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Starting a new business can be an exciting time, full of possibilities! However, it’s not all fun and games - growing a business can be difficult, especially for those that have no prior experience. Are you looking for business coaching or advice on starting and growing a business? If so, you’re in luck! In this episode, Robert Craven shares with us 5 tactical lesson he has learned over the years as an entrepreneur and business growth consultant. Guest: Robert Craven, International Keynote business speaker, author and business growth consultant Robert started his first business at the age of 21 and has since seen almost every aspect of running and growing a business. Voted number 42 in the UK Power 100 for Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurs, Robert has worked on designing and implementing business strategy and marketing projects with household names such as Virgin, Barclays and BlackBerry and has contributed to success stories such as Nando’s, Mitie and Dickies. He has written 10 business books, including

In today’s day and age, we wear many hats. A full-time mother can be a working professional, a part-time graduate student, and a community leader, all at the same time. It’s common. Though some people seem to have it all figured out, many of us struggle to keep it together and stay on top of it all. How do people manage multiple different pursuits and maintain that fine balance between work and life? What drives us to excel in all aspect of life? In this episode, Mitch Joel lets us in on his secrets to juggle work and life. The first two steps to stay on top of it all are to be engaged in what you do and to always be intentional with your time. Listen to find out the rest. Guest - Mitch Joel, President of Mirum, Marketer, Speaker, and Author of Six Pixels of Separation Marketing Magazine dubbed Mitch Joel the "Rock Star of Digital Marketing" and called him, "one of North America's leading digital visionaries." Mitch is the President of the digital marketing agency Mirum, and a podcaster, blogger and spea

You've likely heard the terms Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning thrown around quite a bit. But what does it mean for you? What exactly is AI and how does it differ from Machine Learning? How will it affect marketing and what can we do to prepare for its impact on us? What are concrete examples of its use and what does it mean for our jobs? Should we be concerned? Join us as we invite Jim Sterne to look back at the future and answer this question for us: “If today is 10 years in the future, what would you have wanted to tell your today self about AI and Machine Learning?” In this episode, Jim will share with us the top 5 things you can do now to prepare for the coming AI revolution. Jim Sterne, Founder, eMetrics Summit Co-Founder Digital Analytics Association An internationally known speaker and consultant to Fortune 500 companies and Internet entrepreneurs, Jim Sterne spent more than twenty years in sales and marketing, measuring the value of Digital medium for creating and strengthening custo

The way in which we communicate and share information with our staff can be very revealing about a person, their management style and their industry. Consider how often have you found yourself leaving a leadership meeting and asking “how much should I share with my staff?”. It’s a good and important question, and there is no wrong answer – everybody’s situation is different and some people have constraints to operate within that are outside of their control. But when it comes to transparency around company strategy, the question remains: how much, and what, do you share with your partners, prospects and team? Greg Poirier, Founder & CEO, CloudKettle Greg Poirier is president of CloudKettle, a tech-sector focused digital marketing consultancy company that specializes in scaling Sales, Marketing & Customer Success for B2B SaaS companies. A former manager at Radian6 (acquired by Salesforce) and executive at two other startups, Greg is a sought-after speaker and advisor specializing in digital marketing and

In this episode, we speak with Sarah Calderon about management – specifically how to find, develop and nurture great managers. A great manager will make a tough job challenging and rewarding, and they’ll make a great job fantastic and transformational. But a bad manager will make a great job so-so, and they’ll make a tough job soul crushing. Join us as we discuss what makes good managers and how Google selects, trains and supports new managers in their role. Sarah Calderon, People Development at Google Sarah Calderon is both a manager at Google and oversees the team responsible for Google’s Manager Development curriculum. Prior to this, Sarah worked in coaching, consulting and higher education, gaining experience with managing very small teams of 2 all the way through to teams as large as 100. She is known for her ability to rapidly build rapport with both clients and employees while bringing out the best in them. Sarah has learned a lot from her own managers throughout her career, and when asked about

In this episode we're delving into client relationships. Like any successful relationship, it's important to be engaged, responsive, seek to understand, follow-up and follow-through, deliver on commitments that you make, and when necessary steer into conflict in order to address issues and move forward. We speak with Anke Audenaert about how her approach evolved as she progressed in her career and moved from agency side to client side. Anke Audenaert, Digital Marketing Nanodegree lead at Udacity After close to 8 years as VP of Market Research and VP of Traffic Optimization at Yahoo!, Anke co-founded JumpTime which was later acquired by OpenX, one of the world's leading providers of digital and mobile advertising technology. She is also a founder of Favrit, a company focused on building tools to help consumers bookmark their physical world. Anke is the Nanodegree Lead for Digital Marketing for Udacity, building a unique curriculum with industry partners, focused on hands-on learning for beginning digital

It happens all the time. You’re working and delivering services and in the course of business you come across a process, a system, a problem that you believe you can solve by building a little custom software. Soon enough, you’ve got it built and it's doing the job it’s supposed to do and you think... what if I sold this to another client? It’s not easy to make the transition from selling services to becoming a full-on product company. Many agencies have tried, but few succeed. So what is it about those that succeeded that sets them apart? How did they manage to not lose focus on the services side of the business as they spun up their software efforts? Join us as we speak to Josh Manion about making the transition from services firm to software startup. Guest – Josh Manion, CEO, Ensighten Josh is CEO of Ensighten, a tag management company he founded in 2009. He leads the company’s technology vision and strategic operations. He established Ensighten’s key accounts, including Sony, Microsoft, American Expr

You have the ideas, you've got the skills, you have the drive and you are pushing hard. But often times it’s a struggle to find and land clients, even when you are delivering quality work. So what is it that activates the lead generation machine? How do we achieve name recognition, or have the outbound processes in place to ignite lead generation? Join us as we speak to Cristian Ignat about successfully making this jump through a combination of promotion, hustle & hutzpah – in other words, “fearless marketing”. Cristian Ignat, Founder & CEO of Canopy Cristian Ignat is the founder of Canopy, a Central Europe digital marketing agency based in Romania. Despite his young age, Cristian has been at this game for well over ten years, starting his first company in his bedroom as a side hobby, founding, building and selling another company, and running a large PPC practice for an agency, all prior to founding Canopy. Cristian is a well known figure on the stage of European digital conferences with over 100 appear

The classic entrepreneur trajectory has long since been to get an idea, launch the business, get a client or two, and then grow, grow, grow. Somehow we’ve come to accept the notion that agency success is tied to size and that growth is therefore THE goal. But what if that isn’t the case? In this episode, we dive into the concept of the boutique agency and explore the benefits and drawbacks of this model. We speak with Aleyda Solis about her experiences in making it work, and how to manage your time, your clients, your marketing and resist the siren call of staffing up and going for growth. Guest: Aleyda Solis, Founder, Orainti Aleyda is the founder of Orainti, a boutique SEO agency specializing in international SEO. She is a blogger (Search Engine Land, State of Digital and Moz), a speaker (with more than 80 conferences in 20 countries in English and and published author ("SEO, Las Claves Esenciales"). Aleyda was named by Forbes as one of the 10 Digital Marketing specialists to follow in 2015, and Entrepr

As a leader within an agency, you should strive to be seen as the wise counsel for your client. That’s the person they will call to have in-depth conversations about their business, turn over ideas with and be a go-to source of guidance and advice. While being a wise counsel might sound good, the reality is often that we're so busy simply running the business that we often get time crunched. It’s hard to stay on top of the latest trends and be able to distill these succinctly to clients. So how do these agency leaders who are high performing individuals and recognized thought leaders with super busy lives seemingly manage to do it all? And how do they manage to do all that in an environment that is evolving so rapidly? In this episode, David Rodnitzky discusses how you can manage yourself in order to remain aware of and connected to the pulse of the industry, and ultimately grow your business. Guest: David Rodnitzky, Founder and CEO, 3Q Digital David Rodnitzky is founder and CEO of 3Q Digital, a positio

Understanding your customer's journey is vital to the success of your business. If you can map out the steps in how a customer engages with you, you should – in theory – be able to figure out where and how each step either enhances or diminishes their propensity to engage further. Sounds simple, right? The reality is a lot more complex: multiple channels, multiple devices, organic growth and the ever present human fallibility in delivering a consistent experience, it all takes its toll. So why, at what point and how should an agency look to customer journey mapping as a process to engage in? What can we learn from other sectors where journey mapping drives value, and how can we apply the lessons to the digital agency sector? Guest - Bryan Eisenberg, Keynote Speaker, Advisor & NY Times Best Selling Author Bryan Eisenberg is the co-founder of BuyerLegends, a New York Times bestselling author, and serves as an advisory board member of several venture capital backed startup companies. He is also a highly

In this episode, we talk to Lisa Stern Haynes, a longtime member of the recruiting team at Google, about how Google does staffing. Hiring (and keeping) exceptional talent is never easy, but there are ways to structure how you screen, interview, and assess candidates to help you make better decisions. Lisa offers 5 tips that any organization can adopt to make for better hiring: 1. Be consistent and open mind when reviewing resumes 2. You’re probably not as good at interviewing as you think you are 3. Make hiring decisions by consensus 4. Make hiring part of everyone’s job 5. Work to make a great candidate experience Join us as we discuss Google’s deliberate and thorough process to research, design and develop a successful approach. Guest - Lisa Stern Haynes, Staffing Lead, Google: Lisa Stern Haynes is a Staffing Lead at Google with many years of experience and practical knowledge on how Google does staffing. Having originally joined Google back in 2006 as a Recruiting Coordinator for the sales organiza

In the second episode of this two-part podcast, we explore the interests, concerns and challenges of the modern day CMO. An agency’s relationship with the CMO is at the very heart of the agency / client dynamic. Since all business is fundamentally about relationships, putting yourself in the shoes of the other person is key. Join us as we take a peek behind the curtain and view the world from the other side of the table. Get ready to empathize with, and understand the motivations and needs of a CMO. Guest - Helen McCabe-Young, Acting CMO, Vidanta Resorts and Destinations Helen has a vast experience across marketing and advertising. She was the Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing at One&Only Resorts, and also previously led global marketing for Silversea Cruises. Although the travel industry might be her forte, Helen’s expertise doesn’t stop there. She also co-founded Place360 Health + Spa, an integrated health center and spa in California. Host: Alex Langshur

In this episode, we're looking right at the center of the agency / client relationship. Business is all about relationships, and as with any relationship, it’s necessary to put yourself in the shoes of the other person and really understand what their motivations, needs and concerns are. Join us as we explore and understand a little more about the CMO. What are the issues they’re facing, what do they care about and what do they need?

In this episode, we bring a laser sharp focus on the startup phase of the agency growth curve by asking the question: what is the anatomy of an ideal startup? Today, entrepreneurship and the startup culture seems to be totally mythologized. But the reality is that it’s not easy, it’s not always fun, and it is almost always super risky. But it can also be incredibly rewarding. We spoke to Dennis Mortensen to get his strategically tactical advice on how to navigate the rollercoaster ride that is a startup.

There’s something about saying “no”, particularly in a work context, that always seems, well... just difficult. Whether it’s saying no to a colleague when they need your help, to a direct report that makes an ask that you can’t agree to, or to a supervisor when they ask you to do something that you don’t believe is a priority (for you or the business). In this episode, learn how to use "no" as an effective tool to drive towards outcomes, to help re-prioritize projects and to get others to see outside the box. Guest - Victoria Nessen, President, NK&A Victoria is the Founder and President of the marketing agency NK&A Marketing. She also advises Boston area startups and is a guest lecturer at Babson College in Boston. Her experience and fascination with the art and the opportunity of the “no” stems from her work mentoring emerging women leaders. Host: Alex Langshur

One of the most important, and yet supremely difficult things for any company to do is establish and nurture a culture that promotes and encourages innovation. While we often take our cues from larger companies that have linked their brands to the idea of innovation, it can be a trickier problem for many small and mid-sized agencies to tackle. In this episode, we look at how to make sure that innovation (in approach, processes, technology, culture, etc.) remain a part of the business ethic and Agency DNA. Vicky Brock, CEO, Clear Returns A graduate from King’s College London, Birkbeck and MIT, Vicky Brock is an entrepreneur, an award-winning innovator and the CEO of Clear Returns, a high-growth technology start-up. Named by Forbes.com & Bloomberg as one of the 9 top female tech CEOs to watch, she is also the winner of “Innovator of the Year” at the FDM everywoman in Technology Awards and she has led Clear Returns to be named top Tech Start Up in Europe in the European Commission “Tech All Stars competition”.

In this episode, we take a look at the question -- how can I get my agency to stand out from all the other “me too” digital marketers? In a crowded marketplace how you communicate the value of your products and services is ever more important. Alex and Ben will give you insight into how to be different from your competition. Ben Tyson, Global Live Training Lead, Google With an extensive background in sales (including AD of Sales and Account Management for a major production company), Ben is currently the Global Live Training Lead for Google. In his role, he has designed, built and delivered sales trainings to over 30,000 sales reps, 2,000 account managers and 1,000 sales managers across dozens of partners. He is also an avid industry speaker on the subject of sales, marketing and sales enablement. Host: Alex Langshur

The role of delivery is clear: it must earn sales the right to ask for more business. This means it must deliver to scope, to budget and on time, in others words, with excellence. How can you set yourself up to make delivery with excellence the norm and not the exception? Robbin Steif - Founder and CEO of Lunametrics Lunametrics is a Pittsburgh PA based Digital Marketing and Analytics/Insights agency and a Google Premier Partner. Like many entrepreneurs, Robbin has been an overachiever from the start, with not one but two degrees from Harvard. She is a recipient of the BusinessWomen First award, the Diamond Award for Business Leadership, and was a member of the Board of Directors of the Digital Analytics Association. Host: Alex Langshur

What does your brand stand for? That’s a question that more and more consumers want to know the answer to. In this episode we’ll be digging deep on discovering that one true ‘thing’ that defines your work. Alex and Ben will teach us how to communicate your core values and deliver on the promises you make. Guest - Ben Roth, Chief Creative Officer, MKTG Ben began his career as a designer and art director with stops at the IBM, the Ad Agency and Octagon before being named Executive Creative Director at Jack Morton Worldwide, then Publicis and then VP Creative at George P Johnson. In his current role, he is focused on driving global brand value for MKTG and their clients. Host: Alex Langshur