Podcasts about 20k

Have you heard all the buzz about Crypto?   Is it hype or is it here to stay?   Today we discuss this with our guest and Healthy N Wealthy N Wise community member, D'Narius Lewis     D'Narius Lewis is a Serial Entrepreneur, International Speaker, Author & Crypto Investor. Whose passion is empowering people to have a larger vision for their lives. From Homeless To Successful Entrepreneur, D'Narius's Story is One With Many Triumphs & Lessons.      D'Narius is the founder of Optimum Outreach, a telecom brokerage, assisting businesses with their phone, tv internet & wireless services.   D'narius teaches people that they can live the life of their dreams if they are just willing to suspend their disbelief for an extended period of time and have the discipline it takes to work toward your dreams every single day.   If you would like to connect with D'Narius on his amazing cyrpto wisdom and passion, you can go to his Patreon site https://www.patreon.com/Cryptomagnet?fan_landing=true   Or subscribe to his youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtGPPPAeAfwuqe5rBlpFQTg   FOR YOUR OWN SUCCESS IN 2022 - HERE IS WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH COACH LOIS:   Sign up for Coach Lois' High Performance Sales Masterclass With Jenny Harkleroad February 3rd https://balancedyou.org/performance/   Pour octane on your sales performance this year by attending this one time only FREE offered class!   This could be the 90 minutes that change your LIFE in 2022         If you would like to learn more about Coach Lois' future and past guests, as well as join the party inside of her Healthy N Wealthy N Wise facebook community, go to www.healthynwealthynwise.com     For more of her amazing resources, as well as her guests free gifts, go to www.loiskoffi.com/resources       Join her FB community here go grow your business to $20K months in a balanced/healthy way here:         www.facebook.com/groups/permissionbased20kmonths/     Keywords: crypto, health, wealth, investments, financial goals, sales

First, Jason covers the how Signal messages led to the Oath Keeper sedition indictments (1:47) and how Google, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter are being subpoenaed by the House committee investigating Jan 6th, 2021 (15:32). Then Producer Rachel has an "OK Boomer" segment where she talks with Alex Masmej a French entrepreneur about his experience raising $20K from selling a personal token, $ALEX (27:10).

Nest, Elizabeth Press speaks to Noreen McKee about her recent OpEd (https://tinyurl.com/yz2eudat) in the Times Union on voting in Rensselaer County. Noreen calls for a change to the election process and points out a few of the issues she sees on topics from ballot-harvesting through absentee ballots, the Democratic establishment abandoning its candidates, Republicans hijacking the Working Families Party, the County Executive's $20K last-minute raise, and more. (Outro) As Noreen mentioned, on Wednesday, January 5, 2022, the Rensselaer County Legislature will have a public forum at 1600 Seventh Avenue in Troy. It starts at 6pm and people can sign up to speak before that.

Today, on the Hudson Mohawk Magazine, We begin with Mark Dunlea's interview with Sally Lauletta about her recent run for Rensselaer County legislature; Then, Elizabeth Press takes us to the press conference and protest to oppose the $20K pay raise for Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin; After that, Corinne Carey gets the scoop on the collaboration between Capital Area Relief & Liberation and Return Brewing that is easing the transition incarceration back into the community; Finally, Aileen Javier brings us a story on housing and speaks with Yvonne Maldonado;

Our guest this week is Nate Auffort, and he understands that even when we have the motivation to achieve what we desire, sometimes we need a little help—we need someone to hold us accountable. When Nate combined his desire to make more money with the help of a mentor who kept him accountable, he went from making $3K/month to $20K/month in only 90 days and to $1M in a year and a half! Listen as Nate discusses how to find an expert mentor, use objections to your advantage, and how to get access to his powerhouse conference, Strategic Wealth Accumulation Tactics (SWAT). And don't forget to check out the show notes for more in-depth information and added details not included in the episode. Visit www.staypaidpodcast.com.   Connect | Resources  Strategic Wealth Accumulation Tactics 2022 Conference  SWATtraining.info/learnmore  SWATtraining.info/events  Social media: @nateauffort      0:00     Introduction  2:49     Nate's bio  5:07     How did you become an entrepreneur?  9:13     Where did the idea of SWAT come from?  11:52   How do you spot a fake guru and what do you want in a mentor?  16:21   How Nate's mentor gave him a reason to get to the next level.  22:06   What do elite salespeople do – Strategy 1  27:51   What do elite salespeople do – Strategy 2  31:18   Discerning the personality types of your prospects  36:58   Nate's routines for success  45:37   Action Item 

In the last week of December 2021, the Republican majority county legislature approved a $20K pay raise for Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin. This is 18% more than he currently makes. The raise happened just three weeks after he was arrested and indicted on felony charges related to campaign finances. The Justice Center of Rensselaer County and Rensselaer County Women for Change held a press conference outside the County Office Building in Troy on December 24, 2021. Hudson Mohawk Magazine's Elizabeth Press was there. This segment starts with Democratic Legislator and Minority Leader Peter Grimm. The Rensselaer County Legislature
 Public Forum is on Wednesday, January 5, 2022, at 6 pm. You can signup between 5 - 6 pm to speak.

Today I'm joined by Weston Birkeland, a 4th generation farmer who grows mostly wheat and barley on about 20K acres in Montana. We take a deep dive and discuss how Legacy Farmer has impacted absolutely every aspect of his life and business in only 3 short weeks.  Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org

4:47 - The night CROSSNET was inventedChris and his friends were throwing ideas for a product invention at the wall to see if anything stuck when someone mentioned four-way volleyball.“ESPN was on in the background. Not sure if that motivated it or not, but Mike wrote down four-way beach volleyball. Mike's one of our other co-founders, grew up playing soccer and basketball. Four-way volleyball net. And we're like, yeah, no shit. That'd be sick. Jumped on Google, and nobody had done it before. And right now it was like four in the morning, you're in your hometown farm town. It's cool, and nobody does it, and we're like, this is it. That's the game. So we went to bed and then the next morning we woke up, went to Walmart, got two badminton nets, cut up the center, staked them on the side of my mom's garden shed. Texted all the boys, like yo come over. And we just started making a game in the backyard, like you did when you're 12 years old.”7:47 - Building a brandChris had previously worked with his friend and brother on a startup during college. He knew that when creating his own company, he wanted to create a true brand.“I graduated with a film degree $100,000 in debt. And I was making like 40 grand a year. It wasn't sustainable. So I couldn't go home and focus on e-commerce. So I left. And my brother invented the GLUNT, which is the glass blunt, which is famous, probably the most famous glass blunt that went on for like millions of dollars in sales. It was really, really successful. And I gave up on the cane and I could have gotten involved in that. So when I started CROSSNET, I'm not giving up. I don't care how long this is going to take. It's going to work, just stay patient. So that was the e-commerce history kind of to set us up for good success because I knew I did not want to drop ship this thing. I wanted to form a brand.”12:53 - Balancing Uber and CROSSNETChris was still working in sales at Uber when he moved to Miami, juggling both his full-time job and experimenting with CROSSNET.“We started getting the proof of concept down. We had 50 units coming to the States, started selling them. And people started to take interest a little bit. I went to my boss [at Uber Eats] and I said, Hey, I don't know if I'm making the right move, but I've got a damn good idea. I'm going to move to Miami in two weeks. You'd either let me work remote—and this was before COVID. This is before everything—I was like, either let me work remote because this job is easy as hell and I can do it from my apartment, or I'm done. And he was so cool. And he's like, yeah, go work remote and lead the team. And I had a team of 12 people reporting to me. I led the team for six months working remote in Miami, on the beach playing CROSSNET during the day and answering emails from my phone for Uber.”16:08 - When your product is your billboardBy setting up live games in Miami and elsewhere, Chris and his team got an incredible amount of exposure that was better than any billboard.“What ended up happening was we go to the beach every day and set up the net. Get there at nine o'clock. And 20 minutes in we'd have everybody looking at us, every single person at that beach was staring at us taking photos. It was like a billboard, but it was just our product. I always say it's really hard to market a product that nobody gets to see, unless it's just one on one. When I set up a CROSSNET, hundreds of people see it. So people would start playing. I would film ads on my phone and go home and run Facebook ads at night. Eventually what would happen was you'd be on vacation in Colorado. You'd go home. And you sell nothing in Denver. And all of a sudden we started getting sales with Denver. And I'm like, oh shit, you must be out there playing, right. So it just started snowballing. We had 50 out, and then 250, and now there's 100,000 out there. So when summer comes, it's just that perfect storm.”21:14 - The first factoryAfter nailing down a prototype, Chris and the team went out in search of a factory. They negotiated a small starting quantity for about $20,000.“At this point we typed in Aliexpress Volleyball Nets. Found a few factories, sent over an NDA, sent over the blueprint. Our co-founder Mike was an engineer, so he was good at AutoCAD and we saved the cost there. Lucky. Sent it over, said yo, we have an idea. Immediately heard, ‘sure. $500 grand.' $500? Who the hell do you think we are, $500 grand? No chance. Found one lady that was like, all right. I can do 50 for you. And we're like, please, we promise one day we'll be the biggest company. And now we outgrew our factory. We had to find a new supplier because it became so big. But to your point, negotiate. 50 units. Okay. We'll wire over the check for $20 grand or whatever it was. We literally had $20 grand for this whole company to start.”25:06 - The video that went viralThe best growth moment came when Chris agreed to send a free sample to someone who ended up being on an Olympic volleyball team.“Yo, let me get free samples. I'm sure you guys deal with that all the time. But it's like you know this stuff costs money, right? Would I just light $60 on fire? Or would you give me $60 for free? Hell no, you're not giving me $60 for free. So why should I do that for you? But there's one guy, I guess he was compelling enough. And he said, send me out a sample. I said, okay, I'll send it to you. You pay for the shipping. So he pays like $200 to ship it to Latvia. I don't know where Latvia is, we just ship it. Nothing happens. Four months go by. Crickets. I'm moving on to the next thing. And my phone just starts spazzing one morning. I wake up, I got like 5 million views on this video. 10,000 comments, a quadrillions shares. And it's these dudes in Latviaplaying on the beach. It ends up being the Latvian Olympic volleyball team. So they're on the beach, palm trees. Spike it, dig it, doing everything I can't do on a CROSSNET. And that was our first banger piece of content.”28:19 - The trouble with shippingShipping container costs have skyrocketed, but if you need product you have little choice. Chris hopes to see container costs stabilizing somewhat going forward.“Everyone talks about shipping containers. I just found out our team paid $25,000 for a container. There was 350 units in that container. My cost on these just went up $70 for this damn thing. It's just like stupid mistakes that we're making. But also we really have no choice. If we want the products here, you have to pay it. But if you're losing money on the product, you have to shut it down. Don't even sell that product. It's a loss here at this point. Chill out until the containers come back down. So those are all things we're dealing with right now...I have seen lately that containers are coming down. A lot of boats on the water are landing, now looking for their charges from six months ago. So now I'm dealing with the billing, which sucks. But moving forward we're seeing containers hopefully being a fraction of that $20K. So if we can get down that $12-15K range, I'd be pretty content. I don't think we're anywhere close to that $3 grand that we started at in 2018.”30:42 - Taking CROSSNET internationalToday CROSSNET has warehouses and 3PLs in Canada, Australia, and hopefully will add a greater presence in Europe soon.“I have a warehouse in Kingsville, Ontario, Canada. We opened up that last year. A warehouse in San Diego. Just opened up a 3PL in Australia, which took about a year of work. And then we're opening up a 3PL in Europe somewhere so that we can fulfill some of those countries. But it's a lot of legal work right now. You have to pay VAT fees for all the countries. And it's just a lot of headache to even deal with Europe right now. I'd love to get to Europe tomorrow, but Australia seems like it's going to be a rocket ship for us. There's great weather, beaches. And the nice thing I'm pumped about is when it is freezing cold in Connecticut in October, November, January, February, March, go sell in Australia. Shut off all my ads in the east coast, throw them over to Australia.”34:33 - Getting off the ground in AustraliaWhile getting set up in Australia has had its challenges, Chris knows it will be well worth it.“You cannot get an Australia website without having an Australian registered business, which is crazy to me. So it took us about eight months to get a registered Australian business. You can get a domain in 30 seconds here. You have to have a registered Australian business, which took forever. So eight months of planning, we vetted a ton of 3PLs and found the one that we liked, CP3, great company. And then essentially from there, it was just lining up shipments. Trucking that directly from China to the 3PL in Australia, them unloading, making sure our SKUs are right. Product photography, making sure the Shopify is duplicated but also speaks the language, which is important. And then from there, it's finding the relevant content that sticks.”41:11 - Becoming a legitimate sportFrom partnerships with legacy players to selling at a high level, Chris' background has allowed him to help take CROSSNET to the next step.“It's one thing to say all right, cool. We have a cool sport we made up. But it's still like, it's just a sport that you made up, it's not a real sport yet. So how do we validate, how do we make it real? So we did stuff with USA Volleyball, with Wilson, and we'll go on doing cooler brand partnerships. And for me, being 24 at the time, what better way to legitimize your sport and product than to put yourself into retail. Knowing nothing about retail, but knowing from my corporate days at like Contently where I was selling SaaS software. I was literally 22 years old. Had my nice little tie on, going in to see the CMO at like AIG, some 65-year-old lady, like Fortune 500, Fortune 50 companies. And they're talking to me in person. Like that doesn't even add up. So the way I got good at that was through LinkedIn, and that was the only way. It was crafting good messages, not the shit that you get every day.”Full video interview: https://youtu.be/D1gyFhOKQAUChris Meade - CMO of CrossnetRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of Omnipanel

An interview with Wolfgang Bremer. Wolfgang is the Head of Design at Elli, an electric vehicle company that is part of the Volkswagen group. Wolfgang wants to help make people's lives simpler through design, build true cross-functional relationships and is passionate about getting designers a seat at the table and making them valued business partners. We speak about a lot, including: The mission behind Elli and some of the considerations & challenges of creating physical products where you actually have to make things Why he tends to bounce from big company to small company and vice versa, the pros & cons of each type of company and whether, given Volkswagen own Elli, he's in a small company or a big company right now Some key considerations you need to think about when hiring designers depending on the size of your company and what you might optimise for The problems that silo thinking can bring, where you have designers, product and engineering throwing grenades backwards and forwards over the fence Why it's so important for designers to be true business partners and some of the problems it can cause when they're not Whether it's important to have a CXO representing the design team at the top table, or whether it really matters who the team reports through Some of the hallmarks of bad managers, how even small things can make a difference, and some principles to live by when trying to build effective teams And much more! Contact Wolfgang You can join Wolfgang's 20K followers (and counting) on Twitter or visit bremer.co.

Get the full show notes for this episode here  Melissa Webster is a certified holistic nutritionist, plant-based food instructor, and certified personal trainer, who helps people transition to a plant-based lifestyle. As a chronic illness overcomer, she is committed to empowering others to heal through a plant-based lifestyle, so they can freely live out their God-given purpose, and thrive. We chat about: How Melissa went from junk food vegan to whole foods plant-based eating Growing her own food with her family How to eat well and add more variety to your life, how to figure out what type of vegan lifestyle you want (its not one size fits all), Melissa's three plant-based pregnancies and deciding to raise plant-based children Behind the scenes of Melissa starting and building a YouTube channel with over 20K subscribers. Shout out to this week's sponsor Rouxbe! Make sure you check out this amazing culinary school to improve your plant-based cooking. Click here for a 14-day trial (no credit card required)

On today's episode of the Soul Aligned Business Babe podcast I interview my incredible mastermind client Susie who scaled from $10K months to $30K months in just 30 days. After investing a lot of money already in other coaches and masterminds without the success she desired, she talks about the key breakthroughs that helped her achieve this rapid growth in such a short period of time.  Susie shares about the power of the inner work. The power of shifting who she was BEING, not necessarily what she was doing. She deepened her self trust, her confidence, shifted her expectations, all through embodying the woman who already had her desires and following my Vibrational alignment process. Susie's story is just one of many showing what's available for you too when you master your energy and who you are being.    Susie is a nutritionist and naturopath helping women in the anti aging space. You can connect with her on insta and FB @susiegardenwellness or at http://susiegarden.com Download her free ebook here: The Essential 8: Anti-Ageing Secrets Every Woman over 35 Should Know - Ebook- http://eepurl.com/glDKHn There is also a new mastermind brewing for 2022, for women that are truly ready for their $20K, $30K months and beyond. There will be an exclusive price and bonus for women on the waitlist. Click here to join. Links and resources:   For more about me and current programs visit my website Join the facebook community for regular live trainings  Follow me on Instagram @iamsusanfrancis You can also find me on Youtube Access free trainings, meditations and journal prompts here Make sure you hit SUBSCRIBE so you don't miss out on any future insights and teachings on all things mindset, manifestation and business.  And, if you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a rating and a review. Thanks!

Hello Chit Chatters!! Just a quick catch up and week-in review LIVE from NYC! THANK YOU for helping the show reach 20K downloads on the show!! this is a huge milestone and I am grateful and. proud of what we've accomplished. This quick episode was just a check-in to share some updates and let you know that more great content is to come before the end of year.

FRIDAY - It is the last show of the year!! Monster Tela-Thon for Coalition For The Homeless Orlando. Do we reach our goal of 20K. Is the Russopotmus unleashed? Merry Christmas guys!!! Thank you to our guest Bob Sagett and Michael Andrew. Thank You's to Don The Mortgage Guy from Home Loans Radio, Strange Candy Company, Black Cow, Air Brush Pete, Zaza's, The Might Carver company

Andrew Taylor had the pleasure of interviewing Zac Twardowski, Michael Herrmann and John Elsenpeter about building an agency and investing in things that will create passive income.Michael came from the financial planning industry before making the switch to Family First Life in July 2021 after watching one of our podcasts. He's only been selling for about 3 months, yet he's already had a $53K month! Michael's goal for 2022 is to personally issue $600K and make Hall of Fame.John worked in the oil field for 12 years but after losing a child to a genetic disorder, he truly learned the importance of life insurance and was determined to spend as much time with his family as possible, so he decided to make a change. He started his career with FFL last February and immediately started issuing between $20-$30K every month. So far his biggest week was $20K and his best month was $41K.

Ignite Your Influence Podcast is hosted by @majestyacheampong, and on episode 17, Influencer Majesty Acheampong dives deep into a convo with Influencer Jordynn Nicholson {@jordynn.nicholson} about how she gained 20K followers in 8 Weeks by using Reels. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/majesty-acheampong/support

On today's episode of the Soul Aligned Business Babe podcast I share the importance of rest, play and pleasure. Life is meant to feel good. It's meant to be fun. The more you focus on your needs first the more success you will create. When you are enjoying your life and business you are a match to your desires, you are in alignment. This is the place of ease. Recently I found myself in a place of exhaustion, completely lacking physical and emotional energy. I needed rest, but I had been ignoring my body. There were so many things going on in my personal life and I had shifted into a place of pushing through and forcing, defaulting to old habits, and nothing was flowing. So I let go. I took a week off from my business and allowed myself to rest and have fun. Honouring me first, and allowing myself to find the balance again. Now, I'm finally ready for the next level, a new unfolding and I'm more excited than ever I currently have 3 spots for my 1:1 coaching open for 2022, you can find info here or DM @iamsusanfrancis.  There is also a new mastermind brewing for 2022, for women that are truly ready for their $20K, $30K months and beyond. There will be an exclusive price and bonus for women on the waitlist. Click here to join.   Links and resources: For more about me and current programs visit my website Join the facebook community for regular live trainings  Follow me on Instagram @iamsusanfrancis You can also find me on Youtube Access free trainings, meditations and journal prompts here Make sure you hit SUBSCRIBE so you don't miss out on any future insights and teachings on all things mindset, manifestation and business.  And, if you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a rating and a review. Thanks!

Dave and Chuck the Freak talk about starting the day with a small win or loss, the most Google searched people of the year, Slash wrote his latest song from the perspective of his dog, Idiot criminals cause $20K in damage breaking into jewelry store to steal fake jewelry, a woman that claims she found a severed penis in her soup, a dude that threatened to blow up a urology clinic, a man that was almost eaten alive by a family of otters, the worst “car-gument” you've been involved in, police recovered 41 stolen packages from a porch pirate during a traffic stop, a guy wrote his name in on an election ballot as a joke & won, camels disqualified from a beauty contest because of Botox use, and more!

Zac Twardowski interviews John Elsenpeter about his journey with Family First Life.John worked in the oil field for 12 years but after losing a child to a genetic disorder, he truly learned the importance of life insurance and was determined to spend as much time with his family as possible, so he decided to make a change. He started his career with FFL last February and immediately started issuing between $20-$30K every month. So far his biggest week was $20K and his best month was $41K.John discusses the similarities and differences between a blue collar job and selling insurance, the importance of dialing as much as possible, his system for booking appointments, his phone script techniques and much more!

Have you ever wanted to write a book and get it published....but maybe fear was holding you back????   I know that fear - I have lived it (even as recently as THIS YEAR!)   That is EVEN after partnering with today's guest and helping create a best selling/award winning international book together!   We will talk about overcoming this fear anyway and being FEARLESS in the process, with our guest, Lynda Sunshine West   As the Founder of Action Takers Publishing, Lynda Sunshine West's mission is to empower 5 million entrepreneurs to write, publish and market their books and get them on stages to AMPLIFY their voices.   She is affectionately known as The Queen of Collaboration. She's a Book Publisher, Speaker, International #1 Best-Selling Author, Executive Film Producer, and a Red Carpet Interviewer. At the age of 5, she ran away and was gone an entire week. She came home riddled with fears that stopped her from living. At age 51 she decided to face one fear every day for an entire year. In doing so, she gained an exorbitant amount of confidence and uses what she learned to fulfill her mission. She believes in cooperation & collaboration and loves connecting with like-minded people.   Here are her resources she mentioned on the call   ingramspark.com - go thru them instead of just Amazon! Spread the word about your book faster!   www.theyearoffears.com is where you can get a free copy of her first book where she faced one fear every day!     REGISTER FOR COACH LOIS' FREE ONLINE NETWORKING EVENT for Dec 16th https://www.joinagc.com/event/290   If you would like to learn more about Coach Lois' future and past guests, as well as join the party inside of her Healthy N Wealthy N Wise facebook community, go to www.healthynwealthynwise.com         For more of her amazing resources, as well as her guests free gifts, go to www.loiskoffi.com/resources       Join her FB community here go grow your business to $20K months in a balanced/healthy way here:   www.facebook.com/groups/permissionbased20kmonths/      

What metrics should you track to create a successful lead generation strategy? Kara Brown had been working on a string of supply chain corporate jobs where she oversaw IPOs and eventually decided to create her own business and focus on lead generation. She believes filling the top of the funnel now will be the first to capture market share in the recovery. With LeadCoverage, she focuses on B2B revenue operations and acquisition strategies for scaling companies. In her conversation with Jason, they spoke about what she has seen working for lead generation, what every company should be measuring to keep a profitable business, and how you can save time on prospects that won't become customers. 3 Golden Nuggets Measure what's happening in your funnel. Many agencies don't have a really good lead generation source and are leaning on word of mouth to get new clients. You really have to find that source to keep growing. Where do most businesses fail? Kara says most companies she works with fail at truly measuring what's happening inside their funnel. At the top of her lead generation strategies are “share good news, track who's interested, and then follow up.” Another successful strategy is getting as niche as possible. “When your niche is small, you can be hyper-targeted in your approach,” she says. This will save you a lot of time with clients that don't meet your criteria. Measuring volume, velocity, and value. Kara is not running a creative agency, but she is all about making her business as profitable and valuable as possible. When it comes to how valuable her consultancy or her agency is, she thinks in terms of measuring volume, value, and velocity. Velocity is how fast are they getting in your funnel? Volume is how many deals can you handle any one time and how many deals are going to fill your pipelines? This is all about close ratios and trying not to spend too much time on deals that won't close. And value is all about what is this potential customer truly going to be worth to you? For this, try to be really honest and don't overvalue customers. Lead with pricing to save time. When you are speaking with potential customers, do you lead with the budget? Doing so could really help your closing ratio and save you a lot of time on deals that aren't going to close. Kara prefers to be really straightforward with her approach and start the conversation by stating what her company does for customers and say “this is our minimum monthly rate” to find out whether it is on that potential customer's budget or not. If they're not, then she offers to use the rest of the call to give free advice. She assures this is helpful and saves her a lot of time. Sponsors and Resources Sharpspring: Today's episode is sponsored by Sharpspring, an all-in-one revenue growth platform that provides all of the marketing automation, CRM, & sales features you need to support your entire customer lifecycle. Partner with an affordable marketing automation provider that you can trust. Head over to sharpspring.com/smartagency to enjoy an exclusive offer for podcast listeners. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM Measure Your Way to a Successful Lead Strategy and Stop Wasting Time on the Wrong Prospects {These transcripts have been auto-generated. While largely accurate, they may contain some errors.} Jason: [00:00:00] What's up, agency owners? Jason Swenk here, and have another amazing digital agency podcast guest for you. We're going to talk about lead generation for your digital agency. It's going to be a fun show, so let's go ahead and get into it. Hey, Kara. Welcome to the show. Kara: [00:00:22] Hey! Thanks for having me. Jason: [00:00:23] Yeah, I'm excited to have you on. So tell us who you are and what do you do? Kara: [00:00:27] Yeah, I'm Kara Brown. I'm the CEO and founder of LeadCoverage and we do B2B lead gen for supply chain, heavy industrial, and tech. Jason: [00:00:35] Awesome. And so how'd you get started in creating an agency? Kara: [00:00:40] Yeah, that's a funny story. So I was the 12th employee at a company called Echo Global Logistics. Very sexy, all the trucks. Uh, actually a super sexy, the guy that started Echo Global Logistics also started Groupon. So I got to send the first Groupon email. It's a true story. It came from my inbox. Got to watch them grow like crazy and then ended up being on the team that took the company I was working for went public. So I did an IPO at about 25. Uh, I was asked to move to Nashville to do another IPO for a private equity company, for another supply chain management company. Sort of a stream of, of supply chain, corporate jobs. And then ended up back in Chicago, popped out two kids, moved to Atlanta, moved here for a sort of a garbage brokerage jobs. So it was sort of similar to supply chain but in a different space. Instead of going public, that company raised $95 million in equity. When I exited that, the question was like, what to do next? And someone told me the statistic that less than 2% of female founders will ever break a million dollars in revenue. And I said, well, that doesn't sound that hard. So I did it with an all female team. It took us about 10 months and now we're on the path to ten million. Jason: [00:01:54] Awesome. So is Groupon still around? I haven't heard anything from them. Kara: [00:01:58] Yes. They're still around. They're a publicly-traded company. Please buy some Groupon things. Jason: [00:02:05] So you must have some stock. Kara: [00:02:08] Yeah, I think… They still exists. They're still out of 600 West Chicago and sort of a Chicago tech darling from the early two thousands. Jason: [00:02:15] Very cool. Uh, funny story, my wife got me a Groupon in a helicopter, like 10 years ago for my birthday. And I'm like, I'm not doing it. I'm scared to death of helicopters. That's right. Let's talk about lead generation. You know, I find a lot of digital agencies, they take on the wrong clients and they take on the wrong clients because they haven't been building their pipeline. They haven't been building their pipeline because they don't have a really good lead generation source in order to really kind of tap on because they're based on word of mouth. So what have you seen working for lead-generation? Kara: [00:02:55] Sure. So we have nine lead gen strategies, but I'll start sort of at the top. So at the top is share good news, track who's interested, follow up. Most companies that we interact with, either customers or people that would just help out as friends. Are doing one or two of those and almost none of them, almost none of them, of the companies we talked to are tracking any of it, right? Like really, truly measuring what's happening inside their funnel. And so one of the things that we've found successful for Lead Coverage is getting as niche as possible. So our niche is supply chain management companies over a hundred million in revenue or venture-backed. And basically, if you don't hit one or two of those criteria, we may take you on as a client, but we may not. We may say no, thank you. And that's been very successful for us. So in terms of lead gen, when your niche is small, you can be hyper-targeted in your approach. If you're wide and not very deep, it's really easy to end up talking to a lot of folks that aren't super valuable. The other thing that we like to measure, which we can definitely talk about later, we do a lot of measurement in our company, is we measure volume, velocity and value. And I think most important for agencies is value, right? So a very smart man part of the Groupon kickoff team in the very beginning of the early days said to me, hey, Kara, it is… it costs to you, just as much money to run a $250,000 account as it does a $2,500 account. So get upstream and get as big as you can. Get your, get your retainers as big as you can, as fast as you can. Because that's where the real money-making happens. Jason: [00:04:48] You mean you don't want to race to the bottom? I see a lot of people when they initially talk with us, we really kind of determined that pricing is one of their big issues. And they're like, well, my competitor is actually cheaper. We're actually more. I'm like, what does that matter? Do you want to win that race? I was like, I don't. Kara: [00:05:10] We just decided to raise our minimums. I went to a trade show last week for our very specific niche industry, right? So every single person at that show could be a customer for us, which I think is super important. We went to the show and the number that I told everyone, nobody said it was too expensive. And I came back to the office after two days in the trade show floor. And I said, we need to increase our minimum because no one told me it was too much. And when no one's telling you, you're too expensive, you're not charging enough. Jason: [00:05:40] Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yep. Totally agree. Get in a little bit more about kind of the velocity and the volume and the, the value. Let's talk a little bit more about that. Kara: [00:05:49] Yeah. We love measurement. So we are not a creative agency. We don't have a creative director. We don't do creative. We don't do color theory. We're probably very different than most of the folks that listen to your podcast. But I still listen to the two Bobs and I'm all about agency work. And I'm like all about sort of consulting and how do I make this business as profitable and valuable as possible? So when I think about how valuable my consultancy or my agency is, I think about volume, value, and velocity. So how fast are my customers finding me? And then how fast can I get them to close the deal? Velocity story is a funny one. I have a client that we have been or potential client we've been talking to for over two years. And I think I may tell him it is time to stop talking to each other. Like it's nice. But, um, I've sort of sent him enough info. I've done enough. We've had enough phone calls. I've talked to enough of his people. It's been two years. If you're not going to buy, you're not going to buy, right? So that's velocity. But we also had a few weeks ago, our first one call-close. So we were introduced to someone, they came through a LinkedIn post that I wrote, which I should definitely mention how we do LinkedIn because it's really interesting. And one call the guy was like, great. Let's do it. And our minimums, Jason, are $15,000 a month. And the guy was like, I don't want your minimum. I want to be a big fish in your pond. We were like, all right, let's do it. So those are really exciting. So velocity is how fast are they getting in your funnel? Volume is how many deals can you handle any one time and how many deals are going to fill your, fill your actual pipelines? This is all about close ratios, right? So you can have a whole bunch of conversations, but if they're only closing 5 to 10% of them, you're spending a lot of time on deals that aren't going to close. So I have a thing that I do… fair it may not be nice, but it helps me save a lot of time. I will look at who I'm talking to before I get on the phone. And if they're not in our box, I will open the call with something to this effect: It's so nice to meet you, Jason. I want to talk a little bit about what we do and who we do it for. I'm going to tell you how much. If we're not in your budget, we'll use the next 25 minutes. I'm going to give you 25 minutes of free advice. My minimum is $20,000 a month and my core market is supply chain technology and heavy industrial. Does that feel like something that you can afford? And if they're like, oh my budget's like $2,000 a month or something crazy, then I'll say, hey, no problem. Let's use the next 25 minutes and I'll give you all the free advice I can. That's really helpful. They also don't call me again. So I don't have to like go down the rigor mortise of like giving them a proposal for $20K a month. And they're like, uh, we're not on the same page. So that stops that and then value, right? What is this potential customer going to be worth to me? Like really, truly going to be worth to me. And I don't do the work you do. So I don't work with agency owners. But I would imagine that there are a lot of folks out there who overvalue potential customers, right? I think this product is going to come in at 80 grand and it comes in at 20. I think that this customer is going to stick around for two years and they stay for three months, right? So being really, truly honest with yourself on values really important. And the best way to check out value is just to have someone, probably not you, if you're the CEO. Go back and look at your, at your previous customers, right? Like take a deep dive and really be honest with yourself on how much is each customer actually truly worth to you? Jason: [00:09:21] Is your agency struggling to deliver real revenue growth results to your clients? You know, agency marketers can consolidate data and align marketing and sales teams goals to achieve real results for your agency and clients using revenue growth platforms. Sharpspring is an all-in-one platform built for agencies like yours to optimize digital marketing strategies with simple, powerful automation. Manage your entire funnel all in Sharpspring. Now for a limited time, my smart agency listeners will receive your first month free and half off onboarding with Sharpspring. Just visit sharpspring.com/smartagency to schedule your demo and grab this offer. That's sharpspring.com/smartagency. Yeah, I love it. And I love that you get right to the budget in the very beginning. There's so many people, you know, when I'm speaking to a crowd, one of the two questions I'll ask is all right, how many people get the budget every single time or almost every time? And then, you know, how many people ask for it? And by the it's about 50% of the room than ask. And then 50% of that, it's only a quarter of the percent of agencies are actually getting the budget. And that's before they put all that work in it. I would always go to them and say, I just need a range of what you're trying to stick around. Because here's the deal, especially on pricing, and I learned this the hard way when I talked to a small company, I never heard of called Berkshire Hathaway. And I pitched them like a $20,000 website. They were expecting 30,000. So like if I started out, like I would always try to lead with what's their expectation and then match them there. But I would also even have a floor. Uh, so pricing is very important. Kara: [00:11:12] So I actually disagree. I lead with our pricing. Because if they're willing to pay you $30,000 for a website, there's probably $120,000 somewhere in their budget, right? And I think as a woman, this isn't necessarily agency owner, but as a woman, knowing other women in business, we tend to undervalue ourselves. And what I've found is, as my retainers have gone from 5 to 7 to 12 to 15 to $20,000 minimums, no one's saying no, right? Like very few people say to me, I can't afford you, right? Unless they're like just out of the box, but if they're in the box and they understand the value and I've done a good job of delivering what we do and showing them what we do and how we do it and what the value is we bring. As long as I lead with my minimum… Actually, it's not even the minimum. I learned something at an EO event, the entrepreneur organization that the human brain anchors on the first number that you tell someone. So when someone says to me, Kara, how do we work with you? I say, well, our average retainer comes in between 30 and $40,000 a month, but our minimum is 20. So instead of them saying, oh, I can get this person for five grand a month because I say something like our minimum is five grand. They're already like, oh, well she's like, she's really expensive. Like, can I afford her home? Like, oh, like maybe I should find another $30,000 a month somewhere to pay this person. So I think it's really important that you set your own standards and there's always money in corporations. I have worked for enormous corporations in my corporate career. There's always money. Always. Jason: [00:12:58] Yeah. Yeah. I call it the reverse engineer effect when you're going over the range, because so many people, when they go, I just need to know a range. A thousand, fove thousand? I would literally start at a billion and then a million and then a hundred thousand and 20,000. So they echo that first number going, holy cow, no one else said that. What makes you so unique? And you can really separate yourself. And switching focus a little bit. You hinted a little bit to the LinkedIn post. Tell us how you do that. Kara: [00:13:28] Yeah, so we can attribute $480,000 to two LinkedIn posts. And that's just in 2020, not in 2021. So super proud of this whole process. I post super regularly on LinkedIn. Sometimes I post about being a woman in business. Sometimes it's about marketing. Sometimes it's just like, I don't know thoughts of the week that I've decided that I want to share. I have a ghost writer. She's on my team. Should we speak for about an hour a week. Now, because we've been working together for a while, she can get almost four LinkedIn posts out of that one hour. I also write for Forbes and Entrepreneur and other magazines. So she does those for me at the same time. And she writes the post themselves. They're my words, but she physically crafts them. They go to my team, my team adds the emojis and make sure that they're, if people are tagged and then they go into a file for me to approve. I approve. And then they get scheduled. So we have posts that are going out. We're recording this in September. We've got posts going up through the end of November and I'll be gone the entire month of October. So I'll still be posting even though I'll be in Europe, which is really nice. And so we can see attribution of almost $500,000 to LinkedIn. And this is LinkedIn thought leadership. And it cost me probably 2000 bucks a month to do this. So it's my most ROI driven piece of, of lead gen that we do for myself. And it's been a terrific way for us to meet people. You can't always track every single lead back to LinkedIn, but it was a, it was a funny story. I was at this trade show I just mentioned in our niche industry. And I ran into some guy that I had known from a million years ago. And he said Kara, I read every LinkedIn post and I was like, awesome. And he said… Jason: [00:15:11] Stalker. Kara: [00:15:12] Stalker, right? Well, that's the whole point, like, please stalk me. And he said, may I please introduce you to my CMO? I think that I'd really like to make sure that you two meet each other and now they're going to be a client. So you never know who's reading it. They may not be liking, sharing and engaging, but put it be putting yourself out there is super important. Jason: [00:15:31] Yeah. I love it. And these are just regular posts. Do you have a call to action on there or is it just helpful? Kara: [00:15:36] Yeah. So we're trying to, the LinkedIn algorithm changes pretty regularly. We do this for clients as well. So we have a human being on our team who is regularly trying to sort of like bust the LinkedIn algorithm. Not in an ugly way, just in a, how do we use it to our advantage? So one of the stats she told me that I was really surprised is that less than 2% of people that are on LinkedIn are actively posting. So just by actively engaging in LinkedIn, they're already in the top 2% of folks that are sort of voyeurs only, right? And so, as long as you just put anything out there, you're going to be sort of doing better than other folks. If you get into like exactly what, you know, doing posts, doing polls calls to action links, links back to landing pages. Links to, to form fills and video. We can, it's a whole another podcast we can do just to talk about how to like optimize LinkedIn. In my professional opinion, that this is specifically for my market, which is supply chain, heavy, industrial and tech. I don't need to put video out there. I don't need to be super complicated about it because no one's buying from LinkedIn, right? LinkedIn just keeps me front and center for the folks in my world and in my universe. That when I see them at the trade show or when I send them an email or when they see something from me that's interesting and they have a need. They're like, oh man, there's this woman who posts all the time on LinkedIn. She's really interesting. I'm going to reach out, right? So it's just about staying in the conversation. Jason: [00:17:03] Yeah. It's about consistency. You know, you mentioned you were chatting with someone for two years. Holy cow, like if I was chatting with them, but when I look at my, our stats, most people don't buy from us for about a year and a half to two years. They're digesting that content, which isn't a sweat off my back and if they never buy it and they just get helpful content, I'm perfectly fine with that as well. But, but yeah, just to go through the proposal process for two years, that is a yeah. Shit or get off the pot dude. Kara: [00:17:34] And yeah, this particular human is such a nice guy and he's so kind, and I know he does want to work with us and he is very specifically strapped by, you know, investors and sort of what these investors want to do. I get it. And it doesn't bother me to like, have a relationship with this person. He is also well connected. He's a good human, but we are going to have to at some point, be like, hey, I can't do one more deliverable for you, right? Like I can't, I can't put together another email or send you another proposal. Like they're all the same. Like, it hasn't changed. Like the same proposal you got two years ago was going to be the same one I'm going to send you now because what we do, hasn't really changed. Jason: [00:18:13] Awesome. Well, this has all been great, Kara. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the audience listening in? Kara: [00:18:19] You know, I think one of the things that's really important to us, Jason, is the combination of failed the market. That sales and marketing, including PR and AR analyst relations, which I know a lot of folks in digital marketing don't really touch analysts at all. Cause it's kind of boring, but really important to your senior leaders, right? So if you're going up market, and this is not small business, this is enterprise. So we're very fortunate in the, in our niche. We have sort of along the spectrum, small business, all the way up through sort of big corporate enterprise, even publicly traded companies. And so we get to touch everything from analyst relations to public relations, all the way through, but long story short, the deeper we get in the niche, the higher our prices can go and the more we get integrated with both PR AR and sales. And the stickier you get, the more you can deliver math back to your client that goes to their boss, that goes to the board. The longer you'll stay in the organization, the more valuable you are and the more sticky, just the stickier that you get in inside those orbes. And so that's my sort of best piece of advice is if you can deliver math back to your clients, specifically math that goes to the board or to some sort of senior executive, you will be very, very sticky. So find something that's meaningful to your customer that you can deliver on a regular basis. That means something to their boss. Jason: [00:19:46] Awesome. Love it. What's the agency website people can go and check you guys out? Kara: [00:19:50] Yeah. We're lead coverage.com and we'd love to hear from anyone who wants to talk more about lead gen or anything about supply chain. Jason: [00:19:58] Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Kara, for coming on the show. Make sure you guys go check out the website, connect with Kara. And if you guys want to be around the most amazing agency owners in the world, where they're sharing  what's working currently to be able to see the things you may not be able to see as well as have fun scaling your business. I'd like to invite all of you. Go to check out digitalagencyelite.com. This is our exclusive mastermind just for digital agency owners. So go to digitalagencyelite.com and until next time have a Swenk day.

Do you put joy, happiness and purpose FIRST on your schedule?   Or do you focus on work first?   Do your focus on over achieving or achieving all the time?   How does one create joy and purpose?   Is it through achieving? Or managing expectations on yourself?   So many struggle with this, especially during the holidays and the hustle and bustle of life   As we wind down 2021, we wanted to bring this powerful positive message to you today with Lucy Liu     Lucy Liu is a global business strategist and certified life coach helping high achieving women in life transitions unstuck, kiss overwhelm bye, cultivate rockstar confidence, see clarity, reach dream goals, and live a joyful fulfilling life!   She is an unshakable optimist, wife, mother, easy-going entrepreneur, certified #IamRemarkable women empowerment workshop facilitator, and international motivational speaker. She is the author of two international bestselling books The Rising Sisterhood and Asian Women Who Boss Up. She also inspires as the host of her weekly podcast The Lucy Liu Show, which is the fueling station for your mind, business and life. She has been featured in Medium, VoyageLA, Elephant Journal, ThriveGlobal, FOX, CBS, NBC and dozens of other media outlets.   Get her happiness tool kit instantly at https://www.lucyliucoaching.com/         If you would like to learn more about Coach Lois' future and past guests, go to www.healthynwealthynwise.com     For more of her amazing resources, as well as her guests free gifts, go to www.loiskoffi.com/podcast       Join her FB community here go grow your business to $20K months in a balanced/healthy way here:       www.facebook.com/groups/permissionbased20kmonths/  

Kevin Urrutia is Founder of Voy Media, a “growth marketing agency” focused on helping marketing executives grow their online businesses – but not from the “ground up.” Voy Media does not help companies that want to get started in online marketing, build clients' businesses, or act as any client's marketing team. Instead, the focus is on scaling successful client companies and taking them to the next level, moving them from 6 to 7 to 8 figures in monthly sales . . . and doing it fast. These clients already know what they need to do to build a business and they're doing it. They already have mature systems and processes in place for emailing prospective buyers and getting online content and reviews. Voy takes this collected information, breaks it down, and uses it to feed the creation of new ads, new videos, and new images for clients' social media – their already existing Facebook pages, Google Ads, and LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and TikTok accounts. Kevin's background is in computer programming. During college, he started a web development consulting company. After he graduated, he moved to Silicon Valley to work for Mint.com (Intuit). In that fevered e-commerce boom era (global e-commerce sales topped $1 trillion in 2012, up 21.9% from the previous year), “I kept building things. I kept going to hackathon startup events.” Frustratingly, all that “building” and networking did not result in sales.  Then Kevin discovered “marketing.” He researched SEO, found it “interesting,” and concluded that “Everything around you is really marketing, but it's great marketing when you don't think it's marketing.” He jumped to a startup called Zaarly, and then moved to New York and did what none of his programming buddies wanted to do: He started starting his own businesses. His buddies wanted “jobs.” He wanted to own something bigger and was willing to take the risk. Kevin started an online-scheduled cleaning company. and thereafter, a number of e-commerce companies, learning the lessons on switching products to drive sales and growing teams that he, today, passes on to his clients.  In this interview, Kevin discusses how the recent iOS update, iOS 14, allows individuals to turn off tracking and limits a lot of ad options that used to be available for advertisers. Now, instead of looking at the individual platforms to get information, companies must ask the questions: “How much revenue did we make from new customers this week? How much did we spend on ads? What is the ratio between new customer revenue with ad spend?” Kevin says things are more “fluffy” in one sense, but companies do have a better grasp on their profitability. He says, “People are actually building brands again, versus like, ‘Hey I just want to make quick buck online.'”  That's a good thing, he believes, because “Building a real business takes years.” Companies need to “reinvest into the branding. You got to reinvest into ads, copy, photography.” Kevin can be reached social platforms and on his agency's website at: https://voymedia.com/ where you will find case studies, courses, and Kevin's blog. Transcript follows: ROB: Welcome to The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Kevin Urrutia, founder at Voy Media, based in New York City. Welcome to the podcast, Kevin.  KEVIN: Hey, Rob. Thanks for having me. Super excited to be here.  ROB: Great to have you on the cast. Why don't you start off by giving us an intro to Voy Media. What do you want to be known for?  KEVIN: Voy Media . . . we're growth marketing agency. Pretty typical, but the difference between us and other agencies is my background is in computer science programming. We'll talk about a little bit more of that later on. The way we help founders is by we come in to help you scale. We're not here to help you get started in online marketing. That's a different type of agency. We're more here for founders or other marketing executives that want help to grow their online business with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Creatives are also a big part. We're doing that now with the whole new iOS update and we're seen trying to switch around and again restructure agency to fit the market's needs too. ROB: (Laughs) I see. So, this is not, “I have an idea. I want to get the word out there.” This is “I know who my customer is but help me because I still don't know how to reach them.” Is that where you play?  KEVIN: It's a little bit after that, too, where you already spent some money and now you're saying, “Hey I have a marketing person in-house but we still need help because we want to scale” and you don't want to bring somebody new on again. So, I tell people all the time, we used to do what we said before . . . “Hey, you have a brand new idea. Let's help you” . . . and then it turned out that this was just a different type of client or customer that we didn't want to educate about what marketing was. It was just very difficult. I see some agencies do that. It's like I'm prey to you. Those clients, the ones that pay you that much, they're calling you every single day to give you an update. I think it's so funny, but like you've probably heard before, the more they pay you the less they call you. It's so true. ROB: That's amazing. What is it about a business at that stage that aligns with your talents? What's the playbook that starts to make sense at that stage that maybe isn't available sooner?  KEVIN: I think the playbook that's available is that these businesses already have systems on how to get content, how to get reviews, how to do all that stuff – just feeds our creative team to make new ads, to make new videos, to make new images for their social media, for their Facebook page. It's not like we're saying, “Hey, you should send an email out to get customer reviews.” They already are doing this, so their mindsets are already in this – “Yep, this is what we need to build a brand or a company.” It's just a different business shift of a person and for us, it's less pulling, like “Hey, we need this from you.” It's more like “Yep, this is already in our pipeline. You're gonna get it next week.” If we can, we get user-generated content every week – We just get that in the Slack channel – “Hey, guys. Here's this week's content.” They already have a process in place and we're here to help them. I tell people all the time – a lot of times business owners, in the beginning, want us to basically build their whole business for them. I say, “No, I'm your marketing team. I'm not here to build your company.”  ROB: This is our customer. What do you think? KEVIN: Yeah. I'm like, “I don't know. You have the product.” They're like, “Isn't your team supposed to do that?” Yes, but like, “I don't know exactly what you're doing” :Hey, it looks like this product. . . .like customers are complaining about this. Are you going to switch your product?” They're like, “No.” I'm like, “All right then. If your sales aren't going up, then you need to do something.” So, for me too, this comes from not just doing marketing, but because I've also had my own e-commerce companies too. So, I've had to switch products, I've had to grow a team, and that's where for me, it's like, I see you sometimes, I mean before like we work with founders, I'm like, “Hey, people are clearly complaining about this. Why aren't you switching or doing something?” And at least for me when I had my outdoor gear company – we recently sold it -- we made three to four versions of a trekking pole based on customer feedback because that's what you do as a business. You iterate over and over again. Sometimes people say, “Hey, this is a perfect product.” I'm like, “Is it a perfect product? You need to switch things around if people are complaining about it.” So, I don't know, for me, I'm trying to find people that, like I tell people all the time, the best people that we work with are people that have done it once, failed, and like, “Okay now. I know what to do because everybody has been through the trenches in the fire.” ROB: Sure. What it sounds like they have is they have a steady pipeline of content that speaks to their audience but . . . I think a lot of people's natural format is more long-form and not marketing copy, right? So, you can kind of take what they have, break it down, atomize it, align it to different channels, test some things, and then layer on a set of known tactics that work when you have legitimate content.  KEVIN: Exactly. That's what it is. It's like, “We're here to use tactics to help you grow versus help you figure out these tactics are. We can help somewhat but there's only so much time we can tell clients, “Hey, you need you see.” and they're like “Oh? why? I don't know how to go get it.” I'm like. “Send an email out.” They're like, “Oh okay I forgot this week.” I'm like, “All right. (sighs) I can't press this send button for you.” ROB: Right? Step 1 is send an email this week. Then come back and talk to me.  KEVIN: So yeah. I get it. I think for me, our agency – at least I tell people all the time – it just depends on what type of company or business you want to build. There's people that want to be in that zero to 1 stage, where it's like, “Hey, we're gonna build this system and process for you. But for me, I just don't want to be doing that. So, we're saying, we're shifting more towards – “Hey you have something and you have some sort of team. We're gonna come here implement, help you and supplement you and be that agency.” ROB: Sure. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention, I heard you mention briefly iOS 14. Obviously, the kind of individual targeting, opt-outs, all that is changing how ads run, how ads are tracked. What has been changing for you and how are you responding or suggesting people respond when it comes to the options that are no longer available to them due to those changes?  KEVIN: I think iOS 14 . . . it's interesting. I see both. For us, bad side for a lot of agencies like us is . . . I tell people, like we were, you could track everything. So, our incentives are very like, “Hey look! We spend more money. We make more money.” We see revenue going up, we can spend more money.” Because it's tracked and now that has really affected our ability to scale as an agency and again clients as well because they were spending 15k a month, now they're spending 20k, and they're just like, “Well, the results are even worse and we're not getting any sales.” So, I think, what has changed a lot is the way we're tracking because now we're so used to just looking at the platforms, Google, Facebook, say, “Yep, this is a 1 to 1 or at least pseudo 1 to 1, where right now it's even worse. I don't even know where it's coming from. So, tracking itself has changed and, at least for us, the way we're doing it now is like what people should have been doing or at least sort of had done. Which is like, “Hey, this week, how much revenue did you make from new customers? How much did we spend on ads? What is the ratio between new customer revenue with ad spend?” It's a bit more fluffy, but at least you're saying that, yes, you are profitable. So, more daily profitability sheets/ weekly profitability sheets or even monthly – like your P&L. Go into your account each month and say, “Yep, reconcile all the expenses. Were we profitable?” Great, business is still good. That is something that, at least before iOS 14, people didn't really know, which is interesting. I think any business, you have to know this stuff. People are getting a little more savvy with these numbers. At the same time, something that I've seen shift is that – I think it's good going back with my background. I think now people are actually building brands again, versus like, “Hey I just want to make quick buck online.”  ROB: Right.  KEVIN: That was something that we saw so much because it was so easy to track, like, “Hey, you like pet stuff, right? Let me make this pet niche store and for the next 3 months let me make 20K.” It wasn't like a brand where, right now, similar to any business like you probably seen . . . Building a real business takes years.  ROB: Right.  KEVIN: And there's gonna be years where you don't make money. Everybody had this weird mentality like, “Hey, if I spend a thousand bucks, I need to make 5k this month” . . . or else “You suck – not me.” This is not how you build a company. You got to reinvest into the branding. You got to reinvest into ads, copy, photography . . . I just saw this crazy, quick-flipping of businesses where ten years ago, you were actually okay, “I'm gonna mess with your cake(?) and I'm gonna make this thing a big brand and try to build something. I think that's coming back again, which is great because it's gonna be entrepreneurs that I think want to build true businesses for the long-term.  ROB: Right on. I think I may have heard this. I may have heard it wrong, but there's also an increasing challenge with now with the attribution window. Is that right? That there's actually a short, you can't, I think it's like used to be able to see if . . . so you ran an ad and somebody bought in thirty days. Mow you get what 7?  KEVIN: Yeah. You got like 7 or even like 1 day. Sometimes it's just so much tougher? Yeah.  ROB: So, it is more empirical. It's, “I spent money, am I making money? I increased my spend a little bit ago, am I making more money now?” It's trickier.  KEVIN: It's definitely trickier, like I said. I think you now need to have the stomach for it, like, “Hey, you're hoping to make money,” and I get both sides. You know there's always the side of like, “Hey, I'm not a VC-funded company.” I'm like, “Yeah, I know.” Most people aren't, but there's a reason why companies like Facebook and Google – obviously those are outliers, but other companies such as them that spend . . . like Uber, right? literally in business for ten years and every year lose money, right? There's a reason why it's like – again, that's a bigger scale but you sometimes need to think yourself as a smaller scale, say, “Hey, you're in this for the long run.” You're like, “There's a reason why everybody knows Uber, like, “Hey I'm gonna get a cab because all the brand equity of the advertising.” So, a lot of times you've probably seen business owners don't want to do that because like, “No I need to make money.” I'm like, “Yes, you should make money – but there is something to be said for reinvest into your business and saying, “Hey, I'm gonna do this as ‘quote-unquote' my life's work. It doesn't do your life, but like the next 5 to 10 years, right.  ROB: Sure. I think it's helpful. I think people are starting to get this understanding a little more – to know when you're doing brand marketing and to know when you're doing performance marketing because getting those things twisted is also a real source of misunderstanding if you . . . KEVIN: Oh yeah, there's definitely performance marketing everything and there's also brand marketing. A lot of people just want to do performance marketing but you still need to have great Instagram accounts, great Twitter accounts, great social media people. I tell people all the time, like, “Why do I need a social media manager– they don't make any money?” – But you still want people interacting with your community, talking to them. You know, some of the best companies out there do both performance and branding. Branding is one of those things that you see it when you see it. But when you're doing it, you don't see it. It's tough to put into a balance sheet but you know it when you see it. It's like Uber, you know? Lyft, you know? So it's hard. I know that for sure. ROB: And when sometimes it's even just a negative signal you're never going to see right? Somebody looks up your company. They look up your Twitter or your Instagram or your Facebook or your LinkedIn and if there's nothing there or if it's really dead, people judge that. I mean, they do. I do.  KEVIN: I know I do. I always think marketing is so funny because, like I tell people, “What do you do when you look up a business?” I know you're gonna go like look up reviews. I know you're gonna look at Instagram and then I'm like, “How come for your company you don't think you need to do that?”  ROB: Yeah.  KEVIN: They hate when it's like, “Oh, yeah. I don't know what I'm saying.” They feel dumb but I just hate saying, “I'm like you. You do this same thing, too. So why don't you do for your business? I'm like “Hey if . . . I also tell people this. I'm on calls. I'm like, “If you weren't on your website, would you buy?” And if it's a no, then, “Why do you think other customers would buy?” – So like, “I don't know.” ROB: Take us back a little bit in time here, Kevin. Where did Voy Media come from and what led you to jump off this company-building cliff.  KEVIN: Voy Media is my newest company that I started. Basically, my quick background is computer science. I was a programming major in upstate New York . . . Binghamton. All throughout college I knew I wanted to do my own startup – since I was17 – it's something I wanted to do for a long time. So, in college, I started doing one tiny bit which is my web building. I was 19 or 20. I had 2 employees working on web projects there. We were just getting customers through Craigslist – so developing stuff. For me it was mostly like I've always wanted to build a startup. After college I was like, “Okay I gotta go to Silicon Valley.” I went to work for Mint.com as a programmer and then I went to work for another startup there for 3 years. During this time, I wanted to build stuff so I kept building things. I kept going to hackathon startup events. One of the things that happened for me during this time – I have always was in this mindset of like, “Hey, if you build it, they will come.” Because, hey, if you have a great product people just naturally find you. That was the thing that programmers in Silicon Valley just said to each other. Like “Hey, if people build something great, people will just find it” is one hundred percent not true looking back – but the mindset was very different back then. So, I kept building stuff. Eventually, I was like, “Man, how come I'm not getting any customers?” And then, I started looking up “what is marketing.” I was like, “Okay, this is actually a thing.” That's when I started learning more about marketing. My initial foray into marketing was SEO, like black-hat, world-affiliate marketing, CPA stuff. That was for me very interesting. When I first discovered it, I was like, “Oh, this is very interesting.” The reason why I found it so interesting because these affiliate guys were getting these twenty dollars like, “Hey, you can make twenty dollars off this widget that you sell,” so they had to sell it for a hundred twenty bucks to make profit. So, I was like, “Oh, these guys are using cutting edge tactics.” You would join these underground forums or Skype groups of people saying like, “Hey, try this marketing message.” I was like, “Whoa!” I didn't realize marketing is like that – it was like performance for me. I always thought marketing was this branded thing. I didn't know there's this other type of marketing that was purely based on sales. That's what got me at least . . . at that point I wasn't doing ads. It opened up my eyes to this marketing world. I was like, “Oh, everything around you is really marketing, but it's great marketing when you don't think it's marketing.” Behind the scenes, there's guys pulling the levers that's doing the marketing. So, it's like one of those like realizations that you have. I was like, “Okay, this is kind of what I need to do anyways.” I came back to New York because I missed my family. I started my cleaning company called Maid Sailers and here, for this cleaning company, is where I did almost all the marketing. I did SEO. I did reviews, blogging, PPC, Yelp ads, kind of everything. I did that for about a year-and-a-half. I wanted to keep growing it but people that have a service-based company – even some like Moy media – service-based businesses can only grow as you grow people – humans, right? So, it's human capital intense kind of business, which is great to get started. So, I think I tell people, times like these are great businesses start. But if you want to grow it, I didn't think I could grow it that big. So, then I started ecommerce because at that time too I saw all my friends are doing FBA, Amazon, I was like, “I got to jump into this, right?” It's one of those things with FOMO -- I got to do it. Then I did my Montem, which is my outdoor gear company. This was more scalable because, at the time – it was much easier back then with e-commerce products like Amazon. You're selling. Then, again for Montem, when we did e-commerce, I learned so much more. This is kind of where I first started doing more Facebook ads, Google ads, review blogger reviews. We were like number 1 on Wirecutter, so we were able to do partnerships. We did retail. We were pitching retails with the events – kind of like everything involved and, at least for me, that's why I like entrepreneurship in startups because I like all this stuff I just described. If I worked for somebody, I would never be able to do it all. Because you're only stuck in 1 thing where it's like a founder you could just say, “Okay, I'm going to do it all like,” and you figured it out somehow, which is either exciting or not exciting for some people. For me, it's like, “Oh, this is awesome.” I went to China 3 times up to my factories. So that's kind of where the concept of Voy Media came – because I was doing this e-commerce stuff. And then I was like, “Okay, I want to help other founders achieve success,” – that's the inkling, the idea of Voy Media. Of course, what we are now is very different than what I thought initially because you iterate your business based on what you see. But that's how Voy Media started.  ROB: How did you navigate away from those assumptions of the business, from those predispositions that you had? I mean, candidly, folks who come from a software developer background a lot of time have a hard time taking their hands off the keyboard. They want to be writing code, right? So how did you kind of navigate to the truth of the business instead of where you started?  KEVIN: I always tell people that one of the main reasons why I always wanted to do a startup and it's something that I've always like wanted to do since I was 17. But one of the things when I was in Silicon Valley, at least for me when I was 21 or 22 – I don't know, I was probably 23 at the time – very naïve. I was looking at a lot of my friends in the space, like the programmers there, and they would just talk about stuff and I was like, “Oh, wow! These guys are really smart. I don't think I'll ever be that good. I need to do something else because these guys are just awesome programmers.” My roommate, his name was Adam. We worked at the same company and he would talk about a concept. I'm like, “Dude, I have no clue how you just got that!” I thought I was smart but that's kind of what for me I'm like, “I got figure out something else in my life because I want to make money but, clearly, you're on another level.” I was like, “Let me just do business stuff and that's kind of it for me.” Another relationship for me was that I would talk to him or talk to other people like, “Hey, why don't you start a company. You are really smart,” but they're like, “No, I just want to be an employee.” That made me think, “Hey, there's guys like me that want to have a company and then I can hire guys like him that don't want to take the risk,” and you're gonna hire these super smart people that are gonna work for you and that's where the realization came to me, “Hey, I don't have to be the smartest but there's a lot of smart people that don't want to take the risk I want to take, and they could just work for me. Yeah!”  ROB: Yeah, so that's a good lesson to pick up along the way. As you reflect on the journey so far in building the business, what are some other key lessons you might want to go back and just tell yourself if you were starting over? Some good advice.  KEVIN: Good advice is so obvious. But like hiring people – I think once you feel an inkling that a person's not going to work out, you really got to let them go because it's a drain on the company and drain on yourself. That's probably the one people always say but it's also the hardest because people with emotions and working with them. But that's really tough. I think it's getting better, at least for service-based companies, it's just getting really better at vetting the people you work with just because it's a really personal relationship and, if you already feel like they're gonna be a very demanding, upstart, they're probably gonna be demanding the whole relationship and it's just gonna be a battle to please them. That's something I tell my sales team all the time. Like any red flag. I could see an email and I'm like, “This is a red flag. I can tell already this is gonna be a terrible partner to work with. Let's not even sign them,” and they're like, “Why?” I'm like. “Trust me. This one word they said, I pretty much know what they're looking for.” I think another one that's super important, I think for me at least, it's like, “I couldn't do my theme(?) companies. Every company I've done it, it's been with a partner.” You need somebody there to talk to, to help you with the problem, because like any business they're gonna be high highs and low lows. Sometimes you need somebody else to talk to them about it because sometimes you can't tell your employees how you're feeling because then it's like, “I work for you,” and then they're like, “Oh well. If the founder's feeling this way, I can't feel that way either.” Having a partner that's on the same like equal level as you or around that area – you can like tell them the real issues and how you're feeling, so I think a partner is gonna be great. And again, it helps distribute the work depending on what you're doing and how you're splitting the stuff with the business because it's a lot of stuff to do.  ROB: Yeah, is that somebody that you had early in the business or is that somebody you brought in? Is that somebody outside the business for you? What's that look like?  KEVIN: For Voy Media, it's Wilson. I've known him since college. We've literally known each other for over ten years and we've going back to everything before like one tiny bit the Ruby on Rails company. He was my partner there, too, in Silicon Valley. When I moved there, he was in college and I just graduated. And I was like, “Yo, Wilson! I'm moving.” He's like, “I'll move there with you.” So I've known him for a long time. I tell people it really depends. There's these relationships are very . . . You need to be careful because there's a level of trust you already have so you can't really get mad at each other. But again, it's careful. Sometimes things go wrong, you get mad at each other but you know that “Hey, we're doing it because we both” . . . I I think you both need to know the goal of the business. So, it's like, “Hey, this is why I'm like upset with you. It's not that I'm upset about you personally, it's because I'm upset about the business and we both want to achieve this and we're not achieving it together. How do we get there?” So, it's a careful relationship, like any couple. Things are upsetting us. Why? Because we both want to be happy. How do we fix that issue so it's not like I'm attacking you personally? ROB: Right. And if you're partners on that, you got to solve it one way or another. You can't stay grumpy and you can't stay stuck in the mud. It can go sideways pretty quick. So, you had Wilson there really early on in the business.  KEVIN: Yeah.  ROB: What was another kind of key inflection point that you noticed, where you felt like you had to level up the capabilities of the firm? The people in the firm, the processes – were there any kind of chokepoints so far that you had to kind of reevaluate in a significant way? KEVIN: Yeah. I mean like honestly, at least for Voy Media, one of the biggest things that we made was hiring an operations person to really help clean up everything at the agency. Because from reporting to hiring, I think that really helped us. I think it's one of those things where . . . I consider one of those positions where you want to be so involved sometimes. But you need to bring on someone that can do the work for you, that's smarter than you, that you can give complete ownership. I think, with any business, that's probably the hardest part – giving up some part of the business to somebody else to run and just trusting them. That's probably some of the best things that we've done because now the agency has grown quicker. With that comes a few points. One is cash load. You have to have the money to hire somebody good or can you take a little hit on income? That way you know that this person is going to hopefully pay off in six months. As a bootstrap founder, you think about these things but hiring people like that is super helpful.  ROB: Where was the business in terms of size, however you think about it, when you made that operations move?  KEVIN: We were probably like 5 to 6 people. Now we're about 30 people. So, it's definitely grown a lot more now. But yeah, hiring those people – like higher level people are helpful because there's only so many people that are doing the work. Of course, you need those people as well. But you need people thinking about strategy, thinking about processes and systems and that's why it's helpful and again, at least for me, it's the biggest . . . honestly, one of the biggest things too is thinking about yourself as the founder, as the person running the company. What do you want to be doing? I don't want to be doing all this stuff. I want to hire somebody else to do it because that doesn't give me energy. It drains me. I want to be doing what gives me energy, which is podcasting, sales – that's exciting for me. So, I know I'm gonna do a better job and I know I'm gonna be reading books about it whereas like – “Hey, accounting, – I don't want to look this up.” Find somebody else to do it because it's going to drain you and that's going to affect your whole day.  ROB: Wow. That all makes sense. As we look ahead for Voy Media – when you look at either what the company's doing or what will be necessary in the types of marketing that you do – what's coming up that you're excited about?  KEVIN: What we're excited about right now I think, again going back to what I said before, we're working with founders building these great brands. Better for us to work with founders out in the long run – before I was quick. Like, “Hey this month sucked. You guys suck.” It's like, “Oh god, this is a stressful relationship.” It's more like, “Hey, let's build something big and great together,” and again a big thing for us too. It's gonna be the creatives. People are really open to having great images, great creatives. People are more open to trying new things now because they're seeing that Facebook isn't the only platform. There's now Facebook, there's TikTok, there's Instagram stories, like there's all this new stuff out there. It's exciting again to make content. I see that as exciting. Where before people were just like, “I just want to do Facebook ads. Okay.” “Well, TikTok.” “No, I don't know that platform.” Where people are, I think . . . I don't know . . . there's a shift there where people are more open to new stuff now.  ROB: Yeah, it's certainly a shift. It's certainly interesting in terms of openness. How do you think about the difference between what should be legitimately out of bounds for a particular brand versus what is their being flexible in a way that that is actually necessary? People have their experimental budgets. It can't all be experimental but some of it has to be.  KEVIN: I think it just depends what level you are. I think, for example, when we work with consumer companies, all the consumer platform is always great – TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook of course. But if you're a consumer company, Linkedin doesn't make sense because that's more like professional. So, there are certain industries where it's very clear cut like, “Hey, if you're a SaaS or software or marketing company, you should be on LinkedIn because that's where quote – unquote professionals are. We think about it like that. As you get bigger and you're scaling your business, you need to think about platforms outside – like billboard ads are something that's more branded but there's a lot of ways to access those now in like easy platforms stuff. Some of my friends do that because they raise money and they say it's not effective. But I think something that brands need to think about right now is that, before, it was “you just sell online.” Now I'm seeing a big shift of online plus retail as well. So, getting into the Walmarts, the Targets, the Amazon's, the stores – everything like that is so important because it's more omnichannel versus like, “Hey I'm only direct to consumer.” I'm seeing that big shift now, too.  ROB: Right on. When you say the billboard stuff is more accessible, what does that actually look like? Can I go like buy a billboard? Can I buy it where I want it? Can I set what time of day I want to see a digital like, I don't know . . . What can I do?  KEVIN: I forgot the exact website. I'll try to find it later. But yeah, basically you can do exactly that. I think it's ClearView, one of those company that owns it. They now have a website similar to what you said where you can just say like, “Hey, for 100 bucks I want an ad near Times Square.” It makes it super simple and easy. You can just upload your creatives. Before it was kind of what you were saying . . . even subway ads now in New York City, you have to spend 30K minimum to get like one car of subway ads, where it should be self-serve, right? “Okay, I want one car, one creative . . . how much is it gonna cost? All right?” Subway ads are harder because you actually need to print the thing, where some of these new billboards are digital. So yeah, you could do it. I forgot the exact platform but it's cool. I've seen some friends do it just for experimental. It kind of works but it's one of those things where you just try it out and see.  ROB: Sure. I've thought about it. There's some ways . . . maybe it's too creepy . . . but you can almost get account-based marketing. You know a bunch of people for this company come this way, light up this billboard during the commute, leave it shut down during lunchtime – like who knows, right? KEVIN: Yeah. It's funny you're saying that because there's this company . . . they were a remote job board, right? Facebook announced, I think a few months ago, that like, “Hey, starting in 2022, everybody needs to go back to work in the office.” So, then this company took out ads on that highway to say, “Hey, don't want to go back to work? Apply for new jobs here.” But exactly what you're saying. You can know where these things are, they'll pinpoint the area, and then you can do account-based marketing that way. People do this when they launch a Walmart or Target in the city. There will be billboards around there so say, “Hey, look! We're now available at Target down the street!” So, you can do that type of stuff.  ROB: Very interesting. So much to do. So much to learn. Still, Kevin, congrats on the journey so far. Thank you for coming on and sharing with us as well. I wish you well and I know our audience will enjoy what you had to share. KEVIN: Thank you Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.  ROB: Thanks, Kevin take care. Bye 

Are you a blackbelt leader?   Meaning do you lead yourself with excellence and truth?   How do you show up in life and business?   Do you put your oxygen mask on first and lead by example?   Today we will discuss that and more!   John L. Terry, III is a 2x martial arts hall of fame inductee, international speaker and trainer, BestSelling author, and is considered an expert in leadership, communication, sales, and team building.   He is the founder and CEO of Black Belt Leadership, a coaching and consulting company focused on training values-based, people-centric leaders who in turn build highly motivated, results-oriented, high-performance, non-leader-dependent teams.   John is a DISC-certified human behavior consultant, a Real-Life Management Master Coach & Trainer, and a CTAA-Accredited Emotional Intelligence Coach. He has been a Sales Coach and Trainer to the financial services community for more than 20 years   If you want to see many of John's free resources, please visit his site at: BeABlackBeltLeader.com   Sign up for Coach Lois' SOAR event here:   https://hww.pages.ontraport.net/soar2022       If you would like to learn more about Coach Lois' future and past guests, go to www.healthynwealthynwise.com       For more of her amazing resources, as well as her guests free gifts, go to www.loiskoffi.com/podcast       Join her FB community here go grow your business to $20K months in a balanced/healthy way here: www.facebook.com/groups/permissionbased20kmonths/

Quick, switch over to Vodacast to see the pictures I talk about in the episode! From using a train in a car race to marathon doping with deadly poison, there's far more excitement in racing than simply declaring a winner. YBOF Book; Audiobook (basically everywhere but Audible); Merch! Hang out with your fellow Brainiacs  .Reach out and touch Moxie on Facebook, Twitter,  or Instagram. Support the show Music by Kevin MacLeod, Steve Oxen, David Fesliyan.   Links to all the research resources are on our website.     Born in New York in 1901, Frank Hayes dreamed of being a race horse jockey.  Though he was short in stature, he was too heavy for the job, so he found himself working as a groom and stablehand instead.  Sadly, Hayes wouldn't live to see himself ride a horse to victory, but he *would win a race.  My name's...   LeMans, Grand Prix, Bathurst, the Indy 500, car races are big business around the world, but there was a time when people believed these new horseless carriages were a novelty item, too flimsy for such an activity.  In 1908, a race was organized to prove otherwise, in which six teams of drivers tried to be the first to get from New York to Paris.  Considering the state of the automobile technology and the lack of road infrastructure at the time, that was no mean feat.  Only three of the six competitors would even complete the course.  The race was a 169-day ordeal, still the longest motorsport event ever held. The starting line was set up in Times Square, on a gray morning, the 12th of February.  The six driving teams competed under four flags, Germany, France, Italy and the United States. The French set off with the highest number of cars, as three distinct automobile manufacturers participated.  The event brought almost 250,000 people on the streets of New York City to witness the start of the contest, considerably more crowd than the very first ball drop in New York at the New Year's Eve celebration, welcoming 1908.  The starter's gun fired at 11:15 AM, 15 minutes late.  Mayor George McClellan was supposed to fire the pistol, but he wasn't there on time and apparently, an impatient bystander did the job and the racers took off.  This was the first of many unexpected challenges.The planned route would take the racers across the United States, north through Canada into Alaska, over the frozen Bering Strait to Siberia, across Russia to Europe and finally to Paris.  The decision to have the race rolling in the midst of winter-time added to the challenges of the racers.  Drivers needed to stop often to repair their cars. They even used locomotive lines when it was impossible to find the road.  Not the rails, though.  The American car straddled the rails, bumping along on the ties for hundreds of miles.  The Italian team complained that this was cheating.  The car that would win had a 4 cylinder, 60 hp engine and a top speed of 60 mph.  Cars of the day offered little in rider comfort or amenities, like a roof.  They drove around the world, fifteen hours a day, in winter, in open-top cars without windshields.  Antifreeze hadn't been invented yet, so the radiators had to be drained each night.    While most teams were made of a driver and a mechanic, some teams included journalists, and even a poet, instead.  The first car, a French Sizaire-Naudin, dropped out after only 96 miles, with a broken differential they could not repair.  Another French team lost a man after they became stuck in the snow and the teammates began to fight.  They were about to duel with pistols, when the mechanic fired his assistant, an Artic travel expert he would be sorely lacking later on.  Not even in Iowa yet, the Italian car had mechanical troubles and the driver tried to cheat by loading the car onto a freight train.  He abandoned the plan when a photographer caught him in the act.  The car's owner then sent him a telegram, received a cable from the owners of his car: “Quit race, sell car and come home.”  The American team, driving a Thomas Flyer, took the lead when crossing the United States. The team managed to arrive in San Francisco in 41 days, 8 hours, and 15 minutes, 9,000 miles ahead of the car in second place.  This was actually the very first crossing of the US by an automobile in winter.  The route then took the drivers to Valdez, Alaska, by ship.  The American driver, George Schuster wasted no time investigating the Valdez-Fairbanks Trail in a single-horse sleigh, and concluded that the only way to cross Alaska in a car would be to dismantle it and ship the parts by dogsled.  The Parisian race committee abandoned the idea of Alaska and the Bering Strait and ordered the Americans to return to Seattle. The new plan was for the cars to sail to Vladivostok and drive to Paris from there.  While the Americans were still at sailing back to Seattle, their competitors arrived there and set sail for Russia. Then the Americans lost time getting their Russian visas in order.  The Flyer had been the first to arrive on the Pacific coast but was now the last to leave, a weeks behind the competition.  The race committee also decided that  the American team was given an allowance of 15 days, meaning the remaining teams could beat them to Paris by two weeks and still lose, *and penalized the team that tried to use a train.    The driving resumed from Vladivostok, but by this point, there were only three competitors left: The German Protos, the Italian Züst, and the Flyer from America.  Not an American Flyer; a little red wagon wouldn't fair well in these conditions.  What do all these cars look like anyway?  I'm glad you asked!  I put pictures in the Vodacast app, partner for this episode.  Vodacast is a brand new podcast player that makes it easy to see all the bonus content the creator wants to show you all in one place.  It even syncs to the audio, so you can see what I'm talking about right then and there!  It's still early-days, but it's going to be a real boon for both listeners and creators.   So the drivers, who you can see on Vodacast, agreed to start again evenly matched.  They had extreme difficulty finding petrol in Siberia, leading the French driver to try to bribe the other teams to let him ride on one of their cars, so he could still at least be *on a winning car.  This prompted his sponsor to pull him from the race.  The two two teams faced another set of major challenges as passing through the tundra realms of Siberia and Manchuria.  The spring thaw turned the Asian plains into a seemingly endless swamp.  Progress measured in *feet per hour, rather than miles.  The driver had to push their cars as much as drive them and even resorted to hitch up teams of horses to pull them along.  They also got lost, a lot.  The racers couldn't ask locals for directions as no one spoke Russian and a wrong turn could cost you 15 hours.  Once they neared Europe, roads improved and the race sped up. The Germans arrived in Paris on July 26, while the Americans were still in Berlin, but the 15 day allowance for the Americans and the 15 day penalty for the Germans meant that the Flyer had a month to drive to the next country.  The American team arrived in Paris on July 30th, 1908, to win the race, having covered approx 16,700 km/10377.  Even though the victor had been declared, the Italians trove on and made it to Paris in September 1908. The victory meant huge recognition for Shuster, who in 2010 was also inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame.  If you're ever in Reno, NV, you can see the Flyer in the National Automobile Museum.   ADS - Podcorn and Healthy Postnatal   America's first Olympics, held in 1904 in St. Louis as part of that year's World's Fair, stand unchallenged for the title of most bizarre.  The Olympics' signal event, the marathon, was conceived to honor the classical heritage of Greece and underscore the connection between the ancient and modern.  The outcome was so scandalous that the event was nearly abolished for good.  A few of the runners were recognized marathoners, rest could be described as “assorted.”  There was a man who did all his training at night because he had a day job as a bricklayer, ten Greeks who had never run a marathon, two men of the Tsuana tribe of South Africa who were in St. Louis as part of the South African World's Fair exhibit and who arrived at the starting line barefoot, and a Cuban mailman named Félix Carbajal, attired in a white, long-sleeved shirt, long, dark pants, a beret and a pair of street shoes, who raised money to come to the States by demonstrating his running prowess by running the length of the island.  Upon his arrival in New Orleans, he lost all his money on a dice game and had to walk and hitchhike to St. Louis.   The race was run on August 30, starting at 3:03 p.m.  If you know anything about daytime temperatures, that's what we call hot time.  Heat and humidity soared into the 90s.  The 24.85-mile course involved roads inches deep in dust, seven hills, varying from 100-to-300 feet high, some with brutally long ascents, cracked stone strewn across the roadway, the roadway that was still open to traffic, trains, trolley cars and people walking their dogs.  There were only *two places where athletes could secure fresh water, from a water tower at six miles and a roadside well at 12 miles.  Cars carrying coaches and physicians drove alongside the runners, kicking the dust up and launching coughing spells.   William Garcia of California nearly became the first fatality of an Olympic marathon we he collapsed on the side of the road and was hospitalized with hemorrhaging; the dust had coated his esophagus and ripped his stomach lining.  Len Tau, one of the South African participants, was chased a mile off course by wild dogs.  Félix Carvajal trotted along in his cumbersome shoes and billowing shirt, making good time even though he paused to chat with spectators in broken English.  A bit further along the course, he stopped at an orchard and snacked on some apples, which turned out to be rotten. Suffering from stomach cramps, he lay down and took a nap.  At the nine-mile mark cramps plagued Fred Lorz, who decided to hitch a ride in one of the accompanying automobiles, waving at spectators and fellow runners as he passed.   Thomas Hicks, the bricklayer, one of the early American favorites, begged his two-man support crew for a drink at the 10-mile mark. They refused, instead sponging out his mouth with warm distilled water.  (Purposeful dehydration was considered a positive 115 years ago.)  Seven miles from the finish, his handlers fed him a concoction of strychnine and egg whites—the first recorded instance of drug use in the modern Olympics.  Strychnine, in small doses, was commonly used a stimulant.  Hicks' team also carried a flask of French brandy but decided to withhold it until they could gauge his condition.   Meanwhile, Lorz, recovered from his cramps, emerged from his 11-mile ride in the automobile. One of Hicks' handlers saw him and ordered him off the course, but Lorz kept running and finished with a time of just under three hours. The crowd roared and began chanting, “An American won!”  Alice Roosevelt, the 20-year-old daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, placed a wreath upon Lorz's head and was just about to lower the gold medal around his neck when, one witness reported, “someone called an indignant halt to the proceedings with the charge that Lorz was an impostor.” The cheers turned to boos. Lorz smiled and claimed that he had never intended to accept the honor; he finished only for the sake of a “joke.”  You know, it was just a prank, bro.   Hicks, pumping with strychnine, had grown ashen and limp.  When he heard that Lorz had been disqualified he perked up and forced his legs to keep going.  His trainers gave him another dose of strychnine and egg whites, this time with some brandy to wash it down. They fetched warm water and soaked his body and head.  He began hallucinating, believing that the finish line was still 20 miles away.  In the last mile he begged for something to eat, then he begged to lie down. He was given more brandy and two more egg whites. Swinging into the stadium, he tried to run but was reduced to a graceless shuffle. His trainers carried him over the line, holding him aloft while his feet moved back and forth, and he was declared the winner.   It took four doctors and one hour for Hicks to feel well enough just to leave the grounds. He had lost eight pounds during the course of the race, and declared, “Never in my life have I run such a touch course. The terrific hills simply tear a man to pieces.” Hicks and Lorz would meet again at the Boston Marathon the following year, which Lorz won fair and square.  Bonus fact: The 1904 Olympics also saw gymnast George Eyser earned six medals, including three gold, despite his wooden leg.   MIDROLL  Patreon, names and increase Review and CTA While it's usually easy for humans on a race course to navigate, how then do homing pigeons figure out where they are?  A researcher at the US Geological Survey, Jonathan Hagstrum, has come up with a novel suggestion. It involves, of all things, pigeon races.  In Europe, and to a lesser extent in the US, pigeon racing has become a passionately-followed sport for which birds are carefully bred and trained.  Birds from many lofts are taken to a common distant location, released together, and their return speeds timed.  90% of the birds usually return within a few days, and eventually almost all do.   On Sunday, June 29, 1997, a great race was held to celebrate the centenary of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association.  More than 60,000 homing pigeons were released at 6:30 AM from a field in Nantes in southern France, flying to lofts all over southern England, 400-500mi/640-800km away.  By 11:00 AM, the majority of the racing birds had made it out of France and were over the English Channel.  The fastest birds should have arrived at their lofts by early afternoon. But they didn't.   A few thousand of the birds straggled in over the next few days.  Most were never seen again. The loss of so many birds was a disaster of previously unheard proportions in the pigeon racing world.  One bird could get lost, maybe a hundred, but tens of thousands?   A theory would later emerge.  At the very same time the racing pigeons were crossing the Channel, 11:00 AM, the Concorde supersonic airliner was flying along the Channel on its morning flight from Paris to New York.  In flight, the Concorde generated a shock wave that pounded down toward the earth, a carpet of sound almost a hundred miles wide. The racing pigeons flying below the Concorde could not have escaped the intense wave of sound. The birds that did eventually arrive at their lofts were actually lucky to be more tortoise than hare.  They were still south of the Channel when the SST passed over, ahead of them.  Perhaps racing pigeons locate where they are using atmospheric infrasounds that the Concorde obliterated.  Low frequency sounds can travel thousands of miles from their sources. That's why you can hear distant thunder.  Pigeons can hear these infrasounds very well as they use them for navigation.   What sort of infrasounds do pigeons use for guidance?  All over the world, there is one infrasound, the very low frequency acoustic shock waves generated by ocean waves banging against one another!  Like an acoustic beacon, a constant stream of these tiny seismic waves would always say where the ocean is.  This same infrasound mapping sense may play an important part in the long distance navigation of other creatures. It could explain how Monarch butterflies in the US are able to find one small locality in Mexico, or how Brazilian sea turtles are able to find their way to their homes on tiny Ascension Island a thousand miles out in the Atlantic.  Even more valuable to a racing pigeon looking for home, infrasounds reflect from cliffs, mountains, and other steep-sided features of the earth's surface. Ocean wave infrasounds reflecting off of local terrain could provide a pigeon with a detailed sound picture of its surroundings, near and far.  The enormous wave of infrasound generated by the Concorde's sonic boom would have blotted out all of the normal oceanic infrasound information. Any bird flying in its path would lose its orientation.  The incident is referred to as the Great Pigeon Race Disaster.  The Concorde stopped flying six years later, for reason unrelated to the pigeons. Not every race goes to the swiftest, one was meant to go to the friskiest.  Charles Vance Millar practiced law in Ontario for 45 years until his death in 1926.  He was also a shrewd investor, which meant there was a nice fat bank account before his fatal heart attack.  A lifelong bachelor with no close relatives, Millar wrote up a will that was as mischievous as he had been. For example, Millar would amuse himself by dropping dollar bills on the sidewalk and then watching the expressions of the people who bent to furtively pocket the cash.  In death, Millar outdid himself in roguishness. He wrote “This Will is necessarily uncommon and capricious because I have no dependents or near relations and no duty rests upon me to leave any property at my death and what I do leave is proof of my folly in gathering and retaining more than I required in my lifetime.”  He left the shared tenancy of a Jamaican vacation spot to three men who could not stand the sight of each other.  He tested the resolve of teetotallers by leaving them shares in companies involved in the alcohol business.  The Ontario Jockey Club is an august body whose membership is drawn from society's upper crust, so Millar left shares in the club to an unsavoury character who existing members would find repellent and to two opponents of racetrack gambling.   He parcelled out much of his estate to test his theory that every person had a price; the only mystery being at what level would greed trump principle.  But, it was Clause 9 of the will that caused the most fuss; it was the legacy that triggered a race to conceive.  Simply put, he directed the residue of his estate be given to the Toronto mother who gave birth to the most children in the ten years immediately following his death.  The money involved wasn't chump change. By the time the race came to an end, the total prize was worth $750,000; that would be a bit more than $12 million today.  What came to be called the Stork Derby was on, especially at the three year mark, when the Stock Market Crash of 1929 ushered in the Great Depression.  You might have heard of it. With so many people experiencing unemployment and poverty, the pot of gold offered by Charles Millar was enticing, even if the attempt meant creating a *lot for mouths to feed.   Newspapers followed the fortunes and fecundity of the contestants closely.  It was a welcome distraction from grim reality.  Five women leading the pack, mostly lower income and already with a slew of children, became household names.  Those five of most fruitful loins had delivered 56 kids between them, 32 of which had born by 1933.  From Time Magazine from Christmas Eve 1934: “Last week in Toronto each of the two leading contenders for the prize money bore a child. Mrs. Frances Lillian Kenny, 31, gave birth to a girl, her eleventh child since the race began. Mrs. Grace Bagnato, 41, gave birth to a boy, her ninth ...”  While citizens followed the race keenly, the Ontario provincial government was not amused. It called the maternal marathon “the most revolting and disgusting exhibition ever put on in a civilized country.”   VODACAST   Midnight on Halloween 1936 was the deadline for baby-birthing.  On October 19, The Daily Journal-World of Lawrence, Kansas carried a story that started, “A hesitant stork circled uncertainly today over 1097 West Dundas Street with what looked like a $750,000 baby in his well-worn bill.”  However, the productive resident of that address Grace Bagnato was soon disqualified from the derby; her husband turned out to be an illegal Italian immigrant and that didn't sit well with the authorities. Everything old is new again, eh?  Lillian Kenny, who had ten births to her credit, was also tossed out of the event because she had the misfortune to deliver two stillbirths and that was declared not to count.  Pauline Clarke also gave birth ten times during the competition period but several of her babies were conceived out of wedlock; an activity deeply frowned upon at the time, so they were out.   As the final whistle blew, four women were tied at nine babies each.  Annie Smith, Alice Timleck, Kathleen Nagle, and Isobel MacLean each received $125,000,or about $2mil today.  Lillian Kenny and Pauline Clarke were handed consolation prizes of $12,500 apiece, or $20K.  Mrs. Bagnato, got nothing.   When Millar's law partner found the will he thought it was a joke rather than a legal document. Others thought its purpose was to tie the legal system into knots.  According to The Canadian Encyclopedia, “The question of whether Millar intended his will to take effect or merely to amuse his lawyer friends remains in doubt.”  The Ontario government, which had earlier huffed and puffed about the unseemly nature of the Stork Derby, tried several times to have Charles Millar's will declared null and void. The premier, Mitchell Hepburn, had said it was “the duty of the government to stop this fiasco.”   A few of Millar's *distant relatives popped up to challenge the will; hoping to score the jackpot. But, the will, and its Stork Derby clause, held up and, eventually, the Supreme Court of Canada said it was valid.   It's pleasing to report that the winners handled their legacies sensibly and were able to buy homes and provide an education for their children. The winners, that is.  Nobody knows how many women started the Stork Derby and then dropped out. However, by the end, at least two dozen mothers had produced at least eight babies. This placed an enormous burden on the families who were suffering through the Great Depression with 25% of Toronto families receiving government support in 1935.   The prize money was a direct result of Millar's capricious nature.  He once missed the ferry between Windsor, Canada and Detroit.  This angered him so he bought the property that would eventually be used to construct the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, which put the ferries out of business.  It was money from this investment that largely funded the Stork Derby.   And that's….When Frank Hayes was given the chance to fill in for another jockey, he had to lose a lot of weight fast, like 10 lbs/4kilos in 24 hours, which he probably did by not eating or drinking and possibly sweating or purging.  Doctors then and now think that's why he died suddenly of a heart attack in the second half of the race.  He didn't fall out of the saddle though, even after his horse crossed the finish line first.  He was declared the victor, and remains the only jockey to have ever won while dead.  The horse, Sweet Kiss, was immediately retired, because no one wanted to ride a horse nicknamed Sweet Kiss of Death.  Remember...Thanks    Some races go off the rails, but there are plenty that were made to be weird.  Every year, young women line the streets of Moscow to run for a higher purpose – shopping.  Glamour magazine hosts an annual stiletto race. Young women strap on their tallest heels (3.5”/9cm minimum), and run a 164ft/50 meter course in hopes of winning a $3,000 gift card. Most of the women taped their shoes to their feet, but that did not stop all the trips, slips, and falls.  Thanks for spending part of your day with me.   Sources: https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/01/01/the-historic-new-york-to-paris-race-in-1908/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-1904-olympic-marathon-may-have-been-the-strangest-ever-14910747/ http://biologywriter.com/on-science/articles/pigeons/ https://owlcation.com/humanities/The-Toronto-Stork-Derby https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/paris-or-bust-the-great-new-york-to-paris-auto-race-of-1908-116784616/  

In January 2018, Raleigh native Maggie Kane opened Raleigh's first pay-what-you-can cafe, A Place at the Table. Today she talks to Caroline and Craig about the why and how of how it all got started, how the Triangle community has been so supportive, and what she likes to do in the City of Oaks when she's not working. Instagram | @TableRaleigh | Go help get them 20K followers! Thanksgiving morning at Place at the Table, Gonza will be providing breakfast tacos and hot chocolate! Full show notes: https://thisisraleigh.com/maggie-kane-table-raleigh/(opens in a new tab) For more on things to do in and around Raleigh, visit ThisIsRaleigh.com. This is Raleigh is hosted by Caroline and Craig Makepeace, and is produced by Earfluence.

You've heard me share my free masterclass in almost every episode of the podcast, but today's guest is proof that watching this free training can lead to MASSIVE results. Kat Araujo started her branding agency, Afternoon Culture, in 2018, and despite having reached $10K months already, she was struggling to scale beyond that.She stumbled across my free masterclass, understandably skeptical of how much value a free training could truly provide, but decided to give it a shot since she had nothing to lose.After watching my masterclass and implementing the lessons we cover in that single hour, Kat quickly doubled her business revenue to consistent $20,000 months. These were her results from literally just my FREE masterclass, not even my paid programs. Today's case study examines the revenue breakdown of her $20K months, how she went from being scared to charge her clients $3,000 to raising her minimum project rate to $5,000, and the biggest shifts from my free masterclass she applied to her business that doubled her monthly income. If you're a service provider, consultant, or coach who wants to land consistent clients for your 1:1 service so you can scale to $10,000 revenue months and beyond, watching my free masterclass is the first step to get there. The Consistent Clients Cashflow System I cover in my masterclass doesn't rely on you having a large following or posting every day to succeed.In fact, the majority of people who use our CCC system reach their first $10K month with less than 500 followers.To see if our specific method is a good fit for how you want to grow your service-based business, sign up to watch my free training and download my bonus $10K month workbook at www.ellenyin.com/getclients . It's the best hour you'll spend on your business today, I promise.Connect with Kat: www.afternoonculture.com@afternoon.cultureIf you enjoyed today's episode, please:Join our referral rewards program by signing up for our text notifications at ellenyin.com/superfan , and share your custom referral link with your biz besties to get them to sign up too! Post a screenshot & key takeaway on your IG story and tag me @missellenyin & @cubicletoceo so I can repost you.Leave a positive review on Apple PodcastsSubscribe for new episodes every Monday ----- FREE RESOURCES:Service-based entrepreneurs, are you tired of being on the content hamster wheel + hustling for more followers without more income? I created a FREE, on-demand training just for you on how to use my step-by-step client attraction system to create your first $10K month, WITHOUT a large audience or complicated marketing strategies! Claim your bonus gift by watching now: ellenyin.com/getclients

The government creates tax benefits for two main types of retirement savings accounts: IRAs and Roth IRAs. And within those categories, there are multiple kinds of account types. But let's explain the difference simply: an IRA is tax-deferred, meaning that you don't pay income taxes on the contributions; you pay it when you make a withdrawal. A Roth IRA is the opposite, where you make contributions after tax and then never pay taxes again.Forget about the tax part for now though, because this is really about compound growth and the opportunity cost of your purchases now. We're going to share some examples of how much money you could have based on different scenarios. Remember that we're using simplifying assumptions like a constant growth rate of investments and ignoring capital gains taxes. The point is not to give a specific number but to show the massive impact of saving now and saving consistently. If you max out your 401K at 20,500 for 5 years when you're 25-30 and never put anything in again, then at age 65 you'll have $1.35M.  Your 102K investment turned into 1.35MIf you put in $5K a year for 20 years from 25 to 45, and never put in anything again, then at 65 you'll have $848K.  A similar 100K investment became 848K, but that's $498K less than if you had invested the same amount earlier in life.If you put in $2500 a year for 40 years from age 25-65, then you'll have $534K.  That's almost a million less than if you had put in the same amount of money earlier on.If you put in $2500 a year for 25 years from age 25-50, and then at age 50 decide to max it out at 20K a year for 15 years, at age 65 you would have only $1M (but in this scenario you put in $362K vs. my other 3 scenarios you put in only $100K)The lesson here is:  sacrifice and save earlier on in your life and it will pay offSo what is the one thing you need to do to plan for a traditional retirement? SAVE. RIGHT. NOW.  The more, the earlier, the better.  At the same time, it's never too late to start. You may need to make some tradeoffs earlier on in life to do this, but we think the tradeoffs are worth it.  Examples of things you could sacrifice to be able to max it out earlier in life:Control your housing expenses.  It's most people's #1 expense category.  Don't buy a house quite yet. Instead, consider having a roommate or other forms of house-hacking.  LIve with your parents for a year.Don't buy a fancy new car.Here are a few additional tips related to retirement accounts:Make sure your 401K is invested versus just sitting in cash!  Make sure you're maximizing your employer match.  Invest your 401K aggressively if you're comfortable with this, especially if you're young and don't need it anytime soon.Try to avoid the target date funds.  They are less aggressively invested, and they have higher fees on them.  Top 3 Takeaways:You can easily reach a traditional retirement with your 401K if you save early, consistently, and at a reasonable level.Your purchase decisions now impact you many times greater in the future because of compound growth.It takes time to build momentum, but trust us, saving now is the most important thing you can do.Show References:Friends on FIRE episode #18 - House HackingFriends on FIRE episode #016 -  401ks are your BFF!Friends on FIRE episode #114 | What's a rothIRA and do I need one?---Follow friends on FIRETwitterInstagramFacebookLinkedInLeave us a voicemail or text us: 404-981-3370eMail us at:  friendsonfiremm@gmail.comVisit our website: www.friendsonfire.org---Other LinksMaggie's Blog: Mostly Minimal LifeMike's Book: Your New Relationship with Money

Do you want to UpLevel your business?   Do you want to take a quantum LEAP in income and success AND attract it much faster/easier?   It's actually a LOT easier than you think   And today we want to help you open yourself to the possibilities for that   Ursula Mentjes is an award-winning entrepreneur, sales expert, and inspirational speaker. She was promoted from account executive to president of an international technical training company in just five years at the age of 27 when the revenue was in the tens of millions.   Ursula is the recipient of the SBA's Women in Business Champion, Willow Tree Extraordinary Example, and Extraordinary Entrepreneur Awards, and was chosen as PDP's Extraordinary Speaker and Businesswoman of the Year. She is also the author of four award-winning books; Selling with Intention, One Great Goal, Selling with Synchronicity, and The Belief Zone. Her clients include Aflac, Ebenezer, Keller Williams, Fairview Hospitals, New York Life, Paychex, Union Bank, LeClair Group and more   Ready to turn your annual income into your monthly income? Register now for the Quantum Revenue Expansion Masterclass! My gift for you! ($997 Value) During the Masterclass you will…   Create your *brand new* Quantum Container to turn your annual income into your monthly income.   UpLevel your pricing, packages and marketing.   Discover how to collapse time and reach your quantum revenue goal even faster!   Sign up for her Quantum Revenue Expansion masterclass here: https://ze114.isrefer.com/go/winning/Winning/   Sign up for Coach Lois' SOAR event here: https://hww.pages.ontraport.net/soar2022   If you would like to learn more about Coach Lois' future and past guests, go to www.healthynwealthynwise.com   For more of her amazing resources, as well as her guests free gifts, go to www.loiskoffi.com/podcast   Join her FB community here go grow your business to $20K months in a balanced/healthy way here: www.facebook.com/groups/permissionbased20kmonths/  

In the 85th episode I brought in Lootenant, a master of multiple crafts including social media, comedy and music. He has over 300K followers on TikTok and almost 20K on Instagram. He spoke about his path to stardom, his next album drop, life as a dad, gave some advice for creators, and even brought up his battle with drugs and his life after gaining his sobriety. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/100podcast/support

Do you ever wonder why the income isn't flowing your way as you desire?   What we put out to the world does come back to us   Since money is simply a form of energy - why is it so hard to create that "million dollar feeling"?   We will discuss today with my friend Brian Baird   Brian Baird is the founder/creator of Million Dollar Feeling™,   The Community for Positive Living, where people quickly learn to illuminate the beauty and abundance of their lives through their authentic story.      The mission at Million Dollar Feeling™ is to provide leadership development and personal transformation with a simple guidepost:      His motto is Flip the Script.... Own Your Story.... Change the World!   AND….. Live by the notion:     Wherever you are in life, whether it be a personal, professional or business Journey…..     YOU ARE ALWAYS               too           YOUNG               to not       ENJOY LIFE!       Brian serves Million Dollar Feeling™ as speaker, author, media host, social justice warrior, environmental activist, wellness advocate and, his favorite role, father.      You can reach out to Brian and his community at his website   www.MillionDollarFeeling.com   Sign up for Coach Lois' SOAR event here: https://hww.pages.ontraport.net/soar2022   If you would like to learn more about Coach Lois' future and past guests, go to www.healthynwealthynwise.com   For more of her amazing resources, as well as her guests free gifts, go to www.loiskoffi.com/podcast   Join her FB community here go grow your business to $20K months in a balanced/healthy way here: www.facebook.com/groups/permissionbased20kmonths/

Meet Carl Gould. Known worldwide as a leading authority on all things business and entrepreneurship, he's also a keynote speaker, best-selling author (11 books), and podcaster. A claim to fame in his entrepreneurial journey, Carl built 3 multi-million dollar businesses by age 40. His company, 7 Stage Advisors helps organizations grow to the next level. A 'day with Carl' will cost you $20K, and comes with a guarantee your business will increase at least 5 x that in revenue. We dive into how Carl started his first business at 18 years old, when he was broke and had a broken leg. Then how his interest in personal growth propelled him to become one of the top Life & Business Coaches, trained under Tony Robins and eventually created his own certification program certifying over 7000 coaches worldwide. In this episode Carl shares his practical and impactful knowledge of how to do business successfully with real-world experience...in a larger than life fashion! Find Carl here: https://carlgould.com/

The next time you hear the success story about that coach who had a $10K month, ask yourself "How many months did that one $20K month take? And how much will they be able to make next month?"   Having a successful month in business is great, but it's hardly life-transforming.   A string of months without any coaching income, followed by a single month of $5K or $10K is not my idea of a successful business model.   I prefer working a calendar that is consistently filled with clients, so I don't have to guess where my next car payment's coming from. It's a much better way to go.   But you don't have to take my word for it!   Today I'm talking with one of my former students who started working with me in the beginning of 2021, and since then he's been hitting CONSISTENT $5K-$10K months in his coaching business... all while working part time!   I've asked him to break down exactly what he does and share it with you!     Is your coaching calendar consistently filled with clients and sales calls?   Are you able to comfortably engage with prospects in a way that doesn't feel salesy?   Are you bringing in AT LEAST $5K each month into your coaching business?   It's possible – and it can happen faster than you might think!   If you're ready to hit consistent $5K+ months, visit https://www.5K90.com today.   

Our guest is a general dentist three years out of training. He has hit a couple of milestones, back to broke and a six figure net worth. But he came on the podcast today to celebrate buying a car with cash. He purchased a 2017 minivan with 20K miles and felt rich doing it! How much car can you afford? Check out this episode for the answer. https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/how-much-car-can-you-afford/  This podcast is sponsored by Bob Bhayani at https://drdisabilityquotes.com  He is an independent provider of disability insurance planning solutions to the medical community in every state and a long-time White Coat Investor sponsor. He specializes in working with residents and fellows early in their careers to set up sound financial and insurance strategies. If you need to review your disability insurance coverage or to get this critical insurance in place, contact Bob at https://drdisabilityquotes.com  today by email info@drdisabilityquotes.com or by calling (973) 771-9100. The White Coat Investor has been helping doctors with their money since 2011. Our free financial planning resource covers a variety of topics from doctor mortgage loans and refinancing medical school loans to physician disability insurance and malpractice insurance. Learn about loan refinancing or consolidation, explore new investment strategies, and discover loan programs for specifically aimed at helping doctors. If you're a high-income professional and ready to get a "fair shake" on Wall Street, The White Coat Investor channel is for you! Be a Guest on The Milestones to Millionaire Podcast: https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/milestones  Main Website: https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com  Student Loan Advice: https://studentloanadvice.com  YouTube: https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/youtube  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewhitecoatinvestor  Twitter: https://twitter.com/WCInvestor  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewhitecoatinvestor  Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/whitecoatinvestor  Online Courses: https://whitecoatinvestor.teachable.com  Newsletter: https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/free-monthly-newsletter 

Andrew Taylor, Vivian Weyll, Adriano Dandrea and John Harrison sit down to discuss the importance of attending the many free training opportunities that Family First Life offers - such as Launch 2021, a FREE one-day conference in Phoenix, Arizona happening November 15th, 2021.John worked in the corporate sales industry for over 20 years before his company went out of business. He applied for many jobs before finally deciding to change his career and enter the insurance industry. In the beginning, John was issuing well under $20K every month. He then decided to attend one of Family First Life's free sales conferences last February and has not written under $30K since. In fact, John is now a steady $60K per month producer. He believes the keys to succeeding with FFL are putting in the work, being coachable and listening to those with more experience.Vivian Weyll and Adriano Dandrea are a husband and wife team whose fast-growing agency, Family First Life Aria, did $450,000 last month

What is holding you back from making $20K/month and beyond?   Likely it is your MINDSET   AND charging/asking what you are worth inside of your offers   Today we discuss this with my business partner of Healthy N Wealthy N Wise coaching, Timon Vinke   Timon made the decision to become a full-time entrepreneur in 2017. In a year, his first business grew to more than six figures. However, that was not where his passion was, so he chose to help other entrepreneurs succeed. It wasn't simple to make the switch, but with hard work and the right strategies, he made it. Helping entrepreneurs in creating a successful business.   Ambitious expert entrepreneurs hire him to develop scalable high ticket offers and build seven-figure businesses, guaranteed (all while being healthy and wise at the same time!)   Today on this call you can break through that stinkin thinkin that is holding you back from hitting those high sales' months in no time!   REGISTER TO RECEIVE MORE INFORMATION FROM TIMON AND LOIS AND ATTEND THEIR SOAR 2022 EVENT https://hww.pages.ontraport.net/soar2022   FInd more resources from Coach Lois on her resources page at www.loiskoffi.com/resources   Join Coach Lois' permission based facebook group to get you to $20k months here: www.facebook.com/groups/permissionbased20kmonths/   Book a call with Lois for a one time complementary session to help you get there faster to $20K months: www.bookacallwithlois.com  

Resources: ✅ Join the Sales Revolution: If you're ready to do sales differently, you're in the right place. This community is for entrepreneurs and sales pros to connect, grow, + learn the new (and highly improved) connection-based way of selling. https://www.facebook.com/groups/salesrevolutiongroup   Is sales for you? It is a common question for those trying to shift their careers into sales.   Our guest in this episode, Shane Hetherington, was a former chef also doing odd jobs to make both ends meet. He never saw himself as a salesperson as he never had any experience with selling; however, an opportunity opened up for him in the sales industry.    His first month in sales proved to be a disaster as he only made one sale for an entire month. Shane knew he had to do something quickly, and that's how he got introduced to NEPQ. Seven months into NEPQ training, Shane is now earning $20K+ monthly commissions and got promoted to sales trainer of the company he's working for.    Shane wasn't born with the gift of the gab. It was his training that got him results. Sales could be for you too. Learn how by hitting that play button!    In this episode, we cover: [0:00] Introduction  [3:51] Shane's background  [4:50] How Shane got into sales  [5:11] Shane shares about the first sales training he received  [6:08] How Shane got introduced to NEPQ  [7:25] Results that Shane got from the NEPQ training  [7:46] Disarming the prospect with the right questions  [11:10] How Shane's life has changed since using NEPQ  [13:29] The industry Shane is part of  [14:32] Breaking down Shane's sales process  [32:03] Shane's word of advice for listeners   ✅ If you're looking to take your sales to the 7th level, book a “Clarity Call” below and let's see if you're a good fit for our sales training program!

The world is closing in on TWS but at least Thanksgiving will cost 20K but we won't feel the pain because the Dems are also taxing capital gains. Also, Springsteen is useless. Find us at www.burnbarrelpodcast.com Email us: burnbarrelpodcast@gmail.com Follow on Parler: @burnbarrelpodcast On Gab: @burnbarrelpodcast Facebook: facebook.com/burnbarrelpodcast And Twitter: @burnbarrelpod Rumble: rumble.com/c/burnbarrelpodcast YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCWhLuhtutKdCmbHaWuGg_YQ Follow Tom on Twitter: @tomshattuck You can follow Alice too: @aliceshattuck More Tom stuff at www.tomshattuck.com Tom's "Insta" as the zoomers say: www.instagram.com/tomwshattuck/ Join us at Locals: burnbarrel.locals.com (subscriber based) Join us at Patreon: www.patreon.com/burnbarrel (subscriber based) The opening theme music is called Divine Intervention by Matthew Sweet. The closing theme music to this podcast C'est La Vie by Derek Clegg. Excelsior

Last week I sent an email out to my client list that has since generated $20K in booked revenue for my studio! In today's episode, I'm going to tell you what that email was about and what you can do in your own business right now to start getting similar results! SHOWNOTES https://www.sandracoaneducation.com/podcast/my-20k-email LINKS For more information on The Mini Method, follow this link: https://sandra-coan-education.teachable.com/p/the-mini-method Sign up for today's FREE training: https://sandracoan.lpages.co/pin-free-webinar/ Find your new photography BFFS in our Facebook community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sandracoaneducation Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sandracoan/ If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review, so that I know what content you like the most and continue to bring you more of the same!

In the past few months, my client Samantha has made MORE MONEY than she made ALL last year. With MORE leads and opportunities coming in her inbox daily! We're talking CONSISTENT sales, baby! She's a powerhouse financial expert and an all-around total bada$$, so you don't want to miss this behind the scenes look as we pull back the curtain on what it took to make it happen. Plus, we'll dive into the often-overlooked Super Power that makes rapid record-breaking results possible — like pouring gasoline on a fire. This candid look into how she did it is sure to inspire you to Play BIG in life and business! #GameOn Key points we covered in this episode: ✔️ As a financial adviser, Samantha Dutto Pierre taught people to invest their money but thought last about investing in herself. When she took the courage and decided to trust her gut, she finally unlocked the key to making MORE MONEY than she could have ever imagined!  ✔️As the belief grew, the results grew. Samantha proved herself wrong and found that she could have fun, answer to her true calling and develop unlimited monetary resources. ✔️ It's powerful to be you. Show up before you think you're ready. Things don't have to be perfect before you can put a thing out there in the world or before you can offer at a higher level. Challenge your doubts — know that you will succeed and get to be 100% who you be. ✔️ We are changing what the face of wealth looks like on the inside of our community. Can we all just be honest about what we think wealth looks like, especially in America? If I ask you to name a titan of any industry who are exceedingly wealthy, you're not going to pick somebody who looks like you or me. You're going to name some old white man who's always on the top lists and featured in tv and magazines.  But the reality is this: we are changing what the face of wealth looks like inside this community. It's normal for us to be celebrating 10K, 20K, 30K, 40K, 50K, 100K dollars in a month, a week or a day!!! Milestones like that to the average person makes little to no sense. But I know it's both powerful, empowering and amazing. And we're excited because we know that we are shifting things, and generational curses are being broken. Families' stories about wealth and money are being recoded, and it's creating ripples and ripples of impact. ————————————————————————————— Loved this episode? Know that it's your time. Listen, love, when you stop playing small and show up fully, your business and income will naturally grow as you do too.  Discover how to achieve the next Level of Authority and remove any blocks sabotaging your sales: www.GameOnLiveEvent.com. 

In this episode, Kimberly Cobb from TLC's I Love A Mama's Boy shares some current milestones in her life! Attending her first festival, reaching 20K on Instagram and TikTok, and her big sister turning 30! Follow on Instagram: @mylipsarentsealedpodcast and @kimberlycobb

Are you having trouble with getting your leads to convert? In this episode, Mike Filsaime talks about the software that he developed and sold for $20K at 16 years old and how he came up with a business idea that resulted in a $75K profit on his very first month. Listen in to learn how customers think and behave, and the keys to growing a strong customer base.   WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE How to build an effective email marketing list Skills you need to become a great salesperson A formula to determine the income of your business  The three things you should look for in a mentor The four qualities of a profitable and fulfilling business   RESOURCE MENTIONED Marketers Cruise   ABOUT MIKE FILSAIME After running one of the largest auto dealerships in the U.S.A, Mike Filsaime decided to follow his vision and create software designed to eliminate the pain and frustration of running an online business. His visionary ideas coupled with talented developers and designers have delivered game-changing software for countless online businesses. Following his passion, Mike Filsaime's companies have generated over $175 Million. Historically, Mike was responsible for a number of well-known "classic" software platforms, such as WebinarJam, EverWebinar, Kartra, DealGuardian, Butterfly Marketing, EvergreenBusinessSystem, and PayDotCom. Mike is now the CEO and Co-Founder of prestigious GrooveDigital™, Inc., the fastest-growing software platform for digital and e-commerce marketers.    CONNECT WITH MIKE Website: www.groove.cm Facebook: GROOVE.cm® Official — Groove CRM Platform, Funnels, Pages, Email, eCommerce   CONNECT WITH US Email: marco@marcokozlowski.com Website: https://marcokozlowski.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/realmarcokozlowski/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marco.kozlowski/  

MVC&R have never required a vaccine for listeners, and Southwest Airlines changed course on its vaccine requirement for employees. Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot says police officers not getting vaccinated is “insurrection,” and President Joe Biden has been flying underage migrants to New York in the dead of night. A statue of Harambe was erected on Wall Street, and Katie Couric is spilling the beans on journalists covering for politicians. Kanye West has officially changed his name to "Ye," and the Haitian gang seeks $17 million for the kidnapped missionaries. A guy thought he had won $20K for growing a record-setting pumpkin, but a tiny crack disqualified the gourd. Christopher Walken tried out for Han Solo, and David Duchovny auditioned for "Full House."

Today, we got Mike Butler for you, who will be sharing a jaw-dropping story about a property he bought for $20K that still rents for $1,000. Listen to this episode to get some insights into the current market condition and learn the best way to find motivated sellers. Key takeaways to listen for How to overcome fear and start investing in real estate Is it a good time to get financing? Advertising vs. Marketing. Which is better to attract motivated sellers? Why you should always make an offer on the houses you visit Resources mentioned in this episode Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! Landlording on AutoPilot: A Simple, No-Brainer System for Higher Profits, Less Work and More Fun (Do It All from Your Smartphone or Tablet!) About Mike Butler While working his full-time job as an undercover police detective, Mike Butler began his real estate investing career by buying fixer-uppers and renting them to make extra money.  Mike quickly exploded his real estate business by buying 2 rental properties every week. Then he knuckled down and developed his amazingly simple Investor Books Pro System™ to deliver true financial freedom for his family. His proven and unique system allowed him to safely catapult wealth for his family by investing in real estate. Mike also authored the book “Landlording on Autopilot” and made the #1 Best Seller Business Books on Amazon. Now, he enjoys training millionaires and future millionaires and is a much sought-after featured speaker and trainer at real estate seminars all across America. Connect with Mike Website: www.mikebutler.com Podcast: 5 Hour Real Estate Week Facebook: Mike Butler YouTube: MikeButlerDotCom Twitter: @MikeButlerUSA LinkedIn: Mike Butler   Connect with Leigh Please subscribe to this podcast in iTunes or in the Podcasts App on your phone, and never miss a beat from Leigh by visiting https://leighbrown.com. DM Leigh Brown on Instagram or on Twitter or any social networks by clicking here. Subscribe to Leigh's other podcast Real Estate From The Rooftops! Sponsor If you're tired of doing real estate alone, enroll in  Leigh Brown University and be sure to use your special “CSIRE” discount code at checkout for $10 off your subscription.

Matthew Berman is President/ co-founder of Emerald Digital, a full-service data- and creative-driven digital marketing/ public relations agency that specializes in generating quantifiable leads and sales by: Mapping and generating consumer-journey-stage-specific touchpoints across multiple digital channels,  Developing and delivering personalized, consumer-journey-stage-specific content.  Typical clients are B2C premium consumer goods providers, B2B clients, and professional services (legal, healthcare, and some financial companies). Matthew talks about journey stages as being three funnels: awareness, consideration, and purchase. Awareness involves highlighting a consumer's major” pain points, introducing the client, and clearly presenting the client's unique benefits. At the purchase stage, where the user is already familiar with the client and trust and authority have been established, the message can be “a little more aggressive.”  The client, its product, and its target market determine the mix of content, platform, audience, and messaging needed to best address the target audience at each particular stage. Although the agency's focus is digital, Matthew says it will get into whatever space their target market is in. Matthew cites the example of a pet brand client with “two audiences.” When communicating with “the general public (traditional consumer channels), the focus is on digital with some print media, and media buying. For the industry-specific retail buyers (industry trades), the media mix is more traditional.  It has been difficult in the past to track billboard impact (except perhaps by sending viewers through distinct contact options). Today, companies can purchase digital space for times when prospective customers will be passing by that billboard, change up the message more frequently to keep it “fresh” or to meet the client's changing needs and goals (to increase business, build brand, hire new employees), or try to ping passing cell phones to track “views.” Matthew started his career in music production, selling songs through NYC ad agencies to support large brands' digital content. He partnered with a creative director contact to create Chunnel TV, a video curation and production platform. Funding for that evaporated with the Great Recession and Matthew moved to a traditional marketing agency in New Orleans to work on social and ambassador programs.  A few years later, he started Ember Networks, which provided other agencies with white-label social, web, and SEO support, and often consulted and collaborated with a close friend who owned Herald PR in New York City. On a joint project in the Turks and Caicos, they realized their teams were already integrated and that they would be able to tackle larger projects and work smarter if they combined the two companies. Ember Networks and Herald PR became Emerald Digital. When COVID hit, both locations shut down. Growth was exploding – the company probably tripled last year. Finding, hiring, and integrating new employees into the team was a challenge when everyone was remote. Processes needed to be thoroughly documented, mapped, and assessed; SOPs written, organized, posted, and automated; and communications tools updated and unified. In this interview, Matthew explains how a key tool of the agency's operationalization, a program called ClickUp, has allowed them to aggregate all their documents, automate processes, streamline reporting, and handle client communication.  Matthew is excited about how, today, his clients can tell never-ending stories and have ongoing narratives broken into digestible pieces across multiple platforms and multiple touchpoints and, even more so, how technological advances, AR, VR, AI will impact storytelling in the not-so-distant future. He can be reached on his agency's website at: https://emerald.digital Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm joined today by Matthew Berman, who is President and Partner at Emerald Digital with offices in New York, New York and New Orleans, Louisiana. Welcome to the podcast, Matthew. MATTHEW: Thank you so much for having me, Rob. ROB: Fantastic to have you here. Why don't you start by introducing Emerald Digital and what it is that you all are excellent in doing for your clients? MATTHEW: Absolutely. I am the president and a co-founder of Emerald Digital. We are a full-service digital marketing and public relations agency. Our superpower is we are exceptional at generating quantifiable leads and sales. We do this by mapping out and generating consumer touchpoints across multiple digital channels, and we strive to engineer these consumer touchpoints by the stage which the consumer journey and the user is actually in. If they're at the awareness stage, we have different content pieces generated just for them and personalized just for them. If they're at the consideration stage, we do the same thing. ROB: You've kind of teased it; give us all the stages as you all think about it. MATTHEW: Sure. At a very general level, let's think about awareness, let's think about consideration, and let's think about purchase. We can break them down into those three major funnels. We try to identify, based on the client that we have, what mix of content, what mix of platform, what mix of audience, and what mix of message we need to best speak to our audience at that particular stage. If we're just trying to generate awareness, we want to highlight what their major pain points are. We want to introduce who our client is, and we want to distill our message such that it can focus on the unique benefits that our client offers in an easy-to-understand way for our target market. If it's at the purchase stage, we would generally have communicated with that particular user several times by now, so we've built up trust, we've built up authority. Our messaging is going to be a little more aggressive. ROB: Give us a picture here. Dive down a little bit. Are there typical clients for you? Particular industry, particular size? What's the wheelhouse? MATTHEW: I think in general, we see two different kinds, although it certainly extends beyond that. But the two different kinds that we have are a B2C company, generally consumer goods, with a product or service that might be a little more premium, a little more expensive, whether that be a luxury hotel or a private jet or a luxury villa or a more expensive food item. So we see that. On the other side, we handle a lot of B2B clients and professional services. We deal very frequently in the legal and healthcare and sometimes the financial space. ROB: I can't let it just sit there – I need to know more about expensive food items. MATTHEW: One of the examples is we're working with one of the most premium hotdog manufacturers and sellers in the United States. You would normally think about a hotdog as just a few bucks, and the ingredients that would go into that are maybe not the ingredients you would want to eat. We're working with this great brand where all of their ingredients are ultra-premium. It tastes amazing. It might cost a few dollars more than your typical hotdog, but we have to break down, where would this product be sold? Who would it be sold to? What type of benefits would a prospective buyer be looking for? That might be health, that might be ease of making it, things like that. But they do taste great. [laughs] I always love working with our consumer brands, especially in the food and drink business, because one of the benefits that we get is we get to try the product. I've probably worked with 50 alcohol brands or something by now, and that's always fun because you have to try it out. You have to make recipes, you have to shoot the product. You get to meet fascinating people all over the country. ROB: That might help with recruiting too. MATTHEW: [laughs] It's always a fun gig. ROB: You're like, “Hey, come here. Here's who we work with.” That makes sense, especially on the premium food side. There's a trend here that is fascinating. You're talking about educating people around considered purchases, but it is interesting how it spans across consumer versus the business side. The awareness, the consideration, the purchase, that's all there. You're not very much into the transactional world. You have digital in your name, but I would imagine you also – how do you think about traditional media as part of the media mix when you're talking about these long-term considered purchases? MATTHEW: Oh, without a doubt. Our expertise is certainly in the digital world, and that's where my background comes from. But I think as our business grows and as we take on more mature clients, we very much had to get into the space where it's also billboard, it's also print. It really matters where our target market is. I'm not going to only focus on a digital solution if my client's market isn't active there. We're working with a pet brand now, and we have two audiences that we need to communicate with. We need to communicate with the general public; those would be our more traditional consumer channels, and for us, we definitely highlight on the digital side there. But we can also focus on print media. We can focus on traditional news, media buying, things like that. But then there's this other audience, which is very industry-specific. Those are your retail buyers, your industry trades. Things like that, we might go with a more traditional mix than a more digital mix. But I've been a big proponent of this digital revolution for many years. It's sort of mirroring what my own personal habits were. I'm 34 now, so I've seen – I'm at that age where when I was younger, it was only traditional, and I've seen more and more brands moving to the digital space. If the last few years have taught us anything, we went from where you had to sell clients on the concept of digital 10-15 years ago, but now they all understand that that's where they need to be. They just need to know exactly what they have to do and what exactly they should be doing. ROB: It probably gives you a pretty good advantage. A lot of traditional media is digitizing in the buying, whether you're talking about billboards, out of home, whether you're talking about TV and you have the OTT stuff. That becomes an increasingly digital buy, I think. You might know better. MATTHEW: You're absolutely right. We were hesitant to recommend things like traditional billboards to our clients in the past. We're this interesting marriage of being data-driven but also creative-driven. If we couldn't get the right data for why we were buying something or why a client should be there, it was hard for me to make that recommendation. I might say, let's conduct some hopefully siloed experiment where if we buy this particular billboard without digital capabilities, let's see if we can see any noticeable lift in sales or phone calls. We can have a tracking number. We can send them to a unique URL that's on the billboard. But if it was hard for us to measure, it was hard for us to manage. With billboards now, especially in the digital space, there are Bluetooth – I'm not sure what the phrase is, but there's this Bluetooth tracking on it so it can try to ping all the phones driving by to give us some information on that. We can also purchase particular space if we only want it between 12:00 and 2:00 and 4:00 and 6:00 when people are driving back and forth. It just gives us more options than a general “This billboard is on the corner of X & X.” ROB: I'm just curious, because I've seen things on billboards that I would never have expected would have the correct ROI for the cost. What is the cost and entry point to get into a digital billboard placement? I see restaurants hiring for chefs and I'm like, man, how does that ever ROI? Or maybe they're thinking more about awareness. It seems like it doesn't add up to me, but how does that work? MATTHEW: There is such a variation in what these prices are. It's tough to give you an exact number. I would think there might be a branding component there. We bought a billboard for a client a few weeks back, and we were looking at rural markets versus urban markets, how many people. The urban billboard, I think we were looking at something like $15-$20K a month versus the rural one was maybe $800 or $1,000 or something. ROB: Wow. MATTHEW: So there's a wide variation of what those costs should be. With a message like “We need to hire someone,” that's not the message you would expect. [laughs] I'm not tracking that; I don't know what their ROI is. It's possible they just really needed workers. But it's also possible they're thinking about it from a brand place. ROB: Right, I get that. It's like, “Hey, we're a restaurant, we're here.” Even maybe an opportunity afforded by digital is you get to shift up the creative more often, sometimes saying you're hiring and sometimes talking about your fish and chips. MATTHEW: That's exactly it. ROB: Rotating the message. MATTHEW: Yes. Frequency – we have to heavily consider that, because you don't want to give the same individual the same message 10 times in a row. It will fall flat. It may also be that that particular restaurant purchased a set amount of billboard space, and they were committed to that for X amount of months, and it came to be that they were already busy, or perhaps COVID changed things for them, and they decided, with the digital billboard, “Let's allocate 15% of that space to hiring. We've already accomplished some of the goals we intended to here, and the money has already been spent, so let's use it for something that can affect us right now.” ROB: Matthew, let's rewind the clock here a little bit. Talk us through the origin story of Emerald Digital. Where did this business come from? What led you to start it? What were you leaving behind? All of that. MATTHEW: Let me give you a little run-through here. I got into this marketing world – I've been a musician for over 25 years, and in my late teens I was heavily into music production. I started selling songs to Heineken, Hennessey, and some other large brands for the digital content they were at that time producing. I was able to do this through some ad agency contacts in New York City, which ultimately led me to partnering with one of the creative directors there, and we created a video curation and production platform called Chunnel TV. After the Great Recession hit, we were unable to raise any more money for that, and I moved to a traditional market agency in New Orleans, where I was heavily involved in social and ambassador programs. A few years later, I decided to start my own firm. This is I think where the story of Emerald begins. At that point, I started a firm called Ember Networks. We focused heavily on social, web, and SEO. A lot of the time, there were other agencies that were hiring us. They would say they were able to do XYZ, but they either didn't have the bandwidth or the ability to, so they white-labeled out. More and more over time, I began working with a firm called Herald PR, which is owned by one of my dear friends. He was in New York City. He was my college roommate, so we were always bouncing ideas off of each other. As an agency owner, it's always helpful to have that bouncing-off point. “How are you doing this? How are you doing that?” So we started working together more and more on escalating projects. After a few years, we had a client who was a villa in the Turks and Caicos. Villa Bella Vita. It's absolutely gorgeous. We went down there, we were shooting drones and doing pictures, and we had brought some of our other clients down. We said, “Why are we doing this separately? Our teams are already integrated. They're already working together. We're able to take on larger projects together and work smarter than we are alone, so let's create a joint venture.” So Emerald is a joint venture between Ember and Herald PR. And you get to work with your friends. ROB: And hopefully you get to go back down to that villa every now and again. MATTHEW: Yes, we do, actually. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] That's good, to revisit the origin a little bit in that way, for sure. MATTHEW: Yeah. That's one of the benefits of working a little bit in the luxury space. You get to look at some of these beautiful places. ROB: As we follow the narrative of Emerald Digital, that's a good starting point. What have been some key inflection points, some times in the business where the difficulty level ramped up a little bit? MATTHEW: Well, an obvious one I think would be last year. I think everyone was under similar stress. We had to shut down both of our offices, but at the same time, we were growing at a tremendous pace. We were hiring, hiring, hiring. I think our team tripled or something last year. We were trying to identify people, work with them, merge them into our team, and inculcate them on the business without being in the same physical space. So I would say that was particularly challenging. That very much led us to hyper-focusing on the documentation of our processes and making sure that we had the right communication tools in place to try to break down these physical barriers that we have now, because we have people all over the country now. While our team was mainly focused in New Orleans and New York, during the last year we've had people want to move out of Manhattan; we've had people trying to move a little closer to the middle of the country, whether that's the Midwest, Michigan, and we've had a certain amount of team members moving to Florida. So how do we collaborate? How do we communicate? How are we working efficiently in this environment where we're all separated? That was a pretty major challenge. But it really led us to hyper-focusing on what these processes were and then implementing a toolset that was able to mold our workflow so that we weren't looking at “This thing is on Dropbox and this thing is on Drive and this guy communicates on Zoom and this person communicates on Slack.” It was looking at all of the different things we were doing across two offices, and now we're trying to operationalize this entire business. ROB: That's a really interesting thread to pull on. What are some of those key tools, practices? What makes distributed work for Emerald? MATTHEW: The first thing was we had to write all of these SOPs. First it was, what are the different stages in the work that we have to do, whether it's account service, biz dev, sales, the content creation process – everything from the brainstorm to the client revision to the scheduling to the ad buying? It was mapping out each of these different things we do. I think one of the first things was we wrote this book. I think we had 91 individual SOPs. And it didn't at that point cover everything. So it was like, all right, we have all of these SOPs. No one's going to read 91 separate things, so we need to put them in a single place that everyone can see at all times, and we have to add video. We added GIFs. We unified all of the documents. We had that all in a drive. But then in the last few months, we moved over to a program called ClickUp. It's been fantastic. We're very happy to have moved over because we can aggregate all of our docs. We implemented all of our different processes into the actual software, so we were able to automate a lot of different things. We were able to streamline a lot of our reporting as well and a lot of our client communication. If there was a particular deliverable we had, we were able to have that automatically pull up. So if we have a social client that needs XYZ, when that job is created, it will pull in the SOPs that we have made and automatically pull in some of our primary documentation so that the employee doesn't need to go looking for it or even realize they have to pull that up. It'll just have it right there.  ROB: Sure, and then nobody has to ask where something is, right? They can go look for it, actually, which is helpful. MATTHEW: Yes. Not only be able to look for it, but to remind them that it's there. I think that first month when everyone was working from home, it was, “Where is this thing? Where is that thing? Which folder?” It was a big organizational task. Not only to have it where it's all in a place that the person can find, but it's to create automated reminders and touchpoints on our end so that we don't even have to find it. It's right there. “Hey, by the way, since you're making a social media post, here's a few things that might help you out. Here's previous creative. Here's file assets. Here's a step-by-step on how to do this. Here's a video. And if you need help, here's a simple form that you can fill out right there, and that form will automatically be sent to your superior, our management team, or even our leadership.” ROB: Has it been difficult for everyone to make that transition? It seems like that's a cultural shift, and with that comes the privilege of being able to be distributed, of being able to move to Florida whenever you want. But has that been a tough transition across the team in some cases? MATTHEW: I want to point out that I'm so happy with the way our team has adapted. Everyone has done a tremendous job, to the point where I think in many cases we're more efficient now than we even were before. But I think on a personal level, for many people, with that shift in not going to the office and being in the same house with all of your kids who can't go to school for months at a time, or for even the new hires, there's certainly difficulty there. Or we have employees who have older parents. So there's certainly difficulties. But I think on a professional level, our team has adapted to it tremendously. ROB: That's good news. It's a tricky transition. Now, as you're spread apart, how are you thinking about in person? Is there a cadence of getting together, or is it off the table for now? MATTHEW: That's a great question. With your previous question, you asked what some of the challenges are, and I think one of the biggest ones, especially for me and our creative team, is there are these great ideas that happen off the cuff around the water cooler, and you can sit around a whiteboard in the same physical space and be like, “Wouldn't it be cool if we did XYZ?” There is absolutely something to being in the same physical space. I don't want to discount that. Where I believe we will be moving to as things open up is a more flex time model, where you can come into the office two or three times a week and then you can work from home the rest of the time. If you're not in a location where one of the offices is, then obviously you cannot come in. But wherever possible, I think we're going to identify physical opportunities for everyone to get together, whether that's once a quarter or – we're not sure exactly what that frequency is. But we have several different cadences now for our team to brainstorm, to basically connect. We have an all hands meeting every Monday, every Friday, and then each of our separate teams meets every single morning. “What are we doing today? What are our goals? How did yesterday go?” Those are our primary touchpoints. Most of us are in communication with each other throughout the day anyway, but it's still good to get everyone on those face-to-faces. On a digital face-to-face, I should say. ROB: [laughs] Absolutely. Matthew, as you think back on the journey so far, what are maybe some lessons you have learned that you would tell yourself to do a little bit differently if you were starting from scratch? MATTHEW: I think to document these processes is something I would've done much, much sooner. It would've helped us scale a lot faster, and I think a lot more efficiently. So certainly that. And it would have allowed us to train and hire people in a much easier manner, and I think for us to even identify what some of our own roadblocks were and to have a better understanding of what repeatable processes we have and where we can identify pain points and how we can grow those. And certainly another one for myself – for many years, I wanted to see every creative and had to approve it. It was almost like all roads went through me. That's a tough thing to let go of, but as a business owner, you have to. You have to trust the people that you're hiring to make the decisions that you hired them to do, and only to come to you when they need you, or for you to bring them that strategic vision or directive. But give them enough room to do their job properly. So I would say, “Chill out, Matt. Let go.” [laughs] Bring on the smartest people that you possibly can. That's a really major part. You as the business owner want to be the dumbest person in the entire room. Your job is to hire the smartest people for the best job that you can find, and hire them no matter what it takes so that you can trust them to do what they do well. ROB: How do you time that transition? Because clearly, you start the thing from zero and you're going to be working in the business, necessarily. Very few people – I know one guy that bought five agencies and he just starts being in charge. But for most of us, you're starting with a special talent. You're starting with that skill that you have being the reason that people come to you, and then you start having people fill in some of your weaknesses, and then people who also have your strengths. How do you think about when to start turning the corner on getting yourself out of every piece of creative? How do you time that? MATTHEW: That's a great question. Certainly bringing in smart people and then making sure they know exactly the job they're supposed to do, and then giving them – maybe working with them for the first month or two, where you are a little more hands-on, and just ensure that your processes work. Just oversee. Say, “I built all these processes out. I have trained you. Here's enough room for you to do it yourself.” And you set, “Every Thursday I'm going to dedicate three hours to ensuring that this foundation that we've made is actually working.” You start with different topics. Maybe I'm going to let go of all of the creative when it comes to social posts and video production, but I'm still going to hold on to this web dev side. For now, I want to be able to test everything and I want to be able to overlook the code. I just want to make sure everything's working properly. I think one by one, start making sure that each of those teams has that process down. I would start thinking about what unique assets you have. Are you the best at social? Are you the best web guy? Are you the best for overall strategy? Did you create a web firm because you're a killer coder? Start thinking about the things that you can offload that maybe don't fall into your expertise as much as the others. ROB: That makes perfect sense. As we look at the future of Emerald and of the work that you do for clients, what's coming up? What's the future look like? What's exciting there? What should we be looking out for? MATTHEW: Awesome. If we talk general industry – and I kind of mentioned this before, but it felt like for many years we had to pitch about why you should be in the digital space at all. That conversation, especially in the last two years, has really shifted to “You know that you have to be here. Now we can do some really interesting things.” Our clients are much more on board with this concept of telling a never-ending story, having an ongoing narrative that can be broken up into digestible pieces across multiple platforms, multiple touchpoints. I think that's very exciting as a storyteller. We can create video, we can create audio, we can do all these interesting things. I think that's really fun. That brings us to what's on the horizon. We're not going to be using the same platforms forever, and they change all of the time. More and more, we're seeing movement in the AR, VR, and AI space. I think it's really exciting. There's this fantastic firm up in New York that we are friends with, and some of the stuff they create is this marriage of a digital space with a real-world space. I think as a storyteller, that opens up so many different avenues for us, because now all of your content and all of your communication doesn't have to be flat. It can be 3D. It can be all-encompassing. You can build things that can sit on someone's table and look like they actually exist. So I'm very excited for that AR/VR space, and then on the AI side, it's certainly helping us to more intelligently gather and parse out what our data means, but also to create content faster. ROB: Lots going on there. It would probably be a whole interesting other conversation to get into the level and approach and who's appropriate to get into AR/VR. But I think with the right creative people, a lot is certainly possible. MATTHEW: Yeah. I definitely think we're still a few years out, and it's probably a matter of one of these big tech firms releasing the Apple Glasses or a contact lens. I think the general user hasn't adopted these yet. We're very much still in the first mover advantage. It's not quite there. But part of our role as a business owner here is to set the business up for success 10 years from now. We don't want to be the best Facebook ads guys in 10 years. We want to be the guys that are doing the next thing great as well. ROB: Excellent. Matthew, when people want to track you down, and Emerald Digital, how should they connect with you? MATTHEW: Check us out at https://emerald.digital. ROB: Awesome. We get these hot new domains. I kind of want to get a .digital myself, but maybe just to track my billboard ads. I don't know. We'll get there. [laughs] MATTHEW: Yes, done. [laughs] ROB: Thank you so much, Matthew. Thank you for coming on, for sharing. Best wishes to you and the whole Emerald team. MATTHEW: Thank you so much. ROB: And all the good stuff going on in New York and New Orleans and beyond, right? MATTHEW: And beyond. ROB: Excellent. Have a wonderful day, a wonderful week, and thank you so much, Matthew. MATTHEW: Thank you, Rob, for absolutely everything. Cheers. ROB: Cheers. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

I discuss the essentials of thriving-base pricing through the lens of my upcoming group coaching program, One Year From Now: The Residency. Using my own experience with my $20K invitation, I aim to motivate and embolden you to examine your current pricing model and how to make improvements to solidify the integrity of your triangle (yourself, your clients, and your business) of thriving.  In this episode, I cover: Pricing as an invitation to your customers Defining the word “thrive”  Keeping your triangle intact  Delivering proportions to stay in integrity with your pricing Putting together the necessary mindset ingredients for thriving-based pricing  Experiencing and coping with pricing discomfort

China has a problem in suburban areas with loud dance music from “dancing grannies,” sometimes late into the night. One man has invented a remote-control device that he now sells—20K units to date—that will shut off the speakers and thus shut-down the dancing granny parties. Then a CEO sits on a toilet for 50 hours to raise awareness and money for sanitary products for the developing world. He raised over $30 million for Who Gives a Crap. Finally, the US Mint will release 5 new quarters in 2022 celebrating trailblazing women of America.Apple Podcasts: apple.co/1WwDBrCSpotify: spoti.fi/2pC19B1iHeart Radio: bit.ly/2n0Z7H1Tunein: bit.ly/1SE3NMbStitcher: bit.ly/1N97ZquGoogle Podcasts: bit.ly/1pQTcVWPandora: pdora.co/2pEfctjYouTube: bit.ly/1spAF5aAlso follow Tim and John on:Facebook: www.facebook.com/focusgroupradioTwitter: www.twitter.com/focusgroupradioInstagram: www.instagram.com/focusgroupradio

Ron Christopher is a husband transit operator by day and the real estate entrepreneur by night, after being 20K data in 18 months, he focused on creating generational wealth for his family by leveraging the power of real estate. He is avidly documenting his journey to inspire others, to start building wealth.

Your real estate license can do a lot more than just helping clients buy and sell their properties. If you're a real estate agent, pay attention to this episode because Rachel Richards is about to unveil the secrets to acquiring 40 properties in 3 years with only $20K and a REALTOR's license. Key takeaways to listen for Why you should consider house hacking How REALTORS can quickly build up a portfolio Is owning rental properties 100% passive? What is syndication? Resources mentioned in this episode Dream Big: Know What You Want, Why You Want It, and What You're Going to Do About It Money Honey: A Simple 7-Step Guide For Getting Your Financial $hit Together About Rachel Richards At the age of 27, Rachel Richards quit her job and retired, now living off $15,000+ per month in passive income. Rachel is the bestselling author of Money Honey and Passive Income, Aggressive Retirement. She is a former financial advisor and a real estate investor with almost 40 rental units. She has been featured on CNBC, Business Insider, and BiggerPockets Podcast. By making the topic of money management fun, entertaining, and simple, Rachel has helped thousands of millennials work their way out of financial despair. Connect with Rachel Website: www.moneyhoneyrachel.com Instagram: @moneyhoneyrachel Facebook: Money Honey Rachel   Connect with Leigh Please subscribe to this podcast in iTunes or in the Podcasts App on your phone, and never miss a beat from Leigh by visiting https://leighbrown.com. DM Leigh Brown on Instagram or on Twitter or any social networks by clicking here. Subscribe to Leigh's other podcast Real Estate From The Rooftops! Sponsor If you're tired of doing real estate alone, enroll in  Leigh Brown University and be sure to use your special “CSIRE” discount code at checkout for $10 off your subscription.

“That was the moment where I remember being like, ‘Oh, I'm not done yet.' Like I know there's more. It finally hit me, ‘If you just continue on, you have no idea where your ceiling is.' So at that point, I just wanted to see how far I could go.” This summer, Erika Kemp — like so many professional runners — had one really, really, really big goal race. Since going pro in 2018 and signing with the Boston Athletic Association and adidas, Erika knew she would want to compete at the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials in hopes of making her Team USA debut. When it came time to race the 5K at Hayward Field, Erika made it through the first round and advanced to the finals. But ultimately, she finished last that day, and didn't make the 2020 Olympic team. But! Erika has gone on to have an incredible season since then. On this episode, Erika talks about her physical and emotional recovery from the Trials, and explains her motivation for continuing to race throughout the year. Since the Trials, Erika won the USATF New England 5-mile championships, won the U.S. 20K championships at the New Haven Road Race (it was her debut at that distance, and it earned her a second national title), won the Cow Harbor 10K (and ran a personal best), and finished fourth at the Cooper River Bridge Run 10K the following weekend. This girl is on fire, and on this episode, she talks about how she fell in love with running — and how she stays in love with it. SPONSOR: UCAN. Click here and use code ALI for 20% off your entire UCAN order! What you'll get on this episode: How Erika plans her season (4:00) All about this year's Olympic Track & Field Trials (10:30) On returning to running after taking a break (14:55) Why the Trials felt so “big” (16:45) Erika's outlook on racing this season (20:30) Try it: Erika's favorite workout (24:30) All about Erika's childhood and how she got into running (27:45) On falling in love with running (34:50) On going pro (39:00) Where to find Erika during Boston Marathon weekend (46:30) Erika's biggest hopes, dreams, and goals (49:50) Follow Erika: Instagram @imtinyrik Follow Ali: Instagram @aliontherun1 Join the Facebook group Twitter @aliontherun1 Support on Patreon Blog Strava Listen & Subscribe: Apple Podcasts Spotify SoundCloud Overcast Stitcher Google Play SUPPORT the Ali on the Run Show! If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe and leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Spread the run love. And if you liked this episode, share it with your friends!

Jorge Wins Big! 20K in Mythical money from the Packers winning on MNF. Now the guys Bet Big on the Dodgers in the Wild Card game and on winning the Division. Did you watch the Manning's Telecast for Monday Night Football. Also, Ben Simmons says he's done with the 76ers. He doesn't want to play another game for them. Plus, WHEEL OF QUESTION - Would you rather have a mullet or go Bald? And Bruce Feldman from NFL MEDIA Move THE STICK PODCAST talks about Clay Helton's Biggest problem as the USC Head Football Coach.