The Influential Personal Brand Podcast

Welcome to another special recap episode, where we’ll do a debrief, recap, and summary of our most recent interview with Juliet Funt. In our previous episode with Juliet, we discussed the battle against reactive busyness through something called white space. Juliet is the CEO of WhiteSpace at Work and an expert in white space, which helps organizations retrieve their talented teams from beneath piles of crushing to-dos and relentless task assaults. In today’s episode, we share our cliff notes from that interview, from making sure to work white space into every day to living the dream and setting up a flexible, virtual business and living on the road. We also share our main takeaways, which include writing a book at any stage of your career and the multiple ways in which we can be successful, as well as growing into your personal brand and doing things at your own pace. Tune in today to find out more!

As leaders, we often find ourselves in the trap of reactive busyness. Our time is under attack, from meetings, emails, and ever-present smartphones. But, if we want to get perspective and assess and enhance our business decisions, we need to take time to reflect. Time to daydream. Time to rest and recuperate. Juliet Funt is the CEO of WhiteSpace at Work, a very successful company that works with a lot of the Fortune 500, including some of the world’s top brands, such as Nike, P&G, Wells Fargo, Hershey’s and Hyatt. Juliet is an expert in something called white space, which helps organizations retrieve their talented teams from beneath piles of crushing to-dos and relentless task assaults. She has managed to build her business while living abroad with her family, living the dream of following her passion, creating an empire, and traveling the world at the same time.

Welcome back to another recap episode! In our previous interview with Jim Cumbee, experienced business intermediary and President of Tennessee Valley Group, we spoke to him about making your business irresistible to buyers. He shared with us how a business is quantitatively valued using a metric called EBITDA, how you can increase your company’s value, and why strong businesses don’t always sell. In this recap, we go over our favorite takeaways from that interview, including building a business that operates without you, the dichotomy between selling a great business and wanting to keep it, recurring revenue, and applying these thought processes to purchasing rather than selling, as well as just having fun and making some money along the way, and the value of having an extensive contact base. Tune in today!

No two businesses are alike and with so many unique elements adding to a company’s success, business appraisal is more art than science. In today’s episode, we talk about making your business irresistible to buyers with Jim Cumbee, a foremost expert on the subject and author of Home Run, A Pro's Guide To Selling Your Business. After introducing Jim, he discusses how a business is quantitatively valued using a metric called EBITDA. While EBITDA provides a good start, Jim emphasizes that smart buyers closely scrutinize the qualitative aspects of a business.

In a previous episode, we spoke to Amanda Tress about how she turned her personal brand into an eight-figure business using a brilliant micro-influencer strategy. Today we recap our key takeaways from our conversation with Amanda, starting with how you can be super successful and still run your business off of Google Sheets. Amanda’s business shows us the importance of focusing on what counts and not needing to have every aspect of your business figured out. On the topic of focusing on what’s important, we talk about how Amanda’s story is a reminder that anything is possible as long as you provide people with something that they need. For our third takeaway, we dive into the concept of micro-influencers.

Word of mouth is still the most powerful marketing tool in the business. Today we speak with Amanda Tress, founder of FASTer Way to Fat Loss, whose micro-influencer and word-of-mouth campaign has grown her business at an astounding— it’s made $65 million in two years. We open the conversation by talking about how Amanda started her program as a side-hustle with only 11 clients. She explains her business model and why not everyone can get certified as a FASTer Way to Fat Loss coach. A key takeaway, Amanda shares how she turned her customer force into her sales force by using her clients as affiliates and influencers.

Few entrepreneurs have had as storied a career as Michael Hyatt, a former CEO and acclaimed author who boasts one of the biggest personal brands on Earth. In this episode, we focus on the key takeaways from our interview with Michael. Our first lesson is an important one — that nothing is more important than your email list. Seen as old-school, we talk about how your email list lets you own your virtual landscape so that you don’t need to rely on a mysterious algorithm that can change in the future. Another point in favor of prioritizing your email, we share how Michael’s revenue is tied to his email list. A profound learning in this difficult time, we then discuss how vision shouldn’t change through chaos but that strategy should. Reflecting on this idea, we share how Brand Builder’s Group pivoted their strategy during the pandemic.

Every business needs a vision to guide it to greatness. And the great thing about having a vision? It doesn’t change in the middle of huge events like a pandemic. We speak about how you can develop your vision with Michael Hyatt whose new book, Vision Driven Leader, is an in-depth guide on the subject. Boasting the rare pedigree of having both led large companies as a CEO and having built businesses as an entrepreneur, we begin our conversation with a dive into how Michael grew his brand into a huge business. We’re talking a million unique website visits a month — that’s how huge his business is.

Josh Linkner is one of the busiest speakers in the world and a foremost thought leader on innovation, and today we recap the biggest takeaways from our recent interview with him. For Josh, being a professional speaker requires mastering three separate crafts: Thought leadership, marketing, and performance. Today we break down what Josh means by this and also discuss his three-part elevator pitch, the value of finding a fresh perspective on your chosen speaking niche, and the implication of the fact that there are four billion dollars of speaking fees booked each year in North America! Make sure you don’t miss this one!

Today’s guest is Josh Linkner and he is about to teach us how to book a hundred keynotes a year in the next 20 minutes! Josh is the world’s foremost expert on innovation both from an academic and an experiential standpoint. He is a five-time tech entrepreneur with a combined exit value of over $200 million, and he has won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award twice. On the thought leadership side, Josh speaks over 100 engagements every year, is the New York Times bestselling author of three books, and writes for publications like Inc and Forbes. For Josh, succeeding in the speaking industry comes down to three things, being a thought leader, a businessperson, and a great performer. Becoming a thought leader requires not just having expert knowledge, but a fresh and unique perspective on your topic of choice too.