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There used to be two forms of marketing; online marketing and offline marketing and then the explosion in digital happened and now there are now more than 41 different types of marketing happening on numerous platforms. Because of all these options, it becomes confusing for companies when they begin to build a marketing strategy. Developing an effective marketing strategy takes time and expertise and sometimes businesses just do not know how. But there are essential elements that need to be in a marketing strategy and this episode talks about the options available and how to make the best marketing channel choices for your business.

Today’s business leaders face several challenges, and they all did not just start with the pandemic, but they are not alone. For hundreds of years, our military leaders have been facing challenges even more significant than those we face today. So the question we pose in this episode, what can we learn from our military leaders. In Part 3 of this three-part series, we look at history and one of the US’s most important Civil War battles, Gettysburg. We use this battle to teach us some essential leadership lessons that can benefit you as a leader today.

Today’s business leaders face several challenges, and they all did not just start with the pandemic, but they are not alone. For hundreds of years, our military leaders have been facing challenges even more significant than those we face today. So the question we pose in this episode, what can we learn from our military leaders. In Part II of this three-part series, we look at history and one of the US’s most important Civil War battles, Gettysburg. We use this battle to teach us some essential leadership lessons that can benefit you as a leader today.

Today’s business leaders face several challenges, and they all did not just start with the pandemic, but they are not alone. For hundreds of years, our military leaders have been facing challenges even more significant than those we face today. So the question we pose in this episode, what can we learn from our military leaders. In Part I of this three-part series, we look at history and one of the US’s most important Civil War battles, Gettysburg. We use this battle to teach us some essential leadership lessons that can benefit you as a leader today.

In business and life, we sometimes have the inability to fully understand and tackle human emotions, impacting our behavior, especially in business. As leaders, we should exemplify the kind of behavior we want in our organizations, and without both emotional & social intelligence, we cannot do that. We need both emotional and social intelligence to make decisions, manage stress and set examples for others. We need to know and understand our own emotional state to impactfully lead others. In this episode, we speak with an expert who helps us understand what emotional and social intelligence is and its impact on leadership.

For the last two decades, there has been a shift in how we hire and retain employees. This shift primarily began with the entrance of the millenniums into the workforce and then there was another shift as Gen Z made their appearance. At the same time, technology in the workplace has allowed organizations to reimagine the way they work and manage talent. One of the most impactful changes has been how technology allows companies to screen and hire employees no matter where they are located. It also allows employees to collaborate from different locations and time zones. And although this all started a few years ago, we were pushed into fast-forward when COVID hit the world. Companies had to hire and manage virtually. They had to use the technology available, and processes had to be adjusted. In this episode we explore the best practices for hiring, retaining and engaging employees in during the pandemic and not only in middle size companies but also in SMBs

On December 31, 1999, the world was in a panic related to the formatting and storage of calendar data for 2000. Even though we had years to prepare for this, we still waited until the last minute, and 21 years later, there is another panic. Businesses are wondering what will happen when Google changes to mobile-first indexing on March 31, 2021. They are also wondering what will happen when the core values for website ranking changes in May. Businesses’ need to prepare themselves, but they have had other priorities over the last 12 month, adapting their business models because of the pandemic. But some good has come out of the pandemic. Businesses have been propelled forward into the digital and mobile world. Google quickly jumped on these changes with a whole new suite of core values for website ranking. This episode looks at them and explains what you need to do to make your website visible.

Change happens every day, it is a constant and transitions are inevitable, but some of us bare better than others when it comes to change. Many people spend a great deal of time and energy trying to avoid change, but you cannot run away from change, it will catch up with you. Look what happened at the beginning of the panic, that was change that none of us could run away from this kind of change. Some kinds of changes are controllable, and some are not. If you can learn to cope with change, you’ll lower your risk for anxiety and depression, and you will just feel better. At the end of the day no person or situation will stay the same forever. At the minimum, we all change, we all grow older, and we all are forced to open our eyes to new ways of life. It does not matter if it is in your personal life or your professional life you will face change. In this episode we talk about how to better cope with change and how to become more resilient.

Who is the most exciting person in the room when you’re at a networking event or a social outing? Simple, it’s whoever has the most unique and insightful stories to tell. It’s all about content, and content marketing is built on the same principle. By seeking to answer the unanswered questions or provide unique insights into complex problems, great content captivates an audience and sparks meaningful conversations. Content marketing can do the same thing; it can spark engagement between your brand or business and your customers or prospects. In this episode, we learn how to effectively use content marketing through thought leadership articles, blogging, market research and more. We speak with a company that is a leader in using content marketing and a CMO that knows the ropes. We talk to us about how to use content marketing effectively with some great examples of thought leadership and market research in the digital marketing and local search arena.

There are a lot of podcasts talking about what enterprise as well as small businesses should do to keep their businesses floating during the pandemic, but not a lot of them talk about how to plan now for the recovery and comeback. Only a few brands, retailers and local businesses are managing to sufficiently compensate the loss of offline revenue with online sales. They have basically but their businesses into hibernation, but now with the light at the end of the tunnel, it is time to plan the comeback. This process is especially going to be hard for lifestyle companies , where the owners live from their businesses. In this episode we talk about a method that can help lifestyle companies develop a plan not only for recovery but for growth.

Small businesses have a lot to gain by implementing digital transformation. “Going digital” can help business owners develop productive and cost-effective workflows, reduce administrative overhead, and unlock growth opportunities. However, many small business owners find it challenging to embrace digital transformation. It’s not that they don’t want to - it’s just that many of them find that technological solutions aren’t as accessible as they hoped, and that the intimidating knowledge gap can be hard to bridge. All this changed this year. Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, said: “We saw 2 years of digital transformation in 2 months” Suddenly, businesses that were online-skeptical are rushing into the digital space because they simply must. In this episode we talk to a company that helps businesses reach “tech savviness” regardless of the industry they are in.

As usual, brands must consider their target audience when developing their messages, and this expectation is intensifying as consumers place greater emphasis on brands' actions. People relate to positive messages around social issues such as the environment, coronavirus safety, and systemic racism; therefore, how a business or brand positions itself can impact consumer loyalty. It essential for businesses and brands to recognize diverse cultures and different values. We all have unconscious biases and draw from our own experiences as our default, and this makes it hard for marketers to spot when a marketing campaign is not as inclusive as it could be. Therefore, we must monitor diversity and inclusion in marketing, and there are different ways to do this. In this episode, we explore how we can do this and ensure we reach every possible consumer group and leave no-one out.

B2C deals directly with the end consumer and the end consumer operate on emotions. B2B deals with companies, and they mostly use logic. There are apparent differences in how B2C and B2B companies engage, interact with, and serve their customer bases. Still, when consumer expectations rise in B2C companies, the B2B companies need to step up. End consumer expectations have risen over the past years, and since March 2020, they have exploded. The customer journey is no longer linear. It is 360-degree never-ending customer experience, that has changed how B2B companies need to deal with their customers. B2B companies need to apply the same customer experience and personal service that consumers expect from B2C companies. In this interview, we look at some market research that reflects how B2B companies must adapt their products and services to meet their customers' changing needs and, in turn, the end consumer.

If you walk into a room with ten people and two of them are entrepreneurs, how would you recognize the two on sight? You probably would not until you started a conversation with them. Once in a conversation, you may recognize certain traits or a certain mindset often associated with entrepreneurs, but this does not mean that those two entrepreneurs are alike. Not all entrepreneurs follow the same path to get to where they are. In part I of this series we discussed how innovation is a component of entrepreneurship, in this episode we discuss how not every entrepreneur approaches innovation in the same way. In Part II of this 2-Part series we discuss the Entrepreneurial Mindset and Journey, and the different ways entrepreneurs approach the journey. We explore the contribution of different entrepreneurial styles and how they can contribute to teams and to the different stages in the entrepreneurial journey.

In December 2019 at the onset of COVID-19, we saw a wide array of responses form businesses and entrepreneurs. Many businesses moved their activities online while entrepreneurs sought out new opportunities in the crisis. But the one thing we did see was innovation. German Breweries started making hand sanitizers and tech companies developed tracking and tracing apps. Essentially innovation blossomed in light of the crisis. This episode is Part I of a 2-Part series that explores innovation and entrepreneurship. In this episode, we discuss the routes of innovation, how we can foster innovation and its relationship to entrepreneurship. In Part II we explore the Entrepreneurial Mindset and Journey. Why is this so important? Because Innovation increases our chances to react to changes and discover new opportunities. Entrepreneurship propels us forward with new solutions, helping us embrace change. This series provides us with timely insight into both innovation and entrepreneurship.

History shows that crises can be startup incubators. Some of today’s biggest companies were founded during and shortly after the 2008 economic crisis, including Uber, Credit Karma, Slack, WhatsApp and Groupon. But crisis or no crisis, launching a start-up is a challenge. From limited resources to just knowing what to do, many ideas are never realized and fall apart before the business gets off the ground. But there are lessons to learn from both start-up failures and from those start-ups that succeed. These lessons can be bundled into a formula for success. In this episode we look at the start-up formula for success. A formula that can help increase the success rate of start-ups, no matter what industry they are in, or what kind of product and service they want to bring to market. In this episode we reveal to you what the formula of success..

Time is the most precious resource we have because once it is gone you can't get it back and many times we only realize this when it is too late. Today we live in such a superficial world, where we often value money much more than time. Being busy is seen as being successful. Our jobs consume us, leaving us very little time to focus on our families and ourselves. When we talk about time management we often focus on how we manage our workflow in the office, but not how we manage our lives. We talk a lot about work-life balance but we very often do not practice what we preach. On top of all this the pandemic has not helped. We have brought our offices into our homes, making it very difficult for us to draw the lines between our private lives and work. In this episode we talk about time, money and time-management, not just from the prospective of time-management at work, but with a more global view, how we can better use the time we all have been gifted.

The recent announcement of a massive computer breach that allowed hackers to exploit numerous US government agencies left the US government and the world in shock. The hackers attached malware to a software update which gave them access to government networks and private company systems, putting infrastructures, data, operations and priority information at risk. But this is not the only attack we have seen since the beginning of the pandemic. Chris Versace estimates that in the first 100 days of the pandemic Covid-themed spam messages increased by 26%, and impersonation attacks jumped by 40%. This is worrying news as the world transitions into a virtual workforce, AI advances and healthcare systems and data are a priority. In this episode, we explore how and why we have become so vulnerable and how we can better protect ourselves.

Prominent business disasters such as the collapse of Enron and Northern Rock, to such devastating events as the BP Texas City oil refinery explosion, are very often blamed on Company Boards and Governance. But many of these disasters happened in times that were not as turbulent as they are today. A recent report done by Deloitte on the challenges of Boards, states that “The way in which Boards do their work at this time will be a critical factor in an organization’s ability to emerge from the current crisis and push forward into a new era of economic recovery and opportunity for the benefit of all stakeholders.” In this episode, we pose the question: Are Boards up to governing in these challenging times and do they have the proper governance that can help guide them through rough times and onto recovery?

Leaders todays are asking everyone to make sacrifices and if there is one group of people whom you would expect to be provide great examples in a crisis, it would be a leader. , It does not matter if it is the shift manager at McDonald's or the President of a country, we all have certain expectations of leadership and how leaders meet our expectations is critical, especially right now. But to meet our expectations, leaders first need to understand what leadership is about and in confusing times that is hard. Leaders very often receive contradictory messages and in a crisis it is easy to forget leadership basics. In this episode we explore what good leadership is. We also explore how leaders can get support and why they do not need to make their journey's alone.