Posts by David Shriner-Cahn

Brian Honigman is a marketing consultant, freelance writer and speaker, with a highly diverse background at agencies, global brands (including Dell), and small-but-hot start-ups (like Sumall). Here, he discusses what companies need to know about social media, and why finding the right audience, and promoting your content in the right places, is just as important as producing that content in the first place.

He also discusses:

• Being sure that your business is not “blogging for the sake of blogging”
• Identifying your “ideal audience” online, and targeting content to that audience
• Bringing together data analytics and business intuition to make smart social media decisions
• Testing whether social media could help your business
• Keeping a long-term perspective on social media, even in an instant-gratification medium

Honigman helps brands with content marketing and social media strategy; he has spoken at NYU, UNICEF, Huffington Post Live, and is a contributing writer to the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the World Economic Forum, Entrepreneur Magazine and others.

The last Wednesday of every month, at 1pm EST, Honigman hosts a Twitter chat using the hashtag #InsiderChat. Learn more at www.brianhonigman.com or follow him on Twitter @BrianHonigman.

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Marc Mathios is the Principal of Ace Apparel, a New York-based manufacturing business founded in 1938 by Mathios’s grandfather Morris. Mathios and his brothers must be doing lots of things right: they’re beating the odds (currently at 13%!) on keeping a third-generation family business running successfully. In this interview, Mathios discusses how family dynamics can help a family business—and also how to address family dynamics when they become a difficulty.

Other topics include:

• How to respond to mistakes constructively, whether they are systems failures or individual employee misjudgments
• What it’s like to run a manufacturing business in New York City in 2015
• Using your current customers as models to find more of your ideal customers
• Why wrong-fit customers can prevent your company from moving forward—even if they come with big contracts
• Why waiting for the “perfect moment” to act can keep you on a plateau
• Creating comfort in a workplace as a form of effective leadership

Ace Apparel & Promotions creates apparel with custom corporate logos; all of their apparel manufacturing, embroidery and screen printing are done at their New York City factory. Prior to joining Ace, Mathios worked for 5 years at Ernst & Young as a manager working on accounts in the financial services industry.

Learn more about Ace at www.ace-promo.com.

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Ric Edelman is the Chairman and CEO of Edelman Financial Services, a business that he and his wife Jean founded twenty-seven years ago. Since then, he has been three times ranked the #1 Independent Financial Advisor in the nation by Barron’s and has published multiple books on personal finance. In this interview, he attributes his success in the financial industry partially to his lack of background on Wall Street; Edelman also has no MBA. Instead, Edelman describes how his degree in Communications set him up for success in helping ordinary consumers understand financial planning.

He also discusses:

• Why financial planning “isn’t about the stock market,” but about how people live their lives
• Why it’s not “who you know,” but “who knows you”
• How to plan to learn from failure, not success
• The difference between taking risks and being rash
• Why it can be so hard—and so important—for entrepreneurs to acknowledge that they are not the best person for every job at their business
• The three necessary steps to making sure that your employees succeed

Edelman Financial Services manages $13.7 billion for more than 26,000 individuals and families. The company has 38 offices coast-to-coast, and has won more than 100 business, advisory, communication and community service awards. Edelman hosts weekly radio and television shows, and has published eight books on personal finance, most recently The Truth About Retirement Plans and IRAs (2014). Learn more at RicEdelman.com.

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Mark Asquith is a co-founder of design and digital agency DMSQD. He has described how in 2012 he burned out, a moment that led to his reassessment of his business strategies and subsequent greater success. Here, he speaks about maintaining a sense of perspective on one’s work, and how to manage time and self-expectations, so that the entrepreneurial spirit remains a strength, and doesn’t lead to burnout or wasted energy.

Other topics include:

• What business owners need to know about investing in digital content
• The power of delegation, the risk of burnout, and “superhero syndrome”
• How to balance developing new business with producing the work that generates revenue
• How to be “ruthless with your time”
• Why there “are no competitors”

Asquith hosts Excellence Expected, a podcast that helps entrepreneurs take on their biggest issues, with the involvement of the world’s greatest business minds. He is also the founder of PodcastWebsites.com with John Lee Dumas. Learn more about Asquith at Excellence-expected.com or through his Twitter at @em_two.

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As EVP of Marketing and Business Development at Fragmob, Michel Bayan is working to reinvent the direct selling industry for the digital age: his company works with direct selling companies, selling them tools that help them more clearly understand and analyze their sales figures and compensation plans. Here, Bayan discusses how he moved from being a classically-trained actor into the direct selling industry, and how understanding storytelling, and how stories move people, has helped him be successful in a business he never imagined he’d be involved in.

Bayan discusses:

• Why direct selling is “the last truly democratic opportunity in the world”
• How to balance forward drive and momentum with openness to other possibilities
• How mobile technology will reshape the direct selling industry in the next five to ten years
• Why you need people that are not like you in your business (and why “the nuts are the ones that come up with great ideas”)

A writer and speaker in direct selling, Bayan has advised numerous companies in the industry on their digital strategy, and how to build (or rebuild) their brands to succeed in the digital age. Fragmob is on Twitter (@fragmob) and Facebook (facebook.com/fragmob); follow Bayan on Twitter at @michelbayan.

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From an inauspicious beginning as a self-described “sales failure,” Eric Lofholm has reached tremendous heights in sales: he is President and CEO of Eric Lofholm International Inc., which professionally trains people in the art of selling. In this week’s episode, he attributes the beginnings of his success to learning how to combine his natural talent for teaching with an effective sales system. He also explains the business strategies that helped his company weather and recover from the 2008 recession.

Topics include:

• How formal training can help people overcome the internal resistance to sales caused by the “stigma to sales in our culture”
• The advantages of a “90-day blitz” model for sales efforts
• How to respond to urgency with flexibility
• How publishing—through podcasts, online magazines, and YouTube—can help establish you as a thought leader in your field
• Why it’s so important to understand the mechanisms of your own success

Eric is an instructor for CEOSpace and Networking University, and is the author of How to Sell in the New Economy (2010) and Duplication: The Key to Creating Freedom in Your Network Marketing Business (2014). He also produces a free app, which includes a podcast; to find it, search for “Eric Lofholm” in Apple’s App Store. Learn more at SalesChampion.com or Twitter (@EricLofholm).

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Jeremy Pound is the founder of JuicyResults.com, a search engine optimization firm with a flagship service of a guaranteed SEO. Wil Reynolds is the founder of Seer Interactive, a digital marketing agency. Both are in the search engine industry—but while Jeremy’s company guarantees its search results, Wil has said that a guarantee it is not possible in this swiftly-changing industry. Can these two entrepreneurs find common ground?

Certainly they can! Both agreed that their goal is to help search engine users find content that is useful and relevant to them, and to help the user and their client connect when they should. In this rigorous discussion, they also address:

• The difficulty of measuring accomplishments (or even accountability) in a constantly-changing and unpredictable business environment
• Choosing to pursue revenue vs. rankings
• The importance of performing due diligence before working with a client, and treating a client like a potential business partner
• How sharing risk with a client should affect business decisions
• How to help a client choose between branding vs. direct marketing approaches
• The keys to long-term business success in a quickly-changing industry

Wil Reynolds founded Seer Interactive in his apartment in 2002; the company now has a team of over 100 people and offices in Philadelphia and San Francisco. Reynolds is its current Director of Strategy. Follow him at @wilreynolds.

Jeremy Pound is the founder of JuicyResults.com, and writes and speaks regularly on how organizations can best take advantage of the web to grow their customer base. His book The Bootstrapper’s Guide to SEO is forthcoming. Follow him at @jeremypound.

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Tony A. Rose is a founding partner of Rose, Snyder & Jacobs, a partnership of certified public accountants.In this interview, Rose draws on more than thirty-five years in the industry to talk about finance, fulfillment, and happiness, where they intersect, and how understanding their dynamic can help lead to business success.

In his interview, Rose covers a range of topics including:

• Defining and connecting wealth, happiness, money, and fulfillment
• The importance of measuring and maintaining business capital—not only financial capital, but also human, intellectual, social, and structural
• The strength of “knowing people who are strangers”
• How periods of ambiguity, discomfort, and danger can be turned to a business’s advantage
• What prevents people from making the changes they need for their companies to thrive

Rose’s firm provides a full-range of assurance, tax, and consulting services for small public, closely held, and family-owned businesses, with a specialty in high-net-worth individuals and their families. Rose is a is a Legacy Wealth Coach® and a Certified Kolbe Method Consultant®, as well as the author of Say Hello to the Elephants: A Four-Part Process for Finding Clarity, Confronting Problems, and Moving On (2008) and Five Eyes on the Fence: Protecting the Five Core Capitals of Your Business (2014).

Learn more about Rose at RSJCPA.com.

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What can we learn when politics, academia, business, showbiz, and the literary worlds collide? Between the two of them, Dorie Clark and Eric Ruben have a tremendous breadth of experience, and both experts take different approaches to the same topic: personal brand and reputation management.

Clark is the author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future (2013). A former presidential campaign spokeswoman, she is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Entrepreneur, and is a speaker for clients including Google, Microsoft, Yale University, Fidelity, and the World Bank. A graduate of New York’s Cardozo School of Law, Ruben is a former veteran entertainment professional, and has performed in film, TV, commercials and in off-Broadway productions. He has traveled across the country performing stand-up. He also has over twenty-five years’ experience as a counselor, litigator, literary agent, and talent manager.

In this episode, Clark and Ruben discuss their different approaches and attitudes toward personal branding, including:

• Personal branding: overhyped, or underrated?
• The value of doing good work—and the value of publicizing it
• Why social media can be a double-edged sword for an online reputation
• How to distinguish yourself in a crowded marketplace
• How developing a personal brand can be “fundamental” to your ability to earn a living

Dorie Clark is an Adjunct Professor of Business Administration at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and a Visiting Professor for IE Business School in Madrid. She has guest lectured at Harvard Business School, the Harvard Kennedy School, Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, the Wharton School, the MIT Sloan School of Management, and more. She is recognized as a “branding expert” by the Associated Press and Fortune, is a frequent guest on MSNBC, and appears in worldwide media including NPR, the Wall Street Journal, and the BBC. Her book Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It comes out this April. Learn more at dorieclark.com or follow her on Twitter @dorieclark.

Working in partnership, Eric Ruben assists his clients in determining how best to achieve their personal and professional goals. He can be reached by Twitter (@ericrubenlawyer) or through his website, RubenLaw.org.

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Wanda Allen is a national speaker, coach, author and award-winning business owner. After being a business banker for 25 years, Allen left the bank to pursue her own ventures, founding her business Follow Up Sales Strategies. In this interview, she discusses the emotional blocks that can prevent successful follow-ups, from fear of rejection to reluctance to “bother,” and how having a system in place can help a business overcome these hesitations.

This week, we spoke to her about:

• The five questions you should be asking in the follow-up process
• How overthinking sales follow-ups wastes time, and how having systems in place can help you be more productive (see also Wendy Lipton-Dibner, Smashing the Plateau episode 30)
• How to use follow-ups to establish trust and credibility
• Creating and maintaining effective relationships outside your business–and within it

Allen is a Rising Star Award Winner and Business Owner of the Year Nominee by the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO), and an expert in helping entrepreneurs, business owners and sales professionals improve sales performance, increase client retention, and become more referable through effective follow up systems.

Learn more at Follow Up Sales Strategies, or contact Allen through email at wanda@followupsalesstrategies.com.

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Dr. Cheryl Lentz is an international best-selling author, professor, and speaker, also known as The Academic Entrepreneur. She has written and edited books on leadership, critical and refractive thinking, and more, including the multi-award winning series The Refractive Thinker, a collaboration of essays from around the world.

In this interview, we discuss how “refractive thinking” can help us move forward in business, including:

• Defining success according to constructs from the digital age, rather than old methods
• Changing how we conceive of business spaces to shift how we think about the nature of business itself
• Identifying our own biases when listening to a customer
• The importance of scheduling time to plan for the future (with reference to previous Smashing the Plateau guest Larry Sharpe!)
• Seeing getting help as a sign of strength
• What Einstein can teach us about being the silliest person in the room

As a university professor, speaker, and consultant, Dr. Lentz is an expert in teaching students to apply critical thinking skills to problem-solve in record time. She can be found on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and through her website, www.drcheryllentz.com.

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Jeffrey Hayzlett is a primetime business TV host and host of multiple shows on the digital television network C-Suite TV; he is also a global business celebrity, speaker, bestselling author, and Chairman of C-Suite Network, home of the world’s most powerful network of C-Suite leaders.

In this interview, we discuss:

• Why thinking you’re stuck will keep you stuck
• Entrepreneurship vs. the corporate C-Suite
• How negative storytelling dictates too many important decisions
• Key ingredients for fostering trust in business
• What Pixar’s Up can teach us about business

Jeffrey Hayzlett has bought and sold more than 250 companies in the course of his many, many-faceted career. The former CMO of Eastman Kodak (where he managed a $17 billion-dollar budget) is currently chairman of the C-Suite Network, where he hosts C-Suite with Jeffrey Hayzlett and Executive Perspectives.

He is also CEO, speaker, and author with The Hayzlett Group, and is the bestselling author of Running the Gauntlet: Essential Business Lessons to Lead, Drive Change, and Grow Profits (2012) and The Mirror Test: Is Your Business Really Breathing? (2010). He is also Chair of TallGrass PR, based in New York, San Francisco, and Sioux Falls. Most recently, he launched the CBS Radio show “All Business with Jeffrey Hayzlett,” where his first guest was Gene Simmons.

Follow or get in touch with Hayzlett through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ or email.

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