Toccara Karizma is a digital marketing consultant and business growth strategist. She is the CEO of Karizma Marketing, a full-service digital marketing agency dedicated to growing elite eCommerce brands online through email marketing, social media marketing, PPC, SEO, website conversion optimization, and more. Having built her own successful eCommerce business back in 2007, Toccara is now considered one of the world's top eCommerce marketing experts. Her out-of-the-box approach to digital marketing and expertise in the online business growth space is why I've asked her to join me today.   Most passionate about I own a seven-figure digital marketing agency with a heavy focus on e-commerce clients. I had grown that business to be an international company and it was quite successful. I have a background in business economics, so I knew that my place was in scaling brands and that I could do it very well. That is where I got my start. What I'm most passionate about is building e-commerce brands. I love figuring out how to scale them. Toccara’s career and story I'm the daughter of two entrepreneur doctors who worked very hard and taught me that I could do anything I wanted. I realized that I didn’t want to work for anyone else. I just don't like fluorescent lights and being in a cubicle. And I knew there was more for me out there. I got pregnant with my son and decided, like many other entrepreneurs listening today, that I wanted to solve a problem: I couldn't find cute clothing for my son. So, I had to create it myself. There was so much when it came to the inventory, the output of money in advance of sales, and those types of difficult decisions that every entrepreneur has to make. I realized that there was a different business model here that I knew really well, which was a very low fixed-cost business model: I spend money only after I've received it versus prepaying for things. Four years later, officially being an ad agency, as a single mom and with an excellent team behind me, here we are at seven figures. So, that was the journey. Best advice for entrepreneurs My best advice about what has worked really well for me is getting on those one-on-one calls with your potential clients, especially if you're selling a high-ticket service, because they need to hear from you. Really listen to them and their problems. Be fully transparent and honest. Tell them whether or not you think it would be a good fit. They so appreciate it when you give them free advice and tell them, “I think this would be a better option for you.” The biggest, most critical failure with customers I have a two-fold failure. The biggest failures are taking on clients without the bandwidth, without the support system that I need. We are in demand and are blessed to be in demand. At some points, we want to take on clients when we just don't have the right support team in place. And that's not a fair thing for us to do because when we do that, we don't give them the best results or the best client experience with us. We want to be the Four Seasons of ad agencies. The second failure would be taking any client, especially when you’re newer. That was when we failed because we weren't working with a partner that had everything in place. It was kind of like putting a Ferrari engine in a VW Bug. Biggest success with customers I stand for full reporting. When we talk to our customers, it's almost like we're flipping all the ways in which they were mishandled and mismanaged by other agencies and saying, “You deserve this.” We do full transparency. We'll tell you when we're wrong and when we've done something wrong. We want to meet with you regularly and build a long-term relationship. We're always on camera with them. So, it's doing business with people. My son was working on a project at school. (He’s in high school now.) He was using a video editing...

REACH OR MISS - Entrepreneurial Business Success

Ep. 237 – Toccara Karizma’s key success factor: “For me, it’s mindset. I don’t ever believe in chasing money. I chase joy, and money naturally follows.”

John Thalheimer is an award-winning management consultant, speaker, and author who has helped hundreds of businesses and thousands of entrepreneurs and small business owners transform their potential into extraordinary performance. The secret is in learning the ability to make the right behavioral decision in the moment to reach the desired outcomes. It’s simple. It just ain’t easy. John teaches small business owners and entrepreneurs how to make the right decisions about their company to take it to the next level. In his new book, The Truth About Selling, John teaches us how to influences others to invest in our ideas, products, or services.   Most passionate about My real passion is focusing on the human side of work My main focus has been on the employee. How does that employee achieve what they want to achieve at work? How do they perform well and all that kind of stuff? But it's also about that customer and client and how we get them to make that decision. John’s career and story My first career was in theater. I was a production manager, lighting designer, set designer. At the time, I was in my early 30s. I’d been doing it for 12, 15 years, and it was time for me to do something different. I went into what I call my lost years. I did manufacturing for a while. I did hospitality. I did retail. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I had an opportunity to work in corporate America at a company called QVC, which is a television network. One of the things QVC did well for us, when we were working there, was expose us to the whole business, and not only the production side. I was in operations at first, but then I got into the human resources side and the talent side. I got laid off. I wanted to be an executive coach, to help executives get better. So, I started that journey, but I realized that my main focus was on the small business owner, the middle-tier management team. Best advice for entrepreneurs I believed everyone in the world needed my products, and it wasn’t true. There are three levels that I look at. At the first level, people out there see value in your product or service. Then there are people who have the resources to embed. The third category is people who have the problem you solve. When we think of three circles, our market is in that overlapping section. I think that's the biggest thing I see when I'm talking to entrepreneurs. They're like, “Oh, my product is great, everybody wants it.” And they don't narrow that market down to a set of people who are actually going to buy and invest in it. The biggest, most critical failure with customers One of the things I did was go out and get warm leads. I would do a free workshop or a presentation. The failure was that I would give great information and people would like it, but I was never able to get them to take that next step and invest in me. So, I struggled with that for a long time. I would just keep going. Biggest success with customers I got my wife a biscuit-making class. She could go to this class to learn how to make Southern biscuits. I go to this class thinking, ‘Here I am, I'm going to be learning about biscuits.’ However, as I sat in this class, I started realizing the effectiveness of the facilitator. I said, “Here’s the thing that we all have to do as sales professionals. When we're working with our customers, we have to create a repeatable experience that gets us to where we want to go.” It's selling products, selling information, selling whatever we're trying to do—we have to create something that's repeatable. And so my wife and I created a recipe that we use. John’s recommendation of a tool My biggest turning point was when I hired a virtual assistant. John’s one key success factor For me, it's constantly innovating and seeing things from different perspectives. And, I guess, really, it’s...

Ep. 236 – John Thalheimer: “I believed everyone in the world needed my products, and it wasn’t true. that’s the biggest challenge entrepreneurs have.”

Steve Hoffman (Captain Hoff) has had more careers than cats have lives, from Hollywood TV exec and game designer to manga rewriter, voice actor, animator, electrical engineer, studio head, and video game designer. Today, he’s the Captain & CEO of Founders Space, one of the world’s leading startup accelerators. Founders Space was ranked the #1 incubator for overseas startups by Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazines. Hoffman is also a venture investor, founder of three venture-backed and two bootstrapped startups, and author of several award-winning books. These include “Make Elephants Fly” (published by Hachette), “Surviving a Startup” (published by HarperCollins), and “The Five Forces” (published by BenBella).   Most passionate about I am most passionate about helping entrepreneurs, not just financially but also in reaching their personal goals, helping them do something meaningful with their lives and actually make an impact on the world. I see myself less as a business person and more as a creator. Steve’s career and story When I was a child, I began making movies. By the time I graduated high school, I had made over 50 movies. I made lots of games—board games, role-playing games. I even programmed computer games. So, I was always creating and I wanted to be a creator. I went to college in electrical, computer engineering, but after I graduated, I felt like my creative side was lacking. So I applied to graduate school at the two top films: NYU in New York and USC in Los Angeles. I got my graduate degree in film and television, then went off to work in Hollywood. I quickly rose to the position of television development executive at a major TV production company. I jumped from Hollywood to the largest game company in the world at the time, which was Sega in Japan. A I began working with them, creating interactive entertainment. I launched my career as an entrepreneur. I came back to Silicon Valley, my home, and launched my first gaming startup. Best advice for entrepreneurs A lot of entrepreneurs think they have to have an epiphany, a big idea, or they shouldn't jump in and be an entrepreneur. But my experience has shown me that the idea you begin with doesn't really matter because being an entrepreneur is a journey. And usually, the idea you begin with is wrong. Many entrepreneurs fail because they stick to their original idea. Those who succeed tend to change ideas all the time. I tell entrepreneurs: Don’t go out there with one idea; pick a direction and go out there with many ideas. Then, engage with the customers until you figure out who your customers are and what they need. The biggest, most critical failure with customers I have had a profound failure and that was when I came up with an idea to create character avatars on the internet that people could control and that could walk and talk on any website. This idea was so compelling that we had, yes, Disney, and all these entertainment companies, all these singers and entertainment people, flocking to us saying, “This is an amazing idea. We want to work with you.” We raised a lot of capital and put this idea out there into the world. Then, all of a sudden, we discovered that people would use our application for a while and then leave. We had to find that magic key that got people to come back and stay and engage long-term because unless we had them long-term, we couldn't make enough money to acquire more customers. We were battling against this new social network: Facebook. Biggest success with customers One of my biggest successes came very early in my career. It was my first product. The game was called Gazillionaire. The role was, ironically, what I do today: teaching people to become entrepreneurs. So, teaching them how to become gazillionaires. I put all my personal savings into this. Steve’s recommendation of a tool Startup incubators and accelerators. WeChat It allows you to communicate with friends, do business deals, engage...

Ep. 235 – Steven Hoffman: You can’t generate demand. Demand is either out there or not. In that case, you should kill the product and move on.

Vikrant Shaurya is the CEO and Founder of BestsellingBook.com. He’s also the author of two #1 bestsellers: P.O.W.E.R: The Success Mantra, and How to Write a Bestseller: Become a Bestselling Author, Attract High-Value Clients, and Skyrocket Your Authority. Vikrant is the most-viewed author for “eBook Publishing” on Quora and is recognized by the National Academy of Bestselling Authors.   Most passionate about I'm in the book publishing industry, where I help entrepreneurs publish their books. We help them turn their ideas into best-selling books through “done for you” book writing, publishing, and marketing services. Vikrant’s career and story Eleven to 12 years ago, I had just graduated from high school and my dad asked me, “What do you want to become in your life?” At that point, I had no idea, no clue. I was 16 or 17 and I had no vision at all for myself. I was just trying to enjoy my life. I told him that I wanted to be an engineer. I come from India and there is a kind of mentality that if you're not a doctor or engineer, people think that you are a failure. My dad thought that I was serious about my career and in my life. He sold his land so that I could be admitted to an engineering college. One day, I found this book by Robert Kiyosaki called “Rich Dad Poor Dad.” I decided to do something of my own. The very same day, I dropped out of college. I started looking for a business idea and within a few months, I got one. I got some loans from my relatives, my seniors, my friends, and started a business that hired a bunch of employees. I made so many mistakes and within six months I had completely run out of money. I was 18 at the time. Then I discovered self-publishing. This was my introduction to self-publishing or book writing or publishing. I discovered that I could write books, publish books, and make some money out of it. I started writing books. The first book took just 21 days to write. I published that book and in the first month I made $27 in royalties. I wrote another book in just three days and published it. I also did some marketing and that month I made around $440. I started offering a coaching program through Facebook. I also added coaching fees, so I started making some money from that as well. Within one year, I had launched dozens of courses and eBooks and also helped thousands of students with my courses and coaching programs. Best advice for entrepreneurs My simple advice would be, “start small, think big.” One of the mistakes I made when I started with my first business was doing the complete opposite. I was starting big and thinking small. With my current business, I started very, very small. It was a one-person company, and only when I began to see the opportunity, I hire employees one by one. Now we have more than 40 people in the company and more than a thousand freelance partners. The biggest, most critical failure with customers We help our clients become bestsellers but one client had this expectation that he would be selling billions of copies of his book. We take care of the launch for one or two months—like, we start, we do the marketing, we do the promotion, and we do the sales. There was a communication gap as well, which I had, where we mentioned something and he interpreted it as something else. I had to make a tough decision. We had helped him write the book, publish the book, but because we had some negative reviews, I had to refund him the money. But the thing is, I learned with the process. That's why, whenever a new client comes, we send them a proposal. Biggest success with customers A client came to us three or four years ago. He offered a physical product. By this point, [we had been] helping people who were in the information industries, like people who were speakers or coaches, experts, people who had some kind of a messaging story to share. But this entrepreneur came to us with a physical product, like a physical store where he offered a natural...

Ep. 234 – Vikrant Shaurya’s best advice: “start small, think big.” in my first business, I was doing the complete opposite and ran out of money in six months…”

Anthony Blatner is a tech founder, ex-IBMer, and the founder of Speedwork Social: a top LinkedIn advertising agency. After watching a lot of companies with great products or services fail because of ineffective marketing, Anthony started Speedwork Social to help those businesses unlock their B2B marketing potential and achieve explosive growth. By blending his experience in marketing and software, Anthony helps businesses reach high-level decision makers at scale using LinkedIn Ads and technology. Having managed millions in ad spend and generated over 100,000 new sales opportunities, it is safe to say Anthony is one of the top leading LinkedIn ads experts in the industry and in a way, is only getting started.   Most passionate about I'm one of those people who spends more time on LinkedIn than any other platform. My specialty is helping people with LinkedIn ads. That's what I do day in and day out. We specialize in helping create and manage LinkedIn ads and campaigns for different types of B2B organizations. Best advice for entrepreneurs The thing that I end up talking about the most is, if you're an entrepreneur and you're starting a business, talking about the sales and marketing funnel or how you're going to market your business. If you're a new business and you're starting your marketing, and if you're not seeing a direct “contact us” or “free consultation” working out, you'll probably need to lower the barrier to entry and think about focusing your content more on your customer. The biggest, most critical failure with customers Before I started Speedwork, which is a marketing agency and my current businesses, I had a mobile app development agency. Here in Austin, Texas, we built a whole lot of different mobile apps for a variety of companies. We would build software for them. What we noticed was, after you build an app, you have to put it on the App Store. Then you worry about getting downloads. We saw, in the early days of the iPhone, it was possible to put an app on the App Store, go viral, get a lot of downloads, and be successful in that way. I'd say the biggest challenge was seeing startups spend so much time and money and effort on a new app, but then not think about the distribution and the go-to-market strategy. They’d put it on the App Store and just see it flop. Biggest success with customers I'd say, for my own journey, it is focusing on LinkedIn ads. When I first started my marketing career, I tried out a lot of different areas. At the time, I never would have guessed that I would be focusing on LinkedIn. Anthony’s recommendation of a tool Google Data Studio It's going to tell you something about the stats that can help you optimize campaigns. Google Data Studio itself is free. We're able to blend data from various sources. I can compare, LinkedIn numbers versus CRM numbers and sales numbers. Anthony’s one key success factor It is my technical background as I approached the marketing world. I appreciate the technical skills that I have. I'd say my differentiator is being able to be comfortable with the tech side.   Anthony’s Mountain Since we believe that the best way for entrepreneurs to get fast, big, and sustainable success is by leading your (new) market category, and the entire entrepreneurial journey reminds me of mountaineering, I want to ask you: Is there a mountain you dream of climbing or a mountain you have already climbed? I do have a relationship with a mountain. I've gotten really into running over the last few years. I've done a bunch of random marathons and I’m part of a run club. I like to do a lot of running. Maybe entrepreneurship or startups, you know—you can go at something by yourself and it's going to take a lot of work and training by yourself to hone your skills and learn things. But there are also the times when you're going to need to rely on other people. You’ll need to surround yourself with other people who are going to push you and whom...

Ep. 233 – Anthony Blatner: “You’re not going to be able to do everything by yourself. You’ll need to surround yourself with other people that will push you and whom you’re going to learn from.”

Dan McGaw is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker and the CEO of McGawdotio, an analytics and marketing technology consultancy and SaaS platform, UTM.io. In addition, Dan also finds time to be a 500 Startups Mentor, and has previously started the first business accelerator in Orlando. He’s also a thought leader in the MarTech world and CXL instructor on the topic. Having spoken at the leading Marketing conferences and online events, including Traction Conf and Forget The Funnel, his expertise lies in helping businesses extract and interpret the right data to grow their revenue exponentially. Dan previously served as the Head of Marketing at Kissmetrics and in the past he’s worked as a CMO consultant for a number of high-growth companies, implementing tools, offering support, and analyzing data. In 2015, Dan was selected to be a United States Ambassador of Entrepreneurship by the United States Department of State, where he had the privilege to advise the government, universities, and private corporations on how to build entrepreneur ecosystems. He even flew out to Mexico to be an entrepreneur ambassador for Tijuana and Mexicali! Dan lives in Orlando, Florida with his wife, 3 sons and two French Bulldogs. He’s a keen runner and a self made millionaire who grew up in the ghetto, fought his way out, and is very grateful for the hardships he had in life as it taught him the persistence and grit required to succeed today.   Most passionate about What I'm most passionate about today, of course, is marketing technology and marketing analytics. This is a big area where I spend a lot of my time. I love building marketing technology and sales technology stacks with our clients and with a lot of different people. Best advice for entrepreneurs Focus on generating revenue. To do sales, you have to talk to customers, you have to talk to prospects, you have to get out there and sell your product better to generate revenue. That's the fastest way to grow. I'm a big believer in bootstrapping. Sometimes it's much easier to sell and get your customers, and not only to raise money. The biggest, most critical failure with customers In consulting, I have experienced some fascinating ways that we can fail companies. We just had a client that we worked with and, unfortunately, my team member who was leading the project was not capable of doing the work. So, failure happens. Seven years ago, a team member here stole company intellectual property. Basically, we came up with a business idea. I'm in a meeting. We could build this, but we're not going to build it right now because we have a client that it’s conflicting with. Two months later, all of a sudden, in a meeting, the guy’s doing a demo and accidentally shares his screen. On his screen, he shows a Trello board, which has this product on it. We decided to terminate that employee. Unfortunately, the employee also had access to all of our customers and databases. This team member thought it was appropriate to steal one of our customer's email lists and then promote their product, which is competitive to that customer, to their email list. That was a huge data breach for us. Obviously, we and our client attacked this person with lawyers and all that stuff. But it really changed my perspective on, like, “Hey, listen. People are going to do really, really shitty things and you've got to cover your ass.” Biggest success with customers One thing that I would say was a super big success for us—I don't know if it was luck or if I'm just smart—but for the first year and a half or two years, we didn't really have a niche. We were just taking clients for digital marketing and marketing and technology. We were flailing about to whoever would give us money. There were agencies that did analytics, there were agencies that did marketing automation, there were agencies that did CRM, all these specialty shops. We said, “Nobody is focusing on building you a tech stack. Nobody is...

Ep. 232 – Dan McGaw Best Advice: “Focus on generating revenue. Sometimes it’s much easier to sell and get your customers, not only to raise money.”

Mark Firth spent a large portion of his life working a corporate job in London, but he was left feeling unfulfilled and in need of creating an impact. He decided to take an extended break and visit Colombia, not knowing it would be one of the best decisions of his life. Mark met, fell in love and quickly started a family in Columbia, but he didn't have a job. To support his new family, he wanted to start an online business and remembered that when he worked for corporate companies, like IBM and Siemens, he used LinkedIn to prospect and book qualified sales calls through a personalized approach based on human-to-human connection. In 2017, he founded Linkedpreneurs where he combined traditional B2B sales and online marketing to generate leads. He has helped thousands of business owners and solopreneurs to consistently book qualified calls that become clients through LinkedIn using their personal connection system called Emotional Brand Intelligence. In return, his clients have more time, money and freedom to make an impact and change their life.   Most passionate about We help people grow their businesses. We help them see situations and environmental stimuli and friends and conversations differently from how they did in the past. Ultimately, growing a business is not about just implementing a load of tactics and strategy. It's also about being in alignment, doing things that you want to do, and starting to see things in different ways. Mark’s career and story I started in corporate life. I was at IBM, Siemens, and then at a series of startups. I was trained by Tony Robbins coaches and I've been on a big personal development journey myself. It's my fundamental belief that you cannot lead where you have not been and, as I said, you cannot teach what you do not know. So, I've also been through the frameworks. I can’t force people to change, but I can create an environment. Best advice for entrepreneurs The best advice I can give to any entrepreneur is to just keep on testing. I believe in helping people create the desire to test stuff and try new stuff, as that is when success really comes. When people start being themselves and start doing things their own way, they find this groove and flow that really suit them. The biggest, most critical failure with customers I deleted an entire email list of 10,000 people in error and the backup failed. You need to be in control of your audience. You should have your own target audience. Many people will get a benefit from having a podcast, even though they're not necessarily paying customers. And my email list was that version of it. And I deleted it by mistake. That was a complete failure for me. It was awful. Biggest success with customers This comes down to innovation. It really does. It’s about finding new ways of doing things, discovering new things, improving our products, improving our service. That's something we've always done. We started with automated messaging, and as soon as that became effective, we had already innovated a new process. Mark’s recommendation of a tool I recommend anything that gives you multichannel and allows you to own your audience. I always concentrate on having emails, SMS, phone numbers. Don't trust something you don't control. That's a recipe for disaster anywhere in life. Mark’s one key success factor Just getting up, even when I get knocked down, has helped me become successful.   Mark’s Mountain Since we believe that the best way for entrepreneurs to get fast, big, and sustainable success is by leading your (new) market category, and the entire entrepreneurial journey reminds me of mountaineering, I want to ask you: Is there a mountain you dream of climbing or a mountain you have already climbed? I think people forget to look in the rearview mirror of life at how many skills they've learned, how many experiences they've had, how many people they've helped. Mothers who brought up kids, fathers who've done the...

Ep. 231 – Mark Firth: “You need to be in control of your audience. You should have your own audiences like an email list, podcast listeners, or phone numbers”.

Karl Maier founded Abunden to help internal and external business advisors be even more effective in helping their clients to grow and succeed. Abunden is the third software company Karl has co-founded. In his various roles over the past three decades, he has been part of the leadership team in six established companies which have at least doubled sales in two years. Leveraging his successes, Karl developed the Abunden Framework© and led the development of the practical management tools in the Abunden Tools App. These online SaaS (Software as a Service) tools build the management structure for companies to grow and succeed. Karl received both his MBA and BA from Rice University in Houston. has been the chairperson for the Rice University Business Network and the Houston District Export Council as well as a board member for TiE Houston.   Most passionate about I'm working to help make coaching better and using technology tools to do that. I’m working on tools to help coaches and business advisors be even better. I see the path forward as adding even more tools and technology to improve coaching and make it more of a 24/7 type of experience for people. Karl’s career and story I started reading The Wall Street Journal and The Economics. I went to university and studied economics, got my MBA, and went into consulting. Over the years, I've been involved with information systems, computer systems. I've done finance, accounting, processes, many different things. Over the decades, I've put together what I’ve seen, the keys to growing companies. To me, it’s the most fundamental. Early in my career, I was part of a large consulting organization. I was part of a team doing projects. We grew from 23 people to over 350 people in about 30 months. Best advice for entrepreneurs The customer is critical. One of my mentors said, many years ago, that nothing happens until you sell something. So, obviously, that starts with the customer. I think the principal is to talk to a number of different potential customers and really understand what their problem is. Can you solve it in a way that they're willing to pay for? That's the most fundamental part of starting a business, in my mind. Then you have the option to be Hands-on all the pieces of the company, but that limits your growth, or are you willing to transform and delegate it to other people to grow the company? I think that’s a very fundamental choice, one that I would encourage people to reflect on and decide which way they really want to go. The biggest, most critical failure with customers My first software startup was during the dot-com boom. Everybody said, “Technology is going to solve all the problems.” I think I got sucked into that and I really didn't understand my customers. I was ignoring how the products were actually bought and sold. In the end, the company failed because of that. So that's a lesson. We remember failures better than our wins, I think. Biggest success with customers We had a service company in the health safety industry. I was part of the C-suite management team. And we really did build a team. There was great communication and connection. People respected each other. They worked hard and were able to really understand what our customer's problem was. High-value people were getting malaria and getting sick. We were able to come in and cut their malaria rate in half the first year and then half again the second year. So we clearly were solving their problem. We were able to come in and solve a problem, do it effectively. We were able to grow the company. We grew it in four years by a factor of seven. Karl’s recommendation of a tool LinkedIn This has been a great tool for identifying people whom we can begin to build relationships with and get to know. LinkedIn is a fantastic tool and a bit underestimated place where people are free to buy things. It's okay to sell them through LinkedIn. People are coming together to do business. The

Ep. 230 – Karl Maier: “The team is how you make the work. Any one player can only go solar, but as a team you can go much further.”

Jess Chan is the Founder & CEO at Longplay, a full-service email marketing agency for DTC e-commerce brands. Within 6 months of launching Longplay, Jess helped brands increase email revenue by 639% within 90 days and increase average order value by over 67%. Prior to Longplay, Jess was the Chief Marketing Officer at DTC brand Best Self Co where she saw the unique opportunities and challenges e-commerce brands faced in nurturing, converting & retaining customers that fueled her to launch Longplay. Jess has spoken at events such as DX3 and Digital Growth Summit, and has been featured in Entrepreneur, Influencer Hustle & Thought Catalog.   Most passionate about Most of my time is spent building up Longplay, which is our full-service email marketing agency for e-commerce brands. Now that our business is more established and we have our foundations down, we are doing a little bit more exploring of new business initiatives, whether it’s launching courses or having exploring partnerships to bring the business to the next level. Also, we are exploring starting an e-commerce business as well. Jess’s career and story I work in marketing now, and obviously in entrepreneurship, but my background is in actuarial science and economics. That’s pretty much as far away from marketing as possible. With actuarial science obviously, the focus was on statistics and working in insurance companies and risk modeling. In my last year of college, I found a job posting for a marketing assistant and e-commerce company. At that point, I had zero experience in marketing. So, I started off as a marketing assistant and learned a lot in the first few months. I dove right in. When I graduated, I think it was nine or 10 months later, they promoted me to chief marketing officer. That was how I got my start in marketing and digital marketing. Best advice for entrepreneurs My best advice would be to just get started and figure it out along the way. I think the biggest reason entrepreneurs fail is that they try to have that perfect plan, they try to have it all figured out. The biggest, most critical failure with customers I'd say the biggest failure with customers has been not setting expectations and not having boundaries for my team or myself. We got off to a strong start, but we had to slow down and build those foundations. I think that was a good reminder: If you grow fast, then you slow down and fix the foundations. Biggest success with customers My biggest success is the fact that like Longplay, as a business, exists and is somehow working and profitable and growing. I really had so little experience and it all moved very quickly. The big success was about building an amazing product, an amazing service that had a market fit and really solved a pain point for customers. Jess’s recommendation of a tool Shopify and Klaviyo if you're on e-commerce. Sauna and Slack Google Drive Jess’s one key success factor My one key success factor is figuring it out as you go and trusting in that. When you trust in your ability to figure things out, it removes all of those barriers to getting started or kicking things off.   Jess’s Mountain Since we believe that the best way for entrepreneurs to get fast, big, and sustainable success is by leading your (new) market category, and the entire entrepreneurial journey reminds me of mountaineering, I want to ask you: Is there a mountain you dream of climbing or a mountain you have already climbed? I haven’t climbed any actual mountains but the bounce that I'm wishing to climb next is starting to build a portfolio of different businesses. I've gotten the first one off the ground and it's still growing. We have a really great vision and trajectory for it. Building out that empire, I guess, of e-commerce brands, agencies, services, even physical locations. Seeing where the journey of entrepreneurship takes me and what the next business will be.   The best ways to connect...

Ep. 229 – Jess Chan’s best advice: “just get started and figure it out along the way… entrepreneurs fail when they try to have it all figured out.”

Roger Hardy is a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years’ experience building several technology businesses to successful exits. Hardy founded Coastal Contacts Inc. in 2000, instantly re-writing the business model for contact lens sales and delivery. Drawing from his previous logistics expertise and industry knowledge, Roger seized the newly emerging e-commerce revolution. Roger led Coastal to become the largest online retailer of eyewear and vision related products until it was acquired by Essilor International in what was the largest e-commerce transaction in Canadian history at the time. In 2018 Roger co-founded KITS Eyewear Ltd. alongside Joseph Thompson and Sabrina Liak. As CEO, Hardy has led KITS through unprecedented growth with a 47% year over year revenue increase.   Most passionate about We built Coastal Contacts, my sister and I, from startup to a NASDAQ-listed public company and then sold it in 2014, for almost half a billion dollars. Since then, we've been doing investments in real estate and technology. We kept coming back to the optical category. We were excited about the opportunity in optical. It has always gotten us interested in trying to serve customers in a way that exceeded their expectations. We've been working on KITS Eyecare here out of Vancouver, Canada, mostly focused on the eye care business for North America. Roger’s career and story I worked in the vision category, and while I was working there, I was struck by the fact that I felt that customers were underserved. I think part of it was the timing. The internet was just getting going. And so, like I said, my sister and I built a website and started selling contact lenses. The first day, we had 16 orders. In the first month we had 70,000 in sales, and in the first year we had two and a half million in sales. In the second year, we had 10 million in sales. So, we really knew there was an unmet need in terms of savings and convenience for customers. At that time, the technology innovation was just a website—just putting it online. Today, I think the real technology innovation, like I said, that eye exam just makes it easier for customers to do it online from home or the office, anytime, 24/7, day or night. They can really step into that. The first thing we worked on was growing our subscription business for contact lenses. Today, that's about 25% of our company. The second thing we worked on is vertical integration. We made sure that we had the most technologically advanced optical lab in North America. Best advice for entrepreneurs Build businesses that serve customers. I think NPS is a great measure to use. What we find is that the more we can focus on and listen to customers and remove any challenges in our business, it takes the experience up for customers. That ultimately is a driver of financial results. It's our opinion that the company with the highest NPS in every category ultimately has the highest value in that category. I would put it as: You want to be getting direct feedback from your customers. You want to be removing all the choke points, anything that's friction, anything that they tell you is even a slight displeasure. You want every customer to be wowed by the experience of being served by you. The biggest, most critical failure with customers I don't want to name names, but we used a payments company that we thought of as being very innovative. We did the due diligence on the company. We thought, ‘These guys are really cutting edge and customers are gonna love this.’ It was a different way of making payments and it was on the front. But that company kind of overstated what they could do. Ultimately, it was a significant cost for us. They had problems processing transactions and their technology didn't keep up with their promises or commitments. We want to be innovative, but with innovation comes some bumps. So, I think you're going to see some challenges when you test things. Biggest success with...

Ep. 228 – Roger Hardy built a NASDAQ-listed public company with his sister and sold it for almost half a billion dollars. Today he found a new opportunity in the eye care business.

Andrea Owen is an author, global speaker, and professional certified life coach who helps high-achieving women maximize unshakeable confidence, and master resilience. She has taught hundreds of thousands of women tools and strategies to be able to empower themselves to live their most kick-ass life through speaking, her books, coaching, and her wildly popular podcast with over 3 million downloads. Andrea is creating a global impact in women’s empowerment with her books being translated into 18 languages and available in 22 countries. When she’s not juggling her full coaching practice or writing books, Andrea is busy riding her Peloton bike, chasing her two school-aged children or making out with her husband, Jason. She is also a retired roller derby player having skated under the name “Veronica Vain”.   Most passionate about After about 10 years as an entrepreneur, I am focused mostly on speaking on stages and writing books. Andrea’s career and story I Have an interesting story that’s that involves my personal life ae well. I was previously in the fitness industry. I was in my late 20s and was in my first marriage, to someone different from whom I'm married to now. I had heard about life coaching. This was back in about 2002, 2003—very early in the infancy of life coaching as an industry. I was telling my then husband about it, and he was saying, “I think you would be great at this. ,However you need more life experience”. A couple of years later, my husband had a love affair with our neighbor and got her pregnant. So I got my life experience. My life experience got worse before it got better. I got into another terrible, abusive relationship. By the time I was 31, I’d had my rock bottom experience and decided to change my life. I took responsibility for my life. That's how the life coaching portion started. A couple of years into that, I decided to write a book. The university opened the doors for me. I got a traditional book deal with a small publisher, which got my foot in the door. Now I'm on my third book. It has all just fallen into place from there. Best advice for entrepreneurs You have to ask for help, whether that is with a therapist, your best friend, or your partner. Success doesn't happen in a vacuum. There have to be people who come to support you. That's what I would tell people to work on: Start there if they're having problems with something. This is probably something you've talked about on your show: You have to get very clear on who it is whom you serve and what it is that you do in your work. Don't be afraid to tweak and change this over time. The biggest, most critical failure with customers There have been several of them and they're all connected in my industry, in online life coaching. It's very scalable to offer group coaching. It's the one-to-many model versus one-to-one and it's the best way to scale your business. So, I started doing that and had some success, but for the most part, it wasn't that lucrative. I would say that facilitating group programs was probably my zone of competence. People would say that I was pretty great at it, but I really didn't like it all that much. I didn't look forward to it. It wasn't where I could really shine. For years I tried, and again, it was profitable enough, but not worth the energy I was putting out there. A few years ago, I decided, “I don't want to do this anymore.” It didn't make any sense because, from a marketing standpoint, it’s kind of the only way to scale. I just decided, “You know what? I'm not going to do it anymore.” Biggest success with customers My last book, which came out in 2018, was sold to Hachette Books, a division there. It’s a major publisher and the book ended up selling extremely well. It has been translated into 18 languages now and has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Here's why I think it was successful. First, because I wrote that book and insisted on the title, because that is how I talk to my...

Ep. 227 – Andrea Owen: “Success doesn’t happen in a vacuum! You have to ask for help, whether that is with a therapist, your best friend, or your partner.”

Chris “Mercer” Mercer, co-founder of MeasurementMarketing, is a sought after measurement marketing expert. Mercer (as he’s known) and his team have been helping marketers, marketing teams, and agencies measure their marketing so they know what’s working and what’s not. First by planning out what’s important to measure in their marketing, then how to actually measure it (using tools like Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics), creating dashboards that are actually useful, and pulling actionable insights from what’s being measured to begin forecasting and optimizing future results. Mercer spends countless hours reading, practicing, adjusting and innovating to improve his skill set. He has a knack for teaching, and is known for his ability to simplify even the most complex ideas for his audience. He can be found speaking at conferences and events, such as Traffic & Conversion, Social Media Marketing World, Content Jam, TravelCon, Digital Elite Camp, Baby Bathwater Institute, and others.   Most passionate about I'm very passionate about the art of systems as it relates to measurement, but also as it relates to entrepreneurship and building brands that are very customer-centric and listening to customer journeys. I think that is absolutely what I am obsessed with right now—figuring out how to perfect those things. Mercer’s career and story My main background is sales management. I come from everything managing sort of a pipeline by nature. When we moved online, I created a WordPress site to show people how to do WordPress sites, essentially. It was like a membership site. That led very quickly to people saying, “This is a lot of work. Can you build our sites for us?” We created an agency and that's where we sort of grew, digital marketing-wise. We said, “Okay, we're going to build the site and we will also help you optimize the site”—something called “conversion rate optimization.” In order to optimize, and in order to improve, like, an opt-in rate or a conversion rate for a purchase, you have to know what that rate is. We set up Google Analytics for our clients. We would deliver the site with their Google Analytics and say, “Here’s how you can tell any leads you got from Facebook.” Almost overnight, when we made that shift, we started getting a lot of referrals from clients, but they weren't referrals for sites. They were people coming to us saying, “We already have a way but we need help with our Google Analytics.” We wanted to eventually diversify the business because that was a great business. It's still a great channel of revenue for us, but we wanted to be able to diversify. Best advice for entrepreneurs I think the keyword is going to be deceptively simple, but it's listening to your customer. If you take a second to listen, they will tell you, “Yeah, you're kind of on the right track, but maybe do this instead, or do it in this particular way.” All of a sudden, it becomes a lot easier to grow a business when we listen to our market. The biggest, most critical failure with customers It was when I did the exact opposite of what we just talked about—when I wasn't listening. I was telling the customer, “Here's how this thing works.” The thing that comes to mind for us is that we have a certification program where we will work with agencies. I think sometimes, too, ‘If it's our idea, it's a good idea,’ but it doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea. It's just our idea. Biggest success with customers We were making some changes to one of our offers. Our do-it-yourself training program is called the Measurement Marketing Academy and it's a just-in-time learning platform to learn all this stuff. We noticed way too many people going to the cart, but we weren’t creating more sales. We saw this immediately in our dashboard, and it was weird. It was an odd behavior. So, we went back to our page. We had forgotten to put the price. So, they were going to the cart but not to purchase. They were going...

Ep. 226 – Chris Mercer “What I am obsessed with is figuring out how to perfect systems as it relates to measurement, entrepreneurship and listening to customer journeys.”

Aidan Sowa is an entrepreneur who got into the digital marketing space in 2016 due to working with the MIT Enterprise Forum Cambridge. Aidan is now the founder and CEO of Sowa Marketing Agency. Sowa Marketing Agency specializes in helping luxury realtor get featured in the media, guaranteed. Aidan believes all entrepreneurs have the choice to differentiate themselves from their competition or die as a commodity.   Most passionate about I'm the CEO and founder of Sowa Marketing Agency. Essentially, we specialize in helping luxury realtors become the authority in the industry by getting featured on major media sites, like Yahoo, Forbes, and the like worked. Within the next nine years, we’ll try to reach nine figures. Aidan’s career and story I originally worked with the MIT Enterprise Forum Cambridge. Learned a bit about digital marketing. Eventually, I decided to start my own company around digital marketing, to help entrepreneurs. I wanted to see how that would work. And it did work. I would just have to experiment a lot. Best advice for entrepreneurs My best advice for any entrepreneur who's starting out is to set their goals; to focus on monthly, yearly, 10-year goals and be able to play it down. So many people start at the beginning of the year and have all these big goals in mind and then they eventually give up. I highly recommend that people really nail down their goals so they know exactly what needs to be done. The biggest, most critical failure with customers I would probably say that my biggest failure as a business owner was taking on every single customer. That was a big mistake because when people came in with really high expectations, I would take them on anyway. And then we've them frustrated with me. When I first started my company, that led to chargeback and almost ruined my business. It was a painful experience. I was fortunate enough that this didn't happen, but it was definitely a pretty devastating blow. Biggest success with customers One of the biggest things we did is start utilizing our own marketing methods for ourselves. So, being able to not just be seen like any other business, but being able to generate positive media presence and being able to build out our social media services. I feel like that has really impacted the way our customers have seen us, especially all these luxury realtors. They can see for themselves that we truly believe in what we're selling. We're not just trying to sell them on something. It's something of real value. Aidan’s recommendation of a tool For us, social media is the easiest way to reach customers. We still get a huge number of clients just by sending out messages on Instagram. We're also doing the traditional kinds of social media stories. LinkedIn We have the entire profile built out, and things of that nature, and we've actually automated our invitations. That way, we’re reaching out to clients every single day. Aidan’s one key success factor One of my key success factors is believing in myself and being able to follow through on what I want to do. It's one thing to write something down, and it’s another thing to take action and really make your goals all day. So, being able to take action is probably the key thing.   Aidan’s Mountain Since we believe that the best way for entrepreneurs to get fast, big, and sustainable success is by leading your (new) market category, and the entire entrepreneurial journey reminds me of mountaineering, I want to ask you: Is there a mountain you dream of climbing or a mountain you have already climbed? I've definitely climbed a couple of mountains. I mean, entrepreneurship is sort of like that—just trying to reach new peaks. Once you get to the top, you realize you're not that high at all. There's so much more out there. I feel like that's one of the really cool things about entrepreneurship, as it really opens up your worldview. [caption id="attachment_5825" align="aligncenter"...

Ep. 225 – Aidan Sowa is aiming to reach nine figures in nine years

The 3 shared traits behind successful entrepreneurshipsIt took me fourteen years of research that included following 120 entrepreneurs from their first stages, Interviewing more than 200 successful entrepreneurs, and listening to thousands of them. Here are the three factors of the Formula for Entrepreneurial Business Success.   1. New / Non- existing thing - that’s needed Jon Lee Dumas invented a daily podcast, Jeff bullas started to write about social media when the first innovators seeked for information, Mike Stelzner started to share content for free, Douglas Burdett started to interview authors of new marketing books, John Nemo cracked the code for selling through LinkedIn, Pam Wasley established the interim executive model, Mike Allton built websites for clients and shared content about social media to find more customers when he realized that what his customers really wanted was to learn about how they can use social media. So, he became a blogger and social media educator. and the list goes on. You don’t need to be the first, and you don’t need to be the only one in the world that offers that product or service, you do need to be the first or unique among your target audience. The story I heard in my interview with Mike Allton is a great example not only for choosing a new needed service (or in that case, information) but what it takes to find it. Mike Allton Mike Allton is a Content Marketing Practitioner, award-winning Blogger, and Author in St. Louis, and the Chief Marketing Officer at SiteSell. He has been working with websites and the Internet since the early ’90s and is active on all of the major social networks. Mike teaches a holistic approach to content marketing that leverages blog content, social media and SEO to drive traffic, generate leads, and convert those leads into sales. Mike’s entrepreneurship I started the Social Media Hat back in 2012. At that time, I had been building websites, and as part of that website business, I was blogging about social media marketing in order to give my prospects and customers helpful information. It didn’t attract people who needed websites, it attracted people that already had a website and wanted to learn about their social media opportunity. So, as a result, I wasn’t growing my online business, but I discovered that I like to write and I like to teach people how to use social media blogging. I realized that the content doesn’t help to sell websites, however, I decided to create a site about social media blogging and that what I did. I’ve used my site as a testing ground for anything related to online marketing. I execute the test and write about it and I found out my audience really appreciates those kinds of insights. And in the meantime, I was experiencing making money through the website and I tested that as well. Affiliate relationships, Google AdWords, Display ads, and many other monetization techniques. The most successful way to make money is to have a product that can you sell a lot of, so it can scale.   2. Technology is a success factor Andres Pira started to use VR systems that allow his real estate clients to walk through and see what they are buying, without actually being there, and sold an extensive amount of units just with this technology. Dorothéa Bozicolona-Volpe uses technological listening tools to focus on understanding customers’ needs to help her clients make their digital transformation. Paul Bratby got some geeks that turned his trading strategy that hasn’t lost a quote for 15 years, into a software. Mellissah Smith worked with a development team that developed the technology for developing automatic marketing strategies without a human. You don’t necessarily need to develop a new technological tool (although sometimes that’s what leaded entrepreneurs towards a billion-dollar company market cap). However, you must find the technology that will allow you to boost your entrepreneurship to a meaningful...

Ep. 224 – Is there a formula for reaching Entrepreneurial Business Success?

Kevin Urrutia is the co-founder of New York based Voy Media who specialise in creating for clients Facebook and Instagram ads that are sophisticated and super creative. Kevin's team are usually half on site and half around the world. During lockdown they have all. been working remotely. Kevin also has his own podcast - Digital Marketing Fastlane which helps you to build. launch, grow and scale a successful online business. Kevin is a travel and nature enthusiast. In his spare time, you can find him hiking through Mount Fuji or booking his next adventure.   Most passionate about For me, the most passionate route is marketing. We do a lot of online marketing here at my current company, which is Voy Media, but it's not just online marketing for other brands. I still do my online marketing for my own companies. I have my own e-commerce brands that I'm working on. What I'm most passionate about is doing marketing for other brands, but using those skills to make my own businesses in my own companies. Kevin’s career and story We started marketing. A marketing agency wasn't something I wanted to start. When I was running my other companies, I wanted to connect with other founders and entrepreneurs to help them with their stuff. Initially, I thought that Voy Media was going to be a great way to invest in startups. It was a way for me to meet entrepreneurs, but then that turned into, “Hey! We need help with advertising. We need help with marketing.” That led us to turn into a traditional business model. That's how we came up. Best advice for entrepreneurs My best advice is, for approaching the customer, consider: If you were that customer, how would you want to market your product? How would you want to sell the product? How would you want to handle complaints or returns? I always think about it like that. The biggest, most critical failure with customers At one point, like any business, you over-promise stuff that you can do. As a new entrepreneur, you always want to over-promise. You want to promise and over-deliver, but sometimes you make the mistake of saying, “Yep, I could do that.” And then you get overwhelmed because you don't know how to solve the problem. You know how to solve their issue. Then the customer does get upset. That’s something I think about. It really affects your journey. When you're working with your new company, you want to minimize those moments. A lot of times, they're just not fun to deal with. And they stick with you for a few days or months. Biggest success with customers It was when I was doing the cleaning company. We really focused on making it super easy for customers to book and tell us what they wanted for their cleaning. I liked that because it made them trust us to book a service. Cleaning is a very personal thing. You're literally letting a stranger into your home. By having a great, simple price, by answering phone calls, by answering customers’ text messages to us about their apartments, we made customers feel comfortable booking with us. It’s being very customer-focused and customer-centric and trying to figure out what they want. Kevin’s recommendation of a tool Ebook/Book The book that's really helping me think about marketing, think about sales and business, is DotCom Secrets by Russell Brunson. It talks about how to run a business and how to make money running a business. It teaches you the core fundamentals of marketing and sales. Kevin’s one key success factor I think my key success factor is that I believe in myself. Anything is really about just believing in yourself. We tell people, “Just buckle down, turn off the TV, and start learning.” Then you can literally do whatever you want and change your life. Problem-solving techniques Try to be a great problem-solver and see an issue.   Kevin’s Mountain Since we believe that the best way for entrepreneurs to get fast, big, and sustainable success is by leading your (new) market category, and the...

Ep. 223 – Kevin Urrutia made it super easy for his customers to connect with the company. That what led to his biggest success

The REACH OR MISS podcast is about the customer focused entrepreneur. Hayut Yogev chats with Guy Kawasaki, John Lee Dumas, Michael Stelzner, Kate Erickson, Chris Brogan, Mark Schaefer, Joe Pulizzi, Marcus Sheridan and more successful entrepreneurs and opinion leaders about their Customers Approach and Focus. The goal is to help entrepreneurs and startup founders to reach business success with the right strategy, marketing and sales approach.

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REACH OR MISS - Entrepreneurial Business Success

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