REACH OR MISS - Entrepreneurial Marketing Success

Jonathan Slain’s book, “Rock the Recession: How Successful Leaders Prepare For, Thrive During, and Create Wealth After Downturns” came out in September 2019 and is a #1 Amazon Best Seller.

Jonathan coaches high growth leadership teams across the United States to implement the Entrepreneurial Operating System® also known as “Traction.” He focuses on working with entrepreneurial niche/specialty firms and large corporations ($10M+ in annual revenue), spending over 100 days per year working with teams just like yours.

Jonathan was Valedictorian of his graduating class and had the highest GPA ever in the history of Shaker Heights High School, where he was also voted “Next Bill Gates and Least Likely to Lose his Virginity.”

Most passionate about

• My day job involves consulting work. I started my career in investment banking, so you could say that I’m a recovering investment banker. At some point, I realized that making $80 to $100 a week for somebody else wasn’t a fair play. So, over a decade ago, I left investment banking and started my entrepreneurship.
• I took a trip to Denver with my brother-in-law, who wanted to start a franchised business. I was the family’s “business person” and he wanted my advice.
• I loved the idea and on the flight home, we decided to get into the gym business together. I left banking and we started to build gym franchises. We grew to have five locations in five years all over Cleveland and Ohio. And we kept growing; we set records for the franchises.
• Then, the great recession of 2008-2009 hit. And I learned a lesson: that the worst thing to sell during a recession is personal training. Nobody wants to buy personal training in a recession and we didn’t have a plan.
• Fast forward: We were able to get through the great recession only because I borrowed a few dollars (a quarter of a million) from my mother-in-law. Within three years, I paid her back.
• I started to help people grow their businesses with consulting. Three years ago, my brother-in-law bought me out of the gyms so I could focus on the consulting business.
• I’ve been doing that for the last three years. Recently, I started to get nervous that my clients weren’t prepared for the next recession. That’s what got me into where I’m heading: I put out my book Rock the Recession. Now I’m trying to get the word out so that other entrepreneurs and business owners can rock the recession.

Is the next recession at our doorstep?

• I think that in the US we will probably be looking at an event such as a recession or a slowdown by the end of 2020.
• I want my clients and your listeners to think about how they can rock the recession. What can they do now to prepare and take advantage of all the opportunities that a recession brings?
• Recessions come around only every seven years and don’t last long, and we haven’t had a recession in over a decade.
• As I did the research for the book, I searched for entrepreneurs and business owners who did well in the recession. They were hard to find because most people don’t do well in recessions. What I learned from the ones who did succeed is that their first step was to assess their current situation. So, that is where I would start.
• We prepared a free, short, 20-question assessment on the site com. The scores are from zero (which means you are likely to fail in the next recession) to 100 (which means you are prepared for the recession and will be able to take advantage of opportunities like buying assets for cheap or buying other companies that didn’t prepare, to be able to win talent and more opportunities). The average company gets a score of 37 out of 100.
• The point is to come up with a recession plan ahead of time as opposed to acting when you are already about to lose your house or lose your best employee to the...

David Meerman Scott spotted the real-time marketing revolution in its infancy and wrote five books about it including The New Rules of Marketing and PR, with more than 400,000 copies sold in English and available in 29 languages from Albanian to Vietnamese.

Now David says the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of superficial online communications. Tech-weary and bot-wary people are hungry for true human connection. Organizations have learned to win by developing what David calls a “Fanocracy” -- tapping into the mindset that relationships with customers are more important than the products they sell to them.

He is a massive live music fan, having been to 790 live shows since he was 15 years old, is passionate about the Apollo lunar program, and he loves to surf but isn't very good at it.

Most passionate about

• Over the last five years, I’ve been thinking very, very deeply about what’s coming next after the social media and real-time revolution. The reason I’ve been thinking so deeply about this is that The New Rules of Marketing and PR is the book I’m most known for. That book originally came out in 2007 and now it’s in its sixth edition.
• The New Rules of Marketing and PR has influenced a lot of people but it has also led to a new online world that I think is becoming more polarized. It’s becoming a place where people are just trying to send another email, another piece of spam. They are trying to push out their content in inappropriate ways. There’s even inappropriate use of artificial intelligence.
• I was recently on a site and didn’t even realize, until after a couple of minutes, that I was talking to a robot. And in the political world, the political discourse online is becoming so nasty and mean, even from the President of the U.S.
• What I recognized is that the pendulum has swung in the direction of superficial online
• . But people are hungry for a true human connection. So, I’ve been thinking deeply and writing and researching about how people can have a much more human connection with other people, as well as how businesses can have a much more human connection with their customers.

Aren’t the connections between two human beings “human” anyway?

• I don’t think so. I think that when a company deploys artificial intelligence and pretends that you’re talking to a human, or when a company puts 100,000 email addresses onto a single email, or when people are just being mean and nasty, this is not human. This is not a powerful connection. It’s just doing something to sell a product or a service, and we don’t want to be sold in that way. So, I think organizations that will be successful in 2020 and beyond are the ones that understand how to reach people in a way in which they are growing fans of their customers.
• Five years ago, I was very focused on the idea that superficial online communication is no longer working for many people. But at the same time, people are fans of the things they love, like a sports team, classic cars, bird watching, or an artist. Everybody seems to have something that they are incredibly passionate about. Many people are incredibly passionate about the companies that treat them well, that treat them like human beings.
• That’s what led us to write that book that turned into Fanocracy— turning fans into customers and customers into fans. I wrote that with my daughter.

I can understand and identify with being a fan of a music band, or an author, or a sports team but it’s not exactly the same as becoming a fan of a company. So, what should a company do to attract these fans?

• There are a number of prescriptions that we identified. What was interesting about writing this book with my daughter is that she is a scientist. She got a neuroscience degree at Columbia University and is now in her...

Serial Scottish Entrepreneur and Investor, Strategist and Innovator

Russell has enjoyed the benefits of a highly successful international career in the technology sector and now focuses his efforts on supporting owners and boards of companies to devise and implement growth strategies to create shareholder value. In his earlier career he has held board leadership positions with International companies achieving turnover more than £200m.

Core areas of focus are Leadership, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategic thinking. He is a regular speaker at events on Leadership in business and has spoken at conferences from Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi.

Russell is founding Managing Partner of the advisory group, Exolta Capital Partners, www.exolta.com and Founding Chairman Scottish Business Network, the global network supporting Scottish.

Not all work - since turning 50 he has developed a passion for endurance events and can often be found at weekends mud splattered clambering over obstacles and "trying to keep up".

Most passionate about

• I’m passionate about my country, Scotland. I have the privilege of chairing the Scottish Business Network, which is the biggest diaspora network for Scots involved in business around the world.
• For the last three years, I’ve worked with some amazing businesses and I was able to help them use our diaspora of networks around the world to build their businesses.
• I’m also passionate about growing the Scottish Business Network , getting more people involved.
• It started three years ago when I sat with my colleague, Christine, in a coffee shop in London. We were discussing how we could bring together a few people to talk about Scotland (where I still live, outside the capital city, Edinburgh).
• We thought about having a small meeting and bringing together a few Scottish people. Since then, we’ve done events like this all over the world. And it’s growing and growing.
• We found people who were born in Scotland, who have family there, who have worked or studied in Scotland, who have a great desire to hear what’s happening in Scotland and are absolutely delighted to see how they can help Scottish companies achieve export success.
• We act as a bridge between Scottish companies and the Scottish diaspora based around the world. We hold around 30 meetings a year in London. We also have meetings in Scotland. We launched a meeting in Atlanta, Georgia in the US in January and we’ve done events in Dubai, Hong Kong, and California.
• The organization is not for profit, so it’s more to benefit others. It’s not a commercial thing. It’s not a business we are building to sell. It’s a business we are building to help others and to grow the community.
• Besides the organization, I’m a managing partner for an advisory company called Exolta Capital Partners. We work with smaller businesses with around two million pounds of turnover. We help them develop strategies for growth and then we actively help them deliver it.
• Do I see myself as an entrepreneur? I suppose so. I’ve never been very comfortable with the phrase ‘entrepreneur’ because I think it’s too broad. However, my interest is business. I’m a risk-taker and I like to build things.

Russell’s best advice about approaching customers

• My job is to understand which of my customers’ challenges, problems, and opportunities I can help them overcome and to then attain those.
• When I advise businesses, I typically find that there are things about their customers that they don’t know. A topical example: I was working with a young technology company in Manchester, England, They had a very firm belief that the technology was the main reason why their customers bought their product. Their website talked about the technology, the staff talked about the technology. However, when I interviewed their top

Futurist Jeremy Goldman has been working with companies looking to take their operations online and inject “social” into their processes for over a decade.

Under Jeremy’s leadership, companies like Kiehl’s, TEMPTU or the luxury division he helped Unilever to found, have had tremendous success and won the highest Awards and publications’ mentions.

Jeremy earned his MBA in Information Systems and Marketing at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. His views have been featured in publications such as Mashable, Wall Street Journal, Smart Money, and more.

Jeremy’s first book, Going Social: Excite Customers, Generate Buzz, and Energize Your Brand with the Power of Social Media was released by AMACOM Books in November 2012, hitting the #1 spot on Kindle for social media and business.

In his spare time, Jeremy blogs and curates news daily to his Twitter following of 55,000.

Most passionate about

• I had an interesting year. I sold my company, Firebrand Group, which I had started seven years earlier. After selling it, I took a little bit of time to figure out what I wanted to do next, what would be my next big challenge.  
• My wife was pregnant with our third child and I took some time to help her with our two other kids and with the baby. I felt very fortunate that I was able to do that.
• One of the things I realized is that entrepreneurship is usually respected by some but not by everybody. The next thing I want to do is find a company that has an incubator or a venture fund that wants to launch new ideas and move things a little bit faster and that needs someone with an entrepreneurial background. So, I want to remain an entrepreneur but help other companies move ahead.

Jeremy’s entrepreneurial journey

• The decision to help other entrepreneurs was born out of some previous successes that I had when I went to Unilever, just before I established Firebrand. I was the first employee of a technology-based beauty startup that invented a luxury product Unilever tried to sell for $600, when they were known for five-dollar soap. It was a very disruptive idea.
• It required a different skillset than Unilever had. Not only was it successful and not only did they sell it to another company with a pretty profitable exit, but it was the inspiration for them to launch an entirely new prestige division.
• In Unilever, I was able to, in a short time frame, do something that was pretty impactful for them, something that made me think that if I could do it for them, maybe there were other companies with that desire to move quickly but that didn’t have the skills and the ability. When you are a $60-billion consumer products company, generally you have a little bit more of a conservative mindset than the typical entrepreneur has.
• When I launched Firebrand, I had a book called Going Social coming out. It was about teaching businesses how to prioritize social media and digital marketing, how to focus on the things that work instead of just the things that generate some buzz. A lot of companies are focusing on the wrong things.
• I wrote that book and I realized that there are a lot of companies that need that kind of assistance. I took a combined approach of a consulting/agency mindset, which was that there are some clients that need us for a consult and advice and some clients that need us to execute. Some companies need us for “in between.” I wanted to help them do what was needed and teach them at the same time.
• The teaching aspect was probably one of the most impactful aspects of Firebrand. I’m a big believer in teaching. If I can help these people make smarter decisions, they will go on to be better marketers in the future. I take a lot of pride in that.
• I established Firebrand Group and ran it for six-and-a-half years until I felt I...

Blake Jamieson is a pop portrait artist in Manhattan, NY. He paints pop art portraits for professional athletes and celebrities, including Howie Mandel, Drew Brees, Joe Montana, Gary Vaynerchuk, and over 250 other professional athletes in the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS, and PLL. 

Blake's path to becoming a full-time artist was far from traditional. Despite his passion for art at a young age, Blake decided to forgo art school for a more "practical" degree, studying Economics at UC Davis. After graduating, Blake began his career in digital marketing at Zynga. He worked in digital marketing for nearly a decade, working for small tech startups to publicly traded companies.

On his 30th birthday, Blake decided it was time to stop building someone else's dream, and start to following his own passions. He began painting full-time nearly five years ago, and has carved out a niche that allows him to paint every day.

Most passionate about

• I’m a portrait artist located in NYC. I’ve had an interesting rollercoaster of a journey up until this point, but what I do now is paint portraits of professional athletes.
• Primarily, I have worked in the NFL, although I do work with other athletes who play soccer, lacrosse, hockey, and more.
• I created this niche for myself where an athlete, or the spouse or girlfriend of an athlete, is looking for a painting that will capture special sports moments for them. I’m often the person they turn to and I’m very fortunate to work with awesome people and get to paint every single day.

Blake’s story

• I grew up in a very creative household. I was always encouraged to paint, or draw, or do photography – all the things I do today. However, I convinced myself, from a young age, that art was about being a starving artist and that it was not a career path.
• Instead of doing what my parents encouraged me to do, which was to study art in college, I decided to study economics and tech. I thought this was the safe path at the time, and I aimed to have a career in marketing.
• When I graduated from college, social marketing was just starting to become an actual, respected career. I was able to get into very grounded levels for some reputable companies and work my way through several different companies. Then I spun off and started working for myself as a freelancer.
• Ultimately, on my 30th birthday, I decided that I was tired of working for someone else’s dream. I wanted to follow my own dreams and I realized that maybe my parents had been right all along...
• I’m very grateful. Due to my background in marketing – especially digital marketing – and my experience in marketing a wide range of products, I understand how social selling works and how it is really a relationship-building business. I built up a moderate following of friends, family, colleagues, and people I met along the way.
• When I first decided to start painting, I knew that I had to specialize and come out with a specific niche. I decided that I would paint a specific painting for a specific subset of people.
• Because of my networking at the time, I decided to paint for offices, especially for tech companies. I met with the people on my contact list and told them that I was an artist and that I painted office art for tech companies.
• At first, I painted many paintings of Steve Jobs, Gary Vaynerchuk, and different iconic tech founders. Those tech companies aspired to be like them and wanted to put a picture of Steve Jobs, or motivational quotes, in their offices.
• I did that for two years and it was going well. I had my niece called out and I was gaining a reputation as one of the leaders in the space of Portrait Painting for Professional Athletes.
• There was a really lucky coincidence that when I delivered art in Las Vegas, I met a guy who played in the NFL and...

Nick Loper helps people earn money outside of their day job. He's an author, online entrepreneur, and host of the award winning Side Hustle Show podcast, which features new part-time business ideas each week. As Chief Side Hustler at SideHustleNation.com, he loves deconstructing the tactics and strategies behind building extra income streams.

Most passionate about

• I’m pumped because I had a couple of sick kids with me for a whole week and they went back to preschool today so I have many tasks to accomplish – mainly, to create different content for the Side Hustle Show and additional channels.
• I host the weekly Side Hustle Show, which is about how to build a business in your spare time and create ways to make extra money. I’ve been doing it since 2013 and it’s just past 10 million lifetime downloads.
• It has been a totally life-changing project. We just started as a part-time experiment with a 50-dollar microphone from my living room. Today the weekly podcast is the main focus and there is also a blog component to the nation at sidehustlenation.com.
• The whole thing started on the side from my original side hustle, which was in the affiliate marketing space. It was a comparison shopping site for footwear. That was my main business for a long time, and was the vehicle that allowed me to quit my job and become a full-time entrepreneur “living the dream.” Then we started the show.
• Prior to Side Hustle, I ran one other site, called virtualassistantassistan.com. It’s a directory and review platform for virtual assistant companies and outsourcing companies. I’ve run this site since 2011.

Nick’s customers

• The majority of the listeners of Side Hustle are those who are working in traditional jobs and looking for ways out or ways to at least earn an extra income on the side.

Nick’s best advice about approaching customers

• What I tend to look at is trying to climb that customer’s pyramid. (In my case, it’s the listener’s pyramid.) The base of the pyramid is strangers, those people who have never heard of you. Your job is to elevate them on the pyramid from strangers to listeners. From there, you climb from listeners to subscribers, and then, at the peak of the pyramid, from subscribers to fans.
• Everything that I do – content-wise and marketing-wise – is trying to take people from one point on that ladder to the next one. I’m taking people to the next rung on that ladder in terms of podcast discovery. If they listen once, I want to bring them to the point where they listen again, and then to the point where they become a fan.
• The biggest transition point that I’ve seen from subscriber to fan is when the listener takes action on something that you said and sees results from that. That is the magical moment.
• An example is the people I meet at a conference who say, “I listened to episode ‘such and such’ and now I’m making a thousand extra dollars from my business.” That is a fan for life. They will be the evangelists, the ones who will spread the word for you.
• So, I have the podcast and I have the blog. I also have a mailing list that I send new episodes to. The other component is the Facebook community. This is a group that has been running for several years and that has more than 15,000 members. That’s not me broadcasting to others; it’s where people interact with each other.
• In terms of advice, I would say: The more touchpoints you have with your audience, the better.

Biggest failure with a customer

• I’ve got a folder in my Gmail called ‘Hate mail,’ where people say less-than-nice things about me. And I definitely have my share of one-star reviews.
• I had a house painting business in college. We were a bunch of 19-year-olds with paint sprays … everything that could go...

Bob Burg is a sought-after speaker at company leadership and sales conferences sharing the platform with everyone from today’s business leaders and broadcast personalities to even a former U.S. President.

Bob is the author of a number of books on sales, marketing and influence, with total book sales of well over a million copies. His book, The Go-Giver, coauthored with John David Mann, itself has sold over 925,000 copies and it has been translated into 28 languages.

His and John’s newest parable in the Go-Giver Series is The Go-Giver Influencer.

Bob is an advocate, supporter and defender of the Free Enterprise system, believing that the amount of money one makes is directly proportional to how many people they serve. He is also an unapologetic animal fanatic, and is a past member of the Board of Directors of Furry Friends Adoption, Clinic & Ranch in his town of Jupiter, Florida.

Most passionate about

• I keep doing what I’ve done for the last 30 years. I’m still speaking and writing but I did set a limit for my engagements and I don’t travel as much as I used to. But we are doing quite the same.
• We are focusing more online today. We have courses online and we have a team of certified “Go-Givers” – speakers who license my materials. All of that keeps things very exciting. 

The Go-Giver

• The Go-Giver is a business parabola co-authored by John David Mann, who is a fantastic writer and storyteller. I’m much more of a “how-to” person; I’m “step 1, step 2, step 3,” so it was a good collaboration.
• The idea came about because, many years ago, I had a book called Endless Referrals. It was a book about how entrepreneurs and salespeople can go into the marketplace and easily and confidently create relationships with people in such a way that people would like them, know them, trust them, want to do business with them, and want to refer others to them.
• Endless Referrals was a traditional “how-to” book and it sold very well. I loved reading parabolas, which are basically short stories with a message that tends to contain several principles that are easy to apply.
• For a long time, I thought it would be such a great idea if we could take the basic premise of Endless Referrals – which is that, all things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people whom they know, like, and trust – and turn that into a parabola.
• I tried to figure out the essence of a person who would both quickly and sustainably create those know, like, and trust relationships, as well as whether they are always focused on giving, i.e., giving value to others.
• Basically, the premise of the Go-Giver is shifting your context from getting to giving. When we say “giving” in that context, we mean constantly and consistently providing immense value to others and understanding that doing so is the most financially profitable way to go.
• You can meet someone in person and communicate value simply by focusing on them and by not focusing on yourself and your business, like most people do. Focus on the other person and their business. Ask that person, “How did you get to starting your business?” When they are answering that question, they feel good about it. Or, you could tell a person, “I always love to make a connection between good people that I meet. How can I know who is a good prospective customer for you?” Can you provide them with some helpful information?
• It’s about looking for ways to make another person’s life better, either online or offline.

Bob’s best advice for approaching customers

• One of the things I say when I speak at a sales conference is that nobody is going to buy from you because you have a sales quota to meet, and nobody is going to buy...