Let's Talk Strategies: Conversations with Millionaires and Highly Successful Entrepreneurs (The SoloPreneurs Guide to Success )

By Danette Moss

From cover to cover, this book is filled with solid, proven strategies for success derived from in-depth discussions with highly successful people who divulge exactly what they did in order to enjoy such noteworthy levels of success. In essence, you are getting straightforward, guaranteed success strategies directly from the proverbial “horse’s mouth.”

This book is your ultimate guide to achieving success not by spending hours studying concepts and techniques, but by learning directly from accomplished professionals how to utilize the same time-tested, proven-effective strategies they themselves used to get where they are.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Danette Moss
• Release date: Dec 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301192137

Danette Moss

Danette Moss is the owner of Let’s Talk Strategies; an Integrated Marketing firm that helps you get found by prospective customers, build and attract a larger audience for your products or services, and convert those prospects to leads while analyzing the results to improve your lead generation using the internet. She is the author of the book Let’s Talk Strategies: Conversations with Millionaires and Highly Successful Entrepreneurs, The Solopreneurs Guide to Success. Co-author in the book Conversations With Experts: Do What You Love, Get Paid What You're Worth and host of the weekly Blog Talk Radio Show – Let's Talk Strategies, where she identifies and corrects some of the deceiving misconceptions about networking and empowers business professionals worldwide to overcome the hurdles that are preventing them from thriving in business and achieving optimum success, both in regard to finance and otherwise. She offers the keys to redefining your focus for maximum effectiveness and understanding the tacit information which allows business owners, entrepreneurs, and professionals alike to enter into higher and higher realms of achievement. This is done through the sharing of insider information and success secrets directly from her interviews and one-to-one conversations with a variety of highly accomplished, remarkably successful entrepreneurs, business professionals, and leaders in their field. Using her experience as a master connecter, a problem solver, and an esteemed business strategist, she gets straight to the heart of how to turn any business into a thriving enterprise. She has devoted herself to educating solopreneurs/small business owners equipping them with the necessary skills and steps to succeed in the service industry.

Book preview

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To my dedicated team of editors that encouraged me to get it down on paper and let them do the rest.

To my husband, Curtis, and my five children, Ashlie-Nicole, Lauren, Camryn, Roye, and Kierston aka Kier Bear…for sacrificing the time I would spend with them and allowing me to work on projects that enhance businesses.

To my parents Jeff and Joyce, business owners for inspiring me from birth to be my own boss. To my stepmom Sheila for all of your encouragement.

To all the interviewees: Norm Brodsky, Dr. Ivan Misner, Erik Luhrs, Laurie Foley, Chris Westfall, Diane Conklin, Scott McIntosh, Andy Paul, and Kelli Claypool.

Blog talk radio for supplying what I consider the best online broadcasting platform. And to anyone who helped me that I didn’t call by name, you know who you are. I could not have done this without you.

FOREWORD

We now live in a fully global society and if we aspire to be successful in business, it is important for us to find things that bring us together—things that are similar for us all. Referral marketing, for example—the idea of growing your business through business networking and word-of-mouth referrals—is a concept which crosses cultural, ethnic, and political boundaries because we all speak the language of referrals and we all want to do business based on trust.

For nearly three decades, I have been working with business professionals and entrepreneurs across the globe in teaching them how to achieve significant business growth through business networking and referral marketing. I have been witness to what truly works and what most certainly does not work in regard to business strategies and networking tactics; and it is with great confidence that I say Let’s Talk Strategies outlines exactly what you need to know in order to not only effectively connect with people, but also to build the long-term trust and meaningful, lasting relationships which will lead to repeat business and profitability.

With this book, Danette Moss identifies and corrects some of the deceiving misconceptions about networking and empowers business professionals worldwide to overcome the hurdles that are preventing them from thriving in business and achieving optimum success, both in regard to finance and otherwise. She offers the keys to redefining your focus for maximum effectiveness and understanding the tacit information which allows business owners, entrepreneurs, and professionals alike to enter into higher and higher realms of achievement. This is done through the sharing of insider information and success secrets directly from Danette’s interviews and one-to-one conversations with a variety of highly accomplished, remarkably successful entrepreneurs, business professionals, and leaders in their field.

From cover to cover, this book is filled with solid, proven strategies for success derived from in-depth discussions with highly successful people who divulge exactly what they did in order to enjoy such noteworthy levels of success. In essence, you are getting straightforward, guaranteed success strategies directly from the proverbial horse’s mouth.

Like Reggie Reed, an astute business strategist in the IT industry once said:

If you want to learn how to jump out of an airplane, would you rather read a book written by someone who just talks about the technique of skydiving, or would you rather learn from a professional who has had hundreds of successful jumps?

This book is your ultimate guide to achieving success not by spending hours studying concepts and techniques, but by learning directly from accomplished professionals how to utilize the same time-tested, proven-effective strategies they themselves used to get where they are.

Danette innately understands how to bring people together and forge genuine connections that lead toward ultimate success; helping others benefit in this area is what she has dedicated her life and her career to. Using her experience as a master connecter, a problem solver, and an esteemed business strategist, she gets straight to the heart of how to turn any business into a thriving enterprise by giving business professionals and entrepreneurs this invaluable, step-by-step guide to success.

This book bears great testimony to Danette’s lifelong efforts and mastery of success strategies and I am honored to be a small part of it. I commend you on the wise investment you are making by reading this book and I wish you all the best as you venture forth in your journey toward success.

Ivan R. Misner, Ph.D.

Founder of BNI ®

New York Times Best Selling Author

INTRODUCTION

My name is Danette Moss, serial entrepreneur, radio show host, and now published author. What an honor and privilege not only to have held Conversations with Millionaires and Highly Successful Entrepreneurs, but now to share their business expertise and perspectives with you in this collection of individual interviews.

My goal for Let’s Talk Strategies was always to bring my listeners thought provoking and business building dialogs that could both inspire and educate them. Sharing the insights and expertise of my guest speakers has provided me the unique opportunity to create new strategic alliances while enhancing the skill levels of my audience.

By identifying and correcting some of the misconceptions about what it takes to be successful in business I have spent my career providing the assistance and guidance that have opened up opportunities that were once closed to many of my clients. In business, we all have a choice. In these pages I have culminated the knowledge and the years of experience of several highly successful people and provided you with the keys to unlock the doors that can provide you with those same opportunities. My hope is that by sharing this information with you that you will have just what you need to take your businesses to levels that you had never even imagined.

With each lesson, this book becomes your ultimate guide to success in the most meaningful sense. From cover to cover, it is filled with solid, proven strategies derived from in-depth discussions with highly successful people who divulge exactly what they did in order to enjoy such noteworthy levels of success. In essence, you are getting straightforward, guaranteed success strategies directly from the proverbial ‘horses’ mouth."

I decided to write this book once I realized that the successful people with whom I had been interviewing could help me to assist individuals to redefine their lives by forging business connections that make ultimate success possible. Each of the interviews in this volume is archived for your listening even if you cannot be part of our live audience. For more information about Let’s Talk Strategies or to subscribe to our radio show, visit the following links:

Subscribe: http://blogtalkradio.com/letstalkstrategies/podcast

Website: www.LetsTalkStrategies.com/podcasts

Radio Show: www.BlogTalkRadio.com/letstalkstrategies

Strategy Talk #1

Side Stepping the Pitfalls

Entrepreneurs are not born…it’s really a mindset.

If the entrepreneur follows certain time-tested rules,

They can avoid a lot of the pitfalls that most of us make.

-Norm Brodsky

In this interview with Norm Brodsky, Danette is able to glean for her listeners ways to overcoming devastating financial mistakes that may cause one to loss not only their business but also their reputation. Norm gives us valuable information on how he was able to start more than one multimillion dollar business and recover from devastating financial lose. This interview is chock full of information that allows the reader to be successful from the beginning.

Danette Moss (Moss)

Hello and thank you for joining me on another segment of Let's Talk Strategies with Danette Moss and joining me today is street smarts columnist and contributing editor Norm Brodsky, a veteran entrepreneur who has founded and grown six businesses. In 2008 Norm sold City Storage a document archive business based in Brooklyn New York for $110 million dollars. Along with Bo Burlingham, Norm has chronicled his entrepreneurial journey in his column in Inc. Magazine and in the book Street Smarts: An All-Purpose Tool Kit for Entrepreneurs. Hello Norm, welcome to Let’s Talk Strategies, how are you?

Norm Brodsky (Brodsky)

Fine Danette. Thank you for having me on your program.

Moss

About two months ago I had the pleasure of meeting you at an event in Atlanta and you graced us with your knowledge. It was something that I believe all entrepreneurs need to hear and I'm excited to have you here. In the beginning of your book Street Smarts: An All-Purpose Tool Kit for Entrepreneurs. you have Norm Brodsky’s 10 Commandments for business and these 10 Commandments are what I feel should be read by new and existing business owners. I'd like to start our conversation by discussing those Commandments, is that okay with you?

Brodsky

Great, but before we start with that I'd like to say that entrepreneurs are not born, anybody can be an entrepreneur. It's really a mindset and if they follow certain time-tested rules they can avoid a lot of the pitfalls that most of us make when we don't know what we’re doing. Often, when starting a business either we don’t know or we think we know. The tools that I provide in the book make you aware of some of the pitfalls to watch out for, some of the things that you shouldn’t do or things that you should do to make your chances of success greater. You know they say that 9 out of 10 or 4 out of 5 new businesses fail which is really not true. What happens is that many of these businesses run out of cash because they don't know how to use the cash properly. So, it wasn’t that the business was a failure, they just didn’t know coming out of the gate the things that they needed to make them successful. There are a lot of things that you can learn either before you start your business or while you're in business that will give you a better chance to be successful.

Moss

I like that you mentioned businesses running out of cash, because number 1 of your 10 Commandments speaks to what you just said, but before we get into those Commandments, I'd like to address something that most of us are told we need. We either are told this when we sit in front of a banker or anyone that’s helping us to move forward in our business and that is that we must have a business plan. In your book you stated we needed to understand cash flow before drafting a business plan. I've never heard anyone say that before and have always been told to get a business plan and to list what I think I'm going to make (you know those projections). You really took the fluff off of that. Please explain to our listeners what you mean by that?

Brodsky

The first mistake most people make after someone tells them that they need a business plan is they go online, find a business plan and then they plug in some numbers. They may see that they need let's say $300,000 to start their business but they may only have $100,000 to start with, so then they change the numbers to look like they'll come out all right. But what you need to know is that the business plan itself needs to be tailored for you, the person starting the business, because then you'll do it legitimately. Even though you can raise $100,000 you don't want to go into a business that's going to fail so you need to know what your numbers are and the only way to do that is to understand what the cash flow is because if you run out of cash you're out of business. I've seen a lot of good ideas that could have led to successful business be started by people that ran out of cash. However, if they would've taken a different approach and recognized their cash flow and created a business plan for their businesses and not for the investors they would have seen that they would've run out of cash. So the business plan though important first has to be done by you, and the most important part about that is the cash flow. You must have honest cash flow because if you juggle with the numbers to fit what you think you can raise your going to fail and that's the one thing you don't want to do.

Moss

Number 1 of the 10 Commandments for businesses is running the numbers and if you don't know how to read them you're flying blind. What do you mean by knowing and understanding how to read the numbers?

Brodsky

Well a lot of people don't