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Justin Belleme, the Founder and Director of Strategy for JB Media Group, Romantic Asheville, and JB Institute, joins me for this episode to talk about his journey from college at UNC Asheville straight into entrepreneurship. We discussed the importance of surrounding yourself with a great leadership team, delegating, and overcoming the emotional triggers from client criticism. 

Jake Sorofman, President of MetaCX, brings deep marketing knowledge and insight around what is working today as it relates to marketing, and we discussed a bit about where the team at MetaCX is headed after raising a Series A round and launching their product to market. 

In this episode, Hickory Nut Gap Farms COO, Jean Paul Lausell and I talk about scaling a 100 year old farm into a regional meat product powerhouse, the shift from centralized intelligence to de-centralized organizational intelligence, the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) and the importance of understanding human resources as a business leader. 

I have seen Eric Crews in action, and if there is a "Jedi Master" for Entrepreneurs, Eric is it ! We talk about Eric's three businesses, Collegiate Entrepreneurs, CE Painting, and Crews Consulting Group. Eric's extensive experience mentoring and coaching thousands of people into proven business owners is a recipe for success. 

Dave and Jesse talk distributed teams, Brazilian JuJitsu, and staying healthy for yourself and your business.   I asked Dave what one thing he has learned as he has built his business.  "Being transparent, not with just with your clients, but also with your team members. Honesty and transparency plays a great role in business in general. Communication is really important. Communication is probably the number one of the most important things in business. As long as you stay in touch with your people that you're working with, and you have a good dialogue, good understanding,  it really helps a lot."

Cori Hofmann, the Owner/Operator of Barre 3 Studio in Cedar Park, TX talks about the unexpected challenges of opening a brick & mortar business in the middle of the pandemic. Cori tells the story of building a fitness studio, hiring a team, the challenges of zoom instructor auditions and running their first classes in a park with weed whackers, a bunch of kids running around. 

Jesse Frye has a conversation Adam Hofmann, Founder of the Mandate, and Entrepreneur about the conversation that goes on between our ears as well as experimentation as business owners. From a mindset standpoint, know that your business and your team's success starts with what's happening in between your ears. You've got to take care of yourself, and that starts with your mindset, physical health, and take care the people around you. The battle is going to happen every single day, in between your ears! Embrace and experimenters mindset. 

Having a conversation with Black Entrepreneur and Business Owner, J Hackett truly lived up to the Business Survival Show's mission is Inspiring business leaders.  J and I talked about black owned business in Asheville, North Carolina, the importance of building a strong, diverse business community and revival. We discuss Black Wall Street, starting the first ever black owned coffee shop in Asheville, NC in the middle of the pandemic to create a space to bring ideas and community together. The reason J and his business partner Gene Ettison started the Grind Coffee Shop because they had idea of being a black incubator for businesses and together they wanted it to hold space in area of Asheville that was currently being gentrified..  He said "When you think about a business revival and you think about what it means to revive a thing, it means that the thing was already alive in one place and something happened and it needed to be revived. It needs to be resuscitated. The ideas and the concepts that you have as a business owner, they were already alive in your mind and your heart, your brain and your soul. When you brought them out to the world, people may have accepted or not accepted, but it's up to you to revive that thing,  so to the business owner... take action" J Hackett.   

 In this episode, I'm pleased to welcome Cody Hanson. With the open grants, open grants is on a mission to modernize global grant funding. Cody talked about how his co-founders & OpenGrant CEO, Sedale Turbovsky, how he had the original idea for OpenGrants and approached Cody and their current CTO about two years ago now. Sedale's experience with a previous startup receives grant funding, as well as some experience he had contracting with some management consultancies that help larger organizations win grants. really shaped his view of the Grant process, and that left him a little bit disenfranchised, with the process .The process of applying for and winning a grant can be very convoluted. It can be very expensive. The ecosystem also lacks transparency and inequity. OpenGrants is working to change all of that!  Cody talks about the challenges of building a startup in a space where not all of the players are interested in things changing, and of course the typical challenges that most startups face. 

Peter Glenn of EVlife and host, Jesse Frye talk about the challenges of startup life, pivoting, communication and using untraditional funding streams to building your startup. As part of the discussion, they discussed the importance of pivoting, but there difference between Capital Pivot and Lower Case p pivot. Pivot with a capital peak can be kind of scary because it's a, it could be, it could be a big change for that year, but bear, I think, I think it's good to keep in mind that there are also other types of pivots, like customer segment, pivots , different industry pivots That that are, that have, that have serious implications, but are not as scary as the pivot with a P like let's scrap all this work that we've been doing for the past year and do something completely different in a completely different industry.   

Jeremy talks with Jesse about how HR data solutions were started and, like probably most promising businesses, was born out of him being terrible at something, which was hiring. In his previous companies, he realized that turnover was high. He struggled with identifying what was the underlying problem and understanding how to improve that problem.  Jeremy used his lessons of building his last venture RISC Networks (which he sold to Flexera in 2019), to start his newest business. Jeremy brings a wealth of knowledge and experience that every small business owner should listen to. Jeremy also advises on whether/when to use investors when starting your business towards the end of the podcast that every startup should consider. 

Chris Lucas CEO of Shaker.io talks with Jesse about building a startup through the pandemic, hiring people remotely, and the messiness of building a software platform for the Real Estate market in the chaos of 2020. 

Jody White, founder of Well Creative joins me to talk about her journey of starting a social media management company. Jody historically helped companies manage events, but the pandemic put a halt on in-person events for companies around the world. Rather than lose her business, Jody talks about the importance of knowing your customers needs, finding opportunities and pivoting. Like so many of us on social media, imposter syndrome is real and Jody experienced that initially but was able to overcome that fear and is making a business for herself on social media. 

We are pleased to have Asheville, North Carolina Entrepreneur, and The Lazy Environmentalist Josh Dorfman as our first guest on The Business Survival Show. Josh talks about the challenges of starting a sustainable furniture business, the creative ways of building referral networks in light of the Covid19 Pandemic, and the importance of doing three things every day.  You can learn more at Simbly and the Lazy Environmentalist  You can connect with Josh on Linkedin The Business Survival Show is sponsored by TheBusinessBlueprint. You can learn more about the Business Survival Show, upcoming guest and to download the Small Business Survival Guide here.