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 intellige...
Oct 25, 2019•23 min
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 create...
Oct 18, 2019•30 min
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 strand...
Oct 11, 2019•26 min
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 write h...
Oct 04, 2019•33 min
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 relat...
Sep 27, 2019•35 min
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 mobi...
Sep 20, 2019•26 min
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 he ...
Sep 12, 2019•26 min
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 manag...
Sep 06, 2019•22 min
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 col...
Aug 30, 2019•22 min
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 that...
Aug 28, 2019•21 min
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 unders...
Aug 16, 2019•28 min
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 how, i...
Aug 15, 2019•34 min
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 th...
Aug 02, 2019•25 min
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 conte...
Jul 26, 2019•26 min
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, specializ...
Jul 22, 2019•21 min
Karen Walker, author of "No Dumbing Down: A No-Nonsense Guide for CEOs on Organization Growth," joins Talking Business Now host Kelly Scanlon to discuss how to align the skills and efforts of top management in your company. Karen offers five proven strategies that your senior leaders can capitalize on to create internal processes and strategies that support profitable and sustainable company growth. Karen honed her expertise during the 14 years she worked at Compaq Computer. She joined the fast-...
Jun 28, 2019•17 min
Bradley Charbonneau joins Talking Business Now to discuss the power of habit. He believes most of us suffer from one thing that is something of a quiet poison that keeps us from thriving to new heights. It's being comfortable. Yes, most of us suffer from the habitual, yet not-that-terrible lives we wake up to every day. Charbonneau was living a nice, comfortable life in San Francisco. He was running a successful agency, but it was killing him. His father's death in 2015 jolted him out of complac...
Jun 24, 2019•29 min
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 Curie a...
Jun 14, 2019•26 min
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 has ...
Jun 07, 2019•29 min
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, Leonard ...
May 31, 2019•23 min
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 ...
May 24, 2019•43 min
The speed of change is 10 times faster now than it was a decade ago—and 40% of today's Fortune 500 companies won't exist in 10 years. To stay ahead of that change, there is an urgent need for proactive leaders and entrepreneurs to proactively develop strategies that create the future of work. So says futurist Cheryl Cran, the founder of NextMapping and the author of "NextMapping: Anticipate, Navigate and Create the Future of Work." But don't misunderstand. Although technology is driving much of ...
Apr 26, 2019•23 min
Jennifer Rock and Michael Voss join Talking Business Now host Kelly Scanlon to discuss their journey from corporate communications professionals to business humor novelists. During their tenures with some of the country's largest corporations, Rock and Voss stockpiled insider stories and cautionary tales that have inspired the characters and plot lines of their business novels. Their latest book, Operation Clusterpuck, was released in November 2018. Although their workplace novels are humorous, ...
Apr 12, 2019•27 min
Have you ever promoted someone in your organization with stellar performance to a senior position? Or maybe you’ve hired someone who has an outstanding track record in other organizations? And then that person failed – failed BIG TIME – in the new role? Why does this happen in companies all across America every day? My guest on this episode of Talking Business Now is Ron Carucci. Ron has a new book out called "Rising to Power: The Journey of Exceptional Executives."It’s the result of a ground-br...
Apr 05, 2019•20 min
Sarah Wirth, co-author of The Coaching Effect, joins Talking Business Now host Kelly Scanlon to discuss the missing piece in leadership: the coaching factor. Wirth is the vice president of client services at EcSell Institute. She has 20 years of experience in employee assessment, leadership development, sales executive coaching and customer service. Using evidence-based findings and numerous examples, Wirth discusses how to get the people you hired to perform at their peak capacity. Tune in to d...
Mar 22, 2019•21 min
As a business leader, do you ever feel like you're conducting an orchestra? Trying to get all the people and parts moving harmoniously? On this episode of Talking Business Now, Maestro Roger Nierenberg joins host Kelly Scanlon to explore how an organization's culture mirrors the organizational dynamics within an orchestra. Nierenberg is an orchestral conductor, leadership consultant and the author of Maestro: A Surprising Story About Leading by Listening. He’s also the founder of The Music Parad...
Mar 20, 2019•19 min
James Geary joins Talking Business Now host Kelly Scanlon to discuss how developing wit is essential to business innovation. Geary is the author of "Wit's End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It." According to Geary, wit is more than being able to deliver snappy comebacks. Rather, it is quick, instinctive intelligence that allows us to think, say or do the right thing at the right time in the right place. Tune in to discover: ■ The relationship between wit and wisdom. ■ How wit manife...
Mar 15, 2019•21 min
What if your team looked forward to Mondays instead of Fridays? You may laugh and not be able to imagine that kind of reality. Our guest in this episode of Talking Business Now is Don Rheem. Don insists this type of workplace culture is possible and—already in place—in many organizations today. Don has a new book out called "Thrive By Design: The Neuroscience that Drives High-Performance Cultures." In his book, Don presents the science—yes, the science—of great leadership that offers managers an...
Mar 07, 2019•24 min
Marketing can be a confusing proposition for many business owners and executives. These days, new platforms and opportunities seem to pop up every week in an already crowded field of “opportunities.” Enter Influencer Marketing. You’ve probably experienced it, but you may not have realized it. And it’s likely your company hasn’t used it. Our guest on this episode of Talking Business Now is Stacy Jones, the CEO of Hollywood Branded, an influencer marketing, branded content and product placement ag...
Mar 01, 2019•26 min
Why do some people seem to get promoted easily, and why do others always seem to be passed over? Our guest on this episode, Pamela Green, says often it comes down to whether or not you have executive presence. She joins Talking Business Now host Kelly Scanlon to talk about how to develop executive presence and become a more successful leader. Tune in to discover: ■ What is executive presence and why it's so important for leaders ■ The consequences of not having executive presence ■ The challenge...
Feb 25, 2019•23 min
