Crush The Journey Podcast

Episode 038 Leverage Your Strengths To Create Greatness with Darren Virassammy

Guest Bio

Darren Virassammy is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of 34 Strong, comprised of a team that believes everyone deserves a great place to work and that any workplace can be great.  A leading expert in the global employee engagement community, the 34 Strong team leverages the Strengths-Based approach to human development to create massive shifts within organizations, both culturally and on the bottom line. He and his team have created sustainable change in small microbusinesses, all the way up to large organizational teams at the FDA, Bank of America, American Licorice and The California Department of Public Health.  Recently, Darren has keynoted for Hitachi Global Women’s Conference, The Rotary World Peace Conference, The Professional Grounds Management Society, and Author Mike Michalowicz’ Profit Con (where he also closed down the conference by performing a solo bass guitar piece he composed titled Metamorphosisas a tribute to the journey of entrepreneurs) Darren’s 34 Strong Business partner, Brandon Miller is the co-Author (with his wife Analyn Miller) of a Strengths-Based Parenting book titled: Play to Their Strengths due out in July of 2019.  

Episode Summery

So for many entrepreneurs it feels more natural to focus on what is wrong more often than what it right because what is wrong is what gets attention.  It is why many entrepreneurs and business owners tend to fall into the trap of putting out daily fires in their business and don’t often take the time to really look at all the areas that are going right and that they are strong.  And really and truly, it is going to be focussing on your strengths and the strengths of those around you that will take your business to that next level and my guest today is here to share his expertise on how we can do just that. 

Items mentioned in this episode:

Click the link for Darren's FREE gift to all of you - Grind. Greatness. Genius

This amazing tool will help you identify what are the things you are doing that are in your grind zone, greatness zone and genius zone.

34 Strong website - : www.34strong.com

34 Strong Overview Video

Check out one of Darren’s talks: Creating Excellence Through Strengths(My keynote talk from Profit Con 2018): 

This episode is sponsored by my FREE Cash Flow Clarity Bundle

Guest Bio:

Having a keen eye isn’t just for what one sees, but also for what one senses. Having been one of the most sought after portrait photographers in the U.S. for more than three decades, Jeffrey Shaw, a.k.a. the Lingo Guy, uses this honed intuition to teach entrepreneurs how to attract their ideal customers by speaking their Secret Language.Jeffrey is host of the popular business podcast Creative Warriors, a nationally acclaimed keynote speaker, a TEDx speaker, a business coach for entrepreneurs, and author of the bestselling book, LINGO: Discover Your Ideal Customer’s Secret Language and Make Your Business Irresistible.

Episode Summery

We all know that to be successful entrepreneurs we need to work with our ideal customers because they are the ones who will truly value what we have to offer and be willing to pay for it.  But despite our efforts to develop outstanding products or services, create snazzy websites, and toil night and day to deliver our offerings, so often we may fail to reach our ideal customers, which can leave many of us frustrated and defeated.  Well my guest today is Jeffrey Shaw and he was able to turn his own business around by learning to speak the secret language of his ideal customers and truely differentiate himself from his competitors and he put it all in his new book, LINGO where he shares his 5 step secret language strategy.

Items mentioned in this episode:

Click the link for Jeffrey's FREE gift to all of you

Jeffery will review your website and offer suggestions on how you can ensure your website is speaking the secret language of your ideal customer

Jeffrey Shaw Website - https://jeffreyshaw.com

This episode is sponsored by my FREE Cash Flow Clarity Bundle

Episode 036 How To Prepare For The Unexpected with Dawn McFadden and Christina Bushnell

Guest Bios

Dawn is one of the founding partners of McFadden Bushnell. Dawn moved to Chagrin Falls when she was in High School. She attended law school at Case Western Reserve University and has spent a significant portion of her professional life in the Cleveland area. Dawn focuses on assisting clients and their families in planning for possible long-term care needs, including nursing home care. Locating the appropriate type of care, coordinating private and public resources to finance the cost of care, and working to ensure the client’s right to quality care are all part of their elder law practice. When not in the office, she can be found in Shaker Heights, Ohio with her husband André. 

Christina is a founding partner of McFadden Bushnell. A longtime resident of the Cleveland area, Christina spent the first decade of her legal career as a paralegal before taking the plunge and going to law school. She concentrates her practice on elder law, special needs planning and estate planning, particularly assisting her clients plan for long-term care issues through the use of Medicaid crisis and pre-planning. Outside the office, Christina and her husband Mike can be found cheering on their sons Declan and Sean at hockey, basketball, or other various sports depending on the season.

Episode Summery

In this episode we will be talking about something that is near and dear to my heart. As most of your know, I mentioned a couple episodes ago my mother had fallen ill and unfortunately passed away. The whole experience as many of you can imagine was very difficult for a number of reasons. But probably the most difficult was just how unprepared me and my family were, especially preparing all the legal stuff. For those of you that may have experienced a terminal illness of a loved one, you know that alone is painful but when you are completely unprepared for how everything is going to be handled during and after, it can be quite unbearable. Well my guests today are 2 of some of the kindest and heart-centered lawyers I know and they happen to be sisters to boot. They took what could have been a tremendously confusing, chaotic and frantic situation and made it as simply and easy as possible. And I have invited them here to today to talk to us about the conversations we need to start having with our loved ones and the planning that needs to be done now, both personally as well as for our business, so that if God forbid you find yourself in a similar situation as I was last year, you will at least have that peace of mind knowing that all the major decisions and planning have already been done so that you can focus on being there for your loved one.

Items mentioned in this episode:

Website:  www.mcfaddenbushnell.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mcfaddenbushnell/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MB_Law

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/mcfadden-bushnell-llc/?trk=company_logo

This episode is sponsored by my FREE Cash Flow Clarity Bundle

Guest Bio

Steve Bealey has over 11 years experience in the financial industry with credentials including certified financial planner and accredited portfolio management advisor. He is also very passionate about educating and empowering young people to make smart choices with their money. In 2017, Steve published the book "Financial Success Starts...Now! The Young Person's Guide to Money in America". It is geared towards helping young people make smart financial decisions on their path to growing wealth and building a secure future.

Episode Summery

In today's episode, I discuss with financial expert, Steve Bealey, about the fundamentals of how to build wealth and the strategies he recommends in making your financial success to start now.

Items mentioned

Steve Bealey website

This episode is sponsored by my FREE Cash Flow Clarity Bundle

Episode 034 Understanding GDPR With Lots Of Legal Love with Lisa Fraley, JD

Guest Bio

Lisa Fraley, JD, is an Attorney, Legal Coach®, Speaker and #1 Best-Selling Author of Easy Legal Steps...That are Also Good for Your Soul. She’s also the host of the “Legally Enlightened” podcast on iTunes. She’s a frequent legal expert on over 250 webinars and podcasts including top-ranked “Entrepreneur on Fire”, and she’s spoken at live events for Jonathan Fields, Mike Koenigs, Carolin Soldo, Health Coach Institute, The Health Coach Group, and others, taking stage alongside Gabrielle Bernstein, Kris Carr, and many of today’s thought leaders.

Lisa's mission is to help small business owners understand that the law can be accessible, empowering, loving, and even spiritual. As a Holistic Lawyer®, Lisa blends her legal expertise and caring health & life coaching skills to help thousands of heart-centered entrepreneurs to protect their businesses and brands with contracts, disclaimers, trademarks and more. She shares her “Legal Love” through DIY legal templates, online courses and 1:1 services and is known for aligning legal steps with the chakras. Join the Legal Love tribe and receive free legal tips at lisafraley.com.

Episode Summery

I am so excited to have back on my show online legal expert, Lisa Fraley.  Lisa specializes in providing legal documents for the online entrepreneur with clarity and lots of legal love.  Thinking about the legal parts of our business isn’t always the fun but it is necessary if you want to ensure that you are protected and remain compliant.  And today Lisa is here to talk to us all about a newer law that came into effect this past May called GDPR which stands for General Data Protection Regulation and the steps we need to ensure we are in compliance.

Items mentioned in this episode:

This episode is sponsored by my FREE Cash Flow Clarity Bundle

Episode 033 What Million Dollar Brands Know

Guest Bio

Known as The Marketing Stylist™, Lisa N. Alexander has worked as an art director, graphic designer and marketing consultant throughout her 20 year career. As a consultant, and now Creative Director of PrettyWork Creative LLC, she helps small business owners grow their businesses through strategic marketing and branding.

Lisa describes this process as helping clients develop their WOW factor for their big marketing red carpet events. Web launches, advertising campaigns, social media marketing, new business launches are all big events that require the expertise of a stylist to help businesses put their best face forward and her clients love her for this.

Lisa is also a talented speaker and according to the motivational business speaker, Karen McCullough, Lisa is one speaker she would go out of her way to hear speak. She infuses her ability to make the crowd laugh with her marketing know-how and personal growth lessons. She leaves her audiences, inspired, informed and empowered! Lisa has even shared a story at The Moth Story Slam in Houston.

Lisa is also the author of This Woman Knows, her personal story of coming into her own place of knowing and power. She shares this message with women through public speaking opportunities and encourages them to become women who know. She is also the author of, Put It Out There! 5 Steps to Kick Fear’s Butt and Move Your Dream Forward and will release her first marketing book, What Million-Dollar Brands Know: Branding Strategies for Entrepreneurs in 2018.

Taking the storytelling process to a new level, Lisa and her husband Elgin Alexander produced their first documentary entitled, What Mercy Looks Like for the This Woman Knows franchise. It is a story about the volunteers who helped rebuild Houston after Hurricane Harvey and the organization who spearheaded the mission. The documentary won a Gold Remi at the 2018 WorldFest Houston International Independent Film Festival.

Lisa has appeared in the American Express Open Forum Blog, The Weather Channel and PRINT Magazine. Lisa has also presented to international audiences. She has been featured in two UK Magazines, Vital Woman and Women Empowering Women. Lisa’s work was also published in an Australian publication, This Woman Can. Lisa recently shared her “What If I Look Stupid?” presentation with a group of international personal and virtual assistants. A conversation on how women can ask for what they want and the communication and negotiation tools to do so.

One of Lisa’s greatest achievements was going back to school and graduating with honors from Ashford University with a B.A. in PR and Marketing.

She’s also very proud of her volunteer work. Lisa has volunteered at Freedom Place — a safe house for young girls rescued from sex trafficking and was the former Chief Communication Officer for The Freedom Coalition. Lisa was also the board secretary for Get Together Northwest Houston and has served on the NAWBO Houston board as Director of Public Relations and is the current Chapter President.

Lisa married her high school sweetheart, Elgin, and the two have been happily married for over 30 years and have two adult children and a rambunctious Labrador-mix named Kobe.

Episode Summery

What are successful entrepreneurs doing in their marketing and branding that have allowed them to scale to become million dollar brands?  Todays guest, Lisa Alexander, shares her insights from the amazing women she interviewed for her latest book, "What Million Dollar Brands Know: Marketing and Brand Strategies For Today's Entrepreneur".  Lisa shares with us how success strategies by connecting with your audience, identifying your target audience, refining your product or service, empowering your employees in being your brand advocate and how these women overcame insurmountable obstacles.

Items mentioned in this episode:

This episode is sponsored by my FREE Cash Flow Clarity Bundle

Episode 032 Learn The Importance Of Effective Email Marketing

Guest Bio

Shana is the CEO and Founder of  Radical Reach, a social media expert services company. 

Shana started RadicalReach full time after spending 16 years in the marketing and tech worlds. She wanted to combine the best of both of those to help business owners achieve their dreams. She is a Certified Social Media Manager who loves the way social media connects the world. You’ll often times find Shana engaging on behalf of clients while eating cupcakes and drinking way too much coffee.  In her free time you’ll usually find Shana at a pinball parlor in Cleveland. She’s in two pinball leagues and working her way toward international pinball domination.

Episode Summery

So all of you know how important it is to market your business and nowadays there are so many different channels to communicate with your audience but one area that is often glossed over or sometimes just plain confusing is email marketing.  Email marketing is a great way to maintain a constant and direct dialog with your customers and when done effectively can really help grow your businesses and increase your sales.  Well my guest today is here to share with us her amazing tips for how to create an effective email marketing campaign.

Items mentioned in this episode:

This episode is sponsored by my FREE Cash Flow Clarity Bundle

Episode 031 How To Use Video To Connect With Your Audience

Guest Bio

Episode 030 How To Know When It Is Time To Rebrand with Morgan Stapp

Guest Bio

Episode 029 - How Your Inner Work Creates Your Outer Results with Kelly Ruta

Guest Bio

Key Takeaways

1. What is mindset and how does it relate to making money?
   • Mindset is how you develop your inner game
   • Your inner game is all the inner work that you do in how you deal with your mind and emotions and how those two things come together in order to make decisions and get into action
   • Bringing to the table your empowered mindset will have a direct effect on your bottom line in a positive way
   • The issue of mindset manifests itself in both inner and outer working symptoms
     • Outer working symptoms are not achieving the results you desire
     • Inner working symptoms are constant feelings:
       • frustration, struggle, and feeling like you have to constantly hustle and grind
       • feeling guilty about raising your prices or paying yourself or even collecting on accounts receivable
       • resistance to hiring a really powerful team to help you grow the business
2. So we are both fans of Profit First and when clients come to me wanting to implement this system after having read the book, I typically start off our engagement by going through their financials and deconstructing their money flows and putting it into the different containers of Profit, Owner’s comp, taxes, etc and what I found as 2 of the common struggling areas is that 1. they are not paying themselves what they should and 2. they are not either charging what they should or not collecting what they should.  And when I’ve addressed that with them, what I found is that their belief as entrepreneurs is that they are supposed to struggle and the idea of charging or collecting money seems in poor taste even though they know they are in business to make money - Can you speak to that?
   • Women, in general, have been taught that our worth is tied up in what we do for others, so many women experience feelings of guilt and shame when pricing their products and services in alignment with the value they provide
   • When we are making money in alignment with providing high value, we are then able to turnaround and do so much good for ourselves, for our families and our communities
   • Worth vs Value
     • Worth is a birthright not earned
     • Value are the results, the outcomes, and transform that we either create or co-create with our customers
3. How can overcome those limiting beliefs?
   • Take stock in the work you have done over your lifetime, whether paid or not paid, and determine what service you provided
   • Do not minimize the results you have helped people achieve already
   • Get a hold on the imposter syndrome
     • Place limits and boundaries the use of social media
     • Have a focus, intent and purpose for being on social media
   • Do not buy into competition but only compete and compare your results with yourself in the past as a way to benchmark your progress
   • We set goals based on what we believe the having of them, the being of them, or the doing of them will make us feel
4. So how can you get yourself into money mindset where you are comfortable charging what your worth and receiving the money?
   • We are not 100% responsible for our clients results (this can vary depending on the industry)
   • Do not promise something you can not deliver on if you provide done-for-you type of services
   • If you co-create results with your clients, you can invite your clients to do the worth with you but you can not make them do the work so the price you charge is for the delivery of your expertise and the promise is in doing the work will attain results
   • The key this success is selling from a place of service and integrity
   • Saying no to non-ideal clients it opens up your ability to not only attract but serve your ideal clients

Items mentioned in this episode:

Kelly Ruta's website and resources

This episode is sponsored by:

ErynMorgan.com/Evolution-Live