Digital Chatter Episode #017: Tara Wilder

Eric Sharpe: Hello and welcome everyone to another episode of Digital Chatter. I'm your host, Eric Sharpe. And today I am with the effervescent Tara Wilder, who is the Founder and Online Marketing Strategist of Envivo. Welcome Tara.

Tara Wilder: Thank you so much for having me, my friend. Eric, how are you today?

Eric Sharpe: I'm doing well. So if you couldn't tell Tara and I are friends. Actually we've done some work together and I figured it was about darn time I had her on my show.

Tara Wilder: Yeah, it's about time.

Eric Sharpe: It's about darn time. So, Tara, I, you know, I want to start everyone off as usual with, tell us how did you get into business, into owning your own business?

Tara Wilder: I was naive is the short answer. So, let's see. Where shall I start? So I, when I went to college, I went to college to get a degree in psychology and my intention was to become a graphic.. no not a graphic designer. To go on to get my phd in clinical psychology, become a psychologist. Halfway through I decided, you know, I don't feel like talking to people all day cause that's basically what it is. And it was actually a lot more than just that. But I realized that psychology was just not the industry that I wanted to go into. So I decided to just finish that up, finish up that degree, get married to my high school sweetheart. And I tried to find jobs both in psychology and in web design and.. Because web design, I've been doing it since I was 12 years old. Really, really like it.

Tara Wilder: So, but I couldn't find jobs in either area and I was neither under nor overqualified for any of these positions. I had the hardest time finding a job in one of those fields. So I applied to one retail position. I thought it was a sales position. I got hired. Turns out I was a cashier. So I run around saying I was a cashier with a bachelor's degree and I'm still bitter about it to this day. So I decided to take life into my own hands. I, so I took the job because we were broke newlyweds and needed money. Right.

Eric Sharpe: Yeah. You gotta get the money in the door, right?

Tara Wilder: Yes. Yeah. So I mean, I wasn't prideful about it. But I tried to move up in the company, didn't work out very well, so I decided to start a freelance web design company. And so I just put up a website, tarawilder.com I got some business here and there and then a local IT company reached out to me.

Tara Wilder: And basically after we talked a little bit, they offered me what was my dream job at the time. So they were expanding their creative services department and wanted to have somebody who would head up that effort, basically. Like develop the services, get the leads, close the leads, can perform the services and then eventually hire people. And before that, I started getting experience in online marketing as well. And it was like a dream for me. And my dream job almost literally landed in my lap because how they found me was they typed in web designer Daytona beach and they found my website. They reached out to me, we had a conversation and they offered me the job all because of the power of the web.

Eric Sharpe: Wow. That's awesome. That's a great story.

Tara Wilder: I love it. I love it so much. And it actually has three lessons. And if I may just share real quick. First of all, I had a web presence that even got found on Google. I should have looked it up, but it's something like a million or 2 million results or something when you type in web designer Daytona beach.

Eric Sharpe: All right. Hello and welcome everyone to another episode of Digital Chatter. I'm your host, Eric Sharpe. And today I've got Liz Giorgi here who is the founder and CEO of Mighteor. Tell me, what is Mighteor? Tell me a little bit about it.

Liz Giorgi: Yeah. Mighteor is an Internet video production company and what that means to us is we provide professional video services for all the places that you watch video online. So when brands are thinking about building an awesome Instagram stories campaign, they come to us. When they want to build amazing Facebook ads, they come to us. When they're trying to tell a serialized stories on youtube and build amazing channels, they come to us. So we're really that intersection of video and the web.

Eric Sharpe: Awesome. That's great. That's a perfect pitch right there.

Liz Giorgi: Thank you.

Eric Sharpe: Liz, tell me, tell me how you, how did you get started? How did it get started with all of this video stuff?

Liz Giorgi: Yes. Well, you know, when I was a little girl, I desperately wanted to be Barbara Walters. I really admired her. I remember sitting in my living room as a little girl with my parents and seeing Barbara come on and she would ask the toughest questions of people. Out of the most important people in the world, presidents, prime ministers, elected officials, business leaders. And I admired her so much because, not just because she was asking tough questions, but because every single time when the show whould end you would watch the credits roll back. And it would say executive producer, Barbara Walters. And in my mind, that always stuck in my head, this woman who was not just doing something incredible but was actually behind all of the hard work to it. And so when I was thinking about what I wanted to do, I had a sort of realization how could I do anything except for journalism. Journalism was clearly the direction I needed to go. And that was really the start of all of this.

Eric Sharpe: Okay, awesome. So, so you kind of chose journalism as your path, you know, as a, as a young, young, a woman. I mean, where did that take you from there? What, you know, what was next? How did you pursue that?

Liz Giorgi: Well, so great, great idea, right? But sometimes life doesn't always go the way we plan. So I went to school at the University of Minnesota. I had an amazing experience. I really loved my program. But I graduated from college in 2007 and most newsrooms were really struggling, uh, right before the economic collapse. And then the economic collapse just took it to a whole other level. And so I really had to hustle for a few years. I was doing all kinds of interesting production jobs, everything from working on podcasts, uh, in the very, very early days to working on different shows that I could get myself assigned to and taking any freelance Gig I could take. And I tell people that it was hard at the time, but that hustle and the need to keep looking for the next job was actually the thing that prepared me for when I decided to start my own production company in 2013. So you know, it all works out, but I think that at the time I had had a different vision.

Liz Giorgi: I had had this vision of I'm going to go work in a newsroom and then I'm going to go be a host. It didn't work out that way. I ended up having to work behind the scenes. I had to really find interesting ways to keep myself busy. I was building youtube channels for different programs. I was doing all kinds of things to just pay the bills. And it actually gave me this unique perspective, which was: there's going to be a future to professional quality production on the Internet.

Digital Chatter Episode #015: Amy Waninger

Eric Sharpe: Hello and welcome everyone to another edition of Digital Chatter. This week I have my, uh, my guest is Amy Waninger, who is someone who I've never met before, but she is the CEO of Lead at Any Level. Amy, go ahead and say hi to everyone.

Amy Waninger: Hello! Thanks for having me, Eric.

Eric Sharpe: Yeah, you're welcome. So, Amy we got introduced actually through through someone who you've never met as well, but I started looking through what you do and who you are and I thought you were a perfect example of an entrepreneur and a CEO. I'd like for you to tell everyone a little bit about what you do.

Amy Waninger: Sure. So I work with organizations that want to build diverse leadership bench strength for a sustainable competitive advantage. And My, um, my. I have programs, I've written three books, I do live training events and um, yeah. A little bit of consulting and just kind of all around diverse leadership bench strength.

Eric Sharpe: Well that's a, first of all, that's a phenomenal 32nd pitch right there. I think you've clocked that in just under a 25 seconds.

Amy Waninger: So I probably should have stopped at the ten second mark. I'm working on it.

Eric Sharpe: It's great. It's great. So I mean, that's a lot of stuff. And, and uh, you know, for, you know, for, for someone young like yourself. I mean, that's, that's incredible.

Amy Waninger: Bless you for that.

Eric Sharpe: You've, you've accomplished a lot, you know. Tell me a little bit more about how you got into your business, you know, what, what led you from starting out as the younger version of yourself as to, you know, and lead us along the path as to how you got to where you are now.

Amy Waninger: Sure. So I'll try to make the long story not so long, but about three years ago, two or three years ago, I went to my first ever conference. And you know, I'm older and I can't believe I got this far in my career without ever going to a conference. But when I went it just opened my eyes to this whole world outside of, you know, my city and my, um, my company into this broader industry. And I thought, wow, this is amazing. And as I'm watching people on stage, I thought I want to do that, I want to give something back to the industry. And I, you know, I always wanted to be in theater but I couldn't sing and if he couldn't sing you couldn't be in theater because they don't want you. Right. And I got that would be such a great way for me to be in front of people and kind of scratch that itch of wanting to be on stage and not having to sing, which is excellent. I really wanted to do something. I wanted to create something original. I didn't want to regurgitate to people books that I had read. And so I submitted for that conference. I submitted a proposal that was accepted and then I had to come up with an hour's worth of content based on three bullet points, which was terrifying. Right? Because I had never done this before.

Eric Sharpe: Yeah, I mean, so this is your first, really your first chance to do a, I mean, almost like keynote style talk.

Amy Waninger: Yeah. And so I panicked a little bit and I was like, oh, I got to do this or I got to figure it out. So somebody believes in this message. And I knew I wanted to speak specifically about diversity and inclusion because it's so important in the insurance industry where I was working, um, because there's just such a talent shortage and we have such a reputation in insurance of being, you know, old white men sitting around a table hurrumphing. And I know that not to be true,

Digital Chatter Episode #014: Emi Kirschner

Eric: Hello and welcome everybody to another Digital Chatter series. My name is Eric Sharpe and today I am with Emi Kirschner. Emi, say hi to everyone.

Emi: Hey everybody.

Eric: All right. Emi is a lot of things and let me look at my list here. Emi is a business coach, a speaker and author, a serial entrepreneur and an investor and Emi, we just kind of went through the list. You're so many amazing things and I look forward to learning a little bit more about you today. So why don't you tell everyone out there how you, a little bit about how you got started.

Emi: Absolutely. And first of all, cool and thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here with you today and looking forward to our conversation. How I got started. I really have to blame my older kid. It was all his fault. Now he, I guess there's a couple of different layers. One, I've always like not wanted to work nine to five. I like making my own schedule. I only want to do things my way. Having my own business seems to fit into that, but the catalyst for me starting back really almost 20 years ago was my son had digestive issues as a baby and we went so, you know, doctors and tests and labs and specialists and blah blah blah. And the last pediatric, gastroenterologist said to me, we don't know what's wrong with him, see you later. Sorry. And I was like freaked out.

Emi: I mean I was in my mid twenties. I had no clue as a parent, just in general. And then I had no clue what to do with my kid who was like really, really sick. So I started researching and that led me to.. That moment really led me into my first business as a caterer and then as a personal chef. And I've been, just kind of one thing after another. I started my coaching practice as a health coach because I want people to feel good. Like that's the underlying thing is I want people to really feel amazing. And the funny thing about working with entrepreneurs whom I've always worked with, is that when you start talking about why you're not eating and why you're overeating and you're standing in front of the fridge at 10:00 at night, wolfing down a tub of ice cream is really the stress, my sales aren't where I want them to be. I don't know how I'm going to pay my bills, etc. Etc. Etc. We've all been there.

Eric: Oh yeah. We've all been there, absolutely.

Emi: And I just, I started solving those problems and my background in and outside of, you know, running businesses is business anyways. I have financial services experience, I have project management experience, I have events experience, I've marketing and product management experience. So wrapping all of those things up really allows me to help my clients take their business from either new or new-ish or they feel like they've kind of plateaued a little bit and really have them pop.

Eric: Did you go to school for any of this? I mean, how, you know, how did you..?

Emi: The school of along the way? I mean, my business, my degree is in business. I spent a lot of time learning. I've invested in some great coaching along the way, so I mean it's a number of different things. I will have to say that probably catering taught me the most about sales and customer service.

Eric: Why is that?

Emi: Because it's, you're out there. It's really funny because I started catering as a server. I had no intention of having my own business. I had no intention. I just wanted to do it. Side gig make some extra cash.

Eric: Pretty good money. It's stressful. Yeah,

Emi: I loved it and I loved that chaos but you're really out there to get rid of an x quantity of food but not too much and a lot of times,and I was working for a really high end caterer. So a lot of times people were super uncomfortable with what we were serving and if we came back with our...

Digital Chatter Episode #013: Corrina Sephora

Eric: Hello and welcome everyone to today's Digital Chatter. We are live and I am Eric Sharpe, your host. My guest today is Corrina Sephora. She is an artist entrepreneur, which is fairly rare nowadays I would say. And uh, she's a sculptor and Corrina tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do.

Corrina: Alright. Well first of all, thank you for being here. And thank you for checking us out. And a little about myself. I guess from a really early age I knew I wanted to be an artist and I have been in a myriad of different facilities and I specialize in metal work, sculpture, architectural metal work and pieces of fine art and some functional work

Eric: Great. Great. So, you can see some of the, some of the mental work is in the background here. We've been putting it together. Uh, some of it was already hung on the wall of course. Um, so tell me, I mean, how, when did you first know that you were an artist and you have this, these skills and abilities?

Corrina: Um, well, I mean, Gosh, I think as soon as I could crawl around, I was already drawing, you know. Um, when I was about five, my dad had a workshop where he did some metal work. We had a farm, so he was always building something. He had a theater background and so I was around metal work and welding when I was at age five and um, I called welding electric lightning and I went on. In high school I started doing jewelry and metal smithing like that. And, but leading up to that I did drawing, painting, weaving, printmaking, you name it. And I just always had this vision that I was gonna spend the rest of my life being an artist.

Eric: Okay. Well what, so why was it electric lightning to you? What, what kind of sparked all of it? I mean, obviously you were around it at a young age, but you know, you just mentioned electric lightening. Why, why was it like that to you?

Corrina: Um, maybe we'll get a chance to show you a little bit of electric lightning, after. But welding is an electrical process and it sheds this big, bright blue light. Much like if you're in an evening rainstorm and you see like a flash of lightning. Lightning actually looks, I mean, welding actually looks, electric welding actually looks very similar to that.

Eric: Sure, sure. Okay.

Corrina: So when I was five, you know, that was kinda what I made up.

Eric: That's a perfect explanation. That makes sense. I'm, I'm sure a lot of people have seen welding, you know, they say, you know, don't look, don't look at it directly because you can burn your eyes. Burn the retinas or whatever. So, you know, I've always, I've always seen artists throughout the years, you know, discover themselves and have their influences. So tell me, what are some of your influences?

Corrina: Well, um, let's see. My, I had a grandfather that was a sea captain and much of my work is nautical inspired. So I had this grandfather that was a sea captain. I had uncles that would like in the yard of our house when I lived in Maine. They built this huge ship. Actually, it's still in a Harvard in Boston, um, and so, and we took voyages, you know, I call it voyage, but we went on this long, you know, weeks we were out at sea when I was really young. There's something about that feeling of the water, you know, and that nothingness and everythingness. So that's one. And then this is kind of a cool thing. I'm sort of mystical, but when my mom was pregnant with me, she was jumping off of a rock into a pond and she said she heard this voice and the voice said, my name is Corrina, you have to name me Corrina.

Corrina: Right. And so she's like, she falls into the water and she's looking around and she realizes like, that was just whatever for me. And so I say that's where my soul met my body and later in life we found out two years later...

Digital Chatter Episode #012: Brendan Alen Barrett

Eric: Hello and welcome everyone to today's Digital Chatter. I'm Eric Sharpe and we have our guest today Brendan Alen Barrett. He is a sales coach, trainer, and a podcaster, and a father and he's going to tell you a little bit more about himself. So Brendan take it away.

Brendan: Hey, thanks Eric. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so I do a bit of training. I do a bit of coaching. Hm, probably.. The people that I work with most are entrepreneurs, early stage entrepreneurs or people who own larger businesses and either they need help selling themselves because they've got a craft and that craft is out selling. Right. But they need customers. Or they're trying to grow their sales effort by adding sales people or adding sales development reps to help feed opportunities to their salespeople.

Brandan: But probably what I'm most excited about lately is my podcast project which started out as Facebook Live and we're getting ready to ramp and launch to iTunes. But that's The Business of Family and Selling and that kind of marries my two worlds, my home life my professional life. And on that show we talk about the shared experiences of people who either sell for a living as people or run their own organization. And you know the dynamics of being a family first seller, somebody who's got kids, a spouse to, you know, that they want to show their affection and love and support to. But also a business that's also kind of maybe their baby or a book of business that they need to grow and nurture. And how do they either balance or integrate the two.

Eric: That's awesome. And I'm looking here at your bio on her Website you've got your beautiful son. Right?

Brendan: Yes. Yes.

Eric: And so you know you're in Phoenix, correct? So you live and work in Phoenix and I

Brendan: Yes, sir.

Eric: Checking out your, you know, we've checked out your stuff before the interview but you know tell me kind of how you got started with all of this. I mean what's the background? You didn't really start out by doing sales in the beginning, did you?

Brendan: Well my first.. I guess my first sales training was my junior year of college. I accepted an offer to do one of those Student painter internships, I was actually working with student painters which is basically it's an opportunity for kids college students to learn the skills of entrepreneurship through the exercise of managing and running a branch of an exterior painting business. So that was my first sales training. Once that summer was done after, you know, being in charge of going out finding the work, selling the work, organizing the work, managing the production, closing out the projects.

Brendan: I went, I got a job selling at RadioShack you know commission retail sales. Upon graduating from college where I started pursuing a degree in econ and then decided I didn't want to go to graduate school right away so I switched to communications with an emphasis of PR. But then upon graduation moved to California thinking I was going to get a job in marketing communications you know start low level work my way up couldn't find a gig, first serious offer I got was a sales gig in construction and so I've been working in sales ever since. About a year or so after landing in California relocated to sunny Phoenix and..

Eric: There must have been a reason behind that. What was the reason for relocating?

Brendan: Better salary. So I was working you know, as an employee salesperson and they had an opening in the territory, they wanted to you know expand, put a new office but they needed the revenue base to fund a new office and new equipment in the area. So they wanted to put somebody there permanently because for half the ...

Digital Chatter Episode #011: Sandy Lawrence

Eric: Hello and welcome everyone to another episode of Digital Chatter. My name is Eric Sharpe and today my special guest is Sandy Lawrence. Sandy Lawrence go ahead and say hi to everyone.

Sandy: Hi Eric. Hi everyone. This is great. I'm so excited Eric about being here with you, seeing you again. And my thanks to Michelle Scism that we both know who is my coach, my business coach and through her I met Eric and now here I am. That's what I love about this world in which we live the day where you know you can be on the air any time night or day live and in person and I love the love that, love that, love that. So I'm a publicist. I have a public relations company. I understand a lot of people don't really know what public relations means but I help you tell your story basically. And I work with authors, mainly authors or speakers, coaches, business owners who want to have a book to share their heritage, share their story and leave a legacy. So that's my that's my passion, Eric. We talked about that earlier. I love. I just had an interview today with a lady that works with animals and as soon as she started talking I was like oh my god you have a fantastic story. So I love hearing people's stories and helping them share them with the world.

Eric: Now, Sandy you've been a publicist for for a while. You've had - you're an entrepreneur, a small business owner. You've worked with a lot of people and you've done this for at least 15 years right.

Sandy: Fifteen years. It is actually 15 years in June was my anniversary.

Eric: So congratulations. This is perfect. And that is a testament to you know a small business owner and for those of you who are watching this you know being in business for 15 years as we know, as a small is business, is very difficult. It's tough. And I'd like to know I mean, how did you, what what's your background? How did you transition from you know where you were back then and where you are now?

Sandy: And that's part of my story. So I love telling my story. So I worked for a technology company for almost 20 years and then I was offered an early retirement in 2002. Sitting at my desk one Monday morning checking e-mail and there was this email from corporate and there was this offer and I mean I still get chills now thinking of you know just a regular day and a regular e-mail. And there was the one that changed my life completely.

Sandy: So I had a week to think about it and to make a decision and to let them know so I had to have it faxed. If you remember what fax is. On Friday, it was Monday I had until Friday to fax in my decision and it was you know of course the most difficult decision I ever made. And so all week long it was like will I do that. Well I'm not do that will I do that. Not doing that. And somewhere in the midst of that week my mother in law, who was an author came to me and said I know I know you're struggling with this decision and I know it's going to be challenging. You'll be out looking for clients. Can I ask you would you help me promote my books? And I know you're gonna do it. I know you're going to. So will you help me promote my books? While you're looking for technology clients because I assumed that I would have technology clients. I'm like Of course.

Sandy: So made my decision, I faxed it in and we got started. Her books- I had read her books before, mysteries, cozy mysteries. That's before I knew there were different kinds of mysteries, but hers was a cozy mystery. And I set up a book signing for her at a tea room, because when I started reading her books around marketing standpoint and saw that every day Aunt Louise and her little compadres or entourage would sit and have a cup of tea and when they had tea they would discuss something going on where they were - she had one book about Ireland,

Digital Chatter Episode #010: Michael Cowherd

Eric: Hello and welcome everyone to Digital Chatter Live. And we've got a special edition going on today. Here is my guest Michael Cowherd

Michael: What's going on everyone. Happy to be here. Thanks Eric for having me. Finally linked up and I was on time this go around and I was a.. I made you pick me up so...

Eric: This is true. Yeah, I picked up Michael to make sure he'd show up with this one. So Michael is an entrepreneur. Of course. He's the host of a podcast called Cowherds Corner and he's also a community organizer. And Michael you and met because of a mutual friend of ours actually the first interviewe that I had, Andy Cabistan.

Michael: He was my first too on my podcast!

Eric: There you go! He's obviously a great connector as well. So Michael tell everyone on this show today. Tell a little bit about how you got started.

Michael: So I think it got to start with recognizing my parents. So they're not entrepreneurs but I think that their hustle and the work ethic I attained somewhat and why do I think I just transition into this millennial lifestyle being an entrepreneur getting your own, you know. Where my parents are more you know get a steady paycheck and..

Eric: Which is always nice, there's nothing wrong with a steady paycheck of course.

Michael: But you know I'm so so I didn't start as an entrepreneur. Graduate from Morehouse College in 2013. After that I went to work for World of Technology and I got fired. I got terminated. So I kind of stumbled into being an entrepreneur in the sense of I'm a Capricorn I'm from the north east. So to put those things together, stubborn, single-minded. You know it's hard for me to do things without having an explanation or not having an understanding. And when you work in corporate America you're not going to get to meet too many people who explain things to you, why you need to do something. So ultimately after my termination I linked up with a buddy of mine Jeff Charein a Lebanese native and he was working on a fintech application called MOULAH.

Michael: Essentially it was like a location based Venmo. So if you were having a house party, or you were a vendor at a flea market you could pull up the app click on you know "Eric's orange juice" and right from the app pay cashless and your listing would pop up because you are in the vicinity of that listing. So I ran operations near through social media, hired our first three or four part time employees. Did a lot of business development outreach not only in Somerville, Massachusetts but with different investors overseas and things like that. I was bootstrapped so it was different to see a guy you know, Jad made a good investment in Facebook. You know of some years back, be able to kind of leverage that to help keep the startup afloat for the time that it was afloat.

Eric: That's awesome. You you've done I think what a lot of people have done or want to do in life which is you know, you had a corporate job and in your case you ended up not fitting in. It wasn't that you didn't necessarily like it. I mean maybe maybe you didn't like getting or showing it a certain way but it wasn't a good fit for you. Is it working out so that automatically deposited you into this role. I mean tell me a little bit about what it was like your day to day wise. You know, your first case of being entrepreneur.

Michael: Oh man. So this is going to be an open book and so I might get a little emotional. No man, being an entrepreneur was tough, right. I mean I didn't consider myself an entrepreneur I was unemployed like you know I was I was I was unemployed collecting unemployment and you know still applying for jobs and I would think from the time I got terminated in 2015 you know...

Digital Chatter Episode #009: Christian Zimmerman

Eric: Hello and welcome everyone to Digital Chatter. My name is Eric Sharpe and today I'm here with Christian Zimmerman. Go ahead and say hi!

Christian: What's up guys, how's everybody doing?

Eric: All right. Well Christian is the co-founder and CEO of Qoins. Qoins is an app on both app stores, on the iOS and the Google Play Stores. And it allows people to pay back their debt easily using their spare change. It's a really cool app and I brought Christian on today to discuss that and a little bit more. So Christian tell everyone a little bit about yourself.

Christian: Yeah well first thanks for having me. But yeah so what Qoins does is it help people pay down their debts by using spare change. So for example you know, you go to get a cup of coffee, it's $3.20 we'll rounded it up to the next dollar so $4 and then the 80 cents we apply towards whatever loan you're trying to pay down. One thing we found pretty popular is credit cards. Obviously we make a big impact with credit cards and student loans.

Eric: That's awesome. So how did you get in to all this? I mean this is you know this is not a typical thing. I would imagine for a young person to do. What's your background?

Christian: I'm just a broke college student. I graduated from Georgia State about a year ago. And I think that's kind of where it came about with the problem and trying to solve it. I had my own pain point of trying to make extra payments or make just the regular payments on my student loans. And so I found out I wasn't the only one you know in the same situation. But then as I started to find out that other people with other debt problems were in the same bucket too. But just you know a little bit older. So yes, it's kind of how I care about it and it's been it's been a rollercoaster for sure.

Eric: Yeah I can imagine and in fact I'm trying to think of the statistic of how many people you know graduated college you know the extra you know they've gone to secondary school age and they're paying off their debts hand 20, 30 years later they're still trying to pay off this debt. And it's to them. I mean it's a hindrance to their relationships as a hinderance to their ability to move to buy houses to do all sorts of things. You know what what is like a typical situation for someone to use your app?

Christian: So it's funny 'cause I started because of school loans. Right. And I wanted to you know pay back my loans. But what we found as we started growing.. Like I said a majority people started actually focusing on credit card debt. Because it's not as much of not as much debt but the amount of interest that's on a credit card debt is so much higher it's so much more painful on month to month basis. So we started kind of transitioning more so away from student loans and more towards credit card debt. We still do both. But you know we figured you know our customers are always right. Right. So we've kind of just been transitioned with what they've had to say. And it's been really crazy how much of an impact we've been able.. We've already payed down, helped pay down three, three users' credit card debts and they've gone on to add another card to try to pay down now. And like it's crazy our average user saves like 40 to 50 dollars and spare change, just spare change like it's ridiculous.

Eric: That's awesome. Yes and that's the whole point about paying down debt really is, is just taking chunks out little by little by little as best as you can and your app is a perfect example of you know.. You set it and you forget it but it's a good kind of forget that you're just nipping this out little by little by little because that's what interest does to you is interest rises up little by little by little by little we don't think ...

Digital Chatter Episode #008: Michele Scism

Eric: Welcome everyone to Digital Chatter. Today my guest is Michele Scism. She is a business coach and the founder of Decisive Minds and serial entrepreneur. Michele say hi to everyone.

Michele: Hey everybody so excited to be here and be with all of you.

Eric: All right. So Michele you are truly an expert in business and I brought you on today because I want people to learn a little bit about how you got started. So why don't you go on ahead and tell everyone out there you know how you got started.

Michele: Yeah. So my story is you know the classic serial entrepreneur story maybe. I was born into a family that had kids to guarantee they had employees. So I was working in the grocery store by the age of five. You know we had a store, a trucking company, a wrecker service, a mobile home park. If we thought we could make a dime out of it, we did it. And so I did. I grew up in an existence. If you want to you go get it. You know there is empowerment in entrepreneurship. My entire family was full of entrepreneurs and that just is how I started out life and how I just continue. So I Eric, I'm one of those people, I just eat, sleep, breathe business you know that's who I am and that's how I got started. You know in my experience is working through all those businesses, and then I went to college, got an accounting degree and I spent about 20 years in the trucking industry. Built our trucking company to a point where we sold it in 2007 and my entire family retired. And so you know that was kind of the that chapter and then there became a new chapter of decisive minds and how can I help entrepreneurs do what I did.

Eric: That's great. That's great. So are you, you are one of the lucky ones I would say, in terms of you have a fairly great background in between your finance background and you really were taught to be driven. You were taught to never settle. I think that's something that's great to be taught. I had a very similar background my mother as an entrepreneur, serial entrepreneur. She is phenomenal at it and it's still at the course though. So you know, what brought you from where you are way back then to here and maybe walk me through some more specifics like maybe after the whole trucking company you decided to start up this stuff. I mean walk me through that a little bit.

Michele: I'll tell you what happened is I you know, I retired and I thought you know I was in my early 40s I thought I'm just going to travel the world and do whatever I want and things are going to be great. And I forgot my kids were in high school and my husband sitll owned a business. And then I found myself on on the couch in 2009 of my there's got to be more to life than this. I can't take this. I guess maybe it's that you can't take the entrepreneur out of the girl, kind of thing. And so I just kind of started searching and just checking things out online and looking for you know what is out there where the opportunities. I didn't even know business coaching in the form that we do it existed. You know we as we had businesses we would have mentors you know our CPA's and our attorneys and throughout our business that we never really had a consultants or a coach right.

Michele: So I didn't really know what that was and threw some twists and turns and you know how we chase things on the internet. I ended up at an event in November of 2009. What we would call a three day marketing event right now. Right. I just started the business building event. You know went to this event and I watched this guy Adam Raincy standing on stage I could finish his sentences. I knew how to build businesses- he had my, he had the same background that I did in that he had been in business his entire life. And so I walked up to him said listen you make really good money doing this, right? And he said yes,