Did you know that profit margin is a choice? You don’t have to earn the biggest possible net profit.

You can choose to reinvest, you can choose to save, you can choose to reward your team consistently or make your prices more affordable. Margin is a choice!

After attending a two week Harvard course Dave Duarte returned to his business energised and focused. Unfortunately, this focus directly lead to his first round of retrenchments and some extremely difficult times as his sales efforts failed to convert into paying clients.

Dave Duarte is the founder of Treeshake, a social media agency focused on campaigns for change. His team works with purpose-driven leaders to build communities to solve the big issues of our day from poverty, climate change, public health, animal welfare, relevant education and more.

Here’s what else I learned from Dave in this episode:

• People rise to your level of expectation of them

• We are living in a narrative economy

• Distilling your story will supercharge your sales

• Hypergrowth isn’t the only form of growth in business

In this insightful conversation, Dave talks about living in a narrative economy, choosing the right profit margin for your business, how going all-in on his business actually nearly ended it and the different kinds of growth you can accept in your business.

This week I talk with serial entrepreneur, rocket scientist & explorer wannabe Ben Hirons.

Ben and I discuss his broken business partnerships, the little secret he kept from his wife to keep his company afloat and the importance of brand position in the success of any business.

Ben is one of the leading marketing minds in Australian business. Over the past 20 years, he has started and grown three successful businesses, researched over 1000 SMEs and studied the great marketers of our generation.

Ben is Armed with a double degree in Business and Aerospace Engineering and has the hands-on experience that comes from being a serial entrepreneur.

What would you do if you discovered one of your biggest clients, accounting for 40% of your revenue, was using a project of yours to illegally funnel money to people?

This is precisely what happened to Jonty Fisher and his advertising agency. What unfolded was a brutal period of cutbacks and rebuilding as Jonty and his partners worked to save their business and rebuild.

As a classically trained business marketing strategist, Jonty has led strategic thinking and guided executional work across brands such as HEINEKEN, PepsiCo, Jack Daniel’s, adidas Originals, KIA Motors, Hennessy and many other world-class brands.

He is driven by a passion for human beings and all their gifts and quirks, and a deep curiosity for learning lessons from everything he does.

In this week's episode, he shares his incredible story as we discuss how imposter syndrome affected his leadership, how he learned to bring his whole self to work with him and exactly what happens to your business when a client commits an illegal act unbeknownst to you in the middle.

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After explosive growth, Laura Roeder's business began to plateau, growth stagnated and then declined. The size of her team was not aligned with the lack of growth they began to experience. So she started to make significant changes that most founders just won't commit to.

Laura began to consider the size of her team, the location of her startup and life, the kind of business outcome she was hunting for and everything else in her power to change.

What unfolded is a riveting story of shifted startup perspective, grit and determination from an impressive founder you've probably never heard of but need to get to know.

Laura was the founder and CEO of MeetEdgar and is now the founder and CEO of Paperbell. She has been an independent entrepreneur since the age of 22 and her story is going to shift the way you see your business.

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Find Paperbell online now: https://paperbell.com/

Why would anyone build a new business with the same team and same overheads from a recently failed business?

Off the back of one failed business, my next guest decided to do just that and immediately started another business with massive overheads and not a client in sight.

Unfortunately starting a business with massive overheads and no clients from day one is a lot more difficult even than it sounds. With funding from his family and friends and a plan to dig himself out of a hole, he started to build a new business. This is not a rag to riches story as he ended up burning $500 000 (R8m) working to save the company.

Daniel Marcus is a lifelong entrepreneur and a co-founder of UK-based predictive analytics start-up Ramp.

He built his first company at the age of 19, has seen his fair share of failures and has had 3 successful exits. I don't want to keep you waiting any longer, so remember, it's not over until it's over.

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Visit Ramp - https://rampgrowth.com/

Mike Sharman considers himself to be a creative and an entrepreneur. He used both of these traits to build a successful $1m social media agency called Retroviral, which is responsible for making more brands go viral than any other agency in Africa.

After successfully launching and then scaling Retroviral, Mike sold a majority stake in the business to a large corporate. That's when the gaps in his financial knowledge started to affect his role as CEO, the stability of the acquisition and put the day to day running of the business into a precarious position.

In this episode, Mike and I talk about his financial shortcomings, how he muddled through the acquisition and the impressive turnaround that followed.

Buy Mike's new book - http://brandalismbook.com/

Work with Retroviral - https://retroviral.co.za/

Follow Mike on Twitter - @mikesharman

Vinny Lingham is a prolific entrepreneur who has built businesses spanning the globe and across various verticals including website builders, a gift card company and a decentralised identity verification platform on the blockchain.

He is also an active investor, shark on shark tank South Africa, a dragon on Dragon's Den South Africa and an author.

Vinny and I sit down to discuss his business Gyft which was dreamed up, built and sold in less than three years for more than $50m.

We talk about Gyft paying $50 fees on $5 transactions and how introducing bitcoin payments pulled the company out from the depths of despair. Hold on to your headphones because this is a fast-paced episode!

Lauren Dallas is a Creator a Coach, an Educator, a Growth Marketer, a Hedonist and the CEO of Future Females.

She has started 5 businesses and shut 3 of them down.

In this episode Lauren talks about going broke, imposter syndrome, the realisation she cannot be a successful multi-tasking entrepreneur, how embracing her personal brand changed her business forever and how shrinking margins led to a breakdown that was the catalyst for her next business.

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Website: itsnotover.show

Find Lauren online:

Instagram

Future Females

On the night of his 20th birthday, Rob Stokes decided to start his first business called Quirk. Named after his cat, sitting beside him that night.

His entrepreneurial career is filled with grit, determination and lots of sacrifices that lead to various successes and a few wild stories of failure and near-death experiences.

In this episode, Rob talks about eating only carrots for two straight weeks to save money so that his business could survive. He tells me about a financial director who faked ovarian cancer and stole from another one of his businesses and how one piece of paper thrown in a trash can kickstarted his entrepreneurial endeavours.

When her biggest client becomes her worst paying client the pressure mounted and my next guest had to dig deep to survive.

Yvonne Wakefield is a lawyer who started Caveat legal, the Airbnb for lawyers, in 2011 as a way to provide affordable legal services to those who couldn't afford the biggest law firms in the world.

Ironically it was an established, old-school law firm that almost sunk her company by holding back payments, spinning long stories and manipulating the truth.

Yvonne has fought bad clients, burnout and an archaic establishment and thrived.