Local Business Leaders

Justin is the founder and CEO of Guild Content. I love that name by the way, we’ll talk about that. Probably the first or second question. A Kansas City digital marketing agency focused on creating content that connects and builds brands that can be trusted. His love of writing and connecting to the emotions of audiences led him to leave his front-office role in the Kansas City Chiefs in 2017 to start his agency. You can learn more of their story at GuildContent.com. Justin, welcome to the show.

Jon Schram is an Kansas City managed services IT support expert and the founder & CEO of The Purple Guys, a tech company that has grown since 2001 to become the Midwest’s premier provider of IT support services. The Purple Guys is a fast-growing, 7-digit business that has helped hundreds of companies grow by solving their IT problems and providing them with stress-free, bullet-proof tech support. Jon Schram and his wife, Jill, have three children and have founded two businesses together.

Scott Niedow was born and raised just outside of Chicago. He is a proud Purdue Boilermaker! Scott’s been at James Hardie Siding just shy of 15 years. He’s had many different sales and management roles at Hardie over the past 15 years but the bulk of his time and passion lies with helping James Hardie siding contractors run successful businesses. Scott Neidow says his mission is to be able to help contractors transform their businesses to meet and exceed their financial and personal goals. 1. First we’ll learn a little about Scott’s journey to Hardie and how he got to where he is today. 2. Second, I want to learn more about what I call the James Hardie magic. When I talk about Hardie to other people, I tell them that they are the Chik Fila of the material supply industry. They go so far above and beyond what most material supply. 3. What are some of the challenges that you see with exterior remodeling contractors and how have they overcome them to grow their businesses and their wealth, and improve their quality of life.

Chad Peterson is an entrepreneur, author, and award-winning business broker. His Kansas City based mergers and acquisitions firm, Peterson Acquisitions, was recently acknowledged as one of the best business brokers in the nation. Chad Peterson successfully handles business transactions across the United States, and occasionally around the globe. His M&A firm works on deals from $1 million to $25 million, and in some cases exceeding $25 million. He handles the transactions from start to finish with tenacity and results. He lives great life, traveling and making deals with movers-and-shakers around the country, but Chad started out with a more humble beginning. Chad business journey started when he was a child. He hustled as a kid, walking dogs, shoveling snow, mowing grass, trimming trees, and cleaning out gutters. He developed a thick skin by and 'can do' attitude by cold calling and knocking on the doors. He learned how to prospect, how to garner the trust of clients, and a how-to work hard to earn every dollar. Chad also wrote the book From Blue to White, A Working Man’s Guide to Self-Employment, where teaches people how to transition from employee to self-employed. This book was well-received and garnered attention from the likes of Scott Alexander, author for Rhinoceros Success, one of Chad’s favorite authors. Scott Alexander not only endorsed the book, but he also wrote the foreword.

Brad Sugars started the ActionCOACH brand when he was in his early twenties! Today the company is internationally recognized as one of the best business coaching franchises and one of the leading and most awarded franchises in the world today. So how did a twenty-something Australian create this global powerhouse? He did it through hard work, determination and a well-organized, systemized approach that leads businesses to profits. Brad Sugars has always been entrepreneurial. Even from a very young age, Brad was an entrepreneur. He displayed a natural curiosity for how to work smarter and get measurable results. When still at university, Brad Sugars ran several small businesses. Perhaps due in part to his talents which were developed at a relatively young age, Brad’s ability to make companies from every conceivable industry flourish lead him to be known as “The Turnaround Kid”. Brad Sugars was soon asked to speak to business owners and executives – sharing his tips and advice on web design and digital marketing, sales, systemization and team building. Audiences were wowed. Brad’s “pull no-punches” approach was a refreshing change from other speakers at the time. Today, ActionCOACH operates in over 70 countries and has more than 1,000 coaches around the world, coaching 15,000 business every week. The franchise has received numerous awards including Fastest Growing Franchise, Franchisee Satisfaction, Best Overall Company and has been named the number one business coaching franchise in the world every year since 2004. In this episode of the local business leader podcast, learn how to get business coaching clients from the master himself.

Ex-Paypal & AirBnB SEO Manager Tommy Griffith Discusses Online Courses adn why they are better than grad school. Tommy Griffith has been doing search engine optimization for more than 10 years. He previously managed SEO at PayPal and Airbnb, and now runs ClickMinded, a digital marketing training platform for marketers and entrepreneurs. Tommy started ClickMinded as a side project while working full-time at Airbnb. He grew it until it started generating more revenue than his annual salary. Two years ago, he quit Airbnb to go full-time on it and ran into a number of problems in trying to grow his online SEO course business from there.

John Jonas has been making a 6-7 figure income online since 2004. He has helped thousands of entrepreneurs succeed by teaching them how to replace themselves through outsourcing. He created OnlineJobs.ph, the largest marketplace to find Filipino workers. He also teaches his system for how to find great Filipino workers for free. While making a full-time living he rarely works full time. His team of 27 full-time Filipino virtual assistants do the work in his businesses, while he manages the process. They range from programmers, designers, and webmasters, to writers, researchers, a project manager, and just general VA’s. John has made millions of dollars online directly from work that his Filipino workers have done for him and now teaches others exactly how to do the same thing. If you’ve tried outsourcing before, but haven’t heard what John has to teach about it, give it another try. John’s teachings are SURE to change the way you look at running your business, outsourcing, and the success you have in doing it.

Joel Goldberg has one of the most recognizable faces and voices in Kansas City. While Joel has had a first-row seat to one of the most inspirational stories in recent sports history, Phil Singleton found his personal story to be fascinating. It’s no wonder that he has become on of the most sought-after Kansas City motivational speakers in the metro area and has spoken at: Joel shares an amazing story of how he started out in his early 20’s, fresh out of college, and created an opportunity by cold-calling scores of TV stations around the country and fought his way into the business with sheer grit and determination. You will love this episode on Kansas City's top local business podcast! Click to learn more about Joel, his broadcast career, and all the cool new things he is doing in Kansas City at Joel Goldberg Media!

Ryan Stewart, is a marketing entrepreneur with over a decade of experience building and selling online businesses. He worked as a consultant for Deloitte and SapientNitro helping large brands like Target and Best Buy improve online acquisition. He built and scaled an eCommerce site called Laces Out with a 1.2 million organic business per month and sold the business in 2017. He built and scaled an online SEO agency called WEBRIS to 1.1 million in annual recurring revenue in 16 months, and sold the business in 2018. Ryan is now a partner and board member at From the Future, a technical digital agency that provides link building services and digital marketing services, with 40 employees and offices in Miami and Philadelphia. Podcast booking services for this podcast provided by Podcast Bookers.

Elaine Pofeldt is a freelance writer, editor, and ghost writer who has recently worked with publications including The Economist, Fortune, Money, Inc., CNBC, Crain's New York Business, Forbes, and many others. Entrepreneurship, small business, and careers are her specialties. She is also the author of a new book, which we're going to talk about today, The Million-Dollar One-Person Business. She helps corporate, non-profit, and private clients write and edit proposals, newsletters, blogs, RFPs, reports, white papers, academic articles, and books. Elaine also helps her online editorial clients create inviting high-traffic websites, drawing on her experience on excuse me, Fsb.com to five million page views a month and the number two site in Google after the USSBA. She founded and ran a national businessman competition for fortune, small business and now advises clients on creating and improving contest on their own. She experienced appearing as a guest on TV outlets such as MSNBC and CNN. Please check out all of our podcasts and be sure to learn more about how to grow your business with podcast booking services.

Tom is an SEO strategist and the host of The Sure Oak Podcast. He is the founder of Sure Oak an SEO agency in New York City that grows companies with search engine optimization to get businesses more traffic and drive their revenue growth. Tom has been published in many well-known publications, such as The Huffington Post, Search Engine Watch and SEMrush. Sure Oak is a full-service SEO firm － they are experts at getting you more targeted organic traffic to help grow your company. They not only help big-hearted organizations reach more people; this SEO agency also helps searchers find what they’re looking for. They care about helping purpose-driven organizations achieve remarkable, long-term growth to make the world a better place to live in. Sure Oak does this with SEO. Through the power of search and technology, their team envisions a world where all human beings have higher consciousness, an abundance of time freedom, deep fulfillment, and overall well-being.

James Rose is a reformed Australian digital agency owner and the co-founder of Content Snare. Content Snare is an online software service designed to cut down the time and headache wasted on chasing up clients for website content. Content Snare is one of the best content marketing tools helps digital agencies and web designers get content from their clients. One of the biggest bottlenecks in the web design process is waiting on clients to send their content through. After countless follow-ups and an email trail longer than your to-do list, it’s still likely deadlines will be missed. Content Snare helps you get the content back on time and in the right format, without email. Instead of wading through different files, a massive email trail and Dropbox, Content Snare provides a central place where you and your client can access everything. Instead of having to constantly chase clients, Content Snare does the reminding for you.

Chris Parker is the founder & CEO of WhatIsMyIPaddress.com, the number one website in the world for finding your IP address. According to the Alexa ranking, Chris’s website is one of the top 3000 websites in the United States with over 6 million visitors a month. Chris started the website on January 4th, 2000 and for the first five years, his revenue didn’t even cover his internet bill. In 2005, Chris made $30 from display ads and he knew he couldn’t give up! In 2014, Chris was laid off from his corporate job and was faced with the scary opportunity to make his website a full time business. Since then he’s aggressively grown his site to generate just under seven figures a year in revenue with no employees, no office, and no inventory! WhatIsMyIPaddress.com has granted Chris and his wife time and financial freedom that they use to travel the world and raise their mini schnauzer, Bailey. Learn from Chris Parker how to build a million dollar website business.

Dave Wieser the founder of DW Creative Marketing, a Kansas City-based marketing agency that helps local businesses increase leads and sales through effective marketing strategies and systems. Dave is one of Kansas City's top advertising experts. He has a decade of previous working experience as an account executive for Kansas City area TV stations. DW Creative Marketing, LLC is one of the best Kansas City advertising agencies, and has a strong reputation of providing marketing and advertising consulting services in retail and home services. These services include:

Ruben is the founder of Bidsketch, a bootstrapped SaaS app that’s used by thousands of freelancers, agencies and sales teams to create professional looking client proposals. He launched this top-rated proposal software on the side nine years ago, working nights and weekends, and grew it into a profitable product shortly after it launched. He’s also now starting a new SaaS called Docsketch, which is an electronic signature product that gets sales documents signed 40% faster.

Brad Burrow has a full range of experience and a wide range of production disciples from broadcast, film and TV commercials. Real Media has been rated the #1 best among all Kansas City video production companies by Blogger Local. Learn more about Real Media Kansas City at: https://realmediakc.com

Stephen Woessner is the founder and CEO of the Digital Marketing agency Predictive ROI and host of Onward Nation, a top rated daily podcast for business owners. He’s also the author of several books, one on search engine optimization, another one on viral social media and viral social networking. And his most recent one, which we’ll talk a little bit about today is Profitable Podcasting, a podcast marketing book that I just recently read and loved and we’re going to talk some more about in this episode that as well.

Interested in influencer marketing? This is a great tip to get just about any influencer to accept your outreach pitch. Be sure to check out the show notes page where I explain how and why an initial outreach pitch to Brian Dean failed. And how I took that experience and figured out a way to create an outreach approach that worked (with an almost immediate response) from Larry Kim, founder of WordStream and Facebook Messenger marketing company Mobile Monkey. Also, listen to Larry explain why he said yes to me when on a typical day he gets 10-20 pitches. Also listen to how he got LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman to reply to his cold outreach email.

Jenny Kincaid. Jenny is the owner of Socialworx Public Relations, a Midwest media relations agency with strong local and national media context, and community connections. Jenny is mostly known for her expertise in Kansas City public relations, and for her unique approach on community engagement, or what she calls social relations. Her agency takes relationship one step further by seeking people out who their clients should meet, such as Kansas City influencers, to help them further the business goals. And by building relationships that benefit clients personally, professionally, and philanthropically.

Mike Kawula is the founder of Entrepreneurs GSD, and co-founder of Dinner Table MBA. Michael is an entrepreneur whose last three businesses each hit seven figures in under three years, with this past being ranked the number 144th fastest growing company by Ink magazine in 2012. He's an author. He's been featured on CNN, interviewed by Anthony Robbins, and featured in over 100 publications in over the last few years. Michael has been an entrepreneur since September 10, 2001, has a strong passion for digital marketing, start-ups, his family, and the Florida beaches. Local Business Leaders Podcast Episode resources Mike Kawula's WebsiteHis Book: Self Employed Now WTFMike Kawula on TwitterMike Kawula on LinkedIn