Onward Nation

Ron Schutz consults with business owners to help them realize their full potential for their business, while also developing strategies and workable solutions to prepare them for transition. He has been giving financial advice to business owners for over 50 years and is the author of the new book, "AMERICAN FATHERS", which explores the ideas of moral capitalism and what it means to be an entrepreneur in a global society with different values.

• Some of the challenges that entrepreneurs are facing today
• Building yourself into a media channel to promote your business
• How technology has changed the way business owners spread their message
• The importance of collaborating with other business owners
• Why having more dialog with your clients, employees and vendors is important
• Taking time to be thankful and grateful
• The most critical skill needed to thrive in business: being an active listener
• Why having the ability to stay focused is vital to success
• How looking at a situation through another's lens leads to greater appreciation
• Why you should always look to continuously improve

• Website: www.ronschutzauthor.com

Dina Dwyer-Owens is the co-chair of The Dwyer Group, a service-based franchise company which now includes 19 service brands and accounts for more than $1.5 billion in system-wide sales. She's a certified franchise executive with more than 35 years of industry experience — 15 years as CEO of Dwyer Group. America also knows her for participating in CBS's Emmy-winning hit reality show "Undercover Boss" and the first-ever special episode "Undercover Boss: Epic Bosses." Dina is the author of two books: Live R.I.C.H. and Values, Inc. that both share her global message for living and leading with a proven code of values.

• The importance of celebrating the successes of yesterday but learning from the mistakes
• Why leading with values is important within a company
• Why you should always treat people with respect and dignity
• How to create a system around your company's values
• Why "living" your values is critical to success
• Gaining access to a free "Create Your Culture Workbook"
• Why you should take every day as a learning opportunity
• Looking for the solution via your values when facing obstacles in your business
• The lessons that can be learned by letting yourself be vulnerable
• Why, as a leader, you have to be willing to let go of wanting to be great at everything

• Website: www.dinadwyerowens.com

Naphtali Hoff is an executive coach and president of Impactful Coaching & Consulting. He completed his doctorate in human and organizational psychology and holds two master's degrees in education and educational leadership. Naphtali's personal experience in the leadership field allows him to understand leaders' needs and craft solutions to help them optimize their performance and success. He is also the author of the new book, "Becoming the New Boss: The New Leader's Guide to Sustained Success".

• The outcomes of starting a new leadership position with success
• How having a podcast gives a business owner a new way to connect with people
• The importance of reaching out to other business owners and mentors
• Why setting goals is a critical daily habit
• How avoiding distractions allows for a high impact work day
• Why having a clear sense of direction is a critical skill to master
• The benefits of bringing everyone in the organization together to help make decisions
• Why it is important to define your core values
• Why learning to listen well is critical to success
• The benefits of having a business coach

• Website: www.impactfulcoaching.com
• Website: www.becomingthenewboss.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Book: "Becoming the New Boss: The New Leader's Guide to Sustained Success"

Gavin Zuchlinski is the founder of Acuity Scheduling, the slickest way for businesses to automate and manage their appointments online, allowing clients to schedule themselves. He is a self-professed tech geek who wholeheartedly believes that business should be fun. Acuity Scheduling supports over 50,000 businesses of all sizes, from people working for themselves to major corporations with thousands of employees.

• The benefits of building your business slow and steady
• Why you should focus on creating a product that people will love
• How setting up a checklist of tasks to improve your product will improve your business
• Why spending time improving your product before you market the product is important
• The importance of listening to your customer's feedback
• How reading and researching every day makes you and your business better
• Building a business with recurring revenue makes the business more attractive to buyers
• The importance of remembering the reason your business exists is to help its customers
• Why staying connected to your customers and the technical aspects of your business is important
• The power of being happy in the moment and taking joy in what you do every day

• Website: www.acuityscheduling.com/onward

Mike Canarelli is the CEO and Co-Founder of Web Talent Marketing and is recognized as one of the top digital marketing agencies in the United States who prides itself on providing unique, scalable long-term solutions for its clients. Mike holds a B.S. from Temple University's Fox School of Business and Management where he studied Entrepreneurship and Management Information Systems. After six years as a freelance designer and web developer, he founded Axis Creative Group in 2006 and later merged with Web Talent SEO in late 2010.

• How organization can help you tackle your daily vital priorities
• The importance of focusing on the details of each project
• The benefits of clearing out your email inbox by the end of each day
• The obstacles that can be overcome when your organization works as a team
• How adversity leads to great lessons on how to rebound and come out stronger
• Why being a strong leader can help your team weather the tough times
• Remaining calm under pressure: a critical skill for business owners to master
• Remembering to stop, breathe, think then act when facing adversity
• The importance of trusting those you hire
• Why you need to find a good mentor and lean on them for sound business advice

• Website: www.webtalentmarketing.com
• LinkedIn: Mike Canarelli
• Email: [email protected]

Peter Lisoskie is the founder of Chatbot Nation — a technology that fosters a more humanized and connected relationship between people and brands using chatbots, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. He helps business owners and entrepreneurs create an interactive experience with chatbots to deliver leads, improve sales conversions, provide customer service, sell products, and win new clients.

What you'll learn about in this episode:

• What a chatbot is
• How chatbots create an instant interactive experience
• How to use a chatbot as part of a lead generation strategy
• Why Peter feels businesses will be moving away from email marketing
• How chatbots allow the user to drive the experience
• The advantages of using a chatbot for customer service
• How chatbots contribute to your company's bottom line
• The power of Messenger Codes as a marketing tool
• Why having an animated chatbot character helps create an elevated human connecting experience
• The importance of having clarity and focus to best ensure success

Ways to contact Peter:

• Website: www.chatbotnation.co
• Website: chatbotnation.co/ill-build-your-chatbot
• Twitter: @chatbotnation
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/petelisoskie

Beth Storz is President and Innovation Process Consultant at Ideas To Go with a rich history of helping companies and brands to be more innovative. Beth's experience ranges from managing large flagship brands to smaller strategic portfolios. Beth is the co-author of the recent book, "Outsmart Your Instincts: How the Behavioral Innovation Approach Drives Your Company Forward."

What you'll learn about in this episode:

• What cognitive biases are
• The cognitive biases that impede innovation
• How to overcome the cognitive biases and get your business to the next level
• How the negativity bias holds back innovative thinking
• The power of using positive words to trick the brain into problem solving
• What the curse of knowledge is and how it puts constraints on innovation
• How the fear factor can hold you back from trying new ideas
• Understanding that you alone do not have all the answers is a critical skill to master
• The impact of surrounding yourself with those who are smarter than you
• The importance of continuous improvement within your business

Ways to contact Beth:

• Website: www.ideastogo.com
• Twitter: @bethstorz
• LinkedIn: Beth Storz
• Book: "Outsmart Your Instincts: How the Behavioral Innovation Approach Drives Your Company Forward"

Amy Kirsch is the Director of Investor Relations at RealtyShares, an online marketplace for real estate investing connecting individual and institutional investors to private U.S. real estate investments. She has over 10 years of financial services experience & has worked in wealth management for Merrill Lynch, Dearborn Partners, and JP Morgan's Private Bank before working as the Head of Investor Relations for PeerRealty, a Chicago real estate crowdfunding platform.

What you'll learn about in this episode:

• How real estate investing has become democratized
• What steps need to be taken to become a real estate investor
• The benefits of making a vital priorities list for the week
• How time blocking can become an important part of your success
• Why the most critical skill to master is focus
• The importance of doing right by your clients, following up, and following through
• Why you should celebrate and reward the wins of your team
• Why having employees who have a sense of urgency is important
• The importance of having a team that supports and encourages each other
• Why it is critical to your success to have a mentor

Ways to contact Amy:

• Website: www.realtyshares.com
• Email: [email protected]

Our special encore guest today is Jay Irwin and he is an adventurous soul who is determined to inspire people through wilderness experiences. He teaches audiences, from inner-city youth to executives, how to bring the gifts learned from wilderness experiences into daily life to create powerful and long-lasting change. He is the owner of CBST Adventures where he takes clients out of their comfort zone so they can experience the metaphors of nature. You may remember Jay and the wisdom he shared during Episode 306. If you haven't listened to, studied, and applied all he shared during our first interview…I highly encourage you to add Episode 306 to your list of vital priorities.

• What experiential leadership is
• The benefits of experiential leadership training
• How experiential leadership training leads to team building
• How experiential leadership training can help businesses with succession planning
• Why finding your motivators and demotivators is vital to your team's success
• How being successful is more than just having financial success
• The importance of having a positive impact on others
• The power of being grateful for success and giving back to the community
• What characteristics Jay feels makes an "A" player
• Why defining your vivid vision for your business is important

• Website: www.cbstadventures.com
• Twitter: @jayirwin66

Stephen is the CEO of Predictive ROI and the host of the Onward Nation podcast. He is the author of three bestselling books including the recently released Profitable Podcasting. He is also a speaker, trainer, and his digital marketing insights have been featured in SUCCESS, Entrepreneur, The Washington Post, Forbes, Inc. Magazine, and other media.

Good Morning Onward Nation and welcome to Episode 612…it is always a pleasure and honor to have you here with me – I greatly appreciate your time and attention – and the fact that you have chosen to invest a part of your day making Onward Nation what you listen to and study means a great deal to me.

So thank you very, very much.

Today's episode is going to be a solocast – with a bit of a twist. If you have been listening to the show for a while now – you know that from time to time, I record an episode without a guest – and I call those solocasts – and I do this – because a solocast gives you and me an opportunity to go deeper on a topic and to really explore the depth of a particular lesson.

But for today's solocast – there is a bit of a twist.

And the twist is that my team and I are going to use this solocast as an opportunity to share an episode where I was recently the guest on the Integrate and Ignite podcast…hosted by my friend, Lori Jones…CEO of Avocet Communications.

Okay…so why did I decide to air another podcast's episode inside today's solocast?

I made that decision because of the value I think this interview with share with you.

For example…

Lori and I talk more about how – if you were to launch a podcast, YouTube channel, rockin' awesome blog, or another form of cornerstone content – it could become your Trojan Horse of Sales and ignite your business development strategy within your company.

You and I went deep into this topic during Episode 600 of Onward Nation – but the perspective I share with Lori and what she shares with me will provide additional context that will be helpful to your biz dev.

Lori and I also talk about the importance of thought leadership and how it can be used to share your expertise with your dream prospects – and – add value to your existing customers, which is an important lesson for most business owners, especially those who are being forced to pivot their business over the next 12-36 months.

I also helped Lori's audience see – and I want you to see, too, Onward Nation, how a piece of cornerstone content – again…that may be a podcast episode, a YouTube video, a blog article, etc. can then be used to create 30, 40, even 50 pieces of smaller content.

And this adds leverage into your business and helps you create scale.

Plus, this portion of the conversation with Lori begins to fulfill the promise I made to you during Episode 600 when I said that I would go deep into the content creation process during a future solocast, which I will still do and am preparing that episode right now, in fact.

But the conversation with Lori is an additional layer of introduction that provides some helpful context as we continue moving down the content creation path.

And lastly…Lori and I also address another scaling issue – and that is how to get your internal team onboard with the strategy of creating cornerstone content to drive business development – and – that this strategy is going to run alongside the Trojan Horse of Sales.

And I know it may be surprising, Onward Nation – but – you will be able to complete a lot of this work if you were to recruit and hire several talented and highly motivated unpaid interns to your team.

Lori and I talk about the recipe we have used here at Predictive ROI to do just that – we have recruited and hired 25 unpaid interns over the last several years – and they have been extraordinary. So don't fall into the trap of thinking that you need a large team of expensive talent to be effective in this strategy.

Okay, Onward Nation…here is Lori Jones from the Integrate and Ignite podcast, and yours truly as her guest.

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Okay…welcome back, Onward Nation.

I hope you found the conversation with Lori Jones to be helpful in illustrating the power that cornerstone content can have within your business development strategy.

In fact…Erik Jensen from my Predictive ROI team and I were just on-site for a 2-day strategy session with a company in the financial services industry – and during the discussion – one of the business leaders said, "Wow…now I get it…now I see how our podcast could become the center of our entire content strategy."

And yes, he was correct…your podcast…when executed properly…doesn't just help you build a nation of true fans…or an audience…but each and every episode is cornerstone content that can fuel your entire business development strategy.

I will break this down into precise detail during my next solocast and illustrate the full power of the strategy – but for today, my hope is that the additional context was helpful.

Thank you again for taking the time to be here today…I am grateful for you making Onward Nation what you listen to and study. We all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day and I appreciate you taking some of your invaluable time and sharing it with me.

Until tomorrow…onward with gusto!