Marketer of the Day with Robert Plank: Business Growth & Entrepreneur Stories

Carlos Vivas links a cancer recovery and a near drowning to one outcome: living with purpose through forgiveness and service. At 14, doctors said his leukemia was terminal, offering a costly transplant with 50/50 odds or a Paris-sourced formula treatment. He committed to prayer, felt heat surge through him, and later a CT scan showed no cancer, with a conviction it would not return. In 2015 a riptide dragged him offshore for more than 20 minutes until he yelled for help and stopped resisting. When rescuers could not reach him, a dolphin pushed him up and a boater tossed a rope as lightning approached. He later described a heaven vision that stressed love over religion and a three-part practice: forgive parents, forgive your inner child, forgive those who hurt you. Takeaway: practice the three forgiveness steps and prove it with consistent service, even one call or one meal.

The post 1114: Help From Heaven: The Extraordinary Story of Cancer, Dolphins, and Divine Forgiveness with Cancer Survivor Carlos Vivas first appeared on Marketer of the Day with Robert Plank: Business Growth & Entrepreneur Stories.

Eugene Kwaku shows how global PR can help Japanese companies win trust overseas by translating culture into stories and partnerships. Raised in Japan after moving from Ghana at age five, he specializes in intercultural communication that bridges language, norms, and business etiquette. His planning stack stays simple: Google Drive, Google Sheets, and ChatGPT as shared dashboards tied directly to the objective. To prevent "talking instead of doing," he counts chat message boxes and flags workflows that exceed three to five exchanges before action. Because attention is scarce, he partners with podcasts, influencers, or events that already work, then focuses on the exact touchpoints producing conversions. For execution, he turns ChatGPT outputs into a knowledge base, runs a three-week experiment, and reviews feedback, using a 6:30am to 9:30pm Monday-Saturday routine with Sundays off. Best takeaway: combine disciplined systems with cross-cultural empathy, then test and refine until the message travels.

The post 1113: Bridging Cultural Divides to Expand Your Business Globally with Founder of We As One Eugene Kwaku first appeared on Marketer of the Day with Robert Plank: Business Growth & Entrepreneur Stories.

Joe Rare explains how outsourcing and systems turn a stressful solo hustle into a business that runs without you. He defines freedom as time, then shows how delegating creates leverage so you never miss family events. After hiring his first VA in November 2008, he learned the hard way that a fancy office and payroll can sink you when two clients erase 40% of revenue. He reset by cutting overhead 60-70%, staffing fulfillment first, and focusing personally on closing deals. That shift took one client paying $3,000 per month to $109,000 per month in four months, then nearly $220,000 within three more. He scales by using the same backend template across companies, moving ops leaders between them, and testing offers with a simple landing page before branding. Best takeaway: invest in human capital, tolerate small mistakes, and 'fail fast' so execution beats perfection.

The post 1112: Level 9 Virtual: Outsourcing Virtual Assistants, Proper Task Delegation, and Achieving Business Freedom with Founder Joe Rare first appeared on Marketer of the Day with Robert Plank: Business Growth & Entrepreneur Stories.

Blockchain can restore privacy and trust online by letting people transact and share data peer to peer. Sylvain calls Web3 a train: blockchain is the engine, and tokens are the ticket. Transactions are locked with asymmetrical encryption, where a private key works like a PIN and a public key like an email address. Each step is time-stamped, hashed with tools like SHA-256, and verified by multiple nodes before joining an immutable block chain of custody. Bitcoin started with Satoshi Nakamoto's 2008 white paper; by May 22, 2010, 10,000 BTC bought two pizzas, proving belief can move prices. Beyond money, he points to on-chain health records, land registries, supply-chain tracking, NFT-based media sales, and pilots of mobile voting apps such as Voatz. Takeaway: ignore the hype and learn the decentralized security layer that protects identity and data.

The post 1111: Let’s Meet Blockchain: Explore Blockchain Technology, Cryptocurrency, and Reclaiming Your Privacy with Blockchain Expert Sylvain Metz first appeared on Marketer of the Day with Robert Plank: Business Growth & Entrepreneur Stories.

A veteran small business attorney shares how to reduce legal headaches while making your company easier to run. He says many founders skip due diligence, don't know their numbers, and rely on memory instead of systems. Start with a written plan built around four areas: product/service, personnel, marketing, and finances. Delegate early, replacing $20-an-hour tasks with helpers so you can do $200-an-hour business development. Marketing means validating demand by asking customers what they actually want, not falling in love with your idea. Financial discipline is tracking real costs and margins, because cash flow can hide trouble until it stops. Best takeaway: put agreements and tasks in writing, and review numbers and feedback every week.

The post 1110: How to Legally Safeguard Your Startup: Key Legal and Strategic Insights with Business Law Attorney Mitch Beinhaker first appeared on Marketer of the Day with Robert Plank: Business Growth & Entrepreneur Stories.

Ella Parlor explains how beverage marketing becomes real growth when every tactic leads to an easier yes at the shelf. Starting as a Red Bull street marketer, she found "distribution gaps" where stores had listings but no one stocked product. Her fix is route-to-market thinking plus below-the-line sales tools such as shelf talkers, digital banners, and clear buy buttons. She urges teams to map the consumer journey and win within 5 to 10 feet of the decision, not in the boardroom. With a $50,000 budget, she would rather fund multiple touchpoints than a $30,000 billboard, which should be the ninth touch point. She also pushes multicultural marketing to expand into overlooked audiences and keeps leadership grounded with her SETH check-in: spiritual, emotional, financial, physical. The takeaway is to care about the people behind the products, then audit your journey for gaps and fix them fast.

The post 1109: Eavesdrop with Ella: Marketing & Sales Alignment, Prioritize People Over Products, and Always Keep Going with Sales & Marketing Consultant Ella Parlor first appeared on Marketer of the Day with Robert Plank: Business Growth & Entrepreneur Stories.

Sleep doctor Bijoy John shows how the "Sleep Now" method can end insomnia and sharpen daily performance. He links sleep to lower heart rate, steadier blood sugar, and a glymphatic brain cleanup for memory and mood. Start with S for Schedule, targeting 10pm to 6am and always waking at the same time. L means low light, low noise, and cool temperature so melatonin rises, while E is keeping electronics and the phone out of bed. He adds no exercise within four hours of bedtime and P for Power off with vivid imagination or Yoga Nidra body scans. For N, set a worry window from 6pm to 8pm, then W means "win by losing" by leaving devices and stress at the door. Stick with it for two tough weeks, track patterns in a journal, and consider a home sleep study for suspected apnea, which he says fits 95% of cases.

The post 1108: Nobody’s Sleeping: Strategies For Better Sleep, Live Healthier, and Be More Productive with Sleep Specialist Dr. Bijoy John first appeared on Marketer of the Day with Robert Plank: Business Growth & Entrepreneur Stories.

Joel Friedland shows how industrial warehouse investing can produce steady cash flow with fewer headaches than apartments. He targets single-tenant "box" buildings and aims for 2% yield per quarter, roughly 8% a year. His differentiator is 0% debt syndication, so vacancies do not trigger bank pressure. Because lost rent can run $30,000 a month, he markets relentlessly to keep buildings full. He uses industrial brokers and SIOR relationships, LoopNet/CoStar, and old-school door-knocking, phone, and mail. Supply is scarce since manufacturers may move only every 20 years, so he makes 20 offers a week. After guaranteeing $70 million of loans in 2008, he warns that leverage can turn business into gambling.

The post 1107: Industrial Real Estate Investing Strategies to Achieve Higher Returns, Relationship Building, and Avoid Gambling Risks in Business with Principal at Brit Properties Joel Friedland first appeared on Marketer of the Day with Robert Plank: Business Growth & Entrepreneur Stories.

Alec Hanson breaks down how mortgage pros can use social media to build trust and drive real loan volume. He says the goal is relationships of influence so people know, like, and trust you, starting by connecting with past clients and referral partners online. Organic posts should be ungated education while paid performance ads supply the direct call to action. He uses Gary Vaynerchuk's "Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook" to balance giving value with a clear reminder that you can help. Ignore platform snobbery: TikTok can be serious and LinkedIn rewards consistent posting with generous reach. With rates rising quickly since the Carter administration, he pushes empathy and perspective without talking down to frustrated buyers. When camera fear hits, return to purpose, help families into stable 30-year mortgages, and post anyway.

The post 1106: Mortgage Marketing Insights: Social Media Strategies, Lead Generation, and Influencer Engagement with CMO of loanDepot Alec Hanson first appeared on Marketer of the Day with Robert Plank: Business Growth & Entrepreneur Stories.

Jonathan Gillham explains how to publish with integrity by checking for AI generation, plagiarism, and factual errors before content goes live. He built Originality.AI after paying writers for articles that were simply copied and pasted from ChatGPT. Its fact checker helps editors spot hallucinations, like a foraging book that suggested tasting mushrooms to see if they are poisonous. In a scan of 100,000 sites after Google's March 5 update, about 2% got manual actions and were deindexed for heavy AI spam. He stresses detectors are classifiers, so a 10% score means high confidence it is human, not that 90% is human written. Originality.AI targets roughly 99% accuracy with a 2.5% to 3% false positive rate, and starts at $14.95 plus about one cent per 100 words. The practical takeaway is to make originality and fact checks a standard step in your workflow so the publisher, not the writer, controls risk.

The post 1105: AI Unmasked: Enhance Content Integrity, Streamline Content Creation, and Navigate SEO with Founder of Originality.ai Jon Gillham first appeared on Marketer of the Day with Robert Plank: Business Growth & Entrepreneur Stories.