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Yes, this is actually the side of Patrick Wiscombe's head.

With 12 billion people searching online, and hundreds of millions on social media, there’s a tremendous opportunity for businesses to grow with the right online campaigns.

However, in the ever-changing digital world, that’s easier said than done. For many, it’s a frustrating maze that is constantly shifting.

In this episode, we chat with Lee Odden, author of the new book “Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing,” about how to clear up that maze. Lee is one of the most sought after experts in search engine optimization, social media and content marketing. He outlines steps small businesses can make to increase online performance to reach your true audience and drive sales and customer engagement.

When you’re done listening, make sure to check out sample chapters of his book at optimizebook.com.

About the Guest

Lee Odden

A 15-year veteran internet marketer, he publishes one of the most popular marketing blogs on the web (TopRankBlog) and writes a monthly column for ClickZ called Social Media Smarts. Odden serves on the advisory board for Incisive Media’s SES conference and speaks internationally on the topics of integrated PR, Search, Social Media and Content Marketing.

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Highlights

• Introducing the one and only ‘Lee Odden’
• Short history of search marketing
• Recipe for SEO
• There is no silver bullet
• Where can small businesses begin in online marketing
• Discovering target audience
• Delivering relevant content vs. direct selling
• Identifying customer personas
• Content that shortens sales cycles
• Identify your worst customers
• Ongoing research, testing and monitoring
• Tools for measurement
• Why Lee has never hired a salesperson in 11 years
• Content that solves your customers problems
• We’re #1 in the #2 business …
• Does it work for toilet paper?
• Charmin’s toilet finder app
• Finding toilets in Paris
• First steps for business owners to have success online
• 12 billion people searching on Google every day
• Basics of Google Adwords
• Basics of on-page keyword optimization
• Digging into customers first, then finding the right keywords
• Ranking #1 for ‘Brain’
• Top 5 things every business needs to consider in online marketing
• Content plan
• Optimize
• Socialize
• Monitoring and measurement
• Refining strategy
• What’s the first online marketing hire a small business should make?
• Lee’s favorite thing about working for himself

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Yes, this is actually the side of Patrick Wiscombe's head.

Failed conversations can take a heavy toll on our professional and personal lives. On the opposite end, in business, successful conversations can close sales, bring lucrative deals to the table, enhance the relationships with team members, and may be the single attribute that grows a business.

To nail down the right conversation skills, we talked with with Ben Benjamin, Ph.D., author of “Conversation Transformation” about how to fix some of the types of conversations mistakes that damage relationships, erode trust, and make it impossible to resolve conflicts, reach decisions, or achieve mutual understanding. After listening to this interview, if you think your team is not as efficient as it should be, go here to have Ben give your company an assessment.

About the Guest

Ben Benjamin, Ph., D.

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Highlights

• Introducing Ben Benjamin, author of ‘Conversation Transformation’
• Instead of solving problems, we create new ones
• Why you have the same meetings or arguments again and again
• Most people think they’re great communicators
• It’s always the other guy’s problem
• Yes, Buts …
• Why nobody hears the other person
• Build on the yes
• Ask questions instead of making judgements
• Leading questions
• CEO disease
• Negative predictions
• Sit in the moment
• Noisy behavior
• That’s interesting …
• What complaining really means
• Awareness
• Strategy
• Practice
• We don’t teach people to communicate
• Attacks instead of questions and communication
• If Ben taught Congress
• Why Congress doesn’t communicate well
• How to create effective meetings
• The world is in conflict and they don’t know how to collaborate
• Why communication should come before every other part of business

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Yes, this is actually the side of Patrick Wiscombe's head.

Successful brands understand their core audience, and they make them happy even if it makes everyone else hate them.

Erika Napoletano, author of “The Power of Un-Popular” and the blunt and irreverent blog Redhead Writing joins us for a discussion on how to make your brand sizzle by building an un-popular company. If you follow Erika on Redhead Writing and you expect to hear seedy language in this podcast, trust me, it was there. But, Patrick Wiscombe edited out a few 4-letter words to make it safe for the audiences picking up this podcast on some of the local media like ABC4.com and KNRS Radio.

About the Guest

Erika Napoletano

When she’s not traveling (and even when she is), she consults for some of the U.S.’s leading startups and brands you see in parking lots and on store shelves every day. From branding to building online communities, she helps companies talk to their audience, hold ongoing conversations, and convert those people into long-term advocates so that business owners can wake up every day and do what they love for whom they love doing it.

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Highlights

• Hanging out with Redhead Writing
• Being popular sucks
• 17 W2s in one year
• Dirty, dirty, dirty writing
• Wallowing on the couch
• ‘The Power of UnPopular’
• Why are you building a business with a dream of universal popularity?
• Start biz conversation as an equal
• People are terrified to be wrong
• Have an opinion and stand for something
• Don’t be roadkill
• The Mennonite Entrepreneur
• Guy who makes rubber ducks look like celebrities
• Growth kills a lot of businesses
• Audience is a direct limiting factor on how you’ll scale your biz
• A recipe for building an Un-Popular brand
• Good brands make people ‘feel’ things
• Erika on a Vespa
• Personality, approachability, share-ability, scalability

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Some brands get customers. The best brands create a cult following. To create those loyal followers — those brand lovers — the author of “Customers First: Dominate Your Market by Winning Them Over Where It Counts the Most” says you need to truly understand what motivates your most loyal fans, and then model your business after those relationships.

In this interview with Bolivar J. Bueno, we dive into modeling your business around your most fierce, loyal fans and customers.

About the Guest
Bolivar J. Bueno’s clients include Kohl’s Department Stores, Scheels, CAT, Turner Classic Movies, Target, Wal-Mart, Washington Mutual, Toys-R-Us, JCPenny, and the L.A. Lakers. A lecturer and creative strategist, Bueno has been interviewed by CNN, USA Today, New York Times, and CNN en Español.

Bueno is the author of “Customers First“, co-author of The Power of Cult Branding (Crown Business 2002), a work which received rave reviews from leading mavens like Al Reis, Jay Conrad Levinson, and Jeffrey Fox. He is also the author of the follow-up Cult Branding Workbook as well as Why We Talk: The Truth Behind Word-of-Mouth, a book that changes the way marketers think about word-of-mouth. Bueno is a board member of the Retail Advertising & Marketing Association (RAMA) and a member of the Chief Marketing Officers board for international retailers.

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Highlights

• Who is B.J. Bueno?
• Power of cult branding
• How to create models of who your best customers are?
• Modeling your business after your most loyal fans
• Why customers have irrational devotion to brands
• Having your best customers become fanatical followers
• Measure business based on relationships, feelings, sentiment
• Don’t listen to everyone
• Listen to those ideal customers you want in the future
• Don’t worry about nonbelievers
• How to identify/create brand lovers
• Humans want experiences, not just products
• Which are your most profitable customers?
• Which customers bring in new customers?
• Can any business be a cult brand?
• Belonging to a community of like-minded individuals
• Why companies don’t know their best customers
• What is the emotion you want your customers to have?
• Modeling the customer of the future
• When a frog becomes a prince
• Bullzeye is worth a lot more than the perimeter
• Beware the CEO’s ego
• Have you looked at your garbage every day?

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When was the last time you’ve done a real mirror test on you and your company? In this business environment, it’s not enough to operate on the status quo.

The same old-same old business routine doesn’t get it done anymore. In fact, it’s dragging companies down. Those that don’t continue to innovate in today’s competitive environment will be surpassed by their competitors, or more than likely, an up-and-coming innovative entrepreneur.

In this interview, Jeffrey Hayzlett, former CMO of Kodak and author of The Mirror Test and Running the Gauntlet, talks about how to face the hard questions that can save any company.

About the Guest
Jeffrey Hayzlett is a former Fortune 100 C-Suite Executive, a serial entrepreneur, and a leading business expert. Jeffrey has made multiple media appearances on Fox Business, MSNBC’s Your Business, and NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice with Donald Trump. From small business to international corporations, he puts his extraordinary entrepreneurial skills and creativity into play, launching ventures blending his leadership perspectives, insights into professional development, mass marketing prowess, and affinity for social media. Follow him on twitter at @jeffreyhayzlett

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Highlights

• Infested with wildlife
• Jeffrey’s knee injury
• The Mirror Test
• The only person that’s going to help you, is the one facing the mirror
• Your job is to run the test to see if you’re breathing every day
• Difference between businesses on Wall St. and businesses on Main St. (it’s not much)
• What Jeffrey misses from being the CMO at Kodak
• How to get companies to change
• Why you should think you look better now than you did 20 years ago
• Crawl, Walk, Run
• The danger of complacency
• Companies that are adapting well today
• How to be successful in good or bad times
• Measuring stick to know if you have a good or bad idea
• When to “Ready, Fire, Aim”
• Sometimes we get caught up making everything perfect
• Nobody will die if you make a mistake
• Fear is the #1 thing that prevents success
• How to mitigate risk
• Find mentors who have ‘skin in the game’
• Are you drinking your own Kool-Aid? Do you believe your own press releases?
• The Johnny Vegas Syndrome
• There’s always someone bigger and hotter
• Blinded by puffing yourself up
• Power of self reflection
• Have passion for process instead of product
• The 3 mirror tests you should take
• Why are you in your business?
• What’s the look and feel of your business?
• What promise are you delivering to your customer?
• What’s your elevator pitch?
• 118 seconds to close your customer
• 8 seconds is a hook
• 110 seconds average elevator ride in New York City

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The pace of business and the speed of change has never been so great as in today’s business environment. Everything is in a constant state of flux.

Many companies don’t foresee future changes to their industry, and because of that, when chaos rolls around, the give up their competitors end up with their market share. A prime example of that is Blackberry vs. Apple.

In today’s interview, we chat with Mike Richardson, the author of “Wheel$pin: The Agile Executive’s Manifesto to Accelerate Growth, Leverage Your Value, and Beat Your Competition” about how to prepare your business for the future and avoid wheelspin by being an Agile company.

About the Guest

Mike Richardson

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Highlights of ‘Running Lean’

• Mike Richardson – author of ‘Wheel$pin’
• What Mike’s wife said when he jumped out of a corporate job and into entrepreneurship
• You think we had security?
• Masters of our own destiny
• What is wheelspin?
• What is agility?
• Going nowhere fast
• Losing a fortune in opportunity costs
• Horrendous examples of Wheelspin: Kodak, American Airlines
• The line between investing time and spinning your wheels
• Chaos will test your agility
• Are you on top of chaos, or is chaos on top of you?
• How to move from ‘disorganized chaos’ to ‘organized chaos’
• Examples of chaos
• How to see chaos coming
• The difference between Apple and RIM
• Why Mike uses a Blackberry phone as a prop
• Falling behind the curve
• How to get out of ‘wheelspin’
• How to get in the driving seat of agility
• Why you should develop an ongoing strategy process instead of traditional planning
• Mental Model of your business
• Agility is a mental fight and challenge
• Be pre-adaptive
• Luck is not an accident
• How to reinvent your business
• The taco shop that delivers via drone
• Ask ‘How would I put myself out of business
• What train wreck is awaiting me out there
• What’s the timeline you think your industry will be unrecognizable in a few years
• Productively paranoid
• Learn from foresight
• If you’re not careful, failure comes faster
• Don’t hit the gas when the headlights are in the trunk
• Find the agile middle
• How agility is like a jet
• How agility is like driving a car
• Operations management
• Culture of execution and agility

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Since the Lean Startup was published, it has become somewhat of a bible for entrepreneurs in initiating and managing growth in our time. Ries’ book outlined the philosophy behind the Lean movement. Now he’s partnered with other entrepreneurs to come out with a series of books on how to implement those strategies.

The first of these books is “Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works” by Ash Maurya. We talked with him about how to stop wasting money and time by building the wrong products and the wrong business. He discusses concepts from “Lean Startup”, customer development and bootstrapping. The practical applications make this show one of the most valuable that we’ve done so far.

About The Guest

Ash Maurya is the founder of Spark59 and has launched several startups. Through his running lean workshops, he’s worked closely with entrepreneurs to help them test and refine their vision. Ash holds mentor roles with startup accelerators around the world such as Mozilla Foundation, Year One Labs, and Capital Factory. Follow him on his blog at AshMaurya.com and on twitter at @ashmaurya

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Highlights of ‘Running Lean’

• Ash Maurya – author of ‘Running Lean’
• The how-to guide for Eric Ries’ popular book ‘The Lean Startup’
• The upcoming Lean Series
• Too much time building, not enough time testing
• Why we fail at building what customers really want
• Initial goal should be all about learning
• The zombie entrepreneur
• Problem, solution, fit
• Determine what customers would want to pay for
• From idea to testing to accelerating plan
• Customer validation
• Faith vs Testing
• The importance of testing and the scientific method
• Most business plans are wrong
• Constantly updating plan
• Learn at every point
• Why Plan A should really be Plan X or Y
• What is the business model hinging on
• Why pricing is the most difficult part of the process
• Identify customers, their problems, and how you’ll find those customers?
• How Ash used these same principles to write his book
• How to test your own product or service
• The Food Trailer Phenomenon
• It’s not about where you want to end up, it’s about testing along the way
• Look for strong signals that encourage you to move on
• The ideal time to pursue business financing, investors and business loans.
• The first thing to do once you get funding

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How can you identify the most powerful bloggers, tweeters, and YouTube celebrities to build product awareness, brand buzz and new sales? That’s the question Mark Schaefer answers in his new book, “Return on Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing.”

In the last few years, social media has revolutionized marketing and advertising. Instead of hiring celebrities to market their products, companies are now trying to reach the citizens with influence online to spread their messages. In this episode, Mark Schaefer talks about his book and explains how to use the latest breakthroughs in social networking to “win friends and influence people in the digital age.”

About Mark Schaefer
Mark W. Schaefer, the author of The Tao of Twitter(2011)and Return On Influence (2012), is a globally-recognized educator, speaker, business consultant, and author. His well-known blog, BusinessGrow.com, is one of the AdAge Top 100 marketing blogs of the world. Mark has worked in global sales, PR, and marketing positions for nearly 30 years and now provides consulting services as Executive Director of U.S.-based Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He has advanced degrees in marketing and organizational development and holds seven patents. Mark enjoys teaching social media marketing courses and is a faculty member of the graduate studies program at Rutgers University. He was named by Forbes magazine as one of the top 50 social media “Power Influencers.”

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Highlights of the show:

• Mark Shaeffer – author of ‘Return on Influence’
• The Tao of Twitter
• How an author markets himself
• R.I.T.E. — Creating relevant, interesting, timely and entertaining content
• The shoemaker who’s kids don’t have shoes
• 3 things to be successful on social media
• Compelling content that moves through an engaged network
• Influence has been democratized
• Build it, then participate
• Age of the citizen influencer
• The new marketing revolution
• How to know if you have the R.I.T.E. stuff?
• It doesn’t happen over night
• Rules of online influence
• Marilyn Monroe vs. Pee Wee Herman
• Online influence vs offline influence
• Social proof

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Today’s guest on the show is David Casullo, author of “Leading the High Energy Culture: What the Best CEOs Do to Create an Atmosphere Where Employees Flourish.”

We talk about how to create a culture of high energy that engages and inspires people in your organization. He shares the secrets for how to communicate your vision in order to create a sense of purpose throughout your organization and beyond, while spreading excitement to consumers, investors, and the media.

About David Casullo
David is the President of Bates Communications, a communications coaching and consulting firm in Wellesley, MA. Bates transforms leaders into powerful communicators through executive coaching, consulting, training, workshops, and seminars. David has spent decades developing leaders by tapping into their unique, authentic qualities. His methods ensure that leaders clarify their personal values and recommit to behaving consistently with them. He has a proven process to clarify organizational values and communicate them effectively to drive growth and bottom line results.

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Highlights of the show:

• David Casullo – author of ‘Leading the High Energy Culture‘
• What attributes make and develop the best bosses?
• A leader’s attractive power, clarity, and energy
• The energized culture and you
• Never mistake activity for results
• The ‘who’ that you are
• Getting everyone on the same page
• Creating powerful, effective messages
• Knowing your audience and alpha dogs
• I can’t wait to go grocery shopping
• The secret sauce of a company
• The importance of looking inward
• Never mistake activity for results

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Loral Langemeier has been coaching others to make more money ever since she made her first $1 million. In this episode, we interviewed Loral about her new book, “Yes Energy: The Equation to do Less and Make More,” which is quickly gaining ground on the New York Times Bestseller list. For business owners, her advice helps you focus on the tasks that really move your business forward. Plus, she’s a fireball who might have had a little too much caffeine on the morning we spoke …

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Highlights of “The Yes that Burns”

• Loral Langemeier
• YES! Energy
• Skiing in Tahoe
• Why you should say yes first, and then figure out how
• The Success Equation
• Why entrepreneurs hesitate/say no
• What entrepreneurs should NOT be doing
• Do less/make more
• Make rain
• Has Yes ever burned you?
• Learning from life lessons
• Get off your butt
• How to grow sales based off YES! Energy
• How to turn the economy around
• Why America is so lazy and entitled
• Steps to get YES! Energy
• Think “How” to get more cash
• The difference between being busy and being productive
• Surround yourself with the right people
• Why Loral’s family thinks she’s absolutely crazy
• Create the business that supports the life you want
• How to change your life and build your business when you don’t have enough cash
• Focus on how much you need to sell every day
• Move your feet fast as Hell
• Stop listening to those who haven’t created the results you want

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