Onward Nation

Ron Carucci is co-founder and managing partner at Navalent and is a seasoned consultant with more than 25 years of experience working with CEOs and senior executives of organizations ranging from Fortune 50s to start-ups in pursuit of transformational change. He's a two-time TEDx speaker, a popular contributor at Harvard Business Review and Forbes, and is the best selling author of the book, "Rising to Power."

• Why you need to be open to receiving change
• The importance of having a sense of your most vital daily priorities
• The value in starting your day with gratitude
• The one thing that every entrepreneur has to decide
• Why you should pay attention and understand your impact on others
• The power of demonstrating that we care about other people's stories
• Why you shouldn't be afraid to ask for help in areas that you need to stretch and learn
• Why you should seek out people who push you
• Why you need to take control of your narrative
• Setting your sights on what you can do to help other people succeed

• Website: www.navalent.com
• Twitter: @RonCarucci
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/navalent

• Book: "Rising to Power"
• Free eBook: www.navalent.com/transformation

Brian Burke is an active owner and president of SellYourMac.com, the world's most trusted and highest independently rated Apple trade-in company and whose mission is to make it fast, safe, and easy to buy, sell, and service Apple products. His company has served over 100,000 customers, paid out $19 million, and has been featured on USA TODAY, MacWorld, and ABC News.

• How Brian's passion for sales and entrepreneurship led to him starting his business, SellYourMac.com
• The importance of having systems and processes in place
• Brian's business model and why there will never be a shortage of used Apple products to resell
• How packaging can play a key part in the consumer experience
• The importance of developing healthy habits
• Why it's critical to have a clear vision for your business
• How determination and persistence helped Brian to become the business owner that he is today
• Why you need to have data tracking analytics in place
• The benefits of having a team that supports one another
• The value of staying ahead of the competition

• Website: www.SellYourMac.com
• LinkedIn (personal): linkedin.com/in/brianburke4
• LinkedIn (company): linkedin.com/company/sellyourmac.com
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/sellyourmac

Paul Spiegelman is the co-founder of the Small Giants Community, a peer-group of purpose-driven business leaders. He is the former chief culture officer of Stericycle, the co-founder and former CEO of BerylHealth and the founder and chairman of The Beryl Institute. He's a New York Times bestselling author and has been honored with the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. Paul is a columnist for Forbes.com and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and Inc. Magazine.

• How the Small Giants community got its start
• The impact that accepting outside capital can have on your business
• How to measure the ROI of your business' culture
• How to create a values and purpose-driven business that is sustainable
• The three things that every team member wants
• The power of focusing not just on your company's vision, but on every employee's vision
• How to approach having tough conversations with your employees
• The value of having a mentor as an entrepreneur
• Why you shouldn't underestimate what your gut is telling you
• Why you need to pay attention to how you spend your time and prioritize your work

• Website: paulspiegelman.com
• Website: smallgiants.org

Good Morning...I'm Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation.

Before we dive into today's episode — which is going to be a solocast where it'll be just you and me spending some time together exploring a topic that my team and I have been watching very closely — I want to make sure you've heard about our new Alexa Flash Briefing that we launched yesterday...and how you can get free access to the daily content.

You can activate it with a simple voice command to your Amazon Echo device by saying…"Alexa, enable the Onward Nation Flash Briefing" and you will be all set to receive our daily, short, business building tips and strategies anytime you ask Alexa for your Flash Briefing.

Please give it a try and let me know what you think — thumbs up or thumbs down. Your feedback helps us get better each and every day.

And if you're asking yourself, "What the heck is an Alexa Flash Briefing?"... during our time together in this solocast...I'm going to share the ins and outs to Alexa Skills and Briefings and how Alexa can impact your biz dev strategy in big ways...and I will share why my team and I at Predictive ROI have been studying the broader category of "Voice" for a while now...and I will even take you behind-the-curtain into the four reasons we felt it was important for us to launch the Onward Nation Flash Briefing.

Full show notes available here: https://predictiveroi.com/podcasts/stephen-woessner-solocast-episode-78/

Elizabeth Engen is an Online Business Strategist and Founder of Premier SEO Ninjas - a digital marketing agency that helps doctors and lawyers grow their practices by creating online strategies that increase their number of clients and boost their bottom line. Premier SEO Ninjas aims to be the leading provider of innovative, comprehensive, state-of-the-art, and results-driven digital and Internet marketing solutions to enable their clients to become successful.

• Elizabeth's path that made her realize that she'd been in the wrong line of work for 18 years
• The struggles many business owners go through trying to balance the desire to gain customers in any way possible with learning to focus on the niche that suits them
• How Elizabeth learned to keep negative ideas and beliefs from gaining a foothold and prevent her from pursuing promising business opportunities
• The way Elizabeth approaches sales with the mindset of what she's got to offer versus what she's going to gain from the encounter
• The advice she received from mentors to get herself into a "beautiful state" when it came time to approach a new business opportunity
• The technique Elizabeth's team use to start each morning, where they answer questions designed to establish the tone of how they'd approach the rest of the day
• Why Elizabeth feels it's important for entrepreneurs to start out with solid goals and an idea of the traits their ideal client would have
• The way Elizabeth learned to use the story of her own path to bond with potential new customers and give them a reason to want to do business with her
• How her company differentiated themselves from other competitors by proving their worth to clients with solid research
• Elizabeth's recommendations to new business owners to use affirmative prayer, reflection, and set yourself up properly for the next chapter in your life

• Website: premierseoninjas.com/onward-nation
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/%E2%9C%AF-elizabeth-engen-630460113
• YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCgq84bc2q8Wbh56335qiEDA/videos

Our special encore guest today is Chris Prefontaine. Chris has been in the trenches of the real estate industry for over 25 years. His company has done over $80 million in real estate transactions. He is a practitioner at heart — which is why his company still buys between 4 to 10 properties each month where Chris and his family practices what he preaches. He is the author of the best selling book, "Real Estate on Your Terms."

I invited Chris back for an encore because of a fundamental problem that most business owners struggle with -- how to get their wealth out of their business and into other assets -- just in case they don't have an opportunity to sell the business -- or even if they do sell the business -- awesome -- the diversification of assets can provide a very balanced portfolio. And real estate may be one of those investment strategies to consider as you are building out your plan.

• How to get your wealth out of a business and into other assets while still running the business smoothly
• Diversifying your portfolio in real estate
• How to develop and help people grow to reach their full potential
• How to run a family business smoothly and efficiently
• The unique advantages and disadvantages of running a family business
• The importance of having each family member take on a specific role within a family business
• How to show people that they actually have a pathway to financing and homeownership
• How to amass millions in cash outs over the next three years
• How to make money from the three paydays of real estate and how to morph the three paydays into four or even five paydays
• Whether you should have accountants and attorneys advise you for higher-end deals

• Website: www.smartrealestatecoach.com
• Twitter: @chrispre
• Book: "Real Estate on Your Terms: Create Continuous Cash Flow Now, Without Using Your Cash Or Credit"

Chad Littlefield and Will Wise are Co-founders of We!™ — an organization whose mission is to create conversations that matter. Chad is a keynote speaker, who has spoken at TEDx and is the creator of We! Connect Cards™, which are now used to create conversations that matter on campuses and companies in over 50 countries around the world. Will has over two decades of experience in custom building leadership programs for corporate and non-profit groups. Together, Chad and Will have launched a new book, Ask Powerful Questions: Create Conversations that Matter, now a #1 Amazon.com Bestseller.

• Getting clear on creating conversations that matter
• Small talk vs. conversations that matter
• Why you need to ensure that there is trust within your organization
• Communicating with a person based on what they're doing vs. who they're being
• The power of being clear about your intent and sharing it
• How to not have impossible conversations
• Low curiosity small talk vs. high curiosity small talk
• How to increase the climate of belonging in your business
• Why you should follow your natural genuine curiosity
• A powerful question to ask yourself repeatedly that will reap great rewards

• Website: weand.me
• Free tools: weand.me/ideas

Ron Alvesteffer is the President and CEO of Service Express, a company that specializes in on-site data center hardware maintenance services. Under his leadership, Service Express has averaged double-digit revenue growth year over year and has expanded their geographic footprint nationally. Service Express has been named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing privately held companies for 10-years, but Ron is most proud of their strong company culture which has led to the company being named one of the nation's Best and Brightest Companies to work for for the past several years.

• How Ron decided on his 2020 BHAG goal for Service Express and worked to achieve it by focusing on nurturing the personal growth of the people they hired
• Working to help Service Express consistently achieve double-digit growth each year by using the type of employees they hired as the differentiator from their competition
• The way Ron feels it's important to always let people know the value they add to a company
• How Service Express came up with a system presenting the personal ROI of employees to keep everyone on the same page when it comes to achieving overall company goals
• The importance of setting a clear direction for employees to prevent them from feeling lost or not needed by the company
• Service Express' use of mentors as a way of providing consistent feedback to employees about their performance and their hopes for future development
• How Ron feels putting their employees first, even over customers, helps them provide a better overall service experience
• Ron passing on his habit of reading each day to his employees as a way to engage their minds and encourage new ideas to aid growth
• The importance of developing skills aiding in picking the right people for your company
• What Ron learned from his early mistakes in recruiting the wrong people and how he refined his choices using the topgrading interview methodology
• The way Ron took to heart lessons from his mentor on making connections with the people who worked for his company

• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ronalvesteffer
• Email: [email protected]
• Blog: ronalvesteffer.com
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/weareserviceexpress, www.facebook.com/ronalvesteffer
• eBook: www.serviceexpress.com/careers/the-service-express-ebook

Stacy Jones is the CEO and founder of Hollywood Branded, a Los Angeles influencer and entertainment marketing and strategy agency. She has over 20 years of leadership experience building global influencer and entertainment branding campaigns for top Fortune 500 companies and hundreds of brands. Acknowledged as an expert in the field, Stacy has appeared on CNN and MSNBC, spoken at conferences around the globe from Germany to Beijing, and has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Advertising Age, and other media outlets.

• Why influencer marketing has become so significant for both brands and influencers
• The difference between a 'social' celebrity and 'real' celebrity
• Why all celebrities need to figure out how to be social influencers
• How to determine if you should make social influence part of your marketing plan
• Why micro-influencers have more power than any other type of influencer out there
• Creating a paid course curriculum based on cornerstone content from a podcast
• What a strong influencer campaign looks like
• Things that you cannot ask an influencer to do
• The importance of helping your employees to continually grow
• Why it's critical to develop processes and put systems in place sooner rather than later

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: HollywoodBranded.com
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/hollywoodbrandedinc
• Twitter: @Hollywood_PR
• Instagram: @hollywoodbranded

• Blog: blog.hollywoodbranded.com
• Programs and Reports: learn.hollywoodbranded.com

Phil Singleton is a web designer, SEO expert, award-winning author and CEO of the digital agency, Kansas City Website Design & SEO. He is co-author of the Amazon bestseller, "SEO for Growth: The Ultimate Guide for Marketers, Web Designers and Entrepreneurs" — a book that he co-wrote with John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing and listed as a top marketing book by Huffington Post. He's also the author of a popular WordPress SEO plugin that has been downloaded over 100,000 times in the last year. Phil's latest venture, Podcast Bookers, is a service that helps marketers and executives get booked on established podcasts.

• How after returning stateside after 10 years in Taiwan, Phil successfully began to develop websites while living in Kansas City and soon saw the potential they added to ecommerce
• The growing importance of SEO (search engine optimization) for those buying and selling items on the internet
• The value of sharing information on other podcasts, especially in areas of well-defined expertise, such as Phil's awareness of the impact of SEO
• Ways that appearing as a guest on another's podcast also increases the person's credentials as they share the expertise with other podcasters, even if they have their own show
• How having an expertise in SEO and understanding the impact of a well-written call to action (CTA) allow you to enhance your web presence and ranking
• Ways that podcast guests can help promote themselves and the podcast they appeared on by sending a resource email of things mentioned on the show, SEO suggestions, and other content to assist the host
• Reasons that some podcast guests offer to assist with funding the transcription of the broadcast, since it benefits them as well as the person who interviewed them on the podcast
• The significance of reviews and the growing review-based culture in which many entities with an online presence will ask you to evaluate their online offerings
• How the quality of podcasts have improved as talent brings their best stuff and shares their ideas
• Ways that focusing on an SEO strategy that emphasizes personal branding and the authority people bring to the table drives more traffic to high-quality web pages

• Websites: kcwebdesigner.com, seoforgrowth.com, kcseopro.com
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/seokansascity
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/kcseopro, www.facebook.com/philipmsingleton
• Twitter: @kcseopros, @seoforgrowth
• Book: "SEO for Growth: The Ultimate Guide for Marketers, Web Designers & Entrepreneurs"