Winning On Main Street - Small Business Podcast

Interested in Joining a Startup? What Should You Look For to Find a Good Match-Steve Kahan

Wall Street Journal Best Selling Author Steven Mark Kahan has helped grow seven startup companies from early-stage development to going public or being sold, resulting in a total value of more than $5 billion. He is best known for his ability to plan and execute marketing strategies so that companies can accelerate revenue, grow market share, and consistently deliver superior returns for shareholders. Steven currently provides marketing advisory services to startups, including several Insigh...

How Technology is Helping a Custom Home Builder Achieve Success-Brady Fry

Soon after graduating, Brady bought an outdated Nashville home, determined to completely remodel the entire house. Even though this would be his first large-scale building project, Brady imagined the home completely transformed, even down to the tiniest details. As the years went by, his reputation grew, as did his skill set, resources, and geographic reach. Today, even though he is the owner of one of the most in-demand luxury home general contractors. Brady shares his story with us and how...

Small Business Predictions for 2023-Barry Moltz

How to Beome a Remote CEO-Deniero Bartolini

Deniero Bartolini is a mentor, consultant, and coach to hundreds of small business owners. Born in Rome, he moved to Toronto, Canada and had a successful digital marketing career for a large corporation. When restructuring at the company saw him lose his job, he started freelancing and found he needed to expand with a remote team. Following his success, he founded Remote CEO Academy, where he and his team help business owners leverage the internet to scale their businesses and expand their r...

Sell Your Business for Top Dollar-Jessica Fialkovich

Jessica Fialkovich is an expert on selling your business. The founder of Exit Factor, a firm that educates entrepreneurs how to buy, build, and sell a business, she is also a keynote speaker, small business advocate, and the co-owner of Transworld Business Advisors in Colorado, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Las Vegas. Jessica is an entrepreneur at heart and successfully built and sold two startups, along with her husband and business partner, Al. The premier industry associations have recognized th...

Scale Your Reach & Engagement on Social Media-Evan Kirstel

Evan Kirstel is a B2B thought leader and top technology influencer who helps B2B clients grow their social media audience and leverage LinkedIn and Twitter for sales, networking, engagement, and social selling. He is actively building a network of fellow B2B influencers to help brands with scale and thought leadership. Evan shares the strategies he recommends small businesses use to get their business noticed and their lead funnels growing.    Resources Shared:  EvanKirstel.com eViRa Hea...

Love as a Business Strategy-Mohammad Anwar

Mohammad Anwar is the President and CEO of Softway and Culture+ and the WSJ Best-Selling Author of Love As A Business Strategy: Resilience, Belonging & Success. Mohammad’s passion for helping companies build better relationships with their employees led him to start Softway in 2003. With over 200 employees worldwide, Softway provides companies with the products, services, live events, and leadership insights they need to endear teams to each other and build business resilience. Learn how to ...

How the Rich Get Richer and How You Can Do the Same-Toby Mathis

Toby Mathis is a founder of Infinity Investing Workshop and Anderson Business Advisors, one of the most successful investing, law, tax, and estate planning companies in the United States. Toby’s businesses have been featured on the Inc. list of fastest-growing US companies on three different occasions and voted one of the “Best Places to Work.” He has sat on the Boards of hundreds of companies, including public and private enterprises, non-profits, and business leagues. He brings a wealth of...

Big Company Bookkeeping and Taxes at a Small Business Price-Matt Remuzzi

Matt Remuzzi is the founder and CEO of CapForge, a virtual bookkeeping firm headquartered in California. With over 20 years of expertise in general bookkeeping, CapForge started with a single employee—himself—which has now grown to over 40 bookkeepers and advisors for small businesses. Matt shares some common questions they help businesses solve around their bookkeeping and accounting practices. Resources Shared: • CapForge, Inc. • QuickBooks Bookkeeping by Matt Remuzzi • Amazon Seller Book...

Does Your Business Stand Out Online? - Keegan Edwards

Keegan Edwards is the President and CEO of New Media Retailer, the award-winning digital marketing solutions provider for independent retailers. Over the past 12 years, Keegan has worked with over 1,500 small businesses on their digital marketing and growth strategies. As an entrepreneur, he's built award-winning businesses that provide affordable digital marketing solutions for small to medium-sized businesses across the country. Keegan talks about some of the simple changes any business can...

How a Middle School Teacher Built and Sold One of America's Fastest Growing Companies-Scott Selzer

Scott Selzer is the CEO and Chief Product Architect of StruXure. Founded in 2011, Scott set out to design a better pergola to improve the outdoor space for one of his clients. A middle-school teacher at the time with a part-time remodeling business, Scott created his product, a pivoting louvered-roof structure that the user could control, when he couldn't locate one on the market. Scott has since led StruXure to nearly $100 million in revenues and the company was named to the Inc. 5000 Fastes...

My Personal Journey: From Stoned and Homeless to Entrepreneur and Tik Tok Megastar-Maayan Gordon

Maayan Gordon has 10+ years in digital marketing, founded four successful businesses, 1+ billion video views, and 2+ million followers on social media. Maayan shares how she went from starving and homeless to creating multiple successful businesses. She also talked about her struggles with mental health challenges and how she was able to work through those issues to become a more resilient businesswoman. Resources Shared: • Maayan Gordon Media • Thryv

How a Swig of Dirty Soda Turned into a Thriving Business-Nicole Tanner

Nicole Tanner co-founded Swig, a St. George, Utah-based drive-through "dirty soda" fountain, with her husband, Todd, in 2010. Over the next seven years, they grew the business into a 17-store chain before selling it to Four Foods Group. Swig has expanded into multiple states from that small beginning, becoming thousands of people's go-to destination for personalized sodas, customized energy drinks, boba teas, cookies, and other sweets. Hear about what differentiated Nicole's business in a cro...

How this Warrior Realized a Big Opportunity in Workplace Safety-Zachary Green

Zachary Green is a warrior turned entrepreneur. He began his career as a U.S. Marine, and after leaving the Marines, he became a firefighter. It was as a firefighter that Zachary became keenly aware of the need to help other firefighters who might be trapped in burning buildings to be able to see an exit path so they could escape. He founded LumAware, a company whose photoluminescent helmet bands and exit path markings could enable a firefighter to see their way out through smoke and fire eve...

How Founders Can Scale Their Business and Grow Profitably-Benjamin Friedman

Benjamin Friedman founded Build Scale Grow, which operates as a fractional and interim COO/CFO building long-term scalable systems and installing accountability metrics with fast learning loops. He looks to reduce cash flow and monitor the runway while also being mindful that companies need to invest in new and near-future opportunities now more than ever. Applying lessons from 20 years of bumpy startup rides leading to multiple successful exits, Benjamin started Build Scale Grow to support p...

Build Your Financial Strength Through Fitness Franchising-Jeff Tomaszewski

Jeff Tomaszewski is on a mission to help as many people as possible live a high quality of life into their golden years. Shortly after obtaining his Master’s degree, he formed MaxStrength Fitness in May of 2007 in Westlake, Ohio, which has grown into Cleveland’s premier personal training facility. Jeff now has two locations and has started franchising to further his mission of helping people live a high quality of life now and throughout their golden years. Resources Shared: • MaxStrength F...

Giving Local Retailers the Tools They Need to Thrive in the Age of Amazon-Dan Fairbanks

The idea for XION was born when CEO/Founder Dan Fairbanks owned and operated multiple small specialty running shoe stores in the Seattle area. He discovered that there was no integrated e-commerce/marketplace solution for independent retailers. From there, he teamed up with Co-Founder Robert Ivie, and together with the help of a few other dedicated employees, they developed XION to make it easier for consumers to buy online from local small business retailers. Resources Shared: · XION Retail...

Don't Let the Weight of Business Success Steal Your Profit and Personal Life-Susan Fennema

Susan Fennema is a chaos-killing, clutter-kicking, disorder-fighting maven. She loves beating the pants off disorganization and taking paper where it belongs…to the shredder! She’s a Fractional COO for clients and serves as CEO, or Chief Eradicating Officer, at Beyond the Chaos. Susan shared her mission to help small business owners regain control by leveraging software and processes. Giving business owners the control to steer their business and life where they want it to go and do what they...

How to Manage Risk in Your Business and Protect Your Reputation-Ivy Walker

Ivy Walker is a serial entrepreneur, award-winning author, teacher, business coach, and director of documentary films. Ivy is the founder of AskCoda, a risk management and compliance solution for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Ivy is passionate about leveraging technology as a platform to transform industries and empower individuals to make positive changes in their lives. Ivy talks about her book Twelve-Minute Risk Management and how small businesses can be better prepared. Reso...

How Senior Care Has Become a Giant Business and Could Be a Franchising Opportunity for You-Jeff Salter

At 20 years old, Jeff started Caring Senior Service as the solution for local and long-distance caregiving. Within five years, he had five total locations and then began franchising. Jeff brought a never quit attitude to Caring Senior Service, which has added over 47 locations today and operates in 18 states. Jeff talks about how to build a business that leaves a legacy and aligns with your passions. Resources Shared: • Caring Senior Service • Thryv

How Small Businesses Can Find and Win Lucrative Government Contracts-Kizzy Parks

Dr. Kizzy Parks is the President of K. Parks Consulting, Inc. (KPC). Which specializes in helping small businesses win government contracts. She recently launched GovCon Winners to help service-based businesses learn how to find, bid, and win government contracts. Kizzy has secured over $50 Million in federal government contract awards. In this episode of Winning on Main Street, she shares how she got her start in entrepreneurship and how an unexpected opportunity grew into a thriving busines...

The Story Behind Wad-Free® for Bed Sheets and the Journey into the Shark Tank and Beyond - Cyndi Bray

Cyndi Bray is the entrepreneur behind Wad-Free® for Bed Sheets that went into the “Shark Tank” to pitch the sharks on investing in her company, which makes a novel device to keep sheets from wadding in the washer or dryer, during the November 5, 2021 episode of the hit ABC show. Cyndi succeeded in landing Mr. Wonderful, Kevin O’Leary, as her investor and she has since scaled her business to new heights. Listen as Cyndi explains how, with no background in engineering, product development, or m...

What it Takes to Be a Successful Entrepreneur-Sean Castrina

Sean Castrina is a serial entrepreneur who has started more than 20 companies over the last 20 years. He still seeks to launch a new venture annually. He is also the founder of The Weekend MBA, a two-day LIVE event where veteran entrepreneurs share strategies and tactics to help business owners build an action plan to achieve breakthroughs in their business. Sean is also the author of 4 bestselling business books and hosts a popular business podcast, “The 10 Minute Entrepreneur”. In this epis...

How to Build Great Teams and Hire Better People for Your Small Business-Kurt Wilkin

Kurt Wilkin:                  The disruption piece is most recruiters are trying to fill a seat. You got an empty chair, well, yeah, give me a job description and we'll start throwing it against the wall. What we created was a strategic approach and said, "You know what? You say you've got an empty chair. I want to understand what that chair is doing. How does it interact with the rest of the chairs?" Keep the analogy going. We created something we call strategic talent planning. It's our wa...

How to Build Your Handyman Business and Make More Money-Dan Perry

Dan Perry is an Engineer turned Entrepreneur. He left his Mechanical Engineering job in 2011 to start a successful handyman business. Dan is also the founder of HandymanStartup.com - an online training resource dedicated to helping handymen, plumbers, electricians, and contractors understand business and marketing so they can get more customers, make more money, and gain financial freedom. Dan shares how he started his business and what he learned about marketing that can help any business gr...

The Transformational Accounting Model for Businesses-Anne Gannon

The Largo Group was founded by Anne Gannon, CPA in 2016. Anne has 15+ years of experience and began her career as a CPA with a big-five accounting firm in Boston, MA where she quickly realized the only winner in the 'busy season' approach was the accounting firm. Anne set out to form The Largo Group based on the fundamental idea that monthly accounting and tax services could be done more efficiently. Anne shared the transformational impact she’s seen when small businesses adopt this revoluti...

Digital Marketing for Small Businesses-Ryan Sawrie

After graduating from college in 2007, I hustled to get my first job in marketing. A year later the all-employee email went out congratulating me on my 1st anniversary. But about 2-hours later the same day, I was informed I was being laid off, which was painful and ironic at the same time. In the long run, more good than bad came from it and it set me on the journey to where I’m at today.    Every job I’ve held didn’t exist at the company before I applied for it. Those include jobs such as...

Re-Release-Learn How Connecting with Others Leads to Greater Success - Dr. Kevin Elko

As a high school football coach and teacher, I wanted to learn how to motivate my students better. So I began to study the topic of motivation and the more I learn the more it fascinated me. Too often motivation seems to be a topic we ignore or we leave it as one of the last areas we address whereas I believe motivation should be the first area we address.   I had a chance to apply my learnings on a larger stage when an old colleague of mine, Tom Donahoe asked me if I would help him with p...

Re-Release Learn How Connecting with Others Leads to Greater Success - Dr. Kevin Elko

As a high school football coach and teacher, I wanted to learn how to motivate my students better. So I began to study the topic of motivation and the more I learn the more it fascinated me. Too often motivation seems to be a topic we ignore or we leave it as one of the last areas we address whereas I believe motivation should be the first area we address.   I had a chance to apply my learnings on a larger stage when an old colleague of mine, Tom Donahoe asked me if I would help him with p...

Re-Release Chick Boss Cake-No Excuses From the Million Dollar Bakery-Rebecca Hamilton

I started Chick Boss Cake as a hobby at first and ran it out of my tiny apartment kitchen. Eventually, word spread and I realized I loved both making and eating desserts. Part of what makes us unique ties into our slogan “it’s not about the cake”. While many of our customers will say we have the best cake in town, for us it’s about the community we have and the opportunity to bring people together. The cake and desserts are just the way we create experiences that bring people together.    ...

Re-Release-Chick Boss Cake-No Excuses From the Million Dollar Bakery-Rebecca Hamilton

I started Chick Boss Cake as a hobby at first and ran it out of my tiny apartment kitchen. Eventually, word spread and I realized I loved both making and eating desserts. Part of what makes us unique ties into our slogan “it’s not about the cake”. While many of our customers will say we have the best cake in town, for us it’s about the community we have and the opportunity to bring people together. The cake and desserts are just the way we create experiences that bring people together.    ...

RE-RELEASE-Overcoming the Fear of Failure as an Entrepreneur-Henry Lopez

I always aspired to start my own business but starting out I didn’t have the resources, knowledge, or courage to do so. I started in entrepreneurship by dipping my toe in the water via a partnership with a friend. We took over a pizza delivery franchise while I continued to work my day job and he ran the daily operations. A line I love to repeat from Dan Sullivan is, “we cannot wait for confidence, we don’t have confidence, we have to have the courage to go try something and then confidence ...

Re-Release Overcoming the Fear of Failure as an Entrepreneur-Henry Lopez

I always aspired to start my own business but starting out I didn’t have the resources, knowledge, or courage to do so. I started in entrepreneurship by dipping my toe in the water via a partnership with a friend. We took over a pizza delivery franchise while I continued to work my day job and he ran the daily operations. A line I love to repeat from Dan Sullivan is, “we cannot wait for confidence, we don’t have confidence, we have to have the courage to go try something and then confidence ...

What to Look for When Hiring an Attorney-Nicholas Troxel

I’m a big hockey fan so today I’m wearing my Colorado Avalanche jersey in recognition of our Stanley Cup win. Growing up I played hockey quite a bit with my friends, never seriously but I enjoyed it. Football was the sport I took a bit more seriously. Unfortunately, a string of injuries prevented me from continuing to pursue my dream of playing in the NFL. I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska, which was a nice little college town, but I wanted someplace a little bigger when I went to college. I in...

SELF-MADE BOSS: Advice, Hacks and Lessons from Small Business Owners - Jackie Reses & Lauren Weinberg

Jackie and Lauren worked together at Yahoo and later at Square, where they spent a lot of time talking to small business owners. During the pandemic, they started discussing how during an economic downturn, a lot of people generally start their own businesses, and wouldn’t it be great if they could package together what they had learned working with small businesses. This idea was what led to the authors researching and writing Self-Made Boss.   But both Jackie and Lauren had significant b...

Franchise vs. Startup: How to Choose What is Right for You - Giuseppe Grammatico

I am a first-generation immigrant, my family moved to the States many years ago from Italy to pursue a better life. I got my first taste of entrepreneurship working in our family restaurant, fast-forward to college graduation and I quickly figured out I hated the corporate environment. After several interviews with various companies, I realized corporate America wasn’t right for me. That’s when I reached out to a franchise coach, and we started exploring the options. In 2007, I bought my fir...

Are You Missing Out on Small Business Tax Deductions? - Mark Myers

After graduating from the University of Florida, I started my career managing health clubs. I went to work for a small company at the time called Equinox. I joined Equinox when they had around 12 clubs and now there are over 100 clubs across the US, Canada, and the UK. My role was to help them open locations, which taught me how to be an owner-operator. While I wasn’t technically the owner-operator, each club was treated as its own entity when it came to profit and loss. After a decade of wo...

Stop the Blame Game and Start Living the Life You Want-Omar Medrano

My story can be summarized as there were a lot of wrongs before there was a right. No one believed in me, I had all these fears inside of me, my junior high principal said it would be a cold day in hell if I ever graduated college, I never thought I would become an entrepreneur. I went to school for journalism but quickly realized I didn’t have the gift. After that, I turned to sales and during that season I took a personal development course. What I walked away with was everyone always talk...

Succession Planning in Family Businesses – Stephen Shortt

I grew up in an entrepreneurial family, when I was around five years old my parents started a psychometrics company called Selection, which centered around personality profiling, career guidance, interview skills, and selection guidance. Then a few years later my folks started an English as a Second Language school (ESL), teaching English to international students. The ESL business appealed to me as a young person, because I was able to travel around the world. I started as a marketing assis...

Where to Find Free Small Business Coaching and Funding – Liz Sara

SCORE runs a mentor network around the country with nearly 10,000 business executives that volunteer their time to help small business owners. The SCORE Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the SCORE organization. We bring corporations, foundations, other non-profits, and individuals together to provide sponsorship dollars to underwrite many of the free programs SCORE offers small businesses. These programs include a variety of topics from disaster preparedness to cyber security. We look t...

How to turn your customer service department into a profit center for your business – Zac Garside

Growing up I was fascinated with public speaking and communications so I would learn everything I could about how to be a good communicator. After returning from serving on a mission, I was approached by Brigham Dickinson, the founder of Power Selling Pros, and he asked if I wanted to become a customer service coach. It was seamless for me because I was able to transition my skills from religion to customer service. Seven years later I’ve trained hundreds of CSRs (customer service reps) in t...

What Do Your Customers Want to Buy and How Do They Want to Buy It-Kristin Zhivago

The primary clients we serve today are established businesses that are struggling to figure out how to generate a return on their digital marketing. I’ve been in tech for decades and ran an advertising agency with my husband for a decade before becoming a revenue coach. Over the years I’ve helped companies of various sizes find success through digital marketing and position them for growth. We typically work with businesses that have $2m to $10m in annual revenue.    Mindset driven marketi...

What to Prepare for When Selling Your Small Business – Grant Bledsoe

After graduating from business school, I started a job at Charles Schwab. I had a great time working alongside some wonderful and smart people. As I progressed into leadership roles, I found that to keep progressing I would have to make several lateral moves. That was a bit of a turn-off for me with my entrepreneurial spirit. What I also noticed was a lot of the financial advisors, financial managers, and wealth managers out there, didn’t run their businesses in a way that I felt was the mos...

It's Your Business, Your Profit Should Come First-Rocky Lalvani

Chick Boss Cake-No Excuses From the Million Dollar Bakery-Rebecca Hamilton

I started Chick Boss Cake as a hobby at first and ran it out of my tiny apartment kitchen. Eventually, word spread and I realized I loved both making and eating desserts. Part of what makes us unique ties into our slogan “it’s not about the cake”. While many of our customers will say we have the best cake in town, for us it’s about the community we have and the opportunity to bring people together. The cake and desserts are just the way we create experiences that bring people together.    ...

Risks & Rewards of Startup Investing-Hall T Martin

We originally launched in 2009 under the name Texas Investors Network, however as we grew and began receiving interest from people outside of Texas, we decided to change our name to TEN Capital Network. Today we’ve helped startups raise well over $900M in capital to fund their business ideas and grow successful ventures. We’ve learned a lot along our journey but what I would tell anyone looking to invest in startups would be to spend 90% of your time getting to know the leadership team behin...

Small Business Growth Tips For 2022

We’re coming out of Winter and moving into Spring, what better time than now to position your business for the next stage of growth. Here are five key points that will help your business reach its goals this year.    1. Client experience The biggest topic we’ve heard over and over again is that today’s small businesses need to provide a better client experience. We talked about this topic extensively in our episode with Hank Ebeling of H4 Training (listen here). Why is it when we interact...

How To Turn Customer Service into a Competitive Advantage-Hank Ebeling

I’ve been in the fitness space since college. I’ve worked for several prominent clubs along my journey, including Equinox. I knew one day I wanted to open a club of my own. Generally, you find most of the quality clubs in the city but I saw a need in the suburbs that was being underserved. In 2013 I took the plunge and opened my first location and then in 2017 we opened our second location. Our typical client is a woman in her 50s but we have clients as young as 15 and as old as 75.    Our...

Helping Entrepreneurs Understand Their Numbers – Danielle Hayden

I was working as a CFO for mid-size businesses. I realized that the leadership teams I supported were able to make all of these informed decisions because they were using data to make decisions versus relying on emotion. Around the same time, I was volunteering at a local entrepreneurship hub. I kept hearing the same roadblock from several of the small businesses. They couldn’t get a loan or didn’t have confidence in the decisions they needed to make because they didn’t have good financial d...

How to Get Your Business Unstuck and Growing-Dominic Rubino

In my first business, I found myself working extremely hard but making absolutely no money. I realized I needed to learn the business of business, so I spent time learning how to run a business. What I learned was that once you understand how a business runs, it doesn’t make much of a difference what type of business it is. I went from construction to a pharmaceutical fulfillment warehouse and then on to running a global franchisor. In any business, it all starts with marketing, which produc...