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Taylor is the Cofounder and CEO of Mediatrax.com a one stop shop for wholesale online marketing solutions. They offer an end to end product suite consisting of: • Pay-per-call platform with call tracking • Search engine marketing management • Business profile management and syndication • Online reputation management • Landing page content management systems (CMS) • Website and domain hosting • Website analytics and conversion tracking • As well as customized engineering solutions • They really do it all at mediatrax.com Have a listen to my chat with Taylor Treese. See highlights and links from of our chat below… ENJOY! Entrepreneur From the Start So I grew up in the northeast, originally from Connecticut and I grew up in a very entrepreneurial family. So I’ve always just been around that. Ever since I was a kid, my father has always owned his own business and naturally my mom did the exact same thing. They were both in and around the publishing sector and me being in my mid 40s, there was no digital back then so it was all really the print world that I was immersed in. But needless to say my father was an entrepreneur and they both had separate businesses that kind of played off one another. So I got to see that a lot growing up. Got to see risk taking, thinking outside of the box, all of the things really were just natural to me growing up. Experiencing Conventional Education & Employment Went off to college, my father thought it was important that after school I worked for a big corporation and kind of see what working at a big company was all about before joining the family business per se. And I did that for a number of years, worked for a number of groups, some of the bigger companies were like Ericsson, Telecom. And I was very much always in the tech or telecom space."It’s important, it’s important to know how both sides work. As you know, big companies just operate completely opposite from what an entrepreneur would do. So I think it really is important to see how both sides do what they do everyday." True Calling: I got very itchy after being there for quite some time and that zone. Didn’t like the red tape, didn’t like the politics, it all kind of ultimately boiled back down to me starting something. And my father and I started MediaTrax together. He had a consulting practice at the time and I came up with the product idea and he helped me fund it. And before you know it, here we are basically ten years later just doing a ton of different things. Building Media Trax: Our first product was called “Tracking Product” and I had just come out of the telecom sector so being very familiar with all that technology and linking up with my dad’s consulting practice in the publishing sector. I took whatever funds I could gather and we built (the) competing technology. And we immediately just started approaching all the clients that my dad already knew and we understood the feature set that they wanted. So we were very nimble and we just built what they wanted immediately and just jumped into the market, undercut everybody else and that’s kind of what got us going. And we chose the name MediaTrax cause we were naturally tracking their media for them and helping improve value to their customers. Ala' Carte Services: Yeah it’s very much that new world mentality that I think Google kind of helped spark. Whereby you can just dip your toe in the water and if the service works for you then great, pay it. And it’s performance based and you pay for what you use you know? There was a great book I read years ago called What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis. And I swear you could pretty much apply most of those concepts to just about any business nowadays and help yourself be successful. Networking - Mastermind - Philanthropy: I belong to a group here in south Florida but it’s actually a global organization called: EO or Entrepreneurs Organization: www.eonetwork.org

Kris is the Founder of ArdorMediaFactory.com The premier content marketing company based in Davao City, in the Philippines; They offer businesses world wide ...exceptional content marketing and search engine optimization services. Have a listen to my chat with Kris Reid. See highlights and links from of our chat below… ENJOY! Background Kris Reid: I am originally a country boy from a little town just south of Brisbane Australia. For university I moved to the big smoke and studied Software Engineer which was really one of the best decisions I ever made. It’s given me so much freedom and enabled me to do some pretty cool stuff. Like, pretty much as soon as I finished my studies, I packed my bags and headed to London. When I arrived as a rather junior developer, I may or not have embellished a little on my CV and ended up with some pretty awesome contacts for some rather large financial institutes like Visa Europe. After a bunch of years though, I was pretty sick of working for the man. I quit my job and went backpacking around the globe. As a Software Engineer, I really do love building software. So during my travels I started mucking about building an online multiplayer game. And, as the game neared completion, I realised that I am going to have to promote it if anyone is going to play it. So I started learning about SEO. I worked out that SEO is a decent way to make a quid so I that’s what I focused on and I used it to finance my vangabonding for about two years. I went right through Europe, Russia, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, North America and the Caribbean. Life was pretty nice. I eventually needed to setup an office. Most of my online staff were from the Philippines so I figured that would be the best place to go and here I am. Bumps in the Road Probably my biggest challenge was scalability. Though my business had grown and I had a handful of staff, I was still the corner stone of the business. Every day I wore so many different hats. I did marketing, customer service, product development, software development, team management the works. One thing I learnt is that you have to let go. You have to trust other people for your business to really grow. I first got a manager to handle our writing team. Now she does all the hiring, assigns all the jobs coming in and I have next to nothing to with it at all. I then did the same with our Content Marketing team which lead to an even better result. It freed up so much of my time. I don’t waste energy on day to day tasks that my managers are more than capable of handling and I can focus on the really critical things like Customer Satisfaction and Product Development. AHA Moment Around this time last year we had pretty explosive growth. I think in June we had 4 fulltime staff in the office and around 3 times that working online. By December we had outgrown our office, moved to a much bigger location, had more than 20 fulltime staff in the office and countless more working online. It felt bloody fantastic! I felt secure that I had solidly established my business. I had built a great team and together we can do some really cool stuff. A Day in the Life I still work too many hours. My Wife is a really great support. She’s used to me coming home well after 7 most nights and heading back to the office at 7 again. My first goal is to get a better family / life balance. When you first start your business you have to work harder than everyone else to get started. Then once you’re started you have to work smarter than everyone else to really grow. I feel that’s the stage I am at, and I am trying to learn, experiment and be brave to reach that next level. And hopefully that’ll be fewer hours in the office and more hours on the beach with my family. Providing Big Value Being in the business of, basically promoting other businesses, it makes it rather easy, well at least in concept. The key really is to help customers measure their return on...

Alex is a social media and technology consultant, specializing in strategy, development and content marketing. He is the managing director at TribeMix.com: a creative social media and content marketing agency; developing and delivering cutting edge marketing strategies for a wide range of clients across multiple sectors. At the time of this podcast Alex was #19 in the Top 500 Social Media Agencies in the UK today. Have a listen to my chat with Alex Smale. See highlights and links from of our chat below… ENJOY! Riches to Rags Well there’s definitely been some bumps and bruises. My life has been very diverse and sometimes quite strange. And when we very young, my family was quite wealthy and my dad ran a big car company in London that used to repair the cars of the rich and the famous. But then unfortunately he went bankrupt, the business was closed down and we went from being quite well off to actually being homeless living in a squat in Plymouth and in Devon. We went very much from riches to rags. But you know we built ourselves back up and yeah so eventually my first career was in computer game development. I was a 3-D artist developing computer games for Playstations and Sega Saturns and Xboxes and things like that. And I did that for about 10 years working with Sega, Sony, Codemasters, BMG, a variety of companies all around the UK and also spent a little while living in France working for a French company over there. Yeah so that was really where my career started in technology. I learned a lot about marketing and PR in that time as well. Bumps and Bruises But with all good things, you eventually become in need of looking to do something different, something new. So I always wanted to be a pub manager so I moved back to the UK to run a big pub, which is definitely a bit career change—very different. And definitely a lot of bumps and bruises then I can tell you. But then I spent about five years doing that before eventually starting my own photography business. I’ve been a photographer for a long time as a hobby and I decided that that was the right time for me to actually begin a company doing it. And that was when Early Adopter of Social Media I began my journey with social media marketing. So that was back in 2007 and without any real marketing budget, social media straight away provided a great opportunity for me to market my company. I already had content as a photographer so as an image-based platform, Facebook was a great way to start. I’ve been doing social media marketing ever since then. And during that time I’ve worked quite a lot in the leisure industry working at zoos and attractions, which has been a really kind of fun journey. Had some great fun with lots of different places and you know doing some cool things with animals and things. Taking the Chair I was chairman of the marketing committee for Biaza, which is the national zoo organization and which was quite a prestigious role. I was very flattered to be able to be chosen for that. TribeMix.com is Born I’ve just started my own agency, TribeMix, I kind of got to the point where a lot of people were asking me with help for their social media and I realized that now might be the right time to go it alone and start my own agency With TribeMix we’ve not been going long and our first clients are in the leisure industry. We’re doing some really exciting stuff with them. It’s an industry I know very well having worked in the zoo industry for a long time. So it’s great for us because we immediately understand their business and we immediately understand their customers as well. I know for a fact that it’s really good fun and that’s kind of a guiding line for TribeMix, and this comes from my girlfriend, Jo, you know she’s very strict with me. If it’s not a client we’re going to enjoy working with and have fun and it’s going to make our lives fun then I’m just not allowed to work with them.

Kent is a family man, an author, an entrepreneur and the Founder and President of...LiveItForward.com A personal and professional development company devoted to equipping people to show up and shine in their life and in their career. Have a listen to my chat with Kent Julian. See highlights and links from of our chat below… ENJOY! Podcast Highlights: High Energy That is one of the fringe benefits of working with students for as long as I have. I do a lot with adults as well but I just can’t let go of that student-market especially for the high-level, high-achieving students and they really do keep you young. In fact, not only the students but some of the other people in that industry, some of the other speakers, most of them are easily 10, 15 years younger than me. And so you got to stay up with them, so I work hard. Humble Beginnings I started out as a Youth pastor. I was at a very, very small church, very humble beginnings. If you just look at it as far as a career, I was pretty successful and real quickly went from a small church to one of the largest churches in the US at the time. And then by the time I was in my very early 30’s, I was in the National Youth Director of a couple of thousand churches. So great, just a great experience, loved it. But the longer I was in it, the more I was realizing while it was a great opportunity to serve and I did well at it. I really didn’t fit it super well especially kind of the corporate structure of being involved in church, and then once I got to a larger setting, the national setting, the corporate structure for that. Building/Moving/Living It Forward So I took a number of years just to try to figure some things out while I was working. I finally decided I wanted to start my own business, had no idea what I was doing, ended up getting a lot of coaching, going to a lot of conferences. And long story short, nine years ago, I launched Live It Forward totally as a bootstrapping company, bootstrapped it for three years while I had a fulltime job, was able and it started primarily as a career coaching company, was able to grow it to the point where I could quit my fulltime job and then over the last six years, I have been doing that. And now, it has evolved into where I speak a lot in a particular market, a student market that works with students that are pursuing something. They’re really trying to figure out what they want to do in their lives. So that fit very well with the career aspect. And then on top of that, I started adding things… conferences and shaping the coaching I did for people who specifically want to earn money as speakers and writers. So I’ve been doing that and the brand just continues to grow but it’s been a great journey, have learned an absolute ton, love getting up every day and I love what I do. The Long Runway And when I’m working with speakers or writers and we’re trying to help them launch, I really tried to help them understand how important it is to have a long runway and that’s what bootstrapping allows you to do it. It allows you to have a long runway because most people drop out before they have enough speed to really take off. And they think, oh, I’m going to be able to do this in 6 months or 12 months. And occasionally, you can do that. But I have rarely ever met an entrepreneur who bootstrapped, who was able to get their business off the ground, really less than 18 or 24 months. And I’m often held up as an example of, hey, this is the guy who did a good job at it, and it took me three years. So no matter how you do it, you have to have a runway. You have to have enough time to launch this thing. And if you give up on it too soon, you’re not going to be able to take off. Finding The Right System I think the biggest thing that I do and even the way that we host when we put on a conference, the way we host conference and then the way we do all of our coaching and mastermind is teach the systems that work.

Lynn comes to us from The7GracesofMarketing.com Lynn is a certified, award winning coach, teacher, marketer, social media expert, radio host, speaker and author of the number one bestseller: The 7 Graces of Marketing: How to Heal Humanity and the Planet by Changing the Way We Sell Have a listen to my chat with Lynn-Serafinn. See highlights and links from of our chat below… ENJOY! Podcast Highlights: About Lynn Serafinn: Originally I’m from New York, I spent the first 40 something years in my life in the States and then moved to England in 1999. From the music industry originally; I was a professional musician for many years, everything from classical to electronic dance and I ran my own studio and a small record label for a long time. I have an MA in Adult Education and Distance Learning. Left corporate in 2007s & started as life coach and did coaching for while but then what I was doing also is coming back to one of my first love which was writing. I published a book (2008) that did very well. Because that book did well and I was self published, that’s when peoples started of asking me about marketing. Now it occurred to me at that point that I had been marketing myself for most of life. Now suddenly immersed in these whole new world, called Web 2.0, and dealing with blogging and social media which wasn’t there when I had gone into, with the day job, none of the stuff was there. I suddenly, I’ve realized that was developing my own style of marketing. Sign of the Times There was a lot of really schmoozy formula in marketers out online then and they still are but they we’re really, really and full force around toward the end of the, what we call in Britain, the naughty sooner that the 2007, 2008 and 2009. They were very aggressive, very manipulative, a lot of what I call is scarcity marketing, a lot of persuasive marketing, a lot of invasive marketing and it’s still there today. I had a different style and it seems to work and but I didn’t sit down to analyze what it was. May be on to Something As people started coming to me and they said, hey, you're doing really well with your book. Can you help me to do this with mine, can you help me launch my book, can you help me build platform, all of these kinds of things. It made me sit down and have to analyze, what was it that I was doing that worked, what was it that I was doing that was different… That’s really were The 7 Graces of Marketing came in because I started to realize that they was a heck of lot of stuff about marketing that I could not stand. And furthermore, I kept hearing most of my clients coming to me saying I can't stand marketing. I think it’s evil, I think it’s the devil, you know, that kind of, I mean not really not their words but basically they hated it. They thought it was manipulative, they thought they’d be dis-ingenuous if they engaged in it and as result they didn’t do it and or if they tried it, they did it in a inauthentic way that did not feel good to them. Exploring the History of Marketing But marketing actually, as I started to explore it, I realized that it was really founded upon a conscious system of psychological manipulation. Now a lot of people would say, well yeah, I know… duh, but when I really examined it historically back from around the earlier century and its beginnings we’d say, Edward Bernays who was considered the father of modern marketing. When we get into mass production…and suddenly what happened was, you had a world where we were capable of producing things faster than we could use them. That was the critical turning point in history …it’s not just that we were capable of now producing things faster than we could use them, we were also capable of producing things faster than we could dispose off them. And how the early marketers used psychological manipulation to convince people that they needed more things than they actually needed at the rate,

Alexandra is the Co-Founder & CMO of GetSpokal.com An awesome inbound marketing automation platform designed to help small businesses to: - Create and distribute their content - Attract and nurture inbound prospects. You’ll find all of this happening at: GetSpokal.com Have a listen to my chat with Alexandra Skey. See highlights and links from of our chat below… ENJOY! Podcast Highlights: Alexandra Skey: Canadian,born and raised North American entrepreneur. and a marketer. Spokal is my fourth venture. Personal life: I love riding horses I love kiteboarding. And as a little aside, we actually took Spokal remote. We took our whole (Spokal) team remote and moved to Caribbean for four months last summer. And worked on a company down there, I learned to kitesurf, and through inbound marketing, we were able to grow our business significantly while having a good time under that Caribbean sun. Upcoming Book - Fall 2014: Called Zero Friction I’m working on a book all about e-retail. And so that’s why I decided to call myself an e-retail author. It’s not specifically e-commerce. It really talks a lot about what happens when the barriers to buying and selling and creating online are gone for everyone and what does that look like as we move towards this concept of a zero friction worlds. And ultimately, I think it leads to amazing customer experiences. And so this book was originally written to be e-retail book and in order to stay relevant and writing an e-retail book, it’s quite challenging. So we took a bit of a social, cultural, economical, kind of global approach to the book and really looked at what’s the concept of e-retail. And it’s really about breaking down those barriers, and that’s a very similar concept to what marketing automation does for small business, how do you breakdown these barriers and scale up so that you can have a small business marketing from the Caribbean or you can have someone halfway around the world selling something they made and it’s actually economically viable. And so that’s really sort of, I guess, kind of deep down as part of my passion and that’s what I decided yeah, I guess that’s what an e-retail author is. About Spokal: We came together full time in Spokal, April 2012. So that’s me and my cofounder, Chris. Chris actually started tinkering with the idea about November 2007, sort of part time, trying to see does this concept makes sense, is it resonating, can we actually do it technically. Spokal is quite technically robust just because we actually integrate with a ton of different providers. So he really wanted to see could we even do it as possible. And then we actually met at a co-working space out of Vancouver. And I really liked the idea and he was thinking, okay, well, let’s rev this up. So then we both went on it fulltime in April 2012. Challenges Growing Spokal: We talked about it being really fun, and it’s great and working in Caribbean. I mean, the honest answer, it was a lot of really, really hard work. And there are definitely some dark days. And I think that we, two kind of deep challenges: 1. The first was convincing anyone who was in a small business that Spokal was a good idea. So when we first started out, we were thinking that we would go your typical start up roots. So we create a little bit of a product, build some demand and fund raise. And every investor we talked to thought we were crazy because the small business market is notoriously difficult to reach, and notoriously expensive to do it. And we were trying to explain through the concept of inbound. We’re not actually going out and campaigning. People are googling, how do I grow my business online, and they’ll find Spokal. And they’ll go through our inbound funnel, and they’ll convert. And we were explaining this, and we had very few people that were kind of willing to jump on board with us. And so sort of by default, we realized, okay,

The Big Value Big Business - Podcast Who have I interviewed, what have I learned...? When I started podcast in Dec of last year I was so excited and full of hope, ambition and wonder about how this thing was going to shake out. Podcast Highlights: I am here now 6 months in... 24 episodes, this making 25 and I could not be happier with the results. Let me take a second and give a shout out to my guests: 024: Mimika Cooney - CaptureSchool.com 023: Jeff Rohrs - AudiencePro.com 022: Aj Amyx - AJAmyx.com 021: Bryan Kramer - BryanKramer.com 020: Aaron Bethune - Musicpreneur.ca 019: Ann Handley - AnnHandley.com 018: Michelle Dale - VirtualMissFriday.com 017: Mike Kawula - SelfEmployedKing.com 016: John Lee Dumas - EntrepreneurOnFire.com 015: Bethany Gilbert - OwnYourHill.com 014: Hermione Way - StartUpWorld.info 013: Oli Gardner – UnBounce.com 012: Rochelle Moulton – RochelleMoulton.com 011: Andrew Davis - AKADrewDavis.com 010: Pat Flynn - SmartPassiveIncome.com 009: Ezra Firestone – SmartMarketer.com 008: Brian Massey – ConversionSciences.com 007: Corbett Barr – Fizzle.co 006: Joe Pulizzi - ContentMarketingInstitute.com 005: Jason Glegg - ConvertWithContent.com 004: Stephanie Frasco-Clegg - ConvertWithContent.com 003: Keith Kranc - DominateWebMedia.com 002: James Schramko - SuperFastBusinesss.com So... Just how well is the Podcast doing...Let's See: Am I rolling in endorsements and sponsors? Nope not a one Do I have this huge email list of listeners? Nope it’s actually a pretty modest list of some of the most fantastic people I could ever have the pleasure to serve. Am I monetizing anything? Nope not a thing - not a dime. You know if you are anywhere in or around the internet marketing space, you’ll notice the huge push for podcasts. There is hardly a successful or even an up and coming blogger, online marketer, author or consultant out there that does not have some kind of podcast, google plus hangout, TV show on YouTube…whatever I am talking lots of folks out there are using audio and video to help them get their message to even more people Speaking strictly of the guys I know this huge influx of podcast i think has been inspired I part by the success and influence of: BVBB 016: John Lee Dumas - entrepreneuronfire.com BVBB 010: Pat Flynn – smartpassiveincome.com Just these 2 guys alone combined have downloads close to tens of millions. They have listeners in practically every corner of the world and daily they provide their listeners with valuable information, motivation and inspiration.. These 2 gents; Pat Flynn and John Lee Dumas were in a big way responsible for inspiring me to start the Big Value Business Podcast. I am a faithful listener of both of these guys and I have really tried to bring big value to my prospective audience just like they have...and of course get paid in the process. I know a lot of folks started a podcast as a result of listening to and being inspired by guys like this. Heck who wouldn’t want to make over 100 grand a month like John Lee Dumas? Unfortunately not everybody can be so lucky to hit it big time like these guys… Hey guys like John and Pat have paid plenty of dues and have worked incredibly hard for the blessings they now enjoy and they continue to work hard each and every day serving their respective tribes While a few folks have been able to crack the code, grab a decent size following and make a really good living with their podcast… alas most folks working a podcast like me have not. That doesn’t mean we have failed. It just means we have to work a little harder and go at it a little bit longer. I knew I wasn’t going to set the world on fire in the first 6 months. Probably not even a spark in the first year. And frankly that was not my intention.

Mimika Mimika Cooney is the creator and host of “Mimika TV“, a published author, speaker and small business marketing expert. Mimika’s new passion and focus is teaching solopreneurs, creatives and photographers the fundamentals of business and marketing through her online membership site at www.CaptureSchool.com Have a listen to my chat with Mimika. See highlights and links from of our chat below… Check out the transcript or download it to read later: ENJOY! Podcast Highlights: Mission to Help Creatives Focus and Grow Their Business So really the whole niche is, the one man person or one woman show, even a small business who doesn’t have a lot of resources but needs to know the shortcuts… I’ve always had a passion for teaching and helping others grow. So, for me, I always thought there was something bigger I was made to do with what I’ve done in my life. I’m really excited in order to help other entrepreneurs and creative’s because I'm sure you can tell a lot of us creative’s suffer from a bit of ADD. We can’t focus very well on longer tasks and sometimes I find there’s a lot of things out there that make it hard to, implement into business especially when it comes from a creative side because you want to make it easy to implement, easy to learn. Why the Name: Capture School, It’s about, capturing people’s imaginations, capturing people’s dreams, helping them really take ownership of what it is that they want to achieve in their businesses. I can’t travel a lot. So for me, I kind of felt that it would make more sense to put everything that I know into an online format because a lot of my students that learn from me are also moms and work part time and try to run a household. Travelling is an issue as well as time. So for me I'm always about how can I make things, work smarter and get more done in less time. And the whole structure of the whole school is going to be online learning. So it will be video and audio downloads as well as worksheets. So it’s a system I put together that I’ve developed that I feel, certain So it’s like an online forum for busy entrepreneurs… so it’s kind of like combining, online learning with the coaching model as well. We’re All in the People Business It’s people who click links, not computers. So even if we’re talking about PPC or whether you’re B2B, or B2C, whatever type of business you’re in -- At the end of the day, we have to appeal to people and people are emotionally driven and then that’s what I'm finding the more I read and the more I study is that it’s still very -- even in a very sort of logical business, people are still driven by the emotions. So it’s like how do you touch on that? How do you get people to listen and it’s all about standing out in a really busy saturated economy. So you have to work much harder to break through the noise… Marketing Today is Like Dating So I like to take you through almost like a dating process. First, we’ve got to get a little flirting, get them to like what they see and then you start to do the wooing and then you start the conversation and then you start to ask them on a date and then eventually you can ask them to marry you and then they’ll give you the keys to the house. But, it’s all part of the process of getting them to know like and trust you… Short Reading List Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation by Sally Hogshead Make Your Idea Matter: Stand out with a better story by Bernadette Jiwa Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg Business Brilliant: Surprising Lessons from the Greatest Self-Made Business Icons by Lewis Schiff Contagious: Why Things Catch On Hardcover by Jonah Berger

Jeff is the VP, of Marketing Insights at ExactTarget.com He is a global keynote speaker and author His latest ground breaking marketing book is called: Audience: Marketing in the age of subscribers, fans and followers Find Audience Here: www.AudiencePro.com Little more about Jeff….He is a recovering attorney, bacon-lover, and diet coke addict. Have a listen to my chat with Jeff. See highlights and links from of our chat below… Check out the transcript or download it to read later: ENJOY! Podcast Highlights: This Thing Called the Internet I did graduate from Boston University School of Law and did a Masters in Mass Communication out there as well back in ’94 when they were installing this state-of-the-art power Mcintosh Lab with connection to this thing called the internet. That was my first exposure to the internet. I thought it was interesting. I just saw that match.com celebrated its 20th anniversary and it reminded me that I have been using the internet for 20 plus years. From practicing law to trying and pay off the school that’s when I realized, that it was going to drive me a bit insane as being a litigator is we’re living the worst moments of other people’s lives and so, I turn to the course back towards technology, worked as an national applications consultant at LexisNexis for a few years before joining an agency and then living with a group of folks to join another agency called Optium. Early Days of Email Service Providers We collaborated on a number of new business relationships. – our team won Partner of the Year from Exact Target that one year, I was approached by the CEO and asked if I’d ever consider joining and after about a year of conversation I joined Exact Target in May of 2007. I’m running agency programs and also having a foot in the marketing world and then, after about a year, I just jumped over to marketing full time and I’ve been heading up our marketing insights and really kind of speaking and writing about marketing trends that I was seeing and at various points of my career, I’ve run our digital interactive team, had a hand in events especially programming around our connections, user conference and built our content marketing team. And now, with the book just having come out, the last five months of my life have been in service to that, speaking around the globe on things of audience development. Recognizing Industry Challenges As my career progressed I realized that really the biggest challenges I was seeing in business were often a matter of poor communication and when you look at what kind of communication sits with the consumer that sits in marketing and customer service. And so, I wanted very much to kind of turn the course that way, that’s a lot of what I did at LexisNexis… I also began working on some competitive materials because our marketing team at a time is really slow to get some of them out in the marketplace. So, I created my own and low and behold it was getting picked up by marketing, shined up a bit and then used internationally. All of that experiences at Lexis led me to realize my communications experience and desire to kind of clarify and help people better understand what are the opportunities and challenges are in front of them, was really to fit very well into the marketing realm. Discovering The Audience Marketing doesn’t happen without an audience. It’s just a question of where the audience comes from. And traditionally, we have been very used to vying for eyeballs or attention, right? And the audience comes from third parties who aggregate it in the form of the media. You have a television audience and you buy 30 seconds of their attention in the form of advertising and that money goes right to the network and the network basically is monetizing the audience. They have turned the audience into an asset that they can sell back to advertisers. That model was never going to change. In fact,

AJ comes to us from AJAmyx.com Aj is a business coach, consultant and passionpreneur and founder of the Passionpreneur Academy AJ’s specialty is in training folks from all over the world on how to: •Attract new clients •Create high-end programs to serve people worldwide •How to implement the mechanics of automated marketing and sales systems so that you not only get paid but you GET PAID WELL! Have a listen to my chat with AJ Amyx. See highlights and links from of our chat below… Check out the transcript or download it to read later: ENJOY! Podcast Highlights: It All Started in a Sleepy Lil East Texas Town… I grew up in a very big town of Seven Points, Texas and there’s about, I think now, there are 1200 people and I think that is including the cattle that roam the pastures in the fields. So, it’s a real small town, Seven Points, and the locals they call it Seven Pints because pretty much the only thing that’s in the town in Seven Points is local little honky-tonk bars and liquor stores. And so, it’s like this typical East Texas town where most people here they’re in the construction industry, they work at the school. It’s pretty order of farmers, ranchers, type of things like that but for me, I just have like these huge dreams. So, I got involved in music when I was in high school. For whatever reason I found this old beat up acoustic guitar in the old little metal shed behind my house. I think I was in eighth grade. This is 1998. I picked it up, started banging around on it. Rock Stardom? Co-founding a Christian rock and roll band called Trade Cities and so we went on from pretty much 2009 was the time like we climb the hill of like I guess people call success in the music industry. But we have like radio play in Dallas. We had this big 38-foot tour bus. We had offers from record labels but we’re just an independent artist. I mean, we didn’t have this huge record label backing us. We just literally had thousands and thousands of hours of sweat equity and then my ability to just be ridiculously tenacious and figure out the whole business and the whole marketing thing and in order to do that I guess you could say how lucky or whatever you want to call it. I like to say it’s just where preparation and opportunity meet. Musician AND Marketer I had the opportunity to work with one of the big music guys in Dallas and I went and worked with him for free for about six months or eight months and his name was Jimmy Swan and I got to learn like the music game from the inside out by while everybody else is out partying and drinking and doing whatever they do and until they get in college, I was out booking shows and hanging out with Mantel Jordan’s manager and Coffey Anderson and Rupert Boneham from Survivor and going to all of these things and learn in the music industry. So, I was able to pull that experience back into what we were doing and then make it happen. And then we went along and in 2009, I came to this place in October 2009 where we had to make a decision as a group because we just had different visions in life and if anybody’s ever been in a band or if you haven’t been in a band, I tell you that being in a band with five guys is pretty much like being married to five people. And so, we decided that we weren’t going and do it anymore. So, we played our last show in October of 2009 and then between October of 2009 to March of 2010, so I guess it’s six months or so. Early Midlife Crisis I pretty much went through this experience where some people had midlife crisis or whatever we call it. I guess mine was a quarter life crisis. I got to like learn the importance of like relationships and Walt Disney always said or he had this quote and I always remember he said, “Sometimes the best thing in life is a good swift kick in the teeth.” And at that point in my life, getting kicked in the teeth is exactly what happened… Asking GOOD Questions

Bryan comes to us from BryanKramer.com This is Bryan's personal digital space where he talks about (among other cutting edge marketing topics) the evolution of marketing the models of the B2B and B2C to a more personal, Human 2 Human approach to interacting in the marketplace. You can take a deep dive into this subject by checking out his latest book: Human to Human: There is no B2B or B2C Bryan is also the president and CEO of PureMatter.com; an award winning global digital agency based in Silicon Valley. Bryan and his agency have captured over 100 industry awards and accolades, with Bryan landing in the Forbes top 25 list of influencers to follow… Have a listen to my chat with Bryan Kramer. See highlights and links from of our chat below… Check out the transcript or download it to read later: ENJOY! Podcast Highlights: Talking with Bryan we find out how we can improve our communication and humanize or rehumanize our message as we compete in this extremely noisy marketplace. Building in a Bubble & Combining Traditional and Digital I worked my way up in the agency world. And I worked in one of the oldest agencies here in Silicon Valley, San Jose. And I got a job out of college working for this agency Carter Waxman at that time and my role really at all the agencies that I've worked for was to bring the digital revolution and integration to the agency. So it was taking a traditional and newly digital at that time integration and bringing the two together by training, educating and selling that service into clients for the agency. And that really kind of became my MO really or the thing that I became I think good at for the next foreseeable future and it became something that I really worked hard at as well because it really was a passion of mine. Birth of Purematter By the time, my partner and I Courtney Smith started Purematter, I think it's now 12 years ago, we wanted to combine again traditional and digital and now we've grown into a much more digital agency, here working with enterprise clients like Cisco and IBM and Pitney Bowes and MasterCard and Plantronics and companies like that. So we're really excited, really pinching ourselves right now with the work that we're doing and I think just along the way if there's any takeaway it's just really kind of, you know, learning the ropes and not saying no to anything along the way because it really helped prime me for what I'm doing here today. Key Elements to Success Infrastructure is probably the most critical before you go to market with anything. So often I see companies produce a product and just go for it rather than concentrating internally and spending the time to get your resources and resource management and financials and all the HR and all the different aspects across the, you know, the internal spectrum up and running first. I think for the last, gosh, 10 years, we are kind of the best kept secret because I wanted to and so did my partner Courtney wanted to focus so much on who we were and what we can deliver and what our message is and who our people are and, what does our brand stand for and all those things that you just kind of, you rush through and maybe 10 years was kind of overdoing it. But we didn’t want to -- we also weren’t about ego that's why we named the company Purematter instead of Bryan and Courtney. And, you know, so we really wanted to maintain a Purematter atmosphere. Leading into second thing which is, kind of looking at when is the time to grow and how do you grow and what's that next step for you? And it's either grow or die, you know, you’ve got to disrupt in this time and age and if you don’t disrupt, then you're just not moving forward and at that point, you probably, you're going to end up finding something new. And so, you know, one of the things that we really needed to do is just to step out and that's where I started taking a look at social media and figuring out that I really needed to take Bryan...

Aaron Bethune comes to us from Musicpreneur.ca - Where you'll find his epic marketing book by the same name: Musicpreneur: The Creative Approach to Making Money in Music. While being a musicpreneur as well as an author Aaron is also a speaker, a music educator, and an in-high-demand creative consultant. Aaron's expertise in branding and marketing goes well beyond the music industry which has allowed him the opportunity to work with many major companies outside of music. You can find his agency at PlayItLoudMusic.com where he offers booking, management and consulting services for musicians, artists and more. Have a listen to my chat with Aaron Bethune See highlights and links from of our chat below… Check out the transcript or download it to read later: ENJOY! Note: This could be in and of itself, an epic blog post... You REALLY have to listen to the recording... or just download the transcript! Podcast Highlights: Quote: "Well, I think if you speak to anybody that’s doing what they’re passionate about, it’s something that’s been a lifetime in the making for me. Music has been a part of me for my whole life." Growing Up International But one of the things that I found was that I was born in Montreal. I grew up in England well at least to the age of 12. Then I moved to Spain and then, in Spain, the last place I lived was in a village with four houses and there are a lot of great things about living in sort of an isolated area. But ultimately, music was always itching at me and so I felt that I really needed to make a move to where I felt there’s more of an opportunity. And so being Canadian, going to Canada was an option. And so I essentially moved back so as to be closer. So I took a degree at a University in Canada. And so that was kind of, I guess, you can say, my journey into making music my life but at the same time, studying jazz performance, I mean who am I kidding, that’s not really a living. So along the way, I felt that if I was going to have a career in music, I was going to need to figure out how I was going to make music my business. And I quickly realized that talent is a starting point but it certainly isn’t what gets you across the start line. You need to have business skills and I also quickly realized that it was easier in some ways to learn how to do the business than it was to find people that do the business for me. And part of that, I think, sort of comes back to that golden rule, the rule of reciprocity. I mean if you ask people to do things for you, it’s unlikely it’s going to happen. But if you find ways to do things for other people, then they’re more likely to want to return that favor. And so I felt that if I could create my own business and start to build it, then I would be able to present the value that other people would want to take part in. And along the way, help others and hopefully that they are to help me in return. Birthing of Play It Loud Music What is Play It Loud Music? What does it do? So I made a business card and decided what I was going to be was a promoter. And so on a trip back to Spain…to this event and the friend of mine who was in-charge of the entertainment for a city in Northern Spain called me and said, hey, this (famous) blues guitar player that she knew I really liked was coming to town and she happened to be organizing the event. And so (after the show) I get into the room and I’m waiting in line and I’m trying to figure out what the heck I’m going to tell this person when I meet him because I hear what other people are saying. Oh, I’m a big fan of yours and blah, blah, blah. And I’m thinking, just to say I am a fan is going to end pretty quickly. So when I got there, it just sort of clicked in my head and say, oh, I’m a promoter from Canada. And the guy turned around and he pretty much stopped talking to anybody else, and he said, I’m looking for someone in Canada that I can trust and can promote me. And….

Ann Handley comes to us from AnnHandley.com Ann is also the chief content officer @ MarketingProfs.com where they offer real-world education for the modern marketer, through training, best practices, research and a ton of great content. Ms Handley has been tapped by Forbes Magazine as the most influential woman in social media and she is also recognized by ForbesWoman as one of the “Top 20 Women Bloggers.” She is also a monthly columnist for entrepreneur magazine, a member of the Linkedin Influencer program, and the co-author of the best-selling book on content marketing; "CONTENT RULES" And.... Her NEW BOOK = Everybody Writes: Your Essential Guide to Creating Content That Doesn't Suck Will be out in September 2014 CHECK IT OUT HERE for PRE-ORDER on AMAZON Have a listen to my chat with Ann Handley See highlights and links from of our chat below… Check out the transcript or download it to read later: ENJOY! Podcast Highlights: Humble Beginnings "Actually that was my first job, working in the window at Jack in the Box. That was indeed a humble beginning. But professionally, my first job was working as a journalist. I come out of the journalism world. I was a stringer first for a b2b publication here in Boston for the banker and tradesmen who I wrote about banking and real estate trends. From there, I went to the Boston Globe. I (even) wrote for the magazines that were in the back of airline seat pockets for a while.""In 1997, I co-founded a website called ClickZ,.com and suddenly found my self in the world of marketing, specifically marketing content. I was the president and the editor-in-chief there, and ultimately became chief content officer there. And that was just my indoctrination into marketing, essentially. So I kind of came at it sideways. First, I came up through the publishing world, creating content that marketers would love. Later, I did it at MarketingProfs which led me into this whole content marketing space, before, it was really called content marketing." The Book Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) "That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business (Wiley) And it’s become the best selling book on content marketing. I still see a lot of people reading it. We wrote that book as an evergreen approach to how to create content that your audiences will love.""Since Content Rules was published, I think that an overwhelming number of businesses have adopted that content-centric marketing mindset, and which is a great thing. But a lot of businesses are still not on board. A lot of them are not doing content particularly well. So as much as I think the world has evolved in some ways and some ways I think content remains a challenge for a lot of companies." So, What is "Good Content"? “Create content that your customers will thank you for. What will your customers love? What can you help them with? How can you help explain the world little better? How can you help enlighten them? Shoulder their burdens, all that stuff, I think that’s what journalists do, just by explaining the issues at hand. And I think if you can port some of that mentality, if you can create content your customers will thank you for ...(and bring that) over into the world of marketing .... That’s just a really good place to start.” Content Equation - Explained "So what you’re referring to is something again that I talk about frequently which is how I think about the equation that I think about that will produce the best content, and it’s empathy times inspiration times YOUtility. So essentially, just to walk you through that, so empathy means creating content that your customers will thank you for with a real customer-centric mindset. I think a lot of marketers, a lot of companies say that they have a customer-centric mindset. But very often, they don’t. So I’m saying create content that your customers need ... that they want, that they will like,

Michelle Dale VirtualMissFriday.com Michelle comes to us from VirtualMissFriday.com An Online Business Consultancy with Built-In Virtual Assistant Services. Michelle is also a self proclaimed traveling digital nomad…. Have a listen to my chat with Michelle Dale See highlights and links from of our chat below… Check out the transcript or download it to read later: ENJOY! Podcast Highlights: Very early in her Professional Life realizing there had to be something more! “Coming from working class family I had you know it’s like: work hard and get your nose down and find a job and stay in forever and then retire and then you might be able to enjoy life. But I was not too happy about waiting until I reached 65 to get to the point where I enjoyed life." Packing up and getting out "At the age of 23 I sort of had this idea that I could sell my house, quit my job, just take a laptop and start traveling and you know just take off and I did it really quickly. From the time I made the decision to the time I left it was three months. So, I just kind of, yes I got my affairs all sorted out, everyone thought I was nuts but you know I thought to myself I have to be quick cuz I don’t want anyone to talk me out of this." “This is (not) going to Fill My Cup” "I mean I had some great jobs, all different kinds of varieties of things in hospitals, in restaurants, in hotels and things and every time I went to a new job I always thought right this is going to be it. This is (not) going to fill my cup. And I would get there and I would be there for six months or you know a year and I would think this just isn’t doing it for me. I don’t wake up in the morning and want to leap out of bed and you get straight to work. It was just a process of earning money you know to live and it just didn’t feel right to me…” Internet Marketing (The Dark side) “The internet was very different to what it is now and in 2005 it was you know really working online and sort of making money through the internet was still very new and it was all very hyped up and internet marketee and you know highlighted yellow stuff - really spammy and cheesy … and I didn’t want to go down that road. So, I started looking into alternatives of you know successful people who was sort of real human beings that seem to be making money online, through you know humanity rather than kind of petty sales…” Working online 14 hours was a breeze “I had kind of found my calling I suppose in a way because I used to think to myself God, I have just sat here for fourteen hours straight and I have just worked through all of this stuff and I don’t feel tired, I had lots of energy, I was motivated, I felt good about it, I wanted to wake up the next morning and start again and it was at that point when I realized that I had found what I have been looking for I think in many ways…” Selling Egyptian Rugs "I just put them on eBay and they did start selling. But, I found it just way too tedious and I didn’t enjoy it so you know it’s like it tied me over, eBay fees were quite expensive and shipping was quite expensive but I did in fact sell quite a few rugs to people all over the world" Challenges “There were many… primarily because I was doing it from a foreign country…in the Middle East, it was also a bit of a third world country…there were all sorts challenges with internet, with language barriers , I wouldn’t be able to acquire a sort of client base (Looking for virtual assistance) locally so I made my focus really to do with finding clients online..." Fast Forward 10 years “My business now is split into two; I work with clients and I work with virtual assistants as well. So, I do training for virtual assistants on how they can build their business and I also work with clients through a sort of consulting you know providing services, website service and stuff.” Heart and soul and the magic of that strategic generosity.

Mike Kawula of SelfEmployedKing.com Mike comes to us from SelfEmployedKing.com where he helpsService & Home Based Business Owners Get More Customers, Increase Sales & Earn More Money. Mike has an AWESOME Mastermind Group and he teaches 16 simple Marketing Strategies to experience business growth in 12 Month. Have a listen to my chat with Mike Kawula See highlights and links from of our chat below… Check out the transcript or download it to read later: ENJOY! Podcast Highlights: Always an Entrepreneur? Michael: “I bought my first stock at 9 years old and that was ToysRus, ticker “toy”. I did that from savings from shoveling snow to my lemonade stand - I had a super duper lemonade stand. I sold the morning newspaper, bagels, coffee. I had a regular crowd and I put it next to the bus stop." Graduating college and working as a stock broker until…. “I remember the day exactly, it was 9-10-2001, the day before 9/11. And I found out I was having my first child. And my wife and I decided at that time that I was going to head out and start my own business. And that's when it all started. I just turned 30 and you know I bought my first franchise and since then I've owned two franchises, started an online business and you have sold them and now focused on Self-Employed King where I help small business increase their sales. So it's a lot of fun. It's been a heck of a journey." The Franchise of Franchises Starting out in the franchise world, Mike considered a lot of businesses… “I looked at a car wash, or batting cage facility, a bagel shop, I mean, I was looking at everything. And I had so many problems trying to buy a business that I ended up looking at franchising and I found this franchise that you could walk people through a methodical process and basically help them buy a franchise. So it's a franchise helping people buy franchises." Being able to see several business models at work and choosing what would be best for him in the long run Still Trading Hours for Dollars "But it was one of those things that you were trading time for money basically. I had to be working in a -- and if I want to walk away, I wouldn’t be able to because you couldn’t annuitize that type business.""I kept looking and looking and eventually I saw that the cleaning business kind of matched my goals and objectives which was to build it up, put managers in a place and at that time I thought I'd be able to kind of step away from it and let managers run it." Running on Autopilot? "But three years into it, when I started doing that I learned that it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I built it up to a seven-figure business. But as I stepped away, each year like 2009, 2010, 2011, the sales started to drop and the quality of my company, the name that I had in the local area at the Jersey shore, wasn’t the same as it was when I had started it because, managers just would never give it the same 100% as you would as an owner." From Cleaning Business to Selling Cleaning Products "After selling off the cleaning business Mike says; “I focused more in my online company at that time because we had just gotten ranked by Inc Magazine things were going good. We were ranked the 144th fastest growing company - called Discount Cleaning Products." It’s Okay to Get Outside Your Comfort Zone – It’s Often Necessary "I always tell people as an entrepreneur you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. If you can’t, you're going to have problems being successful. Well if you can just learn to be uncomfortable with or be comfortable with being uncomfortable, you're going to do okay." Online Marketer Emerged "2012, I started blogging and just kind of like sharing basic growth principles. Yeah, again, I'm an online guy right now but I believe in a lot of offline strategies to grow a business. (I’m) huge with networking,  I believe folks should be out there, striking partnerships as much as possible."

John Lee Dumas of EntrepreneurOnFire.comJohn is the creator of EnterpreneuronFire.com where he is the host of the top ranked, seven-day a week business podcast by the same name Entrepreneur on Fire. On his podcast with over 500 episodes published & over 5.2 Million downloads to date, John interviews today’s most successful and inspiring entrepreneurs. Have a listen to my chat with John Lee Dumas See highlights and links from of our chat below… Check out the transcript or download it to read later: ENJOY! Podcast Highlights: Responsible for building the INCREDIBLE Podcast: Entrepreneur on Fire As of March 2014 - 18 Months:                                      - Produced over 500 episodes - Received 5.2 million downloads - Translates to 5,000 unique downloads monthly - Downloaded in over 145 countries around the world - Currently generation $6-Figures per Month$ - In 2013, Entrepreneur on Fire won best of iTunes 2013 - Life Experience (Thus Far) Providence College on a ROTC Scholarship Graduated 2002; commissioned as a second lieutenant in the US Army Member of the first class to be commissioned post 9/11 2002-2006 = Military training & a 13 month tour of duty in Iraq as a platoon leader of 16 men in four tanks in Fallujah, Ar Ramadi, and Habbaniyah, Iraq. Post Military = Attended law school and quickly dropped out after one semester because he hated it. Entered corporate finance and in Boston for John Hancock John: “During this times at 32 years old that I was driving to work, stuck in the traffic jam, running out of my favorite podcast, freaking out saying; I can deal being in a car in traffic as long as I have my podcast.""But if I don’t (have my favorite podcast) and have to hear Miley Cyrus one more time, I really am going to just turn off this road and just go to sleep because this is just too painful.""So I had the epiphany moment at that time, why isn’t there a seven-day a week business podcast? The “aha” moment hit me. I decided that I was going to take action, be that person to create it. Entrepreneur on Fire was born that day." - Why the name Entrepreneur on Fire? “People get when I say “James, you are on fire.” Like you know what I’m talking about.” - Passion “The only thing that was going through my head James was to find something that I was passionate about, that I could pour my heart, my soul, my energy, my enthusiasm into because I just saw with every profession I had up to that point in my life, I was holding myself back from fully committing because it wasn’t something I really enjoyed and how can you throw yourself completely into something with total abandon that you aren’t completely passionate about” - Against All Odds "And it was against all advice ( experienced, podcasters, fellow entrepreneurs and mentors): And not just Cliff Ravenscraft, Jaime Tardy, my mentor and my mastermind leader, both said; “John, you shouldn’t do a seven-day a week podcast. Nobody’s going to want to listen to that many podcasts. You’re going to get burnt out. You’re not going to be able to find enough guests for your show.” "These same well intended people “gave me unbelievable advice that I’ve applied to my business that have helped it out so much. But on that advice, I put my blinders on and I said you know what? I’m not just going to be another once a week podcast. I’m not going to swim in that red ocean. I want the blue ocean. I want to go where nobody has gone before.” - Feelings on Success “It makes me feel very satisfied. It makes me feel very inspired because of the inspiration it has brought to others, the ripple effect.” “It makes me feel very proud of the amount of hard work that I’ve done because I’m not one of those Tim Ferriss’ that have or that’s ever going to write a book that’s called Four Hour Work Week. I mean, if I wrote a book it would be 74-Hour Work Week.” - Lean beginnings – climbing out of the RED “Obviously,

Herminone Way from StartUpWorld.info Hermione, is a new media journalist, reality TV personality and a successful entrepreneur. Her many projects include; StartUpWorld.info Newspepper.com, TechFluff.tv Vibease.com - Just to name a few. Have a listen to my chat with Hermione See highlights and links from of our chat below… Check out the transcript or download it to read later: ENJOY! Podcast Highlights: Humble Beginnings Hermione: “I have to pinch myself to check that it is actually me that’s living this life because I grew up on a little tiny farm milking cows in a little village in Devon which is a county in the south of England, and somehow I’m living this extravagant, amazing, incredible life in San Francisco now where I spent the last seven years traveling all over the world and meeting people like Richard Branson.” Paper Journalism: “I did a degree in Journalism. And that is really when my entrepreneurial journey started and it started with a problem; I was doing this degree in Journalism and my degree was teaching newspaper journalism. I was like hold on a minute, newspapers are dying, and everything is going online” "Everyone is doing citizen journalism and video blogging. Why aren’t we being taught this? Why aren’t we being taught how to write online media, how to video blog? Why are we still being taught the medieval practices of newspaper journalism? When I graduate, I’m going to be working in digital not print.""And so I was googling on the internet of an institution or place where I could get training in online journalism and video production and nothing existed. Nothing.""And so I think I was having a conversation with my older brother, who is also an entrepreneur and which helps and he said, “Well, why don’t you start your own thing?” And I said, “You’re right. I’ll start my own thing.” And that was how Newspepper was born and that was 2007.""So nobody else in London was really doing like low-cost online video and that is really how we grew and people heard about us and they’re like, “Oh, my god. You mean, we can get a video for hundreds less of the price that this production – large production studio charges us.” We were like, “Yeah.” And you know word just spread and we ended up getting clients like BBC and Parliament in Channel 4 and we were just really saying “yes, yes, yes” and being open." Very Naughty "I’ve always been wild. At school I was very, very naughty. I was always the kid that was getting expelled. I would always ask why… like teacher would explain something, I said, “Yeah, but why?” “Yeah. But why is that? Why? Why? Why?” So I wouldn’t ever accept just the answer that was given to me." “I was probably a pain in the neck… but I think that translates well to entrepreneurship because you always have to sort of fight the status quo and look outside the box and bend the rules and beg for forgiveness rather than ask permission.” “I wasn’t always an entrepreneur. I had a job cleaning toilets in a friend’s parents at a hotel on the weekends. I would clean the toilets, clean the bedrooms; be the chambermaid. I (also) worked in a chocolate shop for a while and got very fat. So I did have a couple of regular jobs before I got into entrepreneurship." Three main components of success "Just kept saying yes. I always ask why. Why? Why? Why? The status quo is never good enough." Living outside the comfort zone “People will give you an opportunity, even if it puts you outside of your comfort zone, you just got to say yes and trust me like I’ve been outside of my comfort zone for so many times.” "I can remember when I first started Newspepper, it was just me taking out a video camera and going to various free events that are on London and just taking my video camera and filming the event. And I remember I used to have to like put the camera on a tripod and run around and grab the mic and do the instruction and then run back around the camera...

Oli Gardner from UnBounce.com Oli is the co-founder and creative director at Unbounce.com. Unbounce.com is a landing page building platform for marketers that provides the easiest way to build and A/B test targeted landing pages for your online marketing campaigns. Oli has been quoted as saying, "I've seen more landing pages than anyone on the planet." And that’s a pretty big claim. Oli is also a self-proclaimed opinionated writer on conversion centered design in inbound marketing. He has also been known to have the occasional brush with, let me see if I can this right, the charismatic quadrupedal megafauna which I can only speculate has something to do with helping to protect (LARGE) endangered wildlife species; Charismatic quadrupedal megafauna, basically that means big sexy four-legged animals, that's where how I like to spend my time when I'm doing photography.” Have a listen to my chat with Oli... See highlights and links from of our chat below… Check out the transcript or download it to read later: ENJOY! Podcast Highlights: •Well, we started Unbounce started 2009-2010, six co-founders which is pretty unusual. We've worked together on and off for the last 14 years. •The Early Days, before Unbounce," I worked as a programmer in the Financial District in London. then made my way over to, you know, front-end web development and worked for a big online gambling company called Bodog" •Funny thing was my first day at Unbounce is the first day I became a marketer. I'd never done it before. Yeah, so that was an interesting way to kick off a new company. •Early on with Unbounce, the challenges were the same that every online business faces and that's getting people to show up so you can grow the business. I spent four, six, eight hours everyday just growing the Twitter account for the first six months. I was either writing or I was doing that, they're the only two things I did. You know, and then soon enough, we had, you know, over 20,000 followers and a lot of content. Then, you know, that gets the momentum going but at some point you need to -- we need to build a list of leads for when we launched the company, right? We need some people ready to jump in to our beta launch. •So we needed some lead gen and lead gen is hard to do if you don’t have anything to give away. So I decided we'd write our first eBook which was 101 landing page optimization tips. I ran a two-hour brainstorm, I had 14 questions and each question became a chapter. Then I went home and I wrote all night. So I pulled an all-nighter but I worked 16 hours, came back the next day with the finished eBook. This was the first lead gen opt in. •(To effectively build your brand,) You have to build brand awareness at the same time. I started guest posting. And I kicked things off by guesting the SEO Moz blog, now Moz. And that was the smart one -- the smartest decisions I've ever made. •Two most important ingredients in growing a new buisness: Lead Generation and Brand Awareness; the important thing is to split up between the two. I remember listening to Dharmesh from HubSpot, he was talking MozCon kind of last year and he said the mistake he made at the beginning was doing all lead gen. He didn’t do the brand awareness sites and looking back he wish he had split it in two so that was good validation also from him that I was doing the right thing. Important to maintain a balance of lead generation and brand awareness; one-tends to feed the other in some respects •Landing page creation; Best practices are only relevant when you're building your first page, then you, start testing it and getting feedback and evolving that way. •Five basic elements on your page have to be there; Your USP and your headline, your value proposition; your hero shot, which should ideally be showing your product or service in context of use All the features of your product written as benefits, Social proof and a call to action.

Rochelle Moulton from RochelleMoulton.com Rochelle is the founder and President of Be Unforgettable Media. A brand strategist, marketing maven and creative midwife, she writes weekly at RochelleMoulton.com about the intersection of business and personal brand strategy. She is a serial entrepreneur (and occasional intrapreneur) who has built, led (and sometimes sold) a handful of 6 and 7-figure service businesses. Have a listen to my chat with Rochelle See highlights and links from of our chat below… Check out the transcript or download it to read later: ENJOY! Podcast Highlights: Up front, as a Professional Rochelle is a: Consultant, Programmer (Course Creator and Teacher), a Speaker and a Writer; What Rochelle actually does is make YOU UNFORGETTABLE. She works with soloists—consultants, authors, speakers, experts, and creatives—to develop their personal brand, platform and business model. Rochelle puts it: "I’ll serve as your brand, business and marketing strategist, catalyst and chief evangelist. My job is to reach into your head and pull out your very best bits and put them to work on the big stage. Big presence, big results." When I suggested that she could possibly be considered a personal brand alchemist Rochelle pondered and replied: “Oh, alchemist - That's interesting -- I kind of like that. I usually will call myself a strategist but the strategist I think implies that everything is about fact. And the alchemy is I think what happens when you have more than one person in the mix. You know, you can have some magic happen." “I think to really do this where it serves you best, you being the business owner, the consultant, the author where it serves you best, does it really has to have both sides of your brain in there because people, you know, people buy and connect on emotion.” Even in the earliest days of her career, Rochelle found consulting to be the common thread that ran consistently throughout; “I spent a lot of time in a big consulting firm. I became a partner there and I spent all of my time running around mostly the Midwest, trying to make mergers, acquisitions and spinoffs work for mostly big companies like United Airlines, Ameritech; those guys. And then in '94 for variety of reasons, I basically chucked it all to start my first business.” Best Quote EVER! "When I saw the twisty, soul-sucking machinations, required to stay in the corner office, I put on my big girl panties and heading for the exit.” “And I think I might be unemployable now.” While being out on her own she would spend the next six years on a wild roller coaster ride building a business that she would eventually sell to the Arthur Andersen Company: “First lesson in creating value through branding; you know, they didn’t just buy the revenue, the client base, I mean it was Arthur Andersen. What they bought was our reputation and our story. What/Who do You Want to be? “So it starts with, you know, what do you really want to have happen? And then they key is, I mean it sounds so simple but you just got to do it is, you have to sit down and go through your talents and passions. And then the biggest thing and I will tell you how to do this or your listeners how to do this is, where I get the best data is from what I call your experiences and stories… And so what I will ask clients to do, I'll give them a worksheet and say I want you to write down all the pivotal experiences that happened to you; growing up in your first job and you 10th job, whatever” Who are You Going to Serve? And that is you got to pick your niche. And the trick with the niche is it has to be small enough so that you can really own it, stand out, but it has to be large enough so that you can meet whatever goals it is you have for your business because you might say, well, I want to be the expert on X and I just want it to be me and myself and I and that's all I want. Somebody else might say I want to be an expert in that same area ...

Andrew Davis from AKADrewDavis.com Andrew (AKA Drew), is the author of the Amazon best selling marketing book: Brandscaping: Unleashing the Power of Partnerships. Andrew highly sought after and respected marketer, both teaching and speaking on the many ways that marketing is evolving. Have a listen to my chat with Andrew See highlights and links from of our chat below… Check out the transcript or download it to read later: ENJOY! Podcast Highlights: * Andrew is the author of the Amazon bestselling marketing book Brandscaping: Unleashing the Power of Partnerships. * Andrew speaks to audiences around the world with more than 50 scheduled talks within the year * He started in the television business, working with networks CNBC, CNN, Fox the Today Show. Andrew has also written for some of TV’s legendary personalities like Charles Kuralt. * One of his most memorable positions was working with the Jim Henson Companyhelping to wrangle Muppets. * 2001, Andrew co-founded a marketing agency Tippingpoint Labs realizing that journalists and television producers were really good at, telling great stories that the audience would engage with and it was pretty easy to convince potential brands that he and his partner could do a better job with their marketing efforts by telling stories to go and engage their customers audience. * “There are lots of marketing companies and agencies out there selling very traditional marketing services that claim to help you tell your story, but no one was focusing on telling the story the audience wanted to hear and a story that would inspire people to buy things” “We decided that if we just told great stories you could inspire people to buy things they didn’t know they needed.” * Brandscaping, the Amazon Best Seller was born from a compilation of the 12 years of insight into marketing that Andrew had gathered while he had his agency. "Inspire them to buy rather than persuade them to buy…." * “Big part of diving into the entrepreneurship world I guess is making sure that you’re offering something that you can differentiate based on either your experience or your expertise.” * (When we started Tippingpoint), "We weren’t marketers. I think most entrepreneurs need to ask the same question: What makes your business different than everybody else’s and how can your experience and expertise play into that? Instead of copying what everybody else is doing." * I mean, I think to be successful in today’s marketing landscape, you have to really think about an audience first approach. Can you create content or inspire an audience who has never thought of buying what you sell whether it’s a service or a product to buy it? * And I think you can best do that by understanding who you’re going after. "You can’t be everything to everyone. You have to be something to someone and when you’re something to someone, you’re able to actually sell to them (inspire them) very efficiently and effectively." * Gotta hear the story about the Chicken Whisperer – Talk about niching down; So for everybody out there, every entrepreneur, small business listening, it’s about really diving in and finding your own chicken whisperer, asking yourself who is the audience that I can be very relevant to, that I can inspire their passion and actually sell them whatever I sell. * Okay, so where and how do we find this audience? “Sure. Well, they’re actually a lot easier to find than you think. Example - There’s a Facebook Group for meatloaf sucks you have to know who your after and really dig deep" * Business book club – another form of mastermind group where like-minded entrepreneurs get together to talk about a useful and inspiring book they read at the same time. * Andrews Picks: o Tippingpoint: by Malcolm Gladwel o Getting Things Done: by David Allen, David Allen. o The Power of Habit: by Charles Duhigg * What If? -- “I’m a big fan of what if.