The Thoughtful Entrepreneur

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks with the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, Christy Budnick. Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices is a global real estate agency  with around 1500 offices. They have offices in all 50 states as well as many countries globally. The current state of the market does not cause any concern for Christy as the current climate is not replicating the past rescission of 2007. Christy explains that they focus on growth for their franchisees rather than stacking them on top of one another as that can cause consumer confusion. Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices is often thought of as a luxury brand. However, 80% of the properties sold are not in that market. Christy explains Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices is for everyone at any market level. Christy explains the importance of having a strong realtor in the current market for first time homebuyers. While there are areas in the United States that could grow, the main focus of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices is expanding more globally.  Key Points:How Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices has handled the current housing marketChristy’s thoughts on the 2007 rescission and its correlation to the market todayHow Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices is different from other real estate agenciesBerkshire’s target markets and main focusesChristy’s advice to first time homebuyersBerkshire Hathaway HomeServices franchisee oppourtunities over the yearsHow Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices plans to expand more globallyHow Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices helps clients beyond the transaction of a new home About Christy BudnickChristy Budnick serves as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, a global residential real estate brokerage franchise network. In her role, Budnick oversees the global real estate brokerage franchise network which is made up of more than 50,000 real estate professionals and nearly 1,500 offices throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, the Middle East, India and The Bahamas. The network, among the few organizations entrusted to use the world-renowned Berkshire Hathaway name, brings to the real estate market a definitive mark of trust, integrity, stability and longevity. Budnick is listed amongst the Swanepoel Power 200 (SP 200), ranking one of the 200 most powerful and influential executives and leaders in the residential real estate brokerage industry.  Want to learn more? Check out the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices website at https://www.bhhs.com/Check out Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/berkshire-hathaway-homeservices/.Check out  Christy Budnick on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/christybudnick/.Check out  Christy Budnick on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ChristyBudnickCEO.Check out  Christy Budnick on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/christybudnickceo/.Check out  Christy Budnick on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ChristyBudnick.Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time!More from UpMyInfluence:️  We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE. Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here. What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here.

On today's episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur, we are so excited to speak with the executive director of Financial Modeling Institute, Ian Schnoor! He has a wealth of knowledge in the financing industry. With more than twenty-five years of experience as a financial professional, Ian Schnoor understands the industry well. Starting a Citibank, Ian expanded to becoming president and founder of The Marquee Group & Executive Director at the Financial Modeling Institute (FMI).Financial Modeling Institute seeks to promote awareness, excellence, and discipline in Financial Modeling through world-class accreditation programs. Ian discusses financial modeling and the stories that numbers can tell through becoming scientifically driven and understanding data. He discusses financial modeling as a skill and emphasizes that anyone can learn it as long as you put in the time. He shares that it is not that modeling is necessarily hard to understand but that it can take time to get good at it through practicing and then the skill is with you forever. Don’t forget to listen to our next episode, where we recap all the great insights that Ian Schnoor offered! Key Points from the Episode:- Gut decisions become relics through the tool of Google analytics and insights through forecasting.- Discussing the differences between accounting and finance.- Financial Modeling Institute as an accreditation organization. - How forecasting and modeling works and the impact of strong forecasting and modeling skills. - 10 hour foundations program offered through advanced financial modeling (ADM).  About Ian Schnoor:Experienced financial professional with a demonstrated history of working in the professional training & coachi\ng industry. Strong skills in Valuation Modeling, Excel Models, Microsoft Excel, and Corporate Finance.Links Mentioned in this Episode: Want to learn more? Check out Financial Modeling Institute’s website at https://fminstitute.com/ Check out Ian Schnoor on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianschnoor/Check out Financial Modeling Institute on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/finmodelinginstitute/?hl=enCheck out Financial Modeling Institute on twitter at https://twitter.com/FMI_InstituteCheck out Financial Modeling Institute on facebook athttps://www.facebook.com/institutefinancialmodeling/Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time!More from UpMyInfluence:️  We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE. Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here. What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here.

On today’s episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur, we are so excited to speak with creative finance specialist, Brian O’Niell. He is founder and CEO of BKW Property and host of the podcast The W2 Prison Break Show. Brian O’Niell shares with us his expertise of today’s current housing market needs and trends. With his background also in coaching, Brain gives his knowledge in a comprehensible way that also helps the audience expand their understanding.In today's chat, Josh and Brian discuss opportunities that are available for purchasing property and expanding business. Currently BKW is focused on purchasing properties in the Chicago area, generally single family homes, offering no money down with seller financing. Brain talks about expanding into other markets, buying on creative financing and opportunities available for helping people that are self employed that maybe don't look great on paper to banks. Don’t forget to listen to our next episode, where we recap all the great insights that Brian offered! Key Points from the Episode:- Opportunities in private investing with free and clear property.- Ian’s background in corporate sales and real estate.- Creative Financing in single family homes with no money down. - Expanding markets.- The process of finding sellers with a need that BKW can be of service to. - Daily lead generation and marketing through teams. - Marketing properties though systems. About Brian O’Niell and BKW Property Solutions:Brian and Katie O’Neill are real estate investors and business owners. They have been happily married for 10 years and enjoy spending time with their son, Will.BKW Property Solutions was started to provide flexible real estate solutions for both buyers and sellers. They serve the Greater Chicagoland area and help buyers realize their dream of owning a home. When Brian and Katie experienced many of the common challenges of selling their own home many years ago, they knew there had to be a better way. That is the foundation of BKW Property Solutions and we look forward to serving your needs. There is a better way! Links Mentioned in this Episode:    Want to learn more? Check out BKW Property’s website at http://bkwpropertysolutions.com/.  Check out Brian O’Niell on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-o-neill-5069216/#experience. Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time!More from UpMyInfluence:️  We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE. Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here. What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here.

On today's episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur, we are so excited to speak with CEO of Make Money Your Honey, Amanda Abella! She is a business coach that specializes in online branding and high ticket sales. Amanda works primarily with women coaches and teaches frameworks to help increase revenue while working less. With all of her experience and knowledge in online branding, she breaks down the methods that keep virtual presence consistent.In today’s chat, we discuss attraction marketing, sales, automated funnels, and good old-fashioned sales and networking. Amanda has some fantastic insight on building attraction and creating behind-the-scenes systems to impact sales. Don’t forget to listen to our next episode, where we recap all the great insights that Amanda offered!Key Points from the Episode:- Amanda Abella discusses the effectiveness video and email marketing currently has on attraction marketing.- The 5 Step Sales Process: Engage, Educate, Enroll, Evaluate, and Endorse.- Amanda Abella discusses the importance of asking the right questions to prequalify to avoid getting stuck.About Amanda Abella:Amanda Abella is the founder and CEO of Make Money Your Honey, a marketing and sales training company that helps women coaches, consultants and creatives triple their revenue while working half the time in 90 days by teaching a framework that covers systems, influence and sales.Her clients go from hating sales and marketing to achieving 90% close rates and closing multiple five-figure deals. Her work has been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, Business Insider, Univision and many more.Prior to teaching marketing and sales, Amanda spent a decade as a financial writer and wrote content for companies like Wells Fargo, Discover, Credit Karma, Santander and more. She’s also partnered with companies like Capital One and Transunion in financial education campaigns.She’s also the Amazon bestselling author of Make Money Your Honey, a podcast host, award winning content creator, keynote speaker and has created a community of over 60,000 people across social media channels.In 2016, Amanda created Persuade to Profit, her signature coaching program for bloggers and small business owners who are ready to position themselves as experts and make money with high ticket sales. You can learn more at http://www.amandaabella.com/persuadetoprofitYou can also get a FREE training that shows you how to grow your influence and monetize it at http://www.amandaabella.com/influencerLinks Mentioned in this Episode: Want to learn more? Check out Make Money Your Honey’s website at https://www.amandaabella.com/make-money-your-honey/.Check out Amanda Abella on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandaabella/#experience .Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time!More from UpMyInfluence:We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE. Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here. What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here.

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks to the author of Sell It Like a Mango: A New Seller’s Guide to Closing More Deals, Donald Kelly.Josh asks Donald about his overall work and what it is that he does and how he helps people. Donald explains that essentially they help B2B companies to improve their sales. From individual sales reps that they train, from brand new sellars to seasoned sellers. Through training programs or going through coaching, or sales mastermind. Donald shares how they provide a lot of content through podcasts, blogs, and education. Donald expresses that the goal of The Sales Evangelist is to be the number one sales education organization in the world and help their sellers improve their skills.Josh shares how he has personally been through and experienced Donald’s ​​program and how knowledgeable Donald is at what he does. Josh asks more about his book, Sell It Like a Mango: A New Seller’s Guide to Closing More Deals, asking why does the world need this book today? Donald shares the reason why is that no matter what you sell, there will always be others that are also selling that same thing. He emphasized that what makes him and his book different is his experience. Where he grew up in Jamaica, he grew up selling mangos and others did as well. Donald shares how when he first began he wasn’t selling any mangos. Donald realized that with the same product, same place, same type of people, it requires the seller to be different. It wasn’t the product, it wasn't the customer, it was him. Donald asked himself, “what makes one seller stand out from the other?” He shares that it comes back down to what an individual does to separate themselves from the rest of the competition. Emphasizing to look for the unique things as the premise of the book.Josh asks Donald how do we do that? How do we stand out? Donald explains that one of the biggest things people miss is the importance of servicing the emotional needs that people have.Donald expresses an impactful way to stand out from competitors is by mastering discovery. “How can I help this person to be able to identify and recognize the problem?” Discovery phase is often glossed over. Donald shares that when asking a question, master listening through the discovery process and then the closing becomes easy. Josh and Donald discuss thoughtful discovery and how just asking the question allows for that open discovery.Want to learn more? Check out The Sales Evangelist’s website at https://thesalesevangelist.com/Check out The Sales Evangelist on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldckelly/Check out Donald Kelly on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldckelly/Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time!More from UpMyInfluence:⭐ We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE.🎉 Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here.🚀 What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here.

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks with the CEO of The Mather Group, Josh Greene. The Mather Group is an organization focused on three things: SEO (search engine optimization), paid media, and Wikipedia. Josh Elderedge and Josh Greene discuss Wikipedia and how they help big companies understand what Wikipedia is or isn't, what expectations should be, and what to do with the material currently out there. Josh Elderedge expresses that nearly anyone can contribute to Wikipedia and the intricacies that can come with a collaborative platform. Josh and Josh discuss the process of pages being deleted on Wikipedia and how that happens. Josh Greene shares how it’s not enough to just publish a page, it’s also how relevant that page stays. He discusses the process where a page will be nominated for deletion, from there it is a week to ten days of debate over whether the page is relevant. Josh Greene shares that often the page is deleted. Josh Eldredge asks Josh Greene about notability tests and at what point Wikipedia would consider notability enough to warrant a page. Josh Greene shares how Wikipedia has tons of documentation and how it is very good at their rules and regulations. Josh Greene expresses for new pages the big hurdle of notability is that there needs to be a number of mainstream profiles of someone without quoting that person. Josh Eldredege asks Josh Greene about his work in reputation management and the weight that wikipedia has in google's eyes. Josh Eldredge focuses on reputation issues and how that situation is mitigated or dealt with. Josh Greene expresses how every situation is a little bit different. He explains how sometimes there may be a situation where it now takes up 8 of 10 Google results and how that may not paint a fair picture of what’s going on. Josh Greene discusses clients and how often they hear from people that are either currently in a crisis or just got out of a crisis. He shares how generally it's easier to maintain when doing so in advance but that often people wait until the situation is exasperated before looking to address it. Josh and Josh discuss online presence and how keeping it up to date gives you a solid base. When being a bigger company, a lot of your profiles will be highly visible. Josh Greene shares how when the online presence is stronger, it’s less likely for a negative story to take a headline as there’s additional information to filter through. Want to learn more? Check out The Mather Group’s website at https://themathergroupllc.com/ Check out The Mather Group on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/themathergroup/ Check out Josh Greene on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshgreene1/ Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time! More from UpMyInfluence: ⭐ We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE. 🎉 Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here. 🚀 What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here.

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge, speaks with the CEO of Trainual, Chris Ronzio. Josh and Chris discuss the mission of Trainual which is a business playbook training manual for businesses. Chris talks about history, vision, values, asking why, co-workers, and the rules that are established within businesses. Josh asks Chris if in a perfect world, what would the on boarding process look like? Chris discusses the importance of the formal signing of an offer and the importance of announcing a new member within a company. He discusses the impact of setting up new employees with technology so they have the tools necessary to perform. He also shares the importance of providing space as a new employee is learning their new bearings. Josh asks Chris about the friction that comes when considering adaptations within processes. Chris talks about the different reasons to come into a system like Trainual. First, is to make sure everything is centralized. Next, Chris discusses accountability. Lastly, is the search or ease of finding things when reaching for company resources. Josh asks Chris how Trainual takes something like a manual which is usually perceived as boring and elevates it. Chris discusses how interactive Trainual is versatile, it can include embedded videos, gifts, questions, slides, Spotify playlists. He emphasizes that anything that enriches the culture of your company can be uploaded to the system and the tools are there so it doesn’t have to be boring. Chris talks about one of Trainual’s favorite trademarks, “get your business out of your brain.” He shares how we often feel like the burden of running a company is on our shoulders and how we get stuck in our heads. Chris explains that the transformation doesn’t have to be all at once and the importance of empowering other people within a company. Josh asks what sort of agencies Trainual works with and how these agencies would use Trainual. Chris shares that Trainual is a very horizontal tool. How any business that has people as a component of delivering the product or service being offered can benefit from this system. He discusses how when you have people, then you care a lot about consistency, and to have consistency it’s important to document the company's best practices. They then discuss the value of documenting and collaborating practices within a company and how a process people group can impact that consistency. Chris talks about his book, The Business Playbook, that breaks down how to do this to disconnect from the day to day so that companies are free to grow their business. Want to learn more? Check out Trainual’s website at https://trainual.com Check out Trainual on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/trainual/ Check out Chris Ronzio on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisronzio/Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time!More from UpMyInfluence:⭐ We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE.🎉 Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here.🚀 What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here.

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks with the Lead Innovator and Co-Founder of Respona, Farzad Rashidi.Respona is a platform that helps businesses create partnerships with publications in their sector to gain editorial backlinks to their website. It also helps with gaining organic traffic from Google. A tool that is heavily focused on helps clients identify targets, gives the clients contact information for the target, and outreach for the clients. Farzad explains that there is a lot of malpractice in the space of building backlinks. This malpractice happens because individuals are trying to figure out what works with creating these backlinks. Respona has around 2,000 users that use Respona in very different ways. Farzad explains that they used Respona to recruit affiliate partners through a strategy such as competitor backlink analysis. They would pull the top performing affiliates and use the software to find the main person from those affiliate companies to get into contact. It further helps to create a pitch to give to these companies and possibly create a relationship. There is a program called Respona Guru that is an established relationship with freelancers or agencies and clients can hire these individuals to delegate the process to them. Farzad explains that you can use Respona to find the right podcast to go on for your business. You can use a keyword search or search a specific person's name relevant to your business sector to find a podcast that could be willing to accept guests, the relevancy in your space, and makes the pitching process easier for the client. Farzad explains that he wanted to keep pricing simple for Respona. The cost is starting from $99 a month that is billed monthly and can be canceled at any time. It comes with a free onboarding session and 30 day guarantee. The session includes a meeting with their success team to go over the clients priorities to tour the software and provide a personalized campaign. Farzad explains that Google used page rank to determine popularity. This is a process of the higher the page rank, the higher the amount of quality backlinks are used in regard to that website. Respona spend 20% of their resources on content creation and the other 80% of resources on promotion and outreach to receive backing from other relevant publications. Farzad says there are not many companies that focus on the outreach side of business and it makes it a unique software company. Farzad explains that he wrote about his success with his parent company Visme in his free ebook Marketing Strategies We Used to Bootstrap Visme to over 4 Million users. There is a Respona outreach strategy hub on the website to help ease potential clients into the space and get them comfortable before fully signing up for the software. Want to learn more? Check out the Respona website at https://respona.com/.Check out Respona on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/respona/.Check out  Farzad Rashidi on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/farzadrashidi/.Check out  Farzad Rashidi on Twitter at https://twitter.com/The_Farzad.Check out Farzad Rashidi’s free ebook Marketing Strategies We Used to Bootstrap Visme to over 4 Million users at https://www.visme.co/marketing-strategy/.Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time!More from UpMyInfluence:️  We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE. Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here. What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here.

1265 - Your Brain's Personal Secretary with Selfluence's Blaine Oelkers

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks with the founding partner of LOCAL, Neil Bedwell. Josh and Neil discuss LOCAL and its impact of working with top global brands. Josh shares how LOCAL provides a very unique value. Neil expresses how lucky LOCAL has been in being able to help brands navigate change. LOCAL is a group of marketers that are now focusing on employees. He describes them as a change marketing company instead of a change management company. Neil shares the statistic that two thirds of adults are unhappy at work. That means that two thirds of people are unhappy in the thing they spend half their waking adult lives doing. Neil emphasizes how that’s a huge problem. Neil discusses the origin of what a company actually is. A company is a collection of people. He shares that the word company is derived from a Latin word describing the communion around bread. He expresses that companies don’t employ people, they are people, and how in recent years organizations have forgotten that.  Organizations think more about profit than people, more about the bottom line than the heartbeat of the organization. Neil discusses marketing versus management techniques. Neil describes marketing as the orientation of everything you do around your audience. He believes you must also have that same orientation around employees. Sharing that for employees to want to stay with you, they must feel like the organization is also oriented around them. Josh shares how wonderful it is as an organization to have heart centered values and making them a part of how everything within the organization operates. They discuss the importance of having company values and the impact those values have when they’re felt by the employees every day, not just heard. Neil describes this as the value gap many organizations are recognizing today. Employees know the organization's values but they aren’t feeling it in their day to day work. Josh and Neil discuss company purpose and how many companies today focus on doing good or creating positive impact on the world and the importance of employees feeling aligned with that purpose driven impact. Josh and Neil talk about the pathway of creating lasting change within an organization. Neil discusses a three part process of change. The first is belief, second is adoption, and the third is opportunity. Neil shares that LOCAL’s goal is to work with any leader driving change within a complex culture. Want to learn more? Check out LOCAL’s website at https://www.localindustries.com/ Check out LOCAL on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/local-industries/ Check out Neil Bedwell on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilrbedwell/ Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time!More from UpMyInfluence:⭐ We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE.🎉 Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here.🚀 What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here.