Rescuing the American Dream

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 14:18:51 -0400

The focus of our show today is, quite literally, the American Dream. Within the last two years, we’ve seen a gigantic meltdown in almost everything we’ve held dear: the dream of owning a home, the dream of financial independence through investing; and most vividly, the dream of owning your own business.

With banks lending less to businesses since the Great Depression and venture capital, the lifeblood of many new businesses in in a state of shock, it looks by most accounts that the American Dream of owning your own business is on the ropes. The federal government assumption of large swaths of private enterprise should give everyone pause. Capitalism, the engine of our great country, seems battered and bruised. Is the American Dream dead? What is the American Dream anyway?

To help us grapple with the status of the American Dream is our guest today, Web Ross. Mr. Ross has written and published a book entitled, “Rescuing the American Dream” and has over 40 years of business experience and has worked with several start-up companies since retiring a few years ago.

Dominating Your Market: Neal Lemlein-2

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 08:29:38 -0400

This show is the second in a two-part series on Insights for Market Dominance. To help us shed light on what it takes to achieve market dominance in any business is our guest, Neal Lemlein.
Let me tell you a bit about Neal Lemlein before we get started. Neal is President of Around the Bend Media, a marketing consultancy that provides finance, production services, and marketing to the entertainment industry. Around the Bend Media provides advertising, publicity, promotion, media and interactive services to both large and small businesses around throughout the United States. He is also the author of a new book on career management called Pilot Your Career: 18 Strategies for Career Building and Navigating the Economic Downturn published by Norlights Press.
Neal Lemlein began his film marketing career with the advertising agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, where his first project was ”Star Wars.” As Senior Vice President , Marketing and Media Services, at Twentieth Century Fox, he was responsible for the development and execution of all of the studio’s theatrical media-marketing campaigns.
A member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Lemlein has taught the graduate course, “Strategic Campaign Planning” at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business and serves as a popular event speaker with 4th Dimension Management.

Dominating Your Market: Neal Lemlein-1

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:22:17 -0400

The truth is, if you own a business, you have choices. You can choose to play it safe and live on the edges of success or you can choose to go all out and dominate your market. I don’t care what business you are in, you can choose the level of your success simply on the basis of how you develop and manage what I’ll call ‘the big picture’ within your market. Our show today is a two-part series entitled “Eight Insights for Market Dominance”. To help us shed light on what it takes to achieve market dominance, which means being a high-performing player in your area of business expertise, is our guest, Neal Lemlein.
Let me tell you a bit about Neal Lemlein before we get started. Neal is President of Around the Bend Media, a marketing consultancy that provides finance, production services, and marketing to the entertainment industry. Around the Bend Media provides advertising, publicity, promotion, media and interactive services to both large and small businesses around throughout the United States. He is also the author of a new book on career management called Pilot Your Career: 18 Strategies for Career Building and Navigating the Economic Downturn published by Norlights Press.
Neal Lemlein began his film marketing career with the advertising agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, where his first project was ”Star Wars.” As Senior Vice President , Marketing and Media Services, at Twentieth Century Fox, he was responsible for the development and execution of all of the studio’s theatrical media-marketing campaigns.
A member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Lemlein has taught the graduate course, “Strategic Campaign Planning” at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business and serves as a popular event speaker with 4th Dimension Management.

Neil Rackham: Sales Strategies for hard times

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:43:34 -0500

Our focus for our show today aptly titled, Strategies for Hard Times, which is a title I borrowed from our guests today. In a prolonged economic downturn, every business looks for the answer to the question of, “what can we do to keep our sales moving forward and our business out of trouble?”

To help us make sense out of the sales challenges we are facing today, our guests today are Neil Rackham. Neil is best known as the author of the ground breaking classic, SPIN® Selling and founder of Huthwaite, Inc.

Among his other books are ‘Major Account Sales Strategy’ and ‘Rethinking the Sales Force’, which are required reading at many leading business schools. All three books have been on the New York Times business best seller list and his works have been translated into 35 languages. His other books include ‘Managing Major Sales’ and ‘Getting Partnering Right: How Market Leaders Are Creating Long-Term Competitive Advantage’.

He is also the author of over 50 influential articles on marketing, selling and channel strategy, published in academic journals and practitioner publications. He is a Visiting Professor of Sales and Marketing at Portsmouth University and a Visiting Professor at Cranfield University.

Joining Neil today is John Golden, President & CEO of Huthwaite, Inc. Prior to his work with Huthwaite, John served as the Senior Vice President of Education at the Mortgage Bankers Association. In this role, he was responsible for the restructuring and sustainable growth of the CampusMBA business unit.

David Meerman Scott on Social Media Strategy

Wed, 3 Mar 2010 19:49:25 -0500

Our show today is on how to harness the power of viral marketing to successfully promote your business without having to break the bank in order to do it. What would you say if you could get the word out to hundreds, thousands, and perhaps millions of people, many of whom could be your potential customers? I know what you’d say. Some of you would say I’m crazy. Others would ponder the idea for a moment and then dismiss it as impossible. And perhaps just a handful of you would embrace the idea that you could successfully promote your business without having to spend a Madison Avenue budget to do it.

To flip some traditional marketing concepts on their head, let me introduce our guest for today, David Meerman Scott. David calls himself a ‘recovering’ VP of marketing. David is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker, seminar leader, and the author of the hit new book World Wide Rave. His previous book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR is an award-winning BusinessWeek bestseller and is being published in 25 languages.

High Performers Spotlight: Gigi’s Folderol Restaurant

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:37:22 -0500

Our guests for our show today are the husband & wife team of Dion & Virginia Morrow who own & manage the highly successful restaurant known as the Folderol in Westtown NY. The reason I’ve asked them to join me today is to have them share their insights on how they’ve managed to be successful in what is traditionally a very tough & competitive business where restaurants come and go as fast as you can blink. When it comes to restaurants, I’m a really fickle where I take my wife out to eat. Personally, in order for me to come back to any restaurant, they have to operate flawlessly on three points: food, which has to be exceptional…why would you go out to eat for average food? It also has to have exceptional service from moment you walk in to the time you leave. And, it offers an atmosphere that is much more than a place to sit and eat…you can do that at home.

In my experience, the Folderol is one of those rare restaurants that do all three things and more in a ways that keeps their customers like me loyal and coming back for more. Prior to the show, I asked both Dion and Virginia to independently come up with a list of insights they’ve learned over time as business owners. Many, if not all of these insights we’ll cover today can apply to almost any business model, including yours.
www.gigifolderol.wordpress.com

Best & Worst Decisions of the Last Decade

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:28:43 -0500

Our show today takes another look at the importance of business decision making. Everyday, no matter what business you’re in, you make decisions. Sometimes these decisions are minor in nature. Often times the decisions you make are critical to your ability to grow and prosper your business. Listen, we all make mistakes when it comes to decision making and we can all probably find more than a handful of business decisions that didn’t pan out very well recently. Like I always say, if you’re not making mistakes along the trail, your not going to be in business for long.

The question is, can we learn from our mistakes? By the same token, can we learn from the mistakes and the successful business decisions others have made? Hindsight in business decision-making can be a very productive tool as long as you don’t dwell on the mistakes of the past and use them as a way to move forward.

To help us learn from some recent and very public business decisions and their consequences, both good and bad, is our guest today, Michael McGrath.

This is Michael’s second return trip to this show and for good reason. He’s a seasoned CEO and the author of a groundbreaking book on decision making called Business Decisions: “How to be more Decisive while reducing risk in Today’s Economy”. Michael had advised some of the largest companies in the world and created innovative new decision techniques used by hundreds of successful businesses. He is currently the executive chairman of the Thomas Group.

U R a Brand w/ Catherine Kaputa

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:50:20 -0500

Regardless of what the economy does, the competitive pressure to continue to grow a business remains constant. In a small business, where most have only a few employees if any at all, finding ways to differentiate your business is absolutely critical.

Since many small businesses are one-person operations, it’s easy in the heat of the day-to-day battle for business, to neglect the branding of your business. If you own a small business, YOU are the brand for the business. It’s your face, reputation, character, and professionalism that determine’s how you are perceived by your customers and competitors alike. You are the brand for your business.

To help us understand personal branding and how it relates to the small business world is our guest today, Catherine Kaputa. Catherine is a nationally recognized personal & business branding strategist. She is co-author of the ground-breaking book on business brands called The Origin of Brands. More recently, she is also the author of a personal branding book called U R A Brand: How smart people brand themselves for business success, published by Davis-Black Publishing. If that isn’t enough, she’s recently published a new book called The Female Brand, which we’ll have her come on another show and discuss with us on an upcoming episode of our show.

Secrets of a high performing non-profit w/ Pastor Joe McKelvey

Wed, 3 Feb 2010 19:20:54 -0500

Our show today begins to look at one area of business strategy that is often overlooked. While for profit businesses have been working through the current recession, non-profit organizations have been dealing with the same economic trauma. It just so happens that when people cut back on their spending, they often times cut back on their contributions to non-profit organizations that are dedicated to improving one aspect of our communities or another. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of non-profits operating here in the Hudson Valley today. So, since non-profits have to struggle with the same issues of growth, revenues, marketing, and managing people, they need just as much focus on business strategy as for-profit businesses.

To share some insights & best practices in the context of managing non-profit organizations is our guest today, Pastor Joe McKelvey. Pastor McKelvey is the founder and senior Pastor of the growing and successful Christian Faith Fellowship Family Church located in Middletown NY. The Church, which is widely known as CFF, is an independent, non-denominational ministry and recognized as a non-profit, 501C Corporation. Pastor McKelvey ministers at the 4 main services weekly to a congregation of more than 2,000 adults. He holds a Doctorate Degree in Religion, a Masters Degree in Business Administration and a Bachelors Degree in Theology and Bible. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for several other ministries. I’ve known Pastor Joe and his family since I joined CFF over a decade ago. When I was looking for an excellent role model for a non-profit organization, I didn’t have to look any farther than CFF itself. Over the last 25 years, CFF has grown successfully and continues to grow as one of the largest churches in the region.

Website alternatives for small business

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:14:49 -0500

Our show today is focused on small business website strategy. You know, I’m still amazed at the number of small businesses that still have no web presence despite the fact that their customers rely more and more on the web for information directly related to their buying decisions. It’s long been a fact that people will conduct much of their product or service buying research on the web well before they enter a retail store or call a service-based business.

Building a fully-functional website today costs anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. The software that’s available makes it easier than ever to design a basic website in a few hours time. But if your not willing to invest much in a website for represent your business, which is still the case with many small businesses today, there are some alternatives which will allow you to develop a web presence with an investment of nothing more than your time. So, if you insist on not spending money to have a website professionally designed but understand the need to something decent on the web to represent your business, then this show is for you. Consider this show a stepping stone to a greater and better website presence for your business in the future. Sometimes, you just have to start somewhere and just do it.

Here today to help us through some Website alternatives is my guest, Andrew Seward. Let me tell you a bit about Andrew. Andrew spent 20 years as a senior manager for IBM where he was instrumental in the production and launch of many new products from High End IBM mainframes to the Sony PS3. Andrew now provides technology consulting services to small businesses throughout the Hudson Valley.