Posts by David Shriner-Cahn
STP053: Search Engine Marketing and Client Expectations: Wil Reynolds and Jeremy Pound Face Off
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 Rose’s Recommendations for Understanding Human Capital
Following his interview for the Smashing the Plateau podcast, Tony Rose provided listeners with a set of five recommendations for becoming a better manager of different kinds of capital—particularly, in these books, of human capital. 1. Dan Sullivan, a.k.a. “The Strategic Coach.” Rose writes: “His simple processes for entrepreneurs are life-changing. He convinced me I have…
Read Full PostSTP052: Accounting for Happiness, Fulfillment, and Business Health with Tony Rose
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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From Influence to Imagination: Dorie Clark and Eric Ruben’s Recommendations
During their appearance on Smashing the Plateau, Dorie Clark and Eric Ruben drew on their huge range of experiences (in law, literature, performance, business, academia and more) to discuss personal branding and reputation management. After the episode, each provided a list of two people who had influenced them. The resulting list is a wonderfully diverse set…
Read Full PostSTP051: Personal Branding: Overhyped, or Underrated? Dorie Clark and Eric Ruben Face Off
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's Reading List for Successful Sales
Yesterday’s episode of Smashing the Plateau featured Wanda Allen, who spoke about her follow-up strategies for ensuring sales success. After our interview, she provided us with a list of five figures who had been crucial to her development in the field: 1. Brian Tracy: “I heard Brian Tracy speak 25 years ago, and his no-nonsense…
Read Full PostSTP050: 5 Steps that Ensure Successful Follow-Ups with Wanda Allen
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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Five Influences on Dr. Cheryl Lentz’s Refractive Thinking
Where does Dr. Cheryl Lentz derive inspiration for her refractive thinking? After her interview on Smashing the Plateau, she provided a group of five thinkers that she identified as having been particularly important to the development of her ideas: 1. Peter Senge: MIT professor, systems scientist, and author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art and…
Read Full PostSTP049: Refractive Thinking and Productive Questioning with Dr. Cheryl Lentz
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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Five Major Influencers for Jeffrey Hayzlett's Work Ethic
At the end of his interview on Smashing the Plateau, Jeffrey Hayzlett listed five people who helped shape who he became over the course of his life; he noted that “The people that have been real pivotal in my career aren’t the people who typically you’re going to see with Twitter accounts, or on the front…
Read Full PostSTP048: Effective Attitudes for Business Leaders With Jeffrey Hayzlett
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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Top 4 Life and Business Resources of Richard Laermer and Tony Grass
We’re pleased to present a dual installment for this week’s top influencers. Face-Off participants Richard Laermer and Tony Grass offer their takes on business growth on this week’s episode. (If you missed the Face-Off, go back and listen here.) Here are the influencers Richard and Tony credit in helping them achieve their own growth in…
Read Full PostSTP047: A Branded And Buzzworthy Face-Off with Richard Laermer and Tony Grass
Public relations expert Richard Laermer debates sales and marketing veteran Tony Grass in this episode of “Smashing the Plateau,” our latest in the FaceOff series. Tony and Richard go back and forth on issues related to branding, public perception, and making an impact in the market – fundamental topics for any business leader trying to grow.
Topics include…
- Why the intangibles may matter the most
- Where to sell and where to raise awareness
- Meeting customer needs vs. sticking with vision
- Why analytics doesn’t tell the whole story
Richard Laermer is the Founder and CEO of RLM Public Relations. He is the author of numerous best selling books including Punk Marketing and Full Frontal PR. Tony Grass is the President and Owner of e-Market Intelligence, Inc., an online sales development company focusing on marketing strategy and customer targeting.
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Rémy Chaussé’s Top 5 Sources For Finding Direction While Growing
Our last guest on “Smashing the Plateau” was Rémy Chaussé, a self-proclaimed UNstuckologist. Rémy helps people get over themselves to finally get a move on. (If you missed Rémy, go back and listen here.) Rémy admits she’s had some help along the way. Here are the people she has turned to and how she sees…
Read Full PostSTP046: Getting Unstuck Without The Guilt with Rémy Chaussé
Rémy Chaussé helps people get unstuck from whatever’s keeping them from getting to the next level. As a victim of getting stuck herself, Rémy knows firsthand which strategies work and which just lead to frustration. On this episode, she discusses stubbornness, embarrassment, and how the biggest obstacle is usually yourself.
Topics include…
- How to avoid getting ordinary self-promotion
- Swallowing pride to get things done
- Why leaders should expect less of themselves
- How creativity can actually stifle progress
- Being honest to find your “Joy Factor”
Rémy Chaussé is the Founder of the Get UNStuck Revolution and the selfproclaimed World’s Best UNStuckologist. She helps people move from their creative brainstorming phases to a place where they can implement changes and make progress.
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Nella Barkley’s Top 5 Influential Authors and Media Moguls
Our most recent “Smashing the Plateau” episode featured Nella Barkley, who helped us understand some of the challenges facing leaders and offered ways to combat them. (If you missed Nella, go back and listen here.) Nella hasn’t weathered the storm alone. Here are three people who she says have been instrumental as sources of inspiration.…
Read Full PostSTP045: Finding Success First Within Yourself with Nella Barkley
Public speaker, mentor, and coach Nella Barkley discusses goal recognition and being honest and smart about personal approaches to business. The world is full of entrepreneurs, but many are stuck in old, unoriginal habits. In this episode of “Smashing the Plateau,” Nella helps listeners figure out how to get noticed for things that are wholly unique to them.
Topics include…
- How business is like baking a cake
- Finding what’s truly unique about yourself
- The questions leaders should be asking themselves
- How to avoid the greatest danger
For more than 20 years, Nella Barkley has been helping people find their own personal career and life paths at the Crystal-Barkley Corporation. Through strategic planning principles and her own innate drive to enable others, Nella has become a sought-after mentor, public speaker, and coach.
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Jennifer Kushell’s Top 6 Life Mentors For Focus And Guidance
On our most recent episode of “Smashing the Plateau,” Founder of Young & Successful Media, Jennifer Kushell, discusses her passion for young entrepreneurial spirit. (If you missed Jennifer, go back and listen here.) Just like the kids Jennifer seeks to support, she herself has had help along the way. Here are six of the resources…
Read Full PostSTP044: An Eye Toward the Next Generation with Jennifer Kushell
Jennifer Kushell is the Founder of Young & Successful Media and YSN.com—Your Success Network and author of the NY Times bestsellers, Secrets of the Young & Successful and The Young Entrepreneur’s Edge. In this episode of “Smashing the Plateau,” she discusses motivating young people to think like entrepreneurs and building success through structure.
Topics include…
- The changing face of business
- How to deal with a market in flux
- Making, and then packaging, change
- Why the written word is more important than ever
- How successful people see the world
As the Founder of Young & Successful Media and Your Success Network, Jennifer is fulfilling her mission of ensuring that no driven young person, anywhere in the world, lacks access to opportunity to fulfill their true potential.
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Marc Mawhinney’s Top 5 Influential Authors and Media Moguls
Our most recent “Smashing the Plateau” episode showcased the talents of Natural Born Coaches podcast host Marc Mawhinney. Marc shared his secrets of launching and sustaining a daily coaching podcast. (If you missed Marc, go back and listen here.) Getting your own project off the ground is no small accomplishment. Keeping it from crashing is…
Read Full PostSTP043: Getting By With a Little Help From Coach with Marc Mawhinney
The two podcasts collide in this episode of “Smashing the Plateau,” as today’s guest is Marc Mawhinney, host of the Natural Born Coaches podcast. In our sit down with Marc, we explore the unexpected upsides of his work and the adventure in finding a niche to call your business home.
Topics include…
- Thinking often and acting even more
- Having faith in yourself to succeed
- Why hiring a coach isn’t admitting you’ve lost
- What farming can teach the world of business
Creator and Host of the Natural Born Coaches podcast, Marc Mawhinney helps motivate listeners who want to become professional coaches and offers advice to current coaches looking to improve their businesses. A coach himself, he is also the Founder of Marc Mawhinney Coaching.
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Jim Canterucci’s Top 3 Mentors He’s Met Along The Way
Jim Canterucci was our most recent guest on “Smashing the Plateau.” In our chat with Jim, he talked about the finer points of leadership in 2015, and how the position has undergone a transformation. (If you missed Jim, go back and listen here.) Jim’s idea of a new leadership normal hasn’t been cultivated strictly on…
Read Full PostSTP042: New Ideas and New Solutions with Jim Canterucci
Jim Canterucci runs his business not so unlike we at TEND run ours. Jim helps executives get their big ideas put into action. On this episode of “Smashing the Plateau,” he shares his wisdom on getting companies to accept innovation and how to maintain success even when some of those risks don’t work out.
Topics include…
- Why you should be celebrating failure
- The [60:40] rule of leadership
- How to get people working for the right reasons
- Exceeding an entrepreneurial spirit
- The new normal for leadership
- What farming can teach the world of business
Jim Canterucci is the Founder and CEO of Transition Management Advisors and a Leadership Advisor at ELCircle. He figures out ways to get executives unstuck, moving ideas from inside the boardroom out to the rest of the world by implementing them successfully.
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Kalynn Amadio’s Top 5 Professional Motivators For Success
Our most recent “Smashing the Plateau” episode featured Baby Boomer digital marketing guru Kalynn Amadio. Her ideas on bringing the vast world of online back to simple one-on-one chats are total winners. (If you missed Kalynn, go back and listen here.) But Kalynn has been lucky enough to get a helping hand along the way.…
Read Full PostSTP041: Digital Marketing In a Whole New World with Kalynn Amadio
Author, speaker, engineer, and entrepreneur Kalynn Amadio is the CEO of ikalynn LLC. As a digital marketing expert for Baby Boomers, she helps older entrepreneurs stay relevant in a world that’s migrated online. In this episode, Kalynn talks about learning to use the tools of today so that businesspeople can connect meaningfully with an audience.
Topics include…
- The real reason to use social media marketing
- Building a 1-1 conversation
- Imagining your ideal customer
- How to avoid time sucks
- How to build communities of raving fans
Kalynn Amadio is the CEO of ikalynn LLC, a digital marketing company that helps Baby Boomers flourish in the ever-changing world of the Internet, social media, video, and mobile technology. She is also an author, speaker, engineer, and entrepreneur.
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