Steal From the Best

Chris Dreyer is the CEO and Founder of Rankings.io, an SEO agency that helps elite personal injury law firms land serious injury and auto accident cases through Google's organic search results. His company has the distinction of making the Inc. 5000 list 5 years in a row.

In addition to owning and operating Rankings, Chris is the Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author of "Niching Up: The Narrower the Market, the Bigger the Prize."

Chris's journey in legal marketing has been a saga, to say the least. A world-ranked collectible card game player in his youth, Chris began his "grown up" career with a History Education degree and landed a job out of college as a detention room supervisor. The surplus of free time in that job allowed him to develop a side hustle where he managed over 100 affiliate sites simultaneously, allowing him to turn his side-gig into a full-time one. When his time in affiliate marketing came to an end, he segued into SEO for attorneys, while also having time to become a top-ranked online poker player.

Carl Orsbourn is a global retail executive and board member whose experience spans blue-chip companies, disruptive start-up ventures (Juicer Pricing & Kitchen United), and restaurants (Alfa Co). Carl has been recognized as a power player by Nations Restaurant News and Business Insider for his thought leadership in supporting restaurants to adapt to the challenges and opportunities offered through digitization, technology, and automation.

Meredith Sandland has created and driven disruptive growth at both Fortune 100 and start-up companies. She has spent a decade navigating changing consumer demands and restaurant real estate environments. Meridith is the CEO of Empower Delivery, a SaaS company that enables delivery-centric restaurants to manage end-to-end deliver transactions from brand development to logistics through one platform.

We discuss the recent launch of their book Delivering the Digital Restaurant and explore the world of off-premise food and the massive disruption facing restaurants. They are savvy food industry veterans and their insight on the future of restaurants is eye-opening.

Maggie Kolkena, MSOD is the author of Today for Tomorrow: A Field Guide to Scenario Planning. She is the founder of Third Thought Consulting and brings over 25 years of expertise in providing leadership development experiences. Enabling innovation has been a strong theme in Maggie's work. Her first career was in performing arts which helped shape her entrepreneurial journey.

Maggie has a distinct competence in helping leaders manage the future. There are many books out there about scenario planning, but her recently published book, Today for Tomorrow gives the framework for how to DO scenario planning. She shares some of these tips including adding trendscanning to team meetings to help look at what the future may bring.

Maggie loves supporting leaders and believes that businesses can be powerful agents for positive change in the world.

In this follow-up episode, we again talk with Mike Orr. The first episode with Mike was released back in January 2020. Since then, lots has changed for Mike as he's currently enjoying a sabbatical after a 10 year run co-founding, building and successfully exiting Grapevine6 the SaaS leader in Social Selling in the Wealth Management, Banking and B2B Sales Space. In his last role at Seismic, the acquirer and an industry leader in Sales Enablement technology, he was the GM of LiveSocial. We discuss some important considerations for entrepreneurs looking at making an exit. He offers some sage advice from his experience including building the next level of management team to grow the business so it won't fail if the owners leave. You need to run the business, but the business must be able to run without you. The team of co-founders at Grapevine6 set expectations and had conversations along the way to ensure all were aligned for a successful exit. We are excited to be bringing you this follow-up episode with Mike and hope you're inspired by our conversation.

Lindsay Knowlton has a long history in golf. Her dad got her interested in the sport when she was 14 (because he needed a friend to play with!). Shortly after taking up the game (and finally getting the ball off the ground), Lindsay got the golf bug.

Lindsay started playing in competitive events which earned her a full scholarship to Ohio State University where she was the captain of the team and earned All American Honours. She was a 3-year member of Canada's National Team, 3 time Ontario Champion and won a silver medal at the 2004 World Championships.

After years of competitive golf, Lindsay moved into the corporate workforce realizing that she wanted to help more women "say yes" to the golf invitations that they were getting. She started Iron Lady Golf to help empower women and build their confidence out on the golf course. To date, Iron Lady Golf has taught over 20,000 women how to play golf. Lindsay is a PGA of Canada Class A Professional, Taylormade Golf Advisory Board Member, Ontario Golf Association Ambassador and most of all, passionate about building community.

Lindsay's sage advice for being the best you in business and life is to "Just keep going!"

Alyson Walker is the Chief Commercial Officer at OverActive Media, a global esports company focused on building winning franchises and creating unrivaled fan experiences. Alyson has extensive experience in the sports & entertainment industries and a proven track record for success and leadership as demonstrated in her previous roles. Alyson was part of the team that brought the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games to Canadians in her role leading digital sales and brand partnerships with Canada's Olympic Broadcast Consortium. In 2021, Alyson was named Woman of the Year by Bay Street Bull for her role in building the future of esports. We talk about the importance of bringing solutions and not just identifying problems. Alyson has a very positive attitude and shares some important lessons for business and life including: being firm but fair, do the hardest things first, and always do your due diligence.

Wylie McGraw is a former Star Pitcher, Competitive Bull Rider, and 3-Tour Combat Veteran. It was through those intense experiences that he discovered his crazy superpower of being able to expose blind spots, erupt and eradicate stress, and fully unleash the untapped potential of high achievers. He's the founder of Radical Performance Acceleration and for well over a decade now he has built his business by being the elite behind-the-scenes force providing life-altering work to powerful CEOs, Entrepreneurs, Leaders, and Public Figures, accelerating their performance both personally and professionally. We have an amazing conversation about achieving success and the attitude of success vs. failure. There are so many valuable nuggets and we can assure you that you'll get extensive takeaways from our conversation. Sit back and enjoy this ride, as it's an episode that you don't want to miss.

Jonathan Fodera is the Founder, Director, and CEO of Integrated Business Financing. He primarily works with small businesses helping owners grow and scale their businesses. His experience took him from Wall Street to the world of entrepreneurship and he shares the tales of his journey. Jonathan is highly skilled in banking, business development, entrepreneurship, and business planning. We talk about failed partnerships and what can be learned. Jonathan discusses the importance of helping others and the benefits gained by assisting without expectations.

Jacob was the 9th overall draft pick in the 2009 MLB draft by the Detroit Tigers. He spent the next 11 years playing professional baseball and spent time at the MLB level with 5 MLB teams. Upon transitioning out of baseball, Jacob founded JL Strategic Wealth. They focus solely on helping clients such as athletes, entrepreneurs, and second-generation navigate sudden wealth. We discuss Jacob's baseball experience, investing, and the importance of communication and always keeping your foot on the gas.

Since 1988, Hal Johnson has been encouraging Canadians to lead a healthy and active lifestyle under the umbrella of BodyBreak. Anybody who grew up watching television in the 80s and 90s would be familiar with both Johnson and his wife, Joanne McLeod. They recorded over 300 90-second episodes of BodyBreak. The show focuses on how exercise can be incorporated into daily life. The program was conceived by McLeod and Johnson after meeting in a gym. It was designed to be different than other fitness shows of the era: friendly, representing the sexes equally, and showing both racial and physical diversity, a result of Johnson's experiences of racism, which helped push him to create BodyBreak as a countermeasure. Johnson is a serial entrepreneur conducting speaking engagements and has their name on many different product endorsements including a recently launched branded clothing line. He shares some sage advice including the importance of time and taking advantage of it while you can. Although you can't see it by listening to the podcast, you really are able to experience Johnson's gigantic smile and positive energy and attitude.