Co-Founders of Courage Crafters and Bestselling Authors

Courage Crafters co-founders Andrea Waltz and Richard Fenton talk to Bill Ringle on My Quest for the Best about learning to love the word "no."

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com  for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth. My Quest for the Best is a top-rated small business podcast with over 300 episodes of thought-provoking and insightful interviews with today’s top thought leaders and business experts. Host Bill Ringle’s mission with this show is to provide the strategies, insights, and resources that will unlock the growth potential of your business through these powerful conversations.

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Interview Insights

Listen to this interview to learn:

How they started their business by "burning their ship"A clever approach to expanding business within a client companyUnderstanding that each of us has a "relationship" with the word "no"When it makes sense to celebrate a "no" to encourage positive behaviorGetting off the roller coaster of reactivity

Top Takeaways from this Interview

1:22 Waltz tells about her first real job working for LensCrafters: how she met Fenton and launched into her own business at a young age.2:44 Fenton -  “From my earliest memories, my earliest ages, I had always had a desire to be a professional speaker and to write books.”3:29 Fenton - Tells about meeting Fenton and meshing on what it meant to be a high performer and achiever.4:50 Waltz - [On quitting their jobs to start the new company] - “We knew that in order to really make the business work and to burn our ships…we knew that we had to leave and be completely dedicated and completely focused.”5:44 Waltz - On getting their first client JC Penney.6:25 Fenton - [On working with JC Penney] - “We worked for them over the course of the next 10 years, we probably did over 25 different projects for them, and over the course of time we did well in excess of $250,000 worth of business.”7:58 Waltz talks about her and Fenton’s self-published book The Secrets of Retail Magic and how their “Go For No” concept allowed them to become an essential resource to JCP.9:03 Waltz tells how Fenton’s boldness got them their first client.11:08 Waltz - “Our ideal client has a sales force and, ideally, we like working with companies with large sales forces. Right now we focus on doing keynote presentations at the annual conferences. We don’t focus on a specific industry, although we’re very popular in the direct sales and network marketing industry.”12:00 Waltz - “The problem is that people have a fear of hearing the wor...