Podcasts about smbs

Dimensional inventory is more than just a bunch of attributes at the product level. It affects how the items are created, planned, and tracked. Using an ERP system without the support for dimensional inventory might result in planning issues. It might also result in ad-hoc processes and increased admin effort in correlating dimensions on top of raw data. So what are the best practices when it comes to dimensional inventory?In today's episode, we invited a panel of cross-functional experts for a live interview on LinkedIn who brings significant expertise to discuss Dimensional Inventory best practices. We discussed how dimensional or matrix inventory differs in various industries, as well as why systems not designed for dimensional inventory may lead to increased admin efforts. Finally, we discussed the impact of matrix inventory on planning, merchandizing, shop floor, warehouse, and logistics.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

One of the most difficult skills to master as a small business owner is advertising.  What drives a person to first look at your ad, be inspired to act, and then take action.  That is the secret that most businesses have to figure out.  One thing is for certain, if you don't advertise, chance are that you won't have much business.  Mike & Blaine talk advertising in this week's episode.Today's Beer:Mike: New Belgium - Top Raider IPABlaine: Bottle Logic - She Shot First Tropical IPA@newbelgium @BottleLogicBrewingWatch on Youtube at https://youtu.be/_HWCfXoQ_o4Listen to all our episodes at: https://www.mikeandblaine.com/podcastcashflowmike.comdryrun.com#smallbusiness, #cashflow #finance #beer #friends #entrepreneur #smbs #craftbeer Support the showCatch more episodes, see our sponsors and get in touch at https://mikeandblaine.com/

Do you know an eCommerce platform that is designed for WordPress users? Do you know an eCommerce platform that may require several plugins to build a complex store? Do you know an eCommerce platform that is designed for SMBs and doesn't charge based on GMV? Do you know an open-source eCommerce platform that is written in PHP but is not Magento or OroCommerce? If you guessed WooCommerce, then you are right.In today's episode, we invited a panel of industry experts for a live discussion on LinkedIn to conduct an independent review of WooCommerce's capabilities. We covered how it compares with other open-source and commercial platforms. Finally, we covered the businesses that would be most benefited from WooCommerce and where they might be stretching their capabilities.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe to your favorite podcasting platform.

Do you know an ERP system that is designed for manufacturing but is not from Infor or Epicor? Do you know an ERP system that may not support as many layers of BOMs that Infor or Epicor systems might be able to support? Do you know an ERP system that might struggle with diverse business models, such as a business that might do both construction and distribution? Do you know an ERP system that has a very similar look and feel to Infor? If you have guessed Aptean Made2Manage, then you are right.In today's episode, we invited a panel of industry experts for a live discussion on LinkedIn to conduct an independent review of Aptean Made2Manage's capabilities. We covered many grounds including its similarity in look and feel with Infor. Finally, we covered its BOM structure, traceability, costing layers,and technology.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Every vendor out there would love to get on the shelves of big-box retailers. But the conversation finishes as soon as they ask for the price list. It might finish even sooner if you don't know how to find the right buyer and understand their interests before pitching to them. So what are the best practices to get the attention of retail buyers?In today's episode our guest, Gil Bar-Lev, shares insights about the challenges associated with getting products on retailers' shelves. He also talks about how dropshipping works and how some people might confuse it with the wholesale model. Finally, he discusses different strategies in navigating larger procurement organizations and how to get their attention.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

How can marketing leaders inspire their teams? Sarah Acton, CMO of BILL, claims impact comes from learning what drives them, while also diving deep into the company's mission to understand how to improve the customer experience.Tune in to learn how Sarah created a rebrand for BILL in her first year as CMO. Tune in to learn:When Sarah found her love for SMBs (4:40)About Sarah's part in the BILL rebrand (16:01)How to build relationships with other executive leaders (21:49)What Sarah has to say to aspiring marketing leaders (29:21)Mentions:The Smiling FrogRenè Lacerte, CEO of BILLChief | LinkedIn Marketing Trends is brought to you by Salesforce Marketing Cloud. For more great marketing insights, sign up for The Marketing Moments newsletter. You'll get ideas to help you build better customer relationships, invites to upcoming events, and access to the latest industry research. Subscribe at https://sforce.co/MarketingMoments

In this episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks with Carly Cais, Founder and CEO of RevvSpark. Carly shares her passion for helping B2B companies succeed by producing full funnel content and copywriting for them to increase retention and sales. She explains the importance of providing a great onboarding experience with their customers - onboarding scripts, email sequences, PDFs, anything that can add value to the customer. Their objective? Ensure that the content their customers post is aligned with how their audience wants to interact with their business. Carly says things have changed a lot in B2B since the Internet exploded. She says many B2B buyers no longer want a full sales process where they have to deal with a salesperson. They want to self-educate and get as much information online from your website or other digital touchpoints for legitimacy. She says their mission at RevvSpark is to ensure that their clients have a very robust digital library that people can tap into and self-educate to get to the point where all sales calls close around 50% or more. Key Points from the Episode: How Can Content Increase Customer Retention for B2B? What are Customers Looking for Today More Than 5-10 Years Ago? Understanding the Modern B2B Buyer About Carly Cais: Carly J. Cais (Founder and CEO, RevvSpark) started in marketing over 20 years ago, first in B2C and then B2B. Author of the upcoming book “Startup to Scaleup '' and CEO of content marketing agency RevvSpark, she is on a mission to grow businesses with creative “Conversion Content” that enhances internal teams and drives demand. About RevvSpark: RevvSpark is a content and copywriting agency that provides Conversion Content for demand generation, content marketing and sales enablement. It was launched in 2021, originally as a sales and marketing consultancy, then rebranded as an agency. Their team spans the globe with B2B content and copywriting experts. Founder and CEO Carly J. Cais brings over 20 years of experience in marketing, revenue operations, and sales enablement for SaaS organizations. RevvSpark focuses on B2B businesses, primarily SaaS and services. They typically work with Growth Managers, VPs of Marketing, CMOs, CMOs, and CROs to amplify their efforts and help the business get to the next level. They create words, layout and images that convince and convert. They also help accelerate the growth of mid-stage businesses by complementing what internal teams can accomplish. They provide marketing content to generate demand in the market, encourage prospects to take the next step in the buyer's journey and convert visitors into buyers (MoFu/ToFu content). RevvSpark's focus on excellence in the middle and bottom of the funnel. They delve into buyer psychology and buyer pain points, product expertise, long-tail keyword research, and leverage research and interviews with SMBs to create content that speaks to the target audience, exactly at their stage of the buying journey. They also create internal enablement content for sales teams to convert sales reps into seasoned professionals, reduce ramp-up time, document internal processes, and upgrade skill sets. Links Mentioned in this Episode: Want to learn more? Check out RevvSpark's website at https://www.revvspark.com/ Check out RevvSpark on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/revvspark/ Check out Carly Cais on LinkedIn at

The lot and serial numbers strategies can help improve customer experience and traceability. But over-implementing lot and serial numbers might fire back with the increased overhead and admin efforts. In some industries, the lot numbers could be so involved that you might require multiple lot and serial numbers as part of the same product. There might also be requirements for different BOMs that may contain traceable assembly. So what are the best practices when it comes to implementing lot and serial numbers?In today's episode, we invited a panel of cross-functional experts to live interview on LinkedIn who brings significant expertise to discuss Lot/Serial Control best practices. We discussed the layers of the lot and serial numbers and how they might be different in different industries. Finally, we discussed the unique lot and serial number requirements of industries such as defense, pharma, and custom manufacturing.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

This episode is brought to you by Warren Coughlin, CEO Coach and founder of JumpStart Coaching. Warren focuses exclusively on coaching CEOs running SMBs, and has been doing so for over 20 years. One of my biggest regrets across my 7 years as a CEO was not hiring a coach, and I want to prevent others from making the same mistake. For listeners of In The Trenches, working with Warren is effectively risk-free: If at the end of the first three months you're not happy with the direction of your business, he will give you your money back. On top of that, Warren is offering $3,000 off of his coaching program for listeners of In The Trenches. Just go to warrencoughlin.com/trenches to learn more. * This episode is brought to you by Cayne Crossing. Cayne Crossing helps prospective SMB purchasers with all aspects of financial due diligence, including producing the Quality of Earnings report. Unlike any other QofE provider that I'm aware of, Cayne Crossing also co-invests alongside their buyers, aligning their interests with yours in a way that I simply haven't seen anywhere else. Cayne Crossing is offering a special discount to listeners of In The Trenches: Just go to caynecrossing.com, and scroll down to the “contact form” on their homepage. Enter the offer code “trenches”, and you will get a full $2,000 off of your QofE engagement with them. * CEOs running newly public companies, those who have raised external equity for the first time, and those occupying the CEO seat for the first-time are often intimidated by the idea of reporting into a Board, and are uncertain of how to construct, manage, communicate with, and learn from them. This combination of uncertainty and inexperience often creates undue stress for CEOs, and can create situations in which they are more focused on impressing their Boards than they are on leaning on them for support, guidance, and mentorship. Over many years as a CEO reporting directly into a Board (and now as an investor who sits on Boards and works directly with CEOs myself), I've come to learn a few things about how to construct, manage, communicate with, and learn from this critically important group of people. This episode is my best attempt at sharing these lessons with you.

Three things to know today Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service now generally available TechAisle Survey Indicates Move Away from Hybrid Work, but Challenges Remain for SMBs and Midmarket Firms AND 4 Day Week Global Experiment Shows Positive Results for Companies and Employees, More Adopters to Follow This is the Business of Tech.      Support the show on Patreon:  https://patreon.com/mspradio/   Want our stuff?  Cool Merch?  Wear “Why Do We Care?” - Visit https://mspradio.myspreadshop.com   Follow us on: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mspradionews/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mspradionews/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mspradio/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28908079/

Do you know an eCommerce platform that targets very small eCommerce startups, just like Wix or GoDaddy? Do you know an eCommerce platform that had recently filed chapter 11 to restructure its debt? Do you know an eCommerce platform that may not have as high a transaction fee similar to Shopify? Do you know an eCommerce platform that is based in Austin, TX? If you guessed Volusion, then you are right.In today's episode, we invited a panel of industry experts for a live discussion on LinkedIn to conduct an independent review of Volusion's capabilities. We covered its strengths such as not having as high transaction fees and its alignment with smaller businesses. Finally, we discussed its financial challenges and the problems users reported while using this platform.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe to your favorite podcasting platform.

There are plenty of non-traditional paths that CFOs have taken to get where they are today. We've spoken with financial leaders who came from marketing, sales, and even psychology. Today, we dive into a story shared by Samantha Cook, who started as an architect and became a CFO in the construction industry. Samantha is the CFO of Brinkmann Constructors and the President and Founder of Third Entity Group, a private consulting firm focused on delivering strategic business, finance, technology, and supply chain direction to SMBs. Before Brinkmann, she held several roles in finance and operations leadership at companies like Clayco, Brown Smith Wallace, and Escala. Samantha was named a 2019 influential woman in real estate by the REJournals and won the 2019 Inclusion Award from SLCCC. In this episode, we discuss: -Construction and finance -What should first-time CFOs focus on when taking the role? -CFO versus Senior Director of Finance -Supporting SMBs -The CFO role in the construction industry Presented by Personiv https://insights.personiv.com/cfo-weekly

Do you know an ERP system that is designed for the lumber and building materials industry? Do you know an ERP system that is integrated with most modeling software in the building materials space? Do you know an ERP system that allows entering delivery # and carrier while receiving inventory in the warehouse? Do you know an ERP system that allows picking based on sales orders? If you have guessed BisTrack, then you are right.In today's episode, we invited a panel of industry experts for a live discussion on LinkedIn to conduct an independent review of BisTrack's capabilities. We covered many grounds including its alignment with the building materials distributors and why this vertical has very unique needs where a vanilla ERP might struggle. Finally, we covered different integration requirements such as with the estimation software and eCommerce platforms, and how critical that is for ERP systems in this industry.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

On the heels of a brand redesign, Mike & Blaine tackle getting the opinion of the market for your idea.  What's the right thing to do?  Should you gather input from the market or do you know better because they haven't been exposed to the idea yet.  Henry Ford said “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”  We unpack the quote in this week's episode of Mike & Blaine.Today's Beer:Mike: Martin House Brewing Company - Astronaut Apocalypse Imperial StoutBlaine: Lost Abby - Noble Tendencies Czech Style Pilsner@martinhousebrewing @lostabbeyWatch on Youtube at https://youtu.be/Cu6toeO0xBQListen to all our episodes at: https://www.mikeandblaine.com/podcastcashflowmike.comdryrun.com#smallbusiness, #cashflow #finance #beer #friends #entrepreneur #smbs #craftbeer Support the showCatch more episodes, see our sponsors and get in touch at https://mikeandblaine.com/

On this episode of The Marketer's Journey, I interview Carin Van Vuuren, CMO at Greenhouse Software, a high-growth organization operating in the recruitment space. Carin describes how when she first joined the team at Greenhouse, she was challenged with going upmarket, entering into an entirely different segment. She explains why marketers need to take a different approach depending on if they're targeting SMBs or enterprises, and she shares the simple segmentation strategy that works for her team.Check out this and other episodes of The Marketer's Journey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts!Key takeaways from this episode:C-level executives should prioritize hiring. Carin believes that hiring is the most important job for every business leader, so strong partnerships between a recruiter and a c-level executive is crucial. She recommends that CEOs and CMOs stay involved in the hiring process from beginning to end because building the right team is so essential. For any rebrand, team buy-in is essential. Carin notes that one of her first challenges as Greenhouse's CMO was to elevate the brand to ensure it reflected the sort of company that large enterprises would feel comfortable partnering with. From the beginning, she knew that uniting the entire organization through one aligned vision and getting clear on their brand promise would be critical.Take leadership notes from the bees. As a former beekeeper, Carin says that many of the best lessons she's learned about leadership have come from observing the behavior of bees. For example, the queen bee is first and foremost a servant leader, which means she always puts the hive first rather than prioritizing her own interests.Learn more about Greenhouse Software here: https://www.greenhouse.com/ Learn more about Carin here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carinvanvuuren/

About Ray Pasquale and Unified Office: Ray has spent the last 20+ years as an entrepreneurial technology professional, he has extensive sales and customer engineering experience along with proven management team leadership in dynamic, emerging technology companies. Recently Ray playeda key leadership role in professional and customer services, business development, pre-sales and technical marketing while at Sonus Networks, a market leader in Voice over IP technologies. Ray was a founding member of Sonus's services organization, recruiting many of its most senior members. From 1996 until 1999 Ray was a key technical leader and sales consultant for Cascade Communications' worldwide sales organization. During his tenure Cascade was purchased by Ascend Communications. Ascend, a leader in remote access technologies for the Internet market, was subsequently absorbed by Lucent in a merger. Prior to 1996, Ray's tenure with Digital Equipment Company included positions as Senior Consultant for Worldwide Network Operations, and Technical Leader and Senior Consultant for the Network Products Group. Ray's commitments to excellence and ideas were recognized by Digital. Mr. Pasquale received a Customer Satisfaction Award, Storage Systems Excellence Award, and Delta Ideas Recognition Award. He attended the University of Maine. Ray brings passion and commitment to every project he works on. He applies an open mind to projects in a way that fosters creativity and innovation. I've known him to be skillful in building a technical team. He is able to identify and mentor bright young engineering talent. In addition to his technical side, Ray has broad experience and a grasp of core business planning and marketing fundamentals. His style is direct and concise. Unified Office, Inc. is a leading provider of SDN-based hybrid cloud managed Voice-over-IP (VoIP) and Unified Communications services to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Unified Office's Total Connect Now℠ service architecture was purpose-built from the ground up to deliver the highest quality of experience and availability, leveraging the latest in extensible business VoIP communications technology and cloud-based infrastructure to enhance SMB workforce productivity. Their cloud-based intelligent network incorporates Unified Office's unique adaptive Highest Quality Routing™ (HQR) for end-to-end service quality, and Business Continuity “shadowing” to ensure high availability operation over one or more redundant broadband links. Over the last 7 or 8 years, Internet of Things (IoT) solutions have generally been marketed to and purchased by large enterprises. There are hundreds of IoT solutions for countless use cases including remote asset tracking, factory automation, fleet services, energy/utilities management, parking management, facilities management, smart vehicle enablement and many others. But what about sales of IoT to the world's 200 million small and medium businesses (SMBs)?

While companies understand the importance of cash, they struggle to create processes and KPIs that will help them drive cash for the company. Cash is the ultimate lifeblood of the companies. And they could have cash issues because of so many reasons. The cash issues could be because of how you are allocating your inventory to each channel. They could also be due to the inability to map the cash cycle of the business. Finally, they could be because you might be hyper-focused on revenue.In today's episode our guest, David Safeer, shares why companies need to shift their mindset to cash-focused strategies. He also talks about cash-related topics such as variables that drive cash issues with businesses, the KPIs that mislead businesses and cause performance issues, and how sales strategies might result in cash improvement. Finally, he shared several stories where he was able to save cash for several companies through this mindset.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Guest:  Gary Hayslip, CISO at Softbank Topics:  "So we're talking about your journey as a CISO migrating to Cloud. Could you give us the 30 second overview of  What triggered your organization's migration to the cloud? When did you and the security organization get brought in? How did you plan your security  organization's journey to the cloud? Did you take going to cloud as an opportunity to change things beyond the tools you were using?  As you got going into the cloud, what was the hardest part for your organization? If that was hardest, what was most surprising? Good surprise and bad surprise? Let's shift to some tactical gears: How did you design security controls for the cloud? Did your data security practice change? Did your detection  / response practice change? How has the CISO role evolved and is evolving due to the cloud? Having covered all that tactical terrain, one final strategic question: is moving to Cloud a net risk reduction? Can it be? Resources: “CISO Desk Reference Guide” book by Gary Hayslip “The Essential Guide to Cybersecurity for SMBs” book by Gary Hayslip “Develop Your Cybersecurity Career Path” book by Gary Hayslip

As hyper-connectivity and cloud storage rise in popularity, reducing complexity is a must. Netgear aims to support small businesses with top-notch Wi-Fi provision, streamlined interfaces and a constant regard for SMBs and MSPs as their guide.Shelby Skrhak speaks with Doug Cheung, director of product management at Netgear, Inc., about:What qualifies as a small businessWhy Pro Wi-Fi is lucrative for small businessesHow Netgear provides optimal valueTo join the discussion, follow us on Twitter @IngramTechSol #B2BTechTalkListen to this episode and more like it by subscribing to B2B Tech Talk on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. Or, tune in on our website.

Season 3 starts off with a bang!  You can't begin a new year without a new set of expectations for yourself and your business.  Nobody said it better than the founder of Wal-Mart himself, Sam Walton.  Check out this episode to see what Mike and Blaine have in store for Season 3, and 2023 for themselves personally, and professionally. Today's Beer:Mike: Scope Creep - Fair State Brewing CooperativeBlaine: Goldwater - Birthday Suit West Coast IPA@FairStateCoop @goldwaterbrewingcoListen to all our episodes at: https://www.mikeandblaine.com/podcast#smallbusiness, #cashflow #finance #beer #friends #entrepreneur #smbs #craftbeer Watch on Youtube at https://youtu.be/irz4CmziMgUSupport the showCatch more episodes, see our sponsors and get in touch at https://mikeandblaine.com/

In this episode, we hear from Kunal Rohatgi, the Founder of Fos Lighting, about the journey of his third-generation family-run business. Launched in 2010, Fos Lighting designs manufactures and supplies decorative lighting using locally sourced raw materials and a team of artisans from all over India. They were one of the early adopters of online marketplaces and it paid off - today, despite having three offline stores in Delhi NCR, their online sales surpass offline sales. Tune in to learn how Fos Lighting managed to successfully blend family tradition with e-commerce innovation and how it helps them to scale and operate their business. About Open For Business Series: In this five-part series, I bring you stories of some of the homegrown small and medium businesses. These stories are representative of the countless SMBs in the country that plays a key role in the overall economic growth of India. By celebrating these businesses, I hope to inspire you to start and scale your business. In each episode, you'll hear the stories of building businesses, strategies, and innovations that are helping these brands to grow their revenue and impact the lives of people associated with them.

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT Jannatul Choudhury found his way into the digital signage software business out of frustration - writing his own cloud-based platform because the one he was under contract to use and maintain gave him endless headaches. The Manchester, UK software developer wrote the code and is now growing out the functionality and installed footprint of what he and a business partner then launched as PosterBooking, a SaaS digital signage CMS aimed at the small to medium business market. The goal was produce something that was easy to use, and met marketplace needs. One of those big needs was minimal cost - which steered Choudhury to offering a freemium model. Offering the base platform for free to end-users also allowed him to spin up PosterBooking more quickly, because that eliminated a big chunk of work needed to develop a payment gateway. I had a good chat with Choudhury about his boot-strapped start-up, his love of coding, and how his business operates when the code product is free. Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS TRANSCRIPT Jannatul, thank you for joining me. Can you give me the background on what PosterBooking is all about? What would be your elevator pitch if I asked you that?  Jannatul Choudhury: Yeah, sure. Thank you for having me on your podcast. I love what you're doing for the digital signage industry. It's phenomenal, without a doubt. I think I started following you about a year ago on LinkedIn. I was thinking to myself, I'd love to be on your podcast in the near future so thank you for making that happen. A little background on what PosterBooking is: PosterBooking is a free cloud-based SaaS platform for digital signage. We make it really easy to display images, videos, webpages, and other content on any device like tablets, TVs, LED screens,s and so on from your computer or your smartphone. The platform can be white labeled and is available in seven different languages.  So how did we start PosterBooking? Me and my co-founder, Monsur, we've known each other for quite a long time now, we've had various startups along the way. We were managing some screens for the NHS in the south of England and we were using an existing digital signage platform and every now and then, we used to have some issues and we'd have to travel down there. It was like a six-hour round trip just to make some changes or if the screen was down, we didn't have any playback on what was actually happening. We'd have to go down there with our laptop, keyboard, and mouse just because it was like a Windows machine. And from that we thought, yeah, let's look at alternatives. See what's there, are there any cost-effective solutions? And it has to work on mobile. So we were looking through a handful of them and we couldn't find exactly what we were looking for, like we were looking for a solution that could either be free for a couple of screens so that we didn't have to exactly pay, we don't mind paying for add-ons, et cetera, if it benefits us, and is something that's solely usable on mobile.  Obviously at the time, I don't think that there were many platforms out there that provided that so we thought like, how hard could this be? I've got a tech background, so I thought why not give you a crack? And that's how PosterBooking started.  So you're a coder, right?  Jannatul Choudhury: Yeah. I graduated in 2016 with a software software engineering degree. So I've got quite a bit of a background in tech, especially SaaS as well. And you're based in the Manchester area?  Jannatul Choudhury: Yeah, that's correct. Manchester, England.  When you were servicing this NHS install any of coming to grips with this not being the solution that you needed, I'm curious if you canvased the marketplace and looked at the options out there because there's a whole bunch of “easy to use, affordable” all those kinds of terms CMS software options out there.  Did you half pause when you're thinking, okay, I could write something, but there seems to be a lot of this out there already, or you thought you could do something different?  Jannatul Choudhury: That's a great question. So we did have a look at a number of digital signage companies as a consumer and during that research, before forming PosterBooking, we thought, yeah, there's certainly a gap in the market, and with obviously my background and our idea of what we actually wanted to do. I'll probably get into that shortly. The name PosterBooking comes from do you know how you can book posters? So the idea was to essentially build a platform that allows customers to advertise on different screens. So it basically gives the power to customers to open up their screens to other advertisers and generate revenue through that. So we did quite a bit of research and we found nothing that's completely free and that helps with our end goal. So we just thought, yeah let's build this platform and see where it goes, and quite frankly, it took off really quickly. To begin with, during Covid, we launched during Covid, it was a bit slow, but that actually helped us with servicing a couple of users and building at the same time.  I'm curious about a post on LinkedIn that you put up, maybe where I first came across the company name, you talked about the five things that you've learned along the way in this journey of building up your company and I thought I'd run through those and ask you about them. The first thing you said is, “building a startup isn't easy, know when to ask for help.” Where did that help come from and what kind of help did you have?  Jannatul Choudhury: So I've been in a lot of companies before starting PosterBooking. So I've been in SaaS, healthcare, e-commerce and legal tech as well. So I know a lot of people, say my managers and CEOs, et cetera. So anytime I had issues, I'd go to them even with coding issues or I recently spoke to one of the CEOs at my first place and he actually gave me some advice on how to go to market, et cetera. So that really helped. And I've got quite a few advisors as well that have been in the industry and any questions I don't hesitate to ask. I've even spoken to CEOs in our current industry, like I've spoken to MarkScreenCloud so that was pretty good. I don't shy away. If I need something, obviously, it's definitely good to ask, right?  Your second point was, “Perfection doesn't exist, so release the product as soon as possible.” I guess you can do that sort of thing with SaaS, right?  Jannatul Choudhury: Yeah, definitely. To begin with, we probably launched within a couple of months and I was working at the time as well, so I had a full-time job and during the evenings, I would literally code all night or evening. We launched within a couple of months, so we had our first end-to-end solution which literally allowed customers to create their screens, upload their images, and we had our web player, so it was literally the web player and it was wrapped on the app, so like a web frame and that was literally it. And that allowed us to get into the market straightaway. We didn't have any payment gateways which was probably a big chunk of development time as well that we saved simply because the software was free at the time.   So then you could just layer on functionality and things like payment gateways and so on as the need developed? Jannatul Choudhury: Absolutely, that's correct.  You said, “Build a community and allow that community to make suggestions.” When you describe a community, what do you mean by that and what did they guide you?  Jannatul Choudhury: So with PosterBooking, we've got a community group on WhatsApp and that's got over 200 businesses worldwide and every so often we'll send them a message, it's like a community group where all the businesses in that group communicate with each other. If they have any issues they'll put it on the group and either we'll reply back to them, or if someone else gets there quicker, like another business, they'll reply. So it's very much like a close-knit family.  So say there was recently a couple of businesses that wanted a certain feature and we obviously looked at how that goes with PosterBooking, if it's beneficial, and then we actually released it. T]here's a number of features actually, say two factor auth or multi-user or even little tweaks to allow them to miss a few steps from the content management page, upload images directly onto their playlist from there. So these little things, the community is absolutely huge, right? We're pretty close to them and our online chat as well. We have an email system as well, but when someone messages us on the website, on chat, they'll come directly to us so we're pretty hands on in every aspect of it. I think that really helps a lot.  Is that community culture unique to what you're doing here, or is that pretty common in that if you're running a SaaS platform, it's the one of the things that you do? Jannatul Choudhury: To be fair, I've not found that to be a common thing, but it does really help our business staff, especially when you're a startup. You have that communication with the businesses. They feel like they're part of the business, giving ideas and updates, like sending images through how they're doing, just a sense of community,  I guess it's important for you and whoever's doing your development. It just gets you a lot closer to them.  Jannatul Choudhury: Definitely and in terms of development, I'm the only one that's doing development on the CMS. So whatever people will tell you, it's useful? Jannatul Choudhury: Yes, definitely. And so sometimes it's really important, like some updates, or even if you make a release ,they'll point it out to the group if there's any bugs or anything and I'll get there and fix it straight away.  Your fourth point was, “Use a freemium model with premium upgrades.” I assume that the upgrades are how you actually make money because you can't make money out of free too easily. Do you need a lot of scale to work at your licensing costs and any costs?  Jannatul Choudhury: Yeah, I'd say most of our customers are SMBs so say 90% and most of them will have like under 10 screens as well. So it's not the focus for us right now. It's not all about making a lot of money because we have very low overheads since it's like just a couple of people. And I'm developing it, so we don't have any development costs to begin with. But with our pro services that we've recently brought out it's literally keeping the lights on as well, with our service and bandwidth usage, et cetera. It really helps with that. Moving forward we will probably release more pro services and see how it goes. Do you have any sense of what percentage of your user base is opting into paid services?  Jannatul Choudhury: I couldn't really tell that off the bat, but we are somewhat cash flow positive, but obviously we put all that back into the business. I'd say about 10% are on pro services because we have a bunch of white labeled users, some people want reports, some people want to see if their screens are down so we have downtime alerts via email. We also have large uploads. So obviously being a free platform, we need to try and make some money somehow so we offer large uploads, 4K uploads, et cetera. And it does help and we've seen a massive usage on larger uploads and 4k.  So freemium is something that's been around for 20 years or so and not necessarily in digital signage, but just broadly in web-based software. Is that a challenge or does it help that the marketplace assumes that like with Gmail and products like that, that you can get a pretty good service for free and that therefore, particularly for smaller SMB customers, that's an expectation? Jannatul Choudhury: So I've worked in SaaS before, right? And we had a premium model as well, and it did really help. And with us, we've seen tremendous growth. Just like some businesses, they won't even consider using digital signage and for us to have 10 free screens, it just allows them to put their foot in the door, right? And customers are really happy. There were a handful of customers that genuinely didn't believe our pricing for the free tier which was not shocking to be fair.  I think we've all downloaded apps and signed into services only to discover that the download is free, but to use it costs money. Jannatul Choudhury: Yeah, they'll have purchases.  Your final point was, “Most importantly, believe in yourself!”  What do you mean by that? Is it just simply that to put in the extra hours in the evening and everything to do this, you've gotta have a lot of belief in this?  Jannatul Choudhury: Yeah, for sure. Like with me, I love coding, right? And it's probably like my only hobby right now. And if you ask my wife, she'd probably say I'm glued to the laptop. But it's similar to how people play video games. I just love coding and it's just something that makes me happy. So it's a difficult journey, probably not for everyone, but it does bear fruit. Have you identified particular vertical markets? I know you said SMB, but does it tend to be pubs, restaurants, clubs, churches, schools, or all those things?  Jannatul Choudhury: Yeah, we're pretty much open to everyone really. But our biggest vertical would be say QSR franchises, we've got a couple of hotel chains, zoos, bowling alleys, really just institutions and even non-profits are signing on really fast. Your focus mainly on the Amazon Fire Stick lineup of products. What's been the experience with those units?  Jannatul Choudhury: Initially we had a device that we were selling for about a hundred dollars. But we thought in order for customers to really get the screens up and running without any issues, we need something that's affordable and easy to access. So the Amazon Fire Stick was probably the only one at that price point that they could. So we focused on creating an app for that. We're also Android as well so that really helped to get it off the ground.  So is the Firestick attractive, obviously because of price points, but also because it's familiar, there's a huge distribution network to get one, like you can get one the next day if you really needed that quickly. Was that a big sort of determining factor? Jannatul Choudhury: Yeah, definitely. We have been looking into other solutions. Some Android boxes or even Raspberry PI, but they're not exactly easy to get a hold of. So, we really focused on Fire sticks.  Yeah, you get into those lesser known Android products coming from Shenzhen and so on, and the build can change from shipment to shipment. Jannatul Choudhury: That's what we found with our own made device.  Should end users be nervous at all about deploying a consumer product for a commercial job with those Fire sticks? if you talk to digital signage veterans, they talk about having high reliable industrial grade very durable devices to put out in the field for QSR and so on, versus consumer devices that are not meant to be running 24/7. People use them for six hours in the evening or whatever the case may be, and therefore they're not appropriate for a commercial job.  Jannatul Choudhury: Yeah. I understand what you mean. So I've not seen a major problem with that, mainly because our predominant market is the QSR. So we've got a client with about 400 screens and it's a restaurant franchise, and they use Fire sticks and it's pretty much plugin and go really but obviously in the future we do realize that we do need more robust hardware. We're looking into integrating with BrightSign and Chrome OS in the future, which will really help with the enterprise clients.  I'm curious if the folks who are in the Amazon hardware team that develop Fire sticks, the whole product line, are they aware of commercial uses of their product? And do you ever keep in touch with them about software releases and things? Jannatul Choudhury: Every time you make a release on the app, I think compared to Google, they've got a more rigorous testing. So they'll test literally everything on your CMS, on the app, how you communicate, they'll make accounts, so they do have a very good idea on what's going on. And if anything goes wrong, they just straight away fail the app. They won't really release it up for you.  Oh, okay. So you're on some sort of an App store and that's how distribution's done?  Jannatul Choudhury: Yes. So you don't need to sideload the app. You can just download it straight away from the Amazon store. And they do all the vetting there and do their best to break it before they approve it?  Jannatul Choudhury: Yeah, for sure.  What do you see evolving in this space? Web services have changed a lot even in the last 3-4 years. Are there things emerging that are gonna make your life easier or open up new possibilities? Jannatul Choudhury: We were looking into using sensors for more information on customers. So say we use sensors to identify how many users are in your store, something like that, and in the future we're looking at more enterprise level features, so say integrating with more apps, giving two factor authentication with their accounts, et cetera.  But that's all stuff that you as the only developer at the moment would have to do, right?  Jannatul Choudhury: Yeah. That's very much true. But 2023 is very exciting. We'll be looking at hiring people.  It's the two of you right now, right?  Jannatul Choudhury: That's correct. So we've got me and my co-founder, and we've also got two freelancers that are working on the app side of things.  By the sounds of it, it's all bootstrapped right now, right?  Jannatul Choudhury: That's correct. We're pre-capital, privately-funded and have not had any investment as of yet. Is that something you anticipate doing or is your a great preference to just do this on your own and see where it goes?  Jannatul Choudhury: No, for sure. If the right investment comes, then we'll definitely look into it.  All right. This was great. The one other curious question I have and it's completely out of left field, is are you a City or a United guy, or are you supporting another team? Jannatul Choudhury: United, for sure.  I saw you went to the University of Salford, so I was curious if you supported Salford.  Jannatul Choudhury: No, Salford is in a lower league at the moment. Yeah. That's the one with some of the former Manchester United players, right?  Jannatul Choudhury: That's correct. All right. For those people who are listening and wondering why we're talking about football, my apologies, but I was curious.  I appreciate your time. That was quite interesting.  Jannatul Choudhury: Thank you, Dave. Thank you for taking the time and I look forward to speaking with you in the future at some point.

Blumira is targeting an underserved part of the market; SMBs. Brian, the VP of Sales at Blumira, joins us to discuss how he is successfully running the sales team and growing revenue.  His background is in Enterprise selling and he highlights what is similar and also what is different with selling to SMBs. In this episode, you'll learn:The average length of a sales cycle working with SMBs and what we can learn from that on the enterprise side Advantages of having a rigorous POC process while also being flexible when neededImportance of having enough discipline to say no to some dealsBlumira: www.blumira.comBrian: On LinkedIn or bpenney@blumira.comYou might also like the following:162: Eric Appel, CRO @ Island: why stealth is sexy and the different way Island has built the sales team143: How to answer the “What does your company do?” question without being boring or using buzzwords109: Hot trends in cybersecurity with Amit Karp, Partner at Bessemer Venture PartnersSupport the show

In our annual Prognostication Episode John Best flags an imminent Quantum Break, Anne Legg confronts shrinkflation, John Janclaes ponders employee burnout and Glen Sarvady charts FedNow's road ahead. Also discussions of tech layoffs, the battle for deposits, SMBs' health, and an even wilder than usual set of Bitcoin price predictions.   Links related to this episode:   JPM Chase's SMB Business Leaders Outlook: https://www.jpmorgan.com/commercial-banking/insights/us-business-leaders-outlook  McKinsey article on employee burnout: https://www.mckinsey.com/mhi/our-insights/addressing-employee-burnout-are-you-solving-the-right-problem   Thrive Strategic Services: https://www.anneleggthrive.com/  The CEO Corner: http://theceocorner.com/  Nymbus: https://nymbus.com/  Roger's recent post on the Quantum Break: https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2472644-has-the-quantum-break-just-happened?from_forum=193  Roger Grimes' book on the Cryptography Apocalypse: https://www.amazon.com/Cryptography-Apocalypse-Preparing-Quantum-Computing/dp/1119618193#customerReviews  Our prior “Thankful” episode with Anne Legg and John Janclaes: https://www.big-fintech.com/Media/BIGcast/ArticleID/847/A-Fintech-Thanksgiving  Iggy Pop “I'm Bored”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NuaK29J1fM  Ramones: “I Wanna Be Sedated”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm51ihfi1p4    The CU Town Hall returns Wednesday January 11- Join us for our live and lively hour-long interactive discussion of the top issues facing credit unions. Held alternate Wednesdays at 3pm ET/Noon PT. Request an invitation here: https://www.cutownhall.com/ 

This Week: Saul Colt, Matt McDermott, and Samuel Monnie join Bob to discuss clean rooms for ad targeting, why SMBs are hot for TikTok Shop, how ambassadors beat influencers, big shifts in 2023 media planning, plus this week's #FairFailFoul.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are hard to market to and are routinely under-banked, so how can financial services firms reach them? This week, we speak with Plastiq Founder and CEO Eliot Buchanan. Plastiq specializes in providing payments services to SMBs and it signed a $480 million combination with Colonnade Acquisition Corp II (NYSE: CLAA) in August. Eliot tells us how Plastiq has made inroads in this slice of the market and managed to dodge the impacts of the pandemic on its customer base. We also discuss how some of the macro headwinds blowing towards SPACs actually provide a competitive advantage for Plastiq's operations.  

This episode is all about People Operations for SMBs and the four stages of growing your People Ops team. Now, maybe that just starts with you as the founder, but as you grow a business, you then start to lean on other people. Maybe it's an office manager, an assistant, a director of operations, somebody that helps you wrap your arms around the structure of the business and train the new people that are coming in. As your business grows more, maybe you bring on that first HR person or People Operations person, and then eventually they build out their team with all the different functions. This was a really fun conversation where we dug into the three different people, four, including me, who have held those roles so far at Trainual over the last four or five years. We broke down each stage, the things that we were good at, the things that we were not so good at, and the things that maybe you should be thinking about in your business as you grow to develop an incredible employee experience. Enjoy, dig in and hear our story for how we've grown People Ops at Trainual. Shoutout to Sasha Robinson, Chelsey Krisay, and Marlowe Everett for jumping on the podcast to discuss all thing people ops with me! Find episode show notes, podcast blog recaps, and the best SMB news & tips on The Manual! Watch video highlights on Youtube here. Follow Chris Ronzio for more business insight. Learn more about Trainual, the world's top Business Playbook™ software. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/processmakesperfect/message

This episode is brought to you by Warren Coughlin, CEO Coach and founder of JumpStart Coaching. Warren focuses exclusively on coaching CEOs running SMBs, and has been doing so for over 20 years. One of my biggest regrets across my 7 years as a CEO was not hiring a coach, and I want to prevent others from making the same mistake. For listeners of In The Trenches, working with Warren is effectively risk-free: If at the end of the first three months you're not happy with the direction of your business, he will give you your money back. On top of that, Warren is offering $3,000 off of his coaching program for listeners of In The Trenches. Just go to warrencoughlin.com/trenches to learn more. __________________________ This episode is brought to you by Cayne Crossing. Cayne Crossing helps prospective SMB purchasers with all aspects of financial due diligence, including producing the Quality of Earnings report. Unlike any other QofE provider that I'm aware of, Cayne Crossing also co-invests alongside their buyers, aligning their interests with yours in a way that I simply haven't seen anywhere else. Cayne Crossing is offering a special discount to listeners of In The Trenches: Just go to caynecrossing.com, and scroll down to the “contact form” on their homepage. Enter the offer code “trenches”, and you will get a full $2,000 off of your QofE engagement with them. __________________________ My guest today is Mike Zani, CEO of The Predictive Index. The Predictive Index serves more than 9,000 clients across 142 countries, helping businesses optimize their hiring and team composition decisions through behavioral science, software, and professional consulting from the world's top workplace behavioral specialists. Mike has been CEO of The Predictive Index for approximately 8 years, after having purchased the business from its original founders. Prior to leading The Predictive Index, Mike successfully purchased, operated, and sold two other companies in the employee wellness and manufacturing industries. The Predictive Index is one of the most widely-used personality profiling tools utilized by SMB CEOs when making hiring decisions, and in today's discussion we discuss these types of tools at length: When they're most useful (and when they're not), the most frequent sources of hiring mistakes, how transferable they are to blue collar industries, how we might utilize them in our personal relationships, and how he would utilize similar tools if looking to buy another business, to name just a few. Please enjoy!

What probably should be required reading for any business owner, The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, is full of wisdom about confronting an opposing force.  In this episode, Mike & Blaine consider how to spot the opportunity that is created in chaos.  They even discuss whether or not chaos exists, or is it just an order that you don't understand.  Don't miss the last episode of Season 2!Today's Beer:Mike: Maui Brewing Company & SpindleTap Brewery Collaboration - Lei the Day Pale AleBlaine: Nost and Ellipsis Collaboration - Virtual Playground Doppelbock@nostbrewingproject @ellipsisbrewing @SpindleTapBrewery @MauiBrewingCoListen to all our episodes at: https://www.mikeandblaine.com/podcast#smallbusiness, #cashflow #finance #beer #friends #entrepreneur #smbs #craftbeer Watch on Youtube at https://youtu.be/vg51JwZbf6gSupport the showCatch more episodes, see our sponsors and get in touch at https://mikeandblaine.com/

Typetec, one of Ireland's leading managed IT and cyber security solutions providers, has announced the results of its survey of SMB owners in Ireland which show that IT cybersecurity budgets are set to halve in 2023. The average SMB IT cybersecurity budget for this year is €57,500 – compared to €117,209 last year. While IT cybersecurity budgets are down more than 50%, over three quarters (79%) of SMBs in Ireland have experienced a cyberattack in the past 12 months. The survey of 200 small and medium-sized business owners – commissioned by Typetec and conducted by Censuswide – also revealed the most common form of cybersecurity attacks over the past year. Those were password hacking (32%), phishing (31%), malware (27%), and insider attacks/employee negligence (23%). SMB owners are also concerned about the impact of cyberattacks on their business, with the biggest fear cited as going out of business (40%). Considerably more respondents are worried about this in 2023 compared to 2022 (27%). The other biggest concerns regarding the potential effects of cyberattacks were found to be significant business downtime (39%), sensitive data being made public or traded on the dark web (38%), reputational damage (37%), and the loss of customers (32%). Despite these fears, almost a third (32%) of SMBs do not have an effective disaster recovery plan in place. However, some 64% of respondents think they are fully prepared for evolving cybersecurity threats in 2023, and 29% feel somewhat prepared for same. Among those that feel somewhat or fully prepared, the most popular step taken against evolving threats is increased cybersecurity awareness training for staff (37%). Other key measures undertaken by this cohort were increasing the support they get from external managed service providers (34%), moving more systems and applications to the cloud (34%), investing in more sophisticated threat protection systems (31%), and investing in an always-on business continuity service (30%). The research also found that a large majority (80%) of SMB owners believe that the Government/state should provide more funding/support to help protect small businesses against the rising cybercrime threat. Trevor Coyle, Chief Technology Officer, Typetec, said: “While it might be tempting for SMB owners to reduce cybersecurity budgets at this time, our survey shows that threats are still widespread and the potential impact on businesses is greater than ever. “We understand that many smaller businesses are dealing with inflationary pressures at this time and have to make difficult investment decisions. However, it's important that they make smart choices and don't leave their data and systems more vulnerable and easier to attack, which will ultimately be so much more costly if it happens. “Being smart means not only identifying measures for protection and prevention, such as staff awareness, but also having a strategy in place to support disaster recovery and business continuity should the worst-case scenario arise. “Only through implementing the right technologies and processes can SMBs be reassured that they are lowering risk and upholding productivity – thus protecting both their own business and that of their customers.” See more stories here. More about Irish Tech News Irish Tech News are Ireland's No. 1 Online Tech Publication and often Ireland's No.1 Tech Podcast too. You can find hundreds of fantastic previous episodes and subscribe using whatever platform you like via our Anchor.fm page here: If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming Podcast email us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie now to discuss. Irish Tech News have a range of services available to help promote your business. Why not drop us a line at Info@IrishTechNews.ie now to find out more about how we can help you reach our audience. You can also find and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.

As local businesses expand their "owned media" platforms, our hosts wonder how they'll feed the feed the voracious content monsters they created. This episode explores the mysteries of content marketing, and features an interview with the CEO of one of the companies at the forefront, RevContent.

Why it was selected: We often will forget that buyers are the reason why we do things we do and how we can make an impact. It is important to remember that when we are working on our products and service. In Michael's podcast, we talk a lot about this and the framework that he uses for that especially in the B2B space to strategize for SMBs to grow.  Check out premium content in the CBNation Library at http://cbnation.co/library and pick up our eBook to hear some of the best lessons at http://cbnation.co/shop Previous Episode: https://iamceo.co/2020/12/19/iam859-strategy-adviser-empowers-smbs-to-drive-growth/

Join Cliff Bockard, Senior Vice President of Revenue at DigitalOcean, as he discusses how DigitalOcean has won “big numbers” from “small customers” by tapping the underserved market of startups and SMBs. Cliff will discuss how companies can prioritize the success of their customers and benefit in turn, as well as why customer-centric and responsible, profitable growth matters more than ever.   Full video: https://youtu.be/vbj20ekVKsE   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the

There is something magical about being able to set your mind to achieve something.  Henry Ford made the title quote a reality when he believed he could change the world by producing a car.  We all have things that we have been able to achieve that we never thought we could.  We've also been victims of failing, mainly because we just didn't think we could do it.  In the episode, Mike and Blaine take on the mindset and the role it plays in being an entrepreneur.  Today's Beer:Mike: Tupps - Juice Pack Double Dry Hopped Pale AleBlaine: Great Divide - Yeti Imperial Stout@tuppsbrewery @greatdividebrewListen to all our episodes at: https://www.mikeandblaine.com/podcastThank you to our sponsors! My Life in a Book: https://mylifeinabook.com/#smallbusiness, #cashflow #finance #beer #friends #entrepreneur #smbs #craftbeer Watch on Youtube at https://youtu.be/2J0RHA_zs5USupport the showCatch more episodes, see our sponsors and get in touch at https://mikeandblaine.com/

In this episode, Phillip Lanos and Jason Miller are joined by Phuong Nguyen, Founder, and CEO of Partners in Company. Phuong Nguyen is the Founder of Partners in Company, an agency dedicated to data science and creative design for private equity firms, the public sector, and SMBs. To date, Partners in Company has built data visualization solutions for the Marines, designed campaigns for NYU, and helped SMBs obtain $1.5MM+ in financing.Tune in to learn more!For more go to: https://www.strategicadvisorboard.comConnect:Strategic Advisor Board: www.linkedin.com/company/strategic-advisor-boardJason Miller: www.linkedin.com/in/jasontmiller-sabPhillip Lanos: www.linkedin.com/in/philliplanosPhuong NguyenLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/pnguyen1081Twitter: twitter.com/PN_Partnerswebsite: www.partnersincompany.com

As we close 2022, we reflect on the digital marketing landscape of SMBs and how it has changed in the last twelve months. More importantly, we look at the opportunities for SMBs in 2023. How business models are changing, what tools are available to SMBs, and how agencies can support SMBs. We discuss emerging trends and what agencies can do to grow in scale and increase profitability in the new digital economy.

Uri Levine - Co-Founder of Waze and Author of Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs           If you are afraid to fail, in reality, you have already failed. Uri Levine is a passionate entrepreneur and disruptor, a two-time ‘unicorn' builder (Duocorn). He is co-founder of Waze, the world's largest community-based driving traffic and navigation app, which was acquired by Google for $1.1 billion in 2013, and former investor and board member in Moovit, ‘Waze of public transportation', which was acquired by Intel for $1 Billion in 2020. Levine has built more than a dozen startups and has seen everything ranging from failure, midlevel success, to immense success. Unicorns—companies that reach a valuation of more than $1 billion—are rare. Uri Levine has built two. Levine is co-founder of Waze, —the world's leading commuting and navigation app with more than 700 million users to date which Google acquired in 2013 for $1.15 billion—and his second unicorn, Moovit. Dubbed “the Waze of public transportation,” Moovit was sold for $1 billion to Intel in 2020. In his new book, Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs, with a foreword by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, Levine reveals the formula and key components of building a successful start-up that drove those companies to compete with industry veterans and giants alike. Significant tech companies in the world today—Tesla, Waze, WhatsApp, Facebook, Uber, Netflix—were start-ups not that long ago, but Levine believes the next generation of entrepreneurs will make an even bigger impact. As a mentor and teacher, Levine intends to help entrepreneurs disrupt inefficient markets and improve under-functioning services, to focus on solving society-wide problems while saving consumers time and money. Barrett Young - Senior VP Fleet Safety Strategy at Netradyne     Our automobile driving artificial intelligence has almost 37,000 years' worth of training. Barrett Young is a strategic and innovative leader with half a decade in fleet safety and fleet management technology and over a decade of integrated marketing experience for both B2B SaaS and B2C companies. He has developed and led strategic go-to-market initiatives of advanced safety technology and the roll-out of the ELD mandate. He is passionate about GTM analysis and has a fury for big thinking and innovation that scale companies and revenue. With roads increasingly more crowded with delivery drivers and commercial vehicles, driver safety is top of mind for everyone. Between road risks and driver safety concerns, small and medium businesses (SMBs) with fleets face unique challenges in today's climate. In fact, a recent survey revealed that two-thirds (66%) of decision makers at SMBs with fewer than 1,000 employees and five or more vehicles in their commercial fleets are making financial decisions based on immediate needs instead of safety. Smart tech and A.I. driving solutions may make staying on top of driver safety and saving money easier for these owners. With businesses making safety a priority for their fleet of drivers, this keeps all drivers safe on the road.

This episode is brought to you by Warren Coughlin, CEO Coach and founder of JumpStart Coaching. Warren focuses exclusively on coaching CEOs running SMBs, and has been doing so for over 20 years. One of my biggest regrets across my 7 years as a CEO was not hiring a coach, and to the best extent possible, I want to prevent others from making the same mistake. For listeners of In The Trenches, working with Warren is effectively risk-free: If at the end of the first three months you're not happy with the direction of your business, he will give you your money back. If that doesn't say confidence, I don't know what does. On top of that, Warren is offering $3,000 off of his coaching program for listeners of In The Trenches. Just go to warrencoughlin.com/trenches to learn more. __________________________ This episode is brought to you by Cayne Crossing. Cayne Crossing helps prospective SMB purchasers with all aspects of financial due diligence, including producing the Quality of Earnings report. Unlike any other QofE provider that I'm aware of, Cayne Crossing also co-invests alongside their buyers, aligning their interests with yours in a way that I simply haven't seen anywhere else. Cayne Crossing is offering a special discount to listeners of In The Trenches: Just go to caynecrossing.com, and scroll down to the “contact form” on their homepage. Enter the offer code “trenches”, and you will get a full $2,000 off of your QofE engagement with them. __________________________ This episode attempts to directly address many of the questions that I've been asked over the past 6 months related to the current state of the debt markets: How pricing has changed, how credit availability has evolved, what risks banks are no longer willing to underwrite, how their diligence processes have changed, how non-price terms have evolved, and so on. To help me better understand the current state of the debt markets, I reached out to Cory Kaiser and Tim Eaton, both of whom work at TD in their commercial lending group: Cory is Vice President of commercial banking and has been with TD for over 21 years, and Tim is an associate vice president, who has been with TD for 23 years. Over the past two decades, their focus has been (and will continue to be) on lending to lower-middle market private companies, not just to finance their acquisitions, but also to finance growth, working capital, and recapitalizations, to name just a few. I hope this episode helps to clarify some of the questions that you might be wrestling with yourself. Please enjoy!

How do you get businesses to see something boring as a competitive advantage? Like data protection. Compliance used to cost companies a fortune in legal fees. That's tough - in particular for small and medium-sized businesses. So Miloš Djurdjević set out with his co-founder Daniel Deutsch to build a real painkiller. “There's a lot of anxiety involved in this topic due to personal liabilities that may be at risk if you don't comply correctly,” says Miloš. This makes everything in communications, from marketing to PR and even employer branding and approaching investors a tough nut to crack. His compliance-as-a-service approach is paying off though, as heyData! went from bootstrapping to VC-funded this year. In this episode Miloš shares his approach to communicating about a dreaded subject, so that SMBs are not only compliant but can also use it as a competitive advantage. And heyData! can grow successfully as a company. Tune in to find out:

In what seems to be a crowded field, how can your Property Management company stand out in an authentic and sustainable way? In this final episode of season 2, Andrew visits Jordan Muela's own podcast studio where he hosts the Profitable Property Management Podcast.  Today the LeadSimple CEO is on the other side of the podcast as he shares his personal insights into differentiation for SMBs, PropTech, and creating strong relationships along the way. Listen to Jordan's podcast, The Profitable Property Management Podcast, here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-profitable-property-management-podcast/id1270553459   Subscribe to Jordan's newsletter here: https://leadsimple.ck.page/29e1e08ea4   Like what you've heard and want more content? Sign up for our newsletter https://rbp.secondnature.com/community#signup   Got questions? Email us at triplewin@secondnature.com   To see what other professional property managers are doing in your area, schedule a call at https://rbp.secondnature.com/triplewin   Join our private Facebook group just for professional property managers at https://bit.ly/3jezcLp   Stay up to date on events and resources at https://bit.ly/rbp-home   Follow the Triple Win Property Management podcast by Second Nature and never miss an episode!   Hosted by Andrew Smallwood  Featuring Jordan Muela Produced by Andrew Smallwood, Laura Mac, and Carol Housel Edited by Isaac Balachandran

Tony Hsieh once said to chase the vision, not the money, the money will follow.  If there was ever a quote that hits the nail on the head, it's this one.  You can't chase money is the topic of today's episode, where Mike and Blaine talk about their attitudes toward how success and fortune connect. Today's Beer:Mike: Neighbour Pat's Beer - Gingerbread Spiced BeerBlaine: Claremont Craft Ales - Fortune IPA@neighbourpat? @ClaremontCraftAlesListen to all our episodes at: https://www.mikeandblaine.com/podcastThank you to our sponsors! My Life in a Book: https://mylifeinabook.com/#smallbusiness, #cashflow #finance #beer #friends #entrepreneur #smbs #craftbeer Watch on Youtube at https://youtu.be/ViTTauM9ch0Support the showCatch more episodes, see our sponsors and get in touch at https://mikeandblaine.com/

There are so many interesting things everyone selling to SMBs can learn from HubSpot. Don't miss this talk with Hubspot's and SaaStr's CEOs Yamini Rangan and Jason Lemkin where they'll dig into how HubSpot is growing a stunning 41% year-over-year at $1.7 Billion in ARR.  Yamini and Jason discuss: -why Hubspot "took a step backward" by moving from sales-led to product-led -why focusing on free makes your product better -the importance of having multiple products -why NRR should be a North Star metric for SaaS businesses -working with partners -international expansion and localization: why less is more   Full video: https://youtu.be/sNU4h7LpHOI   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the

As 2022 ends, it is time to take stock of what matters to businesses and consumers. What matters today in December 2022 differs from what mattered to us in January of this year. For example, in January, consumers were looking forward to finally “getting out of the house”, and SMBs worldwide were thinking about when I could let my customers back in. Today in December, we are living the new normal with a hybrid consumer society that is online and in person. Today it's not about how I shop; it is about Where I can get the best prices. With inflation and energy costs, we have changed our focus as consumers, SMBs, and enterprises must change their approach. They are all fighting for that one Euro or one Dollar from the same consumer. So, what do SMBs, and Brands need to do to ensure they are the ones walking away with the spend? In this episode, we talk about how your company cab stays competitive and ahead of your competitors.

The first way to get known in business is to advertise. Not surprisingly, without advertising nobody will know you're in business.  When you say it out loud it makes so much sense, but why do so many small business owners avoid buying advertising or promoting their business.  Mike and Blaine discuss their experience with advertising and why some people avoid it in this episode based on a quote from Steuart Henderson Britt.Today's Beer:Mike: Lakewood Brewing - Peanut Butter Tempress StoutBlaine: Equilibrium - Wavelength IPA@LakewoodBrewing  @EquilibriumBreweryListen to all our episodes at: https://www.mikeandblaine.com/podcastThank you to our sponsors! My Life in a Book: https://mylifeinabook.com/#smallbusiness, #cashflow #finance #beer #friends #entrepreneur #smbs #craftbeer Watch on Youtube at Support the showCatch more episodes, see our sponsors and get in touch at https://mikeandblaine.com/

DO YOU KNOW YOU CAN GROW IN DIFFERENT SIZES?Duane is back with Collin and starts off by talking about the attributes that a seller needs to establish with their prospects, but that's not all, make sure to stay tuned as Duane also discusses how PLG applies in SMBs, Mid markets, and Enterprise, only here in the latest episode of Sales Transformation.Want to book more meetings and close more deals? Start selling the way your buyers want to buy with Humantic AI! Stop sending boring sales e-mails and start sending personalized GIFs and Memes with VIDU.io!TRANSFORMING MOMENTSDUANE: A SELLER SHOULD BE CURIOUS“One of the biggest sales attributes in this role is curiosity. You have to be endlessly curious about your prospects and not take their answers at face value. Because you have to understand the deep need and value they're looking for in the product”DUANE: HOW PLG APPLIES IN SMB AND OTHER BUYER “The way I've approached it, is the product is always going to be the product, you're going to want to have the onboarding sequencing in place, no matter what it's it would be unnecessary work to try to segment their onboarding sequencing based on their buyer persona.”Connect with DuaneDuane Dufault | SellingSaaS | DuaneDufault.comConnect with Collin LinkedIn | YouTube | Newsletter | Twitter | IG | TikTok

What comes to mind when you think of engineering change control? Well, if you are a small shop with a few changes per month (or relatively straightforward products), then you might not see as many change orders. But if you are a highly engineered shop or sell custom products, you might receive change orders even after shipping your products. Heavy on change orders? Then you must need a formalized engineering change control process. Otherwise, you might struggle a lot. So what are the best practices of engineering change control?In today's episode, we invited a panel of cross-functional experts for a live interview on LinkedIn who brings significant expertise to discuss Inventory Replenishment best practices. We discussed the nuances of simpler replenishment strategies such as min/maxes to more advanced such as Kanban, bin, and MRP-centric replenishment strategies. Finally, we discussed the advancements in the inventory replenishment strategies such as DDMRP and how that differs from other traditional methods of inventory replenishment.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Do you know an eCommerce platform that can handle all your content and data needs for you? Do you know an eCommerce platform that is really targeted at B2B  companies and has pre-built integrations with several industrial B2B ERP systems? Do you know an eCommerce platform that has a similar go-to-market strategy as Optimizely? If you guessed Unilog, then you are right.In today's episode, we invited a panel of industry experts for a live discussion on LinkedIn to conduct an independent review of Unilog's capabilities. We covered its strengths such as its unique services for content creation that are extremely friendlier for the buying groups. Finally, we discussed its pros and cons and its similarity with other B2B eCommerce platforms such as Episerver or Optimizely.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe to your favorite podcasting platform.

Looking back, this quote by Sheryl Sandberg, of Meta Platforms, is almost prophetic.  It's interesting to consider the reasons we don't take advantage of opportunities.  In most cases there is a fear associated with the decision.  In this episode, Mike and Blaine tackle the question of limiting fears and shifting beliefs.  Find out what may be holding you back from changing the world.Today's Beer:Mike: Armed Forces Brewing - Preamble Session LagerBlaine: Second Chance Beer Company - Frosty the Hazeman IPA@ArmedForcesBrewingCompany   @secondchancebeercompany Listen to all our episodes at: https://www.mikeandblaine.com/podcastThank you to our sponsors! My Life in a Book: https://mylifeinabook.com/#smallbusiness, #cashflow #finance #beer #friends #entrepreneur #smbs #craftbeer Watch on Youtube at https://youtu.be/ljkwRUkVGdUSupport the showCatch more episodes, see our sponsors and get in touch at https://mikeandblaine.com/

Do you know an ERP platform that started with the investment from Unit4 as the subsidiary but ended up being on its own and calling itself an ERP? Do you know an ERP system that got its PSA capabilities from the Salesforce consulting firm Appirio, which is now part of Wipro? Do you know an ERP platform that is primarily targeted at service-centric industries? If you have guessed FinancialForce, then you are right.In today's episode, we invited a panel of industry experts for a live discussion on LinkedIn to conduct an independent review of FinancialForce's capabilities. We covered many grounds including its origin and alignment with Unit4 and how it shaped up the target market for FinancialForce. Finally, we covered its strengths, weaknesses, and target industries.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

It's Thanksgiving, so we always take a little time to reflect on the things that have brought us joy, happiness, and success.  This Thanksgiving we dive into Lolly Daskal's quote about falling is really the stepping stones for our journey.  Mike and Blaine discuss the things that had the most impact on their future.  It's retrospective, but super cool to draw the connections.  Don't miss this episode.Today's Beer:Mike: Breckenridge - Christmas AleBlaine: Paperback  - Tucked in By Strangers West Coast IPA@BreckenridgeBrewery    @paperbackbrewingla Listen to all our episodes at: https://www.mikeandblaine.com/podcastThank you to our sponsors! My Life in a Book: https://mylifeinabook.com/#smallbusiness, #cashflow #finance #beer #friends #entrepreneur #smbs #craftbeer Watch on Youtube at https://youtu.be/SeFSKUeW5aUSupport the showCatch more episodes, see our sponsors and get in touch at https://mikeandblaine.com/