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Your Business Greatness
By Simone SloanBusiness
Your Business Greatness episodes
- Navigating an Eco-Friendly Approach to Sustainability
On today's episode of 'Your Business Greatness,' host Simone Sloan, Executive Strategist, Founder, and Executive Coach at "Your Choice Coach," talks to, CEO of Ingenium, Heather Johnson, an expert in hazardous waste management with over 20 years of experience. Her innovative approach for sustainable waste management has positioned her company as an industry leader in waste energy programs and zero waste initiatives.
Key Points:
- Heather Johnson leads Ingenium, a hazardous waste management company, with an emphasis on sustainable solutions, downstream management, and exploring reuse and recycling options.
- Heather's leadership style involves collaboration and inclusivity, valuing input from all team members. This has contributed to the ongoing success and growth of her company.
- The waste management industry faces consolidation, with larger companies acquiring smaller ones. Ingenium stays competitive by providing consultative services and avoiding the limitations associated with owning specific technologies.
Resources Mentioned: https://www.pureingenium.com/
Simone Sloan: Website | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
14 min - Changing the Patient Healthcare Relationship
On today's episode of 'Your Business Greatness, host Simone Sloan, Executive Strategist, Founder, and DEI Consultant at "Your Choice Coach," talks to Dr. Baktari, CEO of E national testing E7 Health and US drug test centres. Dr. Baktari brings over 20 years of clinical and administrative and entrepreneurial experience and has been a triple board-certified physician specialising in internal medicine, pulmonary, and critical care medicine.
Dr. Baktari outlines how E7 Health leverages technology to streamline healthcare, making patient data accessible and minimizing traditional inefficiencies like paperwork and wait times.
Beyond improving customer service, Dr. Baktari stresses the need for unique, innovative healthcare solutions that offer new services to patients, inspired by successful models like Amazon.
Dr. Baktari highlights that successful leadership in business requires a specific skill set that may not be innate, even to those who conceive the business idea or invest the initial capital.
Simone Sloan: Website | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
https://jonathanbaktarimd.com/portfolio/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-baktarimd/
23 min - Create Dynamic Customer Experiences
On today's episode of 'Your Business Greatness,' host Simone Sloan, Executive Strategist, Founder, and Executive Coach at "Your Choice Coach," speaks with Kitty Hart, VP of Client Brand Experience at Heroic Productions. Kitty talks about the challenges and trends Heroic Productions is noticing in the current business climate following the COVID-19 pandemic. Kitty talks about a major beauty brand they worked with last year and describes it as one of the most vibrant and fun events they have produced in their twenty-year history.
- Kitty defines an experience as an interaction, which can be positive, neutral, or negative. Identifying key moments that leave an impression is crucial for businesses to understand and improve their customer interactions.
- Regarding diversity and inclusion, Kitty mentions that when bidding on large projects that go through procurement, they are increasingly asked questions about their diversity, equity, and inclusion mission.
- Simone Sloan and Kitty Hart, discuss various aspects of brand storytelling and creating exceptional experiences for businesses.
Simone Sloan: Website | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
Heroic Productions | LinkedIn26 min - Building Software for Small Businesses
Simone Sloan, Executive strategist, Founder of Your Choice Coach, hosts a discussion with Paul Jackson, Founder and CEO of Method.
- Paul is a two-time entrepreneur who believes in building software for small businesses that work just like they do.
- He describes himself as having optimism, grit, and pessimism all at the same time.
- Through his journey in business, he has created an automation tool for QuickBooks and Xero users that allows small businesses to make their own custom apps to automate any of their business processes.
- Paul shares the challenges he experiences introducing his product to companies or transitioning them from one CRM to another.
- Method helps small businesses that have grown to this point by providing a CRM with industry-specific templates that can be customized to fit their needs, allowing them to automate processes that don't require critical thinking, are often repeated, and take up a lot of time.
- Method has about 100 employees and works in a hybrid company environment. Paul believes in the value of both face-to-face and flexible working. To ensure their distributed teams are inclusive, they focus on automating key processes and slowly easing employees into automation to relieve pressure on the business.
- They understand the importance of having different personalities on teams. They focus on building grit and navigating those different personalities to help them achieve their goals.
Resources Mentioned:Simone Sloan: Website | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
@methodCRM @PaulAlexJackson
23 min - Design Your Business Growth
On today's episode of 'Your Business Greatness,' host Simone Sloan, Executive Strategist, Founder, and Executive Coach at "Your Choice Coach," speaks with Raul Ochoa. Raul Hernandez Ochoa, Founder of Do Good Work and an experienced digital growth operator and strategist. He helps bootstrap digital businesses achieve profitable growth by using marketing to create new sales opportunities throughout the customer journey.
In this episode, Raul shares:
- How he helps clients reach their growth goals through a combination of clarity, syncing, and evergreen marketing
- Why developing business goals are important
- A business case study where his company has helped a lean team triple their revenue from 3 million to 8 figures within 18 months.
Resources Mentioned:
Simone Sloan: Website | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
Raul Ochoa: https://dogoodwork.io/
Podcast: https://dogoodwork.io/ybg
https://dogoodwork.io/growth-plan15 min - Effective PR Strategies for Small Businesses
On today's episode of 'Your Business Greatness,' host Simone Sloan, Executive Strategist, Founder, and Executive Coach at "Your Choice Coach," speaks with Mickie Kennedy. He is the Founder and President of E-releases. The company helps small businesses, startups, and authors get website traffic and better-quality customers through coverage in the media. Mickie helps small businesses increase their visibility and credibility.
In this episode, Mickie shares:
- the importance of being authentic, owning your story, and being inspirational
- how humbling it is in a way to recognize your weaknesses as a business owner with a team.
- what he is most passionate about. He also talks about his proudest professional moment.
Resources Mentioned
Simone Sloan: Website | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
https://www.ereleases.com
PR mastermind https://www.ereleases.com/plan/
23 min - 3 P's to Operating an Effective Business
Founder, and Executive Coach at "Your Choice Coach," speaks with Valerie Hayes. She is a fractional COO and is on a mission to help small businesses beat the odds, push through those roadblocks, and become an industry leader.
Three Key Points
If you don't have the infrastructure in place to support that increase in sales and increase in fulfillment needs, then it's not going to work and so Valerie sort of noticed over and over again that really good people were struggling with this problem.
Valerie talks about the three kinds of categories of people that can help your business, all of which are great.
Valerie runs several multimillion-dollar companies as a part-time CEO in 10 hours a week.
Episode Highlights
Valerie’s background is that she is a business owner, human resources, professional and fortune 500 company’s coach and mentor for higher achievers that enables them to really be a collaborative approach in every aspect of their business.
Bringing in a fractional CEO is like buying speed because the CEO knows exactly what the problem is, can spot it immediately, find a solution and move the business forward to that $1,000,000 mark and move it much faster with less resistance and pushback.
If you don't have the time, or maybe the actual skill set or experience level to implement it, it can be a frustrating situation. In that case a fractional CFO comes in and works in the business supporting you and your team.
When you are hiring a Chief Financial Officer or a Chief Operating Officer, you should never hire someone who is afraid to tell you or that someone something is a bad idea.
Resources Mentioned:
Simone Sloan: Website | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fractional-coo/
23 min - Tapping into Your Purpose: Activist, Impact, & Inclusion
On today's episode of 'Your Business Greatness,' host Simone Sloan, Executive Strategist, Founder, and Executive Coach at "Your Choice Coach," speaks with Bernadette Smith. She is the Founder and CEO of the Equality Institute and an IBPA Benjamin Franklin booksellers Gold medal award-winning author of three books on LGBTQ inclusion. She has been featured in places like USA Today, the New York Times, Washington Post. She has appearances on, CNN, Today Show, BBC, and NPR. She's been named one of the Chicago's notable 2SLGBTQAI+ Executives.
Episode Highlights
- Bernadette started her first business back in 2004 when Massachusetts became the first state in the country to have marriage equality for same sex couples.
- Equality Institute is a small DEI consulting firm, a small boutique firm. Bernadette is the visionary leader of the company and primarily what she is really excited about is what they are doing i.e., the inclusive 360 assessment.
- Bernadette consulting work did not provide her clients with enough detail and clarity to have like a very tangible roadmap and what she has found, not only with herself personally but in so many other conversations with folks is that when they lack clarity, they don't do anything.
- Simone and Bernadette discuss the importance of having a support system and how helpful it can be in the entrepreneurial journey.
- Bernadette's proudest moment is being able to really build a team of people who come from underrepresented backgrounds that she can give opportunities to.
- Bernadette was raised with a scarcity mindset. Her parents were immigrants. Even though they had a business, she was always given the message that they couldn't ask for money.
- The most important lesson for any entrepreneur is that you have to learn how to sell because it no matter how good you are at your craft, whatever that craft happens to be, if you can't figure out the sales piece or the piece of getting buyers or hiring someone who can, then you are not going to have a business.
- Curiosity and a willingness to learn and put yourself out there are going to take you really far. And there will be lots of folks who give you grace along the way, but just get started and just ask a question.
- The way our brains are programmed for comfort, safety, security, what's easy, what's familiar, all of that it does require intention to be to get started on this journey, says Bernadette.
Three Key Points
- Bernadette shares her career journey and how she ended up writing a few books and doing speaking and training about LGBTQ weddings. Then how she moved away from weddings and into diversity, equity, and inclusion work.
- 360 assessment tool is a 300 question DEI organizational assessment for an organization. It is not an individual assessment. It's not an employee engagement survey. It is the organization across 16 functional areas for gaps of equity and inclusion.
- The DEI conversation can be overwhelming. There can be a fear of judgment, a fear of getting it wrong a fear of making a mistake that then people call you out for and then it could get nasty or viral or being canceled or all of that. Bernadette advices to just start, and if you don't know what to say in any given situation, ask a question.
Connect
Simone Sloan: Website | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
http://www.BernadetteSmith.com
20 min - Mobilizing Marginalized Students in Tech
On today's episode of 'Your Business Greatness,' host Simone Sloan, Executive Strategist, Founder, and Executive Coach at "Your Choice Coach," speaks with Linc Kroeger. He is the President of Knight Moves and is passionate about fighting social inequity. He served on a technical association for Iowa boards for three years.
Podcast Key Points:
- Linc talks about Knight Moves, the objectives, and who the company is really trying to help and how the transition took place to where he is today.
- Linc's biggest challenge across the whole country is the community college instructor shortage. Even if they offer Knight's curriculum, they cannot provide the instructors. They are trying to come up with creative ways to do this and one of them is pure online or even outsourcing offshore.
Episode Highlights
- After graduating from high school back in 1986, Linc joined the Air Force, went into Fortran training and technology, and was able to go right from high school into a job.
- For the last decade Linc has been in the consulting technology space, and in his last company he was the CEO of a technology services company.
- In Linc's 35 years working in corporate America, he did not see many moves happening in the DEI space.
- Knight Moves is an organization looking at elite technology and bringing professionals in their training.
- Some of the interesting data around indigenous groups is that they have one of the lowest attendance rates to four-year colleges, but they can have the most unused scholarships.
- No one gets excluded from our program because they cannot afford it, says Linc.
- As soon as you start building trust, you start getting referred to the network.
- When you go in and you recruit a group of students and then 2 or 3 of them drop out in the first three weeks because it doesn't work for them, that's probably the biggest, toughest challenge we had, says Linc.
- The Knight Move started as a nonprofit and then we flipped as a social benefiting or B Corp model because as a B Corp we do not have to make a profit, says Linc.
- There are some really creative things you can do out there if you are doing something valuable for a social benefit and impact that goes along with it.
Words of wisdom: In anything that you choose to do in life, find your flow and flow
Connect
Simone Sloan: Website | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
Linc Kroeger https://www.kKnightmoves.org/ or https://www.linkedin.com/in/linc-kroeger-19674b/
24 min - Reframe Your Hiring Strategies With Apprenticeships
In today´s episode of ‘Your Business Greatness’, host Simone Sloan, Executive Strategist, Founder, and Executive Coach and DEI Consultant at “Your Choice Coach,” speaks with Kim Nichols, CEO, and Founder of Franklin Apprenticeships. Kim is on a mission to unlock the potential of the American workforce by creating a new route for tech careers via apprenticeship and work-based education.
Podcast Highlights:
- When Kim first started the company she was working with a couple of apprenticeship experts from the UK who were helping to educate. They had been consulting with the US Department of Labor for a couple of years and then they transitioned those relationships over to her, but she also had an opportunity to learn about apprenticeships in other countries. She went through German, Swiss, and Australian models, and further dove deep into the UK model which is something that aligned best in the US. It's an employer-led model versus coming up through the education system, so it made a lot of sense to replicate that model in the US.
- People that apply to Kim’s program take a career fit assessment as a first step, and that determines whether they have the aptitude for the tech job. So those that have the aptitude, then participate in a pre-apprenticeship program, and that allows them to test out the occupation. Those people that have completed the pre-apprenticeship then participate in interviews with various big companies, and they feel good about it because they've already done the job.
- One of the challenges was that during COVID when companies had stopped hiring and there were layoffs, Kim’s goal at Franklin was to not lose any of their employees. So after some Googling, they found a work Share Plan where they could reduce their employees’ time to 75% and then leverage some unemployment insurance to help carry them was helpful. They also had to step back and take a look at their model. They were able to repurpose some grant funds that they had to deliver pre-apprenticeship which was to give all these people that were laid off from the retail and hospitality sector during COVID to give them the skills that they needed to start a new career, one that wasn't going to go away.
Words of Wisdom: Kim advises you to believe in your outcomes, just go for it, and be more open to opportunities.
Connect to Simone Sloan: Website LinkedIn Twitter Facebook YouTube
Connect to Kim Nichols@ Franklin Apprenticeships: Website LinkedIn
26 min
About Your Business Greatness
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Hot Tips You Cannot Miss! Simone Sloan hosts business experts who share their business knowledge to help your business grow.