The SuccessLab Podcast: Where Entrepreneurs Collaborate for Success

When something is broken, oftentimes, the natural instinct is to turn a blind eye and hope someone else will fix it — but this wasn't the case for Paul Roetzer. While working at a public relations agency early in his career, Paul was having a hard time reconciling the services he was providing for clients with the cost of their retainers. So, he set to work on a solution that would standardize PR services and prices. And in 2005, Paul launched PR 20/20, a marketing consulting and services firm that became the first firm in HubSpot's certified partner program which now includes thousands of agencies from around the world. According to Paul, success isn't solely financial — it's about bringing true value to others and aligning yourself with people who have a similar take on life. He truly believes his career successes — from growing PR 20/20 to authoring two books (The Marketing Performance Blueprint and The Marketing Agency Blueprint) to launching the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute — is a direct indication of this. In this episode, Paul discusses why getting uncomfortable and making small bets on yourself is one of the best ways to fuel your career and achieve the goals you set for yourself. This mindset has helped him successfully manage the rapid growth of PR 20/20 while dealing with the tragic passing of his best friend — an event that forever changed his perspective on life and business.  Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above.  What led you to create PR 20/20? In the early 2000s, I was working at a PR agency and I didn't really understand the business model. Everything was billable hours and in my young mind, it didn't make sense. I would send invoices to clients every month and it'd be a block of text of all the things we did. The client would call me and say, “this looks great, but what did we get for $12,000 last month?”. I wanted this process to be more tangible for myself and for clients, so I started working on this idea of standardized services and set pricing. “PR 20/20” was originally a paper I wrote about how the industry needed a new vision for how it did everything. A year and a half after writing it, I went home and told my wife that I'm going to start a business. She said, “okay, what does that mean?”. I said, “I don't know, but I'll make sure we have health insurance and a paycheck when I do.” That was a Wednesday and on that Sunday, I got a $25,000 loan from a family member and I started the business two weeks later. What was one of your darkest moments, and how did you emerge from it? I was 27 when I started the agency. I didn't have any kids and my wife and I had been married for four or five years at that point. Life was pretty good and then my father-in-law passed away suddenly of cancer. We tried to figure out how to move on with life after that and then the following year, my best friend died in a tragic accident. Here I was in the midst of 100% growth, and from the outside, it seemed as though I had everything figured out. On the inside, I was a wreck and was trying to figure out how to piece together the next day. I threw myself into business even harder because it became my escape and the growth distracted me from dealing with the reality of life.  It was the reality that took me a long time to kind of come to grips with. No one wants to live through that stuff, but I have a totally different perspective on life and business once I eventually made it through. What has been one of the best things you've done for the business to grow it? I made a bet on HubSpot in the very early days. I think what I've done well in my career is finding people I wanted to surround myself with — people who had really interesting visions and who I thought had the will to see them through. HubSpot was very much a bet on its people, not on its technology. I truly believed Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah were committed to building a different kind of company and eventually a much better product that would help our clients and us. Many of the doors that opened in my life — like writing books to eventually moving into the AI space — came from these early days and the relationships I built at HubSpot. How have you managed to juggle the growth and sustainability of both 20/20 and the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute? Part of the way I balance everything is that I never get too high or too low on anything because stuff goes sideways all the time. I teach my team that when something goes sideways, you can't get caught up in the totality of the thing that went wrong. You have to break that thing into little pieces — and then attack those pieces and solve them one at a time. As long as you stay focused on the thing you can actually affect, then you don't get caught up in the bigger problem that can make you feel overwhelmed.  Are there one or two connections you've made along your journey that made a big impact? Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan at HubSpot. They're just good people. Jay Baer also comes to mind. He is one of those people who is bigger than life on stage, but is probably a 10 times better person in real life. Other people I can think of include Ann Handley, David Meerman Scott, Mitch Joel, Marcus Sheridan, Joe Pulizzi, and Andrew Davis — they're just incredible humans. I've been really lucky to not only become peers with them on the speaking circuit and in the author world, but actually become friends with them to the point where we can grab dinner, jump on a call or drop a text message. They've always been there and that's just the kind of people they are. What's advice would you have for fellow entrepreneurs looking to launch a side hustle or second business? Having talked to a lot of entrepreneurs, they think success is what their family, friends, peers or competitors think of what they're building, but none of their opinions matter. I think not enough successful entrepreneurs tell the emerging entrepreneurs that they get to define their own success, so that would be my takeaway for them. Speed round:   Coffee drinker, yes or no? Yes. Three to four cups a day. One business tool you're geeking out over right now? I'm real keen on what we're doing with MarketMuse. Favorite piece of technology? I really love the Philips Hue lights. I like being able to have a million different colors and control it from my phone. What's one book you'd pass along to a fellow entrepreneur? Human + Machine. It does a really good job of laying the groundwork for how marketers, agency professionals, and people will work with AI in the future — without a bunch of technical jargon. One person you'd like to make a connection with? Mark Cuban What would be your icebreaker if you were to meet Mark Cuban? I would probably ask him what AI tools he's using now because he's got to be using some cool stuff. How many hours of sleep do you get each night, on average? Six to seven hours. Which Lil' Wayne song is your favorite? I love his remix of “Imagine” with Imagine Dragons. He just has the one section in the song, but I think it's really cool and it's the only Lil' Wayne song my daughter can listen to. How can people connect with you? Twitter and LinkedIn. Just make sure to add a little note that you heard me on this podcast.    

When a routine –– and very common –– medical procedure went awry, it prompted a major career and life shift for Stephanie Schull. Stephanie's mother underwent a procedure that hundreds of thousands of women have undergone, and like many that have –– which they would soon come to learn –– her outcome was unsuccessful, leaving her in pain for the rest of her life. Refusing to accept this fate, Stephanie left her career as a philosophy professor in pursuit of a better solution for the many women who—like her mother—experience pelvic floor issues. Today, Stephanie is the founder and inventor of Kegelbell, the only FDA-registered external vaginal weight that provides a natural way to get stronger pelvic floor muscles. Through Kegelbell, she is aiming to remove stigmas around women's health and bring a voice to pelvic floor issues that have been kept quiet far too long. In this episode, we learn about Stephanie's sweeping move from academia to the business world, the challenges she faced in producing solutions for what is still mostly a taboo subject, and the creative ways she's been able to run her company with a lean team.    Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above.  What led you to create what is today known as Kegelbell? My mother got a pelvic mesh surgery that didn't work well for her and she will be in pain for the rest of her life. When I learned about this, I was shocked to know that she had problems with her pelvic floor for all these decades. And I was shocked that there was a surgery with such a questionable success. My response to the problem was to research it. That's when I realized that most women have problems with their pelvic floor and as of five or so years ago, people weren't talking about it. The solutions, as a result, were flawed because there wasn't enough conversation. As I dug, I saw that there was a good option, it was just not being utilized. When I talked to people about it and discovered they weren't going to make it right, that's where I decided I had to get involved, so I quit academia and started Kegelbell. What's been one of the biggest challenges you've had to overcome in building Kegelbell? The first challenge was that the subject of pelvic floor issues was taboo. My mother had the problem for decades and didn't tell us about it. When I started wanting to fundraise, I heard a lot of “no, that's not really a problem” and “it's too expensive to educate people about it.” Something else that I got pushed back on was the solution I was proposing to fix, treat and prevent weakened pelvic muscles. A lot of investors were saying, “you need to provide an ongoing band-aid solution that keeps the customer on the hook.” I ran into some pretty systemic problems right out the gate. What was one of your darkest moments, and how did you emerge from it? The darkest moment is an ongoing, everyday concern. With a physical product, I'm looking down the barrel of bank account and cash flow issues every day. Looking at cash flow problems is uncomfortable and it's like I'm flying too close to the sun all the time. As I get bigger, it's the same problem, just with larger numbers. This isn't going to go away. I have to adjust to this reality, which is a bit different than the things I've been used to up until this point. What keeps you going? Listening to podcasts like these so you don't feel alone. It's important to hear from other people with multi-billion dollar companies and hearing them say it's never comfortable and that they're always close to the edge. I recently heard the founders of Lyft talk about how some of the scary moments just don't go away, and I've been telling myself that. Finding comfort in hearing from others is why I wanted to share my experience in hopes it helps someone else. What has been one of the best things you've done for the business to grow it? Not giving up. If you stick with it, it grows a little bit incrementally and then that growth becomes exponential. It's been hard because I haven't paid myself this whole time. We have very few paid people, but that helps us grow. Also, finding the right people to have around. In this case, it's people willing to work as a volunteer for free or at a reduced rate because they really love the mission. I need their energy and talents for this to work, so bringing on more people, even though I didn't have the money to, really mattered. What does the future look like for Kegelbell? More products. I have so many products on the shelf that I want to launch. Everyone has warned me that it's too soon and to wait until Kegelbell is strong enough. But, you have to innovate and offer more. The investors are right in that having just one product isn't sufficient. Once you've acquired the customer at that cost, you need more than one product. So, rather than give them a solution that isn't permanent, I'm just going to give them more products that do different things and solve different problems. I hope to be known as a company that solves problems in a novel way. Are there one or two impactful connections along your journey that made a big impact? I think a big deal for me was getting connected to SEED SPOT, which is an incubator/accelerator for businesses with a social impact. I went from having no business network to immediately being connected to a world where people were helpful.   One of my favorite memories of another impactful connection stemmed from an architecture trip to LA I went on with a friend. During one of her meetings, I went to a pot pie place. There was a nice gentleman there behind the cash register. He came by and asked me how the pot pie was. Eventually, I began to tell him all about Kegelbell. He started asking questions and then he offered some advice. I found this guy to be really resourceful and that he had some useful information. He said he'd be happy to look at my website and give me some feedback. Later, I found out that this guy was not the cashier at a pot pie place. He was a former CMO at Pixar, Disney, Nestle, and was the current CMO at Sears. He's also one of the Harvard Business School Angel Association and has been a mentor and one of my advisors since that day. What's one piece of advice you would give to fellow entrepreneurs looking to make impactful connections? Hopefully that story of the pot pie place is a lesson that you never know where a connection will be made. I'd also say that too many people are hesitant and take the safe route. Be a little more risky, because bold gestures often end up resonating.  Speed round: Coffee drinker, yes or no? Yes.  One business tool you're geeking out over right now? Gorgias Favorite piece of technology?  The cell phone What's one book you'd pass along to a fellow entrepreneur? The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss One person you'd like to make a connection with? Tim Ferriss or Sigmund Freud What's your favorite ice breaker when introducing yourself to someone (either online or off)? If someone says you look familiar, I say, do you watch a lot of porn? And then they're like, “Oh wait...no. Do you?” I say I don't but that I was just looking for a conversation starter. It slays every time, and if someone runs away scared, you probably didn't want to hang out with them anyway.  How many hours of sleep do you get each night, on average? At least eight hours, sometimes seven.  How can people connect with you or Kegelbell? You pretty much can find us on any platform—TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. You can also email hello@kegelbell.com.

Seven continents, 70 countries, countless books, studies in psychology, philosophy and physiology at Oxford with a specialization in brain chemistry were all part of a quest to figure out how to live a good life and what a good life even means.    And that search eventually led Arthur Worsley to create The Art of Living. Prior to, however, he had been working 80+ hour weeks at McKinsey for three years. Burnout and several other life events prompted him to leave and finally start to uncover what it means to live a good life. Today, after immersing himself in studying this, he is helping others get more out of life and achieve self mastery through his TRACKTION Masterclass and The Art of Living.   The following is the transcript from the show. But first, a few helpful links: More about the TRACTION Masterclass (tip: use code “wiredpr75” to get 75% off the class! Only the first 50 people)  GTD (Getting Things Done)  book summary Productivity & Performance: Do More, Better How to accelerate learning What led you to create The Art of Living?  I left McKinsey and I'd been doing a whole load of things. I'd been studying, I learned five languages, I did an ultra marathon through the Sahara desert, I'd been traveling and reading books, and I wanted a way to capture all of that. I stumbled on the Fineman method of learning –– learning by teaching it to someone else. I started putting this stuff down and people started reading it.    I've always been fascinated with being good at life. I had a father who was an alcoholic and despite having all of the advantages that he could have possibly had, he sort of threw his life away. If I look back at my decision on why I wanted to study psychology, why I've always been so interested in reading and why I went traveling, a lot of them link back to trying to get to the bottom of these questions, which is how can we live a good life? How can we not throw away everything that we're given? What does a good life even mean? That's where The Art of Living really came from.   What was the turning point when you realized you had stumbled onto something viable with The Art of Living? When I started out and people started resonating with the stuff I was writing, that was the first moment where I thought, maybe this is possible. The moment that I realized that this was really going to be something cool was when I was with one of my partner's friends who's a retired CEO. I was chatting to him and his wife about the life philosophy that I'd put together, the way I organize my weeks and my days and how I avoid burnout and they said, “Hey, would you give us some coaching?” I'd never really thought about coaching people on that, and that is when I realized that the business was probably going to be viable.   What were the early days like? Once you knew you wanted to build this, how long did it take you? I started out reading a lot of books and it was a huge learning curve for me. Some people start a business and they come from a strong marketing background and then they find a product that they can sell. Some people have a product or a cause that they believe in, and then they're trying to work out the marketing aspect of it.    For me, even though the product had been evolving, I knew what it was I wanted to help people with from a very early stage and I focused on one channel. I'm a big search engine optimization guy. I love the idea of just optimizing something and then leaving it out there and having it slowly accrue more people. That was my top-of-funnel and then I had to work out how to turn those readers into subscribers and those subscribers into buyers? That was a long process of trial and error and learning from people who'd been there before me.   It's quite a different path than McKinsey, was there anything you had to overcome mentally to let go of that chapter and pursue this as a new path? I think it's surprisingly similar to McKinsey in two ways. The first is that what I do involves taking really big problems and breaking them down into really small problems that are easy to solve. The reason I'm able to help people find more balance and meaning in their lives is when you break it down into eight different areas and five different time horizons, suddenly it becomes a set of much smaller problems. The second thing is that it's all about learning super steep learning curves. I would start a project at McKinsey knowing nothing about oil and gas or defense or healthcare or supermarkets in the UK and within three months you're helping the CEO clarify decisions they're going to make. One of the things that I did struggle with is I've always loved problem solving for the sake of problem solving and that tends to mean that I put more energy into solving the problem than it necessarily needs. I have to keep catching myself not to get sucked into spending more time than I need solving the problems that are in front of me.    One of the things you're most known for is your TRACKTION productivity system. In that, one of the first steps is to diagnose what's holding you back. Can you share some tips on how to identify that? There's two kinds of people in this world: those who know what they need to be doing and aren't doing it, and the people who genuinely don't know what they need to be doing. For a lot of people, getting clear on which of those they are, is important. A lot of people know what's going to move the needle and what the most important thing in their business is, and they just can't seem to focus on it. For those, I think one of the most important things you can do is start tracking your time and creating a bit of an inventory of what it is that you're actually working on. When you track your time, it creates accountability. I don't mean on a minute by minute basis or with an app where you build pie charts. You can do this very simply on a piece of paper. You say, 7:15am start breakfast, 7:45am start work, whatever it is that you do. You get a lot of clarity around how much of that time is not being spent on the stuff that's important.    For the people who genuinely don't know what to do, the most important thing is to just sit down and work out what that most important thing is. You can go through a basic planning method where you work out what it is you're trying to achieve. The model I use is ‘what, why not, how, what if and what next'. You ask yourself, what's the what? Then you write down all the reasons that you're not already there. Then you go, how can I solve all of those things? Then you go through a what if phase, which is where you anticipate anything that could come up that could derail you. Then you look at that entire list and go, what's the most important thing on this list that I could be working on and you get on with that. If you do that, you'll naturally squeeze the stuff that doesn't matter off your plate.    How do you then identify things you may be doing on a daily basis that don't really matter? The most powerful way is when you have a vision of what awesome looks like for each area of your life. Something I like to get people to do is write down all the things they're working on right now and then you give each of those things a score from minus five to plus five. Minus five is any activity that's taking you strongly away from that vision that you've written down. Plus five is anything that's taking you strongly towards that. It creates a huge amount of clarity to go down that list and give everything a number. What people who are really struggling tend to do is they have a few minus ones and minus twos on that list and those are things you can easily get rid of. What people who are very productive but are struggling to get to the next level find is they have a lot of plus ones and plus twos and those are things that are hard to give up because they're not doing you any harm and might be slightly pleasant, but they're not as important as the plus five and plus four stuff that's getting you towards your vision. Doing that process is super helpful for getting clear.     If you don't have time to think about what awesome looks like or you haven't done any visions for the different areas of your life, you can use a few heuristic models. I tend to use three nets. The first is the ABC method. A is something that if you did or didn't do, it would have a big impact and C is something that would have no impact at all. B is something that would have a little impact. You go down the list and you go, this is an A task and if I stopped doing it, stuff's really going to start going wrong. This is a C task, if I stopped doing it, nothing will really happen. The second model, I call “hero-based thinking”. Think who's your business hero and then look at each of the things on your task list and go, would my hero be doing this or not? The last net is the $10 task test. Go down the list and ask, how much would it cost to outsource this to a freelancer and that will give you the final clue, which is, is this something that I personally should be doing? If you're an entrepreneur and you aspire to be paid $1,000 an hour, and you've got a lot of $10-tasks on your list, or even a lot of $100-tasks, then you're short changing yourself. Those three nets will tell you, is it important, should it be done at all and should I be doing it?    You work with a lot of entrepreneurs who are facing burnout whether because their work has taken over their lives or they feel like they have to compromise their lives in some way to grow the business. Is there a common thread among these entrepreneurs that you've seen –– something that's keeping them in that pattern? How can they start to break free from that? The two most common ones are lack of energy and lack of clarity. For lack of energy, I talk about three kinds of days: A days, B days and C days. An A day is a work day where you're working on the most important projects. B days are planning days where you work out what success looks like or get clear on your inboxes. C days are recovery days where you get to the end of the day with more energy. For the last four weeks, mark in your calendar as an all day event if it was an A day, B day or C day. Suddenly people go, I haven't had a C day in four weeks, no wonder I'm feeling a bit run down. Or, I've only had two C-ish days because I was at a wedding and that doesn't really count.    A lot of the time, it's just creating clarity. It's so easy to forget how long and how hard we've been working as an entrepreneur. And then you can put for the next four weeks when are you going to do your A, B and C days. My rhythm is five A days, one C day and one B day every week, and every four weeks, I try and take at least three or four consecutive C days to recuperate my batteries. The second is, a lot of the reason people end up just working on work is because they don't have a best alternative to working on work. I encourage people to get really clear on what it is they actually want out of the other areas of life. What does success look like for their family, their health, their wealth, the learning and growth that they want to through? When you're offered a choice, it doesn't just become a default of I'll do more work.   On The SuccessLab Podcast we talk about the idea of impactful connections and how they can really transform the trajectory of your career or your business. Are there one or two along your journey that made a big impact? One of the most important set of relationships that I've had are the mentors in the books I've read. There are two ways that you can approach a book. You can approach it as you listen to what it is that's being said to you, or you can treat it as an active dialogue with the author. Those relationships are very powerful. That's a kind of academic answer so I think the most important relationship that I've got at the moment is my partner, Erin. She's amazing. Lastly, I have a very specific set of values that I look for in the friends that I keep around me and all of those people are constantly inspiring me, making me feel grateful to be alive and showing me new ways of thinking and challenging some of the parts of me that need more development.   What's one piece of advice you would give to fellow entrepreneurs looking to make a change in their lives? It's really helpful to get smart at breaking problems down. Peter Drucker says, if you give two highly competent people a role and they both fail at it, the chances are it's not the people, it's the role that needs to be broken down into more specific roles. I think the same is true of problems. If you throw a lot of people, time and effort at a problem and you can't solve it, it's probably because you haven't worked out how to break it down yet. One of the most important pieces of advice I got when I started out with my blogging was to split my efforts into readers, subscribers, and buyers. That seems like such an obvious thing to do but the moment you break that problem down, it clarifies everything you need to do. Learning to break problems down into smaller pieces is really helpful. Another general problem-solving tip is to invert things. If someone says what does success look like for your business or what should you be working on? You can invert that question and ask, what's the thing that I shouldn't be working on or what don't I want from my business? That will help you narrow the solution space in a way that makes getting to the positive answer more easy.   Speed round:   Coffee drinker, yes or no? No. One business tool you're geeking out over right now? ActiveCampaign Favorite piece of technology? My iPad Pro and Apple Pencil What's one book you'd pass along to a fellow entrepreneur? Getting Things Done by David Allen One person you'd like to make a connection with? I really wish I could have met Stephen Covey.  What's your favorite ice breaker when introducing yourself to someone? Smile. I think the positivity, energy and interest that you show in other people is almost always reflected back.  How many hours of sleep do you get each night, on average? I always give myself an eight-hour sleep opportunity and then I also have a siesta every afternoon that's usually 20 minutes to 60 minutes, depending on how well I slept the night before or how tired I am. How can people connect with you and The Art of Living? theartofliving.com You will find the blog organized by the different areas of life. There's book recommendations, book summaries, articles and courses. If you're overwhelmed, you can sign up to my mailing list and I spend the first week guiding you around the very best content on the site.     

To leave the corporate world at the beginning of a financial recession to start a company requires big thinking and even bigger action—and Rebecca Clyde has both in spades. Add that to her ability to outhustle and outwork her competitors and it's no wonder Rebecca was able to quickly find innovative paths to revenue and growth for her clients despite all odds. Today, Rebecca has built one of the most highly sought after marketing communications agencies in Phoenix, Ideas Collide, in addition to co-founding her newest venture Botco.ai, a platform that offers chat-nurturing solutions for businesses. How does she do it? By leading with value and operating under the mentality that if you pay it forward, the rest will follow. In this episode, we talk with Rebecca about the forces that drive her enterprising spirit, the hard lessons she's learned along the way, and how she creates channels for paying it forward.   Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above. What led you to leave the corporate confines to build your own company, Ideas Collide? At the time, I worked at a good company and really enjoyed everything I did while I was there. But I wanted to take more control of my destiny and my income and I realized the corporate world had a lot of limitations. I realized I had outgrown my ability to work for somebody else and was ready to spread my own wings.  In those early days, what were some of the challenges you had to overcome to achieve growth? We started the company in the middle of the recession in 2008. The very beginning years were scrappy. Our goal was to help our clients find a path to revenue and growth despite all of those downward forces. We were also lucky that we were a startup. We didn't have the overhead of a big agency so we could charge less, be nimble, try different things and experiment without a lot of risks. Our clients really appreciated that and as a result, some of our fastest growth years were during that period where most other companies in our industry were contracting. What was the turning point when you realized you had stumbled onto something viable with Botco.ai? My co-founders and I had a hypothesis that the world has shifted to become on-demand. Everyone was struggling to keep up with that on-demand world because the marketing technologies, processes and frameworks that have been built were not designed for it. If we could shift that, and make businesses really responsive, then they would be able to attract more customers and retain them for longer. Last year, one of my customers at Botco.ai A/B tested a campaign where half of their customers were driven to a ‘chat with us' experience in which they got to interact with the Botco.ai chat. The other half went to their typical landing page to book an appointment. What we learned was when people have a chance to ask questions and get an instant answer, they're twice as likely to convert and become customers. As soon as I saw the results from that effort, I knew we were onto something. Was it tough to make the decision to leave Ideas Collide and go full time with Botco.ai? It was a transition I had to plan over a good amount of time. I couldn't just walk away from it without being very thoughtful. One of the things I did was make a list of all of my duties and responsibilities and slowly began training people to take on each one of those tasks. It was a way to be able to step away from that business so I could start a new company, but it was also a really great way to develop my team. It created that growth trajectory for many of the team members to step up, take on ownership, and truly have an opportunity to run the business, not just be an employee. It was also a growth opportunity for me because it was time for me to build a new company. There was a lot I needed to learn. I needed to have that space to be able to fully give Botco.ai the attention it deserved.  What was one of your darkest moments and how did you emerge from it? With both companies, it had to do with the loss of a major customer or client. With Ideas Collide, there was one particular client that was doing a lot of work with us until they essentially shut down and disappeared. I felt like a punch in the stomach. We had all these outstanding payments with this one client and I had not put in good measures to protect ourselves against that. It was a good lesson. Sometimes these learnings can cost a little bit from a dollar standpoint, but we recovered.  With Botco.ai, we also had one client that was hit really hard with the pandemic. Unfortunately, their business contracted almost down to zero overnight. They had to go dark and having to deal with that again was a big blow. Very quickly we had to pivot our value proposition to target customers and industries that were not affected by the pandemic, or at least were affected in a different way. We realized that everything we had put in place could be easily adapted into other sectors. We took those knowledge bases and workflows we had created for our old industry and customers and pivoted those for the sector that was going to be having a lot of movement and activity as a result of COVID.  What's one of the best things you've done for Botco.ai to help propel its growth? Getting really plugged into the Arizona startup ecosystem. Phoenix is a very young scene for the startup world. Many people would say we're largely underdeveloped, but because of that, there's a lot of desire to help and a lot of great resources. What specifically helped us was winning last year's Arizona Innovation Challenge. We were one of 10 companies to receive a $150,000 grant. It also came with incredible wraparound services that I am incredibly grateful for. We got to participate in a 500-startup entrepreneurship bootcamp that was really transformational for the business. It's resources like that that have helped us get more visibility and teach me things that I didn't know.  Are there one or two connections along your journey that made a big impact? I could write a list of the people in my life to whom I am deeply grateful. Mike Denning has been my coach for many years and has been instrumental for me in terms of my leadership development. Meghan Bednarz, one of my first bosses at Intel, was one of those people who believed in me and my abilities and presented opportunities to me that propelled my career in many ways. Dorothy Dowling at Best Western has also been an incredible mentor and opportunity provider. She's super visionary and an incredible leader that I admire hugely. Gina Corley is one of those quiet forces here in Arizona who is doing a lot to move businesses forward and to modernize the state of digital marketing in this town. Zack Ferris over at Coplex has been an incredible mentor and friend. Eric Miller at the Arizona Tech Council.  One of the big things I really believe in is surrounding myself with positive, high energy, experienced leaders because they have so much they can share and if I'm willing to listen and pay attention, then maybe some of that will rub off onto me. What's one piece of advice you would give to fellow entrepreneurs looking to make impactful connections? The most important thing is to always give and provide value first. For every ask I make, I give 10 times. In my case, I do a lot of giving back through Girls In Tech. I also get asked to support a lot of other organizations here, whether it's teaching a seminar for Local First Arizona and helping small business entrepreneurs, or helping a friend that just wants to learn a little bit about software or sales. Or supporting a fellow founder that just needs a friend to listen to or confide in. There's so many ways we can give back, but unless we're willing to do that on a pretty regular basis, I think the asking will fall short and we'll ring hollow. Make sure you have channels for paying it forward, and then the rest will just take care of itself.    Speed round:   Coffee drinker, yes or no? Sometimes One business tool you're geeking out over right now? Botco.AI, obviously.  Favorite piece of technology? The Hypersphere. It's a workout ball that helps loosen up your muscles so that you're not so tight.  What's one book you'd pass along to a fellow entrepreneur? Pitch Anything One person you'd like to make a connection with? The founder of Infusionsoft/Keap, Clate Mask. What's your favorite ice breaker when introducing yourself to someone? I would say, “My name is Rebecca Clyde. I'm the CEO of Botco.Ai and I'm helping businesses double their conversion rates with intelligent chat.”  How many hours of sleep do you get each night, on average? Not enough. Probably about five.  How can people connect with you and Botco.ai? It's probably best on LinkedIn. Just mention in your note about how you heard about me, whether it was on this podcast or at a conference or wherever. Just include a little note because I'm most likely to see it that way. You can always email me at rebecca@botco.ai

When MeiMei Fox submitted her first book proposal, never in her wildest dreams did she think it would lead to a life-long writing career. But, a fateful connection to the right person (combined with her innate writing talent) soon catapulted MeiMei into the ranks of the New York Times bestselling authors.    Today, she is also a contributor to Forbes, The Huffington Post, and Self Magazine, among other publications, and has co-authored several other notable titles. On top of all that, she manages to find the time to serve as a life coach and mother to twin boys. What's her secret sauce? Fear less, love more.    In this episode, we talk to MeiMei about how she fearlessly pursues audacious goals, how she overcomes challenges and her approach for getting big things done: worst first.   Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above.Your background is in psychology, so what led you to writing? I studied psychology then I went to work at McKinsey as a management consultant and I intended to go down that path, but I was really unhappy. It was fascinating and I was surrounded by brilliant people, but I didn't feel that my work was meaningful and helping the world be a better place. After I finished my two-year program with McKinsey, I was lost and I didn't know what to do next. I was talking with a friend who was a doctor, and he wanted to write a book about supplements and I said, “I can help you write that.” I bought a book called “How to Write a Book Proposal” and I wrote up a proposal for this book that we would co-author. One of my friends knew someone at Penguin Putnam so I sent her the proposal and she wrote back about a week later and said, “I never do this, but we're going to buy your book.” That's how my career in writing got started.    What's been one of your favorite subjects or pieces to write? I've been blessed to have been taken down this path through my mentor in the publishing world. She got me into writing books on spirituality. When I began to work on a book with Robert Thurman, who's a professor of Buddhism at Columbia University (one of the Dalai Lama's oldest friends and also Uma Thurman's dad), I was taken with Buddhism. It's been fascinating to work on several books about Buddhism, learn more about it and find that it really resonated with everything that I believed about the world. I feel like I was almost called down that path during my career in writing. From there, I went to work on The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World with Howard Cutler, which was co-authored with the Dalai Lama.   How have you accomplished so much over the course of your career?  I expected, and wanted, to have children at a younger age, but I ended up getting divorced and spent most of my 30s being single and not getting remarried until I was almost 40 and starting to have a family then. Even though that wasn't what I wanted, I ended up with all this time. So, I just kept pursuing my interests. Everything I've done has been driven by my passion and my purpose. I don't seek out to win awards or be the wealthiest or most successful. I just go after what excites me and gets me up in the morning with a smile on my face.   What, if any, was a significant challenge you've had to overcome in your career?  Choosing this path is the biggest challenge. There's a great deal of instability and in the world of book editing and ghostwriting—it can be feast or famine. I get a really huge project and get a big chunk of payment upfront and then another chunk when the book is finished. Other times, it's like I'm scrambling to pay the monthly bills. You have to be really comfortable with uncertainty. The trade off has been the excitement and the freedom. I've literally spent most of my career working whenever and wherever in the world that I wanted to.    As a life coach, are there any common threads you see in what tends to limit individuals from pursuing or realizing those dreams? I definitely think so. I have a mantra that I've developed over the years, which is “fear less, love more.” What I've seen with a lot of my coaching clients is that it's fear that's holding them back from taking a risk. I think everybody's suited to different levels of risk and different levels of stability. There are ways that you can keep working a steady job and have a reliable income while also beginning to explore some of your passions. What I often find helpful is breaking it down into smaller steps. The other big part of it is holding people accountable. It's so easy to put off our dreams and our passion projects and to procrastinate them or push them to the bottom of the pile. A big part of what I do is holding people accountable to say, “here's this small goal that you set to reach your big dream. What's the timing of that? What are you going to have done in two weeks? What are you going to have done in a month? How can we just start moving there step by step?”   Are there one or two impactful connections that shaped your journey significantly? Amy Hurts. She's the one who was the senior editor at Penguin Putnam who bought and published the book. We became friends as we were working on that book together. At the end of that process, she said, “You know, you can do this for a living.” Even though I now had a published book, I still was in denial over the fact that one could be a professional writer. She said, “I will get you a literary agent and your first freelance editing project.” And she did. She remained at my side, guiding me through that process for a decade. I'm immensely indebted to her.    What's one piece of advice you would give to someone struggling to achieve an ambitious dream? I think it's so important to break big audacious goals into smaller, more manageable chunks. I also think that you don't have to work with a coach. You don't have to pay anyone. It could be a partner, a parent, a best friend, but I think it's really critical to state your intentions out loud and make them known and have someone who is holding you accountable, checking up on you and seeing if you're continuing to make progress to your goals. Another thing is, a long time ago I heard one piece of advice that I really love –– “worst first.” It's the idea that you have your to-do list and in the morning you do the worst thing first.  Speed round: Coffee drinker, yes or no? Yes.  One business tool you're geeking out over right now? Zoom Favorite piece of technology? My smart phone What's one book you'd pass along to someone who may be looking for new inspiration or a change? The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle  One person you'd like to make a connection with? Oprah What's your favorite ice breaker when introducing yourself to someone (either online or off)? My name. MeiMei is Chinese and means little sister. It was a nickname that my brother gave me when I was born, but stuck my whole life. It's a really fun topic of conversation.  How many hours of sleep do you get each night, on average? Seven to eight  How can people connect with you? All the social. You can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, My Forbes Author Page. And my website is meimeifox.com.   

When was the last time you paused, reflected on what was going on in your life, and took a hard look at how it was affecting your happiness, health and overall success? Has it been awhile? More than likely, the answer is “yes.” Often we rush from one task, milestone or accomplishment to the next, in constant pursuit of what we think we need to make us happy, successful and fulfilled. In other words, we're always looking for more and it's exhausting. For Karen Mangia, VP of Customer & Market Insights at Salesforce, this was her reality until a health issue forced her to press pause. But as they say, it's often life's most challenging situations that present the best gifts. Through this journey, Karen learned that success, happiness and fulfillment wasn't about more. In fact, it was just the opposite –– a topic she explores in her book, “Success With Less”. In this episode, we talk to Karen about how the idea of “pause, ponder, prioritize” came about, how to peacefully coexist with old habits, and how to identify when you're at a crossroads and what to do about it. What led you to write “Success With Less”? I think back to those early days when my mom would do this chore chart. It would be a list every day of the things that you were supposed to do and the behaviors you were supposed to display. If I did it, I would get one of those gold stars. I loved being able to see the stars across the board, like these little moments of achievement. I took that gold star mentality forward in life. Keep saying yes, keep performing, and keep amassing those gold stars. It was a formula that worked incredibly well early in my career. I earned several promotions and got some recognition and rewards that created more opportunities. The challenge was that the further you go in your career and life, you have to be more thoughtful about what you're saying yes to and whether it's serving you and moving closer to your goals. All those gold stars eventually added up to a really major setback in my life and I started discovering that “Success With Less” formula. How I defined success changed radically. Success was getting healthy enough again to be able to enjoy my life and that was a very different definition than getting gold stars, and that was okay. Being a type-A personality, how did you teach yourself to pause more frequently? In some ways, the pause was forced on me because I was conscious that I really did have limited time and energy. What I found during that time was that having a success mindset and an outcome in mind helped me start saying “no” to things that might drain my energy and not get me closer to my goal. What I started to discover when I was saying “no” on my own terms or pausing from endless activity was the pauses that we choose feel really different than the ones that are forced on us. What I started finding was when I could choose these moments to pause because they would help me refresh or reset, it felt a little more empowering. How do keep from returning to old habits and thought patterns that set you back? It is really difficult to change our routines and boundaries and then stick with them because that takes energy. We don't always have all the energy that we need to endlessly keep everything in perfect balance. What's important is how do you reset when you find that happening? I'll never forget what my friend once said—that it is okay to look behind you and acknowledge that that person with those habits is still there and it's always going to be there. The difference is you can see that person from a distance and peacefully coexist which means you now have permission to make a different choice. Having a little bit of saving grace that you're still human and you're gonna make mistakes will go a long way. Are there one or two people along your journey who have really transformed the trajectory of your career? There are a couple who come to mind. I had hit a point where I was looking for a role outside of sales and I had flown to another city for a job interview in my same company. When I got to the city and in my rental car, the interviewer called me and canceled the interview. I'm like, what do I do now? I found this mentor and she said, “Drive to my office, I'll think of a plan.” When I got there, she said, “Great news. You and our Chief Operating Officer graduated from the same university. You'll call him, tell him you're in town and that you would love to meet him because he went to the same university.” I thought this sounded like a horrible plan, but I was desperate. I called, met up with him, and ultimately ended up working for him. This sent me on a completely different career path and really brought me to where I am now. Another really formative person that stands out for me is an executive coach I had named Diane. I dedicated the Success with Less book to her because it never would have happened without her coaching and encouragement. What are some of the best ways you intentionally make impactful connections to grow yourself? When I think about growth, I think about what I want to learn and experience next. Sometimes those things come about organically and sometimes I'll find it when I'm listening to somebody else describe a hobby or something they do in their role. I get really excited and I think I would love to try that. That's always been something that's guided my career and my life, where I've sampled different hobbies and experiences. I've found that that has led me on some really interesting paths. What would you recommend to somebody who maybe feels like they're at a crossroads but don't know what direction to go? I refer to that as the general malaise—that feeling that nothing is getting you super excited and you don't really feel a clear sense of where to go next. In those times, I try to think about any small thing that might be enjoyable or what is it that you did when you were five that you absolutely loved? Do just a little something that sparks that nostalgic joy. Be really observant about if anything lights you up. Sometimes we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to figure it out in an instant, but it's okay to live in that spot for a while. Another tool that has helped me is going with the people who I don't know that invite me to connect and have a conversation. I will go through a period where I just say “yes.” I don't know where I'm headed at the moment so this “yes” might be something that ignites excitement or opens up a path to a new opportunity. Speed Round Are you a coffee drinker? Yes What is one business tool you're geeking out over right now? I hate to admit it, and it's so cliche, but Zoom. What is your favorite piece of technology? My mobile phone What's one book you'd pass along to someone who may be looking for new inspiration? Lifescale by Brian Solis. He has some fantastic tools about how to shut out distractions and work in 90 minute sprints. Who is one person you'd like to make a connection with? Brené Brown. I find what she has to say to be incredibly practical, soulful and challenging. What is one of your favorite icebreakers? Two things that I like to ask people about are what are you excited about right now and what was their first job? How many hours of sleep do you get each night on average? I make a concentrated effort to get eight hours of sleep every night. How can people connect you? You can find me on Twitter @karenmangia or you can find me on LinkedIn. I would love to connect with you and hear your story and learn from you.

When most people think of marketing, they think big energy, big talkers, big ideas and even bigger results. And while this may be true, building an effective marketing strategy—and team—is about starting small and ensuring quality always overrides quantity. It's with this mentality that Charlotte Bohnett, senior director of demand generation at WebPT, and Brooke Andrus, content marketing manager at WebPT, have helped develop an extremely effective inbound marketing engine that has led WebPT to become the third-most sought after resource for compliance and billing in the rehab therapy industry. In this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, Charlotte and Brooke talk about how they got their start in marketing and how they've built a powerhouse marketing engine that has helped grow WebPT from a bootstrapped startup to a rapid-growth tech company. This dynamic duo also explains the pivotal role WebPT's content marketing strategy plays within the team's approach to demand generation as well as why marketing teams should own more of the funnel. Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above. What led you to WebPT? Charlotte: I started at WebPT eight years ago. I finished graduate school in Northwestern Ohio and was working at a B2B company that was a distributor of media to public library systems in the US and Canada. They had just expanded into developing a software that libraries could use for checking out video content so I started dabbling in software as a service in the B2B space. My husband and I both wanted to spread our wings in marketing so we applied for jobs all over the country. Fortunately, WebPT reached out to me for a copywriter position. I had a really good feeling about it, so my husband and I packed up and we drove across the country. I knew it was the right fit for me. Brooke: I went to journalism school at the University of Montana and started out my career as a community newspaper reporter and photographer. The parent company that ran our newspaper was constantly reducing newsrooms across the entire organization and I always felt like my job was in jeopardy. Me and my editor were doing the work of six people so I burned out really fast and I decided that it was time to look for something else. I expanded my reach beyond journalism and dabbled in some communications and media relations roles. The company that I was at before WebPT was basically a startup that ended up failing right in the middle of my contract with them. I started looking around and saw the listing at WebPT and was immediately struck by how different and fun it was. I had no idea what an EMR was. I didn't know what SaaS was, but the style and tone of the listing spoke to me so I applied. They called me an hour later to set up an interview. I ended up taking the job, driving across the country and started a new life in Phoenix. What have you been most proud of during your time at WebPT? Charlotte: The team. I have played a hand in hiring every single person in the marketing department. It's my top highlight because without this team we wouldn't have been able to demonstrate the overwhelming value of marketing and of intentionally crafting a very human brand. Without this team, we wouldn't see month-over-month and year-over-year success regardless of the economic or political climate. WebPT has been a juggernaut for over a decade and it is in large part due to this marketing team. Brooke: Making our “Annual State of Rehab Therapy Report” into what it is now. Originally, it was supposed to be a product marketing project to survey the industry and find the data they need to make sure what we were developing was solving our industry's needs. In the middle of the survey our product marketing manager ended up leaving and nobody was stepping in to close the loop on the project. Even though I didn't necessarily want to, I knew it needed to be done so I ended up taking the reins and seeing it through. It turned into this really awesome report and over the years it's evolved into our flagship content marketing piece. We've now done three and I've become the point person for the entire project, from distributing the survey and collecting the data to turning it into this beautiful, polished book. What role does content marketing play in your go-to-market and demand-gen strategies? Charlotte: Content marketing is the foundation of everything we do. Roughly 60% of our leads come in through pure inbound. We wouldn't get so many leads on our website if we didn't have so much traffic coming in organically and that traffic is purely because of how stellar our content is. We wouldn't amass the email marketing leads that we have if our email marketing wasn't fueled by a fantastic monthly newsletter, weekly blog digest, and a webinar series. We also use marketing automation to drip anybody who interacts with any of our content. We have figured out how to make connections to our products with content at every stage of the funnel. Without our content marketing program, we would not see the volume of leads that we are driving. Brooke: Our enterprise sales development works a little bit differently than everything else. Our reps are working bigger accounts for multi-location practices or hospitals. Those are longer sales cycles so they have to do a lot more outreach to keep those leads warm. Everything from blog posts to the industry report has helped give those reps the tools they need to reach out and keep the conversation going. What connections along your journeys have made the biggest impact? Charlotte: One person who has majorly impacted both me and Brooke is Heidi Jannenga. She is an example of an executive who has figured out how to be one with the people. She's honest, transparent, tough as nails and absolutely brilliant. She trusts and respects other people and prioritizes surrounding herself with people who are going to teach her things and then she empowers them. One other person is Mike Manheimer. He's one of the people who fought to hire me at WebPT and he worked with me closely for the entire time he was at WebPT. Before he left to lead demand gen marketing at Gainsight, he fought to promote me to an official manager title and give me authority. After he left, I felt empowered to lead that team. Without Mike showing me that a boss could be somebody who can treat you as an equal, I don't know if I would have known that that's the kind of team that I could create at WebPT. Brooke: I definitely owe my start in marketing and the progression through my roles in the marketing team to Charlotte. I had zero management ambition when I started, but Charlotte recognized the potential in me and it is a huge reason why I ended up pursuing a leadership path. She believed I could do it even though I had no experience managing people and I wasn't confident in my natural leadership abilities. She helped me make that transition and she's always had my back. No matter what happens, whether I feel like I made the right or wrong decision, Charlotte's there to help me turn it into a growth experience. What is one piece of advice you would give to marketers who might be struggling to scale or operationalize content within the organization? Charlotte: Make marketing own more of the funnel. Don't hand over prospects who download a white paper to sales. Keep those people in the marketing funnel, nurture them and get them to commit to a demo because then you're able to control more of the entire funnel and you take a load off of sales, which demonstrates the value of marketing. Marketing is proving that we can qualify the leads through marketing automation. Brooke: Start small. Our content marketing program is a multifaceted, well-oiled machine at this point, but it was not always that way. It's a process. The first step is getting in tune with your audience, understanding what they want to consume, when they want to consume it and how they want to consume it. Create a plan for a month, then try to plan for a quarter, then try to do a high level plan for a year. Keep in mind you don't have to publish something every single day. I think that's a mistake that a lot of content marketers make. Be thoughtful about the content that you're producing and focus more on quality than on quantity. Speed Round Are you a coffee drinker, yes or no? Brooke: Yes. I have one or two cups of coffee first thing in the morning and nothing after that. Charlotte: Yes. I consume all my coffee before noon, but I drink coffee all morning long. What is one marketing tool you are geeking out over right now? Charlotte: Our company is very into Drift right now. What is your favorite piece of technology? Charlotte: Roku Brooke: Garmin watch What's one book you would pass along to a fellow marketer? Charlotte: The book that I would give people is no book at all. I would tell them to be more observant of the marketing world around them. Brooke: This isn't really a marketing book, but a writing book that I recommend to people is “Eats, Shoots & Leaves.” It's incredibly entertaining but it also teaches a lot about writing in a clear, concise manner. Who's one person you'd like to make a connection with? Charlotte: Jameela Jamil Brooke: Barbara Walters What is one of your favorite ice breakers when you're introducing yourself to someone? Charlotte: Talking to people about the food and drinks at events, which actually works out very well because people always want to critique whatever they're eating and drinking at that moment. Brooke: If you see somebody with cool swag from the trade show floor, you can ask them where they got it. How many hours of sleep on average do you guys each get each night? Charlotte: About 7 hours Brooke: 7-8 hours Connect with Charlotte, Brooke and WebPT: You can go to webpt.com. You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest. If you want to get in touch with me or Brooke you can email demandgen@webpt.com. We're both on Twitter— @charbertos and @brookeaandrus.

“Use analytics to see what's working. Double down on those things and cancel something else.” How much time do you spend with your analytics? Seeing what's delivering results and what's not? Looking at what content played well across which channels –– and what content gave you the most mileage. This is where Andy Crestodina, co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media Studios, a digital agency based in Chicago, believes content marketers should start their content planning. In this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, Andy shares how this strategy has helped him and his team create a winning (and scalable) content strategy. What prompted you to change your role from Strategic Director to CMO now at Orbit? Amanda Gant is our in-house marketer and she is 100% deserving of the director title. Partly to keep there from being confusion, we titled up a little bit. Amanda has a title that's more fitting of her role and I am a cofounder. I just ended up being the CFO. We're only a 40 person company so the titles are not super meaningful. I actually still do a good bit of sales, but a lot of my time is spent doing content marketing and I still do tons of writing, speaking and teaching. What are you doing at Orbit for your clients? Have things changed at all in the last month in terms of how you're servicing clients? Our company is primarily focused on web design and development. The content we're creating is basically evergreen content for sales pages. The purpose of these projects is to improve the foundation and platform for marketing and these are things that aren't affected by the massive change in the economy. It has definitely impacted the business environment and the work life of everyone we collaborate with. It's affected the appetite for risk, the concern about cash flow, the pace of sales and pipeline and leads. It's had a big impact but not in the deliverable itself. I can't just publish another ‘how to get more Twitter followers'. What I had to do was to look at what would give comfort to an email subscriber. What kind of article would make sense, and concluded that it would be useful to people in my audience to see what is happening in the industry. I quickly got a survey out of 122 agency owners to ask, what has the impact been for you? I was able to hopefully add to the conversation by putting out a bit of original research. There's some charts in there that really show how providers of different services were affected at different levels. There's a lot of unity in what's happening. I've adapted my communication strategy with clients a bit, but that piece of content is an example of how we can all be sensitive and still create value for an audience. That is a pivot away from the classic common topics and content strategy that we used to run. As companies are thinking about their content strategies, is it a time to be accelerating content marketing efforts or is it time to pull back? We all still have the same number of hours in a day. Some of us who now have zero travel time, have more hours in the day. Rather than doing content marketing or PR, if you're a brand, go back and revise the sales pages on your website, improve the homepage of your website, add testimonials or re-update all of those service pages and product pages. I used to wake up in the morning and spend half an hour or an hour on an article. Now I'm waking up in the morning and spending half an hour or an article rewriting a sales page. Similarly, it's a good time to polish your social media bios and do a little personal branding. You can also build content that can be released later. Let's say you'd always wanted to create a new program with a series of weekly videos. You can now go ahead and pre-record an entire series of content and when it's ready, just queue them up. Go look at all this stuff you're paying for or evaluate a tool that you've never used before. PR people and content marketers can keep strong relationships right now. It's a really powerful time to build stronger relationships and just show that you care and show that you're here. What steps should marketers take to make their content more discoverable? Or what are some of the things that you do? There was always this debate about bounce rate. We built a thousand websites over the years so I have access to hundreds of analytics accounts. I actually had a VA go look at all these analytics accounts and copy and paste different bounce rates from different traffic sources into a spreadsheet. We got up to 500 analytics accounts. I averaged all these and published this number. The average bounce rate on websites is 61%. Then I did it by industry and I did it by traffic source and produced this piece of research that was built to be promoted. It took maybe 30 or 40 hours to make this whole thing. Now I have a piece of content that is totally original. It is the best page on the internet for its topic. It's beginning now to rank in search and it's been picked up by other websites. It looks great in streams because of the visuals. I can reference it from other articles that I've written and as time goes on, I'm going to look for ways to incorporate this into presentations and other content. Are there some other best practices for content distribution? One of the things that it took me a while to figure out is that when you look at a topic or a headline, it's often true that that topic or headline has a natural advantage in either search or in social. If the piece that you're working on answers a question and has long detailed answers, that is likely something that will work well in search. On the other hand, if the piece is a little bit unexpected and has visuals and it's highly collaborative, that is going to work well on social media. They're sort of opposites. In search, your job is to meet expectations but in social, your job is to be a little bit unexpected because you know nothing about what they're thinking. You can basically look at a topic or a headline and ask yourself, is someone looking for this? Does this satisfy an information need or is this kind of emotional? Does this leave curiosity or is it unexpected? That dichotomy and understanding the different psychologies of people in those channels has helped me a lot. When I even begin to think about a topic, I'm already planning how and where that might work best and then tuning it up to work in that place. On the SuccessLab podcast, we often talk about this idea of impactful connections and how they can really transform the trajectory of your career or your business in some way. Is there one or two along your journey that made a really big impact? There is someone that I knew in the early days of our company. His name is Ed Tucker and he was the co-founder of a company called Octane Communications. He was a more mature business person at the time. He'd come from big agencies so he had that experience of pitching larger projects. He showed me how to have tough conversations with clients and that pricing things at a level where you can feed yourself is possible. Watching someone make decisions made a difference and was really useful to me. What's one piece of advice you would give to fellow marketers who may be struggling to scale or operationalized content in their organizations? Use analytics to see what's working. Double down on those things and cancel something else. Try to get a little bit of data about what's working and then do much more of what seems to be working and stop doing some things that weren't working. I wish I had done this years earlier. What people often find is that bigger and harder thing is worth it. It might be two or three times harder to create, but it might give you 10 or 20 times the result. I have learned that it makes more sense for me to do a larger, more authoritative, longer exhaustive piece of content less often. Speed Round Are you a coffee drinker? Yes or no? Yes. What is one marketing tool you're geeking out over right now? Analytics What is a favorite piece of technology? Noise-canceling headphones What is one book you'd pass along to a fellow marketer? Deep Work by Cal Newport Who's one person that you would like to make a connection with? I am blown away by the vision of Elon Musk. I think that guy's brain is fascinating and it'd be fun to hang out with him for an afternoon. What is your favorite icebreaker when introducing yourself to someone, either online or in person? I like to just leave it pretty open and ask someone what they're working on. It often leads to good conversation. They may get specific about a project and you instantly move away from small talk towards something interesting that they feel passionate for. How many hours of sleep do you get each night on average? Six and a half. I have a one-year-old though. How can people connect with you or orbit? Sign up for a biweekly newsletter on our blog at orbitmedia.com/blog. I also wrote a book which is called Content Chemistry. Another great resource Andy mentioned during the interview is this blog post: https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/whats-a-good-bounce-rate/

Want to build an effective go-to-market strategy? Get out and talk to your stakeholders.  That may not be a novel concept, but it's one that's often forgotten. For Cory Fetter, product marketing and go-to-market leader at Front, it's foundational to an effective go-to-market strategy. And when we're talking stakeholders, it's not just customers, it's also product, sales and customer success teams.  In this interview, Cory shares how he approaches building strategies, how he thinks about and uses content to better enable the sales team, increase funnel velocity, and build a loyal customer base, and why he believes effective marketing starts with caring.  Tell us about your journey? How did you get into leading go-to-market strategies for SaaS companies? When I started my career, I didn't envision this. I originally was on the corporate communications side and I joined a global technology distributor in Phoenix called Avnet. I loved the value that was put into effective communication, especially around different cultures and geographies and the rigorous review processes they had. Thereafter, I joined Infusionsoft, which is now rebranded as Keep. I eventually led the PR team and focused a lot of my time on messaging and positioning around the product. I eventually transitioned into product marketing and more formally go-to-market strategy. Then I joined a company called Gainsight. Originally, I focused on growing their SMB segment of business and I leveraged a lot of what I learned at Infusionsoft [Keap] in that role. We eventually acquired a company and then I led the go-to-market strategy for that product line. Most recently, I've joined Front where I'm focused on building and leading the go to market across key industries and in different use cases. You recently landed at Front, what were some of the first steps you took to set yourself (and the company) up for success? I'm still very much in the process of this. I view my first 30 days as primarily to understand the landscape. I've been talking with a lot of people in sales within the product team, the success team, support team and marketing. I am focusing on key questions like, what is our primary target market today? Who do we believe to be the ideal customer profile and trying to learn more about our competitors, their strengths and how are they positioning their product? What types of content are they pushing out into the market? Are there gaps or resources the team needs to help accelerate the pipeline? What has worked within our target audience and what marketing channels are we leveraging? Answering those questions within the first 30 days will allow me to effectively craft the go-to-market strategies.  How do you determine what niches to focus on and then how do you dig in and learn about them?  When you talk to enough people or listen to enough sales conversations, you're going to start finding a pattern. That's usually where I start. I get directional guidance, but then I also look at the data and the usage behind our existing customer base. At Front, I'm fortunate we have some tools that make it easier for me to go in and explore among our customer base and what industries they fall in. Going through that process of narrowing it down with that anecdotal or directional insight from the conversations you've had upfront to more of the analytical data-driven approach, you can layer those on top of each other to get a really good understanding of where you should focus. What role does content marketing play in your GTM strategies? I can have sales enablement sessions with our sales team and make sure that they understand who our target audience is and what key messages should they hit on, but if the team and company doesn't have any content to generate the interest, we're not going to have anyone to talk to. If the sales team doesn't have the content to help facilitate those conversations, you don't have all of the tools in your toolbox to close that deal as effectively as you can. Content is at the core of all of my go-to-market campaigns that I focus on.  Are there one or two impactful connections along your journey that made a big impact? I've had several mentors in my career that really did change the trajectory. Rhett Wilson. He is not even in the marketing industry but has provided so much guidance. He works for the White House Historical Association and his advice on how to interact with others in business helped me so much early in my career and still helps me to this day. Others that are in marketing, like Greg Head who was the CMO at Infusionsoft or Terry Hicks, who was the COO, modeled by example and the one-off conversations that you may not think of as being very formative ended up being very formative. Some of the greatest advice that I got from everyone collectively is be intentional with your career and ask yourself every year, every quarter or every month, are you getting what you need within your current role to achieve the goals that you've set out for yourself? If you're not, that's when you have to ask the questions around what can I re-architect or change within my current role? Or, is it time to go look for that next challenge? What's one piece of advice you would give to fellow marketers who may be struggling to scale or operationalize content in their organizations? I'm going to pull from one of my favorite quotes by Theodore Roosevelt, “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Have the conversation around why you're doing this and why should they care about your content goals and your go-to-market goals and help them see the value of pushing through a new process or scaling content in a certain way.    Speed round: Coffee drinker, yes or no? Yes.   One marketing tool you're geeking out over right now? Looker, a marketing analytics tool that enables self-serve analysis.    Favorite piece of technology?  Front has totally changed the way that I look at email.   What's one book you'd pass along to a fellow marketer? Never Eat Alone One person you'd like to make a connection with? Jeff Bezos. Given what's happening in the world and how Amazon is truly allowing us to continue to function, it would be so interesting. What's your favorite ice breaker when introducing yourself to someone (either online or off)? Sharing a stat about Arizona, that it is literally one of the sunniest places in the world. A lot of people outside of the state don't know that and they always find that to be somewhat interesting.  How many hours of sleep do you get each night, on average? Six or seven.   Connect with Cory on LinkedIn. For Front, check out frontapp.com. (P.S. You can try the software for free!)

Steven Kiger got the entrepreneurial itch in high school, creating odd jobs for himself that would fund weekend excursions with his friend. Today, Steven has founded several ventures, and is currently a partner and CPO at RocketSource, a company specializing in transforming the customer experience, and the co-founder of Platstack, a platform that allows you to save, organize and share topics you care most about.    On this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, Steven shares why getting uncomfortable has been key to his success, the value of surrounding yourself with people who have experienced both great successes and great failures, and how he was able to push through multiple startup failures.   Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above. You have a storied career in entrepreneurship. What was your first venture and how did you start? My very first entrepreneurial venture was back in high school. During the summer, my friends and I would knock door to door to see if people would want us to spray paint address numbers on their curbs. We would strategize around how many doors we had to knock to afford our night out. These entrepreneurial moments continued throughout college and then into my first job, which was at a Fortune 500 company in the dental space. I noticed there was a huge demand for dental marketing and there weren't a lot of companies doing it. I decided to actually quit my full-time job and start a dental marketing company. What were the early days of your entrepreneurial journey like? I was lucky to start at an early age. I was 24 years old. I was single. I had no dependents and I just had to make sure I paid my rent every month. It wasn't a huge amount of stress because I knew there wasn't a lot of risk in doing it. It was exciting. I would say the biggest thing is just getting uncomfortable and doing something you've never done before.  What were some of the biggest challenges you encountered as you grew the business? It was just myself for a long time, so for me, the hardest thing was hiring that first person. It took me many, many years to get to the courage to do that. But it was one of the best decisions I made –– and he's still with me. What was one of your darkest hours and how did you pull yourself out of it? I started an app six or seven years ago called Mover, which was like an Uber for renting trucks. We spent a lot of money on it and built it out. Unfortunately, we never found product-market fit in Utah because everyone has a truck or knows someone that has a truck. Any sort of failure like that, where you spend years of your time, energy, excitement and money only to shut it down, hurts. With those failures, I've learned a lot and to continue pushing forward. What led you to RocketSource and ultimately to sell your other marketing company? It was a tough decision to sell the company but I got to the point where I wanted to build my own products. I had a lot of conversations with my wife and luckily she has been super supportive. I was also lucky enough to get connected my now co-founder, Buckley Barlow. We joined forces and then I brought in the third partner who I worked with in the past. He ran his own digital technology coding shop. And so we needed that dev partner as well. So we had a creative, a growth guy and a dev guy needed to create RocketSource. The ultimate goal with RocketSource was to create a service-based company that can generate some good revenue and ultimately build really cool products we can grow. What has been one of the most important lessons you've learned along your entrepreneurial journey?  My mantra is to never burn a bridge. I've had really crappy clients in the 20 years I've been doing this and I always suck it up and do the job to make sure they're happy. Interestingly, some of my best clients have come as referrals from some of my worst clients. It has served me very well.  Has there been a connection you've made along your journey that made a big impact? My partner in crime, Buckley Barlow. He's a genius in a lot of ways. He's mentored me over the last seven years to become someone who I wasn't before. What's one of the best ways you make impactful connections to grow yourself and your business?  It's amazing what now is available versus when I started 20 years ago. I would say to challenge yourself. Go find entrepreneurial clubs, look on Meetup, find lunches, join a local Slack group, get super uncomfortable. Ultimately, most people want to help each other and one of the best ways to do that is to just get out there. Speed round: One business tool you're geeking out over right now? Slack Favorite piece of technology? Anything that can save time through a mobile device. What's one book you'd pass along to a fellow entrepreneur? Don't Make Me Think  One person you'd like to make a connection with? Barack Obama What's your favorite ice breaker when introducing yourself to someone (either online or off)? Normally I like to talk about travel, anything along the lines of finding out where they've been, what they've done.  What is your favorite way you rejuvenate and refresh? Snowboarding. Just getting outdoors and turning off the devices. How many hours of sleep do you get each night, on average? Eight How can people connect with you or RocketSource? We'd love to have anyone try out Platstack. We haven't fully launched yet so there might be some bugs but we're looking for people to try it out and give us some feedback. You can connect with me on LinkedIn and RocketSource.com is our website.

Like many entrepreneurs, Jacob Findlay gave up the comforts of a secure job, a reliable paycheck and benefits for a new world of unknowns. But unlike other entrepreneurs, he decided to take a year to work in the field he was aiming to disrupt to learn it from the inside out.  Leaving his job as the director of finance at a rapid-growth SaaS company to work in a diesel repair shop may sound unorthodox, but for Jacob, it was a necessary step in his entrepreneurial journey.  Today, Jacob is the founder and CEO of Fullbay, a cloud-based heavy duty truck repair and shop management software based in Phoenix. Now in its fifth year, Fullbay has grown to become the number-one fleet repair platform in North America, completed a very successful Series A funding round, and was recently named the outright winner of Invest Southwest's and Arizona Commerce Authority's Venture Madness competition.  In this episode of The Success Lab Podcast, Jacob talks about the importance of starting lean, building a network that helps you focus rather than distract you, and, above all, the value of practicing patience in business.   Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above. What led to you build Fullbay? I fell into the software startup world on the electronic medical record side and was fortunate enough to be involved in three startups. At one point, I heard from a friend who was looking to find good software for his truck shop and was frustrated in what was out there. The idea was sparked and I thought, “why don't we just build it?” So, I quit my job and I worked in a truck shop for a year to gain some credibility before we launched Fullbay.  What's been one of the biggest challenges you've had to overcome as founder of a fast-growth SaaS company? Learning patience. We are five years in and we're just now doing the things I've wanted to do since the beginning. It's really satisfying. I think it's easy to get pulled into chasing shiny objects that don't necessarily build a company. We've been fortunate enough to keep our eye on the ball and be patient enough to wait to do the amazing things we know we can do.  What advice would you give to fellow entrepreneurs looking to build impactful connections? The way you build anything is to start with a thesis and then test it. Based on that evidence, you're going to establish the next thesis. Another thing that I think is important is that you don't have to be in endless rounds of fundraising, which can be a huge distraction. Try to start your organization as a lean startup. You can continue doing that as it scales. I believe this vastly increases the probability that it's going to survive. What's one of the best ways you make impactful connections to grow yourself and your business?  For about three years I've been involved with the StartupAZ Foundation, which is an incredible group and anybody who has or is looking to start a company should definitely become part of that or something similar in your community.  Speed round: Coffee drinker, yes or no? No, LaCroix. One business tool you're geeking out over right now? Bamboo HR Favorite piece of technology? The iPhone is amazing. One person you'd like to make a connection with? Elon Musk What's your favorite ice breaker when introducing yourself to someone (either online or off)? I try to get them talking about themselves. How many hours of sleep do you get each night, on average? Seven hours and 15 minutes. How can people connect with you or Fullbay? On the web at fullbay.com. And you can always hit me up on LinkedIn.

Finding the courage to be yourself –– and showing up as your full self everyday –– isn't the easiest thing to do for most. But that's exactly what Park Howell put his time and energy into doing and it's been one of the keys to living a fulfilling life, personally and professionally. As the founder of The Business of Story, a platform-based system that helps purpose-driven brands find their voice and connect through the art of storytelling, Park knows firsthand the struggles that come with growing a business. Well, two in his case. He is also the founder of Park&Co., an advertising and marketing agency, which has been in business for over 24 years, as well as the host of The Business of Story podcast.  In this episode of The Success Lab Podcast, we have a frank discussion with Park about what the early days were like as a startup entrepreneur, how he eventually achieved a true work-life balance, and the importance of simply showing up and following up. Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above. What led you to create Park&Co.? I grew up in the Pacific Northwest in the Seattle area. I graduated from Washington State University and moved down to Phoenix in 1985 thinking I was going to be here for a year or two. But I met my wife and had three kids and have been here ever since. While here, I started working as a writer for a public relations firm. I really love the creativity of copywriting for advertising so I moved over to the ad world side. I worked then in-house for a company called Quorum International as its creative director. When I left there, I knew it was time for me to start my own ad agency so I started as a one man band and grew it from there.  What were those early days like?  In the early days I was literally working out of this tiny little room in the back of our very first house that we bought while raising our three kids. Like any entrepreneurial struggle, you get up early, you get on the phone, you deal with clients, and you fend off little kids trying to get your attention while you're trying to get work done at home. You live that for what seems like 24/7 for the first couple of years until you get your feet beneath you. I was very blessed because my very first client was Forever Living Products International. They brought me into their fold like family and I worked with them for about 18 years and still do some consulting with them on the side. My second client was Sky Harbor International Airport and I represented them for about 10 years. I had a really fortunate one-two punch with clients when starting up my agency. What were some of the biggest challenges you encountered in growing Park&Co.? I remember on a couple of occasions becoming very overwhelmed by biting off way more than I could possibly chew. Although I had the energy to put into it, I was also looking at work-life balance with our family. I grew up in a family of seven kids and my parents were always there for us. Balance is really important to me. It's something you chip away at it and hope to figure it out sooner than later. We did, but it was a challenge, especially while we were continuing to build the company without spending a lot of money on employees.  What has been one of the best things you've done for The Business of Story to help propel its growth? The (Business of Story) podcast I do once a week. It is a lot of work, but it enables me to connect with amazing minds from all around the world. We cover every aspect of business storytelling. I've also got a really excellent person that handles my community development and SEO for my company. What was one of the most important lessons you've learned along the way? I think the secret to achieving your goals is 50% showing up and 50% following up. You have to do what you say you're going to do, otherwise you will lose complete and utter credibility.  What connections along your journey have made a big impact? There was a gentleman who has totally changed the course of my life. His name is Bruno Sarda. At the time, he was working at Dell in sustainability and supply chain and was also teaching at Arizona State University. At a conference in Phoenix, Bruno came over, introduced himself and we became friends. Bruno called me one day and said ASU was looking for a leadership professor and he wanted to invite me to write out the communications curriculum around my storytelling program. I'd never done anything like that before and I ended up doing it for five years. You just never ever know when that person's going to step into your world and have that tremendous impact.  What's one piece of advice you would give to fellow entrepreneurs looking to make impactful connections? Be yourself –– show up as who you are. I know people hear that all the time, but often when we're young in our careers and we're trying to look accomplished and as if we have our act together, it gets in the way of who we really are and all the foibles and the vulnerabilities we have. I was talking to my mom, who's 95 and in great health, and I asked her, “What's the difference from 30 years ago to who you are now?” She said, “I worry a heck of a lot less.” I would tell people, stop worrying about themselves and get over the fact that you don't have it all figured out because none of us do. Speed round: Coffee drinker, yes or no? Yes. One business tool you're geeking out over right now? My Calendly calendar invite system. Favorite piece of technology? This microphone and the ability to be able to record. What's one book you'd pass along to a fellow entrepreneur? One of my favorite storytelling books in business is Shawn Callahan's Putting Stories to Work. One person you'd like to make a connection with? Ben Folds. He's a great songwriter, piano player, and pop rock and roller. What's your favorite ice breaker when introducing yourself to someone (either online or off)? I don't have one icebreaker that fits all. I have to first look at the background and I'll ask a question particular to their situation so I can connect with them as quickly as possible.  How many hours of sleep do you get each night, on average? I get between six and eight hours. How can people connect with you or The Business of Story? Head on over to the website businessofstory.com. If you have any questions specific to me, feel free to shoot me an email at park@businessofstory.com or we also have a private Facebook group, a Business of Story for leaders. We welcome all newcomers who are interested in learning how to better communicate and have more confidence in their communication using the power of story.

How do you make an impact with others? Purple hair can help. But Holly Rushton's secret sauce is being a “yes” person and tapping into positive energy.  These two simple –– yet highly effective tips –– have helped her navigate a major acquisition and make a name for herself at Salesforce, where she is a senior manager of content marketing, works with Salesforce's Trailblazer Community and oversees content for AppExchange. Her “you get out what you put in” attitude has also been highly effective in her ability to manage the highs and lows that come with working remotely –– namely helping her build and maintain solid relationships with her coworkers. In this episode of The Success Lab Podcast, Holly talks about the journey that led her to Salesforce, how she has navigated her role through acquisitions, and reveals what she's most excited about from a content marketing perspective in 2020.   Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above. How did you land at Salesforce?  Looking back, I think it was always a goal to work for a larger enterprise. I worked for a Midwestern tech startup called ExactTarget, and we were acquired by Salesforce in 2013. And the rest is history.  What is one of the most rewarding perks of working at Salesforce that only those on the inside would know? I don't want to give away all of our secrets, but you'll probably hear two things. The first one's a bit tongue in cheek –– we get really great snacks in the office. There's a whole cult following of all of our wonderful snacks, which is a testament to Salesforce and how much they care about their employees and want to make sure that they're productive.  However, I think the most rewarding part of working at Salesforce is the ability to try new things and to grow. I have worked for a handful of other companies prior to coming to this ecosystem and the opportunity to grow your career path has not been there. I would work for companies where you had to literally be fired and rehired if you wanted to change departments or your level of contribution –– and that's not a way to run an employee culture.  How do you maintain strong relationships being a remote employee? It actually hasn't been a very easy journey for me. I started working remotely in 2016. It was a really hard change for me and it was difficult for me to feel connected and motivated.  What helps is to identify people who are also not based at HQ that you can develop strong relationships with. We have an internal network called Ohana at Home. It's for all remote employees. We share photos of our cats or our workspaces and we participate in a lot of general conversations. Also, being present helps. Video conferencing is a game-changer. I used to never turn on my webcam but being in front of people and showing your face, even if it's just to nod or say hi, is really important. You really need to put in the energy. At least that's what I've found has been successful for me.  What's one piece of advice you would give to fellow marketers looking to make impactful connections? Being open and being willing to say, "yes." Bringing the energy to building relationships because connections aren't going to be made. Connections take work. You have to be at certain places or talk to certain people. You get what you put in.  What are you most excited about from a content marketing perspective for 2020? I was recently reading a piece from the Content Marketing Institute, and Jay Baer, from Convince & Convert, was talking about the importance of user-generated content. He said for 2020, you'll need to determine what inspires your audience to create and share your story, and that it's not about changing the message, it's about changing the messenger. I think that's a really exciting prediction. Lightening Round:   Coffee drinker, yes or no? Yes. One business tool you're geeking out over right now? I love this Chrome extension called Momentum. Every time you open your browser or a new tab, it displays a beautiful photo and an inspirational quote. You can also keep a digital to-do list on there, which is really helpful for me. Favorite marketing tool? The Salesforce Marketing Cloud. We also use a tool on my team called Social Studio, which is also owned by us. It's really great for engagement. What's one book you'd pass along to a fellow entrepreneur? It's not a traditional marketing book, but Stephen King's On Writing was an important book for me when I was just finishing up college and knew I wanted to do writing in some format.  One person you'd like to make a connection with? Barack Obama. Definitely. What's your favorite ice breaker when introducing yourself to someone (either online or off)? I like to do Two Truths and A Lie. How many hours of sleep do you get each night, on average? Probably, five to six. What's your favorite board game? I'm a big board gamer and I would have to say I really love Lords of Waterdeep. Which was your favorite musical act from this year's Dreamforce? It would definitely be Fleetwood Mac. You can always give me a follow on Twitter –– you can find me at @hollymrushton. I'm also available to connect via LinkedIn. Just look for the girl with purple hair and black glasses.  

Fashion is a $400-billion-dollar industry in the U.S. But until recently, Phoenix was only capturing a small sliver of that pie at best. That changed when two Valley entrepreneurs came together and decided those aspiring to carve out careers in the fashion industry, shouldn't have to relocate to hubs like Los Angeles or New York to be successful. In this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, Sherri Berry and Angela Johnson, co-founders of the Arizona Apparel Foundation and F.A.B.R.I.C, share their uphill climb to launching the fashion business resource and innovation center, and how they've grown it to a beacon for fashion design businesses in the community. Headquartered in Tempe, Ariz., Sherri and Angela have grown F.A.B.R.I.C. into an important economic development initiative, opening the doors for fashion entrepreneurs to put down roots and thrive in the Valley –– and they did it all on a very limited budget. Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above. How did you get into the world of fashion? Angela: I went to Northern Arizona University (NAU) and got my degree in speech communication. When I graduated, I realized I could do some public speaking, but didn't have expertise in anything. So I decided to pursue fashion because I have always had a love for it. I went to Los Angeles and earned a degree from The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM). Then I worked in Los Angeles for a few different brands until I eventually started my own collection. Sherri: When I graduated with my business degree from the University of Wisconsin, I really wanted to be a fashion designer. At the time there wasn't the internet, so you needed a million-dollar ad budget to be able to advertise so people would recognize your brand and buy it in a store. That wasn't realistic for me, so I went into retail and 17 years later I was running 350 stores. I burned out so I decided to launch my fashion brand. I got my MBA and then took two years off to learn everything I could about apparel, design, development and manufacturing. I also spent a lot of time in California working with Frances Harder. She had a consultancy called Fashion Business Incorporated and she wrote a very famous book called, Fashion For Profit. I met Angela during this time. Angela was literally the matriarch of the whole fashion community in Phoenix. Whatever resources were available here, Angela was connected to and willing to share. What traits have helped you advance your career? Sherri: When I started my retail career, I was an assistant manager at a store with a college degree. It didn't pay very well but it was a great opportunity because it was in close proximity to the corporate headquarters of Famous Footwear. Because all the buyers and vendors would come in, the store and our customer service had to be perfect.  It helped me learn you're only as good as the people you hire. You can be on your game, but if one of your employees isn't, then you're not on your game either. It really is about finding people who share in your desires and beliefs and motivations, and also that you support them in their goals as much as they support you in yours. Have you had any low points as an entrepreneur? How did you pull yourself out of it? Angela: I ended up moving back to Arizona to take care of my grandfather when my grandmother passed away. My brand, Monkeywench, was selling internationally and was profitable. But soon I realized that none of the resources I had been using in Los Angeles existed in Arizona. I couldn't operate this business that I had spent years growing anymore if I was going to live in Arizona. So I made the hardest decision of my life to close down a profitable business because of proximity. It was a dark day, but I decided at that moment I wasn't going to let that be the end of my story. Instead, I was going to solve my own problem while also solving the same problem for other people. I pulled together the community from a directory of fashion businesses in Arizona. Now LabelHorde is the directory we use here at F.A.B.R.I.C. to tie everybody together. Is there a common mistake you see first-time entrepreneurs making? Sherri: I try to explain to designers that less is always more when you're starting a fashion design business. It's more important they decide what their niche is and who their target customer is, and then get enough product in enough quantities to build up that brand.  That's the beauty of social media right now. You can take beautiful pictures and videos to put out there, and then do pre-sales without investing a ton in your manufacturing.  What advice do you have for fellow entrepreneurs? Angela: Educating yourself in your industry before you enter it is probably the most important thing. What's great about F.A.B.R.I.C. is that we want to educate people so they know what they're doing and are actually taking on all the responsibilities of this complex industry.   Speed Round: Are you a coffee drinker, yes or no? Angela: Yes. Sherri: Oh my God, yes. What's one business tool you are geeking out over right now? Sherri: I'm looking at CRM systems right now.  What is your favorite piece of technology? Angela: It seems so obvious but when my computer doesn't work, my whole world comes crashing down. Sherri: It's amazing what you can do through a phone now. I can be on the move and be able to do important things without having my laptop or an internet connection.  What's one book you'd pass along to a fellow entrepreneur? Angela: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Sewn Product Manufacturing is a great book for any fashion design entrepreneur.  Sherri: Who Moved My Cheese? It's a short, quirky book, but if you're feeling stuck, you have to read it. Who is one person you'd like to make a connection with? Sherri: I have two: Doug Ducey and Sandra Watson. Angela: Michael Krohn. What would be your icebreaker? Angela: “How would you like to disrupt an industry and help put Arizona on the map for a brand new, innovative industry in the 21st century?” How many hours of sleep do you each get each night, on average? Angela: Oh, that's embarrassing. Five, maybe. Sherri: I try to get as much sleep as possible. How can people connect with you or F.A.B.R.I.C? Angela: Fabrictempe.com takes you to everything that we do. Contact us from there or come in for a tour. 

In the U.S., we waste approximately 30 to 40 percent of the food supply, which translates to more than 130 billion pounds and close to $200 billion every year. But not for long. Ben Deda is the CEO of FoodMaven, a Denver company that diverts food bound for the landfill to restaurants and other food service providers.  In this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, Ben shares how FoodMaven is bringing agility and flexibility to the food system and how the company plans to expand. Ben, who previously held executive, also talks about how his time in the Marine Corps prepared him for business leadership and how he made the switch to the world of technology.    Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above. What led you to FoodMaven? I got connected with the folks at FoodMaven through one of the board members I previously worked with at Galvanize. I was drawn to the fact that they were doing good and in a way that helps people on the planet. It was an opportunity too good to pass up. What's your approach to making genuine connections in your career?  Every single step in my career has been through connections I've made. There's a concept about increasing your surface area for collisions –– the more collisions you can have with the right targeted folks, the better that can be for everyone. It's those chance encounters that are the ones that pay off both personally and professionally. That was a big part of why we came up with a Startup Week –– to help increase those chances of collisions. What was your biggest challenge stepping into the role of CEO at FoodMaven?  How to maintain culture when you scale. When it's a small group, it's really easy. As you start to add folks, there will be different reasons they join the company. You want to make sure that throughout the recruiting process you're getting folks who share important values, whether they're a warehouse worker, a developer, a driver, or a salesperson.  Does FoodMaven have a set of core values?   We have our vision of, "All food used in good purpose." We always talk about our mission, and about capturing and creating a market for food otherwise lost in the food system with positive givebacks to profits, people and planet. We broke that down into values and our core culture and we try to live those every day. During our monthly all-hands meetings, we walk through one of our core values and a scenario that came up in the previous month we thought was a great example of that. If there's misalignment between the core values of your company and how your folks see people acting, then those values start to lose importance.  What's your advice for entrepreneurs looking to build quality relationships? The biggest thing is being deliberate in what surface area you're building. When you base this off what's important to you, then those collisions will be the most valuable. It doesn't have to be transactional. When you both share a passion about a subject, you can build that deeper connection overall. Then once you have that connection, learn to listen. Listening will help you develop that deeper relationship more quickly. What's next for FoodMaven? We're focused on a couple of key things. One is continuing to prove this model works here in Colorado. From there, we're looking to expand. Once we've shown we can take this and replicate it in another market, that's the point where we become really interesting to investors. The ability to take this to 10, 20 or 30 markets is absolutely in the cards.    Speed Round: Are you a coffee drinker? Always. What is one business tool you're geeking out over right now? I continue to geek out on Excel every day. I find some new little trick that I hadn't known the day before. Do you have a favorite piece of technology? Probably my iPhone. It continues to amaze me how much you can get done from a business standpoint. What's one book you'd pass along to a fellow entrepreneur? I still go back to Ben Horwitz's The Hard Thing About Hard Things. It's a great book to get yourself in the right mindset for the hard decisions you have to make as a leader. Who's one person you'd like to make a connection with? I would like to make a connection with whoever we could help the most with what we do here at FoodMaven. What's your favorite icebreaker when introducing yourself to someone? I always just say, "Tell me about yourself". You never know what you're going to hear.  How many hours of sleep do you get each night on average? According to my phone, I sit right at about six. I try to get seven. I've got a three year old who makes sure I'm up pretty early. How can people connect with you and FoodMaven? Visit foodmaven.com. We've got some great content up there where you can see stories about our suppliers and our buyers. There's also the ability to sign up to become either those. To connect with me, reach out on LinkedIn or Twitter at @Ben_Deda.  

When we think of the circular economy and sustainability, many of the organizations in this burgeoning space –– and moreover what they do ––  may seem nuanced to the general population. However, in reality, people have been implementing these practices for generations. At its core, the circular economy is a framework for an economy that is restorative and regenerative by design –– a concept that has been around since perhaps the beginning of humankind. Forrest Carroll, the CFO of Revolv (soon to undergo rebranding as Muuse), knows this firsthand having grown up on a farm in Maryland where the concepts of land stewardship, gardening, composting and fixing what was broken reigned supreme. Forrest directly attributes his upbringing to his foray into the renewable energy industry, which eventually led him to Muuse. On a mission to solve the ocean plastic problem, Muuse was created to empower food and beverage, and consumer packaged goods companies to shift away from the single-use products and instead adopt their reusable foodware products and deposit system. In this episode of The Success Lab Podcast, Forrest breaks down how Revolv (soon to be be Muuse) works, the inspiration behind the organization, how to build a network of allies, and the importance of cultivating relationships with, who he calls, consequential strangers. Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above. What does Revolv do? So, Revolv –– actually, I guess this is as good a place as any to announce our rebranding as Muuse1. Anyway, Muuse is a software platform for reusable foodware. We're mainly working on coffee cups and to-go food boxes right now. In its simplest form, we have a coffee cup with an RFID chip in it that you check out through a digital deposit at any of the cafes in our network. When you're done with your coffee, you drop it off at any of those participating cafes or into one of our smart return stations, which reads the chip and sends a signal to our system to reimburse your deposit immediately. There's a need for this right now because the recycling systems we work with currently are seemingly ineffective and, in many instances, like with bioplastics, they aren't performing as they were intended to perform. So businesses and consumers are turning to this rapidly growing class of reusable goods.   Editor's note: We will refer to Revolv as Muuse throughout the remainder of this blog post What led you to Muuse? The journey really starts on the farm where I grew up. I grew up in Maryland where there's this idea of land stewardship and gardening, which is the ultimate example of the circular economy and implementing sustainable practices in everyday life. On the farm, you're constantly fixing things instead of throwing them out. Take composting, for example. It's using existing natural systems to repurpose organic matter. Further down the line, this led me to work in the renewable energy space where I helped design and build solar energy products across the U.S., which then led me to Muuse. Part of how I got there was due to my old boss, who I worked with at my last renewal energy company, inviting me to see what he was starting in Indonesia. He talked about that pilot test case in Indonesia, and that mixed with my growing love for the ocean and my new surfing addiction. So I'd say the mesh of those two things really led me to Muuse and it has been a whirlwind ever since. I haven't looked back. How do you build impactful connections? The advantage to what we're building at Muuse, and to a lot of the things I've worked on in my business career, is we're building a mission-driven organization. We really don't have to spend a lot of time defending the sustainability benefits of what we're working on. People get it. We know what we're going to offset or that we're going to replace that single-use coffee cup you just bought with a reusable one that never ends up in landfills or the ocean. Finding people whose mission aligns with that is really valuable because they become part of your network of allies. Eventually, you build a large enough network and they are connected to people who you really want to talk to at the business table. And the other benefit we have is that, to their credit, a lot of these large corporations –– I'll use Starbucks as an example –– are trying to figure out solutions to the enormous amount of waste that they're creating right now. They are consumer-facing, so they're getting a lot of pushback. They're in the media. It's to our benefit that we have people who are trying to work on this in these large corporate roles, which are important allies because they're the ones who know what a good solution is.   What's one of the biggest challenges you've had to overcome at Muuse? Patience is one of them. When you move from a big company to a lean startup model and everything is going really fast, you just assume everything will take off immediately, right? But that's not the reality. You have to build all of these systems you never had to think of before. And ultimately, you're still working with these large, multinational companies that think you have these systems in place, so they push back on contract terms and methodology and expect you to have a crack legal team that can help reach a compromise on a contract term, et cetera. Part of the way I've overcome this is having worked to embrace this process of discovery and reflect and appreciate the amount of knowledge we have accumulated as an organization through the testing and piloting programs we've conducted in six different global markets, and from talking to untold number of coffee drinkers, right, or baristas or a cafe managers. When you're working in such a fast-paced organization, there is a lot to build beyond just that reusable cup.   Are there one or two impactful connections that have significantly shaped your journey? I've got to talk about Brian Riley, who's the true founder of this company I'm working on and is someone I first met working at NRG. He immediately occupied this role as a mentor and a boss, which in and of itself is very rare, especially in a hierarchical work environment. But what is even rarer is to find a mentor who treats you like an equal from the onset. That enabled me to grow in a way I hadn't been able to grow before and is one of the reasons I agreed to go see the operation he was building in Indonesia and why I'm where I'm at now. Another source of impactful connections comes from this idea of consequential strangers, which are most of the people you meet outside of your family and friends –– the people on the peripheral who lie in that social territory between strangers and intimates. If you pay attention to those consequential strangers, the sort of collective power of them to help you move ideas forward or to give you advice on very specific parts of your business, your personal life or your professional development. Put them together, and they are a very powerful and impactful connection. I've run into a lot of those consequential strangers over the last year working at Muuse.   What is one piece of advice you'd give to a fellow entrepreneur? I think a part of it is meeting consequential strangers and being open to diving deeper into that informal network all of us have. Asking people for help and asking people for explicit advice or expertise –– and then paying attention to what they have to say –– is really important. It might not be as relevant to the exact question you're asking but helps peel away this veil of what that person's really good at or what they understand. Being flexible and opportunistic allows you to dive in with that person perhaps on something that you didn't previously anticipate.    Speed round   Coffee drinker, yes or no? No. One business tool you're geeking out over right now? Fusion 360. It's a 3D modeling software. Favorite piece of technology? Oh, well (Muuse's) ultra-high-frequency RFID chip, obviously.  What's one book you'd pass along to a fellow entrepreneur? The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. One person you'd like to make a connection with? Oh boy, that's a good one. I want to make a connection with John John Florence. He's a famous surfer and he's working on ocean solutions –– and I think he should become an ambassador of Muuse. What's your favorite ice breaker? I like getting away from the chit chat and immediately going for questions that get to the heart. Here's one: what's the most important lesson your father ever taught you? How many hours of sleep do you get each night, on average? Two. No, I'm just kidding. It just swings so much, it's hard to come up with an average. I try my best to get eight. I really need my sleep. How can people connect with you? We have a pretty significant online and social media presence, but we are still transitioning from the name Revolv. However, I can be reached at forrest@revolv.io.  

Design –– it's much more than a pastime, a creative outlet, or an ability to pair complementary colors. Rather, it's a way for people like Jack Morgan to shed light on an issues impacting millions of people.   Jack has been designing to help educational platforms find a voice and solve large-scale problems for nearly 10 years. Formerly the design lead for Google's digital education division where he helped create the Google Academy London, Jack currently leads the design team at Duolingo, a language-learning website and app focused on making education free and accessible to all. His work at Duolingo has enabled him to help more than 300 million people learn a new language. It also inspired Jack to produce a short documentary about the impact of language on the lives of four Syrian refugees.   In this episode of The Success Lab Podcast, Jack talks about how his upbringing in East London influenced his career path, how his purpose as a designer and entrepreneur has evolved over the years, and how the Japanese idiom "ichi-go ichi-e" impacts his life –– personally and professionally.

The next wave of artificial intelligence is rushing toward the business world like a tsunami. More and more, companies are realizing they need to get prepared or risk being consumed by the swift changes this technology will bring. Jeff Cox is one entrepreneur who decided to get ahead of the trend and founded a company that leverages AI to help its clients increase their customer value.     Jeff is the co-founder and executive chairman of Radius AI, a technology that allows brick and mortar stores to deliver more personalized customer experiences. Prior to founding Radius AI, Jeff consulted and developed technology-based solutions for companies like American Express, McKesson, PayPal, and Apple, to name a few.    In this interview, Jeff shares what inspired him to start Radius AI and why he felt so confident handing off his role as CEO two years after launching. Jeff also explains why he focuses on people, trusts his gut and always strikes up conversations in coffee shops.

Social media has completely rewired our society. It's given new meaning to “breaking news”, and given us new ways to share, engage and express ourselves. But it's also had a pervasive impact on the economy, politics, international relations, all corners of society, and the list goes on. Nobody has a better front-row seat to this activity than the journalists covering these beats.    Salvador Rodriguez (aka Sal) is one such journalist. He is a tech reporter for the San Francisco Bureau of CNBC where he covers Facebook and social media. Needless to say, he's a busy guy. Prior to CNBC, he reported on the tech industry for Reuters, Inc. Magazine, the International Business Times and the L.A. Times.    In this episode, hosts Beth Cochran and Breanne Krager welcome Sal to The SuccessLab Podcast to hear how his love of football ended up being the catalyst for his pursuit of journalism. Sal also shares how his single-minded hustle as a college student led to a job at the L.A. Times, how he learned to look out for his career the hard way and what it takes to develop trusted relationships with sources.

Oftentimes, we encounter guests on this show who had never envisioned an entrepreneurial career for themselves until they were actually doing it. And it isn't uncommon for these journeys to take a meandering approach, replete with twists, turns, setbacks and big wins. Travis Van can attest to this. Travis earned a degree in journalism, went on to become a public relations manager, and then became employee number three at MuleSoft. Having never worked at a technology company, MuleSoft opened a number of doors for Travis and gave him the confidence he needed to eventually embark on his own venture. Today, Travis is the founder of TechNews (formerly known as IT Database), a software platform built specifically for tech companies to organize their public relations programs. On this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, Travis talks about his storied entrepreneurial journey and the biggest challenges he faced as a non-technical person starting a software company.

After devoting years to earning a bachelor's and master's degree in mechanical engineering, Eli Chmouni found himself frustrated and restless in a job he couldn't stand. Rather than accepting another 30 years of the same, he began to explore the idea of working for himself doing something he loved. From that point, Eli says, there was no turning back.  Today, Eli is the founder of SURF, a media distribution and rideshare entertainment company that places tablets in rideshare vehicles. But this is not his first venture. He's actually a four-time entrepreneur, making successful exits from two of his companies within two years of launching them.  In this interview, Eli discusses how a winning a competition jump started his foray into entrepreneurship, how he determines which ideas to pursue, and how he recovered from his darkest moment as an entrepreneur. He also shares stories about his mentors and the important lessons they taught him.

It's not uncommon for entrepreneurs to weave storied journeys throughout their career –– and this particular one makes several interesting (an unlikely) stops. In fact, Kevin Goldman's path is likely quite different from any you've heard before.    A Phoenix native and graduate of Arizona State University, Kevin left the Valley in his early 20s to see more of the world. After joining a band in Seattle with Reggie Watts, who now leads the house band for The Late Show with James Corden, Kevin spent a decade creating music and touring the country, all while running his design consulting firm. After more than a decade run with the band, and another successful startup and exit under his belt, Kevin eventually landed as Chief Design Officer at Trusona, where's helping to lead the mission to rid the world of passwords.    In this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, Kevin shares why he returned to Phoenix, opened his second design agency, 29th Drive, and how he connected with the team at Trusona. He also talks about prioritizing his values, who his greatest teachers have been and how he forms authentic connections while networking.   How did your career begin?  I was born and raised in Phoenix, and went to Arizona State University where I studied industrial design. At 23 or 24, I had this desire to get out of my hometown and see more of the world. I moved to Seattle and thought I might be a barista, because I didn't have a job lined up. At that time, I had been doing design work for a year when a business colleague asked me to do some contract work. That ended up being the start of a consulting career called Goldman Design that I had for over 10 years. It really was a perfect fit because this was early in the Internet era, so it was a case of being in the right place at the right time. Seattle in 1995 was also the right place and time for music. I had played bass guitar in bands through high school and through college, and that's when I met Reggie and Davis and Daniel Spils and all the guys in the band, and started really both careers at that time.   I spent 10 years in Seattle and lived a dual life of playing music, recording albums, touring the country and then working on fun design projects at the same time for a lot of startups in Seattle, including Microsoft. Ultimately I moved back to Phoenix and a lot of business opportunities ended up popping up. That's when I formed a consulting firm called 29th Drive, which was later acquired.   What significant challenges have you faced as a founder and how did you overcome them?   Agencies go through times of having a lot of work and then times of not having as much work – that's just the agency life. At 29th Drive, we asked ourselves, "Well, what are we going to do when we're not as busy?" We decided as a team to develop and launch products. So the challenge was either keeping billable time up or making sure that we were always extracting value from the business, whether clients were there or not.   One of the products that came out of that was a product called Inkwell. It's a physical sketch kit and it's made for makers or for entrepreneurs. We launched it and within probably four to six months, we had sold Inkwells in 22 countries and to some of the big luminary designers around the world. They would tweet about it and were thrilled to have a physical kit that embodied the craft of design that existed away from those glowing screens in front of them. We had a lot of fun developing that and ultimately turned that physical product into a lead generation machine for the consulting business. I take that as a creative win, looking at a problem and solving it in a unique way.   How did you end up joining Trusona? My design team did a two day design studio workshop with the Trusona team. During those two days, I met the founder of Trusona, Ori Eisen, and I thought to myself, I'd like to get to know this guy. I emailed him and asked him if he'd want to get lunch. We met at his coffee shop and immediately started talking about all the things that you're not supposed to talk about – religion, Israel (he's from Israel), art, music – and we really just hit it off.   So fast forward, eight months later I left where I was and came over to join Trusona as chief design officer. The mission here of getting rid of passwords is one that I can really get behind on many, many levels. Ask anybody if they love using passwords, and they'll tell you all kinds of stories about how much they hate passwords.   But on the security side, there's something that people don't know a lot about or at least laymen don't know that aren't in the security world, is that passwords are the root cause for 81% of the breaches in the world. And if that wasn't bad enough, these breaches, there's a tremendous amount of money from these cyber attacks that go to global organized gangs essentially. And that money goes to child trafficking, human trafficking, drugs, weapons, you name it. So if we can eradicate passwords, we can both help with what the money is being used for from the breaches. And then of course we can also make it a little easier for people's lives because they don't have to create and use passwords every day.   Have there been specific people who've significantly shaped your journey?  Certainly with music, I learned so much from Reggie. I remember the very first day we ever jammed together, even though it was 20 years ago. But probably the most impactful connections that helped form my life were some of my yoga teachers back then in Seattle. Let me back up a little bit...   A very good friend of mine recently exposed me to David Brooks. A concept that David Brooks talks about a lot and that is the concept of virtues – there's resume virtues, those are the things that we show on LinkedIn to say how great we are, and then there's eulogy virtues, those are the things that people will remember you by when you're gone. What do we really want to build up – our resume virtues or our eulogy virtues? Which do we give energy to? The biggest influencers in my life have been the ones that have helped to show me where things really matter.   Friendships, personal growth and being able to meaningfully connect with other people requires you to be comfortable in your own skin. Eve Nyman was my yoga teacher in Seattle for probably 10 years and she taught me so much about some of these things that end up affecting the rest of my life, including the business side of my life. How have you successfully made impactful connections over the years, from your band to your business, considering they're both totally different audiences? If there's one thing that comes to mind around making impactful connections, it's about knowing yourself and being sincere about what your intentions are when you meet people in the business world or in your personal life. If you're out there networking and you want a job, don't buddy up to somebody because you're hoping to get a job. Be sincere if you are interested in that person as a potential friend and be sincere about that. At the same time, if you are also sincere about getting a job through a connection that they have, be sincere about that and let them know like, "Hey, I want you in my life." Or, "Can we hang out once a month?" But also be up front and say, "Hey, I'm thinking about making a career change and if you know something, I'd really appreciate it if you kept me in mind.”   That sincerity I think is the most important thing. That dynamic can really go sideways when there's alternative motives that aren't spoken about. Take the time to meditate on why you're spending time with the people you're spending time with, why you reach out to the people that you reach out to and what you communicate with them. There's a lot of people that I network with that I may have some business relationship with, but they're also friends. It is very important to me to keep the communication clear on both sides.   What's one piece of advice you would pass along to a fellow entrepreneur or designer looking to make impactful connections? Surround yourself with people that have a lot more experience than you. It turns into good things. Especially when you're young and first starting your career, try to be the worst one amongst your group of colleagues because you'll learn so much and it will get you out of your comfort zone. The second thing is to be sincere and be present when you're in those situations.

With the media landscape changing at a rapid clip, journalists need to adjust and adapt to evolve with their profession. The rise of digital, as well as video and podcasts, also means today's journalists need to be tech savvy and rely on strong connections within their networks.    Take Stephen Bronner, who has been a journalist and editor for more than a decade, including more than five years as the editor at Entrepreneur.com. He has worked intimately with CEOs, founders, business leaders and experts to share their stories on Entrepreneur Media's website, which brings in nearly eight million unique visitors every month.    In this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, Stephen pulls back the curtain on life as a journalist, including working his way from community news to eventually building Entrepreneur's outside contributor network. He shares insights on building relationships with sources, identifying stories that will resonate and advice for journalists looking to advance their careers.   Would you tell us about your career journey so far in journalism? It's been insane to say the least. I graduated from journalism graduate school in 2008, at the height of the recession. They told us, "All newspapers are going to go away and everybody's going to go digital. Good luck out there." I didn't find a job for about five months, and ended up taking a job for $23,000 working at a little community newspaper on Long Island, New York. I did that for six months, and then I was able to go back to a place where I had been freelancing, which is a free daily newspaper in New York called AM New York. I became one of their editors, doing front-of-the-book niche and world news. Then my old boss at the community newspaper called and said, "Hey, I've been working at this company called Patch. Do you want to join me?" I ended up covering the same community again, and I did that for three years.   Later I ended up at Entrepreneur as their contributors editor and I was tasked with building their outside contributor network – CEOs, media executives, business professionals and the like – to generate story ideas and write columns for the site. When I started out there were probably around 20 writers, and then we ended up having hundreds and hundreds of contributors. Then I was promoted to the news desk at Entrepreneur and did that for about three years. And now I am looking for my next opportunity, as they say. It's been tumultuous.   Are there any favorite stories you've covered? Over the past few years I've had the chance to cover the packaged food industry, which is kind of at a weird place right now, because milk is no longer milk, meat is no longer meat. Things are changing. There's been a lot more science to push things in the right direction environmentally wise, and taste-wise. I would say packaged foods have gotten significantly better –– better for you, better tasting, better for the planet. That's where most of my attention has been going.   In terms of the stories in that vein, I got the chance to interview Ethan Brown of Beyond Meat, which was one of the first Q&As that I did in this area. He was very inspiring to talk with. Then one of the last stories that I did at Entrepreneur was about a company called Perfect Day. These are two guys who have invented a flora-based milk protein. The thrust of it is that they've created, through genetic modification, the exact same structures that are in milk dairy. They want to basically be the provider of this dairy alternative to the entire food industry.   What's been one of the best things that you've done to propel your career forward? It really comes down to luck. I don't mean that in randomness, but putting yourself in the best position to move your career forward. I was very fortunate at Entrepreneur to have a good supporter in Ray Hennessey, the editorial director who hired me. He laid out the vision and the goals that he wanted me to accomplish. As he had a vision to expand Entrepreneur, he included me in that, and that's how I ended up at the news desk.   What is one of the best ways you've made impactful connections for your career? That's a tough one. I don't network, per se, which is probably insane for me to say. You develop friendships with people that you work with, and hopefully you stay in contact even if it's just through LinkedIn, keeping up on their careers as they move forward and then keeping those connections warm as you make your moves. Grad school was a good place for that. Patch was a great place for that, because Patch employed so many people and they're everywhere now.    Is there anyone who has shaped your journey significantly? The editor at my first job, Paul Shapiro. He's doing content marketing now, but he was a good supporter of me because he hooked me up with Patch and that helped my career a lot. And then, as I mentioned, Ray Hennessey was an early supporter of my skills and my ability while I was at Entrepreneur. He was just a good person to be around.   How have you seen journalism change over the last decade? I think what's been the biggest change is the internet has democratized journalism in good and bad ways. Not everybody reads the same news anymore, so not everybody subscribes to the same facts anymore. You could have more voices, which is great, but more voices also bring pitfalls.    In terms of actual changes, I would say video is probably the biggest. Online video is a trend that just keeps popping up. When I was in grad school, it wasn't on the radar. We were still being trained to do slideshows. Radio is still kind of a thing, and podcasts have roared back to life, which is just radio segments really. I imagine those two – video and podcasts – will have some staying power, as well as good writing, of course.   How do you spot trends and identify stories that will resonate? I can't actually say I know what resonates, but I understood Entrepreneur's audience pretty well. They love stories that will unlock the secrets to them becoming millionaires. In terms of covering a beat, it's really just talking to people constantly and seeing what they're excited about, and usually that will point you toward trends. If you hear the same thing from three different people, then we in the media industry regard that as a trend. Twitter's also a good source because it can point you to what will be talked about in the future as well.   How do you go about making genuine impactful connections with your sources? The number one is to be prepared. Learn about their businesses. See what they've written. See what they're excited about. Then just have a conversation with them. At least in the niche that I worked in, people really wanted to talk about what they were doing. They were excited and loved the opportunity to explain it to people as well. It also helps creating a backlog of your work and having them see it. If you do your job well, then they'll be more willing to talk to you because they can see that you have good intentions and that you want to tell their story.   What is your advice for fellow journalists looking to advance their careers? Go deep on something that you're interested in. If you want to cover a beat, then read up on it, talk to people about it and get the word out that that's what you're interested in. Most people I've encountered will have no problem speaking to you. If it's a journalist in the field, say, "I really appreciate your work. I'd love to take you out for coffee." Journalists love free coffee.

Risk taking is an inherent part of being an entrepreneur. The trick is, risk taking requires a delicate balance between calculation and gumption –– and even then, the outcome is not always predictable.  And when it doesn't work out, you have to be able to pick up the pieces and come back stronger.  How do you learn to navigate these murky waters and not let the tough times drag you under? For Rami Kalla, it took surrounding himself with the right people.  Rami is the founder of Point in Time Studios, a thriving video production company based in Tempe that specializes in video, virtual reality and 3D animation. After more than 16 years in business, Rami has endured his share of obstacles, but it's been his tribe and relentlessly positive mindset that have helped him scale the business to all new heights.  In this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, Rami explains how leaving the corporate world opened up the path to following his passion, why entrepreneurs need to lean on one another to ride out their highs and lows, and why showing up and dealing with struggles head on is the only way through.     What led you to start Point in Time Studios?  My journey started when I was about 10 years old and my father brought home one of those old camcorders. I fell in love with it and started making short films with my friends and family, including writing scripts and creating little movies. I didn't know at the time it was going to lead me to what I do now. I went to ASU and studied business and Spanish, then worked for General Mills doing marketing. A few years into that I became very disenchanted with the whole corporate environment and realized I wasn't really living my dream and pursuing my passion, so I started to look into video production and how to turn something I love into a business. As I did research, I found there was a need for quality video production that provided a great product and great service. We started doing a lot of small corporate events, private events, and local commercials. From there, we started working with large companies like Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Ford and PetSmart.  Over the last several years, we've been getting to work internationally doing virtual and augmented reality, as well as video, for companies from L.A. to London. It's been a really fun experience and I'm very humbled to make a living doing what I love.   What is one of the best things you've done to take Point in Time Studios to the next level?  One of the things that I did, right toward the end of the recession, was join a mastermind group. I had gone to business school and worked for a large company, but didn't have a lot of experience as an entrepreneur. I was operating from an island making decisions based off the limited knowledge I had.  I ended up being introduced to EO Accelerator through a friend. At the time, the hardest thing for me was admitting my faults. I was very proud, had a bit of an ego and I didn't want to admit the financial mistakes that I had made. Eventually I opened up and said, "Here's the things that I'm struggling with, and here's the mistakes I made." Half the room said, "Yeah, I've gone through the same thing, myself, and I know exactly what you're going through." That was really a turning point for me, when I not only joined the group but I got vulnerable, and I realized that I don't have to know everything, I do have a lot to learn, and I was able to experience-share from other people in the room.   What's been your experience riding the highs and lows of entrepreneurship?  I'll be vulnerable here. In 2008-2009, I had built a 3,000-square-foot studio in downtown Phoenix and invested around $100,000 into creating it. I was going to build a stage so other companies coming into Phoenix and local companies could rent it out for music videos and films, and things like that. Of course the timing was awful – I built this big facility and it was crickets. Money was extremely tight. I had to let half my staff go. At the lowest point, I had $1.1 million in total debt, and I went to Burger King to get a Whopper and I couldn't afford it. I didn't have enough money to buy a hamburger and I was hungry, and I had three kids to feed at the time.  I realized at that time I'd taken a lot of risks – I wasn't afraid of risk, but they weren't calculated risks. I had gone way too much into debt and hadn't really understood the repercussions of the things that I was doing. It took years to really dig out of it, pay off a lot of that debt and get the business back on track. As a business owner, you have to take risks. You've got to take some risks to grow. But don't take so much risk that you can't recover from things like a downturn or other challenges.    How did you keep yourself motivated to recover from setbacks? A lot of people told me to just declare bankruptcy, hide behind the courts and just wipe all that debt. But I said, "No, I'm not going to do that. I created this mess and I'm going to clean it up." I called the banks and credit companies and worked out repayment plans. I made sure to exercise and make sure I was taking care of myself for my health, because, if you don't do those things, it's very hard to keep a positive attitude. I also surrounded myself with positive people. I got really clear on who I wanted in my inner circle and who I didn't. If you were a negative person and attracted negativity, I didn't want you around.  It seems like a simple formula, but, so often, as entrepreneurs and as humans, we like to put our head in the sand and hope things get better. But you have to get up and deal with things, and that's what I did.   On to networking, how do you go about building genuine connections?  From a business perspective, I had it wrong in the beginning. I would go to networking events and I'd bring a stack of cards, and I would tell myself, "Okay, I need to get 10 business cards from other business owners at this event." Then I realized I was getting a high volume of cards, but I wasn't creating genuine connections. I was looking at it more as quantity, not quality. Now I tell people if you're going to a networking event and you're not being authentic, or you're out to get something, people's walls will go up right away. But if you're genuinely trying to connect with people, then you're just planting a seed. It may not turn into business right away. It could be one year, two years or five years, but things come around. Start conversations and take time to really care about others. Be authentic and just enjoy the journey.    What's one of the best ways you go about making impactful connections? Find what works best for you in your industry. A long time ago, my friend Jay Feitlinger said, "Fish where the fish are at." You've got to figure out what your business is about, including your mission and your vision. Then decide what niche do you want to play in and focus on that space. My mistake early on was trying to be a video company for every company and every market. But then someone said to me, "If you're going to go in for brain surgery, are you going to a generalist or a specialist?" I'm not going to go to my family doctor for brain surgery. And brain surgeons make more money, because they specialize in what they do. I realized that I needed to specialize in a specific industry if I was going to command the money I wanted to make. I picked a couple niches I really enjoyed and showed up. I learned that if you do a great job, people will refer you to other people in an industry.    What's one piece of advice you can give to fellow entrepreneurs looking to make impactful connections? Most of us don't have huge budgets for marketing and networking, so it's important to find our niche. Look locally and see if there's a group or industry you want to be a part of, whether it's construction companies or accounting firms or whatever. Then find out what they're involved with and show up to those events. Go there, network, learn the industry, learn the people, and then, if it's something you feel like you can invest in, then get a booth. Start to build your presence there but the key is showing up.  Half the battle for networking and meeting new people is just showing up. So many of us have this fear of going to these events or being a part of them. By just showing up, you'll inevitably make connections and you'll meet awesome people in your industry. And, again, for me, I grew those relationships in not just showing up, but then exhibiting, and speaking at events, and sponsoring events, and all those things that I recommend doing. But, again, start small if you've got a small budget and work your way into it, and you'll find that the payoffs will be huge.

For decades, Arizona's five C's – copper, cattle, cotton, citrus and climate – served an important role in how its economy was perceived. But as the Grand Canyon State's technology ecosystem continues to heat up, Romi Dhillon thinks the five C's should be updated to better reflect Arizona's tech-focused future: capital, content, community, capabilities, and community carry. Romi is no stranger to bringing big ideas to the table. He is the founder and managing director of the Arizona Founders Fund and prior to raising the fund, he worked with Infusionsoft on the company's Series C and D capital raises. But his background in venture capital started long before that.  In this interview, Romi shares how a mix of serendipity, luck and strategy helped him get his foot in the door of the VC world. He also explains why deep research and 1,300 hours of networking played such a critical role in the success of Arizona Founders Fund, and provides key advice for entrepreneurs looking to set themselves apart and make impactful connections with investors.     What sparked your interest in venture capital? I didn't take the traditional path to venture capital. I was recruited out of my MBA at Thunderbird in 2009 for an internship in Utah, which opened the door to work in a VC fund. It wasn't necessarily for any other reason other than serendipity and luck. Prior to that, about seven years earlier, I had completed my masters at Columbia and had aspired to work at the State Department in Washington, D.C. or overseas. I started to realize there was going to be a considerable amount of writing involved, especially when working in the foreign service, and I didn't enjoy writing that much. I knew that if I was going to have a happy career, writing couldn't really be a part of it, which meant that working in the foreign service wasn't the right place for me to go. When I stepped away from that, I began working in entrepreneurship on the operations side in a small family business in Northeastern Ohio. That's how I started my entrepreneurial journey. What motivated you to take that leap of faith and start Arizona Founders Fund? I worked in Utah's startup community from 2009 until about 2012 – before Utah was as frothy as it is right now. Right about the time that I stepped away from Utah and moved to Arizona to work at Infusionsoft was when Utah kind of found its J-curve. I was working at Infusionsoft and we raised a series C from Goldman Sachs and a series D from Bain Capital. Infusionsoft was growing really, really fast, but I was also noticing what was happening in Utah and how any entrepreneur could take 10 steps in any direction and have some pretty incredible conversations with supporters and mentors, thought leaders, and investors. That's when I thought, "Why isn't that happening in Arizona?"  Startups were leaving Silicon Valley. The housing costs were skyrocketing due to the tech boom. There was traffic and congestion, and it was an expensive place to start a company. I thought that Arizona was interesting, but Arizona was a conundrum in its separate way. This is still a place where the Secretary of State's website lists the old five Cs of the Arizona economy – cattle, citrus, cotton, copper and climate. It's the five ways they thought Arizona was different from every other state. But these were from the 1950s and I thought it was time to create the new five Cs: capital, content, community, capabilities, and community carry (how a relationship between a business and its community is continuously strengthened through its mutual commitment).    What was your experience coming to a new community and starting Arizona Founders Fund?  It depends on which day you caught me. Some days I may have felt I hit the ground running and there were other days where I spent a lot of time waiting for email replies. When I stepped away from Infusionsoft, I started engaging in a lean startup mindset of how to build this fund and began to interview everyone in town. There were 10 months of primary interviews and due diligence with Arizona's technology founders and investors where I interviewed 400 individuals representing 1,300 hours of discussion. I had 1,000 cups of coffee in that 10 month period and I even viewed the last 10 years of Phoenix Business Journal articles. I analyzed about 5,000 pieces of data concerning tech dealmaking in the state from 1998 to present, and spent a lot of time thinking about the Arizona market and why things were the way they were. It's one thing to identify problems, but I thought like a tech entrepreneur and tried to figure out what the solutions could be.    What was one of the biggest challenges on launching the fund and how did you overcome it? I had similar challenges other entrepreneurs have when they go from concept to idea to then making the idea real. It was creating validation and trying to figure out who could be the champions alongside with me. I think that's really the essence of the entrepreneurial spirit – let's try to solve problems by trying to figure out how we can utilize limited resources and do the most with the very least.   How have you gone about building relationships in a genuine way? One of the things I did when I was meeting with entrepreneurs or investors was make it clear why we were meeting right off the bat. I'd say, "Look, I'm here to pitch you on this opportunity. I think that you would be a great fit and I would really like to get your thoughts and advice on either investing, getting you to think about investing, or passing. And perhaps you might suggest someone else in your network who could be a fit." With entrepreneurs, I would share with them, "We're a venture capital investor. This is how we go about investing. Here are the check sizes we write. Here are the expectations that we have after we invest."    Transparency is extremely important because it's pretty obvious what a venture capital investor does. We invest in high growth, fast growth, technology companies. Sometimes just networking for networking's sake is not beneficial to us. Our work is really unscalable and takes a lot of time, so I have to be strategic in how I go about bridge building and networking.   What's one piece of advice you would pass along to fellow entrepreneurs looking to make impactful connections? I think there's a superpower that all entrepreneurs can have and it has to do with sending out follow-ups. People are networking all the time with champions, potential advisers, potential employees, customers, and even with investors or other providers of capital. I think one of the things entrepreneurs can do to separate themselves is continue to follow up with everyone who they meet. You don't want to say, "Hey, that person said I had a silly idea so I'm never going to reach out to them again." Because unless someone says, "Don't follow-up with me or remove me from your email list," the door is always open to have a potential relationship and have a positive network type of activity. My advice to entrepreneurs and anyone looking to build their network is to continually follow-up. Follow-up when you have a new insight on a market. Follow-up when you have a new thought. Follow-up with a quarterly newsletter. Follow-up with developments in your company. Follow-up as much as you can. Email is there for a reason, so leverage the power of email to send more information. I think it is really, really important and it's something that entrepreneurs can do to separate themselves from one another, from those who are very serious and  those who obsess about their company's success.

Meet Scott Holmen, the founder and CEO of Agency 73, a digital transformation company specializing in Salesforce and custom software solutions. He is also an investor in tech startups and created a recruiting company, Talent 73, to help find and connect talent in San Diego.  In this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, Scott shares his approach to prioritizing people before technology and how the desire to defragment San Diego's tech ecosystem inspired a unique event to bring everyone together. He also discusses his company's culture and how he has found success by strategically hiring then getting out of the way.    What motivated you to start your own company? The desire to be better and provide value to my clients. Previous to starting Agency 73, my roles in tech companies were representing offshore software development teams as a business development guy. It works, but you're always up against time, language and culture differences. Software is a complicated, intimate process, and to throw those variables into a process that requires a lot of detail, a lot of communication, a lot of collaboration, it's really difficult. I started Agency 73 to overcome time, language and culture differences by building up our team of senior level people here in San Diego so that as we're speaking with clients, the time, language and culture differences are no longer issues.   Were there any skills you had to train yourself on as the company grew? In my heart, I'm a sales guy. I really love helping people solve problems. In starting the agency I had to, and still have to, wear the CEO hat. I can do those CEO skills, but it's more of a forced thing. I've had to learn about getting processes dialed in, managing people, hiring people and forecasting. What's really natural for me is selling and working with people with the actual structure that's required. We'll be looking to hire a CEO as we increasingly mature and grow the practice so that I can go out and be the founder or sales guy, which I love.   Have you ever struggled with staying out your employees' way or getting too involved with every little thing?  No. It's kind of a joke around the office, but it's actually not a joke. It's, "Scott can barely manage himself, so he for sure can't manage the team." We've been very lucky. The team that we have is brilliant. We hire adults that take care of their stuff, and we don't care when they're working or where they're working, as long as they're hitting deadlines and staying within budget. I don't have to, nor would I have time to micromanage or manage my team very well.    We're about 12 people in San Diego right now. We augment with some nearshore and offshore partners. But I've been fortunate with the team that we have because I don't have to manage them, and we're small enough that it's really easy to see when people are getting their work done or not. But that hasn't happened. We've been really lucky. We've got just the best team. They're a lot of fun. They're really smart, they manage themselves way better than I could ever manage them. Fortunately, I haven't been pulled into the delivery side of the business too much, and I really hope to maintain that going forward, because it's not my favorite place to be.   Are there one or two impactful connections that have really shaped your journey along the way? There's way more than one or two. As an agency, we've been fortunate in that we don't have to do any marketing. I've focused for 20 years on building relationships in San Diego, even before I was in tech. People reciprocate. I've had a goal for years of introducing two people every day, and it comes back around.    I was an outdoor education instructor at a camp in the mountains, and this guy told me, “People over program.” At the time I was focused on what I was going to teach the kids. He said, "Forget about that. It's about the people." That was in an environment where it was simple to switch to focusing on people, but I've maintained that in business. I genuinely care about people and enjoy helping them solve problems, even if there's nothing in it for me and knowing that it might come back around and it might not.   How do you make genuine impactful connections to grow yourself in the company?  Until recently, it's all been one on one. I would meet anybody and help them where I could and occasionally ask for help. I have struggled with pride in asking for help, but people have reciprocated. As we started Agency 73, the first year we had our agency, I focused on what I call defragmenting the tech ecosystem in San Diego. We have investors. We have enterprise companies. We have UCSD, who graduates more computer science kids than Stanford and Berkeley combined every year, so we've got the talent. We've got the money. Everything is here, but those stakeholders aren't talking to each other. Once we started Agency 73, I set out to meet those stakeholders.    We ended up creating Spotlight 73. It's a pitch event, but we don't call it that because those kind of have negative connotations of investors poking holes in your idea and trying to prove that they're the smartest guys in the room. Spotlight 73 is a way of putting the spotlight on a local startup. As I went out and met investors, I said, "What's going on? How come you're not writing checks?" And they said, "Because we're not seeing anything new." At Agency 73, we see new startups all the time because they want us to do development work for them, so we've leveraged Agency 73 to bring those stakeholders together. It's worked. And by worked I mean started to raise a lot of capital from it that they wouldn't have otherwise raised, at least not as quickly as they have. We're getting brand awareness, we're getting deal flow. Most importantly, new relationships are being built.   What's one of the best things that you've done to grow Agency 73? I think the best thing I've done is get lucky with my team. There's my partner and CTO – he's one of those guys who's very technically experienced, skilled and smart. He's also a great writer, which is very important when we're writing requirements. He's fun and social and people love him.    As far as anything intentional I've done, I've authentically focused on people. Technology is second, which is weird to say as the CEO of a technology company. But the best thing I've done is listen to people and care not just about their business goals, but care about them and their family and everything.    How do you keep yourself organized and energized? The organization part comes pretty easily because I have to. If I'm not organized, I'll fail. The systems that we have internally are good in helping us stay organized. We've got our own internal stack and our process is tight because we're kind of technical nerds. I have a great family that keeps me energized. They support me and love me. Then I surf a lot and try to workout every day. I try to eat well, but it doesn't always go well. Our proximity to the beach, again, is a big one. We can just run down and jump in the water and that clears my mind and gets the blood flowing.   What's one piece of advice you would give to a fellow entrepreneur who's looking to make impactful connections? For me, that comes back to the people over program. A lot of entrepreneurs get focused on, "Hey, I have this idea for an app and it's like Uber but it's for this industry." They're so excited about the app that if you listen or engage in that conversation, you'll notice how long it takes for a lot of them to start talking about people. The advice I often give is to forget about your “Uber for whatever” app. Think about who it's going to serve. How it's going to serve them. How's it going to make their life better? Who are you going to surround yourself with that can make you better? Who are you going to invest your time in if you are successful? My advice is to focus on people. Invest in people, and trust that it will come back.

As we learned from Star Trek, space is the final frontier. So, it bodes well for Arizona that the state is home to many of the industry's top aerospace and defense companies. Naturally, these companies are led by some of the most innovative thinkers, scientists and engineers. But go one layer beyond, and you'll often find a stellar team of marketers working to communicate the vision and mission of the company to gain stakeholder buy in, and ultimately help the team continue to push new boundaries and boldly go where no one has gone before.    One such intrepid marketer is Julie Bonner. She is the marketing director at FreeFall Aerospace, a Tucson-based startup developing intelligent orbital and terrestrial antenna systems (or as this recent article in Wired Magazine referred to them, inflatable satellites).    In this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, we talk to Julie about how she broke into Arizona's thriving aerospace sector,  how impactful connections have shaped her career journey, why getting involved in industry associations is key to securing new business as a marketers and designer, and the reason to always follow-up when networking (and not take it personally if someone doesn't respond).    Read on for a selection of questions, and listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above.   How did you land at FreeFall? It was a referral that came from Tech Launch Arizona. They were helping FreeFall in 2016 commercialize the new intelligent antenna design that had come out of the University of Arizona from Dr. Chris Walker, and knew FreeFall needed some branding, design and marketing work. Tech Launch Arizona knew me because of my past work in graphic design helping other startups with their branding and design, and I also helped out at conferences like IdeaFunding in Tucson. That's how I met up with Doug Stetson, the president of FreeFall. We began working together on developing a new logo and materials, and really enjoyed working together.    Can you boil down what it is that FreeFall does? FreeFall is developing new antennas. Some will be in space, as part of satellite communications  able to talk back down to antennas and receivers on the ground. And then some are ground stations. The third piece of this is actually through development and research – they've come up with a unique antenna design for smart cities and for the 5G era, which is coming up. What all of these things have in common is they're all antennas, and they're moving data.    Using your phone or downloading videos, we always want things faster and better. And going from 4G to 5G isn't just going to be a tiny step up. Things are going to be probably about 10 times faster, and so with that, new hardware is needed. There's a lot of development in software, but people haven't really thought about how the hardware can help improve that sort of data rate and bandwidth that you can get, and so that's what FreeFall is working on.   How has your career evolved over time? Since I was little, I was always drawing and told my parents and teachers I was going to be an artist one day. I studied graphic design at Drexel University, and then worked as an in-house designer and then as in-house art director. I've always been entrepreneurial, so I went back to school and earned my MBA over two years at night while I was working as a full-time art director. That gave me the confidence to actually launch my own graphic design business, which was still a way for me to provide graphic design and be creative.     Now, I don't know if everyone wants to be involved with a startup. Obviously, there's risk involved, but I feel like there's a lot of rewards too. Each of us at FreeFall are wearing many hats. Most of my team are engineers, so I'm a little different in that I'm coming from a creative background. I love my position, and I love helping them share what we're working on and letting the audience and our potential clients understand what we're doing and building those relationships.   Working with engineers, have you had to adapt your communication style? Yes. Engineers are so smart, detail-oriented and think very sequentially. Sometimes, when we're trying to share a marketing message, we need to step back a little bit and think more from a bird's-eye view or about what's really the benefit to our future customers. Part of my job is learning a lot from them, asking a lot of questions, and then really thinking about how can we explain this in a way that others who aren't as technical will understand. It's been really fun and interesting, but I love science, especially the space aspect of what we're doing. I find it super interesting, and that's why I mentioned I'm just learning so much.   Has there been anyone that has shaped your career journey? One of my impactful connections would definitely be Doug Stetson, the president of FreeFall. When I started working with him on the logo, I started asking questions about what they're doing and then learned about his background in aerospace at JPL for over 30 years. It's nice working with someone that's very different than yourself, but someone who really values what you're doing. I can say that, even as a contractor and now as an employee of FreeFall, Doug does a really nice job of communicating and sharing how he values the work that you're doing.  At FreeFall, we're a part of this space business roundtable out of the U of A with Stephen Fleming, and I'm learning so much every month going to these meetings about the space industry and what's happening. I'm excited that FreeFall is a part of this. We have many space companies, even right here in Tucson, and I know in Phoenix, where we're all going to be complementary. We're all working together to really make Arizona the space state.    How do you build impactful connections for FreeFall? I believe in lining up with the right organizations. When you find the right ones, you're aligning your values, your mission and your common goals, while building connections at the same time.    For FreeFall, I've really become involved with Arizona Technology Council. We're all supporting technology businesses thriving here in Arizona, and through that, we've built some really good partnerships. As far as space companies, Vector is down here in Tucson, and they are making rockets for small CubeSats. Hopefully at some point, one of FreeFall's CubeSats can fly in Vector's rockets. There's a lot of ways we can help each other and also build up Arizona together.   What's one of the best things that you've done to gain visibility for FreeFall? Last year, Arizona Technology Council did a great presentation about smart cities. The City of Tucson was there with the Department of Transportation. After the meeting we approached them and said, "Hey, we want Tucson to become a smart city. We think our antennas could be a part of that." Over this past year, we've gotten to know each other, have spoken on panels together and have plans to meet with the mayor of Tucson to talk more about smart cities and building that relationship. That really came from being involved with the Tech Council, going to the meetings, and then making sure to talk to people before and after the meetings.    I think it's not only about signing up for something, but it's actively being there and then following up with everybody. The follow-up doesn't always come easy, and also it can be a little disheartening if you follow up and you don't hear from someone right away. If you had a great conversation, it usually just means someone's busy, and try to not be scared to do a little bit of follow-up or to share some exciting news. People are generally like, "Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. I was traveling, or this or that." We've all been there.   What's one challenge that you've faced as a marketer, and how did you overcome it? FreeFall is a fantastic example because we're developing new technology, and so it's been interesting marketing a concept that's not fully a product yet. We have a lab, we're testing everything, and we're making progress, but if you said today, "Hey, I want to buy that right now," it's not ready yet. It's interesting marketing something that you just can't buy off the shelf at that moment. It involves keeping people updated on progress and keeping people engaged and explaining and using tools to show what it's going to do. For example, the animations on our website have been a fantastic tool to have as a marketer because it's showing how this technology will work, even though it's not totally done at this moment.

There is a big difference between being capable of your job and simply crushing it. That's the concept Juan Kingsbury, Talent Strategist at Career Blindspot, wants employers and employees to identify – in fact, it's what he's staked his career on. There's no question most entrepreneurs have a clear sense of their mission and vision, but what about their team's mission as individuals? Juan works with businesses to discover the overlooked potential within their teams. From there he helps leaders uncover new opportunities and actionable insights to help organizations improve how they hire, develop and grow their teams. In this interview, Juan shares why understanding an individual's mission is critical to the success of an entire team, why most people aren't fully satisfied with their jobs and why companies need to focus on hiring the people who want to do the work the job actually requires. He also discusses why sincerity is the key to effective networking, the reason he goes above and beyond what his job calls for and the importance of finding your personal mission.    Read on for a selection of questions.   What do you do as a talent strategist? I primarily work with smaller businesses and mission obsessed leaders and help them strategize the talent they currently have and the talent they're going to be bringing on. Everyone has talent, skills and experience, but what do they do with it? Sometimes people take sales jobs that they don't really like or they get into a certain industry or niche and it doesn't quite jive. It's very easy to point the finger but ultimately it's often that the person doesn't have a good idea of what their talent is and, more importantly, what to do with it. Being a talent strategist is essentially helping people make smarter decisions with what they are naturally good at.   How did Career Blindspot come to be? You might be familiar with the DISC assessment. A lot of companies out there use a version of that or the Myers Briggs test. I worked at a company in North Scottsdale called TTI where I was brought in as a customer support person and helped other consultants anytime they had technical issues. TTI is very different and beyond DISC – DISC is not personality test, it's simply a behavioral choice or preference. TTI goes farther and adds in all these other assessments to determine motivation, emotional intelligence skills, et cetera.   To me this made a lot of sense, and in 2013 I ventured out with Career Blindspot. Now I use these tools to help people do the work that they care about, that the company cares about and that the clients care about. This entails strategizing the right talent for the right work for the right company and the right mission.    A lot of people can do a lot of jobs. You can force yourself and you can learn something because you've got to pay your bills. But there are very few things that we actually want to crush. Employers want someone who's going to thrive, and these tools are helpful in organizations hiring people who actually want to do the work that needs to be done.   Who would you say has helped shape your journey with Career Blindspot?  There's one guy, Justin Foster, who was in sales and branding and now has this company called Route & River which is very focused on leaders who are really good at their business but need help connecting their heart to their message. I'm sure I drove him nuts for a while, but he helped me find my true north. I knew I should be in business because I like business, but why? I could make a lot of money just selling DISC assessments, which would be fine. But Justin was always there to kind of be like, "Are you really telling the truth?" He's a great guy and has connected me with tons of people.    How do you go about networking in a genuine way? Most of the time, the way I stay connected is through being genuinely interested in the people I'm already friends with and asking them what they're doing or what they're working on. Afterwards I'll be mulling it over and then all of a sudden when I'm eating my lunch, I'll think, “Oh, I should tell her to talk to him about that” and then make it a point to make an introduction. But it starts with caring about the 500 or so connections I already have and then seeing how I can get them to hang out and play. I love it when people I know are going and having fun without me. That's my approach to networking, trying to connect people with other people I already know.   What is one piece of advice you would give to a fellow entrepreneur? Look for someone who compliments you. You have your Steve Jobs and then you have your Wozniak. You have your Michael Jordan and then you have your Scottie Pippin. If you're an entrepreneur, look for someone who compliments you, not necessarily the opposite of you. Sometimes your opposite, especially when you're trying to grow, is too opposite and will try to rein you back. Instead, you want to find someone who's in line with your mission. Also, being an entrepreneur is very different than being the leader of a company. It takes a different skill set.   I've met a lot of people who are overly controlling because it's their baby that they're building, but they don't have enough time to do it all. They need to be willing to let someone else help lead the team. The book Traction talks about the visionary versus the implementer. Are you someone who has the idea or are you someone who rallies the troops and is more of the operational person? And you can be both. You might be capable at being both, but you don't want to be capable. You want to crush it. So find someone else who's going to crush the other thing so you can crush yours.   

Behind every great entrepreneur there is usually someone (or several someones) who helped guide them on the path to achieving greatness. Many entrepreneurs credit teachers, mentors and colleagues who left a lasting impression, changing the course of their lives in some meaningful way. That's been the case for Patrick Campbell as he transitioned from working for the government, to Google to the start-up world and eventually founding his own company. Today, Patrick is the CEO of ProfitWell, a subscription software that helps companies achieve faster recurring revenue growth. In this interview, Patrick discusses how his restlessness with bureaucracy led him to start his own company, how a handful of individuals helped shaped his leadership style and why developing high-value content is ProfitWell's ticket to building trust with stakeholders. He also shares why authenticity should be embraced in the workplace and why he always tries to see the best in people.     Can you tell us about your journey and how ProfitWell came to be? My background is in econometrics and math. I worked in U.S. intelligence after school in D.C., then at Google here in Boston. I ended up getting disenchanted with bureaucratic companies – being a young, punk kid who wanted to take on big problems, it was tough to be patient. I decided to join the startup scene, mainly because I was young enough and thought, "If I'm going to take a risk I might as well do it now.” I ended up working for a small company that raised a good portion of money in Boston, but while there I learned that small companies can have their own culture issues as well. That's when I had that moment of, "Well, let me try something on my own," and jumped out.   One of the projects I worked on was pricing. I realized the people didn't know what they were doing – and I didn't know what I was doing – but it was really, really important, and so that was our first product. That's why the original company name was Price Intelligently.   We kind of bumped around, helping all types of different companies collect data to help them with their pricing strategy. Then it quickly moved into something where we focused on subscription companies specifically. That led to us building ProfitWell Metrics, which is our metrics product that you can plug in any billing system and get access to free subscription metrics. That led to more products that we built for the subscription economy.   What were the early days like? You know the saying that people start to look like their dogs? Well, a company, especially in the early days, kind of looks and acts like the founders. For me, that was very, very much the case. In the early days, things were a little frantic. We took on a little bit more than we probably should have. We were doing a bunch of different things because I was very much like, "Oh, I just need to work more. I just need to work harder." So it wasn't without its challenges.   Who would you say helped impact the success of ProfitWell or changed your path completely? There's one person that I think truly changed my life. It was one of my first managers,  Deran Dewin at Google. I was a young punk kid trying to be super, super ambitious, work hard, take on bigger problems and find bigger opportunities. He was known as the manager that you didn't want to report to if you wanted to change roles or get promoted, mainly because he wasn't as numbers focused as some of the other managers. I found out that was not true, but when I got assigned to him, I was like, "Aw man, I got the fluffy manager who cares about me and how I'm doing and these types of things." How big of a butthead must I have been to not appreciate that? In reality, now that I manage people, I really appreciate that and know that's what you have to do.   At the time I was a very negatively motivated person.  Tell me I can't or tell me I'm failing, which is not really healthy. He was someone who came along and asked, "How do we make you positively motivated?” He took the time to figure out, how do we find things to look forward to rather than things you're trying to run away from? That was really high impact because no one had really talked to me about that before.   The other thing he had talked to me about before was this whole concept of authenticity and work. I think that a lot of people try to be someone completely different at home versus at work. Some compartmentalization and some boundaries are obviously good and okay, but the problem with being a different person is that it doesn't scale really well. Inevitably there's going to be fractures in that boundary. You're going to build resentment on one side or the other because basically you're living these two lives.   So if I managed or lead the way that I thought managers were supposed to manage and lead before meeting him, I 100% would have failed. There's no question. It just wouldn't have worked out. We might have had some success because I don't think that that's the only thing that leads to success, but I do think it's a major part in contributing to that.   In addition to how you've evolved as a leader, have there been other key events or people along the way that helped shape the evolution of ProfitWell? One that I think was really high impact was Peter Zotto, GM of the Price Intelligence product. Peter was the neighbor of my ex-girlfriend. At the time there was a huge Boston snowstorm, and whenever that happens everyone kind of ends up staying home or going to bars that are open. That's where I met him and brought him on. The reason he was so impactful was because he took away a lot of the pain and the work, but he also was just as committed as I was, which was a hard bar. He also was willing to put up with all of the BS of early stage bootstrapping a company.   The other person was Facundo Chamut, our head of product/CTO. He's also on our board. He's the prototypical engineering CTO. He is very disagreeable, not always in a respectful way, but mostly in a respectful way. He brought a really good fire and really good challenging ideas.   In those early days, how did you make impactful connections with potential clients and users? There's always been the advice of “Networking isn't as good. Don't go to events, just focus on product. Work, work, work, work, work.” But because I didn't know at the time, I would reach out to people, learn from people, go get coffee, do a lot of these things while also doing all of the other work. And I think a really big thing that led to us being successful and building relationships is I would literally take almost any call.   I still kind of do that today and I think that helps engender a lot of trust with people.   We also do these pricing optimization assessments for people. It is a lead magnet, but it also provides a ton of value for people. We're very upfront, explaining "Hey, at the end of this it'll be obvious if we should work together or not, but even if we don't, you're going to get a ton of value.”   What's one of the best things you've done to propel growth at ProfitWell? One of the smartest things we did for growth was making a commitment to good content. We were probably a little bit overzealous on what was good content versus bad content. But not writing listicals or basic SEO content was really important. Because of that, we engendered a lot of trust, a lot of knowledge, and went from a place of, "Oh, these people are really helpful," to "Oh, they're helpful and they're smart," which I think was a good combination.   It was also a wise thing from an investment standpoint because at this point we think about content as if we're building a media property. It doesn't look like that on the site right now, but that's what we're trending toward and having that mindset has really helped us propel the company and propel the brand forward.   What is one of the most important lessons you've learned along the way? One of the things that would help anyone, no matter what they're building, no matter where they are or no matter what they're doing is the concept of the charitable interpretation principle. What that is is when someone comes to you with an idea or a disagreeable reaction, to take the most charitable interpretation. Assume they have good intentions without assuming they are right. Basically you work to learn more, so you're giving people the most charitable interpretation by assuming their positive intent. It solves so many problems.   What's one piece of advice you would give to a fellow entrepreneur who's looking to make impactful connections? Set aside time each week. If you're early stage, set a little bit more time than maybe you're comfortable with. Later stages have a little bit less time, but set aside specific time that you try to fill. So maybe it's two hours a week in addition to your work. For instance, I'm going to go to a meet up this week. If there's no meet up, then reach out to people and start building relationships. Then ultimately when you're making those contacts with people, be your authentic self.  

Few individuals take a linear path to becoming an entrepreneur. Rather, it's often the culmination of their passions and experiences that lead them to identify problems and harness the fuel that drives them to work toward solving those problems. Take Coplex CEO Zach Ferres for example Today Zach is a pillar of the Valley's entrepreneurial ecosystem, but his journey actually began in northern Ohio as a kid who liked taking computers apart and putting them back together. That fascination blended with a natural inclination for entrepreneurship led him to launch various ventures in computer and car stereo repair in middle and high school. Always in tune to evolving trends and needs, Zach then forayed into website design while attending Ohio Northern University. This jump started his first official company, Bounce Host (now Bounce Fire). He grew the team to 15 and following a successful multi-year run, he sold the company to a Scottsdale, Ariz. firm and relocated to Phoenix. At that point, it wasn't long before the opportunity to consult with, and eventually lead, Coplex came about. In this interview, Zach discusses his transition to Coplex, his early days as a CEO restructuring the team and the critical people who helped shape him along the way. He also shares painful pivots he's made, maxing out his personal credit cards and the importance of reimagining new business models.   What were the early days like when you came in as CEO of Coplex? It was total chaos. It was a fun time, though. The company at the time was a team of about 30 full-time team members in Hollywood. I was living in Phoenix, so I was spending a lot of time commuting. When I first took it over, the company was called Ciplex  (we ended up doing a rebrand in 2012) and it had been continuously ranked one of the top web design companies in the country. We'd get dozens of inbound leads and phone calls every day from people all over the country needing website work. I think at one point in time, we had 350 active open projects and that's about when I started taking things over. We realized there would be a couple of years of really grueling work ahead of us because the company grew so fast that it didn't really have the capabilities to deliver on everything on time and within budget. The first 18 months was a lot of clean up work to get those projects done. Then we reconfigured, restructured the team and ended up bringing on a couple of my former team members in the Phoenix satellite office at the time. We still did a lot of web design work, and fortunately, we had a few really incredible corporate clients that were working with us on innovation projects. That was part of the core DNA that's still around Coplex today.   What was your experience transitioning Coplex from one of the top web design companies to now a venture accelerator? When we started the pivot in early 2014, we realized that the real value in the work that we did at Coplex everyday wasn't in building websites for people and helping people with innovation projects, it was in the underlying businesses that we were helping to get started. We've always had a passion for startups. A lot of the work that we did even on the web design side was with startup companies, and all the innovation work that we were doing was basically new startups and startup spin outs. So we got really good at this whole startup game, and we realized that the real value in building and in doing the work that we were doing was in the equity of the startups. We had, probably in 2013, this first inkling of, "I wonder how it would work for us to actually get an equity component to the deals that we do?" We toyed around with it from 2013 to 2016. I ended up buying the company from the founders in 2016, so I had to go out and raise some money to buy out the partners, and then it was really at that point when we decided to focus 100% of our energy and effort on helping these seasoned industry experts start tech companies. So we pressed play on that in 2016 and started actively divesting from the old part of our business model. At that time, we had maybe 10% to 20% of our work was with venture-backable startup companies meeting the criteria of what we look at today, so we had to walk away from somewhere between 80% and 90% of our revenue. Then we actively started divesting from the old business model. We had a one year plan to essentially fully replace all of the stuff we walked away from with the new service offering, and let's just say that ended up taking about a year and a half longer than we thought. It was a wildly, excruciatingly painful pivot. We had to go through a small round of layoffs, we had to max out all the credit cards and we almost ran out of steam in the transition trying to crack the code on the business model that we have today. It really wasn't until probably about a year and a half ago that the model started to prove itself and we were able to replace a lot of the revenue we walked away from.   What would you say is one of the most important lessons you've learned along the way? When I started my first company, I didn't really have a big vision. I'm an engineer, and I'm a very pragmatic thinker, and I remember in my entrepreneurship class when we learned about vision/mission/values, I was like, "Why does anyone actually care about any of this stuff? It doesn't really make a difference." I think in hindsight, a big learning lesson is to do that from the start because that's where your drive comes from when things get hard. And they're always going to get hard on this path of entrepreneurship, so that will be the one place where you can find some serenity knowing that you're doing things for the right reason and that there's a bigger reason why you're doing what you're doing.   How do you make impactful, meaningful connections with people? Give first has always been a big one for me. When I was building my first company, I was an engineer that did not know how to network, and I forced myself to go to all these networking events. The thing that really worked was being passionately curious and talking with people to try and find ways in which I could help them with zero intention of ever getting anything back. As soon as I started doing that, doors just started opening. Give first when you're building those connections, and they always end up coming back threefold, fivefold, tenfold.   What's one piece of advice you would give to a fellow entrepreneur who's just looking to grow? Getting a coach. This whole idea of personal development is often overlooked when it comes to entrepreneurship. I think everyone has over-romanticized being an entrepreneur, and it's really freaking hard work, and it's not always as sexy and rewarding as it looks like on Silicon Valley sitcoms on HBO. It's a grueling battle and at the core of all of it, you've got to take care of yourself. I think doing things that make sure that you have that outlet, having a coach, working on personal development, making time to run, meditate, go to the gym, whatever it might be. I heard a really interesting quote a few weeks ago that talked about the true bottleneck to growth for an entrepreneur isn't their business, it's basically themselves. So any time you realize your business is stuck and you've hit a plateau, you first need to stop looking at the business and step out and look at yourself because there's something that you're doing that's limiting the growth of your own business because maybe you're missing something.

Have you ever looked around a city in awe of the caliber of companies it boasts and wondered how it all came to be? In the case of the bustling Phoenix metro area, one person who deserves enormous credit is Chris Mackay, the City of Phoenix's Community and Economic Development Director.   Chris leads the city's business development team in attracting businesses to Phoenix and expanding the 16,000 that are already established here. She also has a hand in various small business and entrepreneurial efforts, downtown development and international, retail and workforce development. During the last few years, she has located hundreds of companies to Phoenix, adding a whopping 22,000 jobs to the local economy.   All the while, Chris has had a front row seat to the dramatic shift Phoenix has experienced over the last several decades. Once a city driven by real estate and construction, the community rarred back to life after the Great Recession with cybersecurity, software technologies, advanced manufacturing and aerospace leading the charge.   In this interview, Chris shares how she makes impactful connections with leaders to inspire them to plant their roots in Phoenix, how she's working to keep talent in Arizona and why there is nothing more important than one-to-one connections in the business world.   Can you tell us about your journey and what led you to your current role? My whole professional career, for the most part, has been in commercial real estate or economic development in Metro Phoenix. I worked for a commercial real estate brokerage firm in the '90s and we would go out and hunt for new companies to come back to Metro Phoenix. I always found myself wondering about the companies that we worked with. Did they like the space? Did the employees that moved in find good schools for their kids? Was it everything we told them it would be?   Now, instead of moving from transaction to transaction, I get to be part of a team that builds a city. Not many people get to say that long after they're gone, the buildings they built, the companies they helped, and the jobs that they helped create will still be here.   What do you see becoming one of our next economic drivers? Real estate was always the driver, and that's why Arizona has always been such a cyclical market. As real estate goes, so goes the rest of the economy. If home building isn't going then the entire economy tanks. But that's not the case anymore.   Now it's about emerging technologies and companies that have high wages that are bringing educated jobs for all of our citizens, not just for one sector. Not that construction jobs aren't great jobs – they are. We just can't be reliant on that growth. It has to be on a good diversification of industry and not just construction and sales tax.   Do you do a lot of one-to-one relationship building? In economic development, there is nothing more important than that one-to one-connection. People think that what we do is an immediate gratification but it can be a year's long relationship that we create. And so that one-to-one connection, the one thing that speaks to that individual decision maker, is critically important.   One thing that's important to this company may not be important to another company. So it's really about meeting one-on-one and finding out what's important to them, what is going to make their business thrive and what's the connection that they need in their site decision analysis.   Can you share an example of a way you really won someone over and got them to locate in Phoenix? Not that long ago a large company was considering a relocation, picking up from another market and actually coming here, which is really challenging for companies to do. They're disrupting families, they're disrupting relationships, they're disrupting their vendor connection.   I was working with the CEO of a company and he happened to mention on the phone that his daughter was going to look at Arizona State University and he would be here for a meeting to see the school with his daughter. I called my contact at ASU, logged online, found his picture on his LinkedIn and sent it to my colleague at Arizona State University. She found him in a sea of thousands of parents and freshmen, walked up to him, put her arm around his daughter and said, "Don't worry. We'll take good care of her." That company eventually landed in midtown Phoenix and the CEO told me that experience was his turning point to work with a city that cared that much about his family.   What other tips do you have for building meaningful relationships with people? I think the most important thing to remember is to focus on the person that you're talking to. Don't look past that person for the next person that you should be talking to. You're making a connection to that person and you have no idea where that relationship is going to lead to in the future. And always do your best to follow through on everything that you told someone you would do.   What's one piece of advice that you would give to Valley entrepreneurs who are looking to make impactful connections here in the community? For the most part, everyone of us here is from someplace else so we have the kindest entrepreneurial community across the country. If you've got an issue or a problem, people are happy to help. They'll grab a beer with you and talk it through or they'll have pizza with you and help with the ideas. People are perfectly happy to take a meeting and tell you, "Hey, this is what I found."   I would say if you need to make connections with the entrepreneurial community, don't forget your economic development team because we know most of them. We've had connections or meetings or conversations with most of them, or at least we know where to start to make the connection.   What do you foresee on the horizon for Phoenix? A strong entrepreneurial focus, creating our own companies and moving forward as real platform for emerging technologies. I think you'll continue to see the spin out of our primes – the large companies here who've encouraged their workforce to create their own companies and drive their own companies moving forward.   What else you're going to see that we've not seen in the past is that talented workforce choosing to move to Phoenix. We now see talented, creative, knowledge economy workforce choosing to live in Phoenix. It's not because, "I've got a job and I'm going to move to Phoenix” but “Phoenix is where I want to be so I'm taking my family there and then I'll find a job.”

Author and business philosopher Peter Drucker said marketing and innovation are the only two basic functions of a business enterprise. These products results. The rest are all costs. It's a phrase Kevin Sellers has come back to again and again throughout his decade's long career as a mass communications expert and award-winning marketer. Previously at Intel, he dedicated more than 20 years to leveraging his marketing acumen to create lasting brand value and deliver growth. Today, as CMO of Avnet, he drives key demand generation activities, digital marketing, customer experience, brand strategy, advertising, co-marketing and PR efforts.   Kevin joined the SuccessLab podcast to discuss what he does to stay ahead of marketing trends, martech (and his favorite tool for tracking metrics), and why it's absolutely vital for organizations to be able to explain their brand with five words or less.   Can you briefly walk us through your career and the various roles that you've held? Intel is one of those companies where if you showed some promise and some ambition and so forth, you weren't pigeonholed into a specific thing. I had an opportunity. I showed enough acumen in the space of marketing where they said, "Yeah, come on over and we'll put you in a marketing role." I did product marketing roles for most of my early career in marketing and then expanded from there.   I spent about eight years of my Intel time (I was there for 23 years total) living in Japan, most of which was doing marketing. For the last several years I ran all of marketing, which included product marketing, pricing, branding, advertising and our retail operations. That's what kind of got me into the broadest exposure of marketing.   When I came back from Japan I ran brand strategy, which was a lot of fun. I was basically handed the keys to the Maserati. This was a company at the time whose brand value was the seventh most valuable in the world and I had a chance to shape and drive the brand strategy for the company for a few years –– so the Intel presence and identity system you see today was work that my team and I did back in 2006/2007.   They asked me to run investor relations. It was a fascinating opportunity to really hone communication skills because you have to be able to tell the story of the company to a group of very, very savvy investors and analysts.   In my last role at Intel, I handled all of their global advertising and their digital marketing. That was everything from television spots down to all of our digital execution and so forth. So, I did that for several years and then I left Intel and worked for an agency for a bit and then ended up at Avent CMO.   How did you gain the skills for your role in investor relations? They came to me because I started my career in finance and I understood P&L and balance sheet language. Because I'd spent most of my career in marketing, they viewed it as a nice blend of somebody who understood marketing and positioning but could also speak to a financially savvy audience. It turned out that combination of experiences was really helpful. Most companies will take a person straight through finance and turn them into an investor relations person. What you find is that person understands the business well, but they're not terribly good at positioning, talking strategy and marketing that story well.   So, I found that my background worked well and I was able to garner a lot of respect and attention fairly quickly. I had enough exposure to the business where I could talk about it, but in terms of learning what's new, you learned rather quickly that there's a lot of pitfalls in a job like that which I didn't understand. I had a lot of help from my boss at the time and from lawyers.   I had a lot of help, but I think a lot of it was using my experience, reaching out to people who had done the job before and then making sure I was leaning on experts in different areas like legal or disclosure or things like that.   Over the years, how have you seen marketing change? I would say the rise of digital and, specifically, mobile digital has been a tectonic change. As sort of a byproduct of that, when you think about how you would reach a consumer 20 years ago, it was oh so simple because you had just a few ways. You would either use television or you would use print or you might use direct mail or something like that.   I think I saw a stat somewhere back in the '70s. There was something like 500 to 1,000 messages a day hitting a consumer. Today that number, depending on the research you look at, hovers between 5,000 and 10,000 a day. The rise of digital and the rise of mobile has created so many more touchpoints for businesses and markets to reach consumers. As marketers, how do you break through just this cacophony of noise that's out there when you know your target audience is just being saturated and bombarded with messages? How do you break through? How do you stand out? How do you get noticed? How does your message actually resonate and stick with the target audience?   That's why there's the rise of so much of martech. All the tools and technologies to help refine your segmentation and refine your media choice and mix and all the different tools and technologies out there. Digital does give you the ability to get more direct feedback in a more real-time manner, but again, the biggest challenge we all face is how to break through so much noise and so many messages hitting our target audience? That's a big challenge for all marketers.   What's been a skill that you've had to adapt over the last couple of years? I would say applying digital. Digital is just another channel, right? The core marketing function really hasn't changed, but what has changed is because of so many access points, it's finding your core audience, who you're trying to reach and determining how do you reach them. But at the end of the day, you're still grappling with "What's my message? How do I tell it? Does it resonate? Am I differentiated and unique? Am I able to put a value proposition out there that people care about?"   Those are the same issues that all marketers are grappling with. It's just gotten infinitely more complex because the choice of which you have to go to market now is infinitely broader. The tools you have to use to potentially measure and analyze and tweak and update and modify are almost infinite. Those are things that are requiring a different cadence, a different speed which we operate. It's much more real-time.   What is one piece of advice you would give to fellow marketers or even an entrepreneur looking to market their business? One of the things I tell startup companies is, "Understand the business that you're in, but focus on how do you describe that business in five words or less." It is a very hard exercise. It may take days, weeks, months to figure that out. But if you can get to a point where you can describe yourself in five words or less and it's meaningful, people understand it, you're on to something. From there you can build a marketing and brand strategy because you've learned how to position your company, you've learned how to tell it very simply and now you can go forward with the full story. That's one thing I would have them start with, which is a challenging yet very enlightening exercise.   LIGHTNING ROUND Are you a coffee drinker? Yes or no. No, I'm a hot chocolate guy.   How do you get going in the morning? I run in the mornings. That's what gets me going.   What's one business tool you're geeking out over right now? We're just implementing Percolate. I love it because it gives me access to the whole calendar of content and campaigns and everything and I can see in a glance everything that's happening around the world, and it's the first time I've ever had that capability, so I'm actually very much geeking out over that tool.   What is a favorite piece of technology currently? My range finder. I love it. I pull it out and I can really quickly click a button and it tells me exactly how far out I am from the pin. It's a simple piece of technology that I use a lot.   What's one book you'd pass along to a fellow marketer? My favorite book is a book called "Insanely Simple." It's written by Ken Segall who used to be the creative director at the agency that worked for Apple and Steve Jobs. He writes a book about how Steve Jobs, one of his greatest traits was his ability to keep things very, very simple. It's probably the most important marketing book I've ever read because it helps me to remember that the best marketing is also the simplest marketing. Your message needs to be simple. Obviously compelling and interesting, but we typically confuse compelling and interesting with lengthy.   Who's one person you'd like to go on a road trip with. Bono. I had a chance to meet him in Cannes one year in France and he is such a genuine human being and I was so impressed that I would love to go on a road trip.   How many hours of sleep do you get each night on average? Oh boy. I have not been a good sleeper the last month or two. I've done better, but for the last couple years I was probably doing about four (and by the way, that's not good and certainly not something I'm proud of and I don't think people should wear anything like that as a badge of honor). It's just not good for you. Now, I'm in the five range and that's been helpful. I'd like to get it more consistently in the six range and maybe even hit seven once in a while.   Well, lastly, how can people connect with you? Kevin.Sellers@Avnet.com, so I'm happy to connect with anyone that would like to.  

Sometimes as an entrepreneur, you set out to build one thing but end up with something else entirely. That was the case with Taylor Cavanah. A trained physicist, he and his best friend were on the path to building a technology company only to stumble across a gapping need in the veterinary world. Today, Taylor is the CEO of PetDesk, a platform that enables pet care providers and pet owners to connect and manage their pet's care.   In this interview, he shares how the company was built, why he prioritizes company culture and the reason it's important for entrepreneurs to keep sharing their ideas with the world. How did PetDesk come to be? It started back when Ken Tsui, my other co-founder, and I worked together in the nanotech world and decided to start a business, but not in the pet space. We were failing upwards building great technology, but not really solving problems. My wife's uncle, who is a vet, kept saying, "Hey, you've got to go into vet space. They really need technology." We didn't listen for probably about a year or so.   Then just to make sure we were getting into the right business I went to WBC, which is a big event conference in Vegas, and halfway through the first day I called Ken and said, "Start building PetDesk!” They were sending postcards with 1980s web portals and treating email like it was the newest, greatest thing –– this was 2013. It just seemed like it was a super obvious time for us to get into the space.   What is your role in the company now versus the early days? My day-to-day now is managing the directors of the company and hiring the missing pieces. Right now I'm very deep in planning on what we're going to do next, what our goals are, how we're going to get there, and training up all of our directors on how to do that type of planning. There's a lot of learning and mentoring, and that's a big part of my job.   What are some of the challenges that you've faced as you've scaled, and how did you overcome them? We went through a rapid growth period. When we hit 30 people this really weird, almost dark cloud descended on the company. We took a Friday afternoon, got everybody together, had a picnic. We opened it up and let everybody air their grievances, ask questions, and it was awesome. Within five days, everything was super sunny and great. We'd also made some personnel changes that needed to happen, and now our culture has been getting stronger and stronger. I guess one of the big learnings there is transparency and openness, and the ability to get everybody to be heard is key.   What's one of the best things that you've done for the business? Your culture is going to develop whether you put form written values or not. And it's not about just writing them down, but how you actually doing all those things that you want to do. Are you practicing radical candor? Are you learning? Are you coaching? Are you having a growth mindset? And does everybody in the company embody that as well?   What tips can you share for training up employees? Training is hard. Look for people who are very, very process-oriented. It's amazing what you can do when you put processes and systems in place, and it's so much easier to do it when you have five people than when you get to 50 people.   What's next for PetDesk? We tripled last year and doubled this year in ARR. The sales team is almost fully built out now. We basically have almost all the hires that we need, but we also understand that the market size that we're in is not huge and the product isn't going to last forever. Nobody's ever gotten 50%, 60%, 70% market share in this space, so we need to be thinking about the next thing.   We'll likely expand to serving groomers, boarders and trainers. We moved out of that space to just focus on vets, and we want to move back in.   What's one piece of advice that you would give to a fellow entrepreneur? Share your idea with everybody. When you're doing that, always ask for constructive criticism and really listen to that feedback. It's easy for us to fall in love with our baby, and the more you can take those blinders off, the better it's going to be. Lightning Round:   Are you a coffee drinker? Yes or no? No, Mountain Dew. I'm trying to kick it. It's the worst way to get caffeine.   What's one business tool you're geeking out over right now? Domo. It's a dashboard aggregator that used to cost like $50,000+ every month, and now you can get it for like $80 per user. I   Do you have a favorite piece of technology? I have a favorite piece of future technology that I really want to see happen. The ability to upload your consciousness, and the merging of machine and human intelligence.   What's one book you would pass along to a fellow entrepreneur? The Challenger Sale.   Who is one person or maybe dog you'd like to have dinner with? Albert Einstein.   How can people connect with you or learn more about PetDesk? E-mail at taylor@petdesk.com. I try to make time to help other entrepreneurs as much as possible.

Andrew Chaifetz approaches life with an inquisitive eye. Never one to accept the status quo, Andrew's foray into entrepreneurship began in college when he was required to use a clunky, outdated learning management software (LMS). He decided it wasn't enough to be frustrated and write it off for someone else to eventually tackle. Instead, recognizing others shared his experience, Andrew seized the opportunity to improve and upend the LMS industry. And this formed the basis of Notebowl, a sleek and user-friendly social learning platform for higher education that brings courses and the campus community together –– all in one place. In this episode, Andrew talks about navigating different stages in his business, why he approaches even the toughest challenges with a positive attitude and why our humanity hinges on people asking, “Why?”.

Saundra Schrock is the Founder and CEO of LevelHead, an app that helps employers engage employees in ways to improve their well being and performance. Saundra kicked off her three decade tenure working in finance as a teller, and cites hard work as what propelled her rise in the ranks. Over the years, especially when her travel schedule increased, Saundra turned to meditation and yoga to help combat stress and improve her leadership skills. When she transitioned out of finance, her dedication to wellness remained. Always fascinated with psychology, she knew that to really spread the message of mindfulness in leadership, she'd have to go farther than teaching or writing a book, so she turned to technology. By parlaying her program into an app, she's taken mindfulness to the masses. In this episode of the SuccessLab Podcast, Saundra shares how mindfulness can help people seize opportunities, become stronger leaders and change team for the better.

Wiley Larsen was a problem solver from a young age. Growing up, he would actively seek creative solutions to common everyday obstacles, but his journey to entrepreneurship came by chance. After spending eights years as a high school teacher, his knowledge and enthusiasm for startups began while working for Tom Osborne, a congressman in his home state of Nebraska. Wiley parlayed that knowledge into a leadership role with ASU's SkySong Venture Acceleration program, where he eventually was introduced to the technology that would kickstart his foray into launching his own company. Today, Wiley is the co-founder of Saccadous, a digital health and telehealth startup based on eye-tracking technology. In this episode, Wiley talks about transitioning from education to entrepreneurship, the tough conversations startup leaders need to have and what qualities people in business should possess to be truly successful.

When you think of tech talent, it's easy to limit that purview to developers and programmers. The Valley is loaded with opportunities for tech talent, and they span far more than coding gigs. In this episode of our special series on TechTalent, Heidi Jannenga, co-founder and president of WebPT, discusses misconceptions new grads have about tech jobs, what makes her top employees stand out and what they look for in the hiring process. How do you define top tech talent? There are these mythical creatures we're always looking for as full spec engineers who can span the different areas of development including DevOps, the delivery team world in the cloud, and coders that are very well versed in the latest languages. They understand how to build large-scale platforms and converge and integrate different parts of technology and platforms together. I think they are problem solvers, have empathy and they understand the customer is the most important piece of the puzzle. Are there particular qualities you look for in tech talent? Of course we look for their technical competencies first and foremost, but as an organization, WebPT hires for culture first. We're looking for motivated and passionate individuals who understand our purpose and vision, and can really get behind it. We want people who are very collaborative and work well in teams. We have an agile work environment, so we have smaller team groups that work together. We look for people who understand the importance of quality of code and putting out good, bug-free products. Top talent are those who continue to challenge themselves to learn more, don't think they have all the answers and are open-minded. Thinking of your best employees, what has made them stand out? It comes down the problem solvers. They're nerdy, geeky and hobbyists. They're problem solving when they're not even here, and then they come in super motivated when a lightbulb goes on. They fully embrace the purpose of our organization, including our members and the problems they're having. Our best tech employees are those who are efficient, love what they do and love to inspire others. What roles do you have the toughest time filling? I asked our director of software development that same question and he said, “All of them!” Programmers, DevOps, scrum masters, product managers, and product owners, we have quite a few opportunities open right now. If you go to webpt.com/careers, you'll find what we're interviewing for. How do you recognize some of your best employees? We hold a monthly stand up in which we have a special kudos section where we recognize folks for their valiant efforts. We also have our annual holiday party where we recognize 11 people in the organization that have gone above and beyond our core values. We also have a newsletter where we spotlight employees and share feedback so they can continue to grow and develop as employees. Different departments recognize employees in different ways. If you were mentoring a group of emerging tech talent students, what's one thing you'd want them to know? There are many different opportunities within development. When people think of development, they think of the guy with the hooded sweatshirt coding away. But there are so many diverse opportunities, including IT, scrum masters, developers, quality assurance folks and then the whole product management side. Is there one book you would pass along to emerging tech talent? “Rework” by the founders of 37signals. It is about how to build software, as well as some of the business principles behind it. It is important as a technologist to understand how your role fits into the overall organization.

Behind every great business is an individual who had an idea that was just crazy enough it could work. At least that was the case with Ron Robertson, co-founder and CEO of Picmonic, a visual learning platform that enables users to create, share and learn from audio/visual content. Ron was a third-year medical student bogged down with exams and, like so many of his counterparts, frustrated by all the important information he was forgetting along the way. Studying under a neuroscientist, he learned that by making information more sensory, it dramatically improved the ability to learn and retain that information. It was then the idea for Picmonic was born. Within a year of launching, half the medical schools in the country had signed up and used the product. Six years later, Picmonic is revolutionizing the way students are learning and retaining information. In this episode, Ron discusses his decision to step away from medical school to pursue his own business, building a team, raising capital, and taking Picmonic to market, along with a few other key entrepreneurial lessons he's learned along the way. Coming from a medical background, how did you step into the CEO role and take on growing a business? I came from a background of biochemistry and neuroscience. Going into medical school, I knew very little about business. I was naive but I surrounded myself with people who are much smarter than I am and who'd built successful businesses before. Ultimately it was the advisors, mentors and coaches that helped guide the way. Despite the things I was not familiar with - whether that was building a team or creating software or taking a product to market or raising capital –– none of these were unique. Others have done these things before, so it was more about how could I connect with these people and try to learn from them. What's one thing you have really had to learn as CEO? All of it. One of the areas I was the least prepared for was leadership and management. It's challenging having people work for you in a startup organization where you're underfunded and people aren't making as much money as they would working for a huge corporation. I've had to work hard to get better at it. Business wise, it's a constant process of iteration and improvement. We go through a retrospective process regularly, looking at our objectives, whether we hit them, and if not, why and what could we do differently? When you look at individual roles and responsibilities across the board, there's always room for improvement in every aspect of what we do. What's one of the best things you've done for your business? It comes down to the inception of the organization when I had the idea and shared it with people early on, everybody thought I was crazy. One of things people would say was, “You want to teach people with cartoons?” or “You want to use cartoons to train the next generation of doctors and nurses?”. And the answer was yes. It took an incredible amount of tenacity to fight that battle and believe in myself and the vision enough to build something when everyone thought it was insane.   I dropped out of medical school to build this organization. I quit one year shy of graduating. I believed in it enough to get it going, and consistently share it, tell people about it and get enough people to believe in order to get the capital to recruit the talent to build the product and take it to market. It was 1 to 2 years after we started that finally people started to see the validation. For the first couple years it took a lot of time and energy and commitment. Speed Round: Coffee drinker, yes or no? Absolutely. What's one business tool you're geeking out over right now? Kiteform, Intercom, Slack and Zeplin. Favorite piece of technology: Google. It's heavily used and loved in our organization. What's one book you would pass along to a fellow entrepreneur: “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” by Ben Horowitz Who is one person you would like to have dinner with? Elon Musk How many hours of sleep do you get a night? On average 4 to 5, but I would love to get 6 to 7.

It's an all-too-familiar story for many entrepreneurs: you spend years dedicating yourself to a career path only to eventually realize it no longer gives you fulfillment. That was the scenario for AJ Harbinger, who faced a tough decision while pursuing his Ph.D.  –– stay the course or risk everything and pursue entrepreneurship.   Luckily for the hundreds of thousands of people he has helped, AJ chose the road less traveled, co-founding The Art of Charm, which has become a highly acclaimed podcast and online resource for advanced social skills training. AJ, along with his co-founder Jordan Harbinger and partner Johnny Dzubak, help countless people build confidence, social interaction, networking, and overall self improvement. Guests have included a diverse array of experts, celebrities, athletes, and authors who share practical advice.   In this episode of The SuccesLab Podcast, AJ joins hosts Beth Cochran and Deb Caron to discuss how he stumbled into podcasting, dropped out of grad school and dedicated his life to helping ordinary people become extraordinary.

Codie Sanchez is a multi-hyphenate title holder who puts the Energizer Bunny to shame. She's the founder of CS Ventures, podcast host of the Struggle Isn't Real, startup founder of Threads Refined (since exited), and head of Latin America and Offshore Sales at First Trust. As most entrepreneurs come to realize, their journey is anything but linear. Codie's experience has been no different. She started out as a journalist reporting stories from the U.S./Mexico border. Particularly touched by an elderly woman abandoned in a border community, Codie realized it wasn't enough to write about someone's story –– she wanted to rewrite the story. In this episode of The SuccessLab Podcast, Codie shares why it's important to chase your curiosity, why power comes from developing a deep understanding of money and how she empowers people to break through their fears in order to pursue their dreams.

Tech companies can't succeed based solely on a handful of individuals in the C-suite. Ask any founder or CEO and they'll tell you a company's success hinges on the grit and determination of its rising stars. Whether you're in software development, IT infrastructure or sales, your contributions matter. In this episode on our special series on tech talent, CampusLogic CEO Gregg Scoresby shares insights on how to keep your stars rising. How you define top tech talent? Top tech talent needs to be smart, have a desire to learn new things and be committed to solve the problem or mission you're working on. What makes an employee stand out from the pack? They need to be collaborative and naturally curious to learn new things. We don't have people working in isolation at CampusLogic. If you were in one of our standup meetings, it's hard to tell who is senior and who is junior. No one is above working on a something else than another. One of our values is, “We're nice and take care of each other.” Being able to work with other people and being nice, smart, collaborative and curious. Those are things that make someone successful at CampusLogic. How do you recognize your best employees? We have a company meeting every two weeks where we have lunch together and go over things we're working on. As part of all of that, we're recognizing individuals on teams. We also do real-time recognition of people via Slack where people are recognizing the good performance of other people they see within the company. That said, it's not my job as CEO to make sure everyone gets recognized. Everybody needs to make sure the good work of others is getting recognized as well. What's one of the roles you have the toughest time filling? Software engineering talent is certainly in high demand. The discipline of project management is also hard to find. We have a couple great people in that area, but scaling that is hard. If you were mentoring a group of emerging tech talent, what's one thing you'd want them to know? There's a contract that exists between an employer and an employee. We give you a salary and you give us your best work, including your opinions. I want people to be vocal. They need to bring their best ideas and be motivated to solve a problem. So my advice to younger tech talent is be curious, be vocal, be thoughtful and be collaborative. Is there a book you'd pass along to them? There's a book called “Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter” by Liz Wiseman. It's not directed at tech talent but more toward leaders of developing talent in general. It's a good book to think about whether you're killing genius or cultivating genius. As leaders of tech talent, we need to be doing all we can to multiply the genius within the organization.

As companies scale, it's easy for culture to get pushed to the backburner as teams struggle to keep up with workloads. It's a challenge in any environment, particularly one of rapid growth. And that certainly was the case WebPT back in 2010 when the young startup began growing in leaps and bounds. When Heidi Jannenga, WebPT's co-founder and president, began to feel their tightknit, scrappy culture starting to shift, she and her team took it as an opportunity to hit pause and put in place a set of core values that would forever shape the future growth and culture of the company.   What challenges have you personally overcome as WebPT has scaled? I need more data behind me before I'm ready to jump and make decisions, whereas others are more willing to jump based on their gut. Over time, being in the software world and in a fast moving organization where decisions need to be made quickly, I've become much more in tune with my gut. Don't get sidelined by analysis paralysis, but there have to be some key metrics you can look at in order to move forward to make decisions. Part of that is understanding that if you fail fast, you have the opportunity to make changes and not lose the entire process. Having an agile mindset has helped me to become less risk averse.   What's been one of the best things you've done for the business over the years? Culture is one of the true foundations of our success. Our culture is one based on 10 core values our team came up with. The first couple of years when we had 10 - 12 employees, we were able to transfer that culture organically. There was this understanding of expectations and people would adopt it quickly. But within six months of getting funding in 2010, we'd hired more people than we had in the first few years combined. We felt this cultural shift begin, so we hired a culture captain to help drive and make sure the culture was maintained and nurtured. Our core values as they are today were really born out of conversations and planning from our first 40 employees, and those core values still stand today.   What's one area you've had to train on yourself as president of WebPT? I don't need to have all the answers. Oftentimes, people come to you for things that, at the end of the day, they'll feel more empowered by finding themselves. The other thing is to just let go. As a startup, you wear many hats. I found myself being a jack of all trades. I was a master on the product management peice and leading the culture, but was not great at finance and metrics. As we grew, I learned to be self aware enough to know what I'm really good at. And by identifying areas of weakness, I could pass those things off to people who have those areas as strengths. Speed Round: Coffee drinker, yes or no? I have never been a coffee drinker. What's one business tool you're geeking out over right now? Pendo. Favorite piece of technology: My car, a Tesla Model X. What's one book you would pass along to a fellow entrepreneur: “Rework”, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeir Hansson, the founders of 37signals and “Firms of Endearment” by Rajendra Sisodia. Who is one person you would like to have dinner with? Michelle Obama. How many hours of sleep do you get a night? I average 6-7 hours. On weekends, 8 hours.

There's no question the Valley's tech scene is in on the upswing. One obstacle executives face, however, is finding the right people with the right skills to fill the right seats. In this episode of this special series on TechTalent, Rick Stoddard, Director of Venture Engagement at Coplex, discusses how he defines top tech talent, qualities he looks for in the startups he works with and the top advice he has for up-and-comers. How would you define tech talent? Top talent is those individuals who are constantly learning and absorbing information to further their marketability and what they have to offer to the community. It's talent that's energetic and committed to furthering a community, especially a technology community. There's the resume and bio, but so many intangibles come into play. Are they willing to evolve? Are they willing to take on change? Are they willing to explore the unknown.  What qualities do you look for on filling roles at Coplex, or among the startups you mentor? Coachability, especially in a mentoring situation. If there doesn't seem to be an element of coachability, then why even have the relationship? Is the person open to looking in areas they've never looked before and exploring what could really make a difference –– not just subtle differences, but transformational differences. Also I look for what integrity means to them. Not integrity from a good or bad perspective, but really that they understand that integrity in life can have a huge impact on performance. Being authentic and being open and willing to be vulnerable are other things I look for. Is there an employee you can think of in your past that really stood out? What has made them the best? They were coachable and they were willing to take action, even when they didn't want to take action. Unless you're willing to take action and get out there and experiment and fail, it doesn't contribute much to furthering your career. What roles do local tech companies have the toughest time filling? Software engineering talent and designers –– there are just not enough. I think the more we, locally, can begin to educate our existing base, the better it's going to be. I see a lot of things being done to do just that so I'm really encouraged at the direction I see our community going. If you were mentoring a group of emerging tech folks, what's one thing you'd want them to know? Be yourself and have fun. It's a journey –– enjoy it!

The search for talent is one of the top challenges facing the Valley's burgeoning tech community. In this episode of TechTalent, guest Greg Head, CEO of Greg Head Consulting and founder of Gregslist, talks about what truly makes for a rockstar employee in the tech world and where up-and-coming tech talent should focus their attention. What qualities should top tech talent possess? One trait is the mastery of their specialty. There's a lot of people who say they do the roles, but aren't really intensely focused on mastering those things. You've got to be able to figure it out at a very high level. The other thing I look for is people who admit they don't know something but who learn really fast. If you give someone an idea or homework, and they never circle back, or figure it out, or they keep asking the same questions –– that's going to be slow going. The most talented folks are the ones who dedicate themselves to learning something and keep coming back for more, but at a higher level. Is there an employee you can think of in your past that really stood out? If so, why? Everybody starts off at the bottom, but people can move up really fast. Lindsay Bayuk, who I worked with at Infusionsoft, is now the VP of Product Marketing of Pluralsight, a $100M company in Utah. I knew her seven years ago when she was a student at ASU and was asking how to start a company and what things she needed to do to get there. She was really savvy and intensely interested in it. So, she went from being a college student to a VP at a $100M company in seven years. It was more about her tenaciousness and her attitude and approach to it than any innate thoughts. She's smart, but there's a lot of smart people out there that haven't done what she's done. People can really move fast if they go for it. What roles do local tech companies have the toughest time filling? Senior talented engineers to make their software –– that's the brutal fight, to find those people and then have to compete with others who are trying to take them. Leadership roles are also in demand. Companies might need someone to be their first sales manager, which is very different than being a VP of sales with 15 people under them. If you were mentoring a group of tech up-and-comers, what's one thing you'd want them to know? There are serious problems and opportunities all over the place. Focus on finding problems in the world that haven't been solved yet that you care about. Get in and start helping them. Don't worry about jobs, politics, salaries –– the games. Just worry about solving the actual problem.

What separates an individual with a business idea from an entrepreneur with an idea that could actually turn into a viable business? The ability to successfully identify a market opportunity. That was the case for Gregg Scoresby, founder and CEO of CampusLogic. After years spent as a consultant in the higher education and student financial aid industry, he recognized the experience could dramatically improve with the adoption of mobile and cloud. In this episode, Gregg discusses jumping on the market opportunity, ushering student financial aid into the age of the cloud and the challenges of scaling up. What's a challenge you faced as you've scaled and how did you overcome it? When you're trying to scale, it's different from when you were being scrappy and trying to execute with 10 people –– there's a whole new level of management and leadership required. Externally, customers need more love and attention. Internally, it's important to make sure there's clarity around the company's  purpose, mission and values. At CampusLogic, we talk about purpose, mission and values in almost everything we do. Our core values are the primary thing we interview for and our entire performance evaluation process is based on those core values. If you have smart people who share those core values, then a lot of good things happen. As any company grows, change is inevitable and often necessary. How have you adapted to embrace change? Managing a 10-person company is quite a bit different than managing a 100-person company. The role becomes more about managing the managers versus directing the work on a day-to-day basis. Making changes associated with growth can be hard, but it is fun to see the company grow, and try hard to make the personal and organizational changes that allow it to grow. What's one piece of advice you would give to these entrepreneurs? Build the very best team you can as early as you can. When cash is tight, it can be tricky to hire the best talent that you can. The key is to always be thinking what the company will need in the next six months, 12 months and 24 months, and then hire for the skillsets you'll need in the out years. It's important to find balance when cash is tight, but at the end of the day, talent wins. That's how success happens –– great people solving big problems. Speed round: Coffee drinker, yes or no? No, but a Coke Zero on my desk isn't safe. How many hours of sleep do you get daily? 6 - 7 hours One business tool you're geeking out over right now? Slack. Favorite piece of technology? Microsoft Azure What's one book you'd pass along to a fellow entrepreneur? The Four Disciplines of Execution One person you'd like to have dinner with? My wife.

There's no easy, straight and narrow path to entrepreneurial success ––it's filled honing and fighting for your vision, navigating difficult decisions and balancing scaling with maintaining cash flow. In this episode, Rick Stoddard, Director of Venture Engagement at Coplex, sheds light on some of these challenges and obstacles, and what it takes to move past them. As ventures scale, are there common challenges you see them face? With any company that's scaling, one commonality is the need to be financially prepared for the scaling. Certainly, the game changes as companies gain traction and begin to grow. Then it becomes about the types of individuals they need to surround themselves with. It's about constantly looking at not only people, but also the technologies will enable an entrepreneur to take the next big step. What's a quality or skill you think all founders should have? In everything that we do, it boils down to communication. What we say is what we create. It's about being able to relay thoughts in a way that other people really understand - not so much from my point of view, but their point of view so they can easily step into that conversation. That's a challenge for everyone. Communication takes constant practice and being more cognizant of what you're saying, why you're saying it and the reason you're having the conversation. I know you mentor numerous startup founders, what's one piece of advice you would give to these entrepreneurs? Never give up. Have stick-to-itiveness and be resilient. If you strongly believe and you're driven by what you're creating, you can find a way. It's going to be difficult at times and you've got to be willing to go beyond what a lot of people will do. There's nothing wrong with stopping, but if you want to accomplish something big and you're up to creating something different in life, have that willingness to continue on. Speed round: Coffee drinker, yes or no? No. One business tool you're geeking out over right now? New Surface Pro 4. Favorite piece of technology? New Surface Pro 4. What's one book you'd pass along to a fellow entrepreneur? The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. One person you'd like to have dinner with? My mother.

On the path to growth, nearly every CEO battles some sort of head game no matter the stage or size of the company. Greg Head knows these all too well. He's been an integral part of several rapid-growth companies as they climbed their way to $100M and an IPO, and now as a consultant and coach to early stage CEOs (he worked with more than 300 in the last year). Having been inside some of these rapid-growth companies, and now working with CEOs, is there a common block you see that stand in the way? One big block I see is the misperception that when you're getting started and you're trying a lot of things and experimenting, when you reach $1M or $1B you have to change your game. And it's not doing more, it's actually doing less and getting really focused. CEOs also have to narrow their focus and essentially focus on three key things in the business: vision, leadership, and making sure there's enough cash to keep going. As you grow up, it's hard to relinquish control or learn a new skill such as raising money. You talk a lot out the “head game” and how that impedes many business owners, what are some ways you can identify if you are playing the head game with yourself? Everyone deals with these things. Our beliefs and thoughts and motions...just because we're human. Founders and CEOs like to put on a face like they've got it figured out, but ...sometimes they're fears: what if I'm not the right person, what if we run out of cash, what if I can't do this, what if this doesn't work out. All those beliefs humans have...those are the biggest levers for making movement. And the myth is, ambitious entrepreneurs want to change the world, and as we go through the journey, the biggest surprise is we have to change ourselves. All those beliefs we've had since we were in high school, some are holding us back and we need to get rid of them. How do you start to overcome those limiting thoughts? The first rule is to know which game you're playing. You have to recognize there's an inner game going on. Often we already know the answers, but many of us don't follow them and that's because we're human. It's not the answer or the facts that's the problem, it's where it meets the human. Since you work with so many CEOs and have the inside track on what holds them back in terms of growth, is there one piece of advice you can pass along? It is a challenge as your business starts to grow. IT can feel more out of control because there are more people and you don't have your hands on the keyboard for everything in the business. Founders and CEOs get all the hard issues collected at their desk that they can't delegate, and one of the struggles they have is their senior leaders are not really available for the call about “My head is exploding and I'm not sure exactly what to do here.” They don't always have a lot of help for this, so that's where being around trusted peers, coaches and advisors can help open up that conversation about what might be at the root of the issue. Speed round: Coffee drinker, yes or no? Yes One business tool you're geeking out over right now? iPad Pro so I can do the whiteboard thing remotely on the phone. I'm a whiteboard junkie. Favorite piece of technology? My iPhone What's one book you'd pass along to a fellow entrepreneur? “Crossing the Chasm” by Geoffrey Moore. One person you'd like to have dinner with? Warren Buffett, but his price is pretty high. How much sleep do get a night? Seven hours consistently.

In this episode, Eli Hall, owner of AMS Landscaping, discusses how he seeded the growth trajectory of his landscaping business and maintained a passion for the company for more than 20 years. When he took the company over from his grandfather, it was a one-man operation. Today, Eli has grown it into a million-dollar landscaping business. He talks about how he's learned to get out of his own way, delegate the necessary tasks to get the job done, and utilize technology to create a better customer experience.  

How do you successfully grow a software-as-a-service company? Bob La Loggia, founder and CEO of AppointmentPlus, an appointment scheduling software, has carved one path that has led to amazing growth and a 15-year track record.  In this episode, Bob discusses lessons learned, what one thing he did that made a major difference in the growth of the business, and what advice he'd offer up to fellow entrepreneurs. 

Digital marketing ––it's become an imperative part of the marketing mix for most brands. But for those just getting started in it, it can seem like a vast, unknown world. While the barrier to entry is relatively low, it can be easy for the unknowing marketer to spend a lot of money and have nothing to show for it. In this episode, Adrian Vender, director of analytics at IMI, shares some of the all-too-common mistakes in digital marketing to avoid and how to get started, particularly if you are operating on a budget. Speed round: Coffee drinker, yes or no? Absolutely. One business tool you're geeking out over right now? This is very specific to data nerds like me, but I continue to geek out over Tableau. Favorite piece of technology? Chromecast. What's one book you'd pass along to a fellow entrepreneur? This might sound cliché, but definitely "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell. One person you'd like to have dinner with? I would love to have dinner with Barack Obama. Next week I'm in the lab with Bob La Loggia, CEO and founder of AppointmentPlus. We discuss the trials and tribulations of building a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company. Be sure to tune! Until then, have prosperous week!  

From Wall Street to a successful startup exit to Rise of the Rest, Anna Mason shares her journey. In this episode we discuss productivity tips, overcoming entrepreneurial obstacles and how she's working to make an impact in the startup world as the Director of Investments for Rise of the Rest.