Onward Nation

Matthew Pollard has built five multi-million-dollar business success stories and is the prestigious Young Achiever Award. Matthew is a true differentiation, niche marketing, and sales powerhouse. He is a recurring guest on Fox7's Good Day Austin as well as a featured contributor to Fortune, Entrepreneur, and CEO Magazine. Matthew was recently honored with induction into the International Sales Blogger Awards Hall of Fame and is the 22nd most retweeted business coach on Twitter.

• Matthew's background
• How every single skill set is obtainable
• How introverts become the gate to their industry
• Why adapting to a sales system can help you be more authentic
• Why you don't have to be the person asking for the sale
• How to make a sale through telling a story
• Why it's important to ask the right questions
• Why you should avoid technical jargon when attempting to make a sale
• Why people feel like they get stuck when trying to sell
• Why it's important to get back to what you're passionate about
• Creating a unified message
• How to create rapid growth in your business

• Website: matthewpollard.com
• Website: matthewpollard.com/rapid-growth-academy
• Website: matthewpollard.com/webinar
• Website: matthewpollard.com/archetype
• Website: matthewpollard.com/growth
• Website: matthewpollard.com/sales
• Twitter: @MatthewPollard_
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/MatthewPollardSpeaker
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/matthewpollardspeaker
• Podcast: Better Business Coach

Cindy Georghiou has more than two decades of retail industry experience and is an expert in the fashion and beauty industries. She began her career as an assistant buyer out of college, and moved up the corporate ladder to head buyer soon thereafter. She then made the move to the wholesale side for sales, product development, and e-commerce. In 2006, Cindy and a partner launched BlueSource Inc., a full-service web design company where she acquired extensive knowledge and experience in e-commerce, design, and merchandising. Then in 2012, Cindy and a partner acquired the intellectual property for JAQUA, one of today's fastest emerging natural bath and body brands.

• Cindy's background
• Cindy's strategy for keeping her email organized
• Why it's so vital to be flexible
• Why Cindy and her team had to downsize because of uncertainty with a client
• Why you can't get tied into the minutia
• Not sweating the small stuff
• Why you need to secure funding early
• Why your best employees must be persistent
• Understanding you market
• Setting up your path for success

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

Jason Blumer is the Chief Innovative Officer of his firm, Blumer & Associates, CPAs. The firm was one of the first to move from a traditional office to a virtual environment, where they serve digital, marketing, and design agencies. Jason is also the host of two podcasts, "The Thrivecast" for CPAs and "The Businessology Show" for agency owners. He has been honored as one of the 40 under 40 in the profession by CPA Practice Advisor as well as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting by Accounting Today.

• Jason's background
• Why you need to right team around you
• Why Jason brought a partner into his business
• The rhythm of business
• Giving yourself the freedom to work the way you work best
• How Jason and his partner survived losing too many people at the same time
• Learning to choose and move forward
• Why Jason believes in a client onboarding system for every business
• Why you need to know what others don't know and be willing to do what others are not

• Twitter: @JasonMBlumer
• Website: http://www.jasonblumer.com/

Garrett Gunderson is Founder and Chief Wealth Architect of Wealth Factory, and New York Times bestselling author of Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths That Are Destroying Your Prosperity. And he's personally helped countless business owners create efficient wealth strategies that fit their unique strengths.

• Garrett's background & personal wealth building story
• How Garrett is a leader at both home and work
• Basic rules and foundations of the five-part framework to creating economic independence
• Why Garrett starts every day with a "producer power-hour" to put him in the right mindset
• Why he believes we've been trained improperly about money
• Why you need to think about investing as investing - not as gambling
• Why you need to move to cash and start increasing your investor IQ in things that you pay attention to - focus on those & forget about the rest
• Why it's so important to have integrity and restore it if it's broken
• Why learning to say no to good opportunities to reserve yourself for the great opportunities can help you create more happiness
• Why you should compare yourself on a progress level to where you've been instead of where you're going
• Applying the 5-5-5 strategy
• Why you should delegate roles instead of tasks

• Website: wealthfactory.com
• Twitter: @GBGunderson
• Book: Send a text to 801-396-7211 with the subject "WWRD" ("What Would the Rockefellers Do?") for a free downloadable copy

Michele Wucker is a global thought leader with experience in strategy, policy, turnarounds, and crisis management. Her most recent book is "THE GRAY RHINO: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore." After nearly three decades in media and non-profit management and content creation, she recently founded Gray Rhino & Company to help leaders and organizations to strategize responses to risks that are neglected despite - or often because of - their size. Her previous positions include Vice President for Studies at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs; President of the World Policy Institute, which she re-launched in 2007; and Latin America Bureau Chief at International Financing Review. She has been honored as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and a Guggenheim Fellow.

• Michele's background
• Michele's book "The Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore"
• Why you need structure in your daily life to run a business effectively
• Why Michele begins her day by walking her dogs
• Why you need to listen as a business leader
• What you can learn from Kodak's collapse
• Focusing on what you need and how to get it
• Shedding what's holding you back

• Website: thegrayrhino.com
• Email: [email protected]

Terry Gremaux is an entrepreneurial leader, training business owners worldwide how to use free social media strategies to grow their market presence & business revenue. Terry is an expert at helping you expand your positive business presence on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter & Instagram. He's helped thousands of business owners catapult to get success using the free social media strategies that he teaches.

• Terry's background
• Why Terry starts his day with meditation, journaling, reading, affirmations and movement
• Why it's important to operate at your own highest capacity
• Why having the right mindset is so important for instantaneous change
• Why Terry asks himself every day what he is afraid of and how that keeps him going
• Why Terry believes that social media is the new telephone
• Why you need to find your target customer and who they are following on social media and have conversations with them…every day
• How Terry steals attention on Facebook and why he creates content "like crazy" so that people stay addicted to him
• How to out-attention your competition so you can win
• Never stopping hustling

• Website: thehashtaghunter.com
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/terry.gremaux
• Instagram: @terrygremaux

Kate Sweetman is a founding partner at SweetmanCragun and co-author of the upcoming book, Reinvention: Accelerating Results in the Age of Disruption. Sweetman was listed as an Emerging Guru with Thinkers50, and is co-author of the bestselling business book, The Leadership Code published by Harvard Business Press. Her first-hand experience with world leaders, Fortune 100 organizations, and Asian multi-nationals provides a substantial foundation for insights that extend beyond borders. A former editor at Harvard Business Review, she has been published in HBR, Sloan Management Review, Boston Globe, and the Times of India, and has appeared on CNBC in the U.S. and India. She is also a coach and visiting lecturer at MIT's Legatum Center for Entrepreneurship.

• Kate's background
• Keeping Stephen Covey's Important vs. Urgent Matrix front of mind
• Why you need to do three tasks every single day
• Getting information delivered to you so that you are always learning and spreading that knowledge across your network
• Why Kate begins her morning with quiet time
• What Kate and her team did when her contact page was broken for 2.5 month after a book launch
• Why you have to double check to make sure your technology is working correctly
• Why you need to talk about what it is that you're doing with other people whose opinions matter
• Staying focused on your end goal

• Email: kate@sweetmancragun
• Website: www.sweetmancragun.com

Craig Clark helps guide his clients in the pursuit of organizational or personal excellence resulting in above average results consistently over time, or MOMENTUM. His team's approach is to affect how people work together and impacting their engagement. Craig provides insights spanning 25 years of bringing transformational answers to everyday business problems — around the globe.

• Craig's background
• Why Craig started Momentum Consulting
• Sandbox rules for adults
• How to discover where your blind spots are and how to cover them up
• Why Craig questions how he looks at things
• Building ownership accountability into your organization
• Modeling the behavior you want in your organziation
• Why you need to hold everyone accountable
• Why you need to understand your core values
• Being cognizant of where you slip into being a victim of circumstances

• Email: [email protected]

Linda Hollander is often referred to as the Wealthy Bag Lady. She has been featured by Inc. and Entrepreneur Magazines as the industry leader in corporate sponsorship. She has over 20-years of experience as a business owner and does sponsorship and business consulting. Her clients and sponsors include Microsoft, FedEx, Citibank, Mattel, Bank of America, Marriott, Health Net, American Airlines, IBM, and Wal-Mart.

• Linda's background
• What sponsors are
• What can get sponsored
• Mistakes people make when attempting to obtain sponsorships
• Why you shouldn't market yourself as a podcaster or a blogger but rather as a media company
• Why your worries about having sponsorships are unfounded
• Why you should make the sponsor the star
• Why you should enter one-year contracts
• Why banks are great sponsorships
• What your sponsor wishlist should look like
• Creating a great sponsor proposal
• The #1 secret to getting corporate sponsors
• How she got Bank of America as her very first sponsor

• Website: sponsorconcierge.com

Stephen is the CEO of Predictive ROI and the host of the Onward Nation podcast. He is the author of two bestselling books, 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 382…I'm Stephen Woessner. Thank you for taking the time to be here this morning and for making Onward Nation part of your daily routine.

I want you to know how much your time and attention mean to me. I'm keenly aware that there are many demands on your time — at this moment — and yet you chose to spend some of your precious time with me to learn more about the lessons we share from today's business owners.

I take the trust you place in us pretty seriously.

My team and I know that we need to deliver practical and tactical knowledge within every episode — knowledge you can take and apply into your business to accelerate your results, quickly.

But oftentimes — a critical component to being successful when applying newly found knowledge is fighting back the fear and temptation to procrastinate. The overwhelm — the delay — in reaching back out to your top prospect who has not made a decision on your proposal yet — and guess what — fear and procrastination is what is holding them back from making a decision in your favor, too.

But Onward Nation…if you solve for the fear on both sides of the equation — meaning your fear and their fear — your probability of success increases exponentially.

Or, maybe you are plagued by the failure of a previous venture or a series of ill-advised decisions — and there are days when the burden of money lost and opportunity squandered makes you feel like quitting.

I get it — I've been there.

I have been at the top and I have been at the bottom. I know what the daily pressure feels like when you need to add employees because of increased demand but you can barely afford the team you currently have because you are still paying for mistakes in year's past.

But, rest assured, Onward Nation, the pressure you may be feeling right now…the pressure that seems unending…is actually refining you.

As you feel your business model being compressed, pushed, and pulled — all of it — it is actually a beautiful thing.

The intensity of your situation right now is refining you into something spectacular — if you let it. You and your business may be a diamond in the rough — and it is the intense pressure of today that is refining you, cutting you, removing all of the impurities from your business — and if you have the guts, the mental and physical fortitude to stick it out, you will be a brilliant diamond on the other side of it with exceptional cut, clarity, and color.

So as odd as it may seem — and as painful as it is to endure — enjoy this time — focus on the result outcome — and apply proven, practical, and tactical knowledge to get you through to the other side.

And that is what I am going to share with you during today's solocast.

I am going to share my favorite success quote — I am going to share some of the behind-the-scenes of one of my biggest and most terrifying business failures that caused me to have many puke in the bucket moments.

And I am also going to share the story behind a one-on-one call with my mentor, Darren Hardy and how he properly shifted my mindset, like iron sharpening iron, and gave my team and I the momentum we are still riding today here at Predictive ROI, the content marketing and lead gen agency that I lead alongside our incredible team when I am not interviewing today's top business owners.

And I am going to share all of this insight by sharing — in its entirety — my full interview with John Lee Dumas, host of the exceptional EOFire podcast. John invited me to be his guest for Episode 649 of EOFire and it was an incredible experience. JLD asked me tough questions and I'm excited to share with you the blueprint for eliminating the guesswork behind building an audience — and overcoming the fear and procrastination that often holds us back.

Onward Nation, the lessons you will learn as a result of listening and studying this interview are timely — because if you put them into practice — you will take several large leaps ahead of your competition and be well on your way to ensuring 2017 is your most successful year ever — in whatever way you define success — because it is a deeply personal metric and is different for all of us.

So without further adieu, here is John Lee Dumas, and me, in Episode 649 of EOFire: www.eofire.com/podcast/stephenwoessner

Hey — welcome back, Onward Nation — I hope you found the practical and tactical recommendations I shared with JLD, and now with you, to be valuable as you refine and sharpen your plans for 2017.

Remember, all of the intense pressure that may be bringing you to your knees each and every day…is helping you…if you let it.

Learn from it…adapt…change course…and get mad…fight back…but next time…fight back using the wisdom of what you learned…and you will begin to see the cuts and clarity taking shape, Onward Nation.

You will walk brilliantly into 2017 as the perfectly crafted diamond you were meant to be because you will have allowed the process of pressure and heat to unlock all of God's abundance.

So when you are feeling that pressure…just take a moment to remember the wise words of Marianne Williamson, who said…

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

So, Onward Nation…you are capable — you have the gifts and talent to get through whatever the pressure you are feeling at this very moment — you can get past it — and you will make 2017 the best it has every been.

With that, Onward Nation…I want to thank you again for taking the time to be here with me today.

It is always an honor to have you here — I want you to know how much I appreciate you sharing some of your invaluable 86,400 seconds you have in your day with me and the strategies we learn and share each day from today's top business owners.

And please continue to let me know what you think of Onward Nation…good or bad…I always want your feedback. You can hit me up on Twitter, find us on Facebook, me on LinkedIn, or you are always welcome to email me directly at [email protected] — and yes — that is my actual email address — no fancy filters or filing system — it will come directly to me.

We will be back tomorrow with an incredible encore interview with Linda Hollander — she is rock solid awesome and will take you by the hand, behind the green curtain of sponsorships, and how you can leverage your business platform into a sponsorship of $10,000 to $100,000 with a large corporate brand. She is amazing and shares the details in full transparency! You will love it.

Until then, onward with gusto!