Zane Safrit  

Ralph Heath is an author, consultant, and keynote speaker specializing in thoughtful leadership and marketing. His new book is now available, Celebrating Failure: The Power of Taking Risks, Making Mistakes, and Thinking Big, published by Career Press. He is a managing partner in Synergy Leadership Group located in La Crosse Wisconsin. Synergy works with clients to create best-of-class strategic marketing plans, PowerPoint sales presentations, branding and creative campaigns. Strategic and creative business leadership For 31 years, Ralph led his agency, Ovation Marketing, by providing strategic insight and serving as a marketing and creative resource for client teams. Under his leadership, Ovation was twice named to INC magazine’s list of America’s 500 fastest growing companies. Ralph is a John Caples International Award winner and has been recognized as a DMA Midwest Direct Marketer of the Year.

Steven S. Little will share some ways and resources that embattled business owners can not only survive but grow. And yes, grow during these tough times. His latest book is Duck and (Re)Cover: The Embattled Business Owner's Guide to Survival and Growth. His earlier book was The 7 Seven Irrefutable Rules of Business Growth. Join us.

Jeanne Bliss will join the show to discuss our shared passion: customers, customers service, creating customer evangelists, wowing customers. She’s been inside them for twenty-five years, arm wrestling them on behalf of their customers! As “Chief Customer Zealot” for five large U.S. market leaders, Jeanne’s fought valiantly to get the customer on the strategic agenda, redirecting priorities and creating transformational changes to the brands’ customer experience. She has driven achievement of 95 percent loyalty rates, changing customer experiences across 50,000-person organizations…convincing even the staunchest curmudgeons to help push the customer rock up the hill.

Barry Moltz, co-author of Bust A Myth: Delivering Customer Service in a Self-Service World, will talk about his new book and how customer service is the new marketing. Barry brings 15 years of success and failure starting and running small businesses, angel investing and why you need to be a little crazy to start your own business. He is the author of Bounce: The True Path to Business Confidence and You Need to Be a Little Crazy: The Truth about Start Your Own Business. Barry is a nationally recognized expert on entrepreneurship who has given hundreds of presentations to audiences ranging from 20 to 20,000. He was appointed by the Illinois Governor in 2005 to serve as Chairman of the board of the Institute for Entrepreneurship Education (IIEE). As a member of the Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame, he also has taught entrepreneurship as an adjunct professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Paul Herr, author of Primal Management Paul Herr will talk about the science of engaged employees and specific steps to measure and improve it your organization. Paul offers a remarkably simple solution to engaging employees--align the workplace with human nature and thereby hit the high-productivity sweet-spot inherent within our psychological makeup. In his book, Primal Management, Paul explains the core of our human nature consists of five biologic appetites for things like food, oxygen and rest, and five social appetites that reward human beings with pleasure when we innovate, master skills, achieve group goals, work as part of a tightly bonded team, and protect ourselves from physical and psychological harm.  Together, these ten systems, taken as a group, constitute the motivational engine that lies at the core of human nature.  When this system becomes unplugged due to injury or disease, human beings either become entirely inert or malfunction in various ways.  Herr points to the specific brain areas involved in regulating motivation and the specific neurotransmitters, neuropeptides and hormones involved in the process. Herr proves, using the latest groundbreaking research in neuroeconomics and neurobiology, that pleasure (intrinsic reward) lies at the core of economic decision making, the core of employee engagement, the core of customer satisfaction, and the core of organizational excellence. The latest science indicates that intrinsic emotional rewards, emanating from the basal striatum, drive essentially everything we do. Intrinsic means...affordable. It means being recognized for your accomplishments and talents by your peers and management, having the tools to achieve your goals,among other things. His book and practice, Primal Management, strikes a balance between theory and practice.  On the practice side, it provides a survey for measuring motivational horsepower and tips for getting the horsepower to go up. Join us.

Thousands of entrepreneurs and small businesses suffer from not understanding their customers. They don't what they are doing right that causes customers to come to them. And, importantly, they don't know why customers choose to shop a competitor instead. More Guerrilla Marketing Research solves that problem by teaching business people to ask the right questions the right way and use the answers to make more money. The mission of Bob Kaden and Gerald Linda was to build upon the success Guerrilla Marketing Research, first published in 2006. They accomplished this mission with the book's expanded discussions for effectively planning research, conducting studies and using results. You will come to understand why consumer emotions and feelings are more important to your growth than ever before. And, you will learn what the future holds for the industry and how you can be among the first to benefit from embracing 21st century marketing research approaches. The authors will talk about their work, how small businesses can use the book to spend less and generate more results and how big corporate brands like JetBlue and VirginAmerica began as guerrilla marketers.