In The Trenches

Rob Braiman is personally responsible for the development and growth of three directly owned and successful start-ups, he brings a passion for the small to mid-market segment of business. He has spent 15 years working directly with business owners to improve strategic planning, operations, growth, and business development. 

During today’s conversation, I sit down with Rob Braiman, who’s the Principal and Managing Member at Cogent Analytics. I brought Rob on the call today to talk about the typical problems that small business owners and entrepreneurs face today and how to get through them. This conversation does get somewhat analytical and academia focused, but it will still be incredibly useful for small business owners. 

You’ll leave this conversation thinking about how you can improve some of your bottom line metrics and numbers that you don’t necessarily think about when bootstrapping. My big takeaway from this episode is that the world of KPI metrics can be quite interesting when you know what you’re tracking and how to pay yourself first.

• Where did Rob’s entrepreneurial journey begin

• cogentanalytics.com

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Alinka Rutkowska is a USA Today best-selling author, a Wall Street Journal best-selling author and a top 100 Amazon best-selling author in business and money. She’s sold more than 100,000 copies of her books and her book creation process has been showcased in Entrepreneur magazine. She’s also the CEO of Leaders Press, where she turns entrepreneurs' book ideas into best-selling books. She has launched all its titles to best-seller status.

On today’s episode, I sit down with Alinka Rutkowska to talk about two things. The first is how to outsource your book and what that process looks like. The second is Alinka’s best tips on how to hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list.

During this conversation, we kind of break down her strategy for those two things with what worked and what didn’t. She will be sharing some practical and hopefully pragmatic tips on what you could do to implement for your own launch, regardless if you are shooting for a best seller list.

• When and how did Alinka enter the self-publishing space

• leaderspress.com

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Did you enjoy today's broadcast of In The Trenches? Please click here to leave an honest rating and review on iTunes. Your review helps me spread the word of this podcast, which allows me to line up amazing guests and continue to produce this podcast ad-free. Thanks so much in advance for your support.

Hussain Bandukwala is the Chief PMO Coach and Adviser at Parwaaz Consulting, which provides consulting, coaching, support and resources to facilitate the success of Project Management Office (PMO) leaders. He is a seasoned program/project manager who has worked with C-level executives and garnered recognition for being a versatile leader with a focus on getting things done. Hussain speaks at PMI events and has authored several PMO relevant publications.

Today, I sit down with Hussain to talk about project management. Specifically, how do we get things done quickly and efficiently and do it in as organized a fashion as possible so that we can chip on time and profitably. This episode is going to discuss how you can get things done better, faster and ultimately reclaim more of your time. My biggest takeaway from this episode is that what we are doing is worth our time and energy only when we’re getting things done efficiently and effectively.

• What led Hussain to what he’s doing today

• parwaazcc.com

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Did you enjoy today's broadcast of In The Trenches? Please click here to leave an honest rating and review on iTunes. Your review helps me spread the word of this podcast, which allows me to line up amazing guests and continue to produce this podcast ad-free. Thanks so much in advance for your support.

Andrew Tarvin is the creator of Humor That Works. Humor That Works has helped over 25,000 people, from all around the world and within more than 250 different organizations, use humor to achieve success and happiness in the workplace.

As an entrepreneur, and as a marketer, I like to use humor to capture attention, get people entertained, and to have more fun with the content I am producing. In today’s conversation, Andrew and I dive into the engineering of humor. We spent some time discussing whether or not there is a scientific or mathematical model that we can follow and what constitutes as good humor or bad humor in the workplace.

My big takeaway from this episode is that humor is something that can actually be engineered. There are some good techniques and tactics, and some pragmatic approaches to thinking about how to be humorous in a productive capacity, both in the workplace and on your own.

• How did Andrew venture into his current career

• www.humorthatworks.com 

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Did you enjoy today's broadcast of In The Trenches? Please click here to leave an honest rating and review on iTunes. Your review helps me spread the word of this podcast, which allows me to line up amazing guests and continue to produce this podcast ad-free. Thanks so much in advance for your support.

Jill Stanton is the co-creator of Screw the Nine to Five with her husband, Josh Stanton. Jill and her husband are obsessive world travellers (with their little guy, Kai), say-it-like-it-is podcast hosts, lovers of quality of red wine and hell-bent on helping transform unsatisfied employees into dangerously-successful entrepreneurs!

In today’s conversation, we discuss how Jill has grown her blog to multiple six figures by selling affiliate products. We also dive into what makes a successful affiliate marketing program, how to niche down effectively and what is working and what’s not working in the digital marketing space right now.

My big takeaway from this episode is that affiliate income can be simple, easy and fun to earn, and it’s particularly suited for those people who want to focus on content creation and teaching first. If you’re already creating content and teaching and sharing great information, then you should also be leveraging affiliate or affiliate products. Because if you’re not, then you’re leaving money on the table. 

Take some notes and consider how you might be able to implement or integrate affiliate marketing into what you’re already doing.

• How did Jill and her husband begin their blog

• screwtheninetofive.com/the-screw-show/

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Did you enjoy today's broadcast of In The Trenches? Please click here to leave an honest rating and review on iTunes. Your review helps me spread the word of this podcast, which allows me to line up amazing guests and continue to produce this podcast ad-free. Thanks so much in advance for your support.

Steve Chou is the founder of My Wife Quit Her Job. When Steve’s wife became pregnant with their first child, she decided to quit her job to stay at home with the kids. But instead of cutting back on their lifestyle, they started an online store and made over $100K in only 12 months to replace her salary. 

On today’s episode, Steve and I talk about that website, how he founded it, and how they were able to replace her income with a side hustle project within about one to two years of starting their business. Steve created a foundation in niche businesses, through traffic, lead generation, marketing and sales for his physical and digital products.

My big takeaway from today’s episode was that great results can occur by working with a chatbot through Facebook messenger. I can’t wait for you to hear Steve’s statistics to share about his experience with that feature!

• How did Steve enter the blogging space

• mywifequitherjob.com

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Did you enjoy today's broadcast of In The Trenches? Please click here to leave an honest rating and review on iTunes. Your review helps me spread the word of this podcast, which allows me to line up amazing guests and continue to produce this podcast ad-free. Thanks so much in advance for your support.

Brian Berni is a former Vatican secret archives employee and a best selling author under multiple pen names. He blogs for writers and self publishers at Authorstech and is the co-founder of BookAds, an agency that helps authors advertise their books through Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) and book club ads in 2018. Brian also hosted the first ever virtual summit for fiction writers. 

I brought Brian onto the podcast today to talk about book marketing, book advertising, what’s working, what’s not, and how to make a mess work for you. In today’s conversation, I wanted Brian to share his experience from hosting his first ever virtual summit, Indie Novelist Summit for fiction writers in 2018, which helped him go from practically zero to thousands of engaged readers. Due to the success of the summit, several thousand more subscribers joined his email list and generated multiple five figures just from ticket sales of his virtual summit alone. During the campaign, I worked with Brian, which was a lot of fun because he had such a commitment to quality. And so I have kind of two big takeaways. 

From today’s conversation, I had two big takeaways. The first is on the marketing front which is that Amazon is moving to a pay-to-play model, which seems to be the future of Amazon book sales. The second big takeaway is on the virtual summit front, which is that they work. If you want to know more about virtual summits, you can go to my blog.

• How did Brian venture into an online space 

• authorstech 

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Did you enjoy today's broadcast of In The Trenches? Please click here to leave an honest rating and review on iTunes. Your review helps me spread the word of this podcast, which allows me to line up amazing guests and continue to produce this podcast ad-free. Thanks so much in advance for your support.

Chad Pytel is a developer, founder and CEO of thoughtbot, a product design development consultancy with six studios across the U.S. and U.K. For over 15 years, thoughtbot has produced top quality web and mobile apps with hundreds of clients from one person startups to Fortune 500 enterprises, universities and nonprofits. Chad co-authored two books, Rails AntiPatterns and Pro Active Record, has spoken at conferences around the world and is the host of the podcast Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots.

On today’s episode, I sit down with Chad to talk about how thoughtbot went from an idea to a small five person Web agency. From there it grew to over a 100 person consultancy. During this conversation, we also discuss how Chad has been able to grow this company over the last decade and what that’s been like to expand and grow across multiple geographic locations.

My big takeaway from today’s conversation is that there are a lot of ways to build the type of business you want to build. But the one thing that’s critical is the vision, what you care about, how you do work, who you want to work with, and the things that will separate you from others because there’s always going to be competition. The thing that’s going to separate you from the competition are your values, your goals and how you organize the work you do and why you do it.

• How Chad founded thoughtbot

• Chad's Twitter 

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Did you enjoy today's broadcast of In The Trenches? Please click here to leave an honest rating and review on iTunes. Your review helps me spread the word of this podcast, which allows me to line up amazing guests and continue to produce this podcast ad-free. Thanks so much in advance for your support.

On today’s episode, I am having a conversation with Jason Resnick who is a web developer, host of the podcast, Live in the Feast and creator of the online community for freelancers, Feast. Inside Feast and through his blog and podcast, Jason helps freelancers discover their niche, plan out and market themselves, build recurring revenue and stay in the feast. Jason helps his clients reach their goals, connect with their why and live the life that they’ve always wanted to live.

My big takeaway from this episode is something that’s a recurring theme with the entrepreneurs,authors and creators - you need to niche down at the very least to get any sort of traction from your marketing. The reason is simple. There’s just so much competition out there now that to be generic is kind of a death knell but a great resume and track record can help. If you’re showcasing your work and knowledge online via blogs or podcasts, that can all help, but unless you can target a specific subset of the market, your marketing dollars and bandwidth will vanish before you get any real traction. To stand out, you need to speak directly to your target market. Without further ado, let’s get to today’s interview.

• How did Jason enter the world of freelancing

• rezzz.com

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Did you enjoy today's broadcast of In The Trenches? Please click here to leave an honest rating and review on iTunes. Your review helps me spread the word of this podcast, which allows me to line up amazing guests and continue to produce this podcast ad-free. Thanks so much in advance for your support.

Today’s panelists are Megan Reamer is the co-founder and CEO of Jackson’s Honest, a healthy foods company. Jackson’s Honest makes potato chips, tortilla chips and grain free puffs all cooked in organic coconut oil. Patrick Vlaskovits is an entrepreneur and 2 time New York Times bestselling author. His writing has been featured in the Harvard Business Review and the Wall Street Journal, and he speaks at technology conferences worldwide. And our third panelist is Bret Boyd is the CEO of Knoema, a software platform for data access and discovery. At Knoema, Bret and his team build tools to help public and private-sector organizations make better decisions with data.

During today’s episode, I’m interviewing not one, but three exceptional CEOs. This episode is a bit different than my other podcasts, as it’s a live podcast where I’m extracting the panelist’s best insights on business, marketing, creativity, and leadership.

• How did Megan differentiate her product in a saturated marketplace

The audience Q&A is from 42:40 - 57:00.

• How does Megan think about new extremes in her business

• Megan Reamer

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Did you enjoy today's broadcast of In The Trenches? Please click here to leave an honest rating and review on iTunes. Your review helps me spread the word of this podcast, which allows me to line up amazing guests and continue to produce this podcast ad-free. Thanks so much in advance for your support.