This episode of Talking Business Now welcomes back Frank Fiume. He is the founder of i9 Sports, the nation’s leading franchise of youth leagues and camps. He’s also the author of a recently released, best-selling book called Running With My Head Down: An Entrepreneur's Story of Passion, Perseverance, and Purpose. This is the third in a series of episodes we’ve done with Fiume, who grew i9 Sports to more than $300 million in sales, with 2 million participants in 900 communities in 30 states....

In this second of a three-part series, serial entrepreneur Frank Fiume, a pioneer in the youth sports industry and the founder of i9 Sports, joins Talking Business Now host Kelly Scanlon to share tips and insights into using franchising as a way to grow your business—including the lessons he learned from his mistakes. (Listen to the first episode on the entrepreneurial mindset needed to run a successful business and remain a healthy person.) i9 Sports is the country's leading franchise of...

My guest on this episode of Talking Business Now is serial entrepreneur Frank Fiume, a pioneer in the youth sports industry and the founder of i9 Sports—the country's leading franchise of youth leagues and camps. The company has generated more than $300 million in sales, with 2 million participants in 900 communities across 30 states nationwide. The business catapulted Fiume to national recognition, and Entrepreneur magazine ranked i9 Sports as the #1 children’s fitness franchise. Fiume has...

In this episode of Talking Business Now, Oscar Trimboli, a former marketing director at Microsoft, joins host Kelly Scanlon to talk with us about what deep listening is, how to master it and how to use it to increase productivity, improve processes and grow your business. Trimboli says that despite spending 55% of our time listening, only 2% of people really grasp the skill. But the stakes for not listening are high, ranging from miscommunication to job turnover to lost sales. At Microsoft,...

How do we deal with uncertainty? My guest on this episode of Talking Business Now—Julie Benezet—has some ideas on how to handle it. And she has the experience to back it up. In 1999, Benezet was the new director for a fledgling dot com called Amazon. Her challenge was to figure out how to lease just the right real estate and buildings in just the right places, to help the company survive and thrive. And as they say, the rest is history. As the first global real estate sales executive for...

AI expert and author Pamela McCorduck joins Talking Business Now host Kelly Scanlon to offer insights on the evolution of AI and where the technology is headed. McCorduck has been working in the field of artificial intelligence since 1960—and she knows the founding fathers personally. She's made a name for herself as an astute and authoritative observer of AI's evolution and growth since its earliest days. Her first book, "Machines Who Think," was the first modern history of artificial...

Your company's brand identity is everything visual that is visual about your brand—and your company name is a major part of that. In fact, 77% of consumers make purchases based on a brand name. In this episode of Talking Business Now, Ross Kimbarovsky shares tips for choosing a name for your business—whether you're launching a new business or rebranding an existing business: The difference between brand identity and brand design How your business name conveys your overall brand design and...

Margaret Reynolds joins Talking Business Now host Kelly Scanlon to discuss her latest book—Boost Your GrowthDNA: How Strategic Leaders Use Growth Genetics to Drive Sustainable Business Performance. Reynolds explains how growth-driven can use the Growth DNA framework to accelerate performance in a highly competitive and fast-changing world. Tune in to find out:1. Why GrowthDNA is the missing link to more profit, stronger culture and sustainable high performance. 2. How to develop the four...

August Turak, serial entreprener and award-winning author who attributes much of his success to his 20-year stint as a frequent guest of the Trappist monks of Mepkin Abbey, joins host Kelly Scanlon on this episode of Talking Business Now. In our May 24, 2019 interview with Turak, he talked about the 1996 skydiving accident that triggered the emotional crisis that sent him to the Abbey in search of spiritual solace; his Christmas Eve exchange with a monk named Brother John that led him to...

Small business marketing expert John Jantsch joins host Kelly Scanlon on this episode of Talking Business Now to discuss his recent book "The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur: 366 Daily Meditations to Feed Your Soul and Grow Your Business." In a departure from his previous five books on marketing, in his latest work, Jantsch taps into the wisdom of 19th-century transcendentalist literature and his own 30-year entrepreneurial journey to create a daily guide entrepreneurs can use to create a deeper...

When Conner Hazelrigg was a college sophomore, her friend returned from a trip to Haiti, amazed that everyone there had cell phones—but no electricity to charge them. Yet many residents of these countries rely on their phones for food, medical needs and digital currency transactions.A math and physics major, Hazelrigg decided she needed to do something about the situation. And, within a few months, she had created a prototype for the Sunshine Box, a suitcase-sized device that can charge 10...

What happens when you combine your talent with your passion? According to our guest on this episode of Talking Business Now, legendary Orlando Magic co-founder Pat Williams, you find your “success intersection.” When Pat was seven years old, his passion was baseball. By the time he made it to the minor leagues, he realized after just two years that as much as he loved the sport, it wasn't his greatest talent. Little did he know that his career in sports was just beginning. He discovered that...

Sales and leadership expert Ron Karr joins Talking Business Now host Kelly Scanlon to talk with us about a proprietary sales process, called Velocity Mindset, for increasing your company's market share, sales and profits. Tune in to discover: ■ What today's prospects expect from a salesperson.■ Simple questions for qualifying a prospect.■ How to shorten the sales cycle.■ How to grow sales revenues without discounting.■ The secret to reducing the number of proposals you send out.■ Time...

Ray Zinn, co-founder of microchip company Micrel, joins Talking Business Now host Kelly Scanlon to discuss entrepreneurship, startup success, staying true to core values maintaining a disciplined focus and being a "student of life."A Silicon Valley pioneer, Zinn founded the company in 1978—and he chose to bootstrap it to profitability rather than take venture capital.  When Microchip acquired the company in 2015, Zinn delivered a total equity value of more than $800 million.  Before attending...

Everyday companies across America hire or promote talented executives who ultimately fail. Perhaps you've been one of those executives yourself. Why does this happen so often? My guest on this episode of Talking Business Now, Ron Carucci, has written a book on this very subject. Called "Rising to Power: The Journey of Exceptional Executives,"it’s based on a ground-breaking 10-year study on executive transition that reveals why so many executives fail—and fail so fast. Ron shares with us why...

What do you do when you’re a guy strolling down the skin care aisle of a department store and you don’t like the experience you're having?If you’re Kelley Thornton, you create a men’s skin care empire that's changing the face of men's grooming. Thornton, the founder and CEO of Chicago-based Tiege Hanley, joins Talking Business Now host Kelly Scanlon, to talk about how he and his partners have built a multimillion dollar company featuring a skin care system that's easy for regular guys to...

The story of Crazy Richard’s Peanut Butter is a family story that began in 1898 in Columbus, Ohio, with the oldest peanut butter company in the United States. Its most recent chapter began when the current owner, Kimmi Wernli, was six years old. Wenli joins Talking Business Now host Kelly Scanlon to talk about bringing the natural peanut butter company into the 21st century—with sales in every state—and provides loads of takeaways you can use to grow your own business. Tune in to find out...

Think about the times in your life when you’ve had to reimagine your future. Maybe it was leaving school and starting your career—or changing your career. Often, during these transitional times, we’re faced with many options and we’re concerned about making the RIGHT decision. Many times, there’s not a clear map for which path will lead to success. My guest on this episode of Talking Business Now is Tina Seelig, author of "What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Way in...

Conflict has become a dirty word in the workplace. But, according to our guest on this episode of Talking Business Now—New York Times bestselling author Dr. Liane Davey—companies that avoid or defer conflict find themselves struggling with "conflict debt.” Davey, an organizational psychologist, is the author of The Good Fight: Use Productive Conflict to Get Your Team and Organization Back on Track. She says: "Think of conflict debt like credit card debt. Conflict debt is the sum of all the...

Jeff Green was a teacher and elementary school principal for 16 years. In fact, he thought he would eventually retire as a school superintendent. But, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, Jeff, a father of three, wanted to find a better way to protect his own children and the children and staff under his watch. On this episode of Talking Business Now, Green joins host Kelly Scanlon to discuss his journey from school principal to entrepreneur and how his company SafeDefend,...

Adversity doesn’t define you, but it can influence the road you take as you become who you are.That’s the belief of David Cooks, my guest on this episode of Talking Business Now. At the age of 15, David Cooks was a high school sophomore and a passionate basketball player. But then, he experienced a spinal aneurysm that left him as a T-6 paraplegic. From the beginning, David refused to let the wheelchair control his life. In his book, Getting Undressed: From Paralysis To Purpose, David shares...

In many cases, the solutions to our business challenges can be found if we only ask the right questions. On this episode, Greg Bustin joins Talking Business Now  host Kelly Scanlon to discuss what today’s leaders can learn and which questions to ask by studying decisions made throughout history.He’s written a book called How Leaders Decide: A Timeless Guide to Making Tough Choices. In it, he presents 52 stories featuring pivotal decisions that previous leaders—such as Alfred Nobel, Marie...

Bob McClure, co-founder of McClure’s Pickles, joins Talking Business Now host Kelly Scanlon to talk about his entrepreneurial journey and what it’s like working in a family business that grew into a nationally recognized brand. McClure's is a specialty pickle brand with raving fans. Bob McClure grew up making pickles, using a recipe from his great grandmother. But he didn’t think the pickle industry was where he’d land as an adult. In fact, he left Michigan to work in New York, an actor. He...

Most experts make the mistake of choosing just one way to deliver their expertise. The result? They never achieve the recognition and revenue they deserve.Think about it. Accountants make money through accounting. Trainers make money from training. Chef’s cook. You get the picture. The secret to becoming a niche leader and having more revenue is to diversify how you deliver what you do. That's the advice of Ronan Leonard, the founder of Eccountability. Also known as The Mastermind Guy,...

August Turak joins Talking Business Now host Kelly Scanlon to discuss the business lessons he learned from the Trappist monks.Turak was a founding employee of MTV and the A&E Network. Later, he founded software companies that eventually sold to BMC Software for $150 million. He currently runs a not-for-profit called the Self-Knowledge Symposium Foundation.As a successful entrepreneur and award-winning author, Turak attributes much of his success to his 20-year stint as a frequent monastic...