CEO SECRETS

A successful career in real estate requires a mix of people skills and salesmanship, which can be a challenging combination for introverts. However, introverts can learn to use their strengths to their advantage in the field of real estate.

Staffing is one of the most important aspects of growing a business but can also be one of the most challenging.

Website: https://mystratice.com/ and https://my-gumption.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mystratice/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mystratice/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mystratice

For many businesses, patents protect more than just an idea or a concept. It also safeguards true business assets that are critical to a company’s existence in the long term.

Andrew Horn didn’t know what he wanted to do next coming out of college. While his friends were excited to head off to their first jobs, he didn’t have a sense of purpose in his life and felt that he’d hit rock bottom. So when one of his friends pointed out that sitting there sulking about his situation wouldn’t change anything, he knew he had to do something.

He realized that he had a desire to be of service to other people deep down.  And the times he volunteered to help disabled youth to go into adaptive sports were one of the few experiences that he was proud of. This led him to start a children's nonprofit, which would grow to become one of the premier adaptive athletic providers in the DC metro area.

Finding his purpose gave Andrew that sustainable energy source to be better than what he thought he could be and to keep pushing forward. This is the same energy that encouraged him to successfully launch his business and help propel its growth by 1,734% over the past three years.

Let us hear from Andrew Horn, CEO at Tribute, as he shares his journey from being a delinquent frat boy to finding his true purpose and building a business that uses technology to foster meaningful connections in the world.

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewhorn/

Website: https://www.tribute.co/

Andrew Horn started a children's nonprofit organization called Dreams for Kids DC when he was 21 years old. It is now one of the premier adaptive athletic providers in the DC metro area.

He also leads Junto, a community for men.  It is a practical curriculum that helps men come together in a candid and vulnerable setting to talk about things, get more clarity about their own sense of masculinity, and connect their identity to their values to have a more profound understanding of purpose.

Today, Andrew Horn is an Austin-based social entrepreneur and the CEO of Tribute.co. This platform allows users to celebrate the people they care about through a video montage. He is also a writer and communication coach. Forbes Magazine named him "Dale Carnegie for the Digital Age."

Lung cancer is by far the leading cause of cancer deaths in the world. If not detected early, 80% of patients do not make it after five years. Dr. Aki Al-Zubaidi, an interventional pulmonologist, knew that the best way to beat the statistics is early detection.  He wanted to identify all the patients in his own clinic who had a specific abnormality, or a spot on the lungs that could become a cancer.

Aki is an Interventional Pulmonologist who has dedicated his career to pulmonary nodule management. His background in human genetics and oncology research made him realize that the way to have disruptive change is to combine innovation and action.  Today, he is on a mission to close the gap between technological ability and healthcare implementation.

Christine Spraker, Co-CEO

Christine has more than 16 years of experience in the industry. As a domain expert, and having been touched by lung cancer loss herself, she continuously seeks improved outcomes for nodule and lung cancer patients. She has made it her mission to impact patient lives, and the providers who serve them, with improved technology and tools.

They say the path to success is never a straight line.  The road to get there has many ups and downs and is riddled with challenges along the way.  And for those who were born with a disadvantage, the journey becomes even more difficult.

For any business, growth is absolutely essential - most especially now that we are in the digital age. And while more and more people are using their smartphones and devices to purchase their needs, many businesses are now considering having their own web and mobile apps as a means to connect with their customers.

When Brenden Marquardt acquired his first furniture brand, he thought that all he had to do was put it up on the internet and then people would start buying it.  As it turned out it was a lot more complicated than that.

Brenden Marquardt worked as an investment analyst for Merrill-Lynch and Rice University’s $6B endowment fund.  He’s also worked as a Business Development Manager for Kinder Morgan.

In 2014, He and his brother Kyle, met a lady who had a very cool design for a Murphy bed.  It was affordable and can be assembled easily, but the lady was having a hard time with production, and she really wanted more time for herself.  That’s when they decided to acquire the business from her.

From there, they studied how to scale the business, and worked on putting the right structures in place to ensure its growth.

Today, Brenden is the Co-Founder of Homestead Brands.  They acquire, invest, and grow multi-functional furniture brands and include them into their growing family of e-commerce businesses.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to CEO Secrets. Our guest today was ranked number 363 on the Inc500 list of the fastest privately held companies in America. He was also on this list in 2020 and ranked number 169. That's no small feat to be a part of the list two years in a row. Let's welcome to the show, the President of Astrawatt Solar, Keith Murphy.

Keith began his career as a salesperson but saw an opportunity to do things better. After working in the industry for four years, he started his own company in January 2016, living in his sister's garage and with only $65 in his bank account. They ranked third fastest growing solar company in 2020 and eighth fastest-growing energy company in 2021. The company has 60 employees in four major U.S. cities and has made the Inc500 list.

Astrawatt Solar is extremely focused on providing value and educating homeowners. Keith advises not to look at what your competition is doing. Instead, look for what your customers want. He further stresses finding innovative ways to create efficiencies in the company, which will help save money and create a better workplace for your employees. He and his team believe that big things will happen if you dedicate yourself to small, incremental improvements.

Let us hear from Keith why he believes that the best, the easiest, the most efficient way to get new business is by creating happy customers and why you need to be very picky about where you spend your marketing dollars.

To get a hold of Keith Murphy, visit https://www.astrawatt.solar/franchise

Episode Transcript:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mJFB11YqKb4eD2ELBxJzdC09Z8gl5m1ONftOOZ4CRCc/edit?usp=sharing

Hello, and welcome back to CEO Secrets. Today’s guest is an accomplished business consultant with almost three decades of professional accounting experience. Her company ranked 376th in 2021’s  Inc Top 500 list of fastest-growing privately owned businesses in the US. Let’s welcome to the show, the Owner & CEO of Raincatcher, Marla DiCarlo.

Marla initially wanted to become a social worker but it was her love of numbers and math that made her go into accounting. Eventually, she branched off with a business owner that she was working with into mergers and acquisitions. That's when she fell in love with small businesses and started her own fractional CFO company.

Today, Marla is the Owner and CEO of Raincatcher, a national business brokerage that specializes in small and mid-market businesses. Their mission is to help transform small to medium-sized businesses into companies that are built to sell, and also help buyers find remarkable enterprises in which to create their own legacy.

Let us hear from Marla as she shares her journey and her insights on how small and medium-sized enterprises can have the ultimate edge in the marketplace and get top dollar for their business when they sell it.