Did you check out the Dallas Cowboy’s game yesterday? Or, if you are not a Cowboy’s fan, imagine going to a game for your favorite sports team for a minute. You spent way too much money on your tickets, then walked into the stadium and sat down. But when you looked around, something was missing. They took the scoreboard out?!?!? Imagine sitting through the game without knowing the score and without knowing how much time was left. Kinda takes away from the game, right? But now, put...

When you go on a vacation (assuming you can remember the last one), are you the type that plans every last minute, or are you the type that just goes without a plan, and what happens happens? Thomas Edison had a great quote that went like this … “Vision without execution is just a hallucination.” For the last several weeks, we have been talking about strategy, and I absolutely believe that you must have a strategic plan even as a small business. At the same time, if you cannot execute that...

When you hear the term “brand,” what comes to mind? Probably the idea of a logo or a color scheme, right? In today’s episode, we bring in the “brand boss” with a much deeper approach to branding and the overall messaging strategy when it comes to your business. In her words, you should be focusing on the identity of your business – not just the logo – and making sure that you know what the identity of your business is and thus how to best communicate and connect with your audience. Join me in...

We have all seen the stats regarding the “survival” rates of small entrepreneurial businesses. What is not quite as clear is the number of entrepreneurs – specialists in their field – working long hours day in and day out, with little to show for their efforts. Technically, you have a business, and you are a business owner in title. The challenge is that you are wearing hats on top of hats … 50 or 60 in the words of a guest in season one. However, there is one hat that most entrepreneurs...

Welcome to the re-launch of the Building to Scale podcast! This is episode 1 of season 2 and I and my team are really excited to be putting a renewed focus on our mission to help entrepreneurial business leaders find clarity in what is really happening in their business today and to guide them through a plan to build a more profitable, scalable, and ultimately saleable business. You see, it is my belief that as a small business entrepreneur, you will never be able to achieve the life you want...

I am still not sure how we are wrapping up August and Q3 already … On the one hand, 2021 has been a long year, and on the other side, it has flown by. And, as if 2020 needed to be topped, this has been a challenging year for many small businesses. Many face financial trials dealing with the effects of the shutdowns, while others deal with the challenges involved with unplanned growth explosions depending upon the industry and their location. One of the strategies we work with entrepreneurial...

In 2001, Chris launched a start-up in his spare time – a marketing company called Farotech. What started primarily as a web design firm quickly grew into a comprehensive digital marketing agency specializing in helping clients in the healthcare, orthopedics, SaaS, and cybersecurity fields see explosive growth through a proven marketing system. Today, the Farotech team is proud to be known by the clients they serve— Penn Medicine, Rothman Institute, and Philadelphia Insurance Company, to name...

Courtney Lukitsch is the principal and founder of Gotham PR, founded in 2002, and is a boutique Marketing PR firm based in New York and London, with a roster of high-profile clients in 30 global markets and on every continent in the world. Courtney started her career working for USAID in development, transitioned to academia abroad, and then to retail technology with Zara in Spain. Back in New York, she joined Rubenstein Public Relations, the country’s first and oldest PR firm, as the VP for...

Michelle Seiler Tucker is the Founder and CEO of Seiler Tucker Incorporated. She holds the MandAMI (Mergers and Acquisitions Master Intermediary) title, as well as Certified Mergers and Acquisitions Professional (CMandAP) and Certified Senior Business Analyst (CSBA). As a 20-year veteran in the MandA industry, she is regarded as the leading authority on buying, selling, fixing, and growing businesses. She and her firm have sold over a thousand businesses in almost every vertical and have a...

Ann Brennan is the owner of ASMM Digital Marketing and host of the Small Business Connections podcast, demonstrating her passion for marketing. Ann was the “accidental entrepreneur” who took her talents in social media and marketing and started a side hustle while searching for a “real job.” Before long, however, the side hustle turned into a full digital marketing agency that Ann has now led for the past 5+ years. In today’s episode, Ann shares more about her background in launching and...

Guest Jim Traister has a passion for helping small businesses drive sales. He is CEO of The Digital Navigator, a full-service digital agency that drives sales for independent businesses in three verticals: course providers, hospitality, and small business. In this episode, Traister shares his background as a college instructor turned entrepreneur and how starting his own business came with making mistakes but also fed his love of learning and his passion for helping others. Listen to find out...

Recently, our own Jeff Chastain met an individual whom, together with a business partner, had what appeared from the outside to be a very successful marketing agency. They had a good, solid client base and a good, albeit somewhat uneven, revenue flow coming in. In other words, most of us would look at this business and say this is one that we would want. Why was it that this individual was thinking about quitting the business? In today's episode of the Building to Scale Podcast, Jeff Chastain...

Tim Szczygiel is an experienced Chief Executive Officer with a demonstrated history of working in the computer software industry. In this episode of the Building to Scale podcast, Szczygiel talks about the dichotomy of the pandemic in his business, SalesChain, LLC. While the company enjoyed a very profitable 2020 due to the trend toward remote work, Szczygiel also believes working in person is highly beneficial for employees to learn the culture of the company and share ideas, as well as...

If you were to walk around your office today (virtually or in-person), would you find your team working on the most important things efficiently? In continuing our discussion about the 4 Ps - the four critical components necessary to successfully scale an entrepreneurial business ... it does not matter if you have the right people in the right seats (people), that you have a shared mission that everybody is bought into (purpose), or that you have a proven playbook that everybody is working...

In our modern world, acquiring a knowledge base can be done in many ways, which is why Laurie Stach believes that education should be more about the entrepreneurial mindset, including skills like grit, collaboration and adaptation. In this episode of the building to scale podcast, Stach talks about finding purpose in her work, educating the next generation of entrepreneurs, and lessons she’s learned while running her own company. As a mechanical engineer, it was natural to want a “right...

If you are watching a football (American) game and the quarterback and the receiver are not in sync, what happens? The announcers often refer to it as the players not being on the same page of the playbook and at best, it results in an incomplete pass and a loss of an opportunity. This is no different in business. Too often we hear that small entrepreneurial businesses can't find good talent. In most cases, though it is not a matter of "good talent" but simply the fact that the employee and...

In this episode of the Building to Scale podcast, Mark Ainley delves into important lessons he’s learned in his entrepreneurial journey in the real estate sector, particularly as it pertains to hiring the right people. Getting started in his business, he and his partners tended to hire too late, and often used a “gut feeling" or personality as a barometer to find a good fit. Ainley talks about the pitfalls of this practice, and the ways he has adapted and the methods he now uses to find the...

Why are you in business? We know the mark of a successful business is to make a profit, but beyond that, why are you really in business? Dan Sullivan outlines 4 freedoms of being an entrepreneur and the 4th freedom is a "freedom of purpose". In Dan's word's ... This entrepreneurial company you've created is not just a job or a career; it's actually a vehicle to all sorts of things that relate to your fundamental values and ideals in life. This allows you to have a tremendous sense of purpose...

For Jeff Arnold, founder of RightSure Insurance Group, stewardship and making the world a better place is top priority. Perhaps it was his upbringing as a son in a long line of preachers (his father, grandfather, great-grandfather); his company is built around the culture of giving back at the city, state, national and global levels. In this episode, Arnold discusses his views on philanthropy, as well as the ways in which RightSure stands out in a crowded insurance market, and how metrics are...

In Jim Collins Book, Good to Great, he states ... "When we began the research project, we expected to find that the first step in taking a company from good to great would be to set a new direction, a new vision and strategy for the company, and then to get people committed and aligned behind that new direction." Instead, he found the complete opposite in that great companies and leaders first focused on getting the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus. With all of the...

Entrepreneur Tim Angelillo's passion is to be of service to consumers, clients, partners, and other tenacious entrepreneurs by sharing his story and solutions that can be applied to companies large and small. Angelillo is the founder of Sourced Craft Cocktails, a delivery service that brings the craft cocktail experience to homes and offices. In this lively episode, he describes how he discovered untapped potential in the alcohol distribution industry - a system that hasn’t changed in nearly...