The Third Growth Option with Benno Duenkelsbuehler and Guests
Business & Economics Podcasts
Welcome to The Third Growth Option, a podcast for and by business owners and leaders. We share ideas and insights that help you in your growth journey. In our podcast guests, we look for heart, curiosity, and the desire to share growth lessons. No platitudes and cliches, but stories about growth or tools that helped grow a business or improve the industry or become a better leader, and how they came to embrace an insight. During three decades as a merchant and entrepreneur your host Benno Duenkelsbuehler has built and scaled many growth opportunities from zero (or something) to 8-figure (or bigger) thriving businesses. Our guests are battle-proven leaders in product design, in manufacturing or product sourcing, in marketing and brand building, in operational, technology and executive leadership positions.
Welcome to The Third Growth Option, a podcast for and by business owners and leaders. We share ideas and insights that help you in your growth journey. In our podcast guests, we look for heart, curiosity, and the desire to share growth lessons. No platitudes and cliches, but stories about growth or tools that helped grow a business or improve the industry or become a better leader, and how they came to embrace an insight. During three decades as a merchant and entrepreneur your host Benno Duenkelsbuehler has built and scaled many growth opportunities from zero (or something) to 8-figure (or bigger) thriving businesses. Our guests are battle-proven leaders in product design, in manufacturing or product sourcing, in marketing and brand building, in operational, technology and executive leadership positions.
Location:
United States
Description:
Welcome to The Third Growth Option, a podcast for and by business owners and leaders. We share ideas and insights that help you in your growth journey. In our podcast guests, we look for heart, curiosity, and the desire to share growth lessons. No platitudes and cliches, but stories about growth or tools that helped grow a business or improve the industry or become a better leader, and how they came to embrace an insight. During three decades as a merchant and entrepreneur your host Benno Duenkelsbuehler has built and scaled many growth opportunities from zero (or something) to 8-figure (or bigger) thriving businesses. Our guests are battle-proven leaders in product design, in manufacturing or product sourcing, in marketing and brand building, in operational, technology and executive leadership positions.
Language:
English
Contact:
5134075436
Website:
https://realignforresults.com/
Episodes
Billion Dollar B2B Growth thru E-commerce
6/23/2022
I learned a great deal in this episode from Brian Beck, a leading 23-year practitioner, expert, and operator in e-commerce: we talked about the why, what, and how of growing revenue streams through B2B e-commerce. Brian also wrote the book on the subject – Billion Dollar B2B Ecommerce – and our conversation touched on breaking down the complexity of e-commerce (into consumer-facing and operations-facing, pre-sale and post-sale), the importance of cross-functional translation and alignment,...
Duration:00:28:25
Growth thru e-Selling & Embracing Superpowers
2/17/2022
Scott Rollman is a deep thinker who listens, a strategist who is passionate about getting it done. In this episode, Scott shared his insights on e-selling (the intersection of digital marketing and personal selling), how digital marketing can best support sales efforts, and we also compared notes – from different cultural perspectives of Scott’s midwestern roots and my immigrant background – on the topic of embracing our superpowers and how to help others embrace theirs.
4:02 – “There has...
Duration:00:23:59
He Wrote the Book: Growing the Topline
2/10/2022
It’s fun to learn from fellow travelers on the growth journey. Cliff Farrah and I share a passion (some might even say talent) for envisioning the right growth strategy and guiding the process from concept to successful execution. Cliff founded The Beacon Group in 2001, a growth advisory for Fortune 500 companies and their organic and inorganic growth strategies, and recently authored a wonderful book.
I read, enjoyed, and highly recommend Cliff’s book Growing the Topline. In this...
Duration:00:26:47
Learn to learn from Everyday Experts
2/3/2022
This episode is about how to bring the right people into the room, and how to facilitate the process to make better decisions.
I learned not only about solutions to fundamental “people problems” in our democracy on this episode, I learned how Dani is approaching getting help from “everyday experts”: he took the business community’s “focus group” concept, improved on it, and applied it to public service, learning from bus riders, or hospital patients, or utility customers – by “building...
Duration:00:30:54
DEI – Embracing the Uncomfortable
1/27/2022
Understanding differences in people outside of our “tribe” – maybe outside of our comfort zone – can be, well, uncomfortable and difficult. Nicole Armstrong, founder/CEO of Queen City Certified shared her insights with me, how her team helps executives to guide them with DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) challenges, as the nation’s first data-informed employer certification program.
2:06 – “how do we create systems that make it possible for all people to succeed…to allow somebody to...
Duration:00:32:18
Growth Inflection Points – Personal & Business
1/20/2022
Jay Messner has built several businesses and helps clients improve theirs. Here we talk about inflection points, causes of failures and reasons for getting stuck, what skills can be taught or developed, vs. having to be recruited, and how to jump through inflections points by creating “trust, clarity, and alignment.”
5:04 – “organizations need to have some sense of stable foundation (operationally, culturally, financially) on which to build, especially in rapid growth… when you hit speed...
Duration:00:32:46
The Magnificent Seven – Growth Lessons in Retail & Life
1/13/2022
Many of you know Warren Shoulberg the journalist, writer, editor, consultant, and singular source of home furnishings industry insights via HFN, Forbes.com, and many others. Here, Warren shares his Magnificent Seven of Retail. Important for manufacturers, vendors, and buyers to hear his thoughts the Good, the Bad, or the Ugly of retail (we talk about a couple dozen retailers, like The Good: Target, RH, Amazon, TJX, Williams-Sonoma brands, Magnolia Home in Waco, TX, good independent specialty...
Duration:00:30:14
Grow Flexibly, from the Ground Up
1/6/2022
Growing 10x from the ground up, instead of by edict from the top down, requires a magic combination of strategy, flexibility, authenticity, finding rock stars (and letting them be chess players, not chess pieces), and in Doug Cofiell’s example also well-integrated acquisitions.
6:39 – “you hire for talent, not necessarily for the exact position… as you build a flexible model, it builds off itself and then it gets cultural… they can set their own tone within these guardrails we...
Duration:00:27:08
Growth and Disaster in the Amazon Jungle
12/30/2021
Amazon controls nearly 50% of online sales in the USA, with that comes being loved or hated, and often the latter. Jason Boyce has been an Amazon Seller for 17 years, a Top 200 seller (of millions), he shares successes worth emulating, and how to avoid certain failures and “speed bumps” selling on Amazon. He’s the co-author of Amazon Jungle, where he and Rick Cesari share stories of customer-driven innovation, click-through strategies, reaching page 1 on Amazon search results – with insights...
Duration:00:31:34
Digital Transformation – Do or Die?
12/23/2021
Marvin Dejean removes a bit of mystery around the crucial topic of “digital transformation”, also personal or just “transformation”. We talk about his TIP-squared framework (technology and trends, innovation and insights, people and platforms), how to approach transformation, and avoid pitfalls.
3:36 – “learn to dominate your fear… if you don’t transform willingly… then the market, a competitor, the universe, something is going to force you to do it, or you’re going to be wiped...
Duration:00:32:23
All about pop-up stores
12/16/2021
Pop-up stores come in all types, and both retailers and manufacturers launch them for different reasons. Andy Bailen has deep experience and “spills the beans” with us in this episode.
2:21 – “All Things Retail (a weekly newsletter) came out of my interest in providing guidance and help and actionable content for retailers (of all sizes).”
This conversation about pop-up stores – which Andy has successfully conceptualized and rolled out with big box retailers, and smaller players – serves...
Duration:00:28:44
Entrepreneur’s Brand: Being the Mac Man, LI Coach, Content Strategist
12/9/2021
If a bear roars in the woods and nobody hears him, did it really happen? Brian Burke the Mac Man shares his thoughts on personal branding, his entrepreneurial journey from a dorm room business to running a 20+ employee company that has purchased over $45,000,000 in used Apple equipment, and how he helps others with content strategy, creating a post with over 13,000 likes, SEO, and more.
1:12 – personal branding “helps others to help us, helps us to find clients… if you have the same title...
Duration:00:26:51
Overcoming Transformation Challenges
12/2/2021
Transportation is a fundamental building block of any economy – so dissecting the necessary ingredients for transforming transportation in the coming decades is key to creating a transportation system that works more efficiently and with less environmental impact. Evangelos Simoudis starts with Data and AI, and has written several books, one about Big Data in our Driverless Future, the other about Transportation Transformation. We talked about three phases of transformation, three...
Duration:00:33:22
Lead from the Core: Jay’s Growth Perspectives
11/25/2021
Jay Steinfeld, founder of blinds.com (which he grew from $0 to revenues of hundreds of millions of dollars before selling it to Home Depot) shares heartfelt insights from his entrepreneurial journey and personal development in my conversation with him. If you haven’t read his book Lead from the Core, you’ll want to read it. Whether or not you have, you’ll want to listen to this episode in which Jay talks about “autonomous excellence”, the 4 E’s (evolve, experiment, express yourself, and...
Duration:00:30:58
Growth for Good
11/18/2021
Sharon Rowe founded Ecobags, the original reusable bag company, three decades ago, long before sustainability was as cool and certainly as urgent as it is today. She talks about the sometimes-hard choices, sometimes mutually beneficial relationship between conscious capitalism and naked profitability. Sharon authored The Magic of Tiny Business, as a story of doing good and doing well, having your cake, and eating it too. Her company is a small and stable business, some might dismiss it as a...
Duration:00:27:42
Growing in a More Connected World
11/11/2021
As co-founder of a now 20-year-old distribution company approaching the 9-figure revenue milestone, Yoram Weinreich opens up to share lessons learned, pivots made, and convictions formed during that growth journey: how it began from a direct import business to online/ecom sales, from less to more branded, no inventory to inventory, from a Canadian workforce with global suppliers to becoming a global workforce, from gut decisions to data-driven decisions – there is a lot to be...
Duration:00:35:16
Growth and Self-Awareness
11/4/2021
My guest Dr. L. Carol Scott spoke openly about slaying personal dragons, addressing patterns from childhood and her framework for developmental do-overs. I asked Dr. Scott to come on my podcast because I believe most of us limit ourselves, keep ourselves from growing and thriving in some way, due to some preconceived notion that requires introspection, or what she calls self-aware assessment.
Dr. Scott's 7-point framework of SASS – Self-Aware Success Strategies – can help anybody looking to...
Duration:00:31:28
On Staying Relevant to your Customer
10/28/2021
From ice-cream shopkeeper to executive at Pepsico, expat-CEO for LensCrafter in China, and author of several books, George Minakakis’ journey has been enriched by his curiosity and drive. He shares the reasons behind his mantra to “stay relevant, dismiss nothing, expect the unexpected and plan for the improbable”, and why he loves retail – hint: he loves ambiguity. He talks about technology as the path, and how educating himself on IoT and AI has shaped his upcoming book The New Bricks &...
Duration:00:27:55
Agility in Digital and other Growth
10/21/2021
Marisa Lytle has a secret weapon: agility. As VP of Consumer Engagement and Ecom at DEMDACO, she shares not only interesting insights from the world of digital marketing but overriding lessons about the importance of agility.
3:06 – whereas there used to be a clear start and stop with business initiatives “it’s no longer about achieving a set objective at a set point in time, it’s about being agile enough to continue to adapt throughout the journey.”
4:25 – … “it’s also being...
Duration:00:27:25
Innovating Inside the Model
10/14/2021
Innovating and growing a legacy company that has often played inside the conventions of an industry, is different from the proverbial outside disruptor crashing the party. John Toler, who worked his way up to CEO of Evergreen Enterprises, shares his thoughts on innovating inside the model.
5:39 – on personal growth “I’m part of development group YPO… they’re a good sounding board… I’ve done a lot of continuing education, a lot of reading… those outside reference points… what others are...
Duration:00:32:37