed my life. I'm able to sleep at night because I know that we're following up. Everybody is notified, and everybody knows where we are at a given moment. ...

Brian Roland is a Social Entrepreneur and Founder of Abenity, the 6x Inc. 5000 Company that’s powering corporate perks for top brands including U.S. Bank and MasterCard. And while Abenity provides millions of subscribers with private discounts, the company’s social mission is fighting extreme poverty with every program they deliver. Abenity recently exceeded a million dollars of total giving and hired a CEO to accelerate growth with their fully remote team. Brian lives in Scottsdale with his wife and 3 daughters and is investing his time in efforts that help like-minded entrepreneurs establish a social mission of their own. &nbsp; Most passionate about In 2006, my brother and I built a SAS company (software as a service) that helps large corporations offer employee perks and benefits to their people. We've negotiated discounts on everything from pizza and the zoo to movie tickets, oil changes, car rentals, and hotels. We put it all in one spot for our clients and brand it to look like the company and the employees saved coupons all over the United States and travel offers across the world where they can enjoy special corporate perks. When we founded our business, we really wanted to stand for something outside of our industry. So, we built our business with a social mission. There was an output to our cause for every input into the business. That is what gives me the most passion and mission at this point in my career. Brian’s career and story As a third-grader, I was making laminated folders because my folders would tear apart. I started playing the trumpet when I was young. It teaches you to be the entrepreneurial solo artist, where you're running the show and everybody's looking at you. It teaches you to be a team player, where you're sitting in the symphony and blending in so that nobody notices your contribution, but they hear it, they see everything. That led to teaching trumpet lessons, which led to making a CD and moving to Nashville to go to school, which led me to sell cell phones—having the a-ha moment that the music industry is actually not that entrepreneurial. In that role, I discovered this gap: Companies would love to offer perks and benefits to their people but they had a hard time finding the perks to offer and vetting the purchase to make sure they were good. That's how we built Abenity. We've probably built five or six businesses inside of it. This is what led me, two years ago, to realize that the business had grown to a certain level of maturity where the number of businesses that I could launch within Abenity reached its peak in terms of what the team could have accomplished in a healthy way. There was this moment when it was like our business didn’t need an entrepreneur anymore. It needed people to help execute and set standards and focus on growth. Those are areas that fell outside of my passion areas. So, there was time to put the right people in place to take the business to the next level. And that's what we did. Today I'm kind of the chief evangelist for the brand, which allows me to be available here talking to you. Best advice for entrepreneurs As an entrepreneur, you're really in a testing experimental process all the time. This means you have to be really sensitive to what is, and isn't, working. You have to be really present to what people's needs are. Part of the discovery process of becoming an entrepreneur is looking for gaps and thinking, ‘How can I fill that gap? How can I bridge that gap?’ Wherever you are, you're looking for gaps. That's the makings of entrepreneurship. When you see a gap, how do you fill it? Think about how to fill it and

There are a few reasons why so many entrepreneurs fail. I believe that lack of marketing is the biggest one. And that’s also what entrepreneurs think. According to CBInsight Post-Mortem research, 42% of the entrepreneurs who failed said the number one reason for their failure was ‘No market need.’ Finding the market need is, as I see it, the first and most important role of marketing. It always starts there. It’s all about where is the biggest market opportunity at the current stage of the company. Any company. Otherwise, you might try to go in the wrong direction. OK. Let’s admit it. What would you say if I asked you what is marketing? You would probably tell me it’s lead generation, social media, building a brand, or the like. And you are right. &nbsp; Marketing is everything you need to do to get customers and build your brand. In order to succeed in doing so, you need two things. First, you need to understand who your target audience - your potential customers are... Second, comes the most important law of marketing; The law of Focus. There is an old legend about a farmer that went to the market and bought a golden hoe. This hoe has the power of digging 100 holes in the ground. So the farmer took the hoe and drilled one hundred small holes all over his farm. Instead, he could use the golden hoe to dig in one place, and then he would have a deep excavation where he could build a swimming pool or another room to his house. The same is with marketing activities; you can try and do hundred different activities to different audiences with different messages, and you will get zero effect. But you can do a few larger activities for your most potential customers with the correct message and create a most successful company and brand. In our episode today, I chose to focus on three entrepreneurs that chose to focus on one direction and won the game. Michael Nemeroff saved the financial future of the family and says: “We do one thing—quickly. That’s our success.” It called focus! Michael Nemeroff is the CEO and co-founder of RushOrderTees, a fast growing eCommerce custom t-shirt printing and apparel company. Founded in 2002 when Michael was only 17 with his brother and sister, RushOrderTees specializes in screen printing and embroidering services for everyone from teams to small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. Over the past 18 years, the company has focused on the customer experience by streamlining the entire process with its innovative design studio, incredible service, and the quickest deliveries in the industry. &nbsp; Michael’s career and story This is probably the third business that I started. It was like a combination of being on the computer, being a fast typer, and getting lucky that my brother took the first design course, didn’t want to do his homework, and gave it to me. I turned it into affiliate marketing. I had a need to make money because that’s what we needed to survive. My dad was kind of done, shutting down his business with my mom and Ben, his friend said to him, “You’re a great sales guy. Come on the road with me door to door. We’ll sell shirts to pizza shops and restaurants. I’ll show you exactly how it works, where to get the shirts, where to get them printed, and you can be making money this week.” Initially, my dad didn’t have the mindset to do it but then my brother pushed him to do it. And he actually got in the car with them. In the first two days, they sold three different places. I think it was like making about $1,500. I launched a website...

Michael Cannavo started his career on social media. He was able to infuse his own understanding of viral content, social platforms, and demographic interests into Super73, causing it to accelerate the growth and visibility of the company. As the company grew, so did his social media presence. With 500,000 followers online, Michael has been able to pull back the curtain on what life is like within Super73, how the company has succeeded, and where it is going next. &nbsp; Most passionate about My passion comes from creating things that haven't been created. Whether that's through marketing or products, it's all about bringing something new to the table and looking at it with a fresh set of eyes. Michael’s career and story We founded Super73 back in 2016. It was built on the ashes of a couple of failed businesses. It was about finding the right product for the right time. Here we are five years later. We just crossed over a hundred employees. Over the last year, we've been working to release new products that fit more parents and grandparents—kind of expand that range. Right now we're seeing anyone from 14 years old up to 94 years old. It's been a blast. Best advice for entrepreneurs I think our connection to the customer has helped us. We sell directly to the consumer. We don't go through dealerships or retail stores too much. One of the biggest things that have benefited our company is that we actually hire from the community. So, we hire customers all the time. The biggest, most critical failure with customers I think it’s a matter of really understanding what they want. Early on, we had this idea of what we wanted to do, and we kept trying to insist to our customers, “Hey, this is what you want. This is the product for you.” We were missing a few key features. We heard that directly from the customers and I think it has really changed the way that we view our products, from designing to prototyping to testing it. We really engage with the customers now. Biggest success with customers We recently released a bike called the ZX. It's not necessarily too remarkable of a product, but it is a perfect product for a demographic that was asking for it for a long time. We really took into account what customers were saying in the comment sections, what they were saying on reviews. That really created something so magical because it was exactly what our customer was looking for. When we released that bike, it was positivity across the board. Everybody was so happy. The customers were happy. Our design team was happy. Michael’s recommendation of a tool One of the biggest tools that have worked for us has been our engagement on social media, downloading all of the apps. I wanted to grow our TikTok presence. TikTok is an app that is primarily for Gen Z. It's about 94-95% Gen Z. Michael’s one key success factor I would say it is our ability to understand where we've misstepped. It's our ability to go back to the drawing board and say, “Hey, we could have done this better.” What I love about this company is that there are no egos here. It's this constant evolution of growth. And I think that has been a massive success factor in our company. Anybody can come in with any idea. And it's a valid idea that we're willing to listen to. &nbsp; <span

Yaro Starak is the co-founder of InboxDone dot com, an email management company with a team of 25+ serving clients including restaurant owners, venture capitalists, accountants, doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, car retailers, online coaches and more. Yaro has made 30+ angel investments in tech startups including Steezy, LeadIQ, Fluent Forever, FitBod and Nutrisense, has property investments in Canada and Ukraine, and in partnership built a 3.6MW solar farm. During the mid-2000s Yaro sold his first company, BetterEdit.com, then built an online education business, Blog Mastermind, selling over $2 Million of his books and online courses, as he traveled the world, living in 26 different cities. Yaro has been featured in SkyNews, Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Huffington Post, Business Insider, Foundr and hundreds of media outlets and events. &nbsp; Most passionate about I'm passionate about my own company right now, InboxDone. I'm also passionate about angel investing, which is something I've done more of recently. It's exposure to great ideas and great people. I have a podcast as well. I love doing podcast interviews with exciting and interesting people. Yaro’s career and story When I was 18 years old, I entered university. It was the dot-com boom. I already knew I don’t want to have a job, a boss, an alarm clock that would force me to wake up at a certain time, a cap on my income potential. I just wasn't sure how to make enough money to survive given that I didn't want those things. So, I knew that entrepreneurship was the likely path. With the dot-com boom happening and me entering university, I was given access to the internet. I was constantly exposed to ideas on digital space. So, I started a website. It was more of a hobby about a card game I played called Magic: The Gathering. I made some money from advertising. Eventually, I had a little e-commerce store selling the cards and learned a lot. After graduation, I started what I call my first real business. It was called Better Edit and it was an academic editing service that grew into a full-time income for me. Most importantly, it was a digital business that I could travel with. Basically, I could do what I had always dreamed about—not have a boss, live where I wanted, and be independent. Best advice for entrepreneurs Even today, with our current business, it’s about the customer and figuring out not just what they want, but the psychology behind how they're dealing with that problem. You have to actually meet your customers where they are, then present information that gets their attention. Secondarily, you have to present an alternative pattern or way of doing something to solve their problems. The biggest, most critical failure with customers I had a company that I didn't mention in the story because it was a failure. It was an advertising management company that I started as a proper startup. I got two co-founders and we were attempting to essentially build a platform that would help us. We started building a software platform but I didn't really realize and understand what the customer base needed. They were just so far away from being capable of doing that. Ultimately, we couldn't help them solve the problems and we didn't have a workable business. Biggest success with customers To me, meeting the need of helping the customer break free and delegating is the biggest customer success. Talking about the business too. It's not always the nuts...

Serioja Glorie is an enthusiastic Serial entrepreneur. He has a wealth of knowledge on e-commerce that can be quite beneficial to every business owner. His automation service journey started because of his personal success &amp; demands by others to tread similar paths that yield positive results. He broke a lot of barriers and utilized an ever-evolving landscape that has helped to grow and establish a new formula. Serioja has launched the first Multi-Market Automation Service and thereby proffering solutions to problems that are encountered by entrepreneurs. &nbsp; Most passionate about I'm basically trying to provide the freedom of financial independence. It's financial freedom, which we try to provide through e-commerce. E-commerce automation means you can own your own e-commerce store on Amazon or Walmart without having to manage it or handle it. Sergei’s career and story I've been a salesperson my whole life. Really, I was a door-to-door salesman. I was an insurance salesman. I was a car salesman. I had tens of companies, if not a hundred companies, little startups that I was always trying. I sold LED screens. I was in construction, myself, working in construction. I tried real estate. I didn't want to think about money or success anymore. I wanted to think about filling my emptiness inside. So, I packed my stuff and moved to Thailand. I started a kebab business. I started wine distribution. I mean, I had my own club. There were so many things I tried. And so many things still didn't work for me. I tried the MLM thing too, which obviously didn't work. It brought me to Forex trading. Finally, I started to take a break from Forex trading and opened my very first personal Amazon store. That was basically when my e-commerce journey started. I had a team of five running my store, doing $50,000 a month, making $10,000 in profit—which I paid them a share from, of course. I started posting that on Facebook. Before I knew it, someone was asking me, “Hey, can you manage my store too?” I told them, “Why not? Let's just do 50/50 and give me a thousand bucks.” Best advice for entrepreneurs There’s just one simple rule and it's never, ever give up. You just have to keep going. If you have that kind of mentality, that kind of mindset, that no matter how many times you fail, you will learn from it, you will not get discouraged. You will just keep moving or try something else. The biggest, most critical failure with customers I had already approved 50 clients and was making money for them. But for me, personally, it took 10 months. So, people complained to me: “I’m not getting approved in two weeks or one month.” Well, like I said, they basically gave up before they even started. These are some of the challenges that I face for customers. Biggest success with customers There's a client I had, I just posted something. This client made $29,000 in a single month. Obviously, that is a very big achievement for us. We did over $250,000 in sales in one month. But what people don't realize is that this client needed more than $150,000 to be able to process all these sales—basically, to make that money. So, there's a challenge to that, but I would say that this kind of success is incredible. Sergei’s recommendation of a tool I don't micromanage because I have a pretty big organization already. I just use FaceTime, Skype, WhatsApp, or Messenger.

Toccara Karizma is a digital marketing consultant and business growth strategist. She is the CEO of Karizma Marketing, a full-service digital marketing agency dedicated to growing elite eCommerce brands online through email marketing, social media marketing, PPC, SEO, website conversion optimization, and more. Having built her own successful eCommerce business back in 2007, Toccara is now considered one of the world's top eCommerce marketing experts. Her out-of-the-box approach to digital marketing and expertise in the online business growth space is why I've asked her to join me today. &nbsp; Most passionate about I own a seven-figure digital marketing agency with a heavy focus on e-commerce clients. I had grown that business to be an international company and it was quite successful. I have a background in business economics, so I knew that my place was in scaling brands and that I could do it very well. That is where I got my start. What I'm most passionate about is building e-commerce brands. I love figuring out how to scale them. Toccara’s career and story I'm the daughter of two entrepreneur doctors who worked very hard and taught me that I could do anything I wanted. I realized that I didn’t want to work for anyone else. I just don't like fluorescent lights and being in a cubicle. And I knew there was more for me out there. I got pregnant with my son and decided, like many other entrepreneurs listening today, that I wanted to solve a problem: I couldn't find cute clothing for my son. So, I had to create it myself. There was so much when it came to the inventory, the output of money in advance of sales, and those types of difficult decisions that every entrepreneur has to make. I realized that there was a different business model here that I knew really well, which was a very low fixed-cost business model: I spend money only after I've received it versus prepaying for things. Four years later, officially being an ad agency, as a single mom and with an excellent team behind me, here we are at seven figures. So, that was the journey. Best advice for entrepreneurs My best advice about what has worked really well for me is getting on those one-on-one calls with your potential clients, especially if you're selling a high-ticket service, because they need to hear from you. Really listen to them and their problems. Be fully transparent and honest. Tell them whether or not you think it would be a good fit. They so appreciate it when you give them free advice and tell them, “I think this would be a better option for you.” The biggest, most critical failure with customers I have a two-fold failure. The biggest failures are taking on clients without the bandwidth, without the support system that I need. We are in demand and are blessed to be in demand. At some points, we want to take on clients when we just don't have the right support team in place. And that's not a fair thing for us to do because when we do that, we don't give them the best results or the best client experience with us. We want to be the Four Seasons of ad agencies. The second failure would be taking any client, especially when you’re newer. That was when we failed because we weren't working with a partner that had everything in place. It was kind of like putting a Ferrari engine in a VW Bug. Biggest success with customers I stand for full reporting. When we talk to our customers, it's almost...

John Thalheimer is an award-winning management consultant, speaker, and author who has helped hundreds of businesses and thousands of entrepreneurs and small business owners transform their potential into extraordinary performance. The secret is in learning the ability to make the right behavioral decision in the moment to reach the desired outcomes. It’s simple. It just ain’t easy. John teaches small business owners and entrepreneurs how to make the right decisions about their company to take it to the next level. In his new book, The Truth About Selling, John teaches us how to influences others to invest in our ideas, products, or services. &nbsp; Most passionate about My real passion is focusing on the human side of work My main focus has been on the employee. How does that employee achieve what they want to achieve at work? How do they perform well and all that kind of stuff? But it's also about that customer and client and how we get them to make that decision. John’s career and story My first career was in theater. I was a production manager, lighting designer, set designer. At the time, I was in my early 30s. I’d been doing it for 12, 15 years, and it was time for me to do something different. I went into what I call my lost years. I did manufacturing for a while. I did hospitality. I did retail. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I had an opportunity to work in corporate America at a company called QVC, which is a television network. One of the things QVC did well for us, when we were working there, was expose us to the whole business, and not only the production side. I was in operations at first, but then I got into the human resources side and the talent side. I got laid off. I wanted to be an executive coach, to help executives get better. So, I started that journey, but I realized that my main focus was on the small business owner, the middle-tier management team. Best advice for entrepreneurs I believed everyone in the world needed my products, and it wasn’t true. There are three levels that I look at. At the first level, people out there see value in your product or service. Then there are people who have the resources to embed. The third category is people who have the problem you solve. When we think of three circles, our market is in that overlapping section. I think that's the biggest thing I see when I'm talking to entrepreneurs. They're like, “Oh, my product is great, everybody wants it.” And they don't narrow that market down to a set of people who are actually going to buy and invest in it. The biggest, most critical failure with customers One of the things I did was go out and get warm leads. I would do a free workshop or a presentation. The failure was that I would give great information and people would like it, but I was never able to get them to take that next step and invest in me. So, I struggled with that for a long time. I would just keep going. Biggest success with customers I got my wife a biscuit-making class. She could go to this class to learn how to make Southern biscuits. I go to this class thinking, ‘Here I am, I'm going to be learning about biscuits.’ However, as I sat in this class, I started realizing the effectiveness of the facilitator. I said, “Here’s the thing that we all have to do as sales professionals. When we're working with our customers, we have to create a...

Steve Hoffman (Captain Hoff) has had more careers than cats have lives, from Hollywood TV exec and game designer to manga rewriter, voice actor, animator, electrical engineer, studio head, and video game designer.Today, he’s the Captain &amp; CEO of Founders Space, one of the world’s leading startup accelerators. Founders Space was ranked the #1 incubator for overseas startups by Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazines.Hoffman is also a venture investor, founder of three venture-backed and two bootstrapped startups, and author of several award-winning books. These include “Make Elephants Fly” (published by Hachette), “Surviving a Startup” (published by HarperCollins), and “The Five Forces” (published by BenBella).&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI am most passionate about helping entrepreneurs, not just financially but also in reaching their personal goals, helping them do something meaningful with their lives and actually make an impact on the world.I see myself less as a business person and more as a creator.Steve’s career and storyWhen I was a child, I began making movies. By the time I graduated high school, I had made over 50 movies.I made lots of games—board games, role-playing games. I even programmed computer games. So, I was always creating and I wanted to be a creator.I went to college in electrical, computer engineering, but after I graduated, I felt like my creative side was lacking. So I applied to graduate school at the two top films: NYU in New York and USC in Los Angeles.I got my graduate degree in film and television, then went off to work in Hollywood. I quickly rose to the position of television development executive at a major TV production company.I jumped from Hollywood to the largest game company in the world at the time, which was Sega in Japan. A I began working with them, creating interactive entertainment.I launched my career as an entrepreneur. I came back to Silicon Valley, my home, and launched my first gaming startup.Best advice for entrepreneursA lot of entrepreneurs think they have to have an epiphany, a big idea, or they shouldn't jump in and be an entrepreneur. But my experience has shown me that the idea you begin with doesn't really matter because being an entrepreneur is a journey. And usually, the idea you begin with is wrong. Many entrepreneurs fail because they stick to their original idea. Those who succeed tend to change ideas all the time.I tell entrepreneurs: Don’t go out there with one idea; pick a direction and go out there with many ideas. Then, engage with the customers until you figure out who your customers are and what they need.The biggest, most critical failure with customersI have had a profound failure and that was when I came up with an idea to create character avatars on the internet that people could control and that could walk and talk on any website.This idea was so compelling that we had, yes, Disney, and all these entertainment companies, all these singers and entertainment people, flocking to us saying, “This is an amazing idea. We want to work with you.”We raised a lot of capital and put this idea out there into the world.Then, all of a sudden, we discovered that people would use our application for a while and then leave.We had to find that magic key that got people to come back and stay and engage long-term because unless we had them long-term, we couldn't make enough money to acquire more customers. We were battling against this new social network: Facebook.Biggest success with customersOne of my biggest successes came very early in my career. It was my first product. The game was called Gazillionaire.The role was,...

Vikrant Shaurya is the CEO and Founder of BestsellingBook.com. He’s also the author of two #1 bestsellers: P.O.W.E.R: The Success Mantra, and How to Write a Bestseller: Become a Bestselling Author, Attract High-Value Clients, and Skyrocket Your Authority.Vikrant is the most-viewed author for “eBook Publishing” on Quora and is recognized by the National Academy of Bestselling Authors.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI'm in the book publishing industry, where I help entrepreneurs publish their books.We help them turn their ideas into best-selling books through “done for you” book writing, publishing, and marketing services.Vikrant’s career and storyEleven to 12 years ago, I had just graduated from high school and my dad asked me, “What do you want to become in your life?” At that point, I had no idea, no clue. I was 16 or 17 and I had no vision at all for myself. I was just trying to enjoy my life.I told him that I wanted to be an engineer. I come from India and there is a kind of mentality that if you're not a doctor or engineer, people think that you are a failure.My dad thought that I was serious about my career and in my life. He sold his land so that I could be admitted to an engineering college.One day, I found this book by Robert Kiyosaki called “Rich Dad Poor Dad.” I decided to do something of my own. The very same day, I dropped out of college. I started looking for a business idea and within a few months, I got one.I got some loans from my relatives, my seniors, my friends, and started a business that hired a bunch of employees. I made so many mistakes and within six months I had completely run out of money. I was 18 at the time.Then I discovered self-publishing. This was my introduction to self-publishing or book writing or publishing. I discovered that I could write books, publish books, and make some money out of it.I started writing books. The first book took just 21 days to write. I published that book and in the first month I made $27 in royalties.I wrote another book in just three days and published it. I also did some marketing and that month I made around $440.I started offering a coaching program through Facebook. I also added coaching fees, so I started making some money from that as well. Within one year, I had launched dozens of courses and eBooks and also helped thousands of students with my courses and coaching programs.Best advice for entrepreneursMy simple advice would be, “start small, think big.”One of the mistakes I made when I started with my first business was doing the complete opposite. I was starting big and thinking small.With my current business, I started very, very small. It was a one-person company, and only when I began to see the opportunity, I hire employees one by one. Now we have more than 40 people in the company and more than a thousand freelance partners.The biggest, most critical failure with customersWe help our clients become bestsellers but one client had this expectation that he would be selling billions of copies of his book.We take care of the launch for one or two months—like, we start, we do the marketing, we do the promotion, and we do the sales. There was a communication gap as well, which I had, where we mentioned something and he interpreted it as something else.I had to make a tough decision. We had helped him write the book, publish the book, but because we had some negative reviews, I had to refund him the money. But the thing is, I learned with the process. That's why, whenever a new client comes, we send them a proposal.Biggest success with customersA client came to us three or four years ago. He offered a physical...

Anthony Blatner is a tech founder, ex-IBMer, and the founder of Speedwork Social: a top LinkedIn advertising agency. After watching a lot of companies with great products or services fail because of ineffective marketing, Anthony started Speedwork Social to help those businesses unlock their B2B marketing potential and achieve explosive growth.By blending his experience in marketing and software, Anthony helps businesses reach high-level decision makers at scale using LinkedIn Ads and technology. Having managed millions in ad spend and generated over 100,000 new sales opportunities, it is safe to say Anthony is one of the top leading LinkedIn ads experts in the industry and in a way, is only getting started.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI'm one of those people who spends more time on LinkedIn than any other platform.My specialty is helping people with LinkedIn ads. That's what I do day in and day out. We specialize in helping create and manage LinkedIn ads and campaigns for different types of B2B organizations.Best advice for entrepreneursThe thing that I end up talking about the most is, if you're an entrepreneur and you're starting a business, talking about the sales and marketing funnel or how you're going to market your business.If you're a new business and you're starting your marketing, and if you're not seeing a direct “contact us” or “free consultation” working out, you'll probably need to lower the barrier to entry and think about focusing your content more on your customer.The biggest, most critical failure with customersBefore I started Speedwork, which is a marketing agency and my current businesses, I had a mobile app development agency. Here in Austin, Texas, we built a whole lot of different mobile apps for a variety of companies.We would build software for them. What we noticed was, after you build an app, you have to put it on the App Store. Then you worry about getting downloads. We saw, in the early days of the iPhone, it was possible to put an app on the App Store, go viral, get a lot of downloads, and be successful in that way.I'd say the biggest challenge was seeing startups spend so much time and money and effort on a new app, but then not think about the distribution and the go-to-market strategy. They’d put it on the App Store and just see it flop.Biggest success with customersI'd say, for my own journey, it is focusing on LinkedIn ads.When I first started my marketing career, I tried out a lot of different areas. At the time, I never would have guessed that I would be focusing on LinkedIn.Anthony’s recommendation of a toolGoogle Data StudioIt's going to tell you something about the stats that can help you optimize campaigns.Google Data Studio itself is free.We're able to blend data from various sources. I can compare, LinkedIn numbers versus CRM numbers and sales numbers.Anthony’s one key success factorIt is my technical background as I approached the marketing world. I appreciate the technical skills that I have.I'd say my differentiator is being able to be comfortable with the tech side.&nbsp;Anthony’s MountainSince we believe that the best way for entrepreneurs to get fast, big, and sustainable success is by leading your (new) market category, and the entire entrepreneurial journey reminds me of mountaineering, I want to ask you: Is there a mountain you dream of climbing or a mountain you have already climbed?I do have a relationship with a mountain. I've gotten really into running over the...

Dan McGaw is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker and the CEO of McGawdotio, an analytics and marketing technology consultancy and SaaS platform, UTM.io.In addition, Dan also finds time to be a 500 Startups Mentor, and has previously started the first business accelerator in Orlando.He’s also a thought leader in the MarTech world and CXL instructor on the topic. Having spoken at the leading Marketing conferences and online events, including Traction Conf and Forget The Funnel, his expertise lies in helping businesses extract and interpret the right data to grow their revenue exponentially.Dan previously served as the Head of Marketing at Kissmetrics and in the past he’s worked as a CMO consultant for a number of high-growth companies, implementing tools, offering support, and analyzing data.In 2015, Dan was selected to be a United States Ambassador of Entrepreneurship by the United States Department of State, where he had the privilege to advise the government, universities, and private corporations on how to build entrepreneur ecosystems. He even flew out to Mexico to be an entrepreneur ambassador for Tijuana and Mexicali!Dan lives in Orlando, Florida with his wife, 3 sons and two French Bulldogs. He’s a keen runner and a self made millionaire who grew up in the ghetto, fought his way out, and is very grateful for the hardships he had in life as it taught him the persistence and grit required to succeed today.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutWhat I'm most passionate about today, of course, is marketing technology and marketing analytics. This is a big area where I spend a lot of my time.I love building marketing technology and sales technology stacks with our clients and with a lot of different people.Best advice for entrepreneursFocus on generating revenue.To do sales, you have to talk to customers, you have to talk to prospects, you have to get out there and sell your product better to generate revenue. That's the fastest way to grow.I'm a big believer in bootstrapping.Sometimes it's much easier to sell and get your customers, and not only to raise money.The biggest, most critical failure with customersIn consulting, I have experienced some fascinating ways that we can fail companies. We just had a client that we worked with and, unfortunately, my team member who was leading the project was not capable of doing the work. So, failure happens.Seven years ago, a team member here stole company intellectual property.Basically, we came up with a business idea. I'm in a meeting. We could build this, but we're not going to build it right now because we have a client that it’s conflicting with. Two months later, all of a sudden, in a meeting, the guy’s doing a demo and accidentally shares his screen. On his screen, he shows a Trello board, which has this product on it.We decided to terminate that employee. Unfortunately, the employee also had access to all of our customers and databases. This team member thought it was appropriate to steal one of our customer's email lists and then promote their product, which is competitive to that customer, to their email list. That was a huge data breach for us. Obviously, we and our client attacked this person with lawyers and all that stuff. But it really changed my perspective on, like, “Hey, listen. People are going to do really, really shitty things and you've got to cover your ass.”Biggest success with customersOne thing that I would say was a super big success for us—I don't know if it was luck or if I'm just smart—but for the first year and a half or two years, we didn't really have a niche. We were just taking clients for digital marketing and marketing and technology. We were flailing about to whoever would...

Mark Firth spent a large portion of his life working a corporate job in London, but he was left feeling unfulfilled and in need of creating an impact. He decided to take an extended break and visit Colombia, not knowing it would be one of the best decisions of his life.Mark met, fell in love and quickly started a family in Columbia, but he didn't have a job. To support his new family, he wanted to start an online business and remembered that when he worked for corporate companies, like IBM and Siemens, he used LinkedIn to prospect and book qualified sales calls through a personalized approach based on human-to-human connection. In 2017, he founded Linkedpreneurs where he combined traditional B2B sales and online marketing to generate leads.He has helped thousands of business owners and solopreneurs to consistently book qualified calls that become clients through LinkedIn using their personal connection system called Emotional Brand Intelligence. In return, his clients have more time, money and freedom to make an impact and change their life.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutWe help people grow their businesses. We help them see situations and environmental stimuli and friends and conversations differently from how they did in the past. Ultimately, growing a business is not about just implementing a load of tactics and strategy. It's also about being in alignment, doing things that you want to do, and starting to see things in different ways.Mark’s career and storyI started in corporate life.I was at IBM, Siemens, and then at a series of startups.I was trained by Tony Robbins coaches and I've been on a big personal development journey myself. It's my fundamental belief that you cannot lead where you have not been and, as I said, you cannot teach what you do not know.So, I've also been through the frameworks. I can’t force people to change, but I can create an environment.Best advice for entrepreneursThe best advice I can give to any entrepreneur is to just keep on testing.I believe in helping people create the desire to test stuff and try new stuff, as that is when success really comes. When people start being themselves and start doing things their own way, they find this groove and flow that really suit them.The biggest, most critical failure with customersI deleted an entire email list of 10,000 people in error and the backup failed.You need to be in control of your audience. You should have your own target audience. Many people will get a benefit from having a podcast, even though they're not necessarily paying customers. And my email list was that version of it. And I deleted it by mistake. That was a complete failure for me. It was awful.Biggest success with customersThis comes down to innovation. It really does. It’s about finding new ways of doing things, discovering new things, improving our products, improving our service. That's something we've always done. We started with automated messaging, and as soon as that became effective, we had already innovated a new process.Mark’s recommendation of a toolI recommend anything that gives you multichannel and allows you to own your audience.I always concentrate on having emails, SMS, phone numbers.Don't trust something you don't control. That's a recipe for disaster anywhere in life.Mark’s one key success factorJust getting up, even when I get knocked down, has helped me become successful.&nbsp;Mark’s MountainSince we believe that the best way for entrepreneurs to get fast, big, and sustainable success is by leading your (new) market

Karl Maier founded Abunden to help internal and external business advisors be even more effective in helping their clients to grow and succeed. Abunden is the third software company Karl has co-founded.In his various roles over the past three decades, he has been part of the leadership team in six established companies which have at least doubled sales in two years. Leveraging his successes, Karl developed the Abunden Framework© and led the development of the practical management tools in the Abunden Tools App. These online SaaS (Software as a Service) tools build the management structure for companies to grow and succeed.Karl received both his MBA and BA from Rice University in Houston. has been the chairperson for the Rice University Business Network and the Houston District Export Council as well as a board member for TiE Houston.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI'm working to help make coaching better and using technology tools to do that.I’m working on tools to help coaches and business advisors be even better. I see the path forward as adding even more tools and technology to improve coaching and make it more of a 24/7 type of experience for people.Karl’s career and storyI started reading The Wall Street Journal and The Economics. I went to university and studied economics, got my MBA, and went into consulting. Over the years, I've been involved with information systems, computer systems. I've done finance, accounting, processes, many different things. Over the decades, I've put together what I’ve seen, the keys to growing companies. To me, it’s the most fundamental.Early in my career, I was part of a large consulting organization. I was part of a team doing projects. We grew from 23 people to over 350 people in about 30 months.Best advice for entrepreneursThe customer is critical. One of my mentors said, many years ago, that nothing happens until you sell something. So, obviously, that starts with the customer.I think the principal is to talk to a number of different potential customers and really understand what their problem is. Can you solve it in a way that they're willing to pay for? That's the most fundamental part of starting a business, in my mind.Then you have the option to be Hands-on all the pieces of the company, but that limits your growth, or are you willing to transform and delegate it to other people to grow the company? I think that’s a very fundamental choice, one that I would encourage people to reflect on and decide which way they really want to go.The biggest, most critical failure with customersMy first software startup was during the dot-com boom. Everybody said, “Technology is going to solve all the problems.” I think I got sucked into that and I really didn't understand my customers.I was ignoring how the products were actually bought and sold. In the end, the company failed because of that. So that's a lesson. We remember failures better than our wins, I think.Biggest success with customersWe had a service company in the health safety industry. I was part of the C-suite management team. And we really did build a team. There was great communication and connection. People respected each other. They worked hard and were able to really understand what our customer's problem was.High-value people were getting malaria and getting sick. We were able to come in and cut their malaria rate in half the first year and then half again the second year. So we clearly were solving their problem. We were able to come in and solve a problem, do it effectively.We were able to grow the company. We grew it in four years by a factor of seven.Karl’s recommendation of a...

Jess Chan is the Founder &amp; CEO at Longplay, a full-service email marketing agency for DTC e-commerce brands. Within 6 months of launching Longplay, Jess helped brands increase email revenue by 639% within 90 days and increase average order value by over 67%.Prior to Longplay, Jess was the Chief Marketing Officer at DTC brand Best Self Co where she saw the unique opportunities and challenges e-commerce brands faced in nurturing, converting &amp; retaining customers that fueled her to launch Longplay.Jess has spoken at events such as DX3 and Digital Growth Summit, and has been featured in Entrepreneur, Influencer Hustle &amp; Thought Catalog.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutMost of my time is spent building up Longplay, which is our full-service email marketing agency for e-commerce brands.Now that our business is more established and we have our foundations down, we are doing a little bit more exploring of new business initiatives, whether it’s launching courses or having exploring partnerships to bring the business to the next level. Also, we are exploring starting an e-commerce business as well.Jess’s career and storyI work in marketing now, and obviously in entrepreneurship, but my background is in actuarial science and economics.That’s pretty much as far away from marketing as possible. With actuarial science obviously, the focus was on statistics and working in insurance companies and risk modeling.In my last year of college, I found a job posting for a marketing assistant and e-commerce company. At that point, I had zero experience in marketing. So, I started off as a marketing assistant and learned a lot in the first few months. I dove right in.When I graduated, I think it was nine or 10 months later, they promoted me to chief marketing officer. That was how I got my start in marketing and digital marketing.Best advice for entrepreneursMy best advice would be to just get started and figure it out along the way. I think the biggest reason entrepreneurs fail is that they try to have that perfect plan, they try to have it all figured out.The biggest, most critical failure with customersI'd say the biggest failure with customers has been not setting expectations and not having boundaries for my team or myself.We got off to a strong start, but we had to slow down and build those foundations. I think that was a good reminder: If you grow fast, then you slow down and fix the foundations.Biggest success with customersMy biggest success is the fact that like Longplay, as a business, exists and is somehow working and profitable and growing. I really had so little experience and it all moved very quickly.The big success was about building an amazing product, an amazing service that had a market fit and really solved a pain point for customers.Jess’s recommendation of a toolShopify and Klaviyo if you're on e-commerce.Sauna and SlackGoogle DriveJess’s one key success factorMy one key success factor is figuring it out as you go and trusting in that. When you trust in your ability to figure things out, it removes all of those barriers to getting started or kicking things off.&nbsp;Jess’s MountainSince we believe that the best way for entrepreneurs to get fast, big, and sustainable success is by leading your (new) market category, and the entire entrepreneurial journey reminds me of mountaineering, I want to ask you: Is there a mountain you dream of climbing or a mountain you have already climbed?I haven’t climbed any actual...

Roger Hardy is a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years’ experience building several technology businesses to successful exits. Hardy founded Coastal Contacts Inc. in 2000, instantly re-writing the business model for contact lens sales and delivery. Drawing from his previous logistics expertise and industry knowledge, Roger seized the newly emerging e-commerce revolution. Roger led Coastal to become the largest online retailer of eyewear and vision related products until it was acquired by Essilor International in what was the largest e-commerce transaction in Canadian history at the time.In 2018 Roger co-founded KITS Eyewear Ltd. alongside Joseph Thompson and Sabrina Liak. As CEO, Hardy has led KITS through unprecedented growth with a 47% year over year revenue increase.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutWe built Coastal Contacts, my sister and I, from startup to a NASDAQ-listed public company and then sold it in 2014, for almost half a billion dollars.Since then, we've been doing investments in real estate and technology.We kept coming back to the optical category. We were excited about the opportunity in optical. It has always gotten us interested in trying to serve customers in a way that exceeded their expectations.We've been working on KITS Eyecare here out of Vancouver, Canada, mostly focused on the eye care business for North America.Roger’s career and storyI worked in the vision category, and while I was working there, I was struck by the fact that I felt that customers were underserved. I think part of it was the timing. The internet was just getting going. And so, like I said, my sister and I built a website and started selling contact lenses.The first day, we had 16 orders. In the first month we had 70,000 in sales, and in the first year we had two and a half million in sales. In the second year, we had 10 million in sales. So, we really knew there was an unmet need in terms of savings and convenience for customers. At that time, the technology innovation was just a website—just putting it online.Today, I think the real technology innovation, like I said, that eye exam just makes it easier for customers to do it online from home or the office, anytime, 24/7, day or night. They can really step into that.The first thing we worked on was growing our subscription business for contact lenses. Today, that's about 25% of our company. The second thing we worked on is vertical integration. We made sure that we had the most technologically advanced optical lab in North America.Best advice for entrepreneursBuild businesses that serve customers. I think NPS is a great measure to use.What we find is that the more we can focus on and listen to customers and remove any challenges in our business, it takes the experience up for customers. That ultimately is a driver of financial results. It's our opinion that the company with the highest NPS in every category ultimately has the highest value in that category.I would put it as: You want to be getting direct feedback from your customers. You want to be removing all the choke points, anything that's friction, anything that they tell you is even a slight displeasure. You want every customer to be wowed by the experience of being served by you.The biggest, most critical failure with customersI don't want to name names, but we used a payments company that we thought of as being very innovative.We did the due diligence on the company. We thought, ‘These guys are really cutting edge and customers are gonna love this.’ It was a different way of making payments and it was on the front. But that company kind of overstated what they could do. Ultimately, it was a significant cost for us.They had problems processing...

Andrea Owen is an author, global speaker, and professional certified life coach who helps high-achieving women maximize unshakeable confidence, and master resilience. She has taught hundreds of thousands of women tools and strategies to be able to empower themselves to live their most kick-ass life through speaking, her books, coaching, and her wildly popular podcast with over 3 million downloads.Andrea is creating a global impact in women’s empowerment with her books being translated into 18 languages and available in 22 countries.When she’s not juggling her full coaching practice or writing books, Andrea is busy riding her Peloton bike, chasing her two school-aged children or making out with her husband, Jason. She is also a retired roller derby player having skated under the name “Veronica Vain”.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutAfter about 10 years as an entrepreneur, I am focused mostly on speaking on stages and writing books.Andrea’s career and storyI Have an interesting story that’s that involves my personal life ae well.I was previously in the fitness industry. I was in my late 20s and was in my first marriage, to someone different from whom I'm married to now.I had heard about life coaching. This was back in about 2002, 2003—very early in the infancy of life coaching as an industry. I was telling my then husband about it, and he was saying, “I think you would be great at this. ,However you need more life experience”.A couple of years later, my husband had a love affair with our neighbor and got her pregnant. So I got my life experience.My life experience got worse before it got better. I got into another terrible, abusive relationship. By the time I was 31, I’d had my rock bottom experience and decided to change my life. I took responsibility for my life.That's how the life coaching portion started. A couple of years into that, I decided to write a book. The university opened the doors for me. I got a traditional book deal with a small publisher, which got my foot in the door. Now I'm on my third book. It has all just fallen into place from there.Best advice for entrepreneursYou have to ask for help, whether that is with a therapist, your best friend, or your partner. Success doesn't happen in a vacuum. There have to be people who come to support you. That's what I would tell people to work on: Start there if they're having problems with something.This is probably something you've talked about on your show: You have to get very clear on who it is whom you serve and what it is that you do in your work. Don't be afraid to tweak and change this over time.The biggest, most critical failure with customersThere have been several of them and they're all connected in my industry, in online life coaching.It's very scalable to offer group coaching. It's the one-to-many model versus one-to-one and it's the best way to scale your business. So, I started doing that and had some success, but for the most part, it wasn't that lucrative.I would say that facilitating group programs was probably my zone of competence. People would say that I was pretty great at it, but I really didn't like it all that much. I didn't look forward to it. It wasn't where I could really shine. For years I tried, and again, it was profitable enough, but not worth the energy I was putting out there.A few years ago, I decided, “I don't want to do this anymore.” It didn't make any sense because, from a marketing standpoint, it’s kind of the only way to scale. I just decided, “You know what? I'm not going to do it anymore.”Biggest success with customersMy last book, which came out in 2018, was sold to Hachette Books, a division there. It’s a...

Chris “Mercer” Mercer, co-founder of MeasurementMarketing, is a sought after measurement marketing expert. Mercer (as he’s known) and his team have been helping marketers, marketing teams, and agencies measure their marketing so they know what’s working and what’s not.First by planning out what’s important to measure in their marketing, then how to actually measure it (using tools like Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics), creating dashboards that are actually useful, and pulling actionable insights from what’s being measured to begin forecasting and optimizing future results.Mercer spends countless hours reading, practicing, adjusting and innovating to improve his skill set. He has a knack for teaching, and is known for his ability to simplify even the most complex ideas for his audience.He can be found speaking at conferences and events, such as Traffic &amp; Conversion, Social Media Marketing World, Content Jam, TravelCon, Digital Elite Camp, Baby Bathwater Institute, and others.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI'm very passionate about the art of systems as it relates to measurement, but also as it relates to entrepreneurship and building brands that are very customer-centric and listening to customer journeys. I think that is absolutely what I am obsessed with right now—figuring out how to perfect those things.Mercer’s career and storyMy main background is sales management. I come from everything managing sort of a pipeline by nature.When we moved online, I created a WordPress site to show people how to do WordPress sites, essentially. It was like a membership site. That led very quickly to people saying, “This is a lot of work. Can you build our sites for us?” We created an agency and that's where we sort of grew, digital marketing-wise.We said, “Okay, we're going to build the site and we will also help you optimize the site”—something called “conversion rate optimization.” In order to optimize, and in order to improve, like, an opt-in rate or a conversion rate for a purchase, you have to know what that rate is.We set up Google Analytics for our clients. We would deliver the site with their Google Analytics and say, “Here’s how you can tell any leads you got from Facebook.”Almost overnight, when we made that shift, we started getting a lot of referrals from clients, but they weren't referrals for sites. They were people coming to us saying, “We already have a way but we need help with our Google Analytics.”We wanted to eventually diversify the business because that was a great business. It's still a great channel of revenue for us, but we wanted to be able to diversify.Best advice for entrepreneursI think the keyword is going to be deceptively simple, but it's listening to your customer.If you take a second to listen, they will tell you, “Yeah, you're kind of on the right track, but maybe do this instead, or do it in this particular way.” All of a sudden, it becomes a lot easier to grow a business when we listen to our market.The biggest, most critical failure with customersIt was when I did the exact opposite of what we just talked about—when I wasn't listening. I was telling the customer, “Here's how this thing works.” The thing that comes to mind for us is that we have a certification program where we will work with agencies.I think sometimes, too, ‘If it's our idea, it's a good idea,’ but it doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea. It's just our idea.Biggest success with customersWe were making some changes to one of our offers. Our do-it-yourself training program is called the Measurement Marketing Academy and it's a just-in-time learning platform to learn all this stuff.We noticed way too...

Aidan Sowa is an entrepreneur who got into the digital marketing space in 2016 due to working with the MIT Enterprise Forum Cambridge.Aidan is now the founder and CEO of Sowa Marketing Agency. Sowa Marketing Agency specializes in helping luxury realtor get featured in the media, guaranteed.Aidan believes all entrepreneurs have the choice to differentiate themselves from their competition or die as a commodity.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI'm the CEO and founder of Sowa Marketing Agency. Essentially, we specialize in helping luxury realtors become the authority in the industry by getting featured on major media sites, like Yahoo, Forbes, and the like worked.Within the next nine years, we’ll try to reach nine figures.Aidan’s career and storyI originally worked with the MIT Enterprise Forum Cambridge.Learned a bit about digital marketing. Eventually, I decided to start my own company around digital marketing, to help entrepreneurs. I wanted to see how that would work. And it did work. I would just have to experiment a lot.Best advice for entrepreneursMy best advice for any entrepreneur who's starting out is to set their goals; to focus on monthly, yearly, 10-year goals and be able to play it down. So many people start at the beginning of the year and have all these big goals in mind and then they eventually give up.I highly recommend that people really nail down their goals so they know exactly what needs to be done.The biggest, most critical failure with customersI would probably say that my biggest failure as a business owner was taking on every single customer. That was a big mistake because when people came in with really high expectations, I would take them on anyway. And then we've them frustrated with me.When I first started my company, that led to chargeback and almost ruined my business. It was a painful experience. I was fortunate enough that this didn't happen, but it was definitely a pretty devastating blow.Biggest success with customersOne of the biggest things we did is start utilizing our own marketing methods for ourselves. So, being able to not just be seen like any other business, but being able to generate positive media presence and being able to build out our social media services.I feel like that has really impacted the way our customers have seen us, especially all these luxury realtors. They can see for themselves that we truly believe in what we're selling. We're not just trying to sell them on something. It's something of real value.Aidan’s recommendation of a toolFor us, social media is the easiest way to reach customers.We still get a huge number of clients just by sending out messages on Instagram.We're also doing the traditional kinds of social media stories.LinkedInWe have the entire profile built out, and things of that nature, and we've actually automated our invitations. That way, we’re reaching out to clients every single day.Aidan’s one key success factorOne of my key success factors is believing in myself and being able to follow through on what I want to do.It's one thing to write something down, and it’s another thing to take action and really make your goals all day. So, being able to take action is probably the key thing.&nbsp;Aidan’s MountainSince we believe that the best way for entrepreneurs to get fast, big, and sustainable success is by leading your (new) market category, and the entire entrepreneurial journey reminds me of...

The 3 shared traits behind successful entrepreneurshipsIt took me fourteen years of research that included following 120 entrepreneurs from their first stages, Interviewing more than 200 successful entrepreneurs, and listening to thousands of them. Here are the three factors of the Formula for Entrepreneurial Business Success.&nbsp;1. New / Non- existing thing - that’s neededJon Lee Dumas invented a daily podcast, Jeff bullas started to write about social media when the first innovators seeked for information, Mike Stelzner started to share content for free, Douglas Burdett started to interview authors of new marketing books, John Nemo cracked the code for selling through LinkedIn, Pam Wasley established the interim executive model, Mike Allton built websites for clients and shared content about social media to find more customers when he realized that what his customers really wanted was to learn about how they can use social media. So, he became a blogger and social media educator. and the list goes on.You don’t need to be the first, and you don’t need to be the only one in the world that offers that product or service, you do need to be the first or unique among your target audience.The story I heard in my interview with Mike Allton is a great example not only for choosing a new needed service (or in that case, information) but what it takes to find it. Mike AlltonMike Allton is a Content Marketing Practitioner, award-winning Blogger, and Author in St. Louis, and the Chief Marketing Officer at SiteSell. He has been working with websites and the Internet since the early ’90s and is active on all of the major social networks. Mike teaches a holistic approach to content marketing that leverages blog content, social media and SEO to drive traffic, generate leads, and convert those leads into sales.Mike’s entrepreneurshipI started the Social Media Hat back in 2012. At that time, I had been building websites, and as part of that website business, I was blogging about social media marketing in order to give my prospects and customers helpful information. It didn’t attract people who needed websites, it attracted people that already had a website and wanted to learn about their social media opportunity.So, as a result, I wasn’t growing my online business, but I discovered that I like to write and I like to teach people how to use social media blogging.I realized that the content doesn’t help to sell websites, however, I decided to create a site about social media blogging and that what I did.I’ve used my site as a testing ground for anything related to online marketing. I execute the test and write about it and I found out my audience really appreciates those kinds of insights.And in the meantime, I was experiencing making money through the website and I tested that as well. Affiliate relationships, Google AdWords, Display ads, and many other monetization techniques. The most successful way to make money is to have a product that can you sell a lot of, so it can scale.&nbsp;2. Technology is a success factorAndres Pira started to use VR systems that allow his real estate clients to walk through and see what they are buying, without actually being there, and sold an extensive amount of units just with this technology. Dorothéa Bozicolona-Volpe uses technological listening tools to focus on understanding customers’ needs to help her clients make their digital transformation. Paul Bratby got some geeks that turned his trading strategy that hasn’t lost a quote for 15 years, into a software. Mellissah Smith worked with a development team that developed the technology for developing automatic marketing strategies without a human.You don’t necessarily need to develop a new...

Kevin Urrutia is the co-founder of New York based Voy Media who specialise in creating for clients Facebook and Instagram ads that are sophisticated and super creative. Kevin's team are usually half on site and half around the world. During lockdown they have all.been working remotely. Kevin also has his own podcast - Digital Marketing Fastlane which helps you to build. launch, grow and scale a successful online business.Kevin is a travel and nature enthusiast. In his spare time, you can find him hiking through Mount Fuji or booking his next adventure.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutFor me, the most passionate route is marketing.We do a lot of online marketing here at my current company, which is Voy Media, but it's not just online marketing for other brands.I still do my online marketing for my own companies. I have my own e-commerce brands that I'm working on. What I'm most passionate about is doing marketing for other brands, but using those skills to make my own businesses in my own companies.Kevin’s career and storyWe started marketing. A marketing agency wasn't something I wanted to start.When I was running my other companies, I wanted to connect with other founders and entrepreneurs to help them with their stuff. Initially, I thought that Voy Media was going to be a great way to invest in startups.It was a way for me to meet entrepreneurs, but then that turned into, “Hey! We need help with advertising. We need help with marketing.” That led us to turn into a traditional business model. That's how we came up.Best advice for entrepreneursMy best advice is, for approaching the customer, consider: If you were that customer, how would you want to market your product? How would you want to sell the product? How would you want to handle complaints or returns? I always think about it like that.The biggest, most critical failure with customersAt one point, like any business, you over-promise stuff that you can do. As a new entrepreneur, you always want to over-promise. You want to promise and over-deliver, but sometimes you make the mistake of saying, “Yep, I could do that.” And then you get overwhelmed because you don't know how to solve the problem. You know how to solve their issue. Then the customer does get upset.That’s something I think about. It really affects your journey. When you're working with your new company, you want to minimize those moments. A lot of times, they're just not fun to deal with. And they stick with you for a few days or months.Biggest success with customersIt was when I was doing the cleaning company. We really focused on making it super easy for customers to book and tell us what they wanted for their cleaning.I liked that because it made them trust us to book a service. Cleaning is a very personal thing. You're literally letting a stranger into your home. By having a great, simple price, by answering phone calls, by answering customers’ text messages to us about their apartments, we made customers feel comfortable booking with us.It’s being very customer-focused and customer-centric and trying to figure out what they want.Kevin’s recommendation of a toolEbook/BookThe book that's really helping me think about marketing, think about sales and business, is DotCom Secrets by Russell Brunson.It talks about how to run a business and how to make money running a business. It teaches you the core fundamentals of marketing and sales.Kevin’s one key success factorI think my key success factor is that I...

Imran, the founder &amp; CEO of BIZBoost and BTweeps. Creating Meaningful and Personalized Digital Media Experiences, Globally, Human to Human, Since 2009.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI run a company called BIZBoost. I started in 2010 as a brand.Initially, I focused on building a diverse and global network, both leaders and influencers, on the 9th of March, 2014.I passionately believe in doing what you love and loving what you do. So, here I am, creating meaningful and personalized digital media experiences globally.Imran’s career and storyI started everything on Twitter.In 2009, I came onto the digital media space.I started analyzing and observing what people were doing.I created my network of influencers and leaders.The first thing I did was analyze and connect.During that journey, I gained a lot of knowledge and exposure.I hustled to different and diverse networks of people.It has been almost 11 years, and it's a really creative and intentional journey. I'm living my dream. So, it's a life of my own choices, a life of my own decisions. Being a creator is kind of a responsibility, so it's not about me.Best advice for entrepreneursBusinesses must believe in knowing their customer first, even before pitching their services and approaches, because without knowing who you are dealing with, the possibilities of building a healthy connection become in vain.You have to connect with your customers and consumers, human to human. This is a really important approach. It takes a lot of patience, but it goes a long way and has benefits.The biggest, most critical failure with customersIt was trying to look into the wrong places and connecting with the wrong people. It took a few years for me to figure out the right direction and the right kind of people who are our ideal consumers and customers, so we weren’t hitting the wrong places and connecting with the wrong people.Biggest success with customersReferrals are one of the biggest successes that we have gotten so far.We get forward into a business relationship. We connect deeper, we sell better, we share values.They tend to refer their network to BIZBoost. They tell them that BIZBoost is reliable and is one of the best companies around.Imran’s recommendation of a toolInstagram and TwitterThey are the best tools for connecting with people and serving them and communicating with them and/or marketing and selling our service.Businesses that aim to go global, that aim to connect with diverse people with diverse perceptions, should check out Twitter to build their presence. It's a completely different platform of perceptions within a limited character of creative writing; you can connect with great people.Imran’s one key success factorThe one key success factor is consistency and patience.It's a dilemma for creators and entrepreneurs that they have a huge list of things to do. They have to connect with their teams, their partners, their clients. So, it's all about how to consistently and efficiently optimize your flow, be an executive, and execute the flow in the most disciplined manner.&nbsp;Imran’s MountainSince we believe that the best way for entrepreneurs to get fast, big, and sustainable success is by leading your (new) market category, and the entire entrepreneurial...

My first executive marketing role wasn’t about marketing! At the age of 27, I was chosen to become the first Customer Service Manager and a board member.No one in that water systems company understood what I was going to do—and who needed a customer service manager when professional technicians went to fix whatever was needed when a customer complained?To tell you the truth, I didn’t know exactly what this job meant, either. All I knew was that it was a strategic decision; the sales department said that the reason for not meeting their sales goals was a lack of good customer service.I started by following one rule: to never leave a customer unsatisfied. I talked with each customer who needed a service. Mainly, I listened to them very carefully. The next step was to build a team of service providers who listened to customers and found the solution that would make them happy.The next step was to build a new team of technicians that love to give good service. I did something else, too. I decided that I didn’t want to earn money from customer service itself, so all the payments went directly to the technicians.Within 6 months, customer service went from being the biggest obstacle for closing a sale to the biggest driver for selling. Our customers' satisfaction skyrocketed…and so did the sales.It was probably the most effective marketing campaign that I ran in my more than 30 years as a marketing director.&nbsp;When I asked Warren Coughlin, one of my recent guests on the REACH OR MISS Podcast, for his best advice for entrepreneurs, he said, “I always think it's ‘to serve’! My definition of sales is professionally helping people solve problems, making it a kind of an honorable activity.“If you have a service focus for your customers, like always wanting to help them, you're going to have long client and customer relationships.”&nbsp;This wasn’t the first time we heard successful entrepreneurs talking about 'serving your customers.'Josh Elledge from Up My Influence and SavingAngel told his story about it:“When I started as an owner of a small-town newspaper, I was so uncomfortable to sell; I was so scared, so I ended up failing miserably. And after that, for the next five years, I did sales and marketing for a network of law firms and had to sell every day for a commission-based salary. I was very miserable, and then, I suddenly realized that it’s not about convincing people to buy; it’s about listening to people's needs and finding how I can help them. The minute I understood that, I started to enjoy my connection with my clients and started to succeed dramatically. I found the win-win formula.”&nbsp;Bob Burg, author of the “Go-Giver,” said that “shifting your business context from getting – to give, is the most financially profitable.”In today’s podcast episode, I share some of the most inspiring and educational stories of successful entrepreneurs who won their success by serving their customers best.&nbsp;The first story is about Jeremy Parker from Swag.com, who told me, “I’m never satisfied in terms of customer success. We should go above and beyond to make our customers’ experience great.”Jeremy Parker is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and serial entrepreneur.&nbsp;He is the co-founder and CEO of Swag.com, the best place for companies to buy quality promotional products that they’ll actually want to keep.They work with 5,000+ companies including Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, and TikTok.&nbsp;They are #218 on the 2020 Inc 500 (fastest-growing companies in the US).&nbsp;Also, CrainsNY named Jeremy one of the 40 Under 40.Jeremy’s career and storyI’m actually a filmmaker. I even won the&nbsp;Audience Award&nbsp;at the&nbsp;2006&nbsp;Vail&nbsp;Film...

Ronny Leber has been able to contribute to countless award winning events for over a decade. He has been on stage in front of more than 5 million people all over the world while working with some of the biggest brands in the world. Ronny loves to transform others by making them shine on stage and helping them to shape their own legacy. Besides working as a legacy coach Ronny is a multilingual tv &amp; event-host and a keynote speaker.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI have the opportunity and the privilege, to be a host, commentator, and moderator on TV, and I love it. I'm absolutely enjoying it and I'm very passionate about it.Ronny’s career and storyI want to work at events that bring the whole world together.It was back in 2008 when I had those thoughts. At the same time—as a coincidence, in a way—a professional soccer team from Vienna was looking for somebody to host the youth teams’ games, like, once a month on a Saturday afternoon. Through some friends who were working there, they asked me. I said, “Well, okay. Yeah, sure.” For me, that was not a job; it was like a hobby. I remember I got 70 euros—I got paid seven euros per game. Back in the day, I thought, ‘Wow I really got a good deal out of that.’One year later—on the 25th of June, 2009, which was the day Michael Jackson died—I was at a party for my former sports university. I was working there and was a DJ. At 5:15 in the morning, I left. It was a long party. At the same time, a colleague of mine who worked for a professional ice hockey team in Vienna left as well.Funny enough, the first-ever hockey game for that team that I saw live was in the stadium where I was the announcer. Then, suddenly, it was not just 100 or 150 people. I got the kids’ soccer games. It was like 1000 people there. That was the first time ever, back in 2009, when I thought, ‘Hey, this could be a career.’I started taking classes in that direction. For over a year, I took classes in voice education, speakers’ education. I started to take singing lessons and acting lessons. I danced competitively. I did all kinds of things that I could do in terms of expanding my field and getting better at what I do.I did the ice hockey for nine years. I quit because it was just so much time for me.Best advice for entrepreneursI believe that every entrepreneur has something unique about them. Many entrepreneurs started because they love what they do and wanted to create a business out of it.In the beginning, I was focused just on my craft. I was focused on loving what I do and doing it, and not on building the business.You need to be able to measure the important things because what you cannot measure, you cannot manage.The biggest, most critical failure with customersThe biggest failure that you can have with customers is not being prepared.At the end of the day, you need to know their needs, wants, and desires.Biggest success with customersThe biggest success for me was when I was able to host 120,000 people, which was, for me, one of the most incredible events that I've ever been a part of. That event was in 2019, and it was “INEOS 1:59 CHALLENGE.”I feel really blessed that I work in a field where I feel that I have had many successes. I believe it's also a mindset. You need to set yourself up for success. Basically, I think it's believing in yourself and following the journey, always having a next step, knowing where you want to go and then just being hungry.Ronny’s recommendation of a toolSlack - which is a fantastic way to communicate with your teamTrello - A planning app where you can go from Idea to action in...

Jason Zilberbrand is the President of VREF Aircraft Value Reference &amp; Appraisal Services. He is an Accredited Senior Aircraft Appraiser with the American Society of Appraisers (ASA), and an Accredited Member of the Appraisers National Association (ANA), and he is also an Accredited Member of the International Society of Appraisers (ISA), Expert Witness, broker, inventorying dealer, acquisition agent, aircraft owner, aircraft operator, contract negotiator, consultant, teacher, conference speaker, and author.Jason spent over 15 years as an inventory aircraft dealer with a $300-million-dollar credit facility, and over $4.5 billion in completed aircraft transactions.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI help buyers and sellers of airplanes, ranging from small little piston aircraft like Cessnas to commercial aircraft, like you would fly on an airline.Most of my clients are either financial institutions that provide loans for this type of equipment or individual buyers of these aircraft who are looking to deal with some sort of estate planning or refinancing.My firm is the largest aircraft appraisal firm in the world. We do a couple thousand desktop appraisals a year. If you're familiar with Kelley Blue Book for cars, we manage a similar software platform for aircraft values.Jason’s career and storyI started off in a family business: an aviation insurance company. So, right out of college, I worked for the family business. I did that for a decade. It was all business jets.I cut my teeth in the industry, working with what are today considered the classic business jets. These were airplanes that were used by Fortune 500 companies and high-net-worth individuals. They were flying them globally. My father's company provided coverage for maintenance.I started getting requests from clients to assist them in buying airplanes. That was really when the light bulb started to go off that there were things that I could do in aviation that weren't necessarily tied to the family's business.I left the insurance company and started an inventory dealership—like a car dealership, except we had planes and cars. I did that full-time through 2013. When the recession hit in 2008, I started to appraise more airplanes. I think it just was a natural progression of my career.Best advice for entrepreneursSome of the tricks that I use are to try and create obtainable goals and set those goals every day so that eventually I hit the big goal, but I’m not taking on such a massive project.One of the ways to do that is to look inward and see what your strengths are, then try and bring in other people who can bridge the gap of your weaknesses.You have to trust those whom you delegate work to, which is another big challenge for entrepreneurs. So, you have to trust the people whom you hire; otherwise, don't hire them.The biggest, most critical failure with customersI think that one of the biggest failures that anybody can have is assuming that the other person or the customer sees things from your perspective.When you're young, or at least when I was young, I tended to explode on people who were looking for help and who might not have done it in such a respectful way.So, my biggest failure, unfortunately, was burning bridges with some potentially really important customers because I didn't care to engage with them the way that they wanted to engage with me.Biggest success with customersMy base success, I think, comes with the new business, and that is trusting the fact that the customer base would be able to adapt to change.My biggest success today is asking permission before I go down a path, including when it’s personal, with my wife. I talk...

Jenn T. Grace, M.S., Founder &amp; CEO of Publish Your Purpose.Jenn T. Grace is a nationally recognized business strategist, speaker, and award-winning author. She has been featured in Forbes, The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and CNBC.Jenn passionately believes the more raw and real we can be—the deeper the connections we can experience. This drives her fierce commitment to bring voice to the invisible stories that free people from their isolation.She is committed to giving underrepresented voices power and a stage to share their stories, speak their truth, and impact their communities. She is the Founder of Publish Your Purpose and In addition to publishing 70+ books that share the stories of others, Jenn has written six, including her memoir, House on Fire.A marathon runner, animal lover, and novice birder. She lives in Connecticut with her family.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI feel like my passion always lies in helping people tell their stories. And how I do that is by helping people publish their books—primarily nonfiction books and memories.What I'm really passionate about, as of late, is making a difference within the larger publishing space and context surrounding the predatory practices of many publishers out there, who are essentially taking advantage of first-time authors.Jenn’s career and storyI was a consultant. My background is in marketing, so that's certainly a unique angle that we bring to the publishing process. We really have a strong focus on the marketing side.I wrote my first book in 2013. I started it probably at the end of 2011, beginning of 2012. I self-published it, and I made every possible mistake. It was not a good-quality product.I wrote a second book, and I learned from all of my mistakes on the first one. And then I wrote a third book.By the time I was in between my second and third books, everyone I knew kept asking me, “How did you know how to hire an editor? How did you know how to lay out the book?” I kept getting all of these questions: “How did you do this? How did you do that?” The process of having one-on-one conversations with people and then teaching people in smaller groups how to get their books published eventually led me to found a full-blown publishing company in 2015.Best advice for entrepreneursThe best thing that I would recommend is to track your data. The only way that we can really scale and increase that impact is if we really truly know the very core of whom we're serving.The more clear you can be on whom you're serving, and the more you track that, the more robust it becomes, and the easier it makes your marketing for purposes of finding more of that same person.The biggest, most critical failure with customersI think, in a lot of ways, it’s ego.I had this kind of ego that was telling me, “You can't switch focuses, you can't switch your business, you're known for doing this consulting work, and you've worked for a decade to build your reputation in that specific consulting area.”I think if I had listened to my intuition, listened to my gut and my instincts, I would have started the publishing business even faster, or perhaps more confidently, rather than fighting it like an internal battle with myself that no one actually saw on the surface.Biggest success with customersOne of the things that I was completely hell-bent on achieving was to get national recognition for our chamber of commerce. I had such laser focus.This is a really good example of how I do this in my business. I had laser focus on winning the Chamber of the Year award on a national level in the U.S.Jenn’s recommendation of a...

Dan Morris is an investor, advisor, and B2B growth expert with a mission to leverage his experience to impact 1000 businesses positively by 2025.Helping companies to succeed in volatile markets, increasing profitability from existing strategies, and helping CEOs take positive steps forward to grow their business is where Dan’s expertise is focused.Before turning 30, Dan left a finance career to join a digital agency that showed him what a fast-growing services business could be – it went on to sell for £100m. He then launched a digital signage network publishing content to thousands of screens, and helped a content marketing agency reach #61 on the INC. list.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutWe are working with businesses that need some help with growth. We help B2B, SaaS, and services businesses that are stuck in that six- to seven-figure revenue range and that need to break through to the next level.We help them identify and break down that barrier.Dan’s career and storyI started my career at a very large bank. They taught me to negotiate to understand numbers very quickly, but I realized that my calling was really with smaller businesses that were moving much faster—a lot less red tape and a lot more entrepreneurial energy.I found myself working with a group of entrepreneurs who had several different businesses. When the global financial crisis hit in 2008, we were working on a very exciting project, selling to a group of banks, but all of a sudden, they ran out of money. The opportunity arose for me to go with that group of investors from the UK out to the United States and help them build a business that became 61 on the Inc. list in the next four years.When I left working with those businesses, I trained as a product manager, then worked with technology businesses and SAS companies. My training as a product manager helped me to focus even more on what the customer really wants, how to really get the customer to understand the value of the technology, how to build technology that really works for the customer, how to communicate that in sales and marketing, and how to talk with the technology teams.I really wanted to give away some time and understand technology businesses that were out there and that I could potentially be a part of. As I worked with lots of those early-stage customers, I recognized that there was a big opportunity in helping them build those initial building blocks.Best advice for entrepreneursAligned with exactly what we do today I advice entrepreneurs to take the time to review. Have a look at who you're actually working with. Talk to them and understand what they're actually using your product or service for.If you review, you can build that information into a refinement. You can focus more on delivering more for what people are already getting from you. Then, once you've developed that refinement, you can roll it out.The biggest, most critical failure with customersI think the biggest fail for me was not realizing earlier how many people we could help if we just kept it simple and delivered on this four-Rs framework, rather than being tempted to get in and try to fix everything within a business.Biggest success with customersWe were onboarding in January 2020. This is a company that had been around for nine years and they'd grown to hundreds of thousands of revenue, even around a million dollars in revenue.They'd been in a heavy services business they've been a heavy into the software side of their business. And they'd struggled a little bit with who that core customer was. Over the years, they’d had a lot of successes. Then they'd come back down to a point where they just said, “You know what? We really...

David Wachs's latest venture, Handwrytten, provides scalable, robotic solutions that write your notes in pen. Used by businesses in all industries, Handwrytten changes the way brands and people connect.Prior to Handwrytten, David founded Cellit, a leading mobile marketing platform.&nbsp;With clients including Abercrombie and Fitch, Walmart and more, Cellit was sold in January of 2012.David is a speaker on marketing technology, has been featured in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, and is a contributor to Inc. Magazine.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutMy new company, Handwrytten. It's not so new at this point; we've been around for seven years. Our goal is to reignite the lost art of Handwrytten communications.Specifically, we focus on communication from business to business or business to consumer in this day and age of electronic communication—whether that's email or text or Slack, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all these other forms of electronic communication or old-fashioned junk mail, preprinted stuff that gets thrown directly in the trash bin.About seven years ago, we started this company with the idea of making and sending Handwrytten.We have a website, an iPhone app, and Android app plugins for major systems called Zapier and API, stuff like that, that allow people to get their notes to us very quickly in electronic form.On the other side of the technology, we have robots that we build in our facility in Arizona. They hold real pens and write these notes out at scale. The robots can write out about 750 notes a day each.David’s career and storyI grew up very middle class in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Always, even from the youngest days, I wanted to be an entrepreneur.When I went off to university, I specifically took a double major in business and engineering. I chose computer science engineering.I was in this program at the University of Pennsylvania called the Management Technology Program. I got a degree in engineering and a degree in business from Wharton. Then I went on and worked in consulting.In 2000, which was at the height of the dot-com bubble, I went to work for a consulting firm that was helping large companies start dot-coms inside of them. It was just standard management consulting, but it was a good experience nonetheless, and they worked me to the bone.I then wanted to get into venture capital. I worked in equity analysis for a large investment bank, Credit Suisse, first in Boston, and then I was moved over to a venture capital firm in San Diego, where I was abruptly fired without cause.When I moved out to San Diego to work at this venture capital firm, I had no savings left. I was relatively debt-free, but I had no savings. So, when I got fired, I moved home. My family had relocated. My parents had moved to Arizona, so I moved home to Arizona with my head between my legs. I didn't know what to do next.I started a text messaging company called Cellit. This was in 2004. Back then, we didn't have the iPhone or anything like that. When you drive by a house that was for sale, you'd want to collect information on that house, get the price, and all that, but oftentimes there was no way to get information about that house. So I started this company called Cellit. Our first product was called House for Sell.I quickly pivoted away from Realtors to more large brands. Within a few years, we were sending millions of text messages for brands like Abercrombie &amp; Fitch, which is a large clothing brand, toys, Walmart—some very, very large brands. I ended up selling that company in 2012.I started Handwrytten because what I realized, when I sold that company, was that I wanted to send Handwrytten notes to all my employees...

Simon Severino helps business owners in SaaS and services discover how to be able to run their company more efficiently which results in sales that soar. He created the Strategy Sprints® Method that doubles revenue in 90 days by getting owners out of the weeds.Simon is the CEO and founder of Strategy Sprints which is a global team of certified Strategy Sprints® Coaches which has offers a customized strategy to help clients gain market share and work in weekly sprints which results in fast execution.He is also a Forbes Business Council Member, a contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine, and a member of Duke Corporate Education.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutWe are helping entrepreneurs navigate these funky times. The two things that they need most are time and cash. We help them improve the volume of their work to get them down to a healthy level of work per day, versus working too much. And we help them improve sales.We are growing like crazy right now. I haired five new coaches to my team and I have onboarded a new head of sales and he will be recruiting salespeople in the next month. We are growing because we have a digital plug-and-play offer to help business owners. Since nobody can fly right now, because of COVID, companies need our help in generating sales.Simon’s career and storyI have been doing strategy consultancy for 17 years now.I've done market entry strategy in New York, management system optimization in Beijing, and everything in between.The first thing that I started doing was having my own little private practice as a coach. Then I went to a big consultancy, where I really learned the craft.I was a junior consultant, senior consultant, then a junior project manager, senior project manager, principal, the whole ladder.I was a young psychotherapist. It was not very impactful and was not the place where I was meant to be. My second try was as a leadership coach and leadership trainer. That was where I found my place.Best advice for entrepreneursI would say, make a list of everything that you're doing. Cut the list in half. Then take this list, cut it in half again, and execute.When you cut what you are currently doing, you will automatically ask yourself “What is the most important thing to do?” and “Now what will pop up as the most important thing?” The first thing will be your family, but then comes your customer. What is really helping your customers succeed? This is the most important question for a business owner: which of my activities are really helping my customer succeed? That should be one block of the things that you do every day.The second one is “Which activities are really helping my company grow?” These are joint venture partnerships, working on the forms, the function of your sales and marketing system and the like.The biggest, most critical failure with customersThe biggest failure was in 2013, when I was a strategy advisor of the BMW group.We had a project of around one year to become number one in the world and to stay number one in the world. We started creating the Factbook and analyzing who are the competitors. They picked some competitors and we picked some competitors. One of these competitors was Tesla.The CEO said, “No, we don't need to take them so seriously. It's just a billionaire from America who has no idea about building cars.”At that time, his assumption was “this is not relevant.” Many years later, the I8 and I3 models are now on the streets. The strategy has been born electric in the history of the company.The direction was fine, but my failure was not to validate assumptions.What I learned from this failure and what I'm doing differently now in the strategy sprints method—you...

Warren helps principled entrepreneurs build a Business That Matters.&nbsp;That is one that delivers to you, the owner, attractive profits and a fulfilling lifestyle while also creating positive impacts on customers, team and the larger community.&nbsp;In other words, it is one that helps make the world - or just your corner of it - a better place.He’s been helping entrepreneurs do this since 2002.&nbsp;He was the top Coach in Canada with the world’s largest business coaching company before going out to focus on Businesses That Matter.His clients have experienced everything from 8 figure exits, to 7 figure salaries, from rapid expansion to minimized operational work because of the development of great leaders and high-performance values-driven cultures.Warren’s also a recovering lawyer, a serial entrepreneur, college professor, actor, theater director and Dad to a wonderful daughter who constantly challenges him to be a better person.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI'm really getting passionate about helping people lift their heads and say, “Okay, there are some really interesting opportunities.”I've been really passionate about ringing the bell, starting to build your strategy, starting to build your plans, not just for the next two months, but for the next 10 months.Warren’s career and storyI was supposed to die at birth. I was given a zero percent chance of survival. I was the second person in history to live through this weird congenital defect. When I found out about that, it spurred in me a desire to do something.I was a lawyer. I've been an actor and theater director. I was a college professor. I've been an entrepreneur. All of those things were because I was trying to find that place where I could make an impact with this unexpected gift that I wasn't supposed to have.I believe passionately that entrepreneurship is one of the most powerful forces for positive social change.A family friend was doing business coaching. This was back in 2002. I'd never even heard of it. I started looking into it and just fell in love with it.That’s what I've been doing ever since – trying to take the lessons I've learned over my own professional career and helping entrepreneurs use them in their own businesses and start to succeed.Best advice for entrepreneursI always think it's “to serve.”My definition of sales is professionally helping people solve problems, which makes it a kind of honorable activity.If you have a service focus for your customers, like always wanting to help them, you're going to have long client and customer relationships.The biggest, most critical failure with customersI had a client, a really nice guy. I guess where it went wrong was that he and I had very different thinking styles.I didn't understand that distinction in our thinking styles well enough. I let him guide the direction because he was in a bit of a crisis.We were doing things reactively instead of by a plan. I was encouraging him to move faster and I didn't realize early enough that he wasn't grasping what we were talking about. He actually wound up feeling more insecure rather than more confident. As a coach, I want people to feel more confident.He was selling lots, but by lowering the prices, because he just gave the guy commission on sales, not on margins and the guy was dropping prices. The business was growing, but he was actually losing money.Biggest success with customersA guy came to me and was really unmotivated. He was in tax debt, his team wasn't performing, and he was generating some profits and had a decent niche but no real growth plan.He was really stuck. Because of where he was emotionally, we

Amy Rose Herrick, ChFC is America’s Profit Building Specialist. Business owners implement her “Secret Profits™” systems to increase profitability $10k-$100k or more by eliminating their hidden “profit eating black holes”.Clients have turned to Amy since 1991 accelerating profits, increasing bottom lines, de-mystifying root causes of business losses and MAKING MORE MONEY without requiring adding costly inventory, changing locations, or adding more staff.Amy Rose has several books for sale on Amazon too. Her most recent release is a #1 Amazon Best Seller entitled ”Pack Faith First, Suitcases Second: A Decade of Miracles After 50” that tells the story of her complete “life-do-over” moving from the midwestern United States to a small Caribbean island with her spouse, four school aged kids, the family dog, a few pallets of possessions with no jobs, family, or friends to go to.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI am most passionate about helping small business owners make more money.I help business owners increase their profits this year and every year. It doesn't matter where your business operates. The concepts and formulas and things I work with apply regardless of currency.Amy’s career and storyOne of my life goals is to change the awful statistics that I see. In the U.S., at least 60% of businesses were failing before COVID ever hit.I started in the corporate world, where I did inventory control and cost accounting.I ended up moving into employee benefits. Then I worked in some mode of the tax aspect. I also dealt with office management.Over time, in addition to working in this career, I have bought and sold businesses. I have closed a second-generation family business. It was very painful. I've seen all aspects of it.I've taught classes on contract for Inner Eyes SBDC. And then I do classes here in the U.S. for AARP, which is a large organization. I do those in the Virgin Islands.I developed many courses for small businesses that are very narrowly focused so that we can work on an area.I give small businesses the formulas and the workbooks they need. That's how I ended up building the platform, taking over three decades of hands-on experience.Best advice for entrepreneursI really believe in starting any business with a vision of how you are going to sell the business.You should always have a business be sellable from day one so that when you need to let go of it, or you want to let go of it, you have got it.The biggest, most critical failure with customersThere were two things.The first thing, in one of the industries I mentioned that I was in, securities practice and insurance, they did not allow you to post any type of testimonial. The mistake I made was not collecting testimonials anyway and just holding them back for when I would want them on another day.I didn't start out with testimonials that could have been transferable if I had the foresight to collect them. So, that would be one thing: As you're looking at your journey, even if you don't use the testimonials now, get those testimonials. Put them in a file because you may need them later as you're starting another endeavor, just to show your trustworthiness and value.The other failure I would say is that there was a very short period of time when I had an unqualified staff person working for me and it was difficult to replace them because of things that I was juggling. That hurt me because trying to undo the damage and trying to catch back up and then fix things was difficult.&nbsp;Biggest success with customersI had a client who had Alzheimer's and their...

Hi, my Reachers.This is the eighth ‘Mountain Episode’. It seems like you really love this amazing series of the Reach Or Miss mountains project; Today, I want to share with you the 8th and newest episode where successful entrepreneurs share their mountains stories.&nbsp;Listen to these incredible mountain stories I heard from the successful entrepreneurs I recently interviewed on my podcast.You can then listen to the full interview with each of them and hear about their visions, struggles, and how these entrepreneurs reached their success.&nbsp;From the entrepreneur that booked a trip to Machu Picchu without knowing it’s a mountain. And found himself lying on the floor, gasping for breath…”To the entrepreneur who had never been mountaineering but found himself climbing one of the highest mountains in Mexico…To the entrepreneur who said: “I love mountains, but I love taking people up mountains with me… As a founder, as a leader, there are always other people who will come and support you.”And the entrepreneur who said that what people miss—about mountain climbing specifically, and also in life—that you have to know when to go down. You're not always moving up. You have to be able to get to a certain level, to find a base…”&nbsp;I hope these mountain stories will encourage you to find out what should you – as an entrepreneur looking for your breakthrough to success – take from their stories to help you find the necessary steps to reach your peak.&nbsp;Many entrepreneurs climb mountains, while others use mountains as a metaphor to describe what is necessary to conquer the peak – including the fatiguing yet rewarding journey to the top. Still other entrepreneurs use mountains as an analogy for a significant goal they wish to achieve – such as becoming a billion-dollar-market-cap company.For many years, I’ve compared entrepreneurship to climbing the highest mountains.You climb step by step to the peak, reach your position as a market leader and a leading brand, and then start climbing a new mountain with a new product line or another brand.The idea of mountains as representations of a strong position in the market is mentioned by Al Ries and Jack Trout in the excellent book, Marketing Warfare.“In military&nbsp;warfare,&nbsp;mountains&nbsp;and higher altitude areas represent strong positions and often are used to present a strong defense. In&nbsp;marketing warfare, the question is one of who holds the&nbsp;mountains&nbsp;in the consumer's mind.”&nbsp;So, at some point after the launch of my podcast for entrepreneurs, I started to ask the successful entrepreneurs I interviewed about their habits or dreams of climbing one of the highest mountains in the world.Listen to these new inspiring mountains’ stories, find which entrepreneurs and stories you identify with most, and review your entrepreneurial objectives, market overview, and plan. By making your business as strong as possible, you will be able to quickly and easily achieve entrepreneurial success.&nbsp;Matt Barnett – Papa Bear@Bonjoro “As a founder, as a leader, there are always other people who will come and support you and make the journey to the top much more enjoyable.It’s about a journey, it's not about the destination, and without people, it's a lonely walk.” A British designer by trade, Bonjoro is Matts second company, founded out of Sydney Australia. What started as a sales hack for an Agency he was running, Bonjoro went from hack to side hustle to global business in 18months, and now has team across 5 continents. Matts love of building great products is only surpassed by that of building great culture, and his goal is to be the next Zappos, to be most loved brand in the world.&nbsp;Matt’s Mountain“I...

James Layfield is an entrepreneur and investor creating positive change through innovation in sectors ranging from property to financial technology.Most recently, James co-founded Clearfind, an easy-to-use, unbiased artificial intelligence platform that is changing the way companies manage and optimize software with data.James is a general partner in a fintech investment fund Treasury with the cofounders of Acorns, Betterment, and a board member of Paypal, and has angel investments across a host of technology ventures.James has founded and led multiple successful companies including Rise, the world’s largest fintech innovation platform, with Barclays; Never Ever Limited, an innovation catalyst and consulting agency; and Central Working, a shared workspace hub for business professionals.James is currently an ambassador for CognitionX the AI event, London and Partners, and the ScaleUp Institute. He also serves as the New York Tech Ambassador for the Mayor of London.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutThe thing that I'm working on right now is something that I've been exploring for the last four years, in a really interesting area of the world: software.I'm working on a company called Clearfind. We’re here to help people bring software into their company as effectively as possible and manage and reduce the cost of the software.James’s career and storyI think of myself as a serial entrepreneur. I've always been driven by an absolute passion to try and solve problems that I have faced in my life.I basically created the idea of co-working in the UK, even before the work came around, which is quite exciting, through financial technology. I've been working in financial technology for the last 10 years with some of the biggest banks in the world.The number of available options in the market has increased exponentially and yet the tools with which to navigate it are the same. That's why there is this beautiful, cool area for tool like clarified.We're bringing that together with AI so that we can augment people in their jobs to make consistently smarter decisions. We think we've excelled at that.The first three years of our journey were spent working out how to do the software and then gathering that data. We only launched it in October of last year.We’re a four-year-old company that has been selling since October of last year. The reason is that it's really hard to do the thing that we've managed to do. Once we went to market, we found that this resonates with that audience of companies spending between three and 10 million a year and also with consultants.We have a couple of the world's largest consultancy firms working with us and are already getting some great results. On top of that, we have companies from many different sectors, from finance and banking to biotech and high-tech. Among all of these organizations, the commonality is the amount of money they're spending annually on software and the complexity of the ecosystem.Best advice for entrepreneursI think basically to listen. I have to constantly remind myself of that.What we're doing is going back through the real insights that we have in our business from our real customers and opening our ears to listen to what they're telling us. You then start to adapt and change your messaging and product in a way that's going to resonate with them.The biggest, most critical failure with customersMany years ago, one of my first ever ventures was an experiential creative agency. We had just gotten to the final stages of hopefully about to win Microsoft.We were meeting the people whom you never want to meet when you're trying to sell someone, which is the procurement team.We want us both to come...

Derick Van Ness is a Wealth Strategist who is passionate about helping people reach their full potential. His company, Big Life Financial is focused on removing the mystery and misinformation surrounding money and financial strategy so people can live their BIGGEST LIFE!Derick believes that each person has something unique and valuable to contribute to the world, but that most people are never able to express that gift due to fear, doubt, or worry related to money. His mission is to eradicate that fear and fundamentally change the way that people think about and utilize money within the next generation.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI am most passionate today about getting back out and re-engaging with the world after the pandemic.I've really been feeling the excitement of getting close to being able to go out and meet with friends, to go dancing and sailing and do a lot of the things that I like to do in my personal life.On the business level, I'm really passionate about a lot of the changes that are happening in the way people are engaging with the world. I love how technology is being used in many ways to bring people together.Derick’s career and storyI wanted to own my own business. I wasn't sure what it was going to be, but my father was a business owner and I saw the flexibility that it offered him.So, I knew that I needed to learn how to sell. I took a sales job right out of college.At first, it was just knocking doors, door to door. I was scared to death of that. Then, after doing that for six months, I took a phone sales job where we would cold-call people and build relationships from nothing. That was as hard as could be.My first three years out of school, I probably did 50,000 cold calls.At that point, I felt like I had the skill set to start my business because I'd worked with so many business owners and seen financial statements, and I knew how to sell. Then I had to decide what I wanted to do. I chose to become a real estate investor and start flipping houses.I really learned a lot just by being fortunate enough to have made a lot of money when I was young.Today, we do financial strategy and tax strategy for business owners.Our goal is to help people create financial certainty so that they can stop worrying so much about money and focus on doing the work or being the person that they're here to be. The company's called Big Life Financial, and the idea is that we get money out of the way so that you can live the big life you're here to live.Best advice for entrepreneursI think the most important thing that gets overlooked in sales is asking good questions and listening to salespeople practice their sales pitch. They practice overcoming objections, they practice how to present, they practice all these things, but it's not what communication is not about, what you’re saying, it's about what the customer is hearing.If you don't know their needs, you can't speak in terms of their needs when you present.The biggest, most critical failure with customersI would say my biggest failure with clients is that sometimes, when my business has grown in big spurts, my follow-through of continuing to stay in touch with clients and continuing to stay engaged and active with them, has not been as good as it could have been.Relationships have come naturally to me, so I've relied on that. At times in my business growth, by not having cadences, and not having routines, and not having systems to support me, I've dropped the ball.Biggest success with customersI think the best thing that I've ever done, and I kind of learned this in the real estate business, was when my greed glands turn on.My...

Bryan Clayton is CEO and cofounder of GreenPal an online marketplace that connects homeowners with Local lawn care professionals. GreenPal has been called the “Uber for lawn care” by Entrepreneur magazine and has over 200,000 active users completing thousands of transactions per day.Before starting GreenPal Bryan Clayton founded Peachtree Inc. one of the largest landscaping companies in the state of Tennessee growing it to over $10 million a year in annual revenue before it was acquired by Lusa holdings in 2013.Bryan’s interest and expertise are related to entrepreneurialism, small business growth, marketing and bootstrapping businesses from zero revenue to profitability and exit.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI am the co-founder and CEO of a company called GreenPal, which, in one sentence, is kind of like the Uber of lawn mowing.We have over 300,000 people using the app and we’re doing $20 million a year in revenue. So, we're kind of an eight-year overnight success.Our business has doubled year over year for the past six years. That's the cadence we want to continue until the numbers just get too big.Bryan’s career and storyI started mowing grass as a way to make extra cash, to put myself through college. When I graduated college, I had to make a decision. Was I going to stick with this little lawn mowing business, or go into the job market? Luckily, I decided to stay with the lawn mowing business. I didn't really want to be a grass-cutting guy my whole life, but I was making good money. I was earning a good living and I kind of liked it.In 2013, that business was acquired by one of the largest landscaping companies in the United States. By growing that business, with just me and a push mower to 150 people, I learned a lot through trial and error about how to grow a business, how to get a business to profitability, and how to get a business sold.I realized that about myself and I thought, ‘Okay, well, it's time to start the next thing.’The idea for GreenPal was a straightforward one for me. I addressed the things I saw over the previous 15 years of growing a landscaping business. I thought, ‘Okay, an app needs to exist to make this easier, kind of like Airbnb and Uber and Lyft.’I recruited two co-founders and we went to work. We really didn't know the first thing about any of that stuff. We just didn't give up. We stuck with it. We focused on little goals and got those done, then kept making the app better and better.One thing that got us through those early hard years was that we would make it extremely easy for anybody to talk to us. We would always talk to our users and our customers to get their feedback, to understand what it was we needed to work on. We stuck at it and kept applying that feedback and improving the app. Here we are, eight years later, and we have a profitable business that's growing.Best advice for entrepreneursIf you're just getting started, my best advice is to get as many loyal customers as you can, whether it be six, a dozen, twenty, a hundred.Don't focus on big goals and big revenue goals. Just focus on little goals, making those people's lives better.The biggest, most critical failure with customersWe thought that the value proposition was going to be to deliver the cheapest way to get your grass cut. We thought, ‘If we can just be $5 or $10 cheaper than the other way, people will use the app.’ That was a mistake.Also, in talking to people on both sides of the transaction for a long time, we kind of ignored the supplier side, the vendor side. That came at a cost because we didn't really understand that if these guys and gals weren't really happy with the product, they weren't going to...

Joe Paranteau is a leading expert on sales, generating more than $1B in just five years, an uncommon accomplishment. He has led nearly 30K sales meetings in his 28-year career with Fortune 500, SMBs, and startup businesses. In his first book, Billion Dollar Sales Secrets, he shares fifteen secrets to help inspire salespeople to rise to meet today’s challenges, ignite their dreams and success.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutMy book is coming out. That has been three years in the making.I've also completed my MBA. I went back to school during this time, something that I wanted to do, and I'm so happy that I did.I'm most passionate about helping everyone increase their sales IQ and really execute so that they can provide the things they need for their families and their companies.Our company motto is to help people and businesses throughout the world achieve their full potential. It says nothing about technology but that's what I love to do: help people.Joe’s career and storyI'm the first generation in my family to grow up off the Indian reservation. So, I'm a member of a tribe.I was the first one to grow up in suburbia. I have these two worlds that I grew up in. I grew up poor and didn't have a lot.To help the family, my brother, sister, and I would paint rocks and go door to door to sell them. So, I guess my career really started when I was eight years old.I served in the military as a way to do something to better my life.I went to college, graduated, and then I had an opportunity to get into sales. I thought I wanted to go into politics. That was my thinking at the time. Then I met someone who said, “Joe, you have a technical background and a background in communication. Very interesting. Why don't you want to go into sales?”She explained to me what I just shared with you earlier: That selling is all about helping people get what they want or need. If you can look yourself in the mirror every day and say to yourself, “Today, I helped somebody,” then you're doing all right.The company that I worked for was a technology company that was a Microsoft partner, 28 years ago. So, I started there and worked through a series of startups. Some of them were super successful, some of them were not. Many of them got merged and acquired by other companies, but my path at Microsoft has been interesting.I've been here 16 years, and this is the sixth role and fourth startup that I've been in inside the company. I've helped start different businesses inside the company. The basis for my book was a startup in our health industry team that I was able to help grow to a billion dollars in five years.Best advice for entrepreneursA pretty good one is to focus. Be comfortable and openly search for ways to fail. Don't be afraid of failure. I've come to a place in my sales and business career where I don't see obstacles. I don't see a sale that could be unwinnable.Be open to shifting and being honest with yourself. The only thing that's going against us is time. If we can change the way we approach things, that's really what has to change. If we learn something new, we can approach the situation differently. Then we're one step closer.The biggest, most critical failure with customersThe biggest failure that I've had in sales is not listening well and not aligning myself with what the customer wanted. When I've looked at it from a selfish ambition standpoint, that's a surefire way to fail.I had a customer with a very specific set of criteria. At first, it sounded like I knew exactly what they needed, so I rushed that. I went directly into, “Okay, this will be easy to sell.” I missed the mark completely. The customer felt awkward. They told me, “We like you as a...

David&nbsp;is the founder and CEO of Warm Welcome and was recently named a Top 100 Tech Innovator and Influencer.In today’s market most businesses struggle to stand out in crowded markets. Warm Welcome helps businesses upgrade from boring text to personal video so they can build meaningful relationships that drive real revenue.David&nbsp;has bootstrapped several startups into multi-million ARR. Revenues from Warm Welcome, along with his other four companies, exceed $6 million in 2020.Over the previous years the pursuit of efficiency and automation has created a lonely world that is actually disconnected from what we need the most – people!&nbsp;Most passionate aboutFirst is my family; we just moved to Florida, and I have two young boys, two and four. So that's an exciting, exciting time of life.My business babies and the startup guide; I have a few tech startups, and we're working on selling one of those and working on building one of those. The newest one is called Warm Welcome.it's a way to personalize your business and build trust quickly through video.it's a way to stand out in your market.It is a way to make things more personal, more human by moving beyond kind of boring old texts, emails, or text on your website and putting a face behind it, putting a smile behind it.David’s career and storyI remember back in sixth grade, I went down to the store and started buying up candy bars on sale, Reese's peanut butter cups and everyone loves them. And I started selling those, and the school shut me down...I saw problems back then and enjoyed solving them and enjoyed coming up with a better way of doing something or at least something that I thought was better.So, then I went on to college and actually ended up dropping out of college and starting a service business of photography and love doing that for about 10 years; it hits all the typical scale problems that everyone has in the service business, whether you're a photographer or contractor.So, I started to build communities around the software. One of my mentors, Tim Sanders, said, your network is your net worth. And I thought about that, and I thought I need to build a network: I need to build a community of people that knows me and trust me. Through the community, I started to hear other people's problems and try and come up with solutions for those. And so that's been what pulled me into tech.Best advice for entrepreneursWhen I was 16 years old, my dad sat me down and said, David, if you do your business about helping other people, you always have plenty of work.I think that's probably the best advice out there and something that we often miss when we're building a business or building a product; we tend to think a lot about our business and our product. Still, really we need to be thinking about the customer and thinking about the problem that the customer has and how we are going to help them solve their problem.The biggest, most critical failure with customersOne thing that I've had a tendency to do is to take too much time building what I want to build, a product that I think is the right thing for the market instead of building an MVP or building a beta prototype that I can then take to the market and get their feedback on it earlier.With green.com, I spent about a million dollars more than I needed to spend building that. It cost me a couple of million bucks to get that product going. Because we spent our whole first year building, building, building, building, building, and so what we were essentially doing was baking the product. And then by the time, we presented it to the customer and they gave us feedback on it, we couldn't re-bake it. And so, it almost cost me the entire...

Isaac Kuhlman has been an Amazon Brand Developer since 2013, responsible for more than $12 Million in revenue. He is the co- founder of REAL Coaching with Kirsty Verity where they have helped over 1,000 Amazon Sellers grow their businesses with the right strategies to achieve their freedom goals. They specialize in taking sellers who are stuck or plateaued in their business and break through to reach the real success they desire.Now he gets to enjoy real freedom and pursue his lifelong passion for Rock music-- having produced and recorded an album, bicycling 11&nbsp;miles a day, writing a poetry book and traveling the world.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI'm an Amazon seller and have two brands on Amazon. Then we provide coaching through Real Coaching, which is a company I started with my business partner, Kirsty.We help entrepreneurs establish sustainable long-term businesses on Amazon—not just selling products, but actually getting businesses set up and built, finding products that can be sustainable and that are not just fad-products.I've always wanted to be somebody who educates but also leads other people to build an opportunity for themselves.Isaac’s career and storyI grew up pretty poor. I graduated from high school and took a couple of scholarships and a grant to go to school. I still had to pay a bunch of student loans. Actually, last year I finally paid off my student loans from 2004, when I graduated from college.I got a history degree with a pre-law or political science minor. My school didn’t have a pre-law major, but they had a pathway. I was happy that it didn't work out in the end because it kind of built a fire inside of me.I met a guy who was working in an Amazon business. I didn't know that much about Amazon. I had shopped on it a couple of times. I knew some stuff about online and Facebook, but it wasn't like I was savvy about e-commerce selling.We worked together for about two-and-a-half years, selling a lot of stuff. Then we branched off and went our separate ways. It changed the situation.I didn't have any plan. I had limited funds in the bank. Then I went out and started my own brands and the coaching business and all that stuff.Best advice for entrepreneursI think Robert Kiyosaki has a quote similar to this: People who fail quit easily. Winners always try to fail as fast as possible.People are so afraid of rejection or failure, of something not working out one time, that they don't even get started.In my opinion, you only fail if you give up. You want to keep finding these things that you can do better.The only way you can do things better is to make mistakes along the way. Mistakes are the best learning tools in the world. Put your hand on a hot stove. You’ll remember never to do that again.The biggest, most critical failure with customersThis was very early on in my Amazon business. There was a person who said they got a defective product and they were going to sue us.My response wasn't overly negative, but it was kind of skeptical—pushing off the blame, but at the same time it wasn't helpful because it kind of made it seem like it was all their fault.We eventually got him to calm down. He wanted to write every Amazon customer and tell them, like, all this stuff about how it was a bad product.He was writing a bad review. It became a huge issue when it could have been resolved just by checking the tone of the email.Biggest success with customersThis was back around 2014, and a customer had received a product. They bought it from the Amazon listing that we created, but that didn’t necessarily mean that they were going to get the product from us because other...

Josh Little is the founder of four tech companies–Maestro, Bloomfire, Qzzr, and Volley–that have collectively been used by hundreds of millions of people.&nbsp;With two successful exits and third pending, he’s currently on a mission to save the working world from death-by-meetings with his fourth creation, Volley.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI am trying to save the world from “death by meetings,” as we all have gone remote with the recent pandemic and realized that we still need to talk to move work forward.We are aiming to fill the gap between Slack and Zoom. Most people would say, “Well, I don't see a gap there. I'm either Slacking my team or I'm Zooming with my team back to back all day.”There's this whole spectrum in between that Volley is aiming to solve. With Volley, you share asynchronous video messages. Imagine video texting. If you could text someone with a video, that's kind of what Volley is like.Volley allows teams to move work forward faster by replacing their meetings with asynchronous video conversations. The ultimate goal is to have productive conversations that don't interrupt each other's productivity because meetings are quite interrupted.Josh’s career and storyI started as a teacher. I was a preschool teacher, a social studies teacher. I actually was four years into a music education degree. The only reason I wanted to be a teacher was to be a music teacher, but I did realize that the same skills that made me a good teacher also made me good at sales.I left teaching to go into sales. I went to three Fortune 500 companies and did really well at each of them. I'd usually become the number one rep in the division the first year I was there. They would invite me to be the sales trainer and show everyone what I was doing.I left Stryker, which was my last corporate job, and started my first company, which was Maestro.From Maestro, we built Bloomfire. Then, after Bloomfire, I built QZZr. After kind of a long break and pondering what I wanted to build, the next idea, Volley, came.Best advice for entrepreneursBe remarkable because the definition of the word “remarkable” is “worthy of remark.”To truly be remarkable is to have people talk about the way that you engage with customers, the way that you show up in a conversation.I aim for every interaction with a customer to be in some way remarkable, where they walk away from that conversation and say, “Wow, he really cared,” or “He really understood my problem,” or “I love how he was vulnerable there at that moment,” or “That was really funny what he did.”The biggest, most critical failure with customersWith customers, my biggest failure has been withholding truth or withholding reality from a customer because you want to make customers happy and you don't want to initiate conflict.Biggest success with customersI believe that I'm doing the best work of my life right now. I've had great success.With two of my companies, I've had successful exits. I really think what we're doing for teams and communication right now with Volley is extremely important work.The reason I say that what we're doing is a success—and this is very recent feedback we've been receiving from users—is that Volley has helped increase team connectedness and brought back the fun and the spontaneity that we once had as a team but that we then lost when we went remote. I think that's really powerful.Josh’s recommendation of a toolVolley: That’s a tool that I'm using right now for reaching out to my customers. We're using our product as our support tool.LinkedIn and Zoom: LinkedIn is a great way to

Scott Prisco is a nutritionist and&nbsp;entrepreneur with a passion for helping others. He founded Priscotty Pure, a wellness company that assists people in reaching their optimum state of well-being through unique supplement blends and an&nbsp;electrifying&nbsp;health movement.Scott is also a mover and shaker in the CBD space. He founded Inception Industries Extracts, a manufacturing company that specializes in the production of high-quality, water-soluble powders and liquids, made from hemp-derived cannabinoids. The company uses a proprietary nanomolecular&nbsp;encapsulation technology to drastically increase the bioavailability and effectiveness of its outputs.&nbsp;Inception Industries Extracts formulates ingredients for clients in the nutraceutical, nutricosmetic, and functional foods industries, both domestically and internationally.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutRight now, I'm most passionate about helping people. We are a wellness supplement company. We make supplements and blends—from beauty products to CBD, sleep, digestion and everything in between.I am also passionate about my other company, Inception Industries Extracts, which is a CBD manufacturing company.We manufacture water-soluble ingredients for beverage companies and functional food companies, both domestically and internationally.Scott’s career and storyAbout three-and-a-half years ago, I suffered from depression and anxiety. I started using CBD when it first came on the market and became popular.I found a little bit of relief from the anxiety. It helped my mood.I have a nutrition background and I've always been into science. I read a ton of journals and scientific studies, and I really love chemistry as well.I linked up with a guy who had been making water-soluble ingredients for a world-renowned beverage company for the last 25 years.I took that and we applied it to the CBD. I started Priscotty Pure, which began with one product: a water-soluble CBD powder.We started selling that and then we got a lot of interest from other companies. We ranked pretty high on Google and got a lot of interest internationally and domestically, from beverage companies, functional foods, and nutraceuticals.I think that the CBD market really got played out a little bit. There were a lot of people getting involved in it and putting out products that weren't very good.So, it started as a CBD company, but then we pivoted and ended up selling other things.Best advice for entrepreneursBe open, be malleable, be ready to pivot because you really don't know who your customer is.A lot of times, the best way to decide who your customer is, the proper customer you should be targeting, is to put out the product and see who interacts best with it.Don't think you know everything. Just be open.A lot of times, you’ll see that who you think you're going to be targeting and who you think is going to be buying your product will be different when the sales start rolling in. That’s what we’ve seen. Analytics help us on the backend.The biggest, most critical failure with customersI’d say it was when we first started Priscotty Pure with that one water-soluble CBD product.We anticipated a higher volume of sales.We didn't really plan.It was such a slow start.We thought it was going to sell like hotcakes.Luckily, we got a lot of wholesale interest. We focused on that for a little bit, as we were building up the Priscotty Pure wellness business.We just fell into that and it really helped hold us over. It allowed us to eventually re-reinvest that money into Priscotty...

Unfortunately, you won’t find my room on Clubhouse. Not because I’m not on Clubhouse. I am. There are some fantastic rooms there, and I’ve heard some meaningful discussions. I actually thought about opening a room, and I even decided what it would be called and who my partner coordinators would be.But then I realized that I had totally forgotten the law of FOCUS. This law has a few meanings. I first read about it 25 years ago in what I consider to be the best marketing book I’ve ever read: “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing” by Al Ries and Jack Trout.The law of focus says, “The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind.” We must create a clear identity in the minds of our target audience. The best way to get ahead of the competition is to be very clear and focused about what word we own.But it starts much earlier. There are two decisions you should make regarding the basis of your market strategy: Who are your target customers and how should you define your product or service so that your potential customers understand its value?As an entrepreneur today, you are probably confused. There are so many options, so many people who might need your product, and so many ways you can present your product to your customers.Because there are so many options out there, you must find the customers who feel that they must have your product, that it solves their problem or best fulfills their need.The problem is that to focus and be the best solution for one or two specific target audiences, you have to give up on so many potential buyers. Here comes the law of SACRIFICE—you have to give up something in order to get something. There are three things to sacrifice: product line, target market, and constant change.So many opinions are out there. Everyone knows what you should do, who your target market is, and what marketing activities you should run.But here is the truth: NOBODY KNOWS. You can’t know until you search the market from the point of view of your potential target audience.Searching the market is not complicated today. In most cases, you don’t need an expensive research company. You can learn more about how to do it from my short guide, The three free, practical steps to researching and finding your market.Here are two examples of entrepreneurs who managed to build a successful brand by focusing on and owning a single phrase in the minds of their target market.How did they manage to do this? They focused on the right things and sacrificed other options.The first entrepreneur is Mike Stelzner, who created the leading social media blog “Social Media Examiner” and the Social Media Marketing World global conference.Stelzner managed to own the phrase “Social Media” in the minds of his target audience. Michael Stelzner is the founder of Social Media Examiner, the author of the books Launch and Writing White Papers, and the man behind Social Media Marketing World, the industry’s largest conference. He’s also the host of the Social Media Marketing podcast, the founder of the Social Media Marketing Society, and the host of the weekly Social Media Marketing Talk Show. Michael’s Career“I started as a writer. Then in 2009, I did what I call ‘my great experiment’ when I was able to secure the website, SocialMediaExaminer.com for $10. I connected with some of my friends who were writers and encouraged them to write for this movement that I was starting, called Social Media Examiner. In 2009, not a lot of websites were giving out a lot of free information, and this thing just took off. In months, all of a sudden I had a crazy successful blog on my hands!And then the rest is history …...

My podcast, REACH OR MISS for entrepreneurs, reached its 200th episode, and - as part of the celebration - I decided to change its title to REACH OR MISS - Entrepreneurial Marketing Success.&nbsp;The 1st secret - your “big idea” or what you are “one of a kind of?”As I see it, the power and beauty of entrepreneurship is that it allows you to share or create what you are “one of a kind of” (the best at). That’s what entrepreneurs should focus on.I’m aware that many people choose to enter the entrepreneurial world to leave their 9 to 5 jobs or to make more money, and these are good reasons; not every entrepreneur wants to change the world or make an impact. However, once you decided to become an entrepreneur, your chances to make an impact on more people and move the needle is significantly higher if you focus on your unique, powerful abilities.I believe entrepreneurship is changing the world, not only because it can create technological or behavioral revolutions, but also because it enables entrepreneurs to choose to do what they are the best at and that means less mediocrity and much more greatness in our world.What any entrepreneur should look for while deciding about his/her professional direction isn’t only where they can make a living, make more money or determine the leading trends today (although these are good and important parameters as part of this decision). Entrepreneurs should start to look for their professional direction after answering the question, What am I “one of a kind of”? Meaning, what will I be outstanding in doing?The answer to this question lies in the meeting point between what you are best at doing and what you most like to do.That will also be the direction where you have the best chances to achieve significant successOnce you’ve found what you are “one of a kind of,” you should find what product or service you should create or offer - one that answers a true need and brings value to a significant number of people or businesses.&nbsp;Blake Jamieson is a fantastic example of an entrepreneur that is one of a kind at what he does, and he literally created a new market category that fit his talent. Blake Jamieson is a pop portrait artist in Manhattan, NY. He paints pop art portraits for professional athletes and celebrities, including Howie Mandel, Drew Brees, Joe Montana, Gary Vaynerchuk, and over 250 other professional athletes in the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS, and PLL. Blake’s path to becoming a full-time artist was far from traditional. Despite his passion for art at a young age, Blake decided to forgo&nbsp;art school for a more “practical” degree, studying Economics at UC Davis. After graduating, Blake began his career in digital marketing at Zynga. He worked in digital marketing for nearly a decade, working for small tech startups to publicly&nbsp;traded companies.On his 30th birthday, Blake decided it was time to stop building someone else’s dream, and start to following his own passions. He began painting full-time nearly five years ago, and has carved out a niche that allows him to paint every day.Most passionate aboutI’m a portrait artist located in NYC. I’ve had an interesting rollercoaster of a journey up until this point, but what I do now is paint portraits of professional athletes.Primarily, I have worked in the NFL, although I do work with other athletes who play soccer, lacrosse, hockey, and more.I created this niche for myself where an athlete, or the spouse or girlfriend of an athlete, is looking for a painting that will capture special sports moments for them. I’m often the person they turn to and I’m very fortunate to work with awesome people and get to paint every single day.<img...

On my weekly podcast, I ask my interviewees about the digital or technological tools that they recommend using. However, I tell them that I’m not looking for the shiniest tool in the endless list of them. I’m looking for the tool that they use most and that helps them succeed.Five tools help me as an entrepreneur who has worked with thousands of entrepreneurs on their marketing success.My first tool is Canva. Canva is also one of the tools that Guy Kawasaki recommended in his interview.Canva helps me get much more traction with attractive, powerful visuals. With a huge free photo stock, and very easy and intuitive design options, Canva is here to stay.&nbsp;My second recommended tool is LinkedIn. You probably want to tell me “LinkedIn is a social media platform, not a tool.” That’s right, LinkedIn is defined as a social media platform. However, for me and many of the successful entrepreneurs I interview on my show, LinkedIn is a tool that we use daily to find and engage with potential customers, close deals, and turn them into loyal customers and fans. Guy Kawasaki was the chief evangelist of Apple and a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation. Today, among his other positions, Guy is the chief evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool.&nbsp;When I asked Guy what he is most passionate about today, he talked about Canva. “Professionally, I’m most passionate about Canva. Canva is democratizing design, trying to enable everyone to make great designs very easily.” When I asked about the tool he uses most, Kawasaki answered:“In general, social media is a gift to entrepreneurs, but within social media it’s&nbsp;Facebook! Facebook is so fantastic that you can target a specific age group, gender, in a specific geography with a specific interest. It’s the best marketing thing that exists.“The second social media platform I would highly recommend is&nbsp;LinkedIn. LinkedIn is for your personal branding, for your personal awareness, and for your personal professional development.&nbsp;As a person, if you don’t participate in LinkedIn, you don’t exist in the world. LinkedIn and Facebook, that’s about 80% of my social media activity.”&nbsp;My next tool is Feedly. Feedly is a content curation tool that provides me with endless updated content topics.Using a content curation tool not only helps you to build a constant presence in social media but also allows you to build yourself as a leader in a specific market by providing current information and relevant analysis in a specific field. I learned about using content curation tools from Richard Chowning.Chowning is the founder and director of Africa Mentor, whose mission is to help businesses put their best foot forward in Africa. Chowning is located in Texas.&nbsp;Africa Mentor has official representatives in the Ivory Coast and Ethiopia and has relationships with governments and private sector businesses throughout Africa. “I want to recommend UpContent, which is a curation tool,” Richard told me. “My dream was, when I decided to establish Africa Mentor, to help the economy of Africa, help people and companies that want to establish their businesses in Africa get into the continent, succeed, and create more jobs and lift the standard of living…“…I’ve chosen to use a lot of social media to become known. I have more than...

Since co-founding Escape Fitness, taking it to a $33 million-dollar global business chosen by big brands and independent fitness professionals, such as the UFC, Equinox, 1Rebel, Sanctuary Fitness and more, Matthew has continued to be a powerful advocate for functional training.Their goal is to motivate and inspire people to get started and create exercise habits that last.&nbsp;Matthew travels the world, helping studios and gyms to turn their visions into world-class fitness destinations and awesome training experiences. During the pandemic, Matthew has become an advocate for at-home training and maintaining physical and mental health to persevere in the face of life's challenges.In addition to being a father, he has started five companies and sits on the board of three companies across three continents&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI'm very passionate about the health and fitness space.We have a company that I founded with my father 21 years ago. We started making basic equipment for fitness studios and gyms.We are very much into helping and motivating people to get fit.I predominantly work with a lot of the business community.We have a number of different channels within the business that we supply.Probably the biggest channel is the gyms, personal training studios, and fitness studios.We also do quite a bit of corporate wellness.It’s important to think about your model and how to adapt it and evolve it so that you can deal with things like the pandemic that is going on at the moment.It’s also important to realize that the people who are at the end of the website or email or social media app are humans. What do humans need?As we said at the beginning, there are two things. Look at the stuff that's constant. You mentioned marketing where it's people to people. If it's not business to business or business to consumer, it's people to people.If you go too much down the technical route and lose that human connection, then you're not going to get that engagement and that same experience.Best advice for entrepreneursYou’ve got to look at the new technologies and how your business evolves, but you've almost got to say, “Well, look, what is an important thing for human beings and for people and how can you do that in a way for social media?”I suppose my advice is, it depends on who we're talking to. Don't forget that we're all human and don't let technology confuse you.Try and understand how you can use that technology to create deep and meaningful personal relationships.Nowadays, in order to be successful, you've got to really narrow down on that audience.Humanization and personalization are probably two things that are key today.The biggest, most critical failure with customersOne of the most difficult things for me to get over is when we have a customer who’s not happy with us. For us, the customers or clients, whatever you call them, are almost like family.Maybe someone buys a product and we let them down, or we messed up the delivery or they have a product and it has an issue.We had a client whom we started to work with and they were a long way from where we're located—the other side of the world almost.A big percentage of the product that we shipped them was wrong.The quality control wasn't what it should have been.They brought the containers into the country and then they started to distribute them to gyms. We'd read that they'd realized it had this same problem.So, it wasn't just a...

Ari Rastegar, Founder and CEO of Rastegar Property Company, has earned a reputation as a thought leader in real estate with his innovative, technology-driven investment strategies. He specializes in recession-resilient real assets and multifamily real estate developments, building portfolios designed to reduce risk and maximize capital appreciation potential.Rastegar Property Company has acquired over 20 properties across the Sun Belt over the past year and a half.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutReinvigorating buildings and renovating them, bringing them up to class. Being able to bring a superior product to our tenants—that's really our main focus at the moment.We have things going on with building a thousand homes south of Austin. We're building multi-family, we're building industrial near Tesla's new plant.Ari’s career and storyI was born in Austin, Texas, where our company is headquartered.We're a real estate, private equity firm, and we've done business in 38 cities in 12 states.Right now, we're very focused on vintage multifamily, which is basically older apartment complexes—30-, 40-year-old apartment complexes in very good locations.My grandfather and my father are both Iranian immigrants to America.I was a literature major in undergrad. While I was in law school, I had an inkling, around 2005 or 2006, to start building single-family homes.I partnered with a local developer and borrowed $3,000 from the father of one of my friends from college. Shortly after that, the financial crisis happened.I got kicked in the teeth pretty hard but was fortunate enough to get an introduction to a very, very wealthy person that was on Wall Street and moved me into New York.I worked in various businesses as an entrepreneur under this kind of umbrella of wealthy people.I worked directly in real estate for several years and then decided to start my own company. Now it has been almost six years.Best advice for entrepreneursWe're very much data-driven.As a company, we follow the math, we follow the trends. We track data from the light bulbs to the water heaters to make more effective investment decisions.It’s about coming to the right answer for the consumer and taking your ego out of it—collaborating, having a great team, but really understanding what they truly need and taking yourself out of the equation, delivering that in a win-win environment in which they're getting some sort of value. My hope is that it would be an extraordinary value.The biggest, most critical failure with customersI was running an entertainment company in 2011 for some very, very wealthy real estate people whom I had become close within the real estate world. There was a lot of trouble during those years, as people know.We did everything right by our standards. We sold the tables. We booked big sponsors. We had Sports Illustrated. We had the Black Eyed Peas and Puff Daddy and all the big performers.And then the biggest ice storm in the history of Dallas, Texas hits the Super Bowl two days before and all the flights get canceled.It was a failure in the sense that financially, at the time, with all the chargebacks and returning the money to the customers and things of that nature, it wasn't profitable. We lost money as a business. So the failure from a monetary standpoint comes from that vantage point, which I took very hard.Biggest success with customersOne specifically was during COVID.When the world really shut down, we became extremely active. We started buying like crazy and we were able to procure financing.We partnered with a huge insurance...

A British designer by trade, Bonjoro is Matts second company, founded out of Sydney Australia. What started as a sales hack for an Agency he was running, Bonjoro went from hack to side hustle to global business in 18 months, and now has team across 5 continents.Matts love of building great products is only surpassed by that of building great culture, and his goal is to be the next Zappos, to be most loved brand in the world.When not heads down in product, Matt spends his time rescuing wildlife, teaching his daughter about beekeeping and running one of Sydney’s largest tech founder networks.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI love building great products.The second thing I love most is people. I'm very much an extrovert. So, I love the idea of building great products and then using them to help people connect with other people better.Matt’s career and storyI’m from the UK originally, and I came to Australia eleven years ago. I was originally an industrial designer. I earned an MBA and fell into running an agency.We found that by sending videos to individuals, we get much more engagement. A few agencies wanted to use that technique, and their customers used it, so in 2017, we launched a technology company developing personal videos called Bonjoro.It's all about connecting with customers at key points on the customer journey. What we find is that they're investing a little bit of time checking in personally with leads. Using videos and media is incredibly powerful in terms of engagement.Today, I run that company full-time. The product team is here, in Australia. Then, most of the rest of our team is outside Australia because our customer base is located around the world.Right now, it's really about taking the business to the next stage. So we kind of three years behind in Australia, it is definitely not Israel or the West Coast of the States.Best advice for entrepreneursI think you have to stay connected to the front line.I don't pick and choose. We just send to anyone a personal video and ask them to respond to me personally, to give me feedback. Every single day, I ensure that I talk to a couple of customers on the front line.I have a handle on how well the product is performing and how well our funnel is performing overall, qualitatively.That gives me a better ability to work with my managers across marketing, across customer success, and across products.The biggest, most critical failure with customersThe first business that I mentioned we tried to start, we actually built the product and raised lots of money. Then it failed quite spectacularly and we made a critical error.A lot of people loved the idea and loved what we were doing. We had a lot of paying customers. Then none of those activated. There wasn't a sense of urgency within what we were trying to do.Call that a failure of research, or call that making assumptions that were wrong, but ultimately, we couldn't keep that business going.Biggest success with customersI think it was deciding to go full-time into the Bonjoro product when we already had another business running.It wasn't ever meant to be a business but it looked like we should invest some more time, in this project and it became bigger and bigger so we decided to focus on it as our main business.Matt’s recommendation of a toolAmplitude or Metabase.We use both to track data, measure it, and help inform decisions.It is absolutely crucial to helping marketing improve their...

Kristin Zhivago is the president of Zhivago Partners, a digital marketing management company. She and her team build lead-generation campaigns for small and mid-sized companies, including websites, SEO, online advertising, social media, and video.Zhivago has built a solid team of professionals in the various digital channels; writers, designers, and developers; project managers, and client success managers.She is an expert on the customer’s buying process and the author of&nbsp;Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI started a digital marketing management company in 2017.I was a revenue coach, mostly for tech companies. Basically, I helped people grow their companies, work better with customers, and do a better job of selling and marketing their products.Before that, my husband and I had an agency in Silicon Valley back in the early days. We helped introduce pretty much everything that we use today; The semi-connectors, computers, email, voice mail, and the like.Kristin’s career and storyWhen I was a revenue coach, I often did rent-a-VP services. I would turn around a marketing or sales department.We specialize in digital marketing, content marketing, search engine optimization, online advertising, social media, and so on.We work mostly with small to midsize companies. There's less politics in companies of that size.We want the client to be as smart as possible about what's going on. It's their marketing and we work together to improve what needs to be improved.We're growing our company steadily. We bring on clients as we can absorb them because we're a service-based business.Best advice for entrepreneursThe first thing is: Don't be afraid to interview your customers after they buy from you.If you interview people after they have bought from you, they are no longer playing poker. They're no longer negotiating. They won't tell you what they're really thinking when you're selling to them. However, after you start working together, they will tell you what they were thinking.After they buy, they have a vested interest in your success. They want to make sure that you stay in business and can help them. So, they'll tell you what they were thinking.The biggest, most critical failure with customersWhen I was 17, Pratt &amp; Whitney gave me a catalog and said, “Here. Go out and sell.”I finally met one old guy who came out and said, “Okay, all right, well then, tell me how your drill bit is better than the one I'm using now.” And of course, I had no training. I just had a catalog. I couldn't answer the question.I was so embarrassed, so I walked out. I thought to myself, ‘I'm going to learn everything I can about technology and sales.’ And that has been my path.Biggest success with customersThis was way before anybody was talking about the buying journey. I was one of the first people to identify that it isn’t how we sell that matters. It’s about how they buy. Our job is to make it easy for them to buy from us.We have a client who sells luxury yacht cruises.She was really in trouble at the beginning of last year.There were two words—and I can't tell you what they are, unfortunately, because, you know, it's our thing—but we put those two words in the ads. It was a huge success, bigger than what she hoped for.I love business-to-business, so we keep working on it. It has proved to me that there is such a thing as immediate recognition.Kristin’s

Hi, my Reachers.This is the seventh ‘Mountain Episode’. It seems like you really love this amazing series of the Reach Or Miss mountains project; Today, I want to share with you the 7th and newest episode where successful entrepreneurs share their mountains stories.&nbsp;Listen to these incredible mountain stories I heard from the successful entrepreneurs I recently interviewed on my podcast.You can then listen to the full interview with each of them and hear about their visions, struggles, and how these entrepreneurs reached their success.From the entrepreneur that climbed with her client on “the hike of the gods” in Italy, and was amazed,To the one who decided to climb the highest peak in Utah; Kings Peak, but found out they climbed the wrong peak…”To the entrepreneur whose mountain was to save the financial future of his family,To the only entrepreneur that said: “To be honest, I don’t feel like I’m climbing a mountain today. I feel like my mountain climbing journeys ebb and flow.”And the entrepreneur that moved to the mountains in Asheville, North Carolina and said “It’s pretty impressive, and it’s just incredible to be so rooted in nature here. Being in the mountains is a blessing that I had never thought I would experience like this.”&nbsp;I hope these mountain stories will encourage you to find out what should you – as an entrepreneur looking for your breakthrough to success – take from their stories to help you find the necessary steps to reach your peak.Many entrepreneurs climb mountains, while others use mountains as a metaphor to describe what is necessary to conquer the peak – including the fatiguing yet rewarding journey to the top. Still other entrepreneurs use mountains as an analogy for a significant goal they wish to achieve – such as becoming a billion-dollar-market-cap company.For many years, I’ve compared the act of marketing; taking possession of your potential customers’ minds and of building awareness, likability, and trust of a leading brand, to the act of climbing the highest mountains.You climb step by step to the peak, reach your position as a market leader and a leading brand, and then start climbing a new mountain with a new product line or another brand.The idea of mountains as representations of a strong position in the market is mentioned by Al Ries and Jack Trout in the excellent book, Marketing Warfare.“In military&nbsp;warfare,&nbsp;mountains&nbsp;and higher altitude areas represent strong positions and often are used to present a strong defense. In&nbsp;marketing warfare, the question is one of who holds the&nbsp;mountains&nbsp;in the consumer's mind.”&nbsp;So, at some point after the launch of my podcast for entrepreneurs, I started to ask the successful entrepreneurs I interviewed about their habits or dreams of climbing one of the highest mountains in the world.Listen to these new inspiring mountains’ stories, find which entrepreneurs and stories you identify with most, and review your entrepreneurial objectives, market overview, and plan. By making your business as strong as possible, you will be able to quickly and easily achieve entrepreneurial success.&nbsp;Lisa McLeod: “When we reached the top, I remember thinking that people are just a dot on this earth, so you’d better do something with your time that matters.…!” Lisa McLeodLisa McLeod is the global expert on purpose-driven business and the bestselling author of&nbsp;Selling with Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud. &nbsp;Lisa has spent two decades helping leaders increase competitive differentiation and emotional engagement. Her work debunks the myth...

Curt Mercadante helps businesses and entrepreneurs increase their authority brand exposure to the right clients so they can make more money.For 25 years, he has counseled small business, entrepreneurs, as well as some of the largest corporations and associations in the country.He’s built three profitable businesses, including a 7-figure Public Relations and Advertising agency.Curt is Gallup-Certified Strengths Trainer, host of the Freedom Mindset Radio podcast, and author of the bestselling book, “Five Pillars of the Freedom&nbsp;Lifestyle.Curt and his wife sold their home and most of their possessions. Now they are just traveling around with their four kids.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutThere's business, which is important, but to me, the key is aligning your business with your family, your relationships, and your self-care.The most important thing in our life, my wife and I, is that we sold our home and most of our possessions. Now we're just traveling around with our four kids.The reason we're able to do that is because I've built what I consider a freedom business. It allows me to work virtually and serve my clients by doing what I love, what I feel like I was meant to do.Best advice for entrepreneursThe biggest thing is that we often think, when it comes to entrepreneurship or sales or branding or dealing with customers, that our biggest tool, our biggest weapon, is our mouths.People love to be asked about themselves. People love to talk about themselves. And so when you ask the question and then just kind of shut your mouth and sit back and listen—you learn, right?That learning mindset helps you to grow. It helps you to serve the client and what they want. We often think that we know what the client needs, whether it’s a potential client or an existing client. In either case, you have to use those ears. And then you’ve got success.The biggest, most critical failure with customersI built a successful seven-figure public relations and ad agency over 14 years. It grew and grew and grew. The problem was, I built a company around the definition of success that other people had.I took money from clients who maybe didn't value me. I took money from clients whom I didn't really like working with, who didn't fit my vision. I built that up over time and I became obsessed with growing the company, to the detriment of my health and my family. I wasn't the husband and father that I knew I could be.From a revenue standpoint, I woke up on a Tuesday morning and I shut it down. I said, “I've had enough.” I had been having anxiety attacks for years.Biggest success with customersWhen I shut down my agency, I started my new company, coaching and consulting and doing workshops and boot camps with entrepreneurs.I had built my company off of rock-solid sales principles, having conversations with people, and not relying on “I'm just going to run a bunch of ads and hope I get clients.”Impact story: That one sentence that clearly communicates the positive impact your clients get from working with you. If you don't know those things, I don't care how many ads you run, how much money you throw at it. It's going to be garbage in, garbage out.Time-honored principles of communication: Know your customer, know your impact story, and then together, a process that used the tools available to you at that time.Curt’s recommendation of a toolFrom an authority branding standpoint, and depending on what industry you're in, it’s such a valuable tool because people are there to do business.People put information about their work on LinkedIn. And so, LinkedIn has those tools to find people and get...

Michael Nemeroff is the CEO and co-founder of RushOrderTees, a fast growing eCommerce custom t-shirt printing and apparel company. Founded in 2002 when Michael was only 17 with his brother and sister, RushOrderTees specializes in screen printing and embroidering services for everyone from teams to small businesses to Fortune 500 companies.Over the past 18 years, the company has focused on the customer experience by streamlining the entire process with its innovative design studio, incredible service, and the quickest deliveries in the industry.Most passionate aboutBeing in this pandemic, probably what I'm most passionate about is getting the business back in shape after the huge decline we saw. Essentially, when the NBA shut down, we lost 80% of our revenue.We want to be the most trusted place where you can get custom t-shirts and custom-printed apparel.Right now, we're trying to do blocking and tackling better.Michael’s career and storyThis is probably the third business that I started.It was like a combination of being on the computer, being a fast typer, and getting lucky that my brother took the first design course, didn't want to do his homework, and gave it to me.I turned it into affiliate marketing. I had a need to make money because that's what we needed to survive.My dad was kind of done, shutting down his business with my mom and Ben, his friend said to him, “You’re a great sales guy. Come on the road with me door to door. We'll sell shirts to pizza shops and restaurants. I'll show you exactly how it works, where to get the shirts, where to get them printed, and you can be making money this week.”Initially, my dad didn’t have the mindset to do it but then my brother pushed him to do it. And he actually got in the car with them. In the first two days, they sold three different places. I think it was like making about $1,500.I launched a website and a marketing campaign on yellowpages.com. The website just said, “Russia disease needs t-shirts, click” and there was a blinking phone number.That was the entry into taking custom t-shirts online.It was usually a localized business where you would go to a t-shirt shop and meet with the guy. He would tell you when you get them and you'd work out the design with him. So, the online t-shirt idea was a hit.Best advice for entrepreneursFirst, I would tell you about how we feel about the customer. I mean, they are the business. Without them, there is no business. We’ve had to take a very customer-centric approach from the beginning. Otherwise, anything we delivered would have consequences where the customer would be upset.Second, I would say is to sell something cheap and quick, or have a proof of concept. Otherwise, you could waste years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on something that might have been just an idea and not worth spending time or money on.The biggest, most critical failure with customersWhen we were growing the business, the problem was that we over-promised.We told too many customers that we would be able to hit their deadline. We actually didn't know that we weren't able to, because we just didn't have the production capacity. We were really young.Over-promising and under-delivering is a real issue because you don’t have to do that. You don’t have to say you can do something you can’t do. But I also think it's a part of growing.Biggest success with customersWe do one thing—which is custom t-shirts and apparel—quickly. That’s our success.We didn't really innovate, but in terms of the industry itself, like making something new, but we brought something to the industry that it didn't have because

Known as a top Entrepreneur Mentor and Business Architect, Mike has had a hand in starting or owning&nbsp;15+ businesses across multiple industries including technology, real estate, fashion, digital marketing, and high-level entrepreneur masterminds and coaching. His businesses have generated more than 9 figures in total sales. He’s also the author of the forthcoming book, Twice born: How a Crisis Can Remake You.His love for travel takes him and his wife to an average of 5 countries per year and one month in one of the world’s most beautiful cities to stimulate creativity, to create renewal, and to enjoy a life of adventure.&nbsp;Mike primarily mentors and coaches 2 types of entrepreneurs: the e-commerce entrepreneur with the mastermind he co-leads with Colin Wayne who has a 9 figure Ecommerce brand and the Entrepreneur with Expert knowledge (coaches, authors, speakers, consultants, podcasters) with his Symposia Mastermind.He’s been featured on Business Insider, Forbes, Fox Radio 16 times, spent 1447 hours with Tony Robbins.&nbsp;

Dr&nbsp;Nancy&nbsp;Richmond&nbsp;is a professor and leading speaker in social media, innovation and marketing.&nbsp;Her passion is to empower and train leaders in effectively leveraging social media for their target market. She teaches social media and marketing classes for the College of Business at Florida International University.Dr. Richmond has helped thousands of individuals and companies in the areas of social media and leadership development. Nancy&nbsp;has worked with leading universities including MIT, Harvard University, Florida International University and Northeastern University.&nbsp;She has served as a speaker and consultant for Campbell Soup Company, NBC 6/Telemundo, and National Association of Colleges and Employers.&nbsp;Dr. Richmond has a passion for technology and social media with over 140,000+ followers on Twitter, 20,000+ connections on LinkedIn and 22,000+ followers on Instagram.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Most passionate aboutHelping people with their personal brands is something I'm very passionate about.I also research how people can use social media to make a difference in the world.I'm a professor at Florida International University and I teach social media marketing.I help both businesses and individual leaders with their personal brands.Best advice for entrepreneursBefore you launch your business, you have to understand who you are. And then, second: Who is your business?If you don't understand who you are and what your business is, then people aren't going to understand what it is they can buy from you.With sales, it's really important that you have a good understanding of who you are and what your business is as well.People want to buy from people, so being the face of your company is key. So are the relationships you build with people.That's all about branding. Whether you're branding yourself or you’re branding your business, it should have a meaning behind it.The biggest, most critical failure with customersMy biggest failure in starting my own company was that, probably about 10 years ago, I decided that I wanted to create counseling online. I created this company called Virtual Career Counseling and it really wasn't a hit.At the time, I was much further ahead than my customers were. People weren't really doing virtual yet and they didn't necessarily feel comfortable.Also, the technology wasn't there yet.So, with entrepreneurs journeys, it's not just about “Do you have a good product?” or “Do you have a good service?” but also “Is it good timing?”Biggest success with customersI was working with a client doing social media consulting. Their business had been around for about 30 years or so. They had been doing a little with social media, but they hadn't been doing that much with it.I suggested to the client that they might want to try using Facebook instead of Instagram, because the customers they were trying to target were actually older than Instagram users.We ended up using a video. By switching over to Facebook, we were able to get over three million views.Nancy recommendation of a toolLinkedInLinkedIn is such a powerful tool and I think that people underestimate the ability to find connections for building their business on there.Hootsuite, Buffer and the likeIt's a very important tool, especially when it comes to time. That's really going to make sure that you are number one, you’re targeting...

Kimberly uses her business and marketing expertise to show spiritual coaches how to create financial success while shifting consciousness on this planet. She brings nearly 20 years of business development experience to the table, including 8 years on Wall Street. Five of those Wall Street years were as a managing partner at a broker dealer, valued at $165m, that she founded with 8 colleagues.With recognized efforts in changing people’s lives, Kimberly Maska is gifted with the ability to intuitively see a client's business and craft a strategy for success.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutMy big passion right now is the spiritual coaching certification program that I created.It is about really understanding how to approach your clients.My clients are what I call “spiritual entrepreneurs.” Really, they’re anyone who wants to help shift consciousness on the planet, who wants to help people awaken, take that red pill, and get through it.I show them how to coach and how to use the spiritual laws and spiritual rules that we all know to bring that into the coaching.It's much different from what I would call life coaching and. My clients not only bring in these spiritual laws but also get to use their own modalities.I'm in the middle of writing a book about it as well. So, that's my big focus today.What is a spiritual entrepreneur?The spiritual entrepreneur is someone who wants to help shift this planet. They want to help people find their joy or connect you to God.They want to help people find their connection to whatever they call it—God source, infinite intelligence, the universe—so that they're living their purpose on this planet and not being in the stressful, upset, low-vibration place that most people sit in.Best advice for entrepreneursThe best advice is to really know who your client is.This is something that I see when people come to me, probably about 99% of the time. The reason why they can't get it to work is that they don't actually know who their client is.When there's no connection and someone doesn't really know their client, it falters. It doesn't really work. And even when someone joins my program, I do what I call a kickoff call with them. On this call, I help them get very clear on who their tribe is.The biggest, most critical failure with customersI would say my biggest failure came in a roundabout way. It came because I didn’t fully step into my role as CEO with my team, as the team that I had in place was creating the problems with the clients.I think I had turned over the reins a bit too early, and I turned them over to people who were not in full alignment with what I was teaching and how I was speaking and connecting with my clients.You can call it failure because I had the wrong people in the wrong place but it was also my greatest lesson.Biggest success with customersI have a unique way of looking at clients—of our responsibility to clients and their responsibility to us.I like to say “the customer isn't always right” because there's the idea of responsibility. I take full responsibility for what we did, but the customer also has to take responsibility for themselves.That's what I teach my clients as spiritual entrepreneurs. I'm really showing them how to be spiritual leaders.And as a leader on this planet, coming from that level of alignment with our higher selves, we have to be 100 percent responsible for ourselves. So, when I'm talking with the client, if...

Devin is an entrepreneur, patent and trademark attorney, and an&nbsp;Intellectual Property expert.He specializes in protecting startup and entrepreneurial companies with&nbsp;IP Legal Advice, setting them up for success in their business! In addition to founding and running&nbsp;Miller IP Law, he is the co-founder of several startups including a multi-million dollar startup for wearable glucose monitoring.Devin has worked with the likes of Amazon, Intel, Red hat and Ford. He is passionate about helping businesses and has a drive to educate and entertain listeners with years of experience as a calm speaker, and veteran podcaster.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutMy main focus is on what's called Miller IP Law. It's a patent and trademark law firm that helps startups and small businesses.Another focus is on startups I founded: one in the wearable space, another that is a software as a service startup, and a couple of others that are getting ready to launch.Best advice for entrepreneursThe first thing to do is define who your customers are—not broadly saying, “We want to sell our product to everybody who will buy it,” but saying, “This is who we want to really serve.” This is your best first step.For our company, startups and small businesses are where we want to focus because that's who we enjoy working with. You get to have a lot more impact. They are a lot more fun to work with.The biggest, most critical failure with customersWe built our system so that it would automatically generate invoices based on some of the information we provided. Then it would send the invoice to the client or do automatic follow-ups.We didn't understand, or we didn't account, for every possibility. We had one customer who received the wrong invoice. It was the wrong amount and it wasn't in the right name. It was just a flaw in the system that we've since corrected, but back then the customer said, “Hey, this isn't the right amount.”LESSON LEARNED: It's finding that sweet spot: “Hey, we're automating what we can but it doesn't impact the customer touch, that customer-centric focus.” Today, we make sure that we can maintain those human touches where they're needed.Biggest success with customersResponding to customers right away has been one of the biggest impacts. It has grown our business and had a better customer impact than anything else.We set up a system; 90% of the time we respond right away, and 95% of the time we respond within 30 minutes. We have a strict drop-dead rule: 100% of the time you respond by the end of the day.I can't count the number of times a client has reached out and said, “Hey, thank you for your quick response,” or “Hey, it's great to get a quick answer; you guys are so much more responsive.” That's probably helped us grow our business.Devin’s recommendation of a toolWe use HubSpot a lot. It's how we track the customer experience.HubSpot has been our customer relations management tool since our first year. It's a bit more expensive, but it accomplishes what we need.It provides a wide variety of ways to track the customer journey, making sure we take care of them. We can automate the things we need to and make sure we're not automating things we shouldn’t.Devin’s one key success factorThe one factor for me, personally, is the ability to press forward. There are going to be good times, bad times, easy times, hard times, and everything in between.What has driven our success, or made the difference throughout everything, is the ability to say, when everything is hard, “It's not easy but I'm going to continue to press forward. We're going to figure this out. We're...

With more than thirty years of experience working for and advising hundreds of companies, including ten startups, Bill Flynn has had a long track record of success; five successful outcomes, two IPOs, and seven acquisitions, including a turnaround during the 2008 financial crisis.&nbsp;He has been a VP/Sales eight times, twice a CMO, and once the GM of a division of a $100MM+ IT services company until he pivoted to becoming a business growth coach.As a coach, Bill has earned certifications and cultivated partnerships from organizations such as ScalingUp, Metronome United, Predictive Index, MassMEP, Small Giants, and The Neuroleadership Institute.He is also an author and international speaker. Bill’s best-selling book - Further, Faster - The Vital Few Steps that Take the Guesswork out of Growth continues to garner a 5-Star rating.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI help leadership teams take the guesswork out of growth.I'm probably most passionate about my daughter.On the professional side, I think it's a shame that really good ideas, really good people, and really good businesses either go out of business or struggle for completely preventable reasons.Bill’s career and storyMy goal over the next 20 years is to share, with as many people as possible, that there’s a lot of predictability in business. Most people don't know that. I've been studying it for about 30 years, and I found that there are a few things that good companies do well.We never really teach people how to be good team leaders. It's a skill that can be taught and you can get better and better at it, but we don't teach it.The second thing: Strategy and execution are two really important pieces of the business. They are two sides of the same coin and those who do it well, create a system.The last one is cash. That should be your primary growth metric. Once you are no longer a startup, once you're a scale-up or a real business, cash should be your primary growth metric. It takes cash to grow and you typically have to invest in front of growth.&nbsp;I want to invite you to the free live training about 7 practical ways to get more customers: www.getmorecustomersregistration.com&nbsp;Best advice for entrepreneursI have a particular set of things that I recommend. One is to solve a problem that's worth solving for yourself and your target customer.It has to be interesting to you. It has to be something worthy of the other person. There may be a lot of problems out there to solve, but if the target customer you're going after doesn't have it high enough on their priority list, then it doesn't matter to them.Don't run out of money!Then you get to the entrepreneur who now has a business that's growing. There’s some predictability and scalability to that business.At a high level, a few things truly matter in business—and, really, in life. As a leader, you need to focus and figure out those few things that matter to you.You really need to focus on the demand side of the equation.The biggest, most critical failure with customersI was a sales-guy at one point, in my 20s. I started off on an inside sales team for a company. We sort of competed with Novell at the time, in the 80s. And I was really, really bad at it.The failure was in trying to tell them why they should buy from me, instead of understanding what caused them to buy.Biggest success with customersMy greatest success is the reason I'm a coach now.The reason I do what I do today and why I say this is my biggest success is that two

Getting customers is what entrepreneurs say they struggle with most.&nbsp;When we talk about entrepreneurship success, we still talk about very low success rates (The last formal numbers are still between 5%-10%. Of course, it depends on how success is defined).The first reason (42%) entrepreneurs say what they fail for is “No market need”. There are usually two reasons for not finding the market need:Either you didn’t focus on the right customers, Or your product definition wasn’t correct.&nbsp;The WhatA product or service definition contains 3-5 words;&nbsp;your answer to the question, “What do you offer?” Based on the answer to the question “What problem do you solve”&nbsp;Why is defining your product or service critical?⌘ That’s how customers will find you⌘ It differentiates you from your competitors⌘ It attracts clients⌘ It’s the basis for leading your market categoryThe one rule of defining your product: In defining your product, you should focus on your customers’ point of view:You need to learn what your customers are looking for; How customers, people who are seeking solutions, and providers talk about the problem and solutions within your spaceWe look for what they need or want: What words do they use to look for the solution?&nbsp;Remember, it’s always about them! The customer always looks to find ‘WIIFM’ - What’s In It For Me?!&nbsp;There is one story I like most as an example for the “what” part, finding what solution and product (or service) you should provide.&nbsp;The story of Mike Allton who provided one product and found out his customers want something else…&nbsp; Mike Allton - The award-winning social media blogger and author turned his successful website business into&nbsp;a social media blog and guidance source. Mike Allton is a Content Marketing Practitioner, award-winning Blogger and Author in St. Louis, and the Chief Marketing Officer at SiteSell. He has been working with websites and the Internet since the early ’90’s, and is active on all of the major social networks.Mike teaches a holistic approach to content marketing that leverages blog content, social media and SEO to drive traffic, generate leads, and convert those leads into sales.&nbsp;Mike’s storyI started the Social Media Hat back in 2012. At that time, I had been building websites, and as part of that website business, I was blogging about social media marketing in order to give my prospects and customers helpful information. It didn’t attract people who needed websites, it attracted people that already had website and wanted to learn about their social media opportunity.So, as a result, I wasn’t growing my online business, but I discovered that I like to write and I like to teach people how to use social media blogging.I realized that the content doesn’t help to sell websites, however I decided to create a site about social media blogging and that what I did.I’ve used my site as a testing ground for anything related to online marketing. I execute the test and write about it and I found out my audience really appreciates those kinds of insights.And in the meantime, I was experiencing making money through the website and I tested that as well. Affiliate relationships, Google AdWords, Display ads, and many other monetization techniques. The most successful way to make money is to have a product that can you sell a lot of, so it can scale.What is your one key success factor?One thing that comes to mind: to have specific online relationships with people that can help you and show you the way to achieve your goals.&nbsp;The WhoMost entrepreneurs have a very clear...

Joe Karlsson is a software engineer turned Developer Advocate at MongoDB. He comes from the frozen tundra of Minneapolis, Minnesota (and yes, it does get really cold here, and no, not everyone here has the accent from the movie, Fargo).Joe has been primarily a Node and JavaScript engineer. He has been writing, teaching, and talking about code his entire career. Sharing what he knows and continuing to learn about programming is truly the thing he loves doing the most.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI’m most passionate about Developers Advocate. I work for a database software tech company called MongoDB. As part of my job, I get to hang out with developers all the time. I make cool tools for them, or documentation, I speak at tech conferences and I make videos at Twitch stream.Whatever developers need, I make that for them.I still consider myself a software engineer, but I'm just better at engaging with developers.Joe’s career and storyI first started learning how to program. I started learning it out of fear of not making money when I was a professional.I actually was an art history minor, and then I switched over to computer science for fear of being poor.I went to school during one of the last financial collapses. Then I worked as an engineer and programmer for years. I hated it. I was so bad at it.I was ready to quit programming, and I moved to Hawaii to become a surf bum. Then I met some hacker punks down there, who were making fun stuff, making art. It got me very excited about making stuff just for fun.That changed the way I looked at programming. I've been trying to share the joy that I felt ever since.Best advice for entrepreneursI feel like it would be best if I spoke about how to engage the developer's perspective. That’s the primary customer of many businesses, and I feel like even if your direct customer isn't the developer, most entrepreneurs are now engaging developers as either employees or contractors or building out a product.I get calls from business people and entrepreneurs all the time, asking if I would be willing to join them for their startup. It basically ends with them just calling me and giving me a 15-minute pitch without allowing me to talk at all about the product. That leaves me completely unimpressed and uninterested in their thing.Developers are more interested in learning and growing and playing, I think.Entrepreneurs need to figure out what developers are interested in and know that that's going to be something different from what another customer is going to be interested in.How you managed to speak with developersMy primary development market is JavaScript and Node. It's like the language of the web.I'm trying to provide lots of interesting content for developers, like career advice, learning stuff, tips and tricks, that sort of thing. I sprinkle product information in there, too.Authenticity is super important. That's what doesn't work with business people. Sometimes it feels inauthentic. It feels sales-y. It feels like a pitch. It feels like a commercial.I try to be an authentic human being with feelings and fears and anxieties, while also talking about a product.The biggest, most critical failure with customersI've been a technical lead at several large tech companies. I feel like a couple of them didn't quite understand my need to teach and grow, to help out the developer communities. That caused friction with them.Today, speaking at conferences or streaming and engaging with developers is my full-time job. However, in the past, I was doing that on nights and weekends. Sometimes I'd miss work to do it. I caused some friction with the...

Lisa McLeod is the global expert on purpose-driven business and the bestselling author of Selling with Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud. Lisa has spent two decades helping leaders increase competitive differentiation and emotional engagement. Her work debunks the myth that money is the primary motivation for most employees. She developed the Noble Purpose philosophy after her research revealed, salespeople who sell with Noble Purpose, who truly want to make a difference to their customers, outsell salespeople who focus on their own targets and quotas.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutThe thing I am passionate about today is thinking about people waking up excited to go to work. But, as the years go on, and especially today, it’s hard to wake up feeling like you have that sense of purpose.And if you’re not waking up feeling like that, your employees are definitely not waking up feeling that way.To create a successful business, you need two things: You need competitive differentiation, a way to stand out, and you need emotional engagement. You need people who care passionately about your business as employees because that’s the way to create passionate customers.The thing that will help you acquire both of those is clarity about your noble purpose. Why are you in business? How do you improve the lives of your customers (beyond just making money)? What is the true north star of your business?Lisa’s customersWe work with organizations and a lot of startups. We want to identify the answers to three questions: How do you make a difference to your customers? How do you do it differently from your competition? And on your best day, what do you love about your job?How are you going to move the middle for your customers?It goes beyond a standard value proposition.Lisa’s career and storyI started my business because I was a VP of sales for a large consulting firm, and I had a baby. I couldn’t work 70 hours a week and travel four days a week anymore. And I thought, ‘How can I still work in this field of helping organizations with sales but work differently than I did before?’I got into the world of noble purpose when I did a big project for a big biotech firm. They wanted us to identify what separated the top performers in terms of sales and revenue.We found that all the top performers had that sense of purpose. They didn’t want to just hit the numbers. They wanted to make a difference.Lisa’s best advice for entrepreneursFind where you are already living your purpose. If you are a business and you have customers paying you, any customer with any amount of money, you’re doing something for them. They chose you for a reason.My advice to entrepreneurs is: Go talk with your customers. Don’t just ask them “What did we do well?” Go deeper and ask, “How did our work impact your life or your business? How did it make a difference to you?”You’ll start to see the basis for your noble purpose. You need to name it and blame it and then start activating it in the hearts and minds of your employees.That’s when you create one of those organizations that can’t be beat. Two tips for activating your noble purpose among your customers: The first is to tell many stories about how you helped your customers. How did you do what the customers needed next? The second tip is to ask your employees how you can contribute to that.Biggest failure with customers This is an easy answer. It was more than just a failure with a customer, it was a failure of a business. Our entire company failed. It was during the recession. I’d had my sales consulting business for some time and my husband, who was a...

Guy Kawasaki, David Beebe and Kate Erickson talk about three revolutions you must implement in your Business today:✓ The ‘customers who are fans’ revolution✓ The social media revolution, and✓ The broadcast revolutionHi, entrepreneurs reachers.How are you? We are at the end of the summer. Probably the strangest summer most of us ever went through; the world has changed. Dramatically. The scary thing is that we don't know what the new world is going to look like. Everything is still shifting; what I do know that this is the best opportunity for entrepreneurs to take the time and make their entrepreneurship the business they want to have.And I want to help you at this uncertain time. So I went to look for the entrepreneurs that affected you most by analyzing which entrepreneurs you chose to listen to most and what they stand for.These are the results:The first entrepreneur that most of you chose to listen to is Guy Kawasaki.Guy Kawasaki was Apple's Chief Evangelist, and today is the Chief evangelist of Canva. Guy's approach to customers represents the biggest marketing revolution: The 'customers who are fans' revolution. That’s what marketing gurus like Mark Schaefer and David Meerman Scott (both were the firsts to understand the huge effect of the social media and content revolution) write about today:Mark Schaefer wrote in his last book Marketing Rebellion about "The most human company wins," and David Meerman Scott and Reiko Scott wrote in their excellent book Fanocracy - about turning fans into customers and customers into fans.Let's listen to the main parts of my interview with Guy Kawasaki:&nbsp;The ‘customers who are fans’ revolution Guy KawasakiGuy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool. He is a brand ambassador for Mercedes-Benz and an executive fellow of the Haas School of Business (UC Berkeley). He was the chief evangelist of Apple and a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation. He is also the author of&nbsp;The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media, Enchantment, and nine other books. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.Guy’s CareerMy career really started in the jewelry business, not tech. I started a part-time job when I had my MBA at UCLA. I worked for a jewelry manufacture in downtown LA. It was a small manufacturing company owned by a Jewish family, and that’s where I learned sales and marketing. I worked there for about six years. I have a deep understanding and love for many Jewish things.I was in the jewelry business, and then I got an Apple 2, and I fell in love with computers.I worked for 6 months for a small software company that was acquired, and my roommate eventually hired me into Apple. I went to work for Apple as an evangelist, I left to start a company, and later returned to apple as Apple chief evangelist, and yet again left to start a company… Basically; I’ve been in Apple twice, and I’ve been an entrepreneur, speaker, and author since then.CustomersMy target audience for Canva is anyone who wants to make a design, so this means anybody in the world… We try to democratize design so anybody can create beautiful designs. That’s a few billion people… I hope people realize how necessary it is to use design as an element of your communications because it helps you stand out.From the very start, the goal was to empower people. Just like when I went to work for Apple, the goal for Apple was not to make a business computer but to make a computer that anyone could use. The same thing is true for Canva; it’s not a...

Hi, my Reachers.This is the third ‘Mountain Episode’ in 2020, and I think you would love this amazing series of the Reach Or Miss mountains project; Today, I want to share with you the 6th and newest episode where successful entrepreneurs share their mountains stories.&nbsp;Listen to these incredible mountain stories I heard from the successful entrepreneurs I recently interviewed on my podcast.You can then listen to the full interview with each of them and hear about their visions, struggles, and how these entrepreneurs reached their success.&nbsp;From the entrepreneur that climbed the KilimanjaroTo the entrepreneur that quoted, “We don’t climb mountains because they are there; we climb mountains because others won’t.” And said it’s the same with entrepreneurship - “I do what I do because others won’t.”To the entrepreneur whose company’s name is Stone Pick “because, as entrepreneurs, we see our goal at the top of the mountain.”The one who said that with the acquisition option for entrepreneurs, “it’s like having a helicopter drop me off at the top of the summit instead of climbing by foot.”And the entrepreneur that went up to the base camp of Mount Everest, and plan to go to Peru for his next mountain.&nbsp;I hope these mountain stories will encourage you to find out what should you – as an entrepreneur looking for your breakthrough to success – take from their stories to help find the necessary steps to reach your peak?&nbsp;Many entrepreneurs climb mountains, while others use mountains as a metaphor to describe what is necessary to conquer the peak – including the fatiguing yet rewarding journey to the top. Still other entrepreneurs use mountains as an analogy for a significant goal they wish to achieve – such as becoming a billion-dollar-market-cap company.For many years, I’ve compared the act of taking possession of your potential customers’ minds and of building awareness, likability, and trust of a leading brand to the act of climbing the highest mountains.You climb step by step to the peak, reach your position as a market leader and a leading brand, and then start climbing a new mountain with a new product line or another brand.The idea of mountains as representations of a strong position in the market is mentioned by Al Ries and Jack Trout in the excellent book, Marketing Warfare.“In military&nbsp;warfare,&nbsp;mountains&nbsp;and higher altitude areas represent strong positions and often are used to present a strong defense. In&nbsp;marketing warfare, the question is one of who holds the&nbsp;mountains&nbsp;in the consumer's mind.”&nbsp;So, at some point after the launch of my podcast for entrepreneurs, I started to ask the successful entrepreneurs I interviewed about their habits or dreams of climbing one of the highest mountains in the world.Listen to these new inspiring mountains’ stories, find which entrepreneurs and stories you identify with most, and review your entrepreneurial objectives, market overview, and plan. By making your business as strong as possible, you will be able to quickly and easily achieve entrepreneurial success.&nbsp;John Jonas: “After a month of working with Philippine Virtual Assistant I realized that there are two of me… I replaced myself in my business…!” John Jonas has helped thousands of entrepreneurs succeed in their business by doing outsourcing differently. He created and runs OnlineJobs.ph, the largest website for finding Filipino virtual workers, with over 1,000,000 Filipino resumes and over 300,000 employers from around the world using it. He works about 17 hours per week, choosing to spend his time with his family rather than working.John’s...

Jeremy Parker is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and serial entrepreneur.&nbsp;He is the Co-founder and CEO of Swag.com, the best place for companies to buy quality promotional products that you'll actually want to keep.&nbsp;They work with 5,000+ companies including Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Spotify and Tik Tok.&nbsp;They are #218 on the 2020 Inc 500 (fastest growing companies in the US).&nbsp;Jeremy was also named by CrainsNY as one of the 40Under40.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI’m working on com. We provide custom promo products that people actually want to keep. We launched the company in early 2016 and we are the fastest growing promotional products company in the country. We were just named among the 500 fast-growing companies in the US—the “number 218” fastest-growing company in the States.Our main passion at this point is taking the easy and streamlined buying experience that we developed, not only to buy swag but also to distribute swag and send swag to all remote addresses. Especially now with the pandemic, people feel so disconnected.The difference with our swag platform is that, from the first day, we’ve focused on the millennial customers who expect everything to be fully automated and very easy to work with. With time, our customers asked us to not only hold the process of buying and delivering their product but also store it for them and shift it to each of their customers directly, as well as monitor their inventory. That’s what we’ve worked on in the last two years.Right now, when most companies are working from home and everybody is disconnected, our feeling is that our distribution platform will be very useful.Today many leading brands are working with our platform, from Facebook and Google and Amazon to Netflix and Spotify and TikTok to smaller startups. Our platform scales with the businesses as they grow.Jeremy’s career and story I’m actually a filmmaker. I even won the&nbsp;Audience Award&nbsp;at the&nbsp;2006&nbsp;Vail&nbsp;Film Festival for a&nbsp;documentary&nbsp;I made with my brother. After we won this award, I realized my passion wasn’t to become a filmmaker.After college, I started my first business. I had no experience in businesses and I thought that starting a T-shirt company would be easy and focused and a good opportunity to learn how to run a business. It sounds simple but you need to learn manufacturing, and how to run a website, and how to do marketing and PR and customer service. I started this T-shirt company and became better and better. It helped me find out what I’m good at. I became good at user experience design and branding. That’s what I fell in love with.After the T-shirt company, I worked for MV Sport, one of the largest players in the promotional product space.I was introduced to the promotional products market at the age of 22 and everything in this space was done very manually. It was all about catalogs and presentation decks and phone calls to close the sale.From my experience showing was always focused online, I didn’t want to speak with people while I purchased something. Over the 10 ten years, I watched the promotional products space very closely and realized that the market got bigger and bigger but the buyer changed. The buyer now is a millennial and the platforms were not built for today's buyers.That was kind of an a-ha moment for me: to build a platform with a great user experience that will answer the needs of today’s buyers. And that was the initial idea for Swag.In the first year, we didn’t build any platform. We focused on learning from our customers about what they need and want. The knowledge we got at the beginning gave us a shining light on what kind of platform we should build.Jeremy’s best advice for...

Dr. Travis Zigler is a recovering optometrist turned e-commerce entrepreneur. He is the founder of Eye Love, whose mission is to heal one million dry eye sufferers naturally.Dr. Travis and his wife, Dr. Jenna Zigler, use the profits from Eye Love to fund free clinics in Jamaica and the US through their charity, the Eye Love Cares Foundation.Previously, Dr. Travis and Dr. Jenna owned two optometry practices, which they sold in 2017 to focus on their online efforts. Dr. Travis enjoys reading to his son, Jude, traveling to Jamaica, and playing the ukulele while he drinks his morning coffee.Due to the success of Eye Love, others have asked if Dr. Travis would help them grow their business online—more specifically with Amazon, which is one of his superpowers. As a specialist in Amazon PPC, Dr. Travis blogs about Amazon PPC and selling on Amazon.Travis's favorite quote: Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. - Gandhi&nbsp;Most passionate aboutToday I’m 36 years old and a millennial and my career has taken a crazy turn. I was originally an optometrist, so I’m most passionate about eyes—and specifically dry eyes. I’m on a mission to help one million people heal their dry eye problems naturally. That’s the basis of my main business, called EyeLove.My second passion is helping brands and brand owners scale their sales on Amazon. We saw a lot of success using Amazon to sell our products.We also have a foundation which is all about helping to end preventable blindness. Most people don’t know that there are around one billion people who are blind due to a lack of glasses. We work kind of exclusively in the Caribbean.Travis’s career and story My wife and I are both optometrists. We were working for my uncle but something was missing. Then I got the entrepreneurial bug, so we moved across the country from Chicago to North Carolina. We opened two practices and then came across a course about selling on Amazon. We started to sell on Amazon as a sunglasses company.Then we started to realize how big of a problem dry eye is. It affects 40 million Americans—over 10%. The existing products were very expensive, so somebody came to us and asked us if we could develop one.That’s how our first product for dry eyes was born—from listening to our customer. Since then, we have been on a mission to come up with organic, natural eye health products.The key takeaway I have for this podcast is: Listen to your customers. They are the ones who pay for your service or product.Today my wife and I work together; I’m the CEO and she is my COO. We always joke that I try to ten-X the business and she tries to prevent us from going bankrupt.Travis’s best advice for entrepreneursOne of my favorite pieces of advice is that to become an overnight success, you need to be persistent for years and years.The reason we are successful and somebody else isn’t is that we wake up every single day knowing exactly what we need to do that day in order to move our business forward.We found what we like to do and we just do that every single day. When you are persistent long enough, everything pays off. Your business will grow; you’ll hit a tipping point.Each of us knows exactly what their one thing is. I know that my one thing is podcast interviews and content creation. I try to get on at least one podcast a week.Getting in front of other people’s audiences is my one thing. Hopefully, one of your listeners will resonate with what we are saying and they will follow us, either from the business side or from the healthcare side.We focus on two main things to attract customers. First, we have our YouTube channel, The Dry Eye Show, with 41,000 subscribers. The second is podcast...

Bart Rupert has a strong Mergers &amp; Acquisitions background across Fortune 500’s and startups within industries such as technology, software, energy (oil, gas, and solar), healthcare, real estate, managed services, and construction.He founded nearly 30 companies, negotiated over $500M in contracts &amp; business deals, grew a corporate start-up from inception to $10M, grew a healthcare company from $8M to $75M, and grew an energy company from $22M to $115M+.He has made a career buying &amp; selling companies for a living, facilitated the sale of luxury, premium real estate, and taken ownership of companies across three different countries using none of his own money.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutToday I help entrepreneurs learn how to buy and sell companies for a living. The reason we do that is because, statistically, 88% of all new wealth in the world is created by selling small medium-size businesses and real estate.I started off extremely poor. We couldn’t make rent or pay bills. I figured out that I should become an executive to achieve a true level of financial freedom. I stepped into that role and had some degree of success.However, I then met a guy who was paying himself $365,000 so that he could tell everyone he was making more than a thousand dollars a day. At that moment, I discovered that I should be an entrepreneur and not an executive, to achieve the level of wealth I dreamt of. I looked at this guy and thought, ‘I need to start some businesses.’The organization I was working in asked me to work on a special deal and I found out that this entrepreneur was looking to sell the company. I was a major part of these negotiations. We made the deal and I really loved it.This entrepreneur ended up making $20 million on that one transaction. Then I realized that selling businesses was what could enable me to reach the wealth I wanted.Bart’s career and story I’m the classic immigrant type of achiever. Money is very important. However, what I really love is the achievement. When you help someone sell their business and you can help them change their lives in a way that most people can’t, that feels fantastic.Everybody says that when you make your first million dollars, it feels phenomenal, and it does. But a lot of people also say you’ll never feel better than that and I would disagree; I think you can recapture that feeling each and every time you achieve an accomplishment, but it’s got to be something you really love.For me, doing that for myself is great and I like that, but I really have fun being able to do it for other people.Bart’s best advice for entrepreneursAlmost all the entrepreneurs I talk with are focused on growth. And that’s the right thing to focus on. The issue is that 99% of them focus on organic growth. What we are offering is taking the elevator to reach the same goals instead of using the stairs. Entrepreneurs should consider inorganic growth as part of their strategy.You can buy your competitor, their products, their customers, and find a way to merge them into your organization. Through that strategy, you can double or triple your revenue instantly - just by going through the path of an acquisition instead of trying for five or ten years to double or triple your revenue organically.Today, it’s much easier for entrepreneurs to buy their competitors as part of their growth strategy. The best part is that they can do it without their own money.Biggest failure with customers The biggest failure I had with customers over the course of time is communication. And it’s a big lesson learned. If you are not open and transparent with your customers and if you don’t communicate with them regularly, you will lose them.You should set...

Shane Barker is an instructor for a Personal Branding -Influencer Marketing at UCLA. He has been in the influencer space for over 8 years and has been a keynote speaker at the Influencer Marketing Days Conference, Influencer Marketing Hub, and Influencer Marketing Summit Mexico.Shane was recognized as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Influencer Marketing alongside Kim Kardashian, Gary Vaynerchuk, and legendary PR leaders like the CEO of Edelman.He does 2-day Influencer Marketing Workshops for brands and agencies all over the nation and is a top contributor at INC, Huffington Post, Forbes, and Salesforce.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI help businesses grow offline and online. That’s what I’ve done for over 25 years and what I’m most passionate about.Shane’s career and story I started working for a restaurant chain store, where I was in charge of opening up new restaurants. It was mainly taking care of the POS (Point of Sale) system. I did that for several years all over the US. That was my first part, what I call my Shane 1.0 version.Then I started the Shane 2.0 period, which is everything about the digital space. We build websites, my team is extremely good at SEO, we do influence marketing. I teach at UCLA about how to become an influencer.It has been a long journey. I used to own a bar in California. I built, with two partners, a company from a zero to $25 million valuation in two years. And I had plenty of businesses that failed in the meantime.You have to fail. It’s part of the business. People ask me, “What can I do to become successful?” and I say, “Fail fast and fail hard. Fail as quickly as you can and keep doing that over and over because those lessons are invaluable.”The main similarity between the restaurant world and the digital world is the concept of really “wowing” people with your service and product offering. In any business, you should treat your customers beyond their expectations. This is something I did with the restaurants and it’s relevant to any customer.If you treat people right and you treat people well, they will come back for the business and good things will happen.Shane’s best advice for entrepreneursOne of the things that I didn’t do and that today any entrepreneur can and should do is to take a mentor. My advice to any entrepreneur is to find a mentor or a consultant and ask them the questions that might otherwise take the entrepreneur six months to figure out.I was more of a ‘go-getter’; I was sure I could figure it out, I could do it on my own, no one was as good as me, and the like. I had great people around me but I needed great people who were smarter than me.I wasn’t asking for help. I felt like, as an entrepreneur, I should figure out everything by myself. That this was part of the journey.Shane’s customersToday I have a team of 36 awesome people. We focus mainly on SAS companies—helping them with their marketing and doing a lot of SEO. We have become very good at it over the years and we help our customers’ sites get to number one as a result of leading many keywords.My current website has 160,000 visitors each month thanks to the knowledge we have gained over the years.We focus on inbound marketing. People find us through many points of contact. We use speaking events and podcasts, I write posts for the media, and much more.So, we are a good fit for SAS companies and anyone looking to get more exposure in the digital space.Biggest failure with customers One of my biggest failures was in the company we brought from zero to $25 million in two years. And one of the things we had issues with was customer service. Although I was trying to wow the...

Jason Keath is Founder and CEO of Social Fresh, a social media education company. He is a social media analyst and speaker.He graduated from the UNC Charlotte in 2004 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Design and Photography. He has worked in leadership consulting and as a creative lead for various advertising and digital agencies before becoming an independent consultant in 2008.Since then Jason has worked full time on building Social Fresh, a company that offers insights, training, and education resources to companies that range from the Fortune 50 to small businesses.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutObviously, there have been changes in the world today, but at the root of our business, we are an advent company in many ways. We teach people social media marketing, we teach them how to improve their businesses using social media, we produce in-person conferences, we train some of the big companies, and we do consulting.Recently, obviously, we have been doing much more consulting with medium to large businesses because we can’t do physical events. We pivoted to helping people virtually the best we can. We’ve done virtual events and we’re having a lot of fun with our customers. We’re also doing much more virtual consulting.We help people improve their social media at the highest level. We’ve been doing social media conferences since 2008, and we’ve done more than 25 of them in the US. We are now doing them annually, usually in Florida.Jason’s career and story I was working in agencies as a creative lead—I was an artist-designer and photographer. I was always writing as well; however, I’ve loved most of the creative parts of marketing. I enjoyed working with the agencies, and when social media came on board I was very interested. I experimented a lot with social media, so I started to be more of a strategist in that field.When social media started, people had a ‘trust gap’. Many companies were really interested in social media and started to ask their agencies, “How should it work for us?”, “What should we do?”, and “Where should we be present on social media?”Eventually, I started my own small social agency. Then I sold it and started consulting because I noticed a need for an advent that focused on results for businesses. So, I decided to do it. Originally, the events were meant to drive more business and to help me find more customers for social media consulting. However, that first event ended up more successful and more rewarding than consulting, so I ended up focusing on the events.I’ve done events my whole life. I’ve always helped to produce events, so I felt very comfortable with the medium. I wanted to create an event that I would want to attend, something intimate and practical. I would bring the smartest people I knew from all over the social media industry to get very practical and hands-on, on one stage, one track, having community discussions.This year, we’ve done our first virtual event - Social Fresh X. We focused on how to understand, to adopt, to pivot in response to the pandemic. We had great response there. We had four or five times the number of people who used to attend our in-person conferences, from 90 countries and states. It’s a great way for us to get to more people and we’ll be doing another one at the end of the year.John’s best advice for entrepreneursTalking to your customers in many ways and getting to the root of their problem. That’s what was the ‘pre success’ of many successful entrepreneurs, and it was ‘pre successful’ for me early on. It has been the main way that we adjust and adapt our product.You need to talk with a few potential customers. Even talking with five people will allow you to see and understand patterns.Biggest failure with customers...

John Jonas has helped thousands of entrepreneurs succeed in their business by doing outsourcing differently. He created and runs OnlineJobs.ph, the largest website for finding Filipino virtual workers, with over 1,000,000 Filipino resumes and over 300,000 employers from around the world using it.He works about 17 hours per week, choosing to spend his time with his family rather than working.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutThe thing I’m always working on is helping people to outsource their businesses. I love it; I see so many people succeed with it. I see so much good in it, from both sides, the employer and the virtual assistant.John’s career and story I’m a terrible employee. Out of college in 2003, I had a job for eight months, and my only goal was to quit my job. Because I hated it, and it took me eight months to make a little money online, and then I had an opportunity, and I took it, and I’ve been making money online ever since.In 2004 when I was making money, I didn’t get rich, but I saw how things are working. And I was good with websites; we were ranked on Google, and we were having ads on our websites and were getting money when people clicked the links and so on.I realized that there is a business online. Still, the business models of AdWords wouldn’t work for long, so I started learning other things regarding online - like copywriting, marketing, SEO, and the like.I started my online business, and very quickly, I got overwhelmed, I was overworked; there were so many things to do. I thought it’s going to be easy and obviously I was wrong.I tried different outsourcing solutions; I Tried to hire people locally and to hire someone from India, then I tried Elance, which today is UpWork - and all that didn’t work for me.Then I had a conversation with someone very successful in Internet business, and he said to me, ‘when you ready to hire outsourcing, make sure to go to the Philippines’. And he gave me a reference so I can hire someone full time, and I didn’t do it, but it gave me some hope.But after a while, I realized I couldn’t keep working 60 hours a week without getting enough done. And I hired someone through the agency he gave me, and it was the single most liberating experience of my life!This employee was doing whatever I taught him to do, and after like a month, I realized that there is like two of me… I replaced myself in my business.That guy is still working for me today. Since 2005…! What I didn’t know about the Philippines is that they are loyal almost to a fault.That changed my life, and since then, I’ve helped hundreds of thousands of people do that, and it changed their lives as well.In 2008 I directly recruited a programmer to build a simple Job Board for direct interaction between companies to job seekers. In the first month, we passed a couple of hundreds of profiles, last month we passed a million profiles.The VA sets the terms, and we don’t take a cut of their salary, so they get all the money you pay them. We get paid $70 by employers for access to the database.John’s best advice for entrepreneursI have two pieces of advice. The first one is to make sales! That’s where entrepreneurs fail. Many of them think that ‘if I build this, or if I have just one more feature - than it’s all going to work. No. It’s not. You need to make sales.The second piece of advice is to make sure you add value; meaningful value to your customers.Biggest failure with customers My biggest failure is entering a market where I don’t understand the marketing plan. If I don’t understand what they are looking for and what the offer should be, then I usually fail.Six or seven years ago, I paid a realtor for creating training...

Hi, my Reachers.Last year we started a new amazing series of the Reach Or Miss mountains project; Today I want to share with you the 5th and last (for the coming mounts) episode where successful entrepreneurs share their mountains stories.Listen to these incredible mountain stories I heard from the successful entrepreneurs I interviewed on my podcast.You can then listen to the full interview with each of them and hear about the visions, the struggles, and how these entrepreneurs reached their success.&nbsp;From the entrepreneur that climbed Big Bend National Park, the tallest mountain in Texas, when they realized they lost the way back and there was literally nothing below them.To the entrepreneur that went for three weeks of backpacking and climbing the Sierra Nevada mountains at the age of 16,To the entrepreneur who isn’t a big mountain climber, but loves&nbsp;Miley Cyrus song “The Climb” or ‘There will always be another mountain. And it says, “There’s always gonna be another mountain. I’m always gonna wanna make it move.”To the entrepreneur who lives in Portland, Oregon and climbed the mountain around it: “I have never done a hike where there wasn’t at least one step that I thought, ‘What the hell am I doing? Why am I doing this?’To the entrepreneur that keep setting new goals and climbing the mountains of life on the metaphorical level, because he believes that we’ve been programmed by our creator to want to make a difference and to want to have something bigger than ourselves to live for.&nbsp;I hope these mountain stories will encourage you to find out what should you – as an entrepreneur looking for your breakthrough to success – take from their stories to help find the necessary steps to reach your peak?&nbsp;Many successful entrepreneurs climb mountains, while others use mountains as a metaphor to describe what is necessary to conquer the peak – including the fatiguing yet rewarding journey to the top. Still other entrepreneurs use mountains as an analogy for a significant goal they wish to achieve – such as becoming a billion-dollar-market-cap company. (See Mellissah Smith’s mountain story.)For many years, I’ve compared the act of taking possession of your potential customers’ minds and of building awareness, likability, and trust of a leading brand to the act of climbing the highest mountains.You climb step by step to the peak, reach your position as a market leader and a leading brand, and then start climbing a new mountain with a new product line or another brand.The idea of mountains as representations of a strong position in the market is mentioned by Al Ries and Jack Trout in the excellent book, Marketing Warfare.“In military&nbsp;warfare,&nbsp;mountains&nbsp;and higher altitude areas represent strong positions and often are used to present a strong defense. In&nbsp;marketing warfare, the question is one of who holds the&nbsp;mountains&nbsp;in the consumer's mind.”&nbsp;So, at some point after the launch of my podcast for entrepreneurs, I started to ask the successful entrepreneurs I interviewed about their habits or dreams of climbing one of the highest mountains in the world.Listen to these new inspiring mountains’ stories, find which entrepreneurs and stories you identify with most, and review your entrepreneurial objectives, market overview, and plan. By making your business as strong as possible, you will be able to quickly and easily achieve entrepreneurial success.&nbsp; Amy Vernon: “Listen to your customers and talk to them, though that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do everything they say”Amy Vernon was Internationally recognized as an influential voice in the realm of community, audience, and content, she has worked in media,...

My dear Reachers.Last year we started a new amazing series of the Reach Or Miss mountains project;&nbsp;Listen to these incredible mountain stories I heard from the successful entrepreneurs I interviewed on my podcast.You can then listen to the full interview with each of them and hear about the visions, the struggles, and how these entrepreneurs reached their success.&nbsp;From the entrepreneur that climb the Everest base camp, but the toughest mountain for me was Mount KilimanjaroTo the entrepreneur that reminds us that the sweeter fruits, the animals, the trees, the water - are all down in the valley. Not on the top.To climbing the Pyrenees, and thinking that mountains are like their vision: “it’s my North Star. I know I will never reach it but it will always guide me. The vision is the top of the mountain.”To the fantastic entrepreneur that one of her favorite songs has to do with mountains. It’s called “The Climb” or ‘There will always be another mountain by Miley Cyrus,To laying in a frizzing lake on top of the glacier, and feel: “It’s moments like this that you believe that God exists.” It’s the happiest, purest, and most rejuvenating moment in the world.&nbsp;Many successful entrepreneurs climb mountains, while others use mountains as a metaphor to describe what is necessary to conquer the peak – including the fatiguing yet rewarding journey to the top. Still other entrepreneurs use mountains as an analogy for a significant goal they wish to achieve – such as becoming a billion-dollar-market-cap company. (See Mellissah Smith’s mountain story.)For many years, I’ve compared the act of taking possession of your potential customers’ minds and of building awareness, likeability, and trust of a leading brand to the act of climbing the highest mountains.You climb step by step to the peak, reach your position as a market leader and a leading brand, and then start climbing a new mountain with a new product line or another brand.The idea of mountains as representations of a strong position in the market is mentioned by Al Ries and Jack Trout in the excellent book, Marketing Warfare.“In military&nbsp;warfare,&nbsp;mountains&nbsp;and higher altitude areas represent strong positions and often are used to present a strong defense. In&nbsp;marketing warfare, the question is one of who holds the&nbsp;mountains&nbsp;in the consumer's mind.”&nbsp;So, at some point after the launch of my podcast for entrepreneurs, I started to ask the successful entrepreneurs I interviewed about their habits or dreams of climbing one of the highest mountains in the world.Listen to these new inspiring mountains’ stories, find which entrepreneurs and stories you identify with most, and review your entrepreneurial objectives, market overview, and plan. By making your business as strong as possible, you will be able to quickly and easily achieve entrepreneurial success.&nbsp; Bill Cates: “For me, success means abundance in my life. Money is OK, as long as it doesn’t own you – as long as you own it!”Bill, is an internationally recognized client-acquisition expert, author, and speaker who motivates others to take action with proven strategies. &nbsp;Bill’s MountainI’ve been to the Everest base camp, but the toughest mountain for me was Mount Kilimanjaro. It’s 19,200 feet. It’s not a technical climb; it’s just a really hard walk. It took me six-and-a-half days to get to the top and one-and-a-half days to get down. It was a great experience, a very tough experience, but I loved it and I would do it again.[caption id="attachment_6065" align="aligncenter" width="700"]<img...

Avi Yaron Invented a 3D solution for brain surgeons; “If you ask me what is my greatest achievement, it’s being able to save lives worldwide.”&nbsp;Hi, Reachers.&nbsp;This week I continue to dedicating this podcast to the entrepreneurs that choose to make this world a better place and to bring (for the 2nd time) the story of Avi Yaron.Avi Yaron is a visionary entrepreneur, Executive Chairman, and strategic adviser with extensive knowledge of medical / Neuro technology arenas.Passionate about disrupting medicine, for enhancing life quality, and utilizing advanced technologies.Invented, founded, and led disruptive companies targeting un-met needs. Envisioned “emotion based personalized predictive preventative solutions” (see TEDxAmsterdam talk), set strategy and led Joy Ventures, to pioneer and cultivate a Neuro-Wellness consumer product ecosystem.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI prefer to help them to stay healthy and happy, or even delay the onset of disease Instead of helping people after they already developed the disease. As a technologist, this is what I’m focusing on.I would like to develop global, sustainable companies and services that can help mankind. After my TedTalk, I founded, with a team, joint ventures, which basically bank on the neural wellness products for individuals. This is not medical, but to enhance their resilience, reduce stress levels, improve moods, should be a gigantic market and joint ventures. I left them, but they are still continuing and are developing an ecosystem, both among the entrepreneurs and among academia, meaning funding long term start-ups and providing grants to academia to research the field.Avi’s best advice about customer focus, marketing, and salesEveryone is my customer. My employees are my customers, the physicians are my customers, the CFO in the hospital is my customer, and I’m here to serve. Meaning, they are always right, and I’m always thankful for whoever tells me that I’m wrong because I would like to improve all the time, continuous improvements. I would say that generally I don’t give advice and I don’t believe in teaching; I believe in learning.Biggest failure with a customerThe difference between success and failure is very thin, and each of my companies, before eventually succeeding, failed miserably. Only because I had a phenomenal team and only because we were mentally flexible, and only because I gave a hug to whoever told me that I’m wrong, that we made it.There is a case study that I taught in Stanford MIT about my biggest failure. We were in the process of raising $20 million with one of the best banks, called Piper Jaffray for the go to market phase in 2001, when the big crash happened. My friend in Piper Jaffray called me one day and told me, ‘I’m so sorry, it’s not personal, everything is crashing. We can’t raise the money.’ I set an immediate board meeting. Before this point, they told me, ‘Avi, the company is great, you’re great, we’re always behind you,’ because I always manage risks, and then they told me, ‘Avi, we’re sorry, things have changed. We will not support you. You need to close the company.’ The company was a phenomenal success before then. We managed to get a FDA clearance in 18 months and here we were, in early sales globally, with a burn rate of $450,000, and then we learned that we had no more money and I had $1 million in the bank. That weekend, instead of closing the company, two board members and myself instituted a completely different plan and I had to let go a majority of the employees, buy back all the product that we sold, give back most offices that we had, and reduce the burn rate to $80,000, delay all payments, etc. Keep the company alive, and all of this over a weekend. Then, on Sunday, I called my...

Katherine is a travel columnist for Forbes, and TripSavvy; and her work has appeared in many publications like Architectural Digest, The Week, The Daily Beast, and Business Insider, and more.Katherine Parker Magyar is a New York-based writer with a focus on travel, culture, and adventure—and a preference for far-flung-locales.Katherine is a travel columnist for Forbes, as well as the Caribbean expert for TripSavvy; her work has also appeared in Architectural Digest, The Week, The Daily Beast, and Business Insider, among other publications. She has traveled to 6 continents, 63 countries, and all 50 states in pursuit of a good story.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutToday, I’m in lockdown. However, I’ve had amazing experiences while I’ve been traveling pretty much non-stop over the past two years. I visited 41 countries in 23 months, and I saw so much and moved so quickly, it almost felt normal. Being forced to slow down and take stock of everything I’ve seen, what I took away from everything ... it has been a fortune to be forced inside and reflect.I tracked every single travel experience that I had. It helps give me a broader, nuanced perspective on the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met.I think that traveling is automatically like a force for good. There is a quote by Mark Twain: “Travel&nbsp;is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness…” He said: “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”When I was traveling, I felt like I was constantly getting affirmation of the goodness of society and people. I started scrapbooking. I took all the photos, the letters people wrote to me, the stories I’ve been written, and started compiling them and reliving those experiences.I think now more than ever, people need stories about the good that is happening in the world. It’s easy to be pessimistic and fall into desperation about everything that is happening now.So, what I started to do, and what I’m most passionate about today, is compiling all the stories of the last two years into a book.I had such amazing experiences. I felt history come alive for me and I felt so inspired by it. I like to explore.Other travel writers told me, “You need to focus. You can’t go for only one morning, or only for a week to Kenya. You need two weeks, or you need at least 10 days to go to China. You can’t go to China for only five days.” But I disagree.At the end of the day, you have only one life. If you keep waiting to have the perfect time, and the perfect amount of money, and the perfect schedule, you’ll never go.Katherine’s career and story I hope my story inspires people who think, ‘Maybe it’s too late for me.’ I had always wanted to be a writer. I just love writing. I feel it comes naturally to me.Travel is another passion of mine. I always wanted to share my travel experiences with people.I’ll tell the story of how I started my entrepreneurial journey. In college, I was an English major and I loved it. After college, I wanted to become a teacher and a professor. I wanted to become a poetry professor, an American Poetry professor.I didn’t want to start teaching right away after college, so I got a job in advertising. It was 2009, at the end of the recession, and it wasn’t easy to find a job. That was the first step, and I think that every step along the way makes sense ultimately.There were advantages to working in “corporate America” and to making money, but I wasn’t passionate about my job. I guess that’s why I wasn’t so good at it. I was afraid that I wouldn’t reach my dream of becoming a writer. After a year, I was fired because, as I said, I wasn’t passionate about it and wasn’t good at doing...

Deborah Levine:&nbsp;“My passion today reflects my work for a decade, making a difference in the world by looking at prejudice, religious diversity, and hate, including how to deal with it”&nbsp;&nbsp;Hi, Reachers.&nbsp;We are going through very important times in the last two weeks, in America and all over the world.&nbsp;I chose to dedicate this podcast to the entrepreneurs that choose to make this world a better place and to bring (for the 2nd time) the story of Deborah Levine, the founder and editor of the American Diversity Report.&nbsp;Deborah Levine is the award-winning author of 14 books and the founder/editor of the American Diversity Report.Deborah was born in Brooklyn and raised in Bermuda. Her background includes advanced degrees in cultural anthropology, religion, and urban planning. Inspired by her father, a US military intelligence officer assigned to interrogate Nazi prisoners of war during World War II, she is a former executive director of Jewish Federations.Named by Forbes Magazine as one of the top 10 Diversity &amp; Inclusion Trailblazers, Deborah is the inventor of cognitive technology for addressing unconscious bias.Her work as an entrepreneur includes creating the Women’s Council on Diversity, the DuPage/Chicago Interfaith Resource Network, the Youth Multicultural Video Contest, and the Southeast Global Leadership Academy.Most passionate aboutMy passion today reflects my work for a decade, making a difference in the world by looking at prejudice, religious diversity, and hate, including how to deal with it.I started this journey almost by accident many years ago. I was living in Chicago; my daughter was just a little one and I needed a job. My parents were both working in the Jewish community. My mother was dying of cancer and I thought it would be a gift to her if I worked for the Jewish community while she was still alive so that she could see how much she had influenced me.I started engaging in an interface dialog with international organizations. Then I looked for an executive position. Because I’d never been an executive director of a non-profit organization, no one would hire me. So, here, I started my entrepreneurial journey. I created my own nonprofit and made myself an executive director.My mother was so proud, so pleased. So was my father.Deborah’s entrepreneurship developmentI started my company with the mission of addressing the problems that communities were having as they became more international. I also created what I called the Do-page Interface Resource Network, which is still in existence today.Across the nation, when communities became more international, they had to face prejudice toward newcomers, especially those of a different faith.This affected the entire city, the county, the state. It was ongoing and affected people from India, people from Muslim countries, and Jews. It caused tremendous friction. My mission was to fix that.Eventually, I was approached by different groups, like the county law enforcement department, which wanted to prepare materials that would help their people understand the communities that they were trying to assist. Other examples included public schools (for their educators), hospitals (for their chaplains), and many more.So, I started to document everything and write books so that if I couldn’t be everywhere, at least I had a voice.The need for this kind of education grew quickly, especially among enterprises and the organization. That’s how my business grew and how I started to publish the online American Diversity Report.There were times when I decided to take what my friends call a “real job.” I was hired by a Jewish federation in Tulsa, Oklahoma to be its executive director. After that, I took another job as...

Riggs Eckelberry doesn’t look like a bomb-thrower. And yet, he’s driving the disruption of a trillion-dollar industry that has fallen behind the times and is affecting the health of millions. That industry is Big Water. Simply, those billion-dollar centralized water systems aren’t coping with demand, and water quality is getting worse. The answer? Instant InfrastructureTM. Businesses are doing their own water treatment, using modular, prefabricated systems that are trucked right on site. They get better water quality, lower rates through recycling, and even improved environmental grades!Ten years after launching public company OriginClear, Riggs and his team are offering those truck-in-place modular systems in the USA, while licensees are building products internationally using OriginClear’s low-energy, chemical-free innovation.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI’ve been working in the industrial water industry, which is an enormous, trillion-dollar industry. Yet, it’s not doing its job; only one-fifth of sewage is treated worldwide.Two-and-a-half billion people worldwide have no direct access to clean water. And the change is very slow; the water industry is falling behind the population growth. The Coronavirus brought a sense of urgency to this industry.If you want to transform an industry, find the people who don’t have excess to it—like Uber, which allows people who don’t have access to taxies and the transportation industry to become part of it by using their own cars. It’s the same as Airbnb, which allows people to use their homes as hotels.This opens up dramatically new markets without killing the old market. Both Uber and Airbnb transformed their sectors by allowing more people to play in them. That’s what we’ve done with the water industry.One of the main questions here is: How do you find a global solution? And you must always sell the global problem with a local solution that can scale up.So, the idea that came to mind was to use our big, very healthy investor base of 10,000 shareholders. Why don’t we let them invest in water projects directly, as opposed to the company?All of a sudden, instead of pushing the rock up the hill, we found the rock on downhill.In this post-virus economy, we have three priorities for investors. One is yield—they must make a good percentage on their money. Two is liquidity—they must be able to convert to cash easily. The third is safety.We established Investor Water, a global marketplace that connects everyday investors to water projects. We are now in the process of running three projects as proofs of concept.The marketplace for water projects has become one of our global priorities in the decade to come. That’s why it’s so exciting.Riggs’s career and story I was raised as one of six boys. My father was an international businessman and we stayed for many years in countries like Canada and the Caribbean. We spent many years in Europe. We always had a non-American viewpoint.After high school, I was supposed to go to all kinds of colleges, but I chose instead to get involved in the non-profit space. For years I was paid almost nothing but was in that ‘save the world' kind of mentality.In those years, I had many kinds of fun roles, like being a sailor, a skier, and a marine officer. When I needed to choose my direction, I chose technology because I thought that it was the only way to break out of how things are: the fossil fuel world, the minimum sanitation world, and the like.I ended up in New York doing some pioneering computing work. Fast forward to the early ’90s. I was on the West Coast and got involved with the new dot-com industry. I experienced some amazing 10 years, including the dot-com I learned so much about disruptive marketing, which I called Mistake-Based Marketing, in which...

Justin Goodbread, CFP®, CEPA®, CVGA®, owner of FinanciallySimple.com, is a nationally recognized financial planner, financial educator, wealth manager, author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He has 20+ years of experience starting, buying, owning, and selling businesses. Justin is a two-time winner of the Investopedia Top 100 Advisor award and Exit Planning Institute’s Exit Planner Leader of the Year.Recently, Justin published his first book: The Ultimate Sale. In it, he shows business owners how to create long-term value and accelerate growth in their company with the ultimate goal of selling the business for top dollar when the owner wants to retire.Justin already wrote the first draft of his second book, and is on a mission to publish a book per year aiming to publish 10 books before the age of 50.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI’m most passionate about trying to change the future for so many business owners, here in the US and around the world.A study by the Exit Planning Institute says that out of 5.6 million Americans who have small businesses and entrepreneurships, only 4% will sell their businesses for the price the owners think they’re worth.That’s amazing, especially because, for most business owners, their largest single asset is their business. What I’m into today is changing the narrative and the outcome for business owners, so that whenever they desire to exit, they are ready for it financially and are emotionally prepared to walk away from their business.To increase a business’s value, you need to know where you’re headed.The main difference between a business that will be able to make an exit and a business that won’t is called ‘owner dependence.’ It’s when the business is completely dependent upon the owner—the owner’s mind and the owner’s ability.The one thing the owner needs to do if they want to make the business ready for a very profitable exit one day is to remove themselves from the business, to make the business owner irrelevant.They should build a dynamic team, a dynamic process, dynamic multiple systems, to the point where the business can function and thrive without the owner's involvement.We are working with the owners not only to build the team that will be able to lead and run the business without them but also on how to let it go.I’m young, I’m 42. When I sold my first business, I was 22. I found myself trying to figure out: What’s next? The reason for that was that I made the same mistake that so many Americans and business owners around the globe do: Our identity becomes our business.When our identity becomes our business, it becomes tough on us to sell or transition, or perhaps leave the business for any reason: death or divorce or disability or disagreements. When I leave it, what’s next in life?Justin Goodbread’s career and story I started my first business when I was 16. We had a landscaping business. It was in the ’90s and my mom and dad, who homeschooled us, wanted my brother, sister, and me, as part of our education, to learn how to work, to learn how to be business owners, to learn to be entrepreneurs.My mom and dad—who were not business owners or entrepreneurs—invested their life, their resources, their savings, their time in teaching my brother, my sister, and me how to think like business owners.By the age of 18, my brother and I were in landscaping and made more money than my mom and dad did.My brother and I were landscaping together. We bought our own equipment, found our own customers, serviced the customers, and positioned it. Ultimately, we both went to college, so we walked away from our business, selling it for a nominal fee.After that, my brother and I started separate businesses. He went into the pool business, building high-end swimming...

Jesse Krieger sits squarely at the intersection of publishing and promotion – having signed two publishing deals on two different continents and navigated the world of becoming a best-selling author twice.In addition to being featured on over 50 media outlets for his best-selling book Lifestyle Entrepreneur, Jesse has been an entrepreneur his entire adult life and holds degrees from University of California, Berkeley, as well as National Taiwan University and Beijing Normal University.It has been his honor to publish 100+ books during his 6-year tenure as founder &amp; publisher of Lifestyle Entrepreneurs Press - The Publisher for The Passionate.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutToday I’m the publisher of Lifestyle Entrepreneurs Press. We are the “Publisher for the Passionate.” I also run a crowdfunding platform called Publishers that connects writers to readers and finds the right publisher for them.I’m most passionate about creative entrepreneurs who have had incredible life experiences and who want to share them with the world through a book.I spend most of my time working with authors through the crazy process of creating, publishing, and promoting a book, which, for them, is also their business development tool. It’s what they want to be known for.It gives you, as an entrepreneur, the chance to step forward and release your work to the world. It gives you the opportunity to connect with people you’ve never met, in places you’ve never been, and have a profound impact on their lives in a positive way.Jesse’s career and story It’s all really started with my love for music. I got my first guitar at the age of 13. I wasn’t interested in business growing up. I just wanted to ditch high school and play Jimi Hendrix with my band. I followed this passion to LA, where I went to music school. Then I went with friends to Europe. We played there in bars and clubs and even on the street. It ended in Nashville. I went to study sound engineering there and met my bandmate and my first business partner.We were recording and producing music all the time and I established my first business, which was a record label, to manage our music.I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole adult life. I really have never had a normal job. Toward the end of my 20s, a lot of people started to ask about my approach to starting different kinds of businesses, and traveling, and being able to travel while running a business. During 2008 and 2009, it wasn’t so common “just to be an entrepreneur.”I started to write about my approach. It felt consistent to me. The act of thinking and writing about how I approached coming up with new business ideas, how I approached testing them out, how I thought about the kinds of travel experiences I wanted to have in a year—I built that into my planning.These answers, which I wrote in the book, helped me clarify my philosophy and share it with others.I didn’t self-publish this book. It was published by two publishers. I was first published in South East Asia in 2012. I turned to Malaysia and Singapore and talked at book fairs. I signed books and kissed babies, the whole thing.I had a business history in China and in Asia. We were doing promotional products and flash drives, those kinds of things. Then I decided that I wanted to start studying Mandarin.I found a publisher in Asia. It was a unique story: a big white guy who speaks Mandarin and published a book in Asia about business. There weren’t as many business books in Asia as there were in the Western world.I wanted to do it in Asia before I tried to publish my book in the US. Two years later, my book was published in the US, and some of my friends were working on books of their own. They started to ask me if I could do it for them. Six years later, I said...

Kasey Jones, founder of A Better Jones is deeply passionate about helping people, teams, and organizations grow. She has defined her career leveraging creative and innovative methods to build long-lasting relationships with the people that matter most to your business - buyers, partners, and community.Kasey’s experience spans nearly every aspect of sales, marketing, business development, and community organizing at startups including Notion, GoodData, Postano, and even Obama for President.&nbsp;She discovered her affinity for the startup life by working on political campaigns where she realized she thrived in chaos, had a knack for doing big things with few resources, and loved the challenge of being perpetually in over-her-head.A passionate advocate for underrepresented sales professionals, Kasey also cofounded The Other Side of Sales, a podcast and resource committed to evolving the culture of B2B sales to be more inclusive and to empower underrepresented sales professionals. Also, Sales Hacker has named her one of the 35 Most Influential Women in Sales and a Sales Influencer to watch for 2019.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI’m the founder of two businesses. I have ‘A Better Jones,’ which is a growth strategy, coaching, and demand generation agency for startups in their early stage. We help startups grow faster and we have a variety of ways to do that.Also, we just launched a new project called Our Galaxy. It’s a community, content resource, and coaching platform designed to assist founders and business leaders in building authentic personal brands that help them grow their businesses and careers in what we call ‘a non-icky way.’I know a lot of founders out there who are humble or from more of the technical side, and a personal brand seems a little unappealing to them. We help them understand that building your personal brand is about getting known for the work you do and being respected in your industry in a way that helps your business grow.It’s usually among more product-led founders. They tend to believe that the product should speak for itself and they don’t need to have a public role. They often say that they don’t feel comfortable bragging on social media.I’m a firm believer that everyone has a story to tell, a lesson to teach, or insights to share. When you go out there and you’re transparent about the things that you’re learning and the things that you’re doing, then your industry and your buyers trust you more. They’re more likely to buy from people and from organizations that they trust.Another thing that I’m working on now, worldwide, is this pandemic and how it’s impacting business and the economy. So, I’m working on a coaching program for startup founders who feel like their businesses are poised for growth but who don’t have the right plan or resources. They need help to get deep and intensive about this, to accelerate this growth.I’m creating an opportunity for them to get into groups and take part in the process that I usually do, but in a group setting. We also know that the founders’ journey is really lonely.I see a lot of entrepreneurs, especially here in Oregon, who are massively pivoting their companies, while others are just waiting for things to get back to normal. And I think that this isn’t going to happen. Yes, things will ease and things will get a little better, but we will not go back to where things were.There is a very big need to listen to your customers and understand what they are going through. Listening to your customers is always the biggest need, but because things are changing so quickly now, you need to be having constant conversations with your customers and learning to adopt what they are telling you.We used to hold a lot of events with our customers. Well, that’s not going to happen.Kasey’s career and story...

Sarah Evans, founder of Sevans Strategy and Sevans Digital PR, is a digital PR strategist, consultant, global brand correspondent and keynote speaker, who works with companies worldwide to create and improve their social and digital PR strategies. Her team is able to advise on branding, marketing, advertising, and public relations.Additionally, Sarah has been a digital correspondent for several companies including Paypal, Cox Communications, MGM International, Cisco, SAP, Wal Mart, Shorty Awards and more...Sarah got her start by helping small to midsize businesses build their digital PR efforts. She is currently a member of the Forbes Agency Council. Previously, Sarah worked with a Chicago-area crisis center to raise more than $161,000 in three weeks exclusively via social media, and is honored to be a member of the Guinness Book World Record holding #beatcancer team.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutMy world is all digital PR. I started my business around 11 years ago and it has gone through a lot of changes and evolutions, highs and lows. It has grown and not grown (when I had my children). However, I feel very lucky to work with the clients whom we work with in the digital lifestyle and technology space. We have customers all over the world, from Israel, and from Russia, and from across the US, and I absolutely love what I do.I view digital PR as much more comprehensive. Of course, we do traditional media relations—getting clients sourced in TV, print, radio, and the like—but we also look at social earned organic and even some social paid components.We help clients create their own content for their websites and we help them get placed in media outlets. We get them the opportunities to get placed in unique outlets, as podcasts, or YouTube influencers, or Instagram influencers.We are looking for all the opportunities that a brand can use to either share their story, connect with the community, or leverage a moment in time.I’m not technically a maker, but I test out things every day. I consider myself a tech enthusiast and a beta tester. Each day, I’m trying out 5 to 10 new products and looking at how they can resonate with consumers, how we can use them from a PR perspective, and how we can integrate them into a publicity plan or connection opportunity.Sarah’s customersOur customers all have sorts of technology angles to their products. What all our customers have in common is that they are all technology leaders or influencers, or they have technology related to their brand.Sarah’s career and story I was a PR major in college, so it’s something that I always knew I wanted to do. When I was very little, I was hosting tea parties and putting on events, inviting everyone, bringing people together. That was really what I wanted to do with my life.My mother was the catalyst for that. We started from: Bringing people together is my mission, so what kind of career can help me do that? I discovered public relations and went through a very traditional career path. I started with corporate public relations, then health care, higher education, and agency work.I didn’t realize that I had an entrepreneurial spirit. However, I took the risk 11 years ago and haven’t looked back. I’m very, very happy.Sarah’s best advice for entrepreneursMy advice is to make some of their own advice. Every day, I’m learning something, so I think the advice I would have given 11 years ago, five years ago, or three months ago would be completely different.The one thing that has remained the same is that you have to have a thirst or hunger for what you do. It’s very easy to get depleted emotionally, or down on yourself. When you get into the tranches, you find out how difficult it is because not everyone...

Sean Castrina lost his "dream job" 25 years ago and decided he would never be dependent on an employer for his financial security again.&nbsp;He became a millionaire at 36-years-old by becoming a serial entrepreneur, starting more than 20 companies and currently running 9 companies.His newest book, the World's Greatest Business Plan, helps people by providing a simple step-by-step plan for those who cannot afford to fail.&nbsp;He has contributed to some of the most recognized media outlets including Forbes, Inc., Yahoo Finance, MSNBC, as well as guest lectured at some of America’s finest colleges.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutWhat I’m passionate about for the next 30 days (and for the previous 30 days) is finishing my third book, called The World’s Greatest Business Plan. The reason I wrote this book is that too many business people and startups don’t have a business plan.I went to Amazon and read the first pages of 10 books all about business plans. One book was worse than the next; they were outdated, they were written by professors, they were way too exhaustive.I thought, ‘There must be something simpler,’ so I wrote The World’s Greatest Business Plan. We are giving it as a gift during these times of coronavirus. It’s a good book that will help you formulate a plan for your business or talk you out of going into this business.I see so many startups fall. The main reason is because the startup founder falls in love with their idea. They look at their idea as a success and they picture this idea working. That is the point where they start to write their business plan. However, a business plan should absolutely challenge your idea.A business plan should accomplish a couple of things. One, it should convince you, the founder. It should also convince investors or partners, whoever gets involved in your business. It must build confidence in everybody that is involves.Sean’s career and story The businesses that have succeeded well for me are the businesses where I personally experienced a problem—the need that I had trouble solving.Twenty years ago, I started a handyman company. Well, that is the least sexy business you can imagine. I don’t know the difference between two screwdrivers...I owned a magazine in cities on the East Coast at the time, and I wanted to convert the dining room in our home to an office. We had a newborn child and I wanted to work from home ... and I couldn’t find anyone to do the job. I saw a tremendous need!I started Advantage Handyman, not a sexy business. Well, it has now turned into Advantage Contracting. Twenty years later, it has eight companies that will do anything for your home. It started from a need I experienced and has moved to a multi-million-dollar business.And that’s only one of the businesses I started - 11 companies over the years.The difference I see between a business and an entrepreneurship is that you can decide to leave your job and start your own business, and you have something like six months of entrepreneurship, but then you have your business and all you want to do is make a living from the business for many years to come. That’s a business. This person is not an entrepreneur.An entrepreneur is the one who is looking to build more and more companies and seeking opportunities.Sean’s best advice for entrepreneursSolve a problem! From the beginning. Don’t fall in love with your own idea … yet. At some point you can, after you have done your business plan.A good business starts on one of three foundations. You want to start a business that solves a problem or meets a need, or, satisfy a desire. Ninety-nine percent of all businesses need to have a massive audience for that.Biggest failure with...

Amy is a digital Swiss army knife. Internationally recognized as an influential voice in the realm of community, audience, and content, she has worked in media, cybersecurity, blockchain, and marketing technology.Craigslist founder Craig Newmark named her as one of 5 women bloggers to follow, and PeerIndex named her the 15th most influential woman in tech on Twitter.She was a member of a Pulitzer Prize-winning staff at the Miami Herald and once converted a two-prong electrical outlet to a three-prong grounded outlet without electrocuting anyone.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI have been working on a couple of projects with a group that worked together, and today I’m talking with a few companies about getting involved with community and audience development, which is the sweet spot where my skills intersect.The phrase “audience development” came out of the journalism world. You first have a product, which is the journalism, and then there is the audience, which you want to develop to read and watch the product.Audience development, as I see it, is looking at your users from a new point of view—thinking differently. On social media, companies start to look at their customers more as fans, followers, and community. It’s almost like you’re entertaining them today.Customer development is similar to community management but it’s more typically for media.I believe that, as a result of these times, we are going to change in terms of the business world and workers—not only because of the Coronavirus epidemic, and not only in a good way. An epidemic is awful, but I hope we come out of this with more empathy.Amy’s career and story I started as a traditional journalist quite a long time ago. During the recession of 2008, there were many layoffs in journalism. I decided that I wouldn’t go back to traditional journalism. Social media had just started and I was a power user of Dig, StumbleUpon, and Facebook. After just a few months, I was getting around 50%-60% of my old salary as a manager. I thought, ‘This is new, this is interesting. Let’s see where it can go.’As a reporter for The Miami Herald, I was recognized as the only reporter who lived in the community. I was more trusted because I was somebody who actually lived there.The main difference between being a journalist versus the new social media publishers is that journalism is always about the news. It’s commercially packaged, but its main purpose is to inform the community. Otherwise, you would lose readers, and if you lose readers, then you lose the advertises. Meanwhile, as a business, having a great blog, at the end of the day, is about the company—either for branding or marketing or sales, but it has a different purpose.Amy’s best advice for entrepreneursListen to your customers and talk to them, though that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do everything they say. There is a very fine balance between listening to your customers—your clients and your followers—and being too distracted by that.Biggest failure with customers It’s kind of a challenge because I tend to learn from failure and then put it behind me, so I don’t see it as a failure anymore.I think my biggest failure was with the company that I co-founded. I definitely learned from that. We had very different ideas about how to build the company. I think we were both aware of that but maybe we didn’t realize how far apart we were.My partner thought we had to get to a certain number of clients in 12 or 18 months, while I thought that, to get to this number, we should get just a couple and perfect the aspects that we needed to perfect. The wrong thing was that we acted like this didn’t matter when, the truth was, we never could overcome

A born entrepreneur and self-starter, Lance Tyson is an authority in the sales world with a passion for developing strong business leaders. Lance has worked with some of the biggest names in sports and entertainment, including the New York Yankees and the Dallas Cowboys. After leaving school to start his first business, Lance began working for Dale Carnegie. He rose through the ranks eventually building the most successful Dale Carnegie operation in North America.After a fifteen-year run, Lance sold his interest in Dale Carnegie in order to form a new company, Tyson Group. The focus of Tyson Group is to diagnose your sales team and propose solutions that deliver results that make sense for your organization and needs. We aren’t just a company that provides training—we are a partner that provides solutions&nbsp;Most passionate aboutOur organization helps entrepreneurs and salespeople compete in this complex world. That’s what I’m passionate about. Many of the entrepreneurs we work with are very product-heavy. Sometimes they aren’t equipped to sell things but they have the enthusiasm to sell.At the Tyson Group, we coach, train, and consult sales leaders and their teams. I always say that entrepreneurs and salespeople are the last great worriers.There are plenty of opportunities today for push marketing like Amazon but there are also plenty of opportunities where things should be sold, and to be presented. At the end of the day, people buy from people.Lance’s career and story I’m an entrepreneur by nature. My father was an entrepreneur. I left college in my senior year. It was the time when the Berlin Wall was coming down and I read an article about imports and exports. We decided to start a company that was import-export. I was going to become a broker.One of the companies I was calling on decided I was pretty good as a salesperson, so they hired me for salary.I went back to college and at the same time was very passionate about self-improvement. That was the time of the Stephen&nbsp;Covey movement, the Tony Robbins movement, and I wanted to apply to one of those companies.At the same time, a friend of mine introduced me to Dale Carnegie’s book, which I still believe is the finest book you can ever read about being a leader and a salesperson. When I was trying to join one of those self-improvement companies, I found out that there was a Dale Carnegie office in Philadelphia.The guy who had the sponsorship of the office ended up hiring me. My role was to sell their ‘sales program’ of 12 weeks to companies and entrepreneurs.Then I got married and, because you needed a college degree to teach Dale Carnegie, my wife forced me to go back to college so I could teach there. Over time, I became an owner of one of their organizations and we ended up buying several of their organizations around the U.S.I always had a passion for sales because I did a lot of training and sold a lot of sales programs to companies and business owners. And I’ve seen a lot of great success.We sold our interest in 2010. Then I started the Tyson Group and another company.As an entrepreneur, you need to sell yourself to the bank, to investors, to vendors, to new employees, and, of course, to users. So, I really believe in the process of sales. A lot of entrepreneurs fail on that. They are so excited about their product that they forget that everybody else might not be so excited about it.Lance’s best advice for entrepreneursEntrepreneurs must understand that the sales process is the buying process inverted. I would say to entrepreneurs that they need to find out who would want their product and why they would want it.Entrepreneurs manage to sell thanks to their enthusiasm. The Latin root for enthusiasm is “enthuse,”...

Bill Cates is an internationally recognized client-acquisition expert, author, and speaker who motivates others to take action with proven strategies.&nbsp;A successful entrepreneur, Bill started and sold two book publishing companies. Turning his attention to help other businesses grow, Bill has written four best-selling books:&nbsp;Get More Referrals Now, Don’t Keep Me a Secret, Beyond Referrals and Radical Relevance.Bill is also somewhat of an adventurer. He has trekked through the Himalayas of&nbsp;Nepal and the Andes of Peru. He has lived on a houseboat in Kashmir, India, climbed Machu Pichu, reached the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro, camped in Arctic Circle… and Bill has toured the country as the drummer in a rock and roll band.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI’ve been in business for 40 years, always in marketing and in growing businesses. I built two book-publishing companies and sold both in 1989. Then I got into the business of writing, speaking, coaching, and helping other entrepreneurs build their businesses.I love writing. I plan to write a book every year now for the next five years. Today I also enjoy doing a lot of videos.Bill’s career and the story of the WHWE communityI published cookbooks. I started when I wrote my own book. I worked for American Airlines, so I wrote a book about airline careers and started selling it a bit by myself. I was using direct mail, mail orders—this was long before we had the internet. Then a woman asked me to help her self-publish a cookbook, so I did that.I realized that cookbooks were a really good business. People love to read cookbooks, and not only for cooking. They enjoy following the process of preparing a dish. People also collect cookbooks. So, I borrowed $40,000 (which was a huge amount for me) from my father.I came back with several cookbooks that we sold in cooking stores, kitchen stores, and gourmet product stores. I published 45 cookbooks throughout the time I had my business.After nine years, I discovered that I didn’t really have a passion for what I was doing. I was looking for the next thing. A friend of mine told me, “You have built up a lot of knowledge, you’ve got a lot of experience, and you can help other business owners. You can write, you can speak, you can consult, you can coach.”I never really thought about that and I slowly got into it. I started helping some clients. In 1995 I began writing my first business book. It was called Unlimited Referrals and it was about how businesses can create more word of mouth. It’s not available anymore.My most recent business book is Radical Relevance, which is about how to cut through the sea of noise that the internet creates. Creating word of mouth is more relevant now than ever. You need to have the right mix of marketing and sales.Bill’s best advice for entrepreneursThe second rule in my book, Radical Relevance, is to give your customers or clients a seat at the table. What I mean by that is to not ever develop a product or service or any marketing or sales messages without first talking to your customers or clients.We think we know what’s in their heads and hearts, and to some degree we do. We think we have empathy for them but there is nothing like talking with them. What happens is that we start learning things and getting phrases and words and expressions that we can use and that we wouldn’t have thought of.One of the great questions to ask our clients is, “What do you value about what we do and how would you describe to other people what we are doing?” When I asked that, one of my clients said, “You make asking for referrals as natural as breathing.”Biggest failure with customers I’ll...

“Prepare to ‘climb the mountain’ until things click. If you get off, game over! But you will get there!”&nbsp;Christina Rowe is a marketing expert, a speaker, an author, and the founder of Women Helping Women Entrepreneurs, a global online community of more than 320,000 female entrepreneurs.Christina is also the founder of Stand Out! Media Group, as well as the creator of the Stand Out Online Membership program; the first "All in One" membership program designed to enable participants to eliminate the overwhelm, frustration, and confusion inherent in the online marketing process while getting massive exposure for their businesses through Influencer Marketing (www.standoutonlinesystem.com/get-featured).&nbsp;Most passionate aboutRight now, I’m leading the Women Helping Women Entrepreneurs community as a group on Facebook. We have 316,000 members around the globe. We have a lot of local and country groups as well. It has been an incredible movement. My main focus has been on expanding it and having more wonderful women join.My ultimate goal is to reach more than one million members and to be a movement—women helping women entrepreneurs in business, in life, in motivation.Christina’s career and the story of the WHWE communityIn my former life, when I lived in New Jersey, I owned a hair and nail salon. I don’t personally do hair and nails but I had about 16 or 17 employees working for me.Then I went through a horrendous divorce. I ended up selling the salon and moving to Florida. The divorce was so bad (18 months in the court system) that it inspired me to write a book to help other women.After writing the book, I had to make a decision: Do I get a publisher or do I self-publish? I chose the self-publish road, which led me to online marketing. I went to a workshop where I started to learn about internet marketing and about the squeeze page, which today is like the lead magnet. I started to take a lot of courses and implement it in publishing my book.As I promoted my book, other authors and speakers started to reach out, asking me to help them with online marketing. It was 2006-2007. I started doing coaching and helping other authors, speakers, and people online.That led me to partner with two women when I moved to South Florida. We established Women Helping Women Mastermind, which was a very unique concept. We used to do many live events.When my partner moved in another direction, I started to be involved in Facebook groups. Then, in October 2016, I started the Women Helping Women Entrepreneurs group. By that time, I had created a lot of online courses, so I had a big community that was the basis of the Women Helping Women Entrepreneurs group. We started with 1000 members. From there, it took off globally.The other great thing was that people really liked the group, so they invited many of their friends. They still do to this day.Christina’s best advice for entrepreneursYou need to build up your relations with customers, whether it’s online or offline, no matter what business you have. You have to slow down and do the work.If you are not willing to put in the work of marketing yourself as an entrepreneur, if you think it’s going to be quick and easy ... it’s not! It’s a lot of hard work.So my advice would be, don’t try to go for quick sales. Instead, try to build relationships and give your audience value first.Biggest failure with customers Getting messages everywhere, on any of my private profiles, to my email, in the group, everywhere. Most of the messages were because we didn’t follow the rules and they were upset that their post wasn’t published.But sometimes there were other issues, important issues. I couldn’t answer them all. I was...

Ross Quintana, Founder of Social Magnets a Social Megnets and Personal Branding Company. Buzzsumo Top 100 Social Media Influencer, Content Creator, Writer, Multi-talented Business Futurist with a Passion for Customers, Employees, and Thought Leadership.Most passionate aboutThe first item on the list is my personal brand. At my business, Social Magnets, we do personal branding along with social media management. I am constantly refreshing my own brand.My two goals for my personal brand in 2020 are what I call “The Content Army,” which is about sharing one’s voice. You have to create a ton of content in order to be heard out there. You need not only quality content but also a quantity of content. So, my goal is to work on my “Content Army” across many different formats. My second goal is to focus more on social video. I was one of the early adopters of live streaming but I still feel that I need more of that.It’s so easy to feel that you are creating a lot of content but are not really out there. Social video helps people connect with other people.In my business, Social Magnets, we help people build their social brands and we manage social media.Ross’s current career and customersBesides my personal brand and my business, Social Magnets, I’m head of social for Adobe Partners. I loved the company before I started working for them. I was an influencer for them for three years. After that, I started working for them. I moved to Utah and designed a social selling program for Adobe Partners about connecting through social media.Before the show, we talked about the effect of the coronavirus crisis on businesses. One of my clients is Gravity Speakers, which is facing challenging times now. But this is the time to find ways to connect with our audience and really have meaningful relationships that will last through a disruption.The last piece is the book I’m currently writing. It's called Radiating Value and it’s about the future of holistic business: how to tie together all the little slivers in business, like customers’ experience, employees’ experience, digital transformation, and technology.Talking about the coronavirus, I’ve been working remotely for 12 years. As a futurist, I look at this new situation from a different perspective.People don’t realize that this crisis actually has accelerated the adoption curve. If two months ago you’d told people to start running their businesses and business connections remotely, they probably would have told you that they can’t work from home, although many people have already been doing so for several years. But this crisis just pushed people to do what would have happened anyway in the future. As a futurist, I look at this new situation from a different perspective.Ross’s best advice for entrepreneursMost people blame the wrong things. The truth is, it’s about mindset. My first bit of advice is: Know yourself. So many people don’t really understand their own brand. Know your capabilities and what you deliver. You must understand that you are delivering value and experience. This is also something that you can do virtually.Talk with your customers. You have social media, so it’s very easy to talk with your customers. You don’t need to talk with a million customers but start with one. Ask, “Why did you buy that? What does it mean to you?” Look at your value, what the market thinks of you. You should offer the highest value as the market sees it.Many entrepreneurs have a false assumption that “because I created that, I know what the real value is.” That’s many times not true. You need to talk with your customers to understand what they need and want.Many of the business people whom we work with are executive thought leaders, influencers, and public speakers. I see...

Anthony started off door knocking and built a company to $100k+ per day with over 1M customers a year. He is recognized as one of the top customer generators in the world, running a team that drives over 1 million customers each year.Today, he runs a profitable portfolio of websites ranging from commerce to content blogs that combined reach millions of buyers every month.He is consistently featured as one of the tops “under 30 year old” entrepreneurs and was featured alongside Snapchat’s founder Evan Spiegel as one of the “Entrepreneurs that are changing the world”.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutToday we help match Americans with different financial products. We help them make more money or, more often, in our case - save more money.We get millions of people a day visiting us online, with our advertisement and help them with different financial problems they are facing, educate them, and connect them with various financial partners that we work with. We help them with their insurance programs, mortgage refund, and with all the bills they are having, and how to make it easier on them.Anthony’s career It's funny how it started. I wanted to become a personal trainer, help people lose weight, and live healthier. I started down that path, and I realized that very quickly it rose to someone's financial problems. That people might not have enough money to eat healthily or not to work two jobs and be able to work out and be with their kids.And then, I became more aware of words like divorce, suicide, depression, anxiety, and most of the time, when we looked deeper, we found out that at the top of the chart was financial issues as a massive cause of that.I don't have an advising or accountant background. But the idea was to find what these customers need. So it was mainly about listening on one hand and understanding the different existing solutions on the other.Anthony’s best advice for entrepreneursI believe in fail up, fail fast, fail often. I love to tell the great story of inventing the PalmPilot. If an entrepreneur would decide to invent the PalmPilot would probably start with the development, then go to raise money, then creating it, not happy with it, creating it again and come to the 6th or 8th version and all of a sudden it’s a year later.While the brilliant entrepreneur Jeff Hawkins that had the idea for the personal digital assistant (PDA) that would eventually become the PalmPilot, carried a wooden block with him as his mock-up before making any step forward.I welcome the people that tell us we didn’t take good care of them. I embrace them.I encourage the listeners to learn the term Method Actor. And to put themselves in their customers’ shoes. When I built my business, I literally decided to feel like my customers that experienced financial difficulties. I stopped paying bills, I took a loan and didn’t pay it back on time, I had to talk with debt collectors, I was afraid to answer the phone... - it led me to take a totally different approach in connecting with my customers.You, as an entrepreneur, should be your target market. Fully put yourself in your customers’ shoes and really understand them.Biggest failure with customers The biggest failure I had specifically is a failure with my team that directly affected our customers. I had somebody of my team that crushed our server, and as I told you, we have millions of people coming into our site daily, which means for a day, it’s six figures plus in revenue went down because code was misplaced.It’s not that I was too harsh or mean, but I wasn’t too thrilled about the issue. I still see the long-term effects of my actions that day. The individual is scared to take chances now because they are...

Three entrepreneurs who used social media to stand&gt; out and one influencer that helps us understand what’s next[caption id="attachment_3930" align="aligncenter" width="150"] Dhariana Lozano[/caption] [caption id="attachment_5574" align="aligncenter" width="150"] Blake Jamieson[/caption] [caption id="attachment_6023" align="aligncenter" width="150"] Dr. Ai Zhang[/caption] [caption id="attachment_5721" align="aligncenter" width="150"] David Meerman Scott[/caption]&nbsp;Wednesday, February 26, 2020—I’m making my last preparations for my flight tomorrow to San Diego, where I’ll attend the largest and most important international conference for social media. In my bag, along with my laptop and book, are two of the best face&nbsp;masks, which I promised my daughter (and the mother of my first granddaughter, four months old) that I’d wear throughout the flights to the conference—a 22-hour journey. The coronavirus crisis is huge.For the sixth year in a row, I’m flying to the Social Media Marketing World Conference in San Diego … and I don’t even provide social media services to my clients. However, throughout the last 12 years (among my 33-year career in executive marketing positions), I have helped entrepreneurs achieve business success. Social media is, by far, the most important method that any entrepreneur can use today to become known, stand out from the crowd, and reach sustainable success.Wednesday evening news: The health department just published new instructions and recommendations to avoid flying abroad and to avoid participation in international conferences.I won’t be able to physically attend the conference in San Diego this year.Within 24 hours, I made all the needed arrangements to cancel my flights and replaced my attendant in-person ticket to the virtual ticket.&nbsp;So, especially for the Social Media Marketing World Conference, let’s listen to three entrepreneurs who used social media to stand out and start building their successful entrepreneurship, and to one of the most important influencers in the field.&nbsp;Blake Jamieson studied economics and today is a&nbsp;portrait artist for professional athletes.Blake’s storyI grew up in a very creative household. I was always encouraged to paint, or draw, or do photography – all the things I do today. However, I convinced myself, from a young age, that art was about being a starving artist and that it was not a career path.Instead of doing what my parents encouraged me to do, which was to study art in college, I decided to study economics and tech. I thought this was the safe path at the time, and I aimed to have a career in marketing.When I graduated from college, social marketing was just starting to become an actual, respected career. I was able to get into very grounded levels for some reputable companies and work my way through several different companies. Then I spun off and started working for myself as a freelancer.Ultimately, on my 30th birthday, I decided that I was tired of working for someone else’s dream. I wanted to follow my own dreams and I realized that maybe my parents had been right all along...I’m very grateful. Due to my...

Ted Rubin is a leading Social Marketing Strategist,&nbsp;Photofy CMO... Author/Speaker/Provocateur. Ted was Chief Social Marketing Officer of Collective Bias (an early entrant to the content and influencer marketing space) ... and a principal shareholder until the November 2016 7-figure acquisition by Inmar.In the words of Collective Bias Co-Founder, and content marketing thought-leader, John Andrews... "Ted, you were the vision, heartbeat and soul of Collective Bias, thank you for building a great company. From innovations like cbSocially to the amazing relationships you built with the blogger/ influencer community, clients and employees, you drove the epic growth.”His book,&nbsp;Return on Relationship, was released January 2013,&nbsp;How To Look People in the Eye Digitally&nbsp;was released January 2105 and&nbsp;The Age of Influence... Selling to the Digitally Connected Customer was released in May 2017.Ted&nbsp;is currently writing his latest book, along with business partner and Retail Thought Leader John Andrews titled&nbsp;Retail Relevancy.Return on Relationship, ROR, #RonR, a term he started using and evangelizing in March 2009, is the basis of Ted's philosophy... It’s All About Relationships!&nbsp;&nbsp;Most passionate aboutTo answer your question, and to be perfectly honest, I’m not really sure where I’m heading. Everybody who tells you that they know this is just fooling themselves. Everything we are working on today evolves as we go. Certainly, we have goals, but I always need to realign those goals.Right now, I spend most of my time involved with a company called Photofy. It’s a content market company. Once again, my business partner brought me there. We met 11 years ago when John was just ready to leave Walmart, He managed their emerging content and I still worked at e.l.f.&nbsp;Cosmetics. We both believed in those who were the influencers of the time, which were the bloggers, mainly because bloggers created content.John started a business called CollectiveBios, a content creation company that used a community of bloggers to create storytelling content at scale for brands. And I joined John.Brands weren’t necessarily ready for it. They weren’t prepared to let other people create content for them. It took a lot of “banging on doors,” a lot of patience and resilience, and a lot of hard work to break down those doors. Luckily, we succeeded in doing that and built a company that still exists. It was acquired in 2016 for a significant amount of money, and I thank John every day for that.Later on, John joined a company called Photofy as CEO. Immediately, I got an email saying, “Oh, and by the way, you are the CMO.” Photofy is a content creating tool. It empowers businesses of all industries to create and share high-quality branded content and to encourage their employees to create and share visual branded content on the fly.Ted’s careerI have been an entrepreneur all of my life but I was very fortunate to approach Seth Godin when he just started his internet company Yoyodyne. I was intrigued by an interview on the radio in which he said that he always needs smart people who can sell anything. I said, “Well, that’s me...!” I started as a salesperson and ended up building the entire sales team to sell a product that was the first click-through online product, when no one knew what that was.So, I was lucky then, but I was also lucky to find John as a partner. A partner is a great match when he either does things that you don’t know how to do or does things that you don’t like to do. John and I are similar in many ways but we are also different and that works well for us.John is more sensitive. He talks a lot with our employees; he inspires and guides them. I don’t speak a lot; I prefer to use the products I’m selling and...

He almost didn't think there was a place for him to belong anywhere, but business saved his life and gave him a sense of purpose and significance. That kind of belonging gave him endless fuel because he had never felt it before. He started 16 business and failed a lot, 11 times.Each time he learned, figured out what worked and what didn't and has started 5 successful profitable businesses. He has gone on to create over 15 millionaires with his teachings. He specializes in helping underdogs start successful businesses. Dane also has a passion for singing and he is the author of the upcoming book Start From Zero.Most passionate aboutI’m extremely passionate about loving my customers. I’m always passionate about demonstratively and deeply listening and really striving to care and love the customers I’m working with, in all my businesses. It’s extremely profitable.Listen to your customers in terms of the intention that you can hold people when you listen so deeply to them so you know their inner workings and thoughts, and so you can speak to them in a way that’s different from how they expect to be spoken to.One of the fastest ways entrepreneurs can exponentially amplify their results by 10X or more is by determining whether they are unconsciously arrogant and by determining where they aren’t listening to their customers. Then they should start listening to them.For example, one of my friends helps customers build their YouTube channels. Her customers said they wanted to make money right away on YouTube. My friend said, “No, you don’t want to do that. It takes two years to make money on YouTube.” I told her that she wasn’t listening to her customers, who wanted fast results. Then she thought of a few creative ways in which she could help her customers. Imagine how her marketing would change if she offered her customers, “How to make money your first 30 days on YouTube.”It could lead to a whole new innovation, like a piano teacher who tells her student, “I’m going to teach you to play Bach and Mozart and all the great classics.” The kid says, ”I don’t want to play classical music. I want to play the songs on the radio.” Of course, she says, “No! That’s not how we do it.” But imagine what could happen if she offered her students, “How to play all your favorite songs on the radio in 60 days.” It’s “game over.” She wins the market.That’s how you love: by listening to your customers. You start by looking for where you aren’t listening. I lost a lot of money by not listening to my customers.Now I have a new process to help people break through entrepreneurial blocks and I offer a free five-day email course.Dane’s careerI feel my eyes tearing … I built $2 million companies and I did it by really listening and serving, and failing a lot ... and learning.I don’t know if people realize how much experimentation is required to get something to work.Today, starting entrepreneurs give up after their second idea! I didn’t really figure things out until I had done 16 ideas. Sixteen! Eleven failed and five succeeded.Some people are phenomenal at the violin by age 12. They have to practice and such, but they just have it. For whatever reason, I just have great business acumen. I have great internal power recognition and intuition about how to go about business.When I started, my back was against the wall. I had no money. I was in my parents’ basement. I was unemployed. I intuitively created a path by reading books and blogs. But I was also ignoring a lot of what I read. I built my first software company and products. I didn’t come up with the ideas, I didn’t write the code, I didn’t fund the development. I own the business. I’m an owner.I got my knowledge from reading a ton of books and from failing. I’ve been doing a lot of stuff. Eleven ideas failed. They

Many entrepreneurs think that starting your entrepreneurship means leaving your ‘Nine to Five’ job. And, it sure is. However, the technology revolution opens endless opportunities to reach faster, easier, and bigger successes through your entrepreneurship.These five entrepreneurs made a considerable shift from their previous jobs to the entrepreneurship they chose to start. It allowed them to find much bigger opportunities that led to massive success.&nbsp;Listen to their stories and think which of these opportunities can be a game-changer for your business.&nbsp; Guy Kawasaki&nbsp;From being a marketing and salesperson in the jewelry business, to become the chief evangelist of Apple, the chief evangelist of Canva, and the host of Remarkable People podcast. Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool, and the creator of Guy Kawasaki’s&nbsp;Remarkable People&nbsp;podcast. He is a brand ambassador for Mercedes-Benz and an executive fellow of the Haas School of Business (UC Berkeley). He was the chief evangelist of Apple and a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation. He is also the author of&nbsp;The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media, Enchantment, and nine other books. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College. &nbsp;Guy’s CareerMy career really started in the jewelry business not tech. I started a part time job when I had my MBA in UCLA. I worked for a jewelry manufacture in down town LA. It was a small manufacturing company owned by a Jewish family and that’s where I learned sales and marketing. I worked there for about six years. I have a deep understanding and love for many Jewish things.I was in the jewelry business and then I got an Apple 2 and I fell in love with computersI worked for 6 months for a small software company that was acquired and my roommate eventually hired me into Apple. I went to work for Apple as evangelist, I left to start a company, and later returned to apple as Apple chief evangelist, and yet again left to start a company… Basically; I’ve been in Apple twice and I’ve been an entrepreneur, speaker and author since then.Biggest success due to the right customer approachI started at Canva when they were two years old. I think that from the get go they had a very good prototype. They truly understood the need of people, and Canva was growing like a rocket. I’m not taking credit for that, the credit belongs to the founders of Canva: Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht.This is called Guy’s golden touch. So Guy’s golden touch is not whatever I touch turns to gold but whatever is gold, Guy touches…I’ve learned in my career that it’s better to be lucky than smartGuy is hosting the Remarkable People podcast, weekly on Wednesday. Among his remarkable guests - Arianna Huffington, Martha Stewart, Steve Wozniak, Jane Goodall, and more.&nbsp; Michael StelznerFrom being a writer to start a new revolutionary blog sharing free content (just because he managed to secure the domain) to launching the leading global conference for social media.. Michael Stelzner is the founder of Social Media Examiner, author of the books, Launch and Writing White Papers, and the man behind Social Media Marketing World–the industry’s largest conference. He’s also the host of the Social Media Marketing podcast, founder of the Social Media...

Dr. Ai Addyson-Zhang is an educator and entrepreneur. She received her MA and Ph.D. in Communication from Syracuse University and the University of Maryland in the U.S. Ai is the founder of Classroom Without Walls, an independent and progressive school that helps young adults become future-ready.&nbsp;She is also an Adobe Education Leader, HubSpot Academy Instructor, and SEMrush webinar host. Ai’s work has been featured in Forbes, Inside Higher Education, Pearson Education, and Mark Schaefer’s book, among others. Ai hosts two weekly live streaming shows, in which she interviews thought leaders in social media and education, such as Seth Godin, Mark Schaefer, and Neil Patel. She frequently speaks at academic and industry conferences including VidCon, Global Marketing Day, Global Digital Marketing Summit, Social Media Week Lima (the largest social media marketing conference in the Midwest), and others.Most passionate aboutFor 10 years, I was a professor of communication and public relations at a few universities. Later, when social media became more popular, I started to teach more social media and personal branding classes.In May 2019, I resigned from my associate professor position to build my own school. That’s what I’m working on now.After teaching in higher education for so many years, I started to notice that our educational system is not really preparing children for the future. In that educational system, we are using a very old model to prepare our children. That hurts me as an educator. I love learning. I love reading.I feel like I can better prepare the next generation based on what I have learned from my personal experience as an educator, from the books I’ve read, the conferences I’ve attended, and the people I’ve worked with.There are many important missing links that aren’t being emphasized in the traditional model. Like, for example, digital storytelling—our ability to talk to the camera, talk to a computer, engage in a podcast interview, clearly articulate ourselves in the digital age.To me, that’s as important as reading, as writing, as sport. Our students are using technology at only a very superficial level. That’s how I started and was inspired to build a better school.School Without WallsThe best education takes place outside the classroom. If we think about our students … they feel so lost. That’s something I hear a lot from parents, who are my target audience. They tell me that their children have no idea what to do, even though they spent a lot of money on their kids’ education.Students are learning facts and information but that’s not where transformation is going to happen. Transformation happens through applications. And most of the time, in real life, applications happen outside of the class room.We believe—the coaches and I—that the best education happens outside the classroom. A big part of Classroom Without Walls is utilizing technology and digital devices to break down the learning barriers.My official starting date was last year. I brought Google students to Singapore for an immersion program. It was a life-changing experience for the students, for the parents who came, and for the speakers. We cried every single day—tears of joy, tears of pride. Seeing the transformation in the children, in front of our eyes … it was a very emotional experience for me.I’m an advocate of taking action. I think that planning is important but how much can you plan? I had the idea of making the immersion into my school. From ideation to implementation, it took only four months.The next program will be a three-month program, including the immersion in Singapore.Dr Ai’s best advice for entrepreneursI love this question! My piece of advice is to really get to know your customers. I made so many...

Nicolas Babin, a french citizen has over 30 year experience in high tech industry. He has worked and lived for over 20 years in the US, Europe and Japan. He is a pioneer in AI and robotic having served over 15 years at the helm of Sony Europe.He was managing director of Sony Entertainment Robots Europe and head of communication for Sony Europe. He then was managing director of several companies in the US, UK, Germany and France.Nicolas created and developed over 21 companies in his career so far. He has sat and sits on many boards as a non executive and executive member.&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI am most passionate about the project that takes up about 80 percent of my time today. It’s a company that I started three years ago with an associate and good friend of mine, Benoît Mirambeau. The two of us started a diabetes management company named MirambeauAppCare.This company manages diabetes, especially the level of insulin that people need to inject themselves with based on their doctors’ protocols, glycemic levels, food intake, and workout activities. It’s relevant for all types of diabetes (type 1 and type 2) as well as for pregnant women.Starting the companyMirambeauAppCare stems from the fact that Benoît’s mother has been ill with diabetes for 30 years. In 2015, it got so bad, she fell into a coma. Benoit got scared and said, “Don't worry, Mom. It's Friday. By Monday, I will have found an app for you.” Throughout the weekend, he looked for an app but could not find anything that would manage the exact level of insulin for her.Benoît’s passion is coding. So, he said, I'm going to make you one. He worked for over 800 hours to create this app, which is based on doctor's protocols and can take into consideration, as I mentioned before, glycemic levels, food intake, and workouts. After that, he started to test it and show it to doctors. Everybody was amazed.But Benoît had never created a company. When I became involved, his company was my 16th company. We had the same accountant. So, he went to his accountant and said, “Look, I have this product. Everybody's telling me that it’s fantastic. I need to start a company but I don't know how.” And the accountant put us in touch. We became friends instantly. We have a very great relationship. I helped him set up the company.He's the CEO of the company. I'm in charge of everything but development. I'm in charge of marketing, sales, international business development, etc. He’s like a CTO. He’s the CEO but he's in charge of the product.That's how we started the business. Then we won the CES Innovation Award in 2018 in Las Vegas, while last year we won the Arab Health Innovation Award in Dubai.We're the only company that has this type of product based on A.I. and machine learning. Machine learning is part of A.I. Basically, after three months, the product becomes so personalized that it's really made for the patient.Nicolas’s careerI've been involved in AI since 1996, when I headed up the Sony Robotics Division. The product was called Sony Aibo Robotic Dog for Artificial Intelligence Robot. It was a small dog that we sold from 1999 to 2005 and that was relaunched last year.I'm very lucky. I'm a passionate guy and I've really enjoyed my life so far. I've worked 20 years outside of France; I worked five years in the US and met my wife (who is American) in San Francisco. Then we moved to London to start our life together.I started a European operation in London. Then, from London, we moved to Brussels. From Brussels, we moved to Tokyo. From Tokyo, we moved to Berlin. Sony, being a Japanese company, moved me quite regularly and I went up each time I moved. I was in charge of the European robotics division. So I've been a pioneer in any type of AI.What I...

Jonathan Slain’s book, “Rock the Recession: How Successful Leaders Prepare For, Thrive During, and Create Wealth After Downturns” came out in September 2019 and is a #1 Amazon Best Seller.Jonathan coaches high growth leadership teams across the United States to implement the Entrepreneurial Operating System® also known as “Traction.” He focuses on working with entrepreneurial niche/specialty firms and large corporations ($10M+ in annual revenue), spending over 100 days per year working with teams just like yours.Jonathan was Valedictorian of his graduating class and had the highest GPA ever in the history of Shaker Heights High School, where he was also voted “Next Bill Gates and Least Likely to Lose his Virginity.”&nbsp;Most passionate aboutMy day job involves consulting work. I started my career in investment banking, so you could say that I’m a recovering investment banker. At some point, I realized that making $80 to $100 a week for somebody else wasn’t a fair play. So, over a decade ago, I left investment banking and started my entrepreneurship.I took a trip to Denver with my brother-in-law, who wanted to start a franchised business. I was the family’s “business person” and he wanted my advice.I loved the idea and on the flight home, we decided to get into the gym business together. I left banking and we started to build gym franchises. We grew to have five locations in five years all over Cleveland and Ohio. And we kept growing; we set records for the franchises.Then, the great recession of 2008-2009 hit. And I learned a lesson: that the worst thing to sell during a recession is personal training. Nobody wants to buy personal training in a recession and we didn’t have a plan.Fast forward: We were able to get through the great recession only because I borrowed a few dollars (a quarter of a million) from my mother-in-law. Within three years, I paid her back.I started to help people grow their businesses with consulting. Three years ago, my brother-in-law bought me out of the gyms so I could focus on the consulting business.I’ve been doing that for the last three years. Recently, I started to get nervous that my clients weren’t prepared for the next recession. That’s what got me into where I’m heading: I put out my book Rock the Recession. Now I’m trying to get the word out so that other entrepreneurs and business owners can rock the recession.Is the next recession at our doorstep? I think that in the US we will probably be looking at an event such as a recession or a slowdown by the end of 2020.I want my clients and your listeners to think about how they can rock the recession. What can they do now to prepare and take advantage of all the opportunities that a recession brings?Recessions come around only every seven years and don’t last long, and we haven’t had a recession in over a decade.As I did the research for the book, I searched for entrepreneurs and business owners who did well in the recession. They were hard to find because most people don’t do well in recessions. What I learned from the ones who did succeed is that their first step was to assess their current situation. So, that is where I would start.We prepared a free, short, 20-question assessment on the site com. The scores are from zero (which means you are likely to fail in the next recession) to 100 (which means you are prepared for the recession and will be able to take advantage of opportunities like buying assets for cheap or buying other companies that didn’t prepare, to be able to win talent and more opportunities). The average company gets a score of 37 out of 100.The point is to come up with a recession plan ahead of time as opposed to acting when you are already about to lose your house or lose your best employee to the...

David Meerman Scott spotted the real-time marketing revolution in its infancy and wrote five books about it including The New Rules of Marketing and PR, with more than 400,000 copies sold in English and available in 29 languages from Albanian to Vietnamese.Now David says the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of superficial online communications. Tech-weary and bot-wary people are hungry for true human connection. Organizations have learned to win by developing what David calls a “Fanocracy” -- tapping into the mindset that relationships with customers are more important than the products they sell to them.He is a massive live music fan, having been to 790 live shows since he was 15 years old, is passionate about the Apollo lunar program, and he loves to surf but isn't very good at it.Most passionate aboutOver the last five years, I’ve been thinking very, very deeply about what’s coming next after the social media and real-time revolution. The reason I’ve been thinking so deeply about this is that The New Rules of Marketing and PR is the book I’m most known for. That book originally came out in 2007 and now it’s in its sixth edition.The New Rules of Marketing and PR has influenced a lot of people but it has also led to a new online world that I think is becoming more polarized. It’s becoming a place where people are just trying to send another email, another piece of spam. They are trying to push out their content in inappropriate ways. There’s even inappropriate use of artificial intelligence.I was recently on a site and didn’t even realize, until after a couple of minutes, that I was talking to a robot. And in the political world, the political discourse online is becoming so nasty and mean, even from the President of the U.S.What I recognized is that the pendulum has swung in the direction of superficial online. But people are hungry for a true human connection. So, I’ve been thinking deeply and writing and researching about how people can have a much more human connection with other people, as well as how businesses can have a much more human connection with their customers.Aren’t the connections between two human beings “human” anyway?I don’t think so. I think that when a company deploys artificial intelligence and pretends that you’re talking to a human, or when a company puts 100,000 email addresses onto a single email, or when people are just being mean and nasty, this is not human. This is not a powerful connection. It’s just doing something to sell a product or a service, and we don’t want to be sold in that way. So, I think organizations that will be successful in 2020 and beyond are the ones that understand how to reach people in a way in which they are growing fans of their customers.Five years ago, I was very focused on the idea that superficial online communication is no longer working for many people. But at the same time, people are fans of the things they love, like a sports team, classic cars, bird watching, or an artist. Everybody seems to have something that they are incredibly passionate about. Many people are incredibly passionate about the companies that treat them well, that treat them like human beings.That’s what led us to write that book that turned into Fanocracy— turning fans into customers and customers into fans. I wrote that with my daughter.I can understand and identify with being a fan of a music band, or an author, or a sports team but it’s not exactly the same as becoming a fan of a company. So, what should a company do to attract these fans?There are a number of prescriptions that we identified. What was interesting about writing this book with my daughter is that she is a scientist. She got a neuroscience degree at Columbia University and is now in her...

Serial Scottish Entrepreneur and Investor, Strategist and InnovatorRussell has enjoyed the benefits of a highly successful international career in the technology sector and now focuses his efforts on supporting owners and boards of companies to devise and implement growth strategies to create shareholder value. In his earlier career he has held board leadership positions with International companies achieving turnover more than £200m.Core areas of focus are Leadership, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategic thinking. He is a regular speaker at events on Leadership in business and has spoken at conferences from Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi.Russell is founding Managing Partner of the advisory group, Exolta Capital Partners, www.exolta.com and Founding Chairman Scottish Business Network, the global network supporting Scottish.Not all work - since turning 50 he has developed a passion for endurance events and can often be found at weekends mud splattered clambering over obstacles and "trying to keep up".&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI’m passionate about my country, Scotland. I have the privilege of chairing the Scottish Business Network, which is the biggest diaspora network for Scots involved in business around the world.For the last three years, I’ve worked with some amazing businesses and I was able to help them use our diaspora of networks around the world to build their businesses.I’m also passionate about growing the Scottish Business Network , getting more people involved.It started three years ago when I sat with my colleague, Christine, in a coffee shop in London. We were discussing how we could bring together a few people to talk about Scotland (where I still live, outside the capital city, Edinburgh).We thought about having a small meeting and bringing together a few Scottish people. Since then, we’ve done events like this all over the world. And it’s growing and growing.We found people who were born in Scotland, who have family there, who have worked or studied in Scotland, who have a great desire to hear what’s happening in Scotland and are absolutely delighted to see how they can help Scottish companies achieve export success.We act as a bridge between Scottish companies and the Scottish diaspora based around the world. We hold around 30 meetings a year in London. We also have meetings in Scotland. We launched a meeting in Atlanta, Georgia in the US in January and we’ve done events in Dubai, Hong Kong, and California.The organization is not for profit, so it’s more to benefit others. It’s not a commercial thing. It’s not a business we are building to sell. It’s a business we are building to help others and to grow the community.Besides the organization, I’m a managing partner for an advisory company called Exolta Capital Partners. We work with smaller businesses with around two million pounds of turnover. We help them develop strategies for growth and then we actively help them deliver it.Do I see myself as an entrepreneur? I suppose so. I’ve never been very comfortable with the phrase ‘entrepreneur’ because I think it’s too broad. However, my interest is business. I’m a risk-taker and I like to build things.Russell’s best advice about approaching customersMy job is to understand which of my customers’ challenges, problems, and opportunities I can help them overcome and to then attain those.When I advise businesses, I typically find that there are things about their customers that they don’t know. A topical example: I was working with a young technology company in Manchester, England, They had a very firm belief that the technology was the main reason why their customers bought their product. Their website talked about the technology, the staff talked about the technology. However, when I interviewed their top

Technology (AI, Automation) Vs. Humanity2020 will reach the highest levels of contraventionWhere should entrepreneurs put their $1 for marketing on in 2020?(and there is a clear winner!!)Elon Musk:“Mark my words, AI is far more dangerous than nukes. Far.”Mark Schaefer:“The most Human Company wins”IDC:“big data&nbsp;and business analytics will surpass $210 billion at a CAGR of 11.9% in two years.”Technology Vs. Humanity - 6 of my most successful entrepreneur guests on the Reach or Miss show are leading the changes. Let’s hear what they think is the most important of the two.Humanity is the King for entrepreneurial success&nbsp;Mark Schaefer “Marketing is sick right now. It’s too tech-centric instead of human-centric… If you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business.”&nbsp;&nbsp;Most passionate aboutI’m a person who is always looks forward, so I’m always in the process of reinvention. I tend to be almost obsessed with the big problems in our business. When I wrote my last book, Known, it was about how creating an effective, powerful personal brand is really the only sustainable, competitive advantage we can have. I was addressing the question: Could anybody become known?The question I’m wrestling with now is that everywhere I go, marketing seems to be stuck. There are a few symptoms:People are over whelmed by technology in marketingThey are over using technology in marketingThey’re stuck in ineffective patternsMany of the companies today, either big or small have social media departments that were established in 2010 to 2014, and I can assure you that almost none of the outputs these teams are producing have been updated. So much has been changed with social media during the last years.The idea that I have is that marketing is too tech-centric instead of human-centric. We don’t want to talk with our customers anymore; we just want to monitor them on Twitter. We automate everything and we are loosing our hearts, our souls, and our way.Marketing is sick right now!What is marketing, according to Mark?Get out and talk to customers. The truth is out there.Marketing is finding un-met and under-served needs and creating demand to those needs in a unique way. Hopefully by establishing an emotional connection.I love working with entrepreneurs and startup communities; I love their energy. But the biggest frustration I have is that marketing is almost always overlooked. Startups and entrepreneurs are in love with an idea, or with a business model.They think that marketing is DIY (Do It Yourself), they think that they can read some blog posts and do it. But marketing is about finding and acquiring customers. If you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business.Marketing is HARD! It’s&nbsp;really&nbsp;hard. But you’ve got to address it. And if you aren’t a natural marketer or trained in marketing, you’ve got to get help! Because marketing is really the centerpiece of your business; no matter how good your idea is, no matter how much you are in love with it, if you don’t have customers you are not going to have a business!Mark’s best advice about approaching customersI asked a young marketer that wanted my advice whether he talked with the company’s customers, or joined their sales people? He was already six months in that position and never talked with a single customer!You should talk...

Futurist Jeremy Goldman has been working with companies looking to take their operations online and inject “social” into their processes for over a decade.Under Jeremy’s leadership, companies like Kiehl’s, TEMPTU or the luxury division he helped Unilever to found, have had tremendous success and won the highest Awards and publications’ mentions.Jeremy earned his MBA in Information Systems and Marketing at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. His views have been featured in publications such as Mashable, Wall Street Journal, Smart Money, and more.Jeremy’s first book, Going Social: Excite Customers, Generate Buzz, and Energize Your Brand with the Power of Social Media was released by AMACOM Books in November 2012, hitting the #1 spot on Kindle for social media and business.In his spare time, Jeremy blogs and curates news daily to his Twitter following of 55,000.Most passionate aboutI had an interesting year. I sold my company, Firebrand Group, which I had started seven years earlier. After selling it, I took a little bit of time to figure out what I wanted to do next, what would be my next big challenge.&nbsp;&nbsp;My wife was pregnant with our third child and I took some time to help her with our two other kids and with the baby. I felt very fortunate that I was able to do that.One of the things I realized is that entrepreneurship is usually respected by some but not by everybody. The next thing I want to do is find a company that has an incubator or a venture fund that wants to launch new ideas and move things a little bit faster and that needs someone with an entrepreneurial background. So, I want to remain an entrepreneur but help other companies move ahead.Jeremy’s entrepreneurial journeyThe decision to help other entrepreneurs was born out of some previous successes that I had when I went to Unilever, just before I established Firebrand. I was the first employee of a technology-based beauty startup that invented a luxury product Unilever tried to sell for $600, when they were known for five-dollar soap. It was a very disruptive idea.It required a different skillset than Unilever had. Not only was it successful and not only did they sell it to another company with a pretty profitable exit, but it was the inspiration for them to launch an entirely new prestige division.In Unilever, I was able to, in a short time frame, do something that was pretty impactful for them, something that made me think that if I could do it for them, maybe there were other companies with that desire to move quickly but that didn’t have the skills and the ability. When you are a $60-billion consumer products company, generally you have a little bit more of a conservative mindset than the typical entrepreneur has.When I launched Firebrand, I had a book called&nbsp;Going Social&nbsp;coming out. It was about teaching businesses how to prioritize social media and digital marketing, how to focus on the things that work instead of just the things that generate some buzz. A lot of companies are focusing on the wrong things.I wrote that book and I realized that there are a lot of companies that need that kind of assistance. I took a combined approach of a consulting/agency mindset, which was that there are some clients that need us for a consult and advice and some clients that need us to execute. Some companies need us for “in between.” I wanted to help them do what was needed and teach them at the same time.The teaching aspect was probably one of the most impactful aspects of Firebrand. I’m a big believer in teaching. If I can help these people make smarter decisions, they will go on to be better marketers in the future. I take a lot of pride in that.I established Firebrand Group and ran it for six-and-a-half years until I felt I...

Blake Jamieson is a pop portrait artist in Manhattan, NY. He paints pop art portraits for professional athletes and celebrities, including Howie Mandel, Drew Brees, Joe Montana, Gary Vaynerchuk, and over 250 other professional athletes in the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS, and PLL.&nbsp;Blake's path to becoming a full-time artist was far from traditional. Despite his passion for art at a young age, Blake decided to forgo&nbsp;art school for a more "practical" degree, studying Economics at UC Davis. After graduating, Blake began his career in digital marketing at Zynga. He worked in digital marketing for nearly a decade, working for small tech startups to publicly&nbsp;traded companies.On his 30th birthday, Blake decided it was time to stop building someone else's dream, and start to following his own passions. He began painting full-time nearly five years ago, and has carved out a niche that allows him to paint every day.Most passionate aboutI’m a portrait artist located in NYC. I’ve had an interesting rollercoaster of a journey up until this point, but what I do now is paint portraits of professional athletes.Primarily, I have worked in the NFL, although I do work with other athletes who play soccer, lacrosse, hockey, and more.I created this niche for myself where an athlete, or the spouse or girlfriend of an athlete, is looking for a painting that will capture special sports moments for them. I’m often the person they turn to and I’m very fortunate to work with awesome people and get to paint every single day.&nbsp;Blake’s storyI grew up in a very creative household. I was always encouraged to paint, or draw, or do photography – all the things I do today. However, I convinced myself, from a young age, that art was about being a starving artist and that it was not a career path.Instead of doing what my parents encouraged me to do, which was to study art in college, I decided to study economics and tech. I thought this was the safe path at the time, and I aimed to have a career in marketing.When I graduated from college, social marketing was just starting to become an actual, respected career. I was able to get into very grounded levels for some reputable companies and work my way through several different companies. Then I spun off and started working for myself as a freelancer.Ultimately, on my 30th birthday, I decided that I was tired of working for someone else’s dream. I wanted to follow my own dreams and I realized that maybe my parents had been right all along...I’m very grateful. Due to my background in marketing – especially digital marketing – and my experience in marketing a wide range of products, I understand how social selling works and how it is really a relationship-building business. I built up a moderate following of friends, family, colleagues, and people I met along the way.When I first decided to start painting, I knew that I had to specialize and come out with a specific niche. I decided that I would paint a specific painting for a specific subset of people.Because of my networking at the time, I decided to paint for offices, especially for tech companies. I met with the people on my contact list and told them that I was an artist and that I painted office art for tech companies.At first, I painted many paintings of Steve Jobs, Gary Vaynerchuk, and different iconic tech founders. Those tech companies aspired to be like them and wanted to put a picture of Steve Jobs, or motivational quotes, in their offices.I did that for two years and it was going well. I had my niece called out and I was gaining a reputation as one of the leaders in the space of Portrait Painting for Professional Athletes.There was a really lucky coincidence that when I delivered art in Las Vegas, I met a guy who played in the NFL and...

Nick Loper helps people earn money outside of their day job. He's an author, online entrepreneur, and host of the award winning Side Hustle Show podcast, which features new part-time business ideas each week. As Chief Side Hustler at SideHustleNation.com, he loves deconstructing the tactics and strategies behind building extra income streams.Most passionate aboutI’m pumped because I had a couple of sick kids with me for a whole week and they went back to preschool today so I have many tasks to accomplish – mainly, to create different content for the Side Hustle Show and additional channels.I host the weekly Side Hustle Show, which is about how to build a business in your spare time and create ways to make extra money. I’ve been doing it since 2013 and it’s just past 10 million lifetime downloads.It has been a totally life-changing project. We just started as a part-time experiment with a 50-dollar microphone from my living room. Today the weekly podcast is the main focus and there is also a blog component to the nation at sidehustlenation.com.The whole thing started on the side from my original side hustle, which was in the affiliate marketing space. It was a comparison shopping site for footwear. That was my main business for a long time, and was the vehicle that allowed me to quit my job and become a full-time entrepreneur “living the dream.” Then we started the show.Prior to Side Hustle, I ran one other site, called&nbsp;virtualassistantassistan.com. It’s a directory and review platform for virtual assistant companies and outsourcing companies. I’ve run this site since 2011.Nick’s customersThe majority of the listeners of Side Hustle are those who are working in traditional jobs and looking for ways out or ways to at least earn an extra income on the side.Nick’s best advice about approaching customersWhat I tend to look at is trying to climb that customer’s pyramid. (In my case, it’s the listener’s pyramid.) The base of the pyramid is strangers, those people who have never heard of you. Your job is to elevate them on the pyramid from strangers to listeners. From there, you climb from listeners to subscribers, and then, at the peak of the pyramid, from subscribers to fans.Everything that I do – content-wise and marketing-wise – is trying to take people from one point on that ladder to the next one. I’m taking people to the next rung on that ladder in terms of podcast discovery. If they listen once, I want to bring them to the point where they listen again, and then to the point where they become a fan.The biggest transition point that I’ve seen from subscriber to fan is when the listener takes action on something that you said and sees results from that. That is the magical moment.An example is the people I meet at a conference who say, “I listened to episode ‘such and such’ and now I’m making a thousand extra dollars from my business.” That is a fan for life. They will be the evangelists, the ones who will spread the word for you.So, I have the podcast and I have the blog. I also have a mailing list that I send new episodes to. The other component is the Facebook community. This is a group that has been running for several years and that has more than 15,000 members. That’s not me broadcasting to others; it’s where people interact with each other.In terms of advice, I would say: The more touchpoints you have with your audience, the better.Biggest failure with a customerI’ve got a folder in my Gmail called ‘Hate mail,’ where people say less-than-nice things about me. And I definitely have my share of one-star reviews.I had a house painting business in college. We were a bunch of 19-year-olds with paint sprays … everything that could go...

Bob Burg is a sought-after speaker at company leadership and sales conferences sharing the platform with everyone from today’s business leaders and broadcast personalities to even a former U.S. President.Bob is the author of a number of books on sales, marketing and influence, with total book sales of well over a million copies. His book,&nbsp;The Go-Giver, coauthored with John David Mann, itself has sold over 925,000 copies and it has been translated into 28 languages.His and John’s newest parable in the Go-Giver Series is&nbsp;The Go-Giver Influencer.Bob is an advocate, supporter and defender of the Free Enterprise system, believing that the amount of money one makes is directly proportional to how many people they serve. He is also an unapologetic animal fanatic, and&nbsp;is a past member of the Board of Directors of Furry Friends Adoption, Clinic &amp; Ranch in his town of Jupiter, Florida.Most passionate aboutI keep doing what I’ve done for the last 30 years. I’m still speaking and writing but I did set a limit for my engagements and I don’t travel as much as I used to. But we are doing quite the same.We are focusing more online today. We have courses online and we have a team of certified “Go-Givers” – speakers who license my materials. All of that keeps things very exciting.&nbsp;The Go-GiverThe Go-Giver is a business parabola co-authored by John David Mann, who is a fantastic writer and storyteller. I’m much more of a “how-to” person; I’m “step 1, step 2, step 3,” so it was a good collaboration.The idea came about because, many years ago, I had a book called&nbsp;Endless Referrals. It was a book about how entrepreneurs and salespeople can go into the marketplace and easily and confidently create relationships with people in such a way that people would like them, know them, trust them, want to do business with them, and want to refer others to them.Endless Referrals&nbsp;was a traditional “how-to” book and it sold very well. I loved reading parabolas, which are basically short stories with a message that tends to contain several principles that are easy to apply.For a long time, I thought it would be such a great idea if we could take the basic premise of&nbsp;Endless Referrals&nbsp;– which is that, all things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people whom they know, like, and trust – and turn that into a parabola.I tried to figure out the essence of a person who would both quickly and sustainably create those know, like, and trust relationships, as well as whether they are always focused on giving, i.e., giving value to others.Basically, the premise of the Go-Giver is shifting your context from getting to giving. When we say “giving” in that context, we mean constantly and consistently providing immense value to others and understanding that doing so is the most financially profitable way to go.You can meet someone in person and communicate value simply by focusing on them and by not focusing on yourself and your business, like most people do. Focus on the other person and their business. Ask that person, “How did you get to starting your business?” When they are answering that question, they feel good about it. Or, you could tell a person, “I always love to make a connection between good people that I meet. How can I know who is a good prospective customer for you?” Can you provide them with some helpful information?It’s about looking for ways to make another person’s life better, either online or offline.Bob’s best advice for approaching customersOne of the things I say when I speak at a sales conference is that nobody is going to buy from you because you have a sales quota to meet, and nobody is going to buy...

Shama Hyder Show NotesShama Hyder is a trailblazing, award-winning entrepreneur who has built a global audience and is known for helping brands succeed in the digital age.Shama is a visionary strategist for the digital age, a web and TV personality, a bestselling author, and the award-winning CEO of Zen Media – a global marketing and digital PR firm. She has been named the “Zen Master of Marketing” by Entrepreneur Magazine and the “Millennial Master of the Universe” by FastCompany.com.Shama has also been honored at both the White House and The United Nations as one of the top 100 young entrepreneurs in the country.Shama is the bestselling author of The Zen of Social Media Marketing, now in its 4th edition and Momentum: How to Propel Your Marketing and Transform Your Brand in the Digital Age.As a result of her success, Shama has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious Technology Titan Emerging Company CEO award. She was named one of the “Top 25 Entrepreneurs under 25” by Business Week, one of the “Top 30 Under 30” Entrepreneurs in America by Inc. Magazine, and to the Forbes “30 Under 30” list and more.Most passionate aboutI’m passionate about marketing. I’ve always been passionate about marketing. But today is another stage; when starting something new, you have more passion than experience, with time the experience catches up with the passion. The passion remains strong, but definitely takes you to another level. That’s where I am today.Running Zen Media is very exciting for 2020, and there are many exciting kinds of stuff on the horizon.I started my company when I was 22, right after my graduation. Part of not having a job in an organization then was that, there weren’t many organizations that specialized in social media and digital media. And at the same time, it was also the time of recession in the US and jobs were even more limited than usual.I started with digital marketing. I saw the difference between us, and the traditional organizations that had to pivot and start learning the digital language. The fluency that is required has always been very native to us.I love what we are doing today; we work with B2B clients around the world, delivering everything from launches to influential marketing, and digital PR. We combine passion and delivering, so every day is a mix of technology and communication.Shama’s customersWe work with different types of clients because they’re attracted to us, but we focus more on B2B, and there is a big difference in the way companies do business. A big part of what we do is helping our customers to gain a reputation and attract more customers to them.Shama’s best advice about approaching customersMy best advice is always to treat customers like they were the first. At some point in any entrepreneur’s career, things that were challenging become a lot easier, and it’s very important to keep innovating and to keep having that beginner mindset, to celebrate successes and to treat every customer like there were the first.We live in such a world where, rather than trying to hide, it’s better to be as transparent as possible. I don’t treat any of my advice as a secret; I educate my competitors about new things. I always share.Biggest failure with a customerPart of that is thinking your customers are just like you. It’s a very easy mistake to make. I’m a reader I love to read and we produce a lot of content on our site, and I didn’t think about the fact that maybe not everyone likes to read. I never thought people would prefer watching videos over reading, but when I started shooting videos we were amazed to see how many people watch them. I was a little surprised, I thought ‘there is no way people would like...

Deborah Levine Show Notes Deborah Levine is the award-winning author of 14 books and the founder/editor of the American Diversity Report. Deborah was born in Brooklyn and raised in Bermuda. Her background includes advanced degrees in cultural anthropology, religion, and urban planning. Inspired by her father, a US military intelligence officer assigned to interrogate Nazi prisoners of war during World War II, she is a former executive director of Jewish Federations. Named by Forbes Magazine as one of the top 10 Diversity &amp; Inclusion Trailblazers, Deborah is the inventor of cognitive technology for addressing unconscious bias. Her work as an entrepreneur includes creating the Women’s Council on Diversity, the DuPage/Chicago Interfaith Resource Network, the Youth Multicultural Video Contest, and the Southeast Global Leadership Academy. Most passionate about My passion today reflects my work for a decade, making a difference in the world by looking at prejudice, religious diversity, and hate, including how to deal with it. I started this journey almost by accident many years ago. I was living in Chicago; my daughter was just a little one and I needed a job. My parents were both working in the Jewish community. My mother was dying of cancer and I thought it would be a gift to her if I worked for the Jewish community while she was still alive so that she could see how much she had influenced me. I started engaging in an interface dialog with international organizations. Then I looked for an executive position. Because I’d never been an executive director of a non-profit organization, no one would hire me. So, here, I started my entrepreneurial journey. I created my own nonprofit and made myself an executive director. My mother was so proud, so pleased. So was my father. Deborah’s entrepreneurship development I started my company with the mission of addressing the problems that communities were having as they became more international. I also created what I called the Do-page Interface Resource Network, which is still in existence today. Across the nation, when communities became more international, they had to face prejudice toward newcomers, especially those of a different faith. This affected the entire city, the county, the state. It was ongoing and affected people from India, people from Muslim countries, and Jews. It caused tremendous friction. My mission was to fix that. Eventually, I was approached by different groups, like the county law enforcement department, which wanted to prepare materials that would help their people understand the communities that they were trying to assist. Other examples included public schools (for their educators), hospitals (for their chaplains), and many more. So, I started to document everything and write books so that if I couldn’t be everywhere, at least I had a voice. The need for this kind of education grew quickly, especially among enterprises and the organization. That’s how my business grew and how I started to publish the online American Diversity Report. There were times when I decided to take what my friends call a “real job.” I was hired by a Jewish federation in Tulsa, Oklahoma to be its executive director. After that, I took another job as an executive director because I felt that I had to be in control after being an entrepreneur. That decision led me to what happened with my company later. I got very ill during a mission in Uzbekistan. I couldn’t stay at that job and I decided to go back to my entrepreneurial self. Though it was very difficult to come back, it had been the most creative, innovative, and amazing period of my life. The ability to invent and impact across the entire planet, to give other...

OK, my dear Reachers. This is the third and last part (for now…) of the Reach Or Miss mountains project; Listen to these incredible mountain stories I heard from the successful entrepreneurs I interviewed on my podcast. You can then listen to the full interview with each of them and hear about the visions, the struggles, and how these entrepreneurs reached their success. From the incredible story about a young man that hoped to find a cure for his own brain tumor, so he Invented a 3D solution for brain surgeons, To learning how mountaineers prepare to their journey to the peak of Mount Cotopaxi in Ecuador, To climb the mountain “that we call life that we always have to be climbing and never to give up…”, to open a company that takes young people to an ‘Adventure Therapy’ on the mountains of Ireland, or another outdoor journey, To climb 888 stairs (45 floors) of an office building in downtown Dallas for a fundraiser for lung cancer.” &nbsp; I hope these mountain stories will encourage you to find out what should you – as an entrepreneur looking for your breakthrough to success – take from their stories to help find the necessary step to reach your peak? &nbsp; Many successful entrepreneurs climb mountains, while others use mountains as a metaphor to describe what is necessary to conquer the peak – including the fatiguing yet rewarding journey to the top. Still other entrepreneurs use mountains as an analogy for a significant goal they wish to achieve – such as becoming a billion-dollar-market-cap company. (See Mellissah Smith’s mountain story.) For many years, I’ve compared the act of taking possession of your potential customers’ minds and of building awareness, likeability, and trust of a leading brand to the act of climbing the highest mountains. You climb step by step to the peak, reach your position as a market leader and a leading brand, and then start climbing a new mountain with a new product line or another brand. The idea of mountains as representations of a strong position in the market is mentioned by Al Ries and Jack Trout in the excellent book, Marketing Warfare. “In military warfare, mountains and higher altitude areas represent strong positions and often are used to present a strong defense. In marketing warfare, the question is one of who holds the mountains in the consumer's mind.” &nbsp; So, at some point after the launch of my podcast for entrepreneurs, I started to ask the successful entrepreneurs I interviewed about their habits or dreams of climbing one of the highest mountains in the world. Listen to these inspiring stories, find which entrepreneurs and stories you identify with most, and review your entrepreneurial objectives, market overview, and plan. By making your business as strong as possible, you will be able to quickly and easily achieve entrepreneurial success. <div...

Episode 135 Show Notes This is the second part of the Reach Or Miss mountains project; Listen to these incredible mountain stories I heard from successful entrepreneurs I interviewed on my podcast From the incredible story about the film Manjhi – The Mountain Man, To climbing day after day for a week the beautiful mountains of Montana in Yellowstone, To climb the mountain of going from a hobby to leaving your solid nine-to-five job and start trading full time for a living, to climb the huge mountain of losing the love of your life, and then, 4 years later, to be diagnosed with cancer, Or making a promise to climb the Kilimanjaro: “I’ve made a decision in my life that I’m not going to be afraid of the things I’ve never done before.” &nbsp; What should you – as an entrepreneur looking for your breakthrough to success – take from their stories to help find the necessary step to reach your peak? Many successful entrepreneurs climb mountains, while others use mountains as a metaphor to describe what is necessary to conquer the peak – including the fatiguing yet rewarding journey to the top. Still other entrepreneurs use mountains as an analogy for a significant goal they wish to achieve – such as becoming a billion-dollar-market-cap company. (See Mellissah Smith’s mountain story.) For many years, I’ve compared the act of taking possession of your potential customers’ minds and of building awareness, likeability, and trust of a leading brand to the act of climbing the highest mountains. You climb step by step to the peak, reach your position as a market leader and a leading brand, and then start climbing a new mountain with a new product line or another brand. The idea of mountains as representations of a strong position in the market is mentioned by Al Ries and Jack Trout in the excellent book, Marketing Warfare. “In military warfare, mountains and higher altitude areas represent strong positions and often are used to present a strong defense. In marketing warfare, the question is one of who holds the mountains in the consumer's mind.” &nbsp; So, at some point after the launch of my podcast for entrepreneurs, I started to ask the successful entrepreneurs I interviewed about their habits or dreams of climbing one of the highest mountains in the world. Listen to these inspiring stories, find which entrepreneurs and stories you identify with most, and review your entrepreneurial objectives, market overview, and plan. By making your business as strong as possible, you will be able to quickly and easily achieve entrepreneurial success. <div class="fl-photo fl-photo-crop-square fl-photo-align-center" itemscope...

Episode 134 Show Notes Incredible mountain stories I heard from successful entrepreneurs I interviewed on my podcast From the marathon monk course on a mount Hiei in Japan, To climbing the Machu Picchu in Peru to climbing the mountain of becoming a one-billion-market-cap company, to work with a paralyzed young Mom with a two years old daughter, that had a catastrophic traffic incident and dreamt on skiing with her daughter one day To climbing Mount Whitney in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. 16000 feet. The highest mountain in America (outside Alaska) Or climbing the mountain of Depression and Anxiety – “The biggest mountain that I have climbed and I haven’t looked back ever since.” &nbsp; What should you – as an entrepreneur looking for your breakthrough to success – take from their stories to help find the necessary step to reach your peak? &nbsp; Many successful entrepreneurs climb mountains, while others use mountains as a metaphor to describe what is necessary to conquer the peak – including the fatiguing yet rewarding journey to the top. Still other entrepreneurs use mountains as an analogy for a significant goal they wish to achieve – such as becoming a billion-dollar-market-cap company. (See Mellissah Smith’s mountain story.) For many years, I’ve compared the act of taking possession of your potential customers’ minds and of building awareness, likeability, and trust of a leading brand to the act of climbing the highest mountains. You climb step by step to the peak, reach your position as a market leader and a leading brand, and then start climbing a new mountain with a new product line or another company. The idea of mountains as representations of a strong position in the market is mentioned by Al Ries and Jack Trout in the excellent book, Marketing Warfare. “In military warfare, mountains and higher altitude areas represent strong positions and often are used to present a strong defense. In marketing warfare, the question is one of who holds the mountains in the consumer's mind.” So, at some point after the launch of my podcast for entrepreneurs, I started to ask the successful entrepreneurs I interviewed about their habits or dreams of climbing one of the highest mountains in the world. Listen to these inspiring stories, find which entrepreneurs and stories you identify with most, and review your entrepreneurial objectives, market overview, and plan. By making your business as strong as possible, you will be able to quickly and easily achieve entrepreneurial success.

Episode 133 Show Notes After twelve years of research that included following 120 entrepreneurs from their first stages, Interviewing more than 100 successful entrepreneurs, and listening to hundreds of thousands of them, here are the three factors of the Formula for Entrepreneurial Business Success. &nbsp; 1. The thing that’s needed Jon Lee Dumas invented a daily podcast, Jeff bullas started to write about social media when the first innovators seeked for information, Mike Stelzner started to share content for free, Mike Allton built websites for clients and shared content about social media to find more customers when he realized that what his customers really wanted was to learn about how they can use social media. So he became a blogger and social media educator. Douglas Burdett started to interview authors of new marketing books, John Nemo cracked the code for selling through LinkedIn, Pam Wasley established the interim executive model, Mike Allton built websites for clients and shared content about social media to find more customers when he realized that what his customers really wanted was to learn about how they can use social media. So he became a blogger and social media educator. and the list goes on. You don’t need to be the first, and you don’t need to be the only one in the world that offers that product or service, you do need to be the first or unique among your target audience. Let’s hear Mike Allton. Mike Allton Mike Allton is a Content Marketing Practitioner, award-winning Blogger and Author in St. Louis, and the Chief Marketing Officer at SiteSell. He has been working with websites and the Internet since the early ’90’s, and is active on all of the major social networks. Mike teaches a holistic approach to content marketing that leverages blog content, social media...

Paul Bratby Show Notes Paul Bratby is the founder of Trade The Fifth, an Elliott Wave program designed to educate traders and investors on the financial markets so they can take responsibility for their own portfolios and trading accounts by learning how to ride the profitable Fifth Wave setup. Paul started in the business over 14 years ago, and combined his career as an Engineer along with his Military Mindset to develop a repeatable trading and investing strategy that he has used to manage 8-figure accounts. &nbsp; Most passionate about I retired as a money manager five years ago. But I got bored, so I started a hobby. This hobby was revolving what I was most successful at, which was trading, investing in stocks and shares, and future contracts, these sorts of things. It started to keep me occupied to help people realize their dream. I had a dream to move to Spain, live in a villa by the sea with a beautiful sea view, have a pool, and live a nice and comfortable life. I’ve got all of that. Everybody has their different dreams. What I wanted to do was to share my story and help people in this industry. A lot of people want to take control of their own future, their pensions, their savings, or even by creating more income by trading and investing in stocks and shares and future contracts, so I just wanted to help. It was doing great as a hobby project, helping traders become more successful. I built a great strategy; I’ve never had a losing quote for 15 years by now. So what I did was getting some geeks that turned this strategy into a software. And it was doing great. Paul’s entrepreneurship development In May last year (2018), I was in Chicago doing a small training event as part of this hobby project, and an entrepreneur from Silicon Valley came to me and said: “Paul. I just got on a flight because I needed to see you; I think you&#8217;ve got a great product. I&#8217;ve got a great experience with digital growth, and with startups. I&#8217;d like to go into business with you.” So, it was a bit of a shock, but we did it! We started the company in July 2008. We launched the website on November 2018, so we&#8217;re coming up to one year. And in that first year, we are one of those strange statistics that one in 10000 tech startups are in profit in the first year. And we are profitable in our first year. We&#8217;ve got a cloud-based system, and we&#8217;ve gone through hyper-growth because of me having that foundation, that hobby and that experience, coupled together with my partner that got an eye for growth, hacking, and tech and we had a great first year. I fly to the US four or five times a year, hold live training events that are sold out. Paul’s best advice about approaching customers and his biggest success due to the right customer approach So the short answer is, listen to your customer. One of my biggest success stories recently in this last year is that during our growth, we found that we had more customers with small account balances, you know, just starting out. And in the strategy within our software, we’re not clear enough for smaller traders. So this became quickly apparent by the massive amount of e-mails we were getting, and questions on the Facebook group. So I took action. I was in New York in June of this year. And I sent out a tweet on Thursday to say, you know, I&#8217;m in New York. Any customers out there who can join me for a drink on Friday evening? 10 users turned up! From that, we started a WhatsApp group for New York. I listened. But not only did I listen, within 24 hours, but I also came up with an idea and shared it with all of that ‘focus group’. OK. They loved...

Episode 131 Show Notes 4 successful entrepreneurs share their path to success “When I wrote my last book, Known, it was about how creating an effective, powerful personal brand is really the only sustainable, competitive advantage we can have. I was addressing the question: Could anybody become known?” (Mark Schafer) I thought about this book when I interviewed Phil Friedman. Phil decided to stop being frustrated as a university professor teaching philosophy and made a career shift, studied yacht design, and basic structural and mechanical engineering. He then entered the marine industry as a yacht builder, boat and shipyard manager, small-business and start-up advisor, and yachting writer and editor. But the most exciting part of this story is how Phil managed to make this shift. I asked Phil which marketing or sales tool helped him most to establish his expertise and become a Yacht and Marine consultant; his answer was very clear: &nbsp; Phil Friedman Marine Industry Consultant Phil Friedman has a long and varied background in the marine industry, as a yacht build.er, boat and shipyard manager, small business and startup advisor, and yachting writer and editor. As Managing Director of the Port Royal Group, he provides clients with the benefit of his intimate knowledge of yacht construction, major refit and repair, surveying, damage assessment, estimating, contract negotiation, and dispute resolution. For several years, Phil was the president and CEO of Palmer Johnson Yachts, during which time the company under his supervision developed, built, and refitted nearly two dozen luxury mega yachts in the 30- to 60-meter range. During his multi-year tenure as Senior Editor of Power &amp; Motoryacht magazine, Phil tested and evaluated hundreds of yachts worldwide. He has published more than 1,200 articles on yacht design, construction, repair, and maintenance. And his recently published eBook, Ten Golden Rules for Successful New Build Projects, has received wide acclaim from industry professionals. &nbsp; Phil’s recommended tool for marketing and sales Digital Publishing!! On social media, on business networking platforms, on your website and the websites of others, and email or other direct digital campaigns. I believe digital publishing gives you the opportunity to share your thoughts and samples of your prior work with a much bigger audience of potential clients than had ever been possible before. I can’t overemphasize how important it’s been in building my own business by writing and putting information out there. I’m not talking about content as a commodity; I’m talking about genuinely engaging with people across digital media and through digital publishing. Digital publishing By digital publishing, I’m talking about valuable content that provides information and advice and interest for people. I published probably over 1,200...

Angela Maiers Show Notes Angela Maiers has been listed as one of IBM’s Top 20 Global Influencers, named by Forbes as one of the Top 5 Education Leaders to Watch, in 2017 and 2018,  and is among Huffington Post’s Top 100 Social Media Influencers! Angela founded the global movement, Choose2Matter in 2014. The non-profit organization grew out of the impassioned response to a TEDTalk she gave on the power of two simple words, that went viral. YOU MATTER! She is the author of nine books, including the highly-acclaimed Genius Matters and Classroom Habitudes. Futurist. Innovator. Educator. Entrepreneur. Change Maker. Angela Maiers is on a mission to disrupt the status quo and to empower every individual to change their own world, if not the world around them for the better. It is fair to say she leaves no room unchanged. Please join me in welcoming &#8211; Angela Maiers! Most passionate about As long as I can remember, my passion and my mission have been to educate. I&#8217;m a linguist, and the root of the word “educate” means “to lead out.” That&#8217;s what people don&#8217;t quite understand. They think education is putting information in, when it is the complete opposite. It is seeing the gifts in front of you and helping to lead them out, to move them so they can be contributed to the world. So, to be able to lead out, it doesn&#8217;t matter if I&#8217;m with five-year-olds (which is how I started my career) or with Fortune 500 companies. The genius that exists within individuals and organizations is what my mission, what my mantra, what my whole essence is about: to educate, to lead out. Angela’s career and entrepreneurial development For as long as I can remember, I have loved learning. I was really good at it and very passionate about everything I could get my hands on. That had to do with how we learn, how the brain learns. I actually put myself through medical school and studied neuroscience. My entrepreneurial side; I worked to put myself through university and all my jobs had something to do with special communities and special needs students, from severe and profoundly autistic to emotionally disturbed to drug-addicted. I worked with them and their mothers to get them back on a pathway of purpose. It&#8217;s what made me feel alive, and it&#8217;s what taught me what true passion is. As I said before, it&#8217;s not what you&#8217;re good at. I was good at school, but it&#8217;s not what I love to do, which is learning. I love learning about the brain. I love every single part of neuroscience. But it wasn&#8217;t what I was meant to do. My entrepreneurial spirit led me to become an educator. I quit medical school, went back to college, and became a teacher. No one I knew supported me because, at the time I was going to school, it was – and still is – a really big deal to be in medical school. I was the first woman in my family to go to college, the first woman in my family to pursue the pathway of medicine. There&#8217;s prestige in that. Unfortunately, there’s not as much prestige in being a teacher. So, when I went back home and announced to everybody that I had found my passion, that I was going to quit medical school and be a teacher, I was met with a lot of resistance. I think that&#8217;s how you know that something is a true passion. No matter what, no matter how much resistance I got and no matter how challenging the act of educating is, the act of not being a teacher was akin to not breathing. Angela’s TED talk Then I did this TED talk. With TED, you get 17 minutes to tell the world how you&#8217;re going to change the world. I had this beautiful talk about social media all ready

Ramon Ray’s Show Notes Ramon Ray is an entrepreneur, author, and speaker who loves burnt pancakes, bacon, and eggs. He is the founder of Smart Hustle Media and has started four companies (two of which he has sold). Ramon has authored four books. His latest book is &#8220;The Celebrity CEO: How Entrepreneurs Can Thrive by Building a Community and a Strong Personal Brand.&#8221; Ramon has been invited as an expert witness to the United States Congress. He has also been invited by the Office of the President of the United States to speak at the White House on personal branding. Additionally, he has produced many events including the &#8220;Smart Hustle Small Business Conference,&#8221; &#8220;Small Business Summit,&#8221; &#8220;Small Business Technology Tour,&#8221; &#8220;Small Biz Big Things&#8221; and more. Ramon’s expertise is in technology, marketing, sales, business startups, and growth. His favorite topic is personal branding. He interviewed President Barack Obama during the President&#8217;s first live Google Hangout and was part of the US Delegation to India, led by Ivanka Trump, for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit. Most passionate about I love what I do. I educate business owners on how to start and grow their businesses. I’m neither a consultant nor a coach. We have events, we have online content, we have blog posts and a podcast. I also work with leading brands, both small and large, to help represent them and add credibility and authenticity to their messages. We might help those brands create content. I can also speak at their events, host their live videos, etc. I have a community of business owners. I work with brands and help them better reach their target audiences. And I love it every single day. My secret wish? Some of your audience may know Steve Harvey. He’s kind of like Oprah Winfrey, except he’s a guy &#8230; so, my goal is to have my own TV show. Even though TV is kind of dying, I still want to have my own TV show. This is my only goal. Ramon’s career From a young age, I was fascinated by technology. When I became an adult, it stayed with me and I discovered the Internet. So, I’m a geek&#8230; Then I discovered that you could put content online. I’ve been blogging since 1991. Ramon’s customers On the one hand is the community that I serve. We don’t make as much money from them; it’s not a big revenue driver. I like to call this community &#8220;Smart Hustlers.&#8221; They look like me. There are companies that are not trying to be billion-dollar venture-backed companies. We specialize in those that want to be profitable but live a great life. On the other hand is, of course, the brands. Every global brand, or even a smaller brand, that is spending money to market to small businesses is our potential client. Ramon’s best advice for approaching customers What are you doing to get attention? What are you doing to get leads? What are you doing to convert these leads into customers? This is half of the equation: attention to attract the leads and convert them into customers. The second half is: How are you different? How are you special? A third thing is the long-term game. I’m all about relationship-building. Of course, we all need to eat. So, first, do whatever you need to do to get food and provide for your family. But if you have some revenue getting in, go for the long-term game. Build relationships. Biggest failure with a customer Everybody has failures. Some are more catastrophic than others. This

Deborah Mills-Scofield Show Notes Deborah Mills-Scofield helps mid- to large-sized companies make “strategic planning” a verb. She is also a partner in an early-stage venture capital firm. Deb has written for Harvard Business Review and other venues, including her own blog, and has contributed to several books. Deb graduated from Brown University in three years and helped start the Cognitive Science concentration. After graduation, she went to AT&amp;T Bell Labs, where her patent was one of the highest-revenue-generating patents for AT&amp;T and Lucent. She is on the Advisory Council of Brown University’s Engineering School and lectures at Brown. Deb also mentors student entrepreneurs of all types, advises in the Brown Design Workshop, and supports those involved in STEAM. She measures her success by her clients’ success and their impact. Most passionate about There are two parts to that answer. The first part is my ‘work’ work, the paying kind, in which I’m working with mid- to large-sized companies, helping them discover where they want to be in three to five years and how they can get there. I help them encourage or enhance themselves if they already have a culture of innovation, or think outside the box—think of the old differently. To me, it starts with the customer, client, or end user (depending on what words they use). The second part is that I mentor and advise students at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where I went to school. Working with these brilliant kids keeps me young mentally. It keeps me learning, keeps me challenged. If I can keep up with them, I’ll have no problem keeping up with my clients. My students study engineering, biology, chemistry, math, English, education—totally across the board. I mentor them and sometimes I also teach them. Then I get to introduce my clients to really cool kids, which helps them get interesting perspectives. Plus, I help my students find really interesting internships and jobs. It’s a nice symbiotic relationship. It all works really well for me. Deb’s three tenets There are three tenets I live my life by. These three tenets apply to my work life, my personal life, and my mentoring. There are three kinds of phrases: The first is not mine; it’s from a Jewish theologian and philosopher called Martin Buber: (I–It) and (I–Thou): “I” is I, meaning the person, while “It” means “Do I view the other person, or nature, as a function versus as a relationship?” “I-Thou” means that the other is a “thou”. They are not an objective; they are a person with a relationship, with a life. For me, it’s a key to how to view your customers internally or externally, because it’s all about them, it’s not about you. The second is: Rush to discover, don’t rush to solve. If you look at the world, at least the Western world, whenever you see a problem, you immediately try to fix it. You don’t try to find out why that’s a problem and what that means. You just try to fix it without knowing many things you probably should. And the last is: Your entire life, your approach to things should be: Experiment, Learn, Apply and Iterate. That’s how I live my life. I’m insatiably curious, which is a good thing but can also be a frustrating thing. I just really love learning &#8230; and then I try to discover patterns. Deb’s career and entrepreneurships’ development It started with growing up in the Northeast: New Jersey and New York City. I went to Brown and then to Bell Lab, which was the think tank for AT&amp;T. I was 20 when I graduated and went there. I got paid to play and experiment with ideas. I had fantastic bosses and amazing...

Melinda F. Emerson Show Notes Melinda F. Emerson, “SmallBizLady” is America’s #1 Small Business Expert. She is an international expert on small business development and social media marketing. Melinda is also the president of the Quintessence Group, a marketing consulting firm based in Philadelphia, PA serving Fortune 500 clients who target small businesses. She has published over 5000 articles on small business on her blog. Her advice is widely read, reaching more than 3 million entrepreneurs each week online. She is a former columnist for The New York Times and Entrepreneur. She is the bestselling author of Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months, 2nd Edition, and her latest book is Fix Your Business. &nbsp; Most passionate about  The thing that I’m most passionate about is to stop small businesses failures. That what keeps me up at night and keeps me going every day. I love entrepreneurs; we are the bravest, strongest, most committed people in the world. But a lot of us struggle to run a business. So my mission, my magical power, is fixing businesses. That&#8217;s what I do. It’s my special gift, and everything I do is about that mission. What I’m most passionate about at the moment: For ten years, I’ve been running The Small Business Twitter Chat, every week. On this September we are launching The Small Business Chat Podcast. How do I fix businesses? One business at a time. Melinda’s 12 Ps of running a successful business 12 P&#8217;s of Running a Successful Business: Preparation, Purpose, People, Profit, Processes, Productivity, Performance, Product, Promotion, Prospects, Planning, and Perseverance. On my website, I lay out some of the tools that I like. To help any small business owner to find some help while implementing the 12 Ps. Biggest failure with a customer I had so many&#8230; My first business about 15 years ago was a video production company. I worked there with who was then my husband. We use to do a ton of work in the pharmaceutical and healthcare space. One of our biggest clients then was GSK; they hired us to do a video in a very important health fair with a well-known speaker. We shot the video, they didn’t want any editing, and we gave it to them. Six months later, they were looking to consolidate their entire video production projects, and they invited us among the three agencies they considered. We were very excited, but once we got in, I felt something was wrong. They head of video started the meeting by showing the video that we shoot six months earlier at that health fair &#8211; and it was all blue. So not only that we had to do another video for them for free, we never got any order from them again. Biggest success due to the right customer approach I have a lot of amazing customers. One of my favorite projects was when I worked with Wells Fargo Bank (prior to the huge scandal of course). They hired me to show up basically unannounced, and they had a special project at one of their small business customers. We had to do a surprising ambush makeover, and at the end of the project, they surprised them and gave them a 10 thousand dollars makeover to the retail store of their business. It was so awesome I got to be somebody’s fairy godmother. It was a pet grooming business, and they had no idea why I was there. I showed up with this camera crew, and we had told them a story about they were going to be featured on Wells Fargo website. We interviewed them about how they started their business and their money management. It was a husband and wife business with a unique story, and they created a great...

Ilan Missulawin Show notes Ilan Missulawin is the co-founder of ClickCease, the leading click fraud protection software used by thousands of advertisers. His background in marketing is diverse, from marketing campaigns for global retail companies to startup marketing. He lives in Tel Aviv with his wife and two children. Most passionate about  I’m a co-founder of ClickCease, which provides protection from click fraud to advertisers that use Google search. At least 20% of the clicks that a Google advertiser gets will not convert. In the beginning, I was on the phone all day, speaking to companies that were already aware of, and concerned about, click fraud. Then we started to advertise, especially through Google search, attracting these people to our site. The breakthrough happened about a year after the launch, when we started to use chat software called Intercom. It supported people whom we brought to the website, answering their questions and helping to convert them into sales. The next stage was to start building an awareness of potential customers. Then we started using the chat software in the online store. Next, we discovered the power of conferences in terms of meeting with advertising agencies that give services to SMBs. Ilan’s customers The majority of our customers are SMBs (small-medium businesses) like plumbers, e-commerce stores, lawyers, dentists, or any service that needs to advertise on Google in order to be found. They will suffer negative consequences if someone clicks several times to harm their campaign and waste their money. We also have another kind of customer: enterprises that are very well-known brand names. With them, it’s more about bot fraud. Ilan’s best advice about approaching customers I learned these three stages from Keith Cunningham, a businessman from Austin, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in Denmark recently: Keith Cunningham’s Formula for Success: Find out what they want. Go and get it. Give it to them. If I need to give more specific advice, I would say persistence. Visualize this: Underground are two tunnels and at the bottom of each tunnel is a big diamond. One group will dig, dig, dig and then, two digs away, will give up and leave. In the second tunnel is another group of people who will dig, dig, dig and, at exactly the same point as the other group, two digs away, will continue to dig. My last bit of advice is about big changes. Many people and influencers believe in BIG changes. Tony Robbins, whom I love listening to, talks about massive action. However, I believe that habits are what, at the end of the day, result in massive action. Persistently changing one percentage here and one percentage there, and one percentage in a third place, will bring about major changes. Biggest failure with a customer I think that if you aren’t in the right place to help a customer, they won’t be there for you. There was a customer who was on our site chat all the time. But, really, he was asking tons of questions and he wasn’t even a customer yet. We kind of dismissed the guy because he was on the chat all the time. We didn’t know that he represented a very well-known brand name. We thought, you know, Mr. X comes to us all the time only to ask questions. Like the guy who comes in every day to the car miller but never buys a car. We lost the customer. We didn’t realize that the reason he was asking these endless questions, which nobody else ever asked, was because he was from an enterprise and he had to show his boss that he had done everything

What can any entrepreneur learn from influencer entrepreneurs like Jeff Bullas, Kevin L. Jackson, and Josh Steimle? &nbsp; How to become the influencer of your new market? I was standing in Lipton’s testing room in Bristol with the Global Marketing Director, in 1996, learning one of the most important lessons in marketing. From my 32 years in marketing, I know that the best and easiest way to succeed in launching a new product and building a successful brand is by leading your market category. The idea is taking ownership of a market category in the minds of the customers. One of the four basic market strategy definitions is ‘what market category should we play in’. If you can’t lead the market, you should invent a new market category. The most famous example of that is probably the story about Miller Beer. Miller wanted to grow and lead the US market. However the beer market was totally saturated. And any farmer who grew barley could quite easily build a brewery in his farm and start selling beer. Miller looked for the differentiation point. Marketing was in its infancy; Miller had done research and found there is a need for a light, less bitter beer with a smaller amount of alcohol, so they invented a new kind of beer. They could have launched the new beer by calling it the new Miller Beer. But they didn’t. Instead, they called women, young drivers (and other potential audiences of such a product) to try the first light beer in the world. They didn’t promote Miller beer; they were the ‘new needed category’ They took ownership in the minds of the customers as the leader of a new kind of beer and increased dramatically the value of the Miller Brand overnight. &nbsp; With time, other beer producers penetrated the light beer market, however Miller Lite was, for a long time, the market leader of the light beer category. Today, Miller Lite is the third most popular beer in the US. The most interesting thing is that all three leading beers in the US today are lite beers. &nbsp; Entrepreneurs, who invent new products, also create new market categories. Taking ownership of this new category can be critical to the strength of your brand and the value you can achieve for your entrepreneurship. I will write in more depth about finding the right market category in one of the coming posts. Let’s go back to the testing room in Bristol. At that time, Lipton was marketed world wide as the leading tea brand in the world. By saying to me, “You should become the Queen of Tea,” this Unilever director meant that I should know everything about tea and be the voice of the worlds leading tea in Israel where I was Lipton’s marketing director. &nbsp; &nbsp;...

The best advice from Dr. Kevin Gazzara, Dhariana Lozano, Roy Sutton and Deepak Shukla can help your business succeed more quickly and substantially. Entrepreneurship starts in different ways. However, there is something special about those who saw an opportunity and decided to focus on a new direction. Their journey to success is different from the journeys of those to whom entrepreneurship simply ‘happened’ and totally different from startups that raised money to develop an entrepreneurial enterprise from an idea. In  today’s episode, I share with you the best advice from these entrepreneurs. I believe that no matter how you became an entrepreneur, the perspectives of Dr. Kevin Gazzara, Dhariana Lozano, Roy Sutton and Deepak Shukla can provide a new perspective on taking your business to higher levels. &nbsp; Before he left his 18-year career at Intel, Dr. Kevin Gazzara’s research discovered 5 things any entrepreneur needs to become successful. Dr. Kevin Gazzara Dr. Kevin Gazzara has spent the last 30+ years in program management, leadership, organizational development, courseware development, executive coaching, and teaching in both public and private sectors, spanning from heavy equipment to high tech. He is a currently a senior partner at Magna Leadership Solutions LLC, based in Phoenix, Arizona, which provides business workshops, facilitation, assessments, and executive coaching services worldwide. Kevin worked for Intel Corporation for 18 years, holding management positions for: Management and Leadership development, Intel University for the US, the Graduate Rotation Program, Mentoring programs for Intel’s worldwide Human Resources Organization, and more. Dr. Gazzara is also

Mellissah Smith Show Notes Mellissah Smith is a marketing expert, author, writer, public speaker, and technology innovator. Having worked with more than 300 companies across technology, health, and medical, professional services, manufacturing, transport and logistics, finance, and sustainability industries. Mellissah has a well-established reputation as an experienced marketing professional with 28 years of experience. As the founder and managing director of Marketing Eye, she has taken the company from startup to a multi-million dollar enterprise with offices in Australia and the US. Mellissah is the founder of Robotic Marketer an innovative, modern and AI based technology that develops and consists of marketing workshops and extensive strategies. Mellissah is also the Editor in Chief of Marketing Eye Magazine, a quarterly magazine that covers marketing, entrepreneurship, travel, health, and wellbeing. &nbsp; Most passionate about I’m one of those people who are very passionate about many things. Right now, I’m involved with my little startup, called Robotic Marketer. About four years ago, I decided to develop a robot that will help clients optimize their marketing departments. Today, I found out that one of the companies will be buying 10,000 marketing strategies from us over the next twelve months. I’m super excited but also exhausted. This Robotic Marketer is an AI (artificial intelligence) software robotic program that writes marketing strategies without a human. While it would normally take two or three weeks, or even longer, for a marketing manager to do market research and a competitors’ analysis, and to come up with a marketing strategy, the software literally takes 28 minutes. This robot for marketing strategies is the first in the world. It started with our own needs in my marketing firm, Marketing Eye, which is a leading small- to medium-sized business marketing firm in Australia and the US. We have quite a big team of marketing experts who write the marketing strategy for a client, which is a major part of the role in our company. So, I wrote about how automatic marketing would work and how it could develop marketing strategies without a human. I worked with a development team that developed the technology, and today it’s live. The product contains more than 40 pages of comprehensive marketing strategy that is aligned with each client’s business goals. It can definitely serve entrepreneurs. Mellissah’s best advice about approaching customers The most important piece of advice for any entrepreneur is to understand the purpose of the customer’s business and what the market really needs. The very first thing to do is to get to know your customers or your potential customers before you even open the doors. Many entrepreneurs close their doors within the first five years, and they always say it’s about money. But, is it really because of money or because they didn’t invest enough in their customer, including the customer experience and understanding what the customer actually wants and needs? Make sure you put the customer first. There is lots of talk about how if you treat your employees well, they will treat the customers well. I don’t know if that’s actually true. At the end of the day, your business survives only if you have customers. That will happen only if you look after them and if they have a great experience. Customers who have a great experience not only come back to you but will also recommend you. That’s the easiest way to get new clients. Biggest failure with a customer I have had a lot of failures. I definitely try to not make the same mistake twice. I think our biggest failure, and...

Smita Nair Jain Show Notes Smita Nair Jain is currently the Senior Divisional Vice President at Sears Holdings India Pvt. Ltd  &#8211; an offshore division of the 141 year old American retail giant Sears Holdings Corporation. Before joining Sears, she was Chief Operating Officer at Barclays in India. Prior to this, she has been at global executive leadership roles with leading multinational organizations such as Capita, MphasiS, Prudential and Accenture Amongst her many interests, the most prominent one is around Inclusion and Diversity and she works with multiple self help groups and organizations towards bettering the gender ratio across levels in corporates and other related issues such as eual pay .She is also passionate about developing the youth of this country and is a mentor to multiple start-ups and is a key speaker at many start up events. She is a popular speaker in campus circuits and has been invited to speak at various IITs, IIMs, NITIE and TEDx events. She was also awarded the Linkedin Power Profile for the years 2015 and 2017, once for technology and the other for Finance – a rare feature, to be awarded this prestigious title twice in three years.  She is a voracious reader and is particularly fond of the works of contemporary Indian authors. She also writes and has to her credit numerous published articles… the first of which was published in a leading English daily when she was in class 9. She loves Indian classical music, is a mother to Bheem- her 5 year old Cocker spaniel and a weekend wife to her cinematographer husband. &nbsp; Most passionate about Today I’m the Senior Divisional Vice President at Sears Holdings India, a 141-year-old retail organization. I’m based in Hyderabad, towards the south of India. Since I’m not a spokesperson of Sears, most of my observations that I will be sharing with you will not be reflective of my employment with Sears or of Sears as an organization. I’m passionate today about four topics: First, I love the world of social media; I’m always there whether it’s LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. I’m completely hooked on it. I only use the social aspects of social media, so people on social networks are very reactive to me. I’ve got an impressive number of followers on all my platforms, and I’m deeply grateful to all of them. The second piece that I’m really passionate about is about Inclusion and Diversity, especially gender diversity. I’m part of a lot of organizations in India like the Lean In leadership group. I think that globally we have a long way to go to bring equal representation of genders. The third thing is Mentoring. I mentor a few high potential middle management women who are seeking to grow to executive levels of leadership. I also mentor a few startups where I deal with these youngsters who are starting organizations, in terms of helping them find funding as well as helping them find their first batch of customers. And fourth, I want greater engagement with the youth of today. Smita’s career and entrepreneurship’s development In terms of my career, I have about 25 years of work experience, which started after I graduated with an MBA from one of India’s universities. In these 25 years, I’ve occupied various national and global levels of leadership in international organizations. One of the things that influenced me to give to society and support these youngsters is because of the encouragement that I got from my background which includes my parents, my teachers, and the leaders who I worked for. They’ve been fabulous and always supporting and always encouraging. They have had faith in me, and they were willing to take big risks for their businesses. Because I had that, I think the best

Kate Sheehan Show Notes Kate Sheehan a Director of The OT Service and Occupational Thera-pist specializing in environmental design and equipment provision. She is well respected as a leader in the field of product and commercial consultancy and is passionate that products are designed to meet function, enable occupation, are simple and intuitive to use. Most passionate about I’m an Occupational Therapist, but I’m not a typical OT. I worked in emerging markets. Back in 2004, I was quite frustrated by the equipment market for people with disabilities, because it was quite institutional and functional but not very aesthetic. At some point, I was asked to help as a consultant for commercial project aesthetics in hotels inaccessible toilets. And that brought me to the commercial sector looking at how we can influence design and change from a product development aspect but also how we can use the occupational therapy skills to enable companies to target people and how OTs can be the bridge between the product producers and the clinical authorities to help both meet the needs of the end-user. I sold my company twice. The second time, last year I sold part of my business to my two business partners Adam Ferry and Samantha Shann, and now we are building the company together even further. We have 24 therapists, and we work Nation Wild while focusing on two distinct sectors: We work for companies, helping them advising on exposing products to the OT market from a clinical point of view. We also do hands-on clinical work in housing and equipment, providing the therapy to support people to maximize their function in their won home. Kate’s customers For me, my clients are my ultimate customers, so it is the end-users; Mrs. Jones that is going to use the product. Kate’s best advice about approaching customers I think the best advice I can give is to be true your own values and ethics; If you come across as being honest and being ethical, then people will approach you. The other thing for me is about being honest, and it’s about products. Companies are bringing new products and are very excited about them. And if I think it won’t work, I will tell them why I think it won’t work. One of the companies that I told them their product wouldn’t work was was quite frustrated with my remarks, came back a couple of years later with something else. And that really did work&#8230; You can’t compromise your reputation! And the other really important thing; Money isn’t everything!. By giving people (either end consumer or professionals or businesses) advice that you don’t charge for and that gives them some value. It&#8217;s really worth it. Biggest failure with a customer There is always success after failure! And you can learn more from things that come wrong than from things that happen right. The biggest critical failure I had we helped a company that was looking at launching a radical new approach to deliver equipment to the end consumer. They were going very fast, but as we saw it, they haven’t got the foundations in place, and we kept coming back to the basics. We kept telling them what they needed to do, but they kept moving way too quickly. In the end, the whole thing was collapsing. And what it did to me was to realize we should have said “stop” sooner! We should have said we are pooling out because you are not listening to what we are saying., and we should have been more assertive and said &#8211; this will not work. I think we were almost overwhelmed because we thought it was such a good idea. Biggest success due to the

Resa Gooding Show Notes Resa is the Co-Founder and Client Relations Director of Cacao Media, a HubSpot Certified Platinum Partner Agency with offices in Tel Aviv, New York, and Nairobi. With the CRM and Marketing Automation processes she and her team set up, startup companies, as well as traditional companies, spend more time closing deals instead of being bogged down by administrative tasks. Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, she currently lives in Israel with her husband and kids and when not assisting her team and client can often be found at various co-working spaces giving advice and assistance to anyone who requests. Most passionate about I’m originally from Trinidad and moved to Israel following my love. I studied Statistics in the university. I worked in statistics with the government here. When I came to Israel, I was not sure which business direction should I take and decided to focus on marketing where I can combine two of my skills, statistics with my English. So, I got involved with marketing. Worked with the big brands like Motorola and Apple on their in-store marketing throughout the world. I did it for eight years. With time, I saw the shift and the need among startups to get online, so I started to help them. I became a specialist mainly by partnering with HobSpot offering companies to use their platform for marketing automation and online marketing. I started to learn and follow all the marketing gurus like Mark Schafer (who was a guest on this show), Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, and the like. So, I learned what it takes to build a business and a brand online and translated it and started to work with agencies for the last five or six years. Two years ago, I established my own agency &#8211; CacaoMedia. Today we help companies with their marketing automation and CRM working as partners of HobSpot. Our customers are both startup and traditional companies. You will be amazed how many companies are still working with Excel sheets and are not very open to marketing automation. Resa’s best advice about approaching customers I’ll answer this question with three parts, regarding the world of marketing automation which I focus on. The first part is for a company to be able to decide when (and when not) to have a marketing automation system. It’s not a chip system, most of the systems cost between $800 to $2000 and you are expected to work on an annual basis. The stage you are ready for a marketing automation system is when you have a need of reaching multiple audiences in multiple destinations, and your team is based in different locations. The second part of the decision whether to start working with marketing automation is when you have the content for attracting your prospects and engaging with them. A marketing automation system can’t be effective without content. So, they need to first create the relevant content. The third and very important part is the ability to clearly see what works in terms of online marketing. Many startups, as well as some of the traditional companies, make decisions about what kind of online activities they should focus on based on guesswork. So, they actually don’t know how to allocate their budget. Therefore, they are not maximizing their money and loosing potential customers. Biggest failure with a customer I have had quite a few failures along the way. One of the things I used to forget is showing the value. I can sell an HobSpot system to a prospect, and I found that too many times, I focused on the amazing features or benefits of the system and did not focus on showing the value as my prospect cared about. Other failures were the result of not setting...

The golden touch Show Notes Entrepreneurship opens an opportunity for anyone, anywhere at any time to create groundbreaking business success and dramatically change their financial future. While talking with hundreds of successful entrepreneurs on my show, I met with three well-respected real-estate influencers, that not only became very successful in their field but also chose to teach and help others to become real-estate experts. Whether you are looking for an opportunity to leave your ‘Nine to Five’ job, or you are already an entrepreneur looking to become an influencer on your field, you will find a lot of tips and insightful ideas on today&#8217;s show. Pamela Goodwin &#8211; “My Moto is: Never Give up and Always Find a Way!” Pamela J. Goodwin is the founder of Goodwin Commercial based in Dallas, TX, a boutique commercial real estate firm specializing in developing retail/restaurant pad sites (Walgreens, McDonalds), brokerage, investment sales and consulting services under one roof. Originally from Omaha, Pamela graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is a best-selling author, speaker, coach, member and contributor with Forbes Real Estate Council. When she isn’t working, Pamela enjoys traveling to the beach, staying fit, being a basketball mom, spending time with her family and friends. &nbsp; Pamela’s best advice about approaching customers Without customers, you don’t have a business. It all comes down to networking and as everyone says, it comes down to having the customers trust you. I truly love meeting people and helping them. I recently helped a couple that designs jewelry. They’ve been leasing space for more than 30 years in an office building. I’ve built a relationship with them and true, to show them how to own, have their own building instead of spending all that money leasing space. They closed on their first office space in December, and they could not be happier. It was building that relationship of giving them examples and walking them step by step knowing that you would be with them for the entire process. You need to help the customer. You are helping them save time or money. You need to build on that relationship, meet with them, check in with them, and see how you can help them. It’s key for repeat business. If they are happy with what you’re done for them, they’re going to refer you to other people. With Warren Buffett Pamela’s key success factor I’ve been called ‘Persistent Pam’ before. If I want something, I go after it. But what I really like to do is connect people with people that I have met and build that relationship. Building relationships, to me, is key and I think that’s been a success. I really like to get to know people and meet with them and help each other in business. Love adventures and trying new things, I think a lot of people get stuck in a rut. People reach out to me saying they’re stuck and it helps to keep trying...

Yariv Tabac Show Notes Yariv Tabac is CEO and Co-founder of DBmaestro. Yariv is also the Co-founder of Extreme Group, a leading IT services solutions provider group that employs more than 200 IT professionals and serves more than 50 of the largest enterprises in Israel. Prior to DBmaestro, Yariv co-founded byUMan Inc., an innovative solution for managing web- enabled contact centers. Yariv began his career at the Israel Defense Forces Computer Center where he held various technical and management roles. Yariv holds a B.Sc. degree in Business and Management from Bar Ilan University. Outside of work, Yariv enjoys swimming, hiking and a good beer. Most passionate about Today DBMaestro is no longer a startup. We are a company. DBMaestro is the leader in DevOps for Database. We focus on enterprises, Fortune 1000, Global 2000, and we assist our customers in automating all their computers&#8217; integration, computing delivery processes, and make their agile development much faster with better quality. With our product, they can work faster without any downtime coming from their database without a data loss. We are protecting the data and the database. There are three layers that need to be automated in enterprise applications: First, there is the code; like Java, dot-net, C++, and others. This is layer number 1. Layer number 3 is the infrastructure, like the servers. There are good solutions to automate those platforms. Layer number 2 is the database. It’s a different technology, and it’s much more vulnerable because it is where you store your data. If something happens, there will be downtime, and the data will be lost. No organization can afford to do that to themselves. I love to build the company; I like to work with people. I enjoy working with customers. Whenever I travel and meet with customers, I ask them why they bought DBMaestro. Why did they choose us? And what can we do better? The main two things customers say they chose us for are 1) The wideness of the offer; the list of features on the one hand and the broad support for the database on the other, on different platforms, on the cloud and more. 2) The connectivity. The fact that we are using an open-source platform, so it’s very easy to integrate with. CEOs need to deal with three angles: building the team, adjusting the messages, and bringing money to the company. Money can come either from external VCs or internally from our customers. Today we are focusing mainly on the internal sources – meaning sales. Yariv’s customers Today we mainly focus on Fortune 1000, Global 2000 companies and medium enterprises accounts, but we are much more focused on the BFSI (Banks, Financial Services, and Insurance companies). Yariv’s best advice about customer focus, marketing, and sales Persistence, persistence, and listening all the time! We entrepreneur CEOs are very lonely creatures. You can listen to smart people or your investors and get their advice, but at the end of the day, there are two or three options to choose from. And you have to choose. And there is at least a 50% chance that you’ll fail. You need to make changes fast. When you see something doesn’t work, change it. And be persistent. I’m changing all the time: the locations of people, changing the functional features, changing the road map, changing the marketing. You should change all the time. Biggest failure with a customer Failures are something we can learn from, not less or even more than successes. What I did in DBMaestro, I prepared a failures case study form. When something wrong happens either from the...

Phil Friedman Part 2 Show Notes For the first time after 115 episodes, I decided to divide my interview with my weekly guest Phil Friedman into two parts. Phil decided to stop being frustrated as a university professor teaching philosophy and made a career shift, studied yacht design and basic structural and mechanical engineering. He then entered the marine industry as a yacht builder, boat and shipyard manager, small-business and start-up advisor, and yachting writer and editor. &nbsp; Marine Industry Consultant Phil Friedman has a long and varied background in the marine industry, as a yacht builder, boat and shipyard manager, small business and startup advisor, and yachting writer and editor. As Managing Director of the Port Royal Group, he provides clients with the benefit of his intimate knowledge of yacht construction, major refit and repair, surveying, damage assessment, estimating, contract negotiation, and dispute resolution. For several years, Phil was the president and CEO of Palmer Johnson Yachts, during which time the company under his supervision developed, built, and refitted nearly two dozen luxury mega yachts in the 30- to 60-meter range. During his multi-year tenu re as Senior Editor of Power &amp; Motoryacht magazine, Phil tested and evaluated hundreds of yachts worldwide. He has published more than 1,200 articles on yacht design, construction, repair, and maintenance. And his recently published eBook, Ten Golden Rules for Successful New Build Projects, has received wide acclaim from industry professionals. You are more than welcome to read the 1st half of my interview with Phil, on last weeks Episode &#8211; 116: Ep. 116 – Phil Friedman: “The key to being an entrepreneur is in functioning as an entrepreneur; Be very flexible and really keep the overall picture in mind” – 1st part Phil’s recommended tool for marketing and sales Digital Publishing!! On social media, on business networking platforms, on your website and the websites of others, and email or other direct digital campaigns. I believe digital publishing gives you the opportunity to share your thoughts and samples of your prior work with a much bigger audience of potential clients than had ever been possible before. I can’t overemphasize how important it’s been in building my own business by writing and putting information out there. I’m not talking about content as a commodity; I’m talking about genuinely engaging with people across digital media and through digital publishing. Digital publishing By digital publishing, I’m talking about valuable content that provides information and advice and interest for people. I published probably over 1,200 feature articles in print and digital media. I have written a couple of books and content for websites; my own website as well as for others. I have an extensive library of articles on yachts, on yacht construction, design, and related subjects such as marine business management. And I have an extensive library on platforms such as LinkedIn, Bebee and more. What it’s done for me is it put me in front of people that what I’m writing about is valuable for them. So, when I publish something, they will read it, they will share it, and they will pass it on. I believe that my own experience fits closely with the ideal engagement (while talking about social media). I work at genuinely engaging with people around yachting related topics. What entrepreneurs...

Phil Friedman Part 1 Show Notes Marine Industry Consultant Phil Friedman has a long and varied background in the marine industry, as a yacht build.er, boat and shipyard manager, small business and startup advisor, and yachting writer and editor. As Managing Director of the Port Royal Group, he provides clients with the benefit of his intimate knowledge of yacht construction, major refit and repair, surveying, damage assessment, estimating, contract negotiation, and dispute resolution. For several years, Phil was the president and CEO of Palmer Johnson Yachts, during which time the company under his supervision developed, built, and refitted nearly two dozen luxury mega yachts in the 30- to 60-meter range. During his multi-year tenure as Senior Editor of Power &amp; Motoryacht magazine, Phil tested and evaluated hundreds of yachts worldwide. He has published more than 1,200 articles on yacht design, construction, repair, and maintenance. And his recently published eBook, Ten Golden Rules for Successful New Build Projects, has received wide acclaim from industry professionals. Most passionate about I’m presently continuing actively as a consultant in the yacht building industry, which I’ve been doing for more than 25 years. My latest project is managing a startup in China of two new modern yacht lines for export primarily to the US and Canada. I also continue to actively write yachting-related marketing content for both print and digital publishing sectors. After 30 years in these two fields, I thought I’d retire, but my business is surging again. And I don’t mind continuing to work since I really love what I do. Changing professional direction I was an academic at the time. I was teaching philosophy at the university, and I felt frustrated and unfulfilled. The abstract nature of philosophic discussions can be daunting. Most of my colleagues with whom I kept in touch over the years have taken on other activities as well, more concrete activities. I was very interested in sailing, and I felt attracted to the art and craft of yacht design. So, I studied yacht design by mail, and I ordered several courses from a nearby college in basic structural engineering and mechanical engineering. I always had an aptitude for mechanical work and building, and somewhere deep in my background, I had a desire to be a designer. I decided to change the direction of my professional life, and I jumped in with both feet and decided to become a yacht designer and a boat builder. After I trained students as a university professor, I decided to go into business for myself. Writing for yacht magazines is what enabled me to gain exposure in the market that I wanted to reach. Phil’s customers In this field, ownership means much more than owning a boat or owning a yacht. It really involves participating in a subculture. And that’s what attractive for many people. And practically, if you think about the amount of time and energy and money that some buyers of yachts put into having a yacht built, you realize that what they are interested in is the process as much as a result. I have a range of customers. I provide consulting services to yacht builders who are looking to improve their processes, or maybe they are looking to narrower-ship particular project.. Among my clients, I also have people who are seeking to have yachts built and need independent third party advice to get that done and to help with managing the project to make sure that they come up at the other end with something that they want. Phil’s best advice about customer focus, marketing, and...

Kevin L. Jackson Show Notes Kevin L. Jackson Advance Technology &amp; Business Strategy Expert Kevin L. Jackson is a globally recognized cloud computing expert, Thought Leader, Industry Influencer and Founder/Author of the award winning “Cloud Musings” blog.  He has also been recognized as a “Top 5G Influencer” (Onalytica 2019), a “Top 1000 Tech Blogger” (Rise Social Media 2019) and provides integrated social media services to AT&amp;T, Bosch, Ericsson and other leading companies. As an Associate Consultant with A.T. Kearney, he provided cloud computing and cybersecurity management consulting services to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Other internationally recognizable firms that have sponsored articles authored by him include Cisco, Microsoft, Citrix and IBM. Mr. Jackson has also been featured in podcasts and online video with Dell, Intel Corporation, O’Reilly Media and National Public Radio. In May 2018 he was awarded an Information Security Leadership Award for his work in the US Federal Government Sector by the President, International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC)2. His books include, “GovCloud: Cloud Computing for the Business of Government” (Government Training Inc., 2011), “Practical Cloud Security: A Cross Industry View” (Taylor &amp; Francis, 2016), and “Architecting Cloud Computing Solutions” (Packt, 2018). This most recent book was selected for use by Tulane University as the textbook for their mandatory Enterprise Architecture course. Mr. Jackson also delivers online training through Pluralsight. Most passionate about I started Gov Cloud Networks in 2013. After I retired from the Navy, I worked as a corporate executive for many years. During that time, I proved my expertise in applying advanced technology to seminal intractable business challenges. That often led to the development of Nobel Internet Phased Information Brokerage Businesses Models that would interact with mobile devices. I was doing a lot of work with the military, the government, and the intelligence community; there were the only people that had these large global networks and had the money and the urgency to actually build and deploy the solutions that I was thinking of. But eventually, all that turned into Cloud Computing, and my ideas became commercially buyable. After that, I was reputably urged to start my own business providing integrated social media and cloud computing, and cybersecurity consultancy. This was targeted to organizations that wanted to leverage advanced technology. The meaning of cloud for business It’s all about information. Today everything is about knowledge. You have to know people to communicate with people. The largest businesses on earth are about identifying information sources. The largest taxi cab company in the world is Uber, and they have no physical cars. They find people that need a ride, and then they identify people that are willing to give a ride. And that’s information exchange; it’s information brokerage. I worked with the intelligence in the Army, and I was a carrier pilot in the Navy, and by doing that my job was managing the battle space, and it was managing information. When we look at businesses, that is information about what your customers and clients need and where they can get that information. Cloud Computing is a platform for collecting information and delivering information. Social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are about information exchange, and the platform that social media ride on is a cloud computing platform. If you think about banks, the largest bank in the world is a virtual bank, PayPal, that is built on top of a cloud. If we think about blockchain, Bitcoin is built on...

Antoine Martel, Josh Steimle, Pamela J. Goodwin and  Lance Scoular During the last two years of interviewing most successful entrepreneurs and opinion leaders in the world of entrepreneurship, I was surprised to learn about the tight connection between the causes that lead entrepreneurs to their biggest failures and the main factors behind their biggest success. My advice to entrepreneurs struggling to find the breakthrough to success would be to study the roots for their failure. The answer is most likely there. Antoine Martel At the age of 23, Antoine Martel is a very successful real estate investor with a business that buys and sales over 100 homes a year. Antoine Martel of Martel Turnkey is a real estate investment expert from San Mateo, California. As a licensed real estate agent and experienced investor, Antoine helps new and seasoned investors realize their financial goals. His proven real estate investment strategies have enabled countless clients throughout California to realize passive income and financial freedom through out-of-state turnkey rental properties. While still a student at Loyola Marymount University, Antoine had already begun immersing himself in learning the real estate industry, absorbing everything he could about real estate investing; how to set up a team, networking, calculating the numbers, recognizing good deals, and much more.  Antoine Martel is now a nationally recognized real estate expert with tens of thousands of followers. He is an inspiration to both millennials and generations from every decade....

Ofer Shayo Show Notes Ofer Shayo is a passionate tech entrepreneur with over 15 years of senior management experience focused on enterprise SaaS, mobile, social networking, and Cloud TV products with superior user experience. Co-founded Tvinci in 2007 and built and developed a world-class team of talents with a diverse, innovation-driven culture. Tvinci was acquired by Kaltura in 2014, and today it serves Kaltura’s customers under the name Kaltura Media and Telecom. Tvinci&#8217;s Cloud-TV platform is serving today millions of Pay-Tv subscribers worldwide (Deployed by Vodafone, Veon, Turner, Viacom, KDG, Ono and MediaCorp). Currently, Ofer is based in London with his family and is starting to build a new tech company. What is Ofer most passionate about? I defined myself as an entrepreneur almost from day one. A few months ago, I left Kaltura – the company that acquired my company five years ago – and I’m now in the Avery structured ideation process to find an innovative idea and establish a new company with my current co-founder. In the beginning, for a few months, I started to look for my new startup idea without a structured process. I had a lot of free time, and since I’m based in London with beautiful parks around me, was sitting there and thinking of new ideas. Whenever I thought of an idea that seemed good to me, I said OK, let&#8217;s do a proof of concept and research around it. I thought of three new ideas that way. However, I realized it’s not the right way for me. I want to be able to compare a few ideas, to make sure they have a big enough target market, and that we can lead the market in terms of the competition in a market that hasn’t been destructed so far. I have a few parameters on my list at the end of the process. I will choose an idea that most likely will be my day job for the next five to seven years. The story of Tvinci I met Ido Wiesenberg, my Tvinci co-founder, while we were on a trip walking on a mountain in Guatemala, and we talked about the opportunities for connecting Mobile, TV, and PC, the “holy triangle,” and that was in 2004. We were both students originally from Israel. When we came back, I joined the business Ido established a few years earlier as co-CEO. It was a kind of creative agency. After a few years together, we reached some really big customers in Israel and outside of Israel. We decided that we wanted to build a product company. We made a clear decision that it would be in the video space. This was right after Google acquired YouTube in 2006. We did some business research, and we built a sort of demo: a proof of concept of a kind of interactive player with social layers above it. We shared it with a few prospective customers. One of them was Wacom in Israel. They liked it, they adopted it, and we built a product around it. We branded it as Tvinci, and we raised our seed money. At the beginning of 2008, we already had a few customers, including Wacom. The name came through our third co-founder Guy Barkan. In the beginning, we thought we are reinventing the TV, and the first entrepreneur in the world was Leonardo De Vinci so together it’s Tvinci. The product was a white label of Netflix. We approached mobile operators, TV cable operators, and media companies and allowed them to build their own TV business on the cloud. Ofer Shayo &amp; Ido Wiesenberg &#8211; Tvinci co-founders Ofer’s best advice about customer focus, marketing, and sales Success is something personal. Our bigger success in Tvinci was...

Special Edition, Show Notes Hi Reachers! I hope you are all having wonderful days, and I’m so happy to be here with you. I have talked a lot lately about the changes and new direction that we are taking, and I’m very excited to tell you that it’s happening now. This is a special episode where I’m about to announce a new challenge regarding Entrepreneurial Business Success rates; in which each of you have a part. So stay with me until the end. But first I would like to invite you to my new Free Live Master Class about THE 4 PRINCIPLES OF CREATING, GROWING, AND MAINTAINING YOUR SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURIAL BUSINESS. In this webinar I will walk you through “How to build AN ACTIONABLE, MONTHLY ROUTINE TO REACH ONGOING PAYING CUSTOMERS, REVENUE, AND GROWTH without the CONSTANT STRESS OF CASHFLOW, FRUSTRATING trial and error, or EXHAUSTING guesswork. There will be two options to take part in this Master Class this week, on Wednesday May 29th at 2 pm east, 11 am pacific time, and on Thursday, May 30th at 3 pm east, 12 pm pacific time. So, go to the REACH OR MISS website or to the show notes of this episode and save your spot in the Masterclass today. It’s going to be new material that hasn’t been taught like this before, and it will enable you to succeed in ways most entrepreneurs simply don’t.  This webinar is directly connected to today’s special episode about entrepreneurs’ success rates and how you are capable of exceeding them. Almost a year ago, in episode 63, I was the weekly guest on the REACH OR MISS podcast. I told my story about my 32 years of experience, first my 21 years of executive marketing positions with local and multinational leading brands. The switch I made after I refused an offer from a new VC, and the last ten years of my own company with 8 employees and what I learned from the 120 startup founders and entrepreneurs we worked with. If you wish to listen to this episode you will find it in the REACH OR MISS website, search for episode 63. In today’s episode, I’m going to use our weekly questions to address the subject of business success for entrepreneurs and will tell you my own story about the last two years interviewing more than 100 successful entrepreneurs and at the same time I met and engaged with hundreds of entrepreneurs who are struggling every day to build a successful business. &nbsp; So let’s begin with the interview with the first question: What am I most passionate about today and where I’m heading? After ten years of working with hundreds of startups and entrepreneurs, we realized that the assumption we had about how the right marketing and sales methods would change the chances of an entrepreneurship’s success was right. We saw an amazing growth of the success rates. But we also experienced despoilments, watching entrepreneurs decide to ignore what their customers told them kept doing what they thought was better and fail. And we also realized that working with each entrepreneurship for several months would never scale. So, I decided to make a major shift. We decided to transfer most of our activities to the virtual world; establishing an online business and aiming to help thousands of entrepreneurs instead of a handful of them every year. Most of my previous team found different marketing positions with startups and my technology manager, Guy, and I started to establish the new formation of an online business. We started The Reach or Miss podcast in March 2017, which has become the base for the business. Our objective is to impact as many entrepreneurs as possible by helping them focus in the right way, on their customers....

Andres Pira Show Notes 16 years ago, Andres was homeless, sleeping on the beaches of Thailand, starving, frustrated an d angry at his situation. When he reached out to the last of his friends he hadn’t already begged for money from, his friend responded by giving him something that would prove to be much more valuable -a book called The Secret. Though it did not happen overnight, today he runs over 19 companies, employs over 200 people, and is one of the largest real estate developer in Thailand. He has only just begun his journey and continues to apply the lessons he learned in The Secret, only to see more prominent and significant results. Andres has narrowed down the 18 principles he uses to achieve success, which are now laid out in his book, Homeless to Billionaire. &nbsp; Download My Powerful Cheat Sheets to adopt today A Daily Routine of Successful Entrepreneurs &nbsp; Most passionate about My line of work is real estate. I’ve been in real estate for 16 years and that’s my passion. I love building things, I love selling things, and I love buying things within real estate. I just recently launched my autobiography about my journey in real estate and the different countries I’ve lived in. So, my passion is to reach out to as many people as possible and hopefully they will be inspired to fulfill their desires and dreams. Andres’s best advice about customer focus, marketing, and sales The first thing is to always focus on your marketing, on getting the customers because if you don’t have the customers, you don’t have sales, if you don’t have sales, you don’t have income, if you don’t have income, you don’t have a company. So, everything starts with marketing. Make sure you have a source where you get your leads and customers because, from there, all the other departments will be developed. Biggest failure with a customer What we didn’t do in the start was we didn’t follow up with them in the right way. Customers like to be taken care of; they want us to reach out. The follow up is very important and what we understood is that if you don’t follow up, they will go to other companies. So, we have to keep our clients that already bought from us very close to us. When I started our customer service department, that’s when we started to see an increase in revenue because the clients were happy. We were reaching out to them, and they were happy we didn’t forget them when we started sending post cards every Christmas or on their birthdays. We learned through trial and error, we acted late, and lost a lot of income because many clients were going elsewhere. Biggest success due to the right customer approach Our greatest success is when we managed to make great returns for our clients, great investments, the clients what to buy certain products from us but when we managed to sell them for a better price than they bought, or they got a better return or they managed to upgrade their unit or their house to something better, because we managed to sell their initial investment. That’s great success and creates trust with the clients who will continue buying from you because they know it works and they’ll talk you up. Andres’s most recommended tool A big success for us is we started to use VR systems and walkthroughs with our clients. People can sit in China, Australia, or America and feel like they are actually in that room, unit, or house. They can walk around feel like they are already there

Antoine Martel Show Notes Antoine Martel of Martel Turnkey is a real estate investment expert from San Mateo, California. As a licensed real estate agent and experienced investor, Antoine helps new and seasoned investors realize their financial goals. His proven real estate investment strategies have enabled countless clients throughout California to realize passive income and financial freedom through out-of-state turnkey rental properties. While still a student at Loyola Marymount University, Antoine had already begun immersing himself in learning the real estate industry, absorbing everything he could about real estate investing; how to set up a team, networking, calculating the numbers, recognizing good deals, and much more. Antoine Martel is now a nationally recognized real estate expert with tens of thousands of followers. He is an inspiration to both millennials and generations from every decade. &nbsp; Download My Powerful Cheat Sheets to adopt today A Daily Routine of Successful Entrepreneurs &nbsp; Most passionate about I’m a real estate investor and I’ve been investing in real estates for the past 4 years. Before real estate investing, I was in college, in LA. While I was at university, I started investing in real estate, I planned to start my own company out of college, I never really wanted to work for anybody, so I thought if I started real estate early enough, I’d be able to do it full time by the time I graduated. That’s exactly how it happened. After graduation, I started buying and renovating houses, renting them out, and then reselling them to people who want to own them as investments or as rental properties. Antoine’s best advice about customer focus, marketing, and sales I think that I have an unorthodox way of attracting clients to my business. I’m the least salesman-like salesman out there; I think the best way to see is to not sell and to actually care about what’s best for your client. ‘Build a brand so you don’t have to sell, make them come to you.’ It’s all about building a brand, providing education, and truly caring about the end client, their goals, and help them achieve their goals. If your company is the best fit, sure, sell them on your product. But if it’s not, refer them to someone else. Don’t be a salesman, learn as much as you possibly can about your product or about the niche that you’re in, and provide value upfront to people on a mass scale. Biggest failure with a customer It would be following up. When I first started, the first two years, I would go to meetups, I would have coffee meetings with people and then I’d never follow up. I’d go and have a one hour meeting or lunch, coffee, or dinner with somebody and then I’d never reach out to them again. I wouldn’t check in with them, I’d just let it be. There were hundreds of people I met one on one in my first couple years of doing this that I just never reached out to again. Biggest success due to the right customer approach My success has come from a whole lot of networking and not selling. I updated my website a couple weeks ago, and I talked with my dad and brother, and said, ‘Hey, I want to add something on my website so that people can buy a house from our website in one click. They click a ‘Buy Now’ button, they fill out a short form, and the contract is sent for that property, and they fill out the contract.’ So, without any interaction from me, somebody could buy a property from my website. My dad and brother said there was no way that will work, and just as...

Avi Yaron Show Notes Avi Yaron is a visionary entrepreneur, Executive Chairman, and strategic adviser with extensive knowledge of medical / Neuro technology arenas. Passionate about disrupting medicine, for enhancing life quality, and utilizing advanced technologies. Invented, founded, and led disruptive companies targeting un-met needs. Envisioned &#8220;emotion based personalized predictive preventative solutions&#8221; (see TEDxAmsterdam talk), set strategy and led Joy Ventures, to pioneer and cultivate a Neuro-Wellness consumer product ecosystem. &nbsp; Download My Powerful Cheat Sheets to adopt today A Daily Routine of Successful Entrepreneurs &nbsp; Most passionate about I prefer to help them to stay healthy and happy, or even delay the onset of disease Instead of helping people after they already developed the disease. As a technologist, this is what I’m focusing on. I would like to develop global, sustainable companies and services that can help mankind. After my TedTalk, I founded, with a team, joint ventures, which basically bank on the neural wellness products for individuals. This is not medical, but to enhance their resilience, reduce stress levels, improve moods, should be a gigantic market and joint ventures. I left them, but they are still continuing and are developing an ecosystem, both among the entrepreneurs and among academia, meaning funding long term start-ups and providing grants to academia to research the field. Avi’s best advice about customer focus, marketing, and sales Everyone is my customer. My employees are my customers, the physicians are my customers, the CFO in the hospital is my customer, and I’m here to serve. Meaning, they are always right, and I’m always thankful for whoever tells me that I’m wrong because I would like to improve all the time, continuous improvements. I would say that generally I don’t give advice and I don’t believe in teaching; I believe in learning. Biggest failure with a customer The difference between success and failure is very thin, and each of my companies, before eventually succeeding, failed miserably. Only because I had a phenomenal team and only because we were mentally flexible, and only because I gave a hug to whoever told me that I’m wrong, that we made it. There is a case study that I taught in Stanford MIT about my biggest failure. We were in the process of raising $20 million with one of the best banks, called Piper Jaffray for the go to market phase in 2001, when the big crash happened. My friend in Piper Jaffray called me one day and told me, ‘I’m so sorry, it’s not personal, everything is crashing. We can’t raise the money.’ I set an immediate board meeting. Before this point, they told me, ‘Avi, the company is great, you’re great, we’re always behind you,’ because I always manage risks, and then they told me, ‘Avi, we’re sorry, things have changed. We will not support you. You need to close the company.’ The company was a phenomenal success before then. We managed to get a FDA clearance in 18 months and here we were, in early sales globally, with a burn rate of $450,000, and then we learned that we had no more money and I had $1 million in the bank. That weekend, instead of closing the company, two board members and myself instituted a completely different plan and I had to let go a majority of the employees, buy back all the product that we sold, give back most offices that we had, and reduce the burn rate to $80,000, delay all payments, etc. Keep the company alive, and all of this over a weekend. Then, on Sunday, I called my board and I told them what we did, and I...

Dwayne J. Clark Show Notes Under his leadership, Aegis has grown to more than 30 locations, employs more than 3k staff members, and has served over 60k residents. Dwayne grew up poor with often not enough money for food. The family solution was to make a potato soup meant to last a week. Today, he supports more than 70 local and global charities and has founded four of his own including: The D1 Foundation, The Potato Soup Foundation, The Clark Family Legacy Foundation, and The Queen Bee Café. His book, &#8217;30 Summers More&#8217; contains the “lessons from longevity” that Clark has amassed from a front-line view as the CEO of Aegis Living, combined with the latest health and wellness research on living well as we age. &nbsp; Download My Powerful Cheat Sheets to adopt today A Daily Routine of Successful Entrepreneurs &nbsp; Most passionate about AI don’t lack for passion! I have a book coming out called, 30 Summers More. I’ve been working on the book with a medical doctor and a PhD for almost 5 years now. I’ve taken care of 65,000 elderly in the course of my career and I thought, I’ve got to get some wisdom out of this experience, and maybe there are some things I can pass on to people. About 6 months into writing the book, I had a medical issue and ended up in the hospital for 3 days. I asked my wife to bring in the manuscript because I wanted to work on it. And as I sat there, working on the manuscript, I had this epiphany and said, “You know, this book is not about the 60,000 elderly people, this book is about changing the lives of 30, 40, 50, and 60 year olds.” The book took a turn at that point, as did my health. So, I changed my diet, my exercise program, I lost almost 50 pounds over the next couple years and totally changed my lifestyle, right down to the TV programs I watched. I started studying longevity programs all over the world; I would read research papers 2-3 hours a day, everyday. I traveled to different countries, talked to people who were 100 years old, I talked to people about their longevity practices. It’s fascinating. What I’ve done in 30 Summers More is brought back all the best practices and the things that we’re doing wrong that maybe killing us. Even though we’re highly educated, highly wealthy country, we’re still not even in the top 30 in terms of our health practices. We need to get better. Dwayne’s best advice about customer focus, marketing, and sales When we started the company, we had tee shirts and slogans that say, ‘Our customers are number two’. People would ask why we would say that. Well, it comes at the point of service, the interaction between the staff and the customer. It doesn’t matter if you’re going to a restaurant, a hotel, the phone company, whatever it is, that person who is talking to the customer, that exchange, has to be phenomenal. That’s one of the things that I think are incredibly important: you have to focus on that interaction. Our new president, he oversaw $18 billion in revenue and 182,000 staff. Really successful companies focus on that point of contact. So, if your staff think you are a rotten company and don’t like their pay, their benefits, or culture, then that point of service, that view point, gets conveyed in that point of service with that customer. So, that’s the most important thing: you really have to focus on that interaction, that point of service between the line staff and the customers. Biggest failure with a customer I think, sometimes, you can choose the wrong partners. We get caught up in peoples’ resumes: maybe they have a lot of money, maybe...

Dan Gingiss Show Notes Dan&#8217;s 20 year career has consistently focused on delighting customers, spanning multiple disciplines including customer experience, marketing, social media, and customer service. He has held leadership positions at three Fortune 300 companies – Discover, Humana, and McDonald’s. He is an international keynote speaker who believes that a remarkable customer experience can be your best marketing. Dan is the author of the book, Winning at Social Customer Care: How Top Brands Create Engaging Experiences on Social Media, a host of the Experience This! Show podcast, and a regular contributor to Forbes. Brand24 recently named him one of the “Top 100 Digital Marketers 2019”. &nbsp; Download My Powerful Cheat Sheets to adopt today A Daily Routine of Successful Entrepreneurs Most passionate about I’m just launching my solo speaking career. So, I’m excited about growing that because I do think that I have a good message and one of the things that I’ve found attending conferences is that events often bring on speakers because they work for big companies. But the result is that they often don’t have good speakers because they’re so focused on bringing in a professional corporate person, who is not a good speaker and I pride myself in being both. I come to the table with an extensive professional background and I’d also like to think I’m a pretty good speaker. Dan’s best advice about customer focus, marketing, and sales The issue with marketers is that most marketers believe that they know what their customers want. And then we over index on the content that we want to provide our customers instead of the opposite, which is listening to your customers, hearing them tell you what they want, and over indexing on that content. What I love about social media is it’s the first and only marketing channel where people can talk back to you. You can’t talk back to a TV commercial, and if you remember the early days of social media, marketers looked at it as another broadcast channel. ‘Let’s put our TV commercials on Facebook! People will love that!’ Of course, no one wanted to see TV commercials on Facebook. Companies were forced to listen to what customers wanted, marketers had to adjust to all channels in that way, like they’ve had to in social media, which is listening to your customers and then delivering the content that they’re asking you for instead of acting like, ‘We know, as marketers, better what our customers want.’ Dan’s best advice for entrepreneurs I would say to follow your passion. When I interview for jobs, I always tell people that what I’m looking for in a job is, I’m not a morning person, so I’m looking for a job where I don’t hit the snooze button in the morning because I judge job satisfaction by how many times I hit snooze. If I don’t want to get out of bed, that’s usually a bad sign. What I’ve found is by following my passion, by doing what I love, I’m jumping out of bed in the morning! I’m excited to go to work because I’m doing something that is meaningful for me. Biggest failure with a customer I think failure is important in life because it teaches you. My first job out of college, I worked for a collectables company. I had a product line that I was responsible for, and I was responsible for everything, not just the marketing, but also the packaging and shipping, making sure we had the right inventory, and all that. I got a phone call from a distraught woman who had bought one of our products for her granddaughter,...

Dr. Kevin Gazzara Show Notes Dr. Kevin Gazzara has spent the last 30+ years in program management, leadership, organizational development, courseware development, executive coaching, and teaching in both public and private sectors, spanning from heavy equipment to high tech. He is a currently a senior partner at Magna Leadership Solutions LLC, based in Phoenix, Arizona, which provides business workshops, facilitation, assessments, and executive coaching services worldwide. Kevin worked for Intel Corporation for 18 years, holding management positions for: Management and Leadership development, Intel University for the US, the Graduate Rotation Program, Mentoring programs for Intel’s worldwide Human Resources Organization, and more. Dr. Gazzara is also a faculty at Grand Canyon University, University of Phoenix, Drexel University, and Ohalo College. In 2007, he received the Future HR Leader award from Human Capital magazine for the Task Quotienttm (TQ) assessment. Workforce Magazine has recognized him for his international leadership development programs. &nbsp; Download My Powerful Cheat Sheets to adopt today A Daily Routine of Successful Entrepreneurs   Most passionate about I found my passion in management and leadership development and I was fortunate enough to be able to spend my last ten years managing Intel’s university and then managing Intel’s management and leadership development for the last six of those ten years. We used to do about 2500 – 3000 managers a year in 10 different countries. Dr. Gazzara’s best advice about customer focus, marketing, and sales There are 5 things that came up as a consistent pattern with the successful entrepreneurs I’ve talked with. They said you really need 5 things in order to be successful: You need a shtick or something unique that you offer than nobody else does. You have to have a network. Not only do you have to have a network, you have to be able to tap into your network in order to get work, get your name out there, and build and grow your business. You need a social presence. You need to be out there interacting and maintaining your presence. You need to write a book, specifically a hard cover book. You need to have enough money saved that you can spend 18-24 months making no money doing consulting. Biggest failure with a customer We learned early on that you have to use the 80/20 rule, particularly when you’re starting out. You need 80% of your time doing sales, selling, and nurturing your clients. Then the other 20% is development of your content. As entrepreneurs, we fall in love with our content and we want to work more on that than on selling. So, one of the things we didn’t do early on with one of our clients who we didn’t capture was that we were doing more development and not paying enough attention to them. Biggest success due to the right customer approach After I left Intel, I was doing a keynote speech for a large company in Silicon Valley for a sales conference and I literally ran into another consultant who had taught at Intel, he was an external consultant. We literally ran into each other while I was coming on to do my talk and he was leaving. I had taken one of his programs and it was a fantastic program. So I called him and said, Lets talk about how I can help you and I’d really love to use your material. So, I got certified on his material and he got certified on my material. We started offering...

Deanna Haysom Show Notes Growing up in a rural community in Saskatchewan, Canada, Deanna had an introduction to the entrepreneurial lifestyle at a very young age. With over 20 years of experience in sales and marketing in both the private and public sector, she attributes her upbringing to many of her life successes as it has been hands-on experience and an intuitive drive that guided her into her current role as Owner and Creative Director of tag concepts. Her company, tag, focuses on working with clients that are seeking authentic branding for themselves or their companies. Most passionate about We are extremely excited about helping our clients learn who they are. At the same time, I’m really passionate about bringing people together that are really great at what they do and giving them the opportunity to continue to expand those strengths so they become even better. I guess it’s the collaboration that I appreciate. So, mainly bringing in these industry experts, honing in on their amazing skills and strengths and then giving them the opportunity to continue to thrive. Deanna’s best advice about customer focus, marketing, and sales First thing that comes to mind is: be a solution for the customer. Often the customer is out there with some sort of problem or some question in mind, and if you can be that trusted advisor, providing them with solution, you instantly gain trust with them. So, thinking about what your clients, or perspective clients, maybe asking themselves then putting that out there; not in a sales way, because I don’t believe in that approach. More from a relationship based point of view, so that you have an opportunity to engage further. Biggest failure with a customer My largest failure came from not trusting my instincts with clients. Sometimes as small business owners, or as human beings, it can be scary to not trust your instincts, especially when you are a new business. Clients are coming to you and you want to make sure you have enough money to pad your account or pay your bills. And so, at times, we ignore those instincts that might be trying to tell you this isn’t the right client for you, maybe someone else could serve them better. So, at the beginning of Tag, I took on some clients that my instincts told me I shouldn’t, but I did anyway. I truly do believe that was a failure on my part. I should have said no, but I didn’t. Biggest success due to the right customer approach Answer: This particular client had gone through many struggles, like you have and like I have, where you almost feel you aren’t in the right place anymore and you don’t know if you believe in yourself any more. I provided her with some insight to help her realize she wasn’t alone and that I, myself, have gone through some of the same struggles and self-sabotage. We worked together to get past that, and then we presented a new brand, and in that brand concept that day, I saw a huge weight being lifted off her shoulders and she suddenly saw herself the same way I saw her, and the same way so many other individuals see her. She finally knew who she was and where her business could go. Deanna’s most recommended tool Answer: Our favorite tool, which is a free tool, at least, right now it is, is Trello. The reason I appreciate it is because we are bombarded by a lot of different platforms, so no matter who you are or what you do, we...

Dorothéa Bozicolona-Volpe Show Notes Dorothéa Bozicolona-Volpe, Principal and Founder, Social Espionage Dorothéa Bozicolona-Volpe was born in New York City to French and Italian parents. Her father’s passing caused her family to move to Europe, where she became somewhat of a nomad. She has lived in Italy, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Dorothéa is a strategic digital marketing executive who is fluent in 4 languages and specializes in developing business through digital, influencer and social media marketing for the world’s most memorable brands. Dorothéa teaches marketers and business leaders how to increase value and develop strong relationships between brands and fans. There are 4 distinct areas of her business: eCommerce: Deep understanding of taking Big Data to inform and implement UX, CRM, iOT, and AR/VR programs to assist in buyer decision making Personal Branding: For c-suite executives, recruiters, legal and medical professionals, entrepreneurs and celebrities ESN (Enterprise Social Networking): Creating integrated customer &amp; employee engagement for communities. Marketing Strategist: Digital Transformation, Social Media, Influencer and Content Marketing Strategy Additionally, Dorothéa has appeared as a social media strategy subject matter expert on CBS and CNN. Dorothéa is an avid skateboarder who tweets to relax. Follow Dorothéa on Twitter &amp; Instagram @socialespionage Most passionate about Today, I’m heavily involved in marketing strategy in the four areas of my business: digital transformation, e-commerce, influencer, and content and social media marketing, as well as personal branding. The moment I’m done with our interview, I’m heading to a client’s. I work just about every day, I take Saturday afternoons off. People always ask me, Why do you work so much? And I say, well I don’t really consider it work because I love what I’m doing, so to me, it’s not really work! And when people say to me, But you don’t have much of a weekend! I answer: I’m an entrepreneur! There’s no such thing as a weekend. Digital Transformation Digital transformation, when you think about it as a whole, is the transformation of a business, and even the organizational activities, the processes, the competencies, the models of the business, to really fully leverage the changes and opportunities of a mix of digital technologies, and also their accelerating impact across the future of societies in a strategic and prioritized way. A lot of that sounds like high level stuff, but really, digital transformation isn’t just about technology. I read a recent survey in Harvard Business Review, it was of directors, CEOs, and senior executives, and they found that digital transformation was their number one concern because they felt their companies were at risk of not keeping up the pace in their industry. 70% of all digital technology initiatives unfortunately do not reach their goals, and a lot of that is because it has to always be with people first. I think that part of that is communication failure; I think that they get so excited about a new technology or a new way of teaching their employees or certain departments within their organization that they wind up losing sight of the fact that it’s really about people. So, it’s really important that you understand and figure out your business strategy before you invest in any kind of technology. Digital transformation, when you think about it, is understanding how to design the customer experience...

Bea Pole-Bokor Show Notes Bea Pole-Bokor is the Owner &amp; Founder of B!Social A professional diplomat by training, Bea has been successfully branding and promoting a country at top levels in the international scene before going digital and establishing B!Social. She’s worked at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, as well as with marketing giant L’Oréal prior to moving to New Zealand. With over 10 years of experience in communication, content creation, and events, she is now on a mission to share her passion for all things social. Bea is an official LinkedIn Local host, a member of the Organizing Committee, and a speaker at the Social Media Conference New Zealand 2019. Most Passionate About Today I consider myself as a very social person. This was the reason I started my business, B!Social, which is all about social media and beyond. I help businesses leverage the power of social media to grow. I love it because it’s all about people. I used to be a diplomat before and that’s all about social networking, so I’m passionate about people, relationships, getting together and sharing our knowledge, inspiring each other, and growing together. Social Media: Lonely vs. Social I’m struggling with this question because I think everything has two sides, the pros and the cons. I see social media as an opportunity for businesses to leverage, to reach people, to talk to and with the people who matter to them the most. I feel this is a wonderful platform to create community and help people get together, but I’m also very much aware of the dark side of social, so to say. In this world of digitalization, when we are always behind our screens and phones, I feel there is a massive disconnect, a process that’s happening with all of us; we’re getting over digitalized and less connected because everyone is using their devices and on the internet and it’s terrifying to see sometimes people chatting next to each other on their phones without really talking to each other. So, as much as social media is a wonderful platform to connect people, and to get social, it also has the cons, which include really isolating people. So, it’s really about finding the balance and knowing how to use these platforms in a mature and responsible way, as a business and user. Why did you make the switch to social media? I think I tapped into something really deep in myself, what I really love, what I’m really good at, and what I would like to do. I saw an opportunity and said, I love social media, I’m always hanging out on social media, I keep in touch with my family and friends, I’m observing the trends and I said, there’s a need for this. There’s a need for people to understand how it really works and amazing opportunities for businesses, so I created my own business, and that’s the story of B!Social. Who are you working with today? Who are your customers? I started focusing on the local environment first because that’s where I wanted to connect with the people and that’s where I saw there’s a need for this kind of service, so I started locally and over time as the business grew, I’ve been expanding past the local region going more into the national and international scene. Social media is typically a thing that you can do all around the world because it’s digital, you can Skype, you can Zoom, you can Facetime, you can messenger call whatever you want, you can connect on different platforms, but I really enjoy working with local communities

Josh Steimle Show Notes Josh Steimle is an author, speaker, entrepreneur, and executive coach. He has written over 300 articles for publications like Fortune, Time, Forbes, Inc., Mashable, TechCrunch, and Entrepreneur, and is the author of Chief Marketing Officers at Work, which was recognized in Success Magazine as one of the 5 Best Business Books of 2016. Entrepreneur Magazine put Josh on their 50 Inspirational Entrepreneurs to Watch in 2017 list, Forbes recognized him as one of 25 Marketing Influencers To Watch In 2017, and he was ranked #7 on Richtopia’s list of Top 100 Most Influential CMOs. &nbsp; Josh lives on a farm near Boston with his wife, two children, and 27 horses, and is an avid reader, trail runner, triathlete, and skateboarder. Most passionate about What I’m most passionate about today is personal influence. I believe most people are good people, and if I can help people to increase their influence, to be more influential, then they will use that influence to do good things and make the world a better place. So, that’s my mission. I’m on a mission to help people become more influential so they can change the world. I have courses, and a book that I’m writing called, The 7 Systems of Influence, I have my blog, email newsletter, and I’m active on social media, but the way this all came about is because I have a business, a digital marketing agency. We don’t focus on personal branding or influence, we focus on helping businesses to sell more, so we do SEO and things like that. A few years ago I started working on my personal brand as a way to market that agency and it really worked in a huge way. It was that experience of working on my personal brand and seeing it build my business that made me think, this is fun and this is something that I would love to help other people do. I’d love to help other people work on their personal brands so they can build their business or get their message out and that’s how this all started. Then, I went from coaching to these courses, to working on this book and I’m trying to get the word out any way I can to help people understand how personal branding works, how influence works, so they can apply it in their businesses and lives. Joshua’s best advice about approaching customers Even more foundational than market fit is something that I learned when I was writing this book. The way I wrote this book was I went out and interviewed 30 CMOs from large companies; from Target, PayPal, Spotify, GEE, as well from as a bunch of startups. As I interviewed these brilliant marketers who had successful track records in these companies, one thing stood out across the board: empathy. These marketers really understood their customers, they could get inside the minds of their customers, they might do focus groups, they would do testing and such, but they really understood, fundamentally, what their customers wanted. Biggest failure with a customer I’ve had so many failures. If I’ve had any success, I’ve had 10 times as many failures. Life’s interesting, especially as an entrepreneur and as somebody involved in marketing, you always show off the successful side of what you’ve done. You trumpet your successes; you hide your failures. Most of my biggest failures have to do with people; where I made a bad...

A special Trio Chat for International Women’s Day Show Notes Adriana Cecere Runs an Alignment and Growth consultancy for leaders, based in Syd-ney, Australia. The methodology has been proven, developed by model-ling strategies Adriana used whilst starting, developing and selling more than ten multi award winning enterprises over the past two decades. Labelled, the “Back Pocket CEO”. Adriana is the Author of an Amazon #1 best-selling book. She works with Business and Industry Leaders on their development, Business Alignment, Transformation, and Growth. Her big picture is to make a positive impact by helping Leaders across the globe and make a difference in their lives, that of their business and the greater community. More recently, jointly with Mikayla Jee has commenced a program to in-spire and empower women across the globe be the best version of themselves and follow their dreams. As an Advisory Committee member of The Buttery Foundation Board, she supports and promotes development of their programs, designed to rebuild and empower people recovering from substance abuse. Mikayla Jee Since I was young I can remember taking an interest to business, innovation, entrepreneurship and individuality. When I graduated from primary school at just age 11 I wrote in my yearbook that when I grow up, I want to be an entrepreneur. Now, at 19 years of age I am currently embarking on my personal and professional journey studying and working as part of the UTS Bachelor of accounting Co-operative scholarship program in the university of Technology Sydney. I have experienced six months as a financial analyst at American Express, have performed a sales assistant role at Pandora Jewelry from the age of fifteen and have assisted with the tutoring high school students in addition to numerous community and personal engagements, developing myself in order to create financial freedom, success and happiness in my career and life as a future businesswoman. Most passionate about Adrianna – I’m based in Sidney, Australia. I run a consultancy firm, helping businesses to improve and get to their next level. Over the past two decades, I’ve started, developed, and solved more than 10 successful enterprises, many of which have been multi-award winning, and my passion now, is helping young men and women in general globally to achieve their goals and become the best version of themselves. Mikayla – So, similarly to Adrianna, I’ve always been passionate about personal development and also development in others and helping others reach their potential, confidence, and empowerment. As a young woman, I find empowering women empowering for myself, so that’s something I’ve passionate about. I’m currently 19 years of age; I’m based in Sidney, Australia. I am currently studying at the University of Technology Sidney as part of a Bachelor of Accounting scholarship program where I work closely with financial institutions as well as embarking on my studies to develop myself as a hopeful future businesswoman and future business leader, so that’s where I am at the moment, and in terms of my vision for the future, I would love to continue to develop myself and hope to inspire others in their professional and personal development and also reach self success and freedom in my career and personal life as well.  Why women? There are so many available programs for inspiring women. Don’t you feel any entrepreneur needs empowerment and a jump-start to success? ...

…So, they (start-up entrepreneurs) read those titles and then don’t do the work! &nbsp; Don Philpott Show Notes Currently the CMO for Carista App, No.1 Product on Amazon UK and Japan. MD of AD360.co/AD360.eu &#8211; one of the world’s top marketing automation/inbound strategy companies. I’ve previously consulted for some the World’s biggest brands, was subcontracted from Adecco as Google Maps Business View Marketing Co-ordinator. Outsourced to Honda from IBM. Business Development Director (EMEA) at Focusvision, Strategic Marketing Manager for Faceracer.com &#8211; the world’s first social network for karting and Business development Lead for BulgarianHeadhunters.com &#8211; a startup that both signed a global contract with IBM in one year and beat the pants off of our competitors in the BPO recruitment sector. And more&#8230; &nbsp; Most passionate about I am currently a CMO marketing guide for a company called Carista, a global product that’s sold on Amazon. It’s essentially a tool that helps you customize your car care. Todder, who is the CEO of Carista is essentially a very successful startup entrepreneur. His product is available globally, it’s available on Amazon, Ebay, and all over the world, but he is a guy who essentially doesn’t see himself as an entrepreneur, and he feels very strongly that he’s a software engineer. He creates a product and that product is a very specific product for a very specific function to customize a car. When he hired me, I brought with me the entrepreneurial mindset. I said, look, you are a very funky CEO, you’re a very presentable guy, you have the skills to speak very well, you have a face that looks very well, and you’re a guy who can present his topic, meaning the technical side of the product, very well. And he really wasn’t into it. So, when you talk about entrepreneurialism, I’ve always been the guy who can market the entrepreneurial talent. I’ve had entrepreneurial products myself, I know how to brand stuff, I know how to send stuff to market, I know the channels to use, all of the stuff you and I are very well aware of. But the actual person to produce the product often is very specific about the product. They want it to be a great product and they identify with the product. Don’s best advice about approaching customers There’s a famous book by a guy named Eric Ries called The Lean Start Up. Essentially what he says, and many other guys who are starting up say, you must do it. You must address the customer, you must get the customer’s feedback, you must actually talk to customers, find out how they use your product, how they want to use it, and how they perceive it. So, there’s lots of this element in terms of specifically start up entrepreneurs, what they tend to do is, and I apologize for this but, they jump on entrepreneur porn. So, they read those titles and then don’t do the work that those books tell you to do. They all have valuable insight, they all tell you to understand your product, understand your customer, and when I’ve listened to your podcasts, all the people you’ve had on say very similar things. They say there’s an actual list of things you should do and you MUST do them. It’s not that you think about doing them, you actually do them, and then there is a process that flows from that. It’s one of the things about entrepreneurialism that people have a perception that it’s for young guys who are fancy-free and it’s for people who go it alone, who are innovator personality types. Now, the statistics don’t bear that out. If you spent 30 years in a large company and you have a certain amount of money that you take with you as a payoff, often that’s the best time to go and be an entrepreneur. You’re in your mid 40s, you’re...

Eyal Feder Levy Show Notes Eyal Feder-Levy &#8211; CEO and Co-Founder An urban planner and smart city geek, Eyal has worked with numerous cities to implement advanced technology and methodologies. In Zencity, he helps local governments around the world make better decisions daily by analyzing millions of citizen feedback data points using advanced AI. Before founding Zencity, Eyal was part of the founding team of “City Center,” Tel Aviv University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Cities and Urbanism, where he led several Smart City programs. Apart from Zencity and academic work, Eyal is part of World Economic Forum&#8217;s Future of Cities advisory board, a member of the US Conference of Mayors Business Council, and the youngest board member of the Israeli Urban Planners’ Association. Most passionate about The whole purpose of what we’re doing at Zencity is to help these weird organizations called local governments make better decisions. These organizations have such a huge impact on our lives, they manage our infrastructure, transportation, pubic safety, education, and so on and they can really be the difference between a good quality of life and a bad one. Today, it’s really a challenge to be data driven and measure the outcomes of their investment and the hard work they’re putting in. So, everything we’re doing is focused on helping these organizations be more efficient, make better decisions, be more in touch with the needs of their community, and that’s what we are passionate about. We’ve just started working in North America in the last year. We have about 35 cities in North America using our platform today and we’re excited to help more communities. Eyal’s best advice about approaching customers We did two things that worked really well for us in the beginning and I think that’s what helped us build our infrastructure: First, we do all of our sales and business operations from Tel Aviv. We used any connection we had to get that first client. In our case, we won an award by a really great organization called New Cities that chose us to be one of the most promising urban tech start-ups in 2017. From that award, we leverage the relationship with the organization to ask them to introduce us to cities in their network that they think could be good partners as a first partner in the USA. It’s really important for that first client to be a good partner. So that’s one thing: use whatever relationships you have to find that great design partner, that first good client. And the second thing was we learned about our industry and saw where people tend to meet. Before we had any clients, we flew out to a conference of an organization called ICMA, International City Managers Association. In one place, we met several thousand potential clients in three days, in out of them, 5 of them agreed to be our first clients. Biggest failure with a customer The first thing an entrepreneur needs to learn is that it’s okay to fail and it’s okay to get no for an answer. I’m privileged to have gotten a lot of what I wanted throughout life and the company’s experience being an entrepreneur was something that I had day in and day out to face not being accepted, not winning the awards I wanted, getting a lot of ‘no’s from investors, getting a lot of ‘no’s from clients, and that’s something you really get used to and I think it makes you much stronger and if you learn to leverage those rejections into learning moments, then you become more successful. One of our

REACH OR MISS Show Notes We are about to REACH 100 episodes of the REACH OR MISS podcast. And I can’t help but feel a bit sentimental about it. I want to discuss why I started this podcast, and address the question: did I achieve at least some of the main objective that brought me to launch this podcast almost two years ago (March 20th 2017, to be exact). &nbsp; I won’t tell the whole story now, just the main facts. In January 2008, after 21 years of executive marketing positions in leading multinational and local brands, I founded a company aiming to help entrepreneurs and startup founders become successful by winning market category leadership using the right marketing and sales approach. That was the basic idea. Shortly after I left my position working with one of the leading and most successful brands in the world, I received an offer to join a new VC that would focus on supporting entrepreneurs not only with money, but also with the needed basics of marketing and sales. The times were different back then. It was almost only technological young people who founded their own entrepreneurships, while the common perception was that they are all going to become billionaires some day soon. Today, almost everyone becomes an entrepreneur and the around 90-95% fail to achieve the success they aimed for. Why do so many entrepreneurs fail? There are several reasons. However, the most common reason, according to a famous research done by CB Insights, was “There was no market need” (42% of entrepreneurs that their startup fail). And as I have written, from our experience with 120 startups and entrepreneurial businesses, we worked deeply with them about their market strategy - only 5 companies found there wasn’t a market need for their new venture. The issue is that entrepreneurs are failing to find those that would be the first to adopt their product or service and are failing to describe what this new, un-familiar product is or does. &nbsp; That was one of the reasons I started this podcast almost two years ago, interviewing successful entrepreneurs and opinion leaders about what enables them to succeed and what their best advice to other entrepreneurs would be. Today, there are tens of thousands of entrepreneurs listening to our podcast and reading our posts, and I see a lot of confusion and questions about how entrepreneurs can succeed. &nbsp; We will soon launch our new online course for entrepreneurs guiding them through how to find their biggest market opportunity, and how to build their marketing and sales formation. &nbsp; Today, I chose to revisit some of our successful interviewees, most of them struggled with questions like you are struggling with on their path to success. I believe it will help you to find yours. &nbsp; The first advice is by Justin Hu. Justin was already successful in the space of Growth Marketing, but discovered that wasn’t where his passion was. Once he understood who his customers should be and what they needed, he built his current business. <div...

Pamela Goodwin Show Notes Pamela J. Goodwin is the founder of Goodwin Commercial based in Dallas, TX, a boutique commercial real estate firm specializing in de-veloping retail/restaurant pad sites (Walgreens, McDonalds), broker-age, investment sales and consulting services under one roof. Originally from Omaha, Pamela graduated from the University of Ne-braska-Lincoln, is a best-selling author, speaker, coach, member and contributor with Forbes Real Estate Council. When she isn’t working, Pamela enjoys traveling to the beach, staying fit, being a basketball mom, spending time with her family and friends. With Warren Buffett Most passionate about I’ve been in some form of commercial real estate for more than 30 years and in my own company, Goodwin Commercial, going on 13 years this month. We specialize in 100% retail commercial real estate, and our niche is single tenant net lease properties, which means we buy land and then lease it back to McDonald’s, Walgreens, Starbucks and similar tenants. What I’m really passionate about is helping people learn how to invest in commercial real estate. A lot of people are scared and are thinking they don’t have the money or the knowledge, so my passion is to help people buy their first commercial real estate asset. People are surprised by how they can get into buying a Starbucks and not operating it, but owning that investment property and showing you how to team up with partners, so you have cash flow, so you can be at the beach while you have money coming in. Pamela’s best advice about approaching customers Without customers, you don’t have a business. It all comes down to networking and as everyone says, it comes down to having the customers trust you. I truly love meeting people and helping them. I recently helped a couple that designs jewelry. They’ve been leasing space for more than 30 years in an office building. I’ve built a relationship with them and true, to show them how to own, have their own building instead of spending all that money leasing space. They closed on their first office space in December, and they could not be happier. It was building that relationship of giving them examples and walking them step by step knowing that you would be with them for the entire process. You need to help the customer. You are helping them save time or money. You need to build on that relationship, meet with them, check in with them, and see how you can help them. It’s key for repeat business. If they are happy with what you’re done for them, they’re going to refer you to other people. Biggest failure with a customer I had been working with a client for more than a year; it was a retail tenant looking for space. Sometimes, because I’ve been doing the business for so long, I can trust people, and sometimes I think document and paperwork can get in the way of relationships to a degree, but you still have to be protected and in this case, I did trust this person too much that we were working one on one, meeting with the landlord, and then when it came time to sign the deal, the lease, he requested half of my commission, which was a complete surprise. Which doesn’t happen too often in our business. I refused to pay him half because it was never talked about up front, and then he contacted the

Brian Hart Show Notes Brian Hart is an online columnist for Inc. Magazine and founder of Flackable, a national, full-service public relations and digital marketing agency headquartered in Philadelphia. The agency, which he bootstrapped in 2014 at the age of 27, represents a national client base of financial and professional services firms. Most passionate about I started my public relations and digital marketing agency, Flackable, about 5 years ago. Prior to this, I worked for a large public relations agency in New York. I got a LinkedIn message from a company interested in finding new public relations representation. We connected on the phone, we clicked, and I had been sitting on a business plan for a few months prior to connecting with them. I knew at some point I would take the leap and start my own business. I thought I was a year or so away from making that a reality, but once things clicked, I decided to quit my job, start working with them, and go all in. On the PR side of things, we utilize technology and identity influencers, reporters, the media, who are the right fit for our clients, who are looking for experts, just like our clients. So, we use technology to expedite that process of identifying them, researching them, and getting them connected with our clients to create mutually beneficial relationships. On the other side of it, and this is very closely related to public relations, is search engine optimization. I see search engine optimization as one of the biggest opportunities for these small to mid-sized financial firms we work with right now. Financial services are notoriously late to adapt to new marketing trends and technology when it comes to marketing. So, while a lot of other industries, like real estate, retail, and so forth have been all over SEO and investing in boosting their search ranking and increasing their online visibility, these financial firms are just starting to figure it out, so I’ve invested a lot of time, money, and training into building our search engine optimization and that’s heavily backed by the technology we license. Brian’s best advice about approaching customers The first thing is know who your customer base is, who your target market is, and identify their pain points. That’s how you create a brand and a message and a vision that’s going to resonate with them. Identify those pain points, have some empathy for them, I mean really put yourself in their shoes and whatever problem that they are facing. That’s how you invent creative solutions for them, which is the second thing, and how you can put out a product or service that’s going to interest them. That’s going to help them succeed and meet their own goals. Biggest failure with a customer This came from my previous agency. It was a big lesson, and really, it was a lesson that helped to form the identity and the dynamic of our customer relationships now, with my new venture. That is understanding that when a client hires a consultant, whether that’s a public relations consultant, an accounting expert, a lawyer, a real estate agent, whatever type of professional that might be, they don’t want that person asking them questions; I mean, yes, you need to ask questions, but the customer doesn’t want to drive the strategy themselves, they want assertive advice from the person who should be the expert. So, when I went off on my own, it was important to me to make sure that we never fell into that type of client dynamic with my...

Robin Colner Show Notes Robin Colner is an acclaimed digital and social media marketing strategist, university educator corporate trainer and MBA graduate of the Wharton School. After working for Fortune 100 companies, Robin founded DigiStar Media, a digital and social media marketing agency. DigiStar is dedicated to helping businesses and professionals leverage social media and digital marketing to engage prospects, attract new clients, amplify the impact of advertising and public relations campaigns and implement successful integrated marketing programs. Robin is also the founder and Director of Fordham University’s Digital and Social Media Certificate Program and the instructor for the social media marketing classes offered by Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business. Most passionate about I am running a digital and social media marketing firm: Digistar Media, digital and social media strategy and training firm. When you’re in this field, you can’t help but be passionate about it because I believe that everybody needs to have a foundation of information about this. There are many people in business today that feel it’s something they don’t want to pay attention to, or they want to give to a young person to pay attention to, or they wish they didn’t have to pay attention to it, or they’re overly hyped about it. So, what I like to do is make sure everybody, for age 20 – 120 are capable of understanding how they can leverage the channels without feeling like they are losing their privacy, that someone is learning too much about them, but being able to use them to reach their goals whether it’s a business goal or even a personal goal, or getting know or getting more visible or following their own passions and finding people that they can build a community with. I needed to find a niche, because I was a little older and not going to be necessarily hired by agencies since I was out of my 30s. So, I looked at the market, just like an entrepreneur would do, which let me see where there was a need that was not being met, and that need was the business owners over the age of 45 that were just beginning to understand how to get their websites developed and they hadn’t even thought about this stuff and they were totally overwhelmed. I’m perfect for that because I know the world they are coming from and I can help them along without it being intimidating. That’s when I set up my program, after that I had all these ideas for how I wanted to run classes and I can share that later. Robin’s best advice about approaching customers Entrepreneurial companies are usually born out of a need identified by its founder for a certain product, service, or technological solution. It’s best for a business to test its assumptions with possible customers or clients to validate their proof of concept. Too often, companies spend time and resources developing a product that’s really in search for a customer. In the technology space, I get calls every day from platforms because they want me to use their platform. There are hundreds of thousands of them build, little better mousetraps, we’ll call them, right? They don’t have the marketing know how, muscle, or money behind them to be the ones that people actually use because we still live in a world were people want to use the known quantities, the platforms that other people recommend, that they’ve heard about at conferences, that they’ve heard about in forums with their peers. So, it’s important to focus on the customer. Biggest failure with a customer ...

Deepak Shukla is the Founder and CEO of Pearl Lemon, a 4x award-winning SEO agency in London. Deepak bootstrapped the business from his mum’s place to a £250k company in less than 24 months. He’s since gone on to invest in algorithmic trading, launch 5-figure online courses and continues to grow. Deepak has been featured in TEDx, SEMrush, BBC, Chelsea FC, Appsumo, Bright Talks &amp; more. When he&#8217;s not running his agency, you&#8217;ll find him running marathons (25 so far) completing Ironmen (2 so far), getting inked (40% body coverage) or playing with his cat Jenny. Most passionate about I’m passionate about helping people. I think everybody has the ability to unleash greatness within their lives. The way I’m serving businesses today is through my agency, Pearl Lemon; we specialize in helping companies make sure they get enough visibility on Google for keyword terms that can really get the right people to their doorstep. That’s what I do today. Where I’m headed: there are now Pearl Lemon videos, we’re in the midst of releasing Pearl Lemon reviews, I’m trying to build a foundation from which we can spread our message about accelerated growth within not only the businesses we run, but within our own lives. Deepak’s best advice about approaching customers Be your own devil’s advocate. The number one thing that anyone, as an entrepreneur, needs to be able to do is be able to get money in the bank. You have to be able to sell your proposition and the way you do that is be able to answer any question any one throws at you. For me, those questions are: Do you have a case study? Yes. What format of a case study? Any format you want; we’ve got video, PDF, spreadsheets, fancy documents. Do you have someone I can speak to? Yes, you could reach out to Hayut right now, here’s her LinkedIn profile, I’ll also do an email intro, what would you prefer? Brilliant! You should be able to answer all of those kinds of questions in any conversation you go into because a lot of people will falter and fluster here, and I do believe that in today’s age, it’s easy to spot where the numbers don’t quite make sense or things don’t quite stack up. The presence of competition is so developed that you need to make sure that you have left no stone unturned. When you go into these conversations, ask yourself: would I be satisfied by my answer? Does that answer make sense? And certainly, if you can begin to make sure you’ve covered every answer, you very quickly begin to differentiate yourself and this has been the way that we’ve begun to win awards. We’ve won three now in our first year as a SEO only agency and I’d love for more people to copy me. I think you need to be unreasonable in your pursuit of success and unreasonable in the level of quality that you bring to the table. They’ll say well, the client didn’t provide the blog content, and I’d say well, why did you just assume that they would do what they said they’d do. That’s your fault, for making an assumption that people follow through. Do you follow through on your New Year’s resolutions? Do you follow through on your fitness/weight/diet goal plans? You probably don’t do half the things you say. So, why do you expect someone else to do the things they’ll say they do? It’s naive. Biggest failure with a customer There’s a company called City Relay; they are a property management company. At that stage of the business, I was focused on the business development and sales side, so I lost touch a little bit with the day to day of what was going on with the...

Christopher Penn Show Notes Christopher S. Penn is a Co-Founder and Chief Innovator of Trust Insights. Christopher is a recognized thought leader, best-selling author, and keynote speaker. He has shaped four key fields in the marketing industry: Google Analytics adoption, data-driven marketing, modern email marketing, and artificial intelligence/machine learning in marketing. Mr. Penn is a 2019 IBM Champion in IBM Business Analytics, co-founder of the groundbreaking PodCamp Conference, and co-host of the Marketing Over Coffee marketing podcast. Prior to cofounding Trust Insights, he built the marketing for a series of startups with a 100% successful exit rate in the financial services, SaaS software, and public relations industries. Most passionate about I am the cofounder of a startup called Trust Insights and we’re a company that helps marketers do more with their data; make more money with it, show better results, and so on and so forth. My personal focus in this space is around machine learning and artificial intelligence. How we use the software, the computers, and the technology that are available today with stuff that is in market today to do that better, faster, cheaper for us. Christopher’s best advice about approaching customers Do you actually listen to your customers? A lot of marketers do so anecdotally, like they’ll listen to a call or they’ll talk to somebody but they’re not doing actual research with representative sampling, either running large scale surveys, doing intensive, large scale focus groups, or bringing in all that data. How many emails are in your customer service inbox that you, personally, have read? A lot of marketers say, “Oh no, that’s customer service’s problem, we don’t read that inbox.” No! That’s where all the good stuff is! I did a project this past summer, for a food and beverage company. They said, “We want to know what our customers are asking us about that we don’t know about.” So, we looked through their transcripts from their call center. They make stabilizers for beverages, and two things popped up that I’d never heard of: Oat milk and hemp milk which are vegan alternatives to dairy. So, here’s an entirely new line of products that you could build that you know there is an interested market for! Biggest failure with a customer It’s more of a personal failing than a customer failing, which is, in the early days, pricing strategy was difficult because I didn’t know how to price any of this. We started talking to our advisors, who said, “You just shouldn’t talk to customers about price, period. Get a sales person and put them on commission, but the salesperson is the one who talks prices. You can talk to the customer about solving their problems and understanding their pain, but you are no longer allowed to talk price with the customer.” That made for, probably, rougher days in the beginning than it had to and now, being on the other side of that, I can’t understand the value of a solution to a customer because I don’t see the value to the customer. The failure, on my part, was talking to customers about price because I didn’t value it properly. Biggest success due to the right customer approach One of the biggest successes, and one of the things I don’t see companies do nearly enough is sending out a survey that is completely open ended to ask people what they want more of. What is it that you want more of? What can we do for you? How can we provide you...

John Hopper Show Notes John Hopper created the system The Greatest on the Planet to change the lives of millions of people. Two years ago he turned his proven system into an effective workbook that changes the dynamic between employees and their employers. For over 200 years the basic dynamic between employer and employee has not changed. Way back in the 1700&#8217;s when someone was hired to come work on the farm is was &#8220;do as I tell you and I&#8217;ll pay you for it&#8221;. That is the same basis we&#8217;re working on still today and it no longer works. John is a motivating speaker, and a highly sought after for his expertise on “the 6 key points to having irreplaceable employees”, limiting beliefs, money, and human behavior. Most passionate about Way back in 1992, almost 20 years ago, I was working for a large construction company. I was very high in the company, even thought I was very young; I grew up through that company very quickly. I became the first person outside of the owners in order of rank. There were four owners of the company, and then me, and everybody else was behind us. So, I was fighting to become an owner of that company. Right out from underneath me – and I was working on a really big project at the time – they sold the company! Well, I didn’t own it, so I didn’t get any ownership in the sale. So, I was very upset. They basically sold to an investment banker from New York City. I didn’t want anything to do with it. I wanted to own my own business one day; I didn’t want to be the top guy in a New York investment firms construction company. So, I quit. When I quit, my employer tried to convince me to go out and start my own business. I said, “Well, I’m not really ready for that. I’m too young.” You tell yourself all these excuses as to why you can’t do it. So, I go to work for another construction company and then I realized that it’s awful, just horrible. I was used to being spoiled where I’m at, I was the number 5 guy in the company! So, then I was forced to go start my own business. At 27 years old, I decided to take the plunge. I started in September of 1999. From September until the end of December, I sat at my kitchen table, got on the phone, called every single person I could possibly think of and I sold $6 million worth of work in four months. I was selling my construction services to help you build a building. John’s best advice about approaching customers If it’s just a one person show, without any employees; they need to be customer focused. If they have employees though, they need to worry about the employees. Let the employees focus on your customers. If you are focused on the customer and the employee is focused on the customer, then who is focused on he employee? Nobody! And they are the most important part of the company. So, the only thing I want you to worry about are your employees. Wake up every single day and worry about what else you can do for your employees, the same way you would if you were worried about a customer. Biggest failure with a customer I was focused on the customer, not on the employee. And because of that, I lost hundreds of employees. I wasn’t paying attention to them; I was paying attention to the customers. Biggest success due to the right customer approach In my own company, my life changed. As an example: getting materials to a job site. Oftentimes, that would become my responsibility because nobody else was available to do it. So I’d...

Brian Mawdsley Show Notes 20+ years in the IT and digital space along with a flair for sales has landed me with the ability to see the technical and the big picture. This is useful as I can now help organizations make the most of the technology that exists to achieve their business goals. I have created products and solutions for companies and for my own company with a combined revenue achieved through these solutions well over $ 10 million. I have created, developed and launched the &#8216;Social Media Formula&#8217;, a blueprint methodology that embraces multiple platforms to achieve optimum success online. The SMF along with myinsider website solutions, a no fuss professional website solution for SME’ s is live and ready to help you get online the right way. Most passionate about My company’s name is Inside Man. Before I started my business, my dad ran a small biltong business. He came to me knowing I was in the technology space and he said, “I need a man on the inside.” And that’s where the name came from. In fact, the whole company was built on the idea of making or giving the entrepreneur business owner the impression that we were working on the inside of their company to do the digital elements. A couple of years ago, I came across a group of interns who were all basically trying to build little businesses while at University. All of them needed websites. None of them had funding to do the website. And through working with them, we came up with a product that I referred to as ‘The Insider’, which is a low-cost, pay as you go type website that allows them to get a beautifully functional operational, website, a full time support person, for life, managing updates, changing things on the website, whatever needs to be done, at a fixed, affordable monthly fee. The idea there was that that element would no longer need to be a headache for the entrepreneur or business owner. Then, that led to the next step, obviously, which is marketing. So, what I’ve developed is what I refer to as the social media formula, which runs on a 3, 6, or 9 day cycle. It’s not designed to be a campaign type approach, which is extremely high impact over a short period of time. It’s also not designed as maintenance, which is your daily posting and keeping the account alive. It’s more of a hybrid of those two. What it does is it starts with a blog article that obviously needs to be posted on the website that we built for the client, and that article needs to primarily be something that is topical and interesting, not necessarily a hard sell. Not necessarily marketing a product or the services of the entrepreneur or business owner, but rather an interesting article that is going to have a much wider reach. In the article, there needs to be what I refer to as a ‘bridging term’. One of the points within the article can be a bridge to something that the entrepreneur is trying to market. And that’s where you put your call to action. For the rest of the cycle, the 3, 6, or 9 days, across Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, and potentially LinkedIn, there will be posts relating to the article, not the product or call to action, but the article itself to increase brand awareness and traffic to the site. The whole point of the cycle is to add value to the end user. To see the entrepreneur as someone who is adding value to their life; and that’s the starting point of the relationship. Brian’s best advice about approaching customers I learned this many years ago in a sales training program that I did as a core center agent. The lesson that

And the main trends in entrepreneurial marketing for the New Year I often asked how I choose my interviewees for this podcast. I imagine the main reason for the question is the high diversity of the eighty guests on the show since its establishment on March 2017. It’s not easy to find a clear pattern among them. Can you guess what the connection is between interviewees like: Kate Erickson, Guy Kawasaki, Pam Wasley, John Lee Dumas, Mike Stelzner, Jack Kosakowski, Andy Crestodina, Mark Schaefer, Mark Metry, Mike Allton, Chris Brogan, Pascal Guyon, David Beebe, and Lee Oden, just to name a few? You already know that they are all successful entrepreneurs and/or influencers (opinion leaders) in their fields… However, besides these common characteristics, they are all customer focused entrepreneurs, which is what marketing is all about, after all. They, as entrepreneurs, succeeded due to their customer focused approach, or as educators and influencers about this critical issue. I chose interviewees who left their mark on the field of entrepreneurial marketing. But before diving into the most meaningful interviews that marked the changing marketing direction for entrepreneurs in 2019, I would like to remind you about the main differentiation of entrepreneurial and/or startup marketing: It is the need to introduce, sell, and brand a new unfamiliar product or service at least in one aspect - It can be a totally new product, or a new target market for the product, or a totally new business model and the like. &nbsp; The biggest trends of entrepreneurial marketing for 2019 and who the trend setters and the early adopters of those trends are Entrepreneurial successes based on a failure When I joined the entrepreneurial industry, entrepreneurs were considered as magical geniuses, which were considered to be potential billionaires by the fact they established a startup. But with time many entrepreneurs and startups fell, and a lot of investments went down the drain. A few of my guests, like James Arthur Ray, Ovi Negrean, and Josh Elledge talked about the inevitable failures as a base for success. &nbsp; Ovi Negrean Even though you might be at one peak at one point, if you want to go to an even higher peak, you will have to go through some valleys. <div...

Dhariana Lozano Show Notes Dhariana Lozano has been in the social media and digital marketing world for over 7 years. She is the co-founder of Supremacy Marketing, a boutique social media marketing firm based in New York City who manages the social media presence of clients like Chef Jordan Andino, Flip Sigi and more. Her experience ranges in creating social media strategies and consulting for both B2C and B2B brands to help them stand out and break through digital walls for ongoing success. She blogs at DhariLo.com where she provides social media tips, resources and courses. You can see her work published in Social Media Week, Social Media Today, and the AgoraPulse blog. Most passionate about I’ve been in social media marketing for about 8 years now. I started off in the corporate world and I went to agencies and I felt that social media was a bit of an after thought; people would bring me in last minute into meetings. They didn’t really understand social media and what I could do. I got a little frustrated and I decided I wanted to do this on my own and work with the companies I wanted to work with and work one on one with people to help them understand social media, so that it’s not the last thing we think about, but something they think about in the beginning, when they want to create a campaign or start a business or a product the want to market. I started my business about 4 years ago with my partner; we help entrepreneurs, small businesses, large businesses, we help anyone who wants to be on social media. Dhariana’s best advice about approaching customers I think, as an entrepreneur or small business, you have to be very clear about who you are so you can project to your potential customers or your ideal customers in the right way. I know sometimes people try to talk to everyone but that doesn’t work, so be clear about who you are and who your customer is; it makes the process a lot easier. That’s not the easiest process to go through, figuring out who you want to work with or who your target customers are, but it’s worthwhile sitting down with your team, if you have one, or just by yourself, and thinking about who you are and the image you want to project; like what do you want people to see you as and what makes you stand apart from every other business. I live in New York City, so we have hundreds of thousands of sandwich shops, but every one is a little bit different; you need to find what differentiates you. Biggest failure with a customer I worked with a company, this was 8 years ago, back when social media was fairly new, at least to them. I created a post that had a political tone, but I didn’t think much of it, and people got upset. The customers of the company got upset. We took the post down, and it really affected how I felt. I thought it was no big deal, my customer was very upset with me, their customers were upset with them, and that was really hard. It was funny because now, in 2018, we’re seeing brand take on issues that they wouldn’t touch before, political issues, social issues, and I think it’s such a drastic change from 8 years ago. I think it’s great that brands are embracing issues that, before, they wouldn’t go near. So, that was a learning experience, but now I feel okay, because brands are really taking a stand politically and socially. Eventually, it wasn’t a match, for different reasons, but it did affect the relationship, but we got over it and fixed it. I profusely apologized. It taught

Matt Sweetwood Show Notes Matt Sweetwood is a thought leadership and personal branding ex-pert and was the CEO of a social network. With over 30 years of en-trepreneurial experience, he has been credited with the reinvention of the modern camera store, as well as the country’s largest in-store photography education program. However, his greatest achievement is having raised five successful children to adulthood as a single dad. He is a life and business coach and is a regular contributor on national TV and to several publications. He has a bestselling self-help book, “Leader of the Pack: How a single dad of five led his kids, his business and himself from disas-ter to success. Most passionate about I ran a company for 28 years. It was quite an adventure; reinvented that business several times, exited that business successfully (that means you sold it). I’m not one of those people that really want to die behind the desk of the company I started many years ago; I like to move on. In the last 2 years I got to be the CEO of a social media network, a start up, and published my book and now what really excites me is to take those 30 years of experience and I coach executive CEOs typically and I consult companies. It’s an exciting thing to do because you get to walk in to new places all the time, really use your brain, get paid to use your brain and really make a different. In addition to that, I write; my book, Leader of the Pack, just came out. I write for Entrepreneur magazine, I’m a speaker; I speak all over the place on leadership, personal branding, and entrepreneurship, and some spiritual topics too. I live in New York and being in the business world, being in a diverse business world where one company I consult is a large nonprofit, another is a manufacturing and distribution company, and another is a larger company, more of a conglomerate; so that kind of diversity is exciting. Matt’s best advice about approaching customers This piece of advice translated in the most general terms is that when you approach a customer, it should be ‘How can I serve you?’ not ‘How can I get your money from you?’ I have a famous saying, when someone says it’s not about the money, it’s always about the money. You have to care about your customers or clients first and you have to do it in an authentic way. We’ve all been in a retail store or restaurant or even we’ve had a consultant come in, when they’re sitting there and their heaping false praise on you and their talking, but you can sense that they just want to convince you. If you do that, you aren’t going to be successful. You have to build a business that authentically tries to solve customer’s problems and serve them. If you do that, they will come to you. Biggest failure with a customer We’ve had this happen several times. We’ve brought in a product that was from a major vendor and was defective, but it wasn’t clear how the product became defective; we’re talking about $10,000 camera. A customer comes in and says the camera doesn’t work. We say okay and we try to apply the warranty, the vender says the camera was damaged, the customer says I didn’t damage it, I just took it out. We’ve had the happen several times. That’s a situation where you sometimes end up losing the customer because you can sell that customer for ten years and not make $10,000, so your choice is to eat the $10,000 or do something. It happens a little bit more than I’d like. We can offer to pay for the repair of the camera, you try to settle with...

The biggest risks of entrepreneurship Show Notes On the one hand, entrepreneurship looks like the ultimate dream; countless posts offer tips and tricks to leave the 9-5 job behind and find your freedom or be your own boss. On the other hand, most people prefer to keep the entrepreneurial journey as a desirable dream. Establishing and managing your own brand new business is incredibly challenging, especially because it involves taking high level risks. &nbsp; On my interviews with more than seventy successful entrepreneurs and opinion leaders for the REACH OR MISS podcast, successes and failures both get a meaningful share of each show. Every entrepreneur experiences both. Yet, a few of my guests tumble down to rock bottom - and then, they discovered their strength and the path to success. I would like to share with you four of the most amazing stories I’ve heard over the last year and a half since starting my podcast. &nbsp; One of my most surprising and exciting interviews was with Bruce Van Horn, who started his story by saying: “I’m an executive and life coach, as well as a business and leadership consultant.  I survived stage 4 prostate cancer, the death of my daughter, a divorce, and 2 bankruptcies. I had a bankruptcy that happened a couple of years after my daughter’s death, just before my divorce; I was at a very low point of my life and I hated everything about my life at that point.” I think it is an amazing story, not only because the tough experiences Bruce went through, but because of his journey to reach a meaningful fulfilling level of success. Bruce Van Horn Bruce Van Horn is a bestselling author, speaker, thought leader, transformational life coach, business and leadership coach, marathon runner, and cancer conqueror. Bruce hosts the “Life Is A Marathon” podcast, which has millions of listeners in over 210 countries around the world. Bruce is passionate about sharing his life experiences and

The biggest failure vs. the biggest success - what leads successful entrepreneurs to the highest breakthrough? &nbsp; It was September 15th, 2008. I was in Zurich, on my way to a big annual exhibition with one of my startup clients. I got a call from my bank’s manager. A big payment of 25,000$ that was to be deposited into my bank account that day had been canceled. It was the day of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy; the financial landscape changed forever that day. Over the next few days, two of my biggest clients cancelled their contracts. My company was less than nine months old. I carefully built it step by step with clients I knew and could trust. It was my first year of being independent after more than 20 years of executive marketing roles in international brands. The situation was totally new to me. It was a painful failure and the next few months were incredibly difficult, however, looking back, this was exactly what allowed me to grow so fast in the following years. In 2010, we closed the first investment of 1.5 million dollars for one of our clients. Suddenly the company was growing faster than ever. If you asked which of these cases affected my future business success most, it was definitely the failure. Not the success that came afterward. What can you learn from these failures? What can you learn about success? And more importantly, how can your failures and successes affect your business? &nbsp; &nbsp; Daniel Gefen looks at his failures and successes in a straightforward way. I love the way he talks about communicating with your customers: ”The secret is that people actually crave authenticity, they crave real genuine people, and if you can do that, you will have no problem finding people to buy something from you.” Daniel Gefen – Podcaster &amp; co-founder of Get Featured Started out on 6 figure salary at age 23. Went broke &amp; got evicted onto the streets with family.  Started business from scratch. Went broke again. Outsourced his business to a...

Ovi Negrean Show Notes After 10+ years of experience working in various firms, ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, having also some entrepreneurial ventures in between, Ovi jumped full time into the startup world with nugget (acquired) and is now focused on SocialBee. He has experience in building and managing software development teams; building SaaS and mobile products; creating ROI-positive social media; marketing and product launches. He is passionate about helping startups succeed in building great products, finding the appropriate launch sequence, and the best levers to grow. He’s also an idea machine and can really help with brainstorming. His imaginary friends say he’s a fun guy. Most passionate about My passion lies in building the company and the machine behind what we are creating; we have this combination of the tool and of the services. It’s almost like running two separate businesses, and that requires a lot of moving parts that we need to fine-tune, especially in the team area. Ovi’s best advice about approaching customers Especially in today’s world, where tools and mass media surround us, and it’s a one to many world where people want to talk directly to the masses and rely on automation a lot, it’s important to make sure you don’t over automate things. You should have a tool that you pre-filled and set everything yourself. Also, the first engagement with the new followers, you can’t automate that. Especially when you are starting out, it’s really important not to think at scale. You have to start small, you have to talk one to one with customers, to understand if the solution you are thinking of fits their needs or if there is a bigger need that you haven’t discovered. You really need to make sure what you automate and what you don’t because the human touch is important and this is how we engage with each other. Biggest failure with a customer We had a couple of incidents recently, where it wasn’t necessarily because of us but it had a big impact on us, especially on our psychological state at the time. At one point, because of things that we didn’t know, our payment processor stopped processing our payments. The customers weren’t able to pay us and we had to switch processers almost overnight, which was not easy. It was a lot of work on our team’s behalf to switch to the new processor and to make sure that everything was still going smoothly. Unfortunately, it was not something we were able to control at the level that we wanted to. We are a social media management platform, so we rely on the social media platforms for APIs to be able to post on the platforms. But because of the whole Facebook issue, they stopped providing some API access and it took quite some time to get those accesses back. It was a stressful period for us because customers were not able to post, especially in Facebook groups, and Facebook was not communicative about the issue. Now, it’s solved but it showed us that there are some places where we depend on key partners and we need to make sure that we diversify that area so if that happens again, we have a solution. Biggest success due to the right customer approach So, I’m going to tell you about our very first customer. His name is Zachary. I’d written some articles about marketing. He reached out and I’m always happy to help people with ideas for their startups or marketing ideas, and so on. I

“...Being hungry and wanting to win is important. But all that ambition should be equally balanced with patience... and patience is hard.” I just couldn’t stop watching this DailyVee 061 short video advice: Gary Vaynerchuk's advice DailyVee 061 Being more patient means playing the long game. It means being customer focused, not to mention listening and reacting to markets’ needs and changes. It’s a chaotic world, the journey is hectic, and many entrepreneurs just jump on any new opportunity or challenge. One of the first questions I ask my guests on the Reach or Miss podcast is 'what would be their best advice to entrepreneurs regarding customers’ focus, marketing, and sales?" In this episode, I collected five of the best tips from my guests, market leaders, and successful entrepreneurs. Raoul Davis Raoul Davis is CEO of Ascendant Group Branding, which helps CEOs, retired athletes, and executive leaders increase their top line revenue. Ascendant’s integrated model includes brand strategy, public relations, book deals, social media, and brand design. Davis has been invited to small business forums at the White House and is considered to be an expert on CEO and executive branding. Raoul’s career My journey started back in my college studies, where I was involved in all the parties on campus until a friend of mine told me I have to run for the vice president election of the campus activity board. Then I decided to develop some leadership skills. Then I learned my first lesson about branding. I thought the fact I did a good...

Ep. 83 Show Notes Hi, Reachers, In a fascinating and thought-provoking interview with Mark Schafer, whom I see as the leading marketing experts today, he said: “The question I’m wrestling with now is that everywhere I go, marketing seems to be stuck. There are a few symptoms: People are overwhelmed by technology in marketing They are overusing technology in marketing They’re stuck in ineffective patterns Many of the companies today, either big or small, have social media departments that were established in 2010 to 2014, and I can assure you that almost none of the output these teams are producing have been updated. So much has been changed with social media during the last years. Marketing is too tech-centric instead of human-centric. We don’t want to talk with our customers anymore; we just want to monitor them on Twitter. We automate everything and we are losing our hearts, our souls, and our way. Marketing is sick right now!” Longtime readers and listeners know that I, and this podcast, is all about being customer focused. However, neither Mark Schaefer nor I think that the new marketing technology tools are bad. The opposite is true, I believe that the new technological tools and methods allow marketing communication, engagement, and is personal in a way we've never dreamt of. The point is which tools regarding customers, marketing, and sales are the best to use to maximize your entrepreneurial business. &nbsp; In this podcast, I ask my interviewees for their recommendation of the best marketing tool. However, I specifically tell them that I’m not asking about the latest, shiniest tool in the endless list. I want to hear which tool they use that most effects their marketing and business success. In today's episode, you will hear some of the most important recommendations from my interviewees. In the show notes of this new episode you will find the list of the most recommended tools of our guests, opinion leaders, and successful entrepreneurs. &nbsp; This surprisingly highly recommended and tool received recommendations of five different guests including Chris Brogan, Tomas Laurinavicius, and Joe Pulizzi. I chose to share the beautiful answer of Mike Stelzner: Mike Stelzner

Mitch Joel Show Notes Mitch Joel is Founder of Six Pixels Group &#8211; an advisory, investing and content producing company that is focused on brands, commerce and community. He has been called a marketing and communications visionary, interactive expert and community leader (he prefers the title &#8220;Brand Hacker&#8221;). He is also an entrepreneur, author, journalist, investor, trusted advisor, and passionate speaker who connects with people worldwide by sharing his insights on business transformation and marketing innovation. He has been named one of the top 100 online marketers in the world, and was awarded the highly prestigious Top 40 Under 40. Prior to Six Pixels Group, Mitch spent close to two decades building, running and (eventually) selling his business. He was President of Mirum – a global digital marketing agency operating in 25 countries with close to 3000 employees. Mirum is owned by WPP. Most passionate about Right now is an interesting time for me. I had been building and running with three business partners a digital marketing agency called Mirum that I recently left as of July 1st. I’m now in a new venture, which is called 6 Pixels Group, which is a business based off my blog and podcast, Six Pixels of Separation, but it’s more of a holding company for a whole bunch of things I’ll be working on. Mitch’s best advice about approaching customers I’ve spent a lot of time out in the world, sharing and connecting, and I think that’s the primary way people find and connect to me. I’ve spent a lot of time doing work for non-profits and volunteering. I’ve been very fortunate, and I’m playing a bit of a long game here, I’m really doing my best to not think immediately about what the issues are but instead how I can push things forward. Businesses need somebody to help them figure out how to get better consumers, and that’s the type of game I want to be a part of. I think you really need to understand and live your purpose. When you have a purpose that’s very specific as a business, your values, your mission, and not just the pedantic words you put on a sign, but the ones you live and breath, those are the ways that people truly believe or see a level of differentiation. So, I try to figure out what the differentiation is; it’s very hard to have something completely unique. Once you figure out what your angle is, it’s easier to say no to the types of businesses that aren’t right for you. I think, a lot of times, entrepreneurs get trapped because it’s hard. I’ve started many ventures and I know at the beginning you want to take everything and go for everything and it’s hard to do that really well. Biggest failure with a customer I was part of an agency business for over 15 years and you lose a lot more than you win, so I think the overall process of pitching would be the one. You have to have a very thick skin, you’re looking at it from the prospective of ‘you’ve answered everything perfectly, you’ve met them, there’s good chemistry’, but you still didn’t win the business. So, when you’re in the agency business, that question is a strange one because it’s all about spending most of your days losing and not winning the client, and not being successful. Once you have the client, the challenge is keeping them and trying to maintain that level because other people are knocking on that door. So when you ask ‘was there one failure?’ There’s many and they happen every single year because you’re counting on that to grow and maintain the business. It’s a constant slog when you are...

Andy Crestodina Show Notes Andy Crestodina is a co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media, an award-winning 38-person digital agency in Chicago. Over the past 18 years, Andy’s provided guidance to 1000+ busi-nesses. He speaks at national marketing conferences, writes for big marketing blogs and hosts a little podcast. Andy has written hundreds of articles on content strategy, SEO, in-fluencer marketing, conversion and Analytics. Top 10 Online Marketing Experts, Forbes Top 50 Marketing Influencer, Entrepreneur Magazine Top 25 Content Marketers, Express Writers/Buzzsumo Top 10 Social Media Influencers, Social Media Explorer He is also the author of Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Hand-book for Content Marketing. Most passionate about I love the human side of being an entrepreneur, marketing, and business in general. So, I’m really excited about live events, especially since yesterday was our annual conference, called ContentJam, which is kind of a mini version of some of the other conferences that you and I know and love; maybe 1/10th the size of San Diego Social Media Marketing World. As a tactic, and as a marketing strategy, live events are great for us because the service we offer is web design, which is very high touch, lots of subtlety and nuance. You want to have face-to-face meetings with clients when possible. The sales process involves a lot of trust, so it’s good to meet with people face to face prior to beginning projects. Our focus has always been local; we’re in Chicago. So, live events have been a great strategy for us because it’s a chance to meet so many people and to build trust and awareness, as well as teach and be an educational program. So, for 8 years, we’ve had a monthly event. For 7 years, we have an annual conference. For the last 2 years, we’ve added a quarterly event, so it works really well as a demand gen approach. It’s not super fast, but it’s very durable and powerful in the long run. Andy’s best advice about approaching customers Well, listening and empathy are the two greatest skills. I think that is why we drive business, because we are empathetic and understanding, and we care deeply about the experience that these customers have, even before they are customers, where they ware, what they’re struggling with, their frustrations, their triggers, their hopes. What sends that person to Google to search? In other words, what are they looking for? When they land on a page, what are their top questions? And in what order are those questions prioritized? What evidence would make them trust that our answers are legitimate? So, web design and digital marketing are tests of empathy and the marketer who best understands the customer is best suited to build pages that attract those visitors and use language that helps those visitors. We are the answerers, we are the providers of clarity, we’re the givers of hope, we’re helping these people solve some problem in their lives, sometimes just through information and content and articles, or videos, or events or whatever; the format. And other times through a service which creates a business transaction but we do so with the goal of helping them first; if we do a good job of that, everything seems to work out. Biggest failure with a customer I’m sensitive to this; I’m open about it, it’s obvious, and I get a lot of feedback, so this is ongoing. We are a web design company. To be relevant for that and to attract traffic, leads, and...

Jeremy Liddle Show Notes Jeremy Liddle: Entrepreneur for 16 years. Co-founder &amp; Exec Director of CapitalPitch. President, G20 Young Entrepreneurs Alliance (YEA) Aus-tralia for 5 years. Represents Australia in youth employment and entre-preneurship at the United Nations. Published author on startups and TEDx speaker. “I&#8217;ve been an entrepreneur since before I knew what the word meant. Af-ter 17 years of founding and growing businesses, I realized that entre-preneurs solve the world&#8217;s problems but a lack of access to capital inhib-its too many from changing the world. I cofounded CapitalPitch to solve this problem. CapitalPitch is a Digital In-vestment Firm that accelerates founders for impact on the world by helping Pre-Series A tech companies and sophisticated, professional and institutional investors; providing a capital raising platform, Venture Capital investment funds and advisory services from Seed to IPO or acquisition.” Most passionate about What I’m most passionate about is helping founders with huge problems scale up solutions and solve them on a global scale in a way that will make the world a better place. The way that we do that here at CapitalPitch is by helping investors invest through our venture capital fund and we then help the founders by investing in them, advising them, supporting them, and giving them an ecosystem of support: us, our advisers, our investors, and a broader network. It’s two sided, we started originally working with founders, advising and connecting them to investors using a proprietary platform that we built. So, we started as a platform, and then raised a fund a couple years ago; earlier this year, we started making our first investments. So, we’ve now done, as of this recording, three, soon to be four investments out of the funds, then looking to make a total of 20 out of fund one and then moving into fund two. Jeremy’s best advice about approaching customers When we’re looking at a company we want to invest in, one of the key factors is their ability to attract customers and generate revenue. We like founders that have an authentic connection to the problem they are trying to solve, that have deep industry knowledge, and understand the way their customers think. Companies and founders that think like that, and are that intimately knowledgeable about their customers tend to be the ones that come up with the right solution. Because they will know where their customers hang out, what they’re reading, the way they behave, what they’re eating, what they’re thinking; they’ll know everything about those customers and when you know everything about your customer, then it’s significantly easier to acquire them. Going and speaking to as many customers as possible and systematically interviewing them to get that intimate knowledge is super important. Biggest failure with a customer When I went to Singapore and we were opening beverages’ retail stores, selling fruit juice, in a market where Chinese were the majority of the population. In Australia, the juice worked really well because we used to sell truckloads of orange juice for breakfast. In Chinese culture, fruit juice is not drunk before midday because it’s seen as heating. So, we didn’t realize when we went over there that we basically knocked out half of the market before we even opened the doors because the Chinese wouldn’t drink fruit juice before midday. So, had we done our market research better, we would have realized that. I’d say that was a huge mistake that made those stores...

Justin Wu Show Notes Justin is a co-founder of Blocknauts, a blockchain growth advisory &amp; me-dia group. Justin is a keynote speaker &amp; advisor for over 12+ blockchain companies, tokens &amp; Dapps. Prior to founding Blocknauts, Justin has been content creator in the growth marketing space. He has collaborated with the Wall St Journal, CES, NASA, NASDAQ &amp; been sponsored by Samsung, Intel, New Balance. Most passionate about Today I’m focusing on organizing educational events on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency to developers, business consultants and other professionals that want to learn more about this fields. Our most recent, and biggest event right now is called Blockchain Northwest. We had 800 people come to the first ever Seattle, Washington conference. We had people from Microsoft, Amazon, T-mobile, Starbucks, Bedtracks, R-chain, Storm Token and Unicorn Gold, just to name a few; so, we had a lot of local Seattle companies come through, enterprises and enterprise decision makers, and also a lot of other companies from Canada come down, people from Oregon, LA, New York. Justin’s best advice about approaching customers The best advice I have is to really focus on the customer’s point of view and the value. As I thought about what the problems are in the space from a consumer standpoint and what do they really want? They want high-level, advanced content, and they don’t want it too expensive because it pushes people away. You want to provide that value for the attendees. Think about the value for your customers first and stop thinking short term about how to monetize and squeeze every single dollar. There were lots of other events that were in the region that tried to copy what we did, and they tried to charge $800 a ticket; they only had barely 150 attendees! We pulled off 800 people, and we charged $150 a ticket. Biggest failure with a customer We tried to keep everything in house and tried to build everything ourselves. We could have opened a lot more doors more easily within each of the potential regions that we were going to and we learned this about 6 months into the business. In this space, collaboration is key; don’t go into different industries or communities alone, trying to do it all yourself. You really want to go spend time in that region or industry and start meeting and talking with people first. Try to map who’s who in the space, and from there, it’ll open up a lot of other doors. Biggest success due to the right customer approach The biggest event so far to date, and I think it’s going to continue going forward, was when I was speaking onstage at a conference with several thousand people. I shared the stage and was interviewed by Larry King, as well as Charles Hoskinson, the co-founder of Ethereum and Cardano. It was definitely the biggest highlight so far in terms of big stage and big audience. The best way to connect with Justin: LinkedIn Twitter More resources for Entrepreneurs Don’t Miss – Customer Focus Strategy &amp; Execution: <a...

Lee Odden Show Notes Lee Odden is a digital marketing strategist, author, international speaker and CEO of TopRank Marketing. His work integrating search, social, content, and influencer market-ing has been recognized by the Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Forbes. By combining a &#8220;best answer marketing strategy&#8221; together with &#8220;do well by doing good&#8221; values, he&#8217;s attracted top industry talent and clients including SAP, 3M, Dell, LinkedIn, Oracle and GE Digital. Odden is a prolific writer as the author of the book Optimize and as editor of TopRankBlog.com where he has published over 1 million words on digital marketing topics. Most passionate about It’s funny; I didn’t start out to create an agency necessarily. It’s my passion for marketing and the chase of solving difficult problems is really what got me into the role I have now. Obviously, I’ve had to learn to be a CEO, but technology plays a role in all of that. You can’t be efficient, or effective, especially these days, without being aware of and mastering the tools. There is an expression I use, ‘A tool is only as effective as the expertise of the person using it.’ I think there are a lot of tools that solve 50 problems, but a lot of people only have 5 of those problems. That’s part of the decision making process, especially with an organization that is trying to allocate funds for it’s technology and reconciling that against their needs, the capabilities of their staff, and that sort of thing. On an individual basis, or a small business basis, it’s a lot easier. Lee’s best advice about approaching customers Obviously, you’ve got to know your customer. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are focused on the product or solution they have to offer and their own reasons for starting the company; their passion behind the technology, their passion behind the solution that they have invested so much into, and sometimes they don’t express that same passion for investigating or empathizing with why their customer would want to buy that product or service. I think really knowing and understanding your customers is the most key thing you can do; you need to understand, it’s an ongoing activity, it’s not just something you do when you start the company and write a business plan. The other thing is, and this is from my own experiences, it’s possible to create the kind of momentum, to create a kind of gravity, if you will, so your customers come to you instead of you relying on chasing them. In our agency, we don’t rely on salespeople. We’ve not relied on advertising at all. Biggest failure with a customer A client engaged us for branding and awareness level campaign and said, ‘this is not about lead gen, this isn’t about conversions, this is just about increasing market affinity about our brand and our solution. All we’re trying to do is increase the amount of conversation about the main topic and our brand, that’s all we want.’ Okay, great! So, we built a program, we have an agreement, we have a project plan, all lined up towards that objective and we execute. Then a quarter into the engagement, the client says, ‘my upstream executive is really worried since we haven’t dramatically increased the number of leads.’ Of course, there weren’t even landing pages or conversation pages involved in the campaign! So, we scrambled to create a demand gen program with leads. That was a bit of a disaster and expectations were not managed properly and we had to swallow a jagged pill. We ate a lot of cost. But that was a

Is there one key success factor most successful entrepreneurs have? Or is the key success factor is unique to each entrepreneur? At the end of every interview on the REACH OR MISS podcast, I ask my interviewee what their key success factor is and what works for them. You will be amazed at what I found. Hi Reachers. So happy you are here! Today is the final episode in a three part series, where I talk about three main things we can learn from successful entrepreneurs. Over the last ten years I’ve worked with over 120 startups and entrepreneurs, and met with thousands more in meetups, conferences, and the like. I decided to start this podcast one and a half years ago in order to help entrepreneurs and startup founders increase their chances of business success by learning from most successful entrepreneurs and opinion leaders. This podcast is focused on entrepreneurial marketing and how being a customer-focused entrepreneur will pave your way to success. The last two episodes were all about how successful entrepreneurs started their businesses and what did they do to breakthrough into the market. Today, I want to focus on something that isn’t directly connected to customer focus and entrepreneurial marketing:  the key success factor that led my interviewees to achieve their major successes, and what we learn from those experiences. Madalyn Sklar Madalyn Sklar – I’m an idea person. I come up with ideas all the time. Everything I’ve done came from ideas. Success comes when you follow your passions. Madalyn Sklar is a serial entrepreneur, community builder and leading Twitter marketing expert. With 22 years of digital marketing experience and 13 years social media marketing under her belt, it’s no surprise she’s ranked the #1 Social Media Power Influencer in Houston. Each week Madalyn hosts the #TwitterSmarter, a Twitter chat that brings together hundreds of people in an active one-hour discussion revolving around Twitter marketing. Since launching two years ago, it has reached 4.64 billion impressions. Huffington Post has named Madalyn one of 50 Women Entrepreneurs to follow. The moment when Madalyn felt she stopped chasing after customers and started to attract them: I must admit that I didn’t really have to chase after customers. When I started, I built web sites and people that wanted a website came to me. Also, with the musician community, I didn’t really have to chase them either. You should make a mission of building your own brand. Madalyn’s key success factor: Always moving upward. That makes me happy. I love the journey. I love the work I do. If you do things this way, you will reach the stars. Jonathan Aufray Jonathan Aufray – Has lived in 7 countries, speaks 4 languages, and tries to teach entrepreneurs around the world that the most important word in Growth-Hacking is Growth! Jonathan Aufray is the co-founder and CEO of Growth Hackers and Growth Academia, which help...

Entrepreneurial marketing and sales are incredibly challenging. How do you find the biggest market opportunity and need for an unfamiliar product in a market that probably doesn’t exist yet? Successful entrepreneurs and opinion leaders Joe Pulizzi, David Beebe, Vladimer Botsvadze, and Tomas Laurinavicius tell us about their experiences and beliefs about reaching the business breakthrough.   Since we’re talking about the marketing and sales of an entrepreneurial business, now is a perfect time to debunk one of the greatest myths in the startup world. In a recent conversation with the marketing manager of a startup that develops and sells enterprise software, I was informed of one of the most common, yet false, axioms regarding marketing: “You need to spend big on marketing if you want to bring in the big bucks.” Wrong! The truth is marketing is all about looking at the problem your product or service solves from the point of view of your potential customers and helping them solve that problem or struggle. The tremendous change in marketing and sales channels on one hand and customers’ behavior on the other, from offline to online and social media, and from one to many to one-on-one interaction and engagement- is a blessing in disguise for entrepreneurs. &nbsp; On the REACH OR MISS podcast, I ask my interviewees about how they became successful and what marketing and sales approaches have worked best for them. I’ve chosen four successful entrepreneurs and opinion leaders that you can best learn from about how to make a breakthrough for an innovative entrepreneurial business. Joe Pulizzi Joe Pulizzi is one of the biggest marketing influencers that helped build the new approach focusing on content as the major factor in the business and communication arena. He is founder of Content Marketing Institute, which includes the largest in-person content marketing event in the world, Content Marketing World. The company had a successful exit in June 2016. &nbsp; &nbsp; Your marketing breakthrough I’m sort of the evangelist for content marketing. I‘ve been doing this for 20 years, talking to small and big companies about how they can build audiences through valuable content creation in order to see profitable behavior changes. I started the content business in 2000, started my own company in 2007, and we just had an exit in 2016. We sold it to UBM, the largest events media company in the world, and it’s has been a pleasure working with them ! Biggest success due to the right customer approach It wasn’t just one thing. The success that we built is in bringing this community of marketers and content creators together. I remember the first day we hit 10000 subscribers, 10000 people that opted-in to receive our marketing, and when the opinion leaders like Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, and the like started to use the term Content Marketing, which was a phrase we started to spread around… However, everything was about creating content specifically around a customer’s problem. Recommendation of a tool for customer focus, marketing, or sales? A big change is happening for a long time now. If you go back before 1990, there were only a handful of ways your customer could get information; TV ads, magazines, newspapers, radio, billboards, fax machines, those types of things. The conversation with the customer was owned by big media companies and by brands with huge advertising budgets. And it was like that for 50 years, from 1940 to 1990.  The technological advance happened, along with Google and Smart Phones, and customers gained control of their own buying journey. Because your customer can ignore us, they can ignore your advertising, they...

Many people are dreaming of leaving their 9 to 5 jobs and becoming entrepreneurs. But how do you make that first step? Being an entrepreneur means finding what will work for your unique skill set. Aiming to gain income and profits as fast as possible and grow your entrepreneurship quickly from a one-person show to a substantial 6 or 7 figures company within a few years. In this episode, I bring you the stories about the first steps of the most successful of this new breed of entrepreneur. Who is the new kind of entrepreneur? John Lee Dumas (JLD) is the founder and host of the leading entrepreneurship podcast, Entrepreneurs on Fire, and is one of the founding fathers of this new age of entrepreneurship. John established his podcast after finding himself unhappy with traditional 9 to 5 jobs and frustrated with the weekly podcasts he listened to on the road because there wasn’t enough content. So, he decided to create a daily podcast for entrepreneurs. It quickly grew into a huge success and John, along with Kate Erickson, his partner, built a successful seven-figure business around the podcast. The new entrepreneurs are building businesses around their unique skills, and by doing so, are creating new market categories. They start from scratch, and unlike the earlier model of startup entrepreneurs, they are not looking to raise someone else’s money; instead, they build their businesses aiming to gain income and profit quickly. &nbsp; Bruce Van Horn’s entrepreneurial journey is an incredible story about the fresh start of a man who survived prostate cancer, the death of his daughter, a divorce, and 2 bankruptcies; and transformed his life, becoming a bestselling author, speaker, thought leader, transformational life coach, and business and leadership coach. I was in total victim mode in my life. I had a long list of everybody and everything that was responsible for what had gone wrong in my life. But I wasn’t on the list. Running a marathon changed me. I learned what was holding me back in my life. In marathon training, if you aren’t successful, the only one to blame is you. You can’t blame someone else. And I realized the top problem I had was a thinking problem. My brother, who got me into running marathons, said the hardest part of running a marathon is making the decision to do it. And he was right, but I misunderstood him. I thought i was a decision you made once. But actually, it’s a decision you have to make every single day. And when I realized how training transformed my body, I started to apply that philosophy to every area of my life, so my finances started to turn around after my second bankruptcy, my relationships got better; I started to enjoy my life again. People noticed I’ve changed and asked about it, and I told them. And one day I got an invitation to be someone’s life coach (I didn’t even know what that was at the time). It worked well and I discovered my gift: working with people on their mindsets about their businesses and their lives. . I’ve been doing it for six years now. I had to take a year off in 2014; I was diagnosed with stage 4 of prostate cancer, and the treatment and surgery had a lot of complications. I had to...

Tony Hughes has thirty years of corporate and sales leadership experience with unbroken personal and team sales records. He is: Currently ranked #1 sales blogger globally by both Top Sales Magazine and Best Sales Blogger Awards Rated as the most influential person in professional sales within Asia-Pacific by Top Sales World Currently ranked #3 sales expert and thought leader globally by LinkedIn Tony is also a bestselling author and the most read person on LinkedIn on the topic of B2B sales leadership. He has more than 400,000 followers on his blogs. The American Management Association published his most recent book, COMBO Prospecting. He teaches &#8216;modernized selling&#8217; within the MBA program at the University of Technology, Sydney; sits on a number of boards; and is Chair of a CEO mentor group with The Leadership Think Tank. Tony speaks at conferences internationally and his consulting clients include some of the best-known brands in the world. Most passionate about The thing I’m most passionate about today, in business at least, is helping organizations solve their revenue problem. Revenue is like airspeed, if you don’t have enough, none of the other controls seem to work. Businesses are relentlessly pursuing growth, and are facing more and more competition. Also, the failure rate of sellers, especially in the B2B market, is increasing. So, my passion is about helping salespeople become successful and helping organizations sell with a real sense of purpose.    Tony’s best advice about approaching customers One of the things that every marketer, salesperson, and entrepreneur needs to do is take themselves out of their own world and view what they do through the eyes of their customers. Content is king, but audience is queen. Biggest failure with a customer When I was 25, we sold the manufacturing business in Australia and I took the business to the USA; I was convinced I’d be a multimillionaire by the time I was 30. I felt confident, but the truth is my confidence was misplaced and I think every entrepreneur when they start out, is excited and confident that they are not going to be one of the statistics, that they are going to succeed. But what I realized was, I hadn’t done enough market research. I’d undervalued the importance of being able to sell, and when I came back from America a few years later, that was what prompted me to get into sales. The thing I say about selling is it’s a skill that nobody wants and yet everyone needs. Biggest success due to the right customer approach  When I wrote COMBO Prospecting, I was looking for the right publisher to publish it, so I ran a COMBO prospecting campaign. I ran a sales campaign where I identified three different publishing houses that I thought would be right for me. I identified the key people, I put myself in their shoes, I...

James Arthur Show Notes James Arthur Ray is considered one of the world’s foremost leadership and performance advisers, coaches and consultants. James’s company has been on the INC. 500 LIST as one of the fastest growing businesses in the industry. He has taught over 1 million individuals in 145 countries over the course of 20 years. Then in 2009, in what began as a very routine sweat lodge-like ceremony outside of Sedona, Arizona, 3 of the 53 participants lost their lives from complications. The incident was deemed an accident and James was found to be negligent. He spent the past 4 years creating and refining a new set of teachings that we have listed above. Each of his talks has a detailed curriculum that audiences both learn from and enjoy. He emphasizes gaining personal clarity, recognizing each person’s unique gift, and better understanding about how to avoid the mistakes that are avoidable. James is high- energy and truly inspirational. Most passionate about I have some big intentions and goals. My big, bold, what I call PTP: Powerful Transforming Purpose, is to impact, influence, guide, and direct the infinite potential and the destiny of the entire human race. I know that’s bold, and I also know it may not be accomplished in my lifetime, but that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna give it everything I have. James’ best advice about approaching customers I have a two-pronged answer for that question. The first prong: Forget about money. Easier said than done, I’m not saying money is not important; of course it is. One of my mentors taught me, ‘No margin, no mission.’ Put all of your focus on providing value, because most of us have been conditioned to believe that a business is in business to make money. That’s wrong. A business is in business to provide service and value. When we provide service and value, the money comes as a byproduct. The second prong: Know specifically who your customer is, presupposing that you know what your unique customer avatar is. Who is your market, who are you going after, who is your customer, and then how do they want to be served? Because, so many times, we tend to come to any kind of relationship, and your customer is a relationship, from our perspective and we attempt to serve them in the way we want to be served vs. joining their perspective and serving them in the way they want to be served. Biggest failure with a customer Without any hesitation whatsoever, my biggest failure, and anyone who knows my history, knows that in 2009, my company and I conducted an event in Sedona, Arizona and three people ended up losing their lives in an activity we were doing. Yeah, it was horrible, and it was the antithesis of everything I’d ever stood for or ever attempted to accomplish. I’m sure you can imagine, I mean, if you’ve ever lost anyone you cared about, you know what the anguish is on that. On top of that, you have it happen on your watch and you’re the leader… So, anyway, that was my biggest failure. Biggest success due to the right customer approach My team and I were inducted into the Inc. 500 in 2009, with one of the fastest growing, most successful privately held companies in the nation, if not the world. When Inc. Magazine interviewed me to ask how I did it, my response was ‘I didn’t do it, my team did.’ I’m also wise enough to know that I had the wherewithal and the skills to build a high performing team, and yet, one of the ways I do that, is playing you’re a...

42% - No Market Need! This is the top reason startups fail, for according to a comprehensive research of entrepreneurs with failed companies. Hi Reachers, The REACH OR MISS podcast is all about being a customer focused entrepreneur. One and a half years ago, I decided to create this   podcast after I realized that most entrepreneurs failed because they didn’t understand what I call the magic of marketing. Marketing is magic; it’s all about being able to look at the market from the eye view of the potential customers. Entrepreneurs fail for two reasons; both of which are part of not finding the     biggest opportunity in the market: They didn’t find their most potential customers, those who will be the initial and secondary audience to adopt the new product. They didn’t manage to clearly define their new, unfamiliar product. Let’s face it; this is a huge challenge. Among the 120 startups and entrepreneurs we worked with over the last ten years, only in one company did the two founders define their product in the same way, with the same words. Most entrepreneurs tell a different story than their colleagues and even from day to day. My guests in the REACH OR MISS podcast are successful entrepreneurs and opinion leaders. I ask them about how they managed to find who their most potential customers are, and how it led them to reach their successes. &nbsp; The issue of choosing the customers that are most likely to adopt, use, and pay for your product is one of the most important aspects of business success. In today’s show I’ve chosen to focus on some of the most important issue my guests talked about while answering the question about “Who are your customers, and how did you figured out that these are the best customers for you? &nbsp; My first guest is Lance Scoular. For me, Lance is one of the best examples to how entrepreneurs succeed by focusing on their most potential customers. And how, listening to them led Lance to a very successful pivot. Lance Scoular, AKA The Savvy Navigator, has been involved in International Trade and Transport for 50 years. In 2008, Lance started receiving invitations from students in his classes to connect with them on both Facebook and LinkedIn. Over the last nine years, he has developed and expanded his social media networks exponentially (especially LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, and beBee) and those of a select group of clients in a variety of sectors, both locally and globally. The results have been significant. Lance is currently in the process of doing a 180-degree business pivot, refocusing away from Social Media Consulting, back to what he does best, International Trade and Transport Training. He will soon launch an online course, “Import Export Made Easy” in video and audio, as well as the “Import Export Made Easy” Podcast. &nbsp; How Lance found his customers Back in 2009, I got very involved in social media. I was running an Import Export

Gary Loper Show Notes Gary Loper is a Twitter expert, teaching people to use Twitter in relationship marketing. He is also is a motivational speaker, life and business coach, and a highly respected entrepreneur. He has enthused and empowered individuals in all walks of life. Gary has a strong background in marketing and sales, and his 30+ years of customer service and 15 years of direct sales ads show in more depth who he is. With his diversity in spiritual studies, relationship building, life and business coaching, marketing, customer service and sales, his background is a perfect blend to help others to be their best, in life and business. Most passionate about I’m passionate about creating more things about social justice, inclusion, and equality. It’s not just a today problem; how we treat other groups of people horribly has been going on throughout history. And I really think that needs to stop. There is so much we could learn from each other, we should be able to hold onto our heritages, and blend into a community the supports and cherishes the uniqueness of each other. Tweeting motivational quotes was the first aha moment for me. People started responding and retweeting, they asked questions and So, I started coaching through Twitter. I’ve been able to see a daily progression of how these motivational messages are impacting people’s lives in a positive way and that’s why I post them all the time. Those motivational messages have a big impact, it’s my responsibility to share them; I know people will see them when they need to see them. Gary’s best advice about approaching customers Probably the biggest thing I teach is: you have to listen. So, if somebody asks you a question, don’t rush into your answer with a pitch. It’s like dating; if they try to “close the deal” on the first date, it may be a little fun, but the probably of it becoming a long term relationship is small. But relationships that build over time, 5, 10, 15, 20 dates before things close naturally; now you are building a relationship and you’re looking at more than just one thing. You have to be able to serve people. On social media, we can build trust and rapport, through our blog posts, by sharing these motivational messages, by sharing articles that highlight that we are experts in these areas and that we want to be known for these areas. People are watching us on Twitter; how we’re interacting, what we’re doing. I never look at people who are following me as potential clients, I see them as representative of their own community, and if I can build trust and rapport with them; when they need me, or when they hear of somebody who needs me, they can refer me. So, listening and being of service are my best advice. Biggest failure with a customer I have a philosophy, borrowed from Napoleon Hill; there is a seed of good in every experience. When I first started out, I started with a client who was managing his Twitter account. He and I were in the same coaching program, so I trusted that his integrity would be about the same as mine because we were in the same program. But he didn’t pay me, and kept stringing me along for a year. I was so gullible that I allowed it to happen, and three or four thousand dollars later; I had to cut him off. But that was the turning point; now we do pre-pay, and we’re able to be a lot clearer about our results. It really helped me be able to see the value of the work I was doing. Biggest success due to the right customer approach <ul...

Trevor Crane Show Notes Trevor Crane is an 11 time #1 international bestselling author and the founder of Epic Author Publishing. He is also the host of the GreatnessQuest.com podcast and co-founder of SuperKidsBooks.com. Trevor’s mission is to help publish 1000 new authors and help people take their LIFE and their BUSINESS to the next level – no matter how successful they already are. He helps his clients generate MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in bottom line profits. Trevor is also a sought after speaker, trainer and coach. His unique commonsense approach, along with his humor, wit, and infectious energy, allows him to connect with any audience. Most passionate about I’m most passionate about helping you tell your story. I struggled to publish my first book for over 20 years. I finally broke down and hired my first mentor, who helped me write my first book. Using his guidance and help, I was able to 10x my income within 12 months of publishing my first book. Learning to tell your story and turn it into a story that inspires others and write a book that becomes your most powerful marketing tool is the cat’s meow, in my mind. Trevor’s best advice about approaching customers My main advice to anyone who wants to create a result they’ve never created before is that you get help! Find a mentor who has already been through the jungle. So, if you look at a business, the business has three parts: leads, sales, and fulfillment. Leads mean you need marketing. A lot of people don’t know how to create those leads on demand. So, the question you should be thinking of is: ‘Where is your biggest challenge’, and there’s only the three of them: leads, sales, and fulfillment. So, the challenge is someone who finally figures out some marketing, and they get some leads, and then they fail at fulfillment, because it’s suddenly overwhelming! Most people need to improve one or more of those three things. My other advice is: there is no one thing, there is no stopping; you never finish. Once you figure out marketing in one area, then comes the next, and the next after that. Once you figure out how to sell to one type of person, then you have to go back to the beginning and start over again. Biggest failure with a customer The number one mistake that I made, and am probably still making, is It’s about being inauthentic. It’s about saying one thing and doing another. I am not a man who believes he is a liar; integrity is one of my highest values. But if I’m to be honest, there are still places in my life that I lie to myself about. Maybe these are old patterns that I’ve had of limiting beliefs or I hear something like this on a podcast and I say ‘Oh yeah, I’m good at that! I already do that! I knew that!’ Well, if you are not demonstrating it in your life, you don’t know it. And if you can’t teach it to another human, you don’t know it. I caught myself doing this with a mentor recently, he told me something, and I thought, ‘Oh my god, I do that! I’m so proud of myself!’ But am I demonstrating it, does my bank account reflect it? I had a business partner, and I didn’t like him anymore. Like, I didn’t like how he did business, I didn’t like hanging out with him anymore. So, I stopped talking to him. I didn’t call it a lie, but I didn’t speak with I poorly communicated with him over a period of time; I was short with him, and I didn’t tell the truth, meaning what I was feeling and   thinking. We didn’t have it out; we had a working relationship and instead of owning up to my...

Allen Ganett Show Notes Allen Ganett is the founder and CEO of TrackMaven, a marketing analytics service whose clients have included Microsoft, Marriott, Saks Fifth Avenue, Home Depot, Aetna, Honda, and GE. He has been on the &#8220;30 under 30&#8221; lists for both Inc. and Forbes. He is a contributor for FastCompany.com and has a new book, The Creative Curve, on the disciplined pursuit of creativity, from Currency, a division of Penguin Random House. He was also once a very pitiful runner-up on Wheel of Fortune. Most passionate about So, where I get really excited is this intersection between the left brain and the right brain; between our neurological selves and our creative selves. My company helps big brands find patterns in their marketing data, so they can figure out what their audience cares for, what stories they should tell, how they should resonate with their audience. My book is all about intersection; my argument is that creativity is something that’s learnable, something that’s nurture-able, and something you can work within a system for. So, this idea of sort of applying systems thinking to things that are more organic. That’s where I get most excited, because that’s where I feel you can unlock a lot of potential, whether that’s in marketing or within a person. Creativity may seem magical, but that doesn’t mean it is. The reality is that we actually know that creativity is simply how a right hemisphere processes information, our right hemisphere processes information by doing this more divergent thinking, where it brings together disparate ideas together to form something new and that’s not magic, that’s biology. Allen’s best advice about approaching customers The number one thing for any entrepreneur is to focus on problem solving, not problem finding. The key thing I see that a lot of first time entrepreneurs do is come up with some solution to some problem, and then they go, ‘Okay, so I have this big idea, now what’s the product that’s the market fit? What is the real problem I’m solving?’ Entrepreneurs start with the solution and go backwards, and what you find is that second time entrepreneurs focus on a big problem and the solution comes later, they frame their entire enterprise around ‘Okay how do we solve the big, hairy problem, how do we really nail that?’ That is what they focus on doing, and that, I think, is a very different set of skills, but one that’s very important. Don’t build a solution in a vacuum; it’s never actually going to be good enough. Biggest failure with a customer We had a customer early on, who was much bigger than any of our other customers; huge household name brand, they were about 10% of our revenue. They were not a good fit for the software; they didn’t fit the use case, they didn’t fit the ideal customer profile, they didn’t fit any of it. But, they really wanted the software and they pushed us, so we sold it to them. About a year later, when it came for renewal, they cancelled and it really hurt the business because it was this huge customer that represented a huge revenue loss. It was a really important lesson for me because it solidified this idea of good revenue and bad revenue. Not all revenue is good; if you take on a customer who is unprofitable, who is not going to pay back, who is going to take an undue amount of attention from the rest of your customers, or isn’t in your ideal customer profile, you are going to get hurt. That idea,

Roy Sutton Show Notes Roy Sutton is an experienced C-Level executive, board director, and former CEO with a broad knowledge base and understanding of business, as well as telecommunications and digital media. Based in London, Roy is currently a business consultant, blogger, public speaker and entrepreneur using his skills and experience to help people make the most of their lives. His objectives are achieved by creating digital products designed to offer people solutions to the many common problems they face. Roy holds an MBA Degree in International Business from Cass Business School, London, and the Certified Diploma in Accounting and Finance from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA). He also holds a BEng Degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Liverpool and a BA Degree in Spanish &amp; Latin American Studies from the University of London. Roy is a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute. He is also a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, London. Most passionate about My real interest is digital media and using digital media for marketing purposes. Originally, I set my company up to exploit my own know how, skills, and business contacts. I was focused primarily on consultancy work and to an extent, I still am, but I recognized that the problem with consultancy work ultimately is you’re providing a service 1 to1. So, it’s very difficult to scale that up. Whereas, marketing digital products through digital media, you have the opportunity to serve 1 to many. And the thing about the internet, and online marketing is that websites give you a global reach, and they are always open; you don’t need premises, you don’t need an inventory, and your overheads are fairly low. You do have to maintain a website obviously, or a number of websites. I am gradually moving away from pure consultancy to create digital products and offer solutions to my target customers, based on my own knowledge and experience. My background is in the telecom industry, the international telecom industry. Also I realized that I know a lot about the telecom sector, which has really helped with things like developing websites and so on. Over time, you learn an awful lot about an awful lot. You develop skills when you’re running a business. I was previously the CEO of a national telecom operator; when you run such a business you learn an awful lot about people, marketing, sales, and general business. Tailoring your product as a solution to customer’s problems, I realized I could harness my wider knowledge to create digital products and make money online. So I started by creating websites offering or targeting specific solutions for people. The first website I created was a self-help website; I called it ‘Wit and Wisdom’. Part of it was humor, but mostly it was intended to inspire people that were self-improvers, people who wanted to better themselves, but...

Pascal Guyon Show Notes Pascal Guyon is a multi-platinum music producer who contributed to 3 Grammy nominations. He’s also a programmer, a social media strategist, and a speaker. 3 facts about Pascal: I am proud to have contributed to 3 Grammy nominations and to over 15 million albums sold worldwide I have served as a mentor to 10,000&#8217;s of artists and business owners worldwide, through my video game, speaking en-gagements and education programs I have also helped some of the most disruptive brands in transportation, cryptocurrency and food dominate social media Most passionate about Most people are known to be specialists in one field, and that’s about it. I’m more like a polymath if you will; I get bored extremely quickly. So basically, I have different specialties. Of course, my first specialty is music. I ended up doing a lot of live music, playing with bands, but I figured out that I prefer to create; so that’s how I became a music producer. So actually, my passion for computer science came way later, after I spent 15 years producing music for very famous people as well as less famous people, and mentoring these people as well. What I really like to do is combine all my specialties to create a unique experience. This is how I managed to create a video game six month ago, which pays me every time the game, which features my music, is played, at no cost to the player. I think my game is the best thing I’ve created. So I decided to go into computer science; it always made a lot of sense for me. I decided I was going do a game, but an educational game. And since I know quite a bit about social media, I hid information about social media marketing in the game, so when people play the game, they actually collect information, and avoid the enemies of course, and that’s where they learn how to do better in social media and also, they are hearing my music! That’s one of the really cool things I did last year. When did you fall in love with social media? So basically, I am French and I love modern music, modern, popular music, and all my heroes were in America, and I was like: ‘I want to be there! How do I do that?’ So, this was when Myspace became really big, so basically, I used Myspace to communicate about my skills. So, I maximized my opportunities, I was also using additional software that was running in parallel of Myspace to maximize my visibility and it worked out really well, this is how I started producing songs to like, really big stars, from my French village. Who are your customers? As a music producer, at first my customers were mainly music artists, music labels, that kind of stuff. But since I got bored of that circle, and also because I found out it was a very inefficient circle, I moved on to get to know the entrepreneur circles; basically, I moved from producing music and mentoring artists to mentoring business owners on how to do well on social media. So now my customers are mostly brands, startups, and celebrities in business, and because they are hungry people, it’s perfect for me; they are willing to learn, they want results, and it’s very satisfying for me too. Pascal’s best advice about approaching customers I think there are two things. When people ask what it’s like to produce...