Ask an Expert by Propelo

While attending Yale University, Yong Zhao noticed that traditional Chinese restaurants were declining, but demand for authentic Chinese cooking was rising.  He quickly started working on a fast-casual dining chain that could provide a balanced experience for Asian and non-Asian alike, but in a design that could scale up.  Shortly after, Junzi Kitchen was born.  Already recognized as one of the be...

It’s 3:30 am and Kobe Bryant is rigorously practicing basic drills taught to middle schoolers.  Today’s Ask an Expert, Alan Stein Jr., shares lessons this valuable lesson, along with others he’s learned after helping to train NBA greats like Kevin Durrant and Steph Curry for over a decade. Now he’s helping organizations and individuals with proven strategies from leadership, organizational perform...

Today’s Ask an Expert, Adele Revella, is the Founder and CEO of the Buyer Persona Institute. They take a journalistic approach to interviewing recent & actual buyers that are in their client’s space revealing the real buying decisions, for individuals and committees. Adele talks about changes to buying decisions in recent months, and she also shares a powerful insight about focusing on how you...

After successfully getting a business off the ground, today’s Ask an Expert started struggling in 2013.  To help turn things around they started adopting the principles of Verne Harnish’s book, Scaling Up.  Things turned around so quickly, and with such great results, he started a coaching business, Elevation, as a certified scaling up coach helping businesses quickly turn things around. Shawn sha...

70% of the 30 most transformative innovations have been created by employees within companies, not entrepreneurs.  Today’s Ask an Expert guest Kaihan Krippendorf, Founder and CEO at Outthinker, explains how organizations should look for patterns from companies that are bucking the traditional status quo.  He also talks about why it's just as important to market internally vs. externally and h...

Mark Sanborn has dedicated his life to developing leaders in business and life for over 30 years.  He’s worked with over 2,600 companies across the globe from FedEx, HP, RE/MAX to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, and has authored 8 books having sold over 2 million copies worldwide.

Tim Wolfley has been in the digital marketing space for almost 15 years, and comes on to talk about some recent technology changes around geofencing.  Historically, geofencing has been intriguing, but due to limitations to pinpoint targeting impressions and budget could be wasted.  Tim shares how accurate the targeting has become allowing for some new strategies businesses can utilize: 1. Conquest...

Some of my favorite business origin stories are from entrepreneurs who were having a problem and then figure out how to eliminate that problem. Today’s Ask an Expert, Greg Skloot, co-founded a company right out of college that developed an impressive software platform, but they struggled on the sales side because of challenges working with different personalities. To help overcome this they hired...

Awareness, passion, and staying close to the problem allowed today’s Ask an Expert guest to successfully buck traditional start-up models.  Shani Dowell, Founder and CEO of Possip, was talking to her husband about a gap in good communication between schools and parents.  From a dining room table, a business was born and in just three years they’re now working with over 400 schools. Shani talks abo...

After talking to many incredibly successful business people over the years one theme starting coming up over and over for today’s Ask an Expert guest Erik Qualman.  Erik, author of the wildly successful book Socialnomics, shares that successful leaders said that the most important attribute of their success is focus, but that it’s also their most challenging aspect. Erik realized that was somethin...

Having spent over 25 years helping organizations from Godiva, Oreo, and Kraft Foods shape stronger brand strategies, Rich Keller developed a personal branding program to help you personally and professionally. Rich’s program is predicated on in-depth personal evaluation through a series of questions, which reveal your one-word personal brand. This one-word brand will help you Stand-out, Conquer Ob...

When heading into a negotiation it’s important to understand the differences between what you want to happen, and what you need to happen.  Today’s Ask an Expert guest explains that it’s just as important that we understand that for the other party which requires you to be deliberate with your research while also making sure to ask open ended questions.   Mark Raffan is the founder of Negotiations...

We all have weaknesses, and like it or not it’s easy for most of us to see these weaknesses vs. our strengths, but today’s ask an expert has flipped the script by challenging people to change their perspective. David Rendall is a former professor, part-time comedian, and brilliant speaker talks about his philosophy of why “weird is wonderful and weakness is strength.” In this episode, David gives...

Your logo is not your brand, no matter how much you want it to be, nor how many thousands of dollars you spent creating it. Today’s Ask an Expert guest, Denise Lee Yohn is a branding expert who has worked with big brands from Frito Lays to Oakley. Today we talk about her book Fusion, which outlines why where your brand and culture intersect matters. She outlines how you can audit your brand, and w...

With manufacturing shortages and limited inventories coming up against increased consumer demand dealerships need to adapt quickly says today’s Ask an Expert Guest. Stephanie Reck, National Sales Director for CF Search Marketing, talks about how dealerships are getting creative with variable marketing, fixed strategies, and improving the customer experience in an era of social distancing.

We’ve all heard it’s the thought that counts, but that’s only true if it’s a thoughtful thought, says our Ask an Expert guest. John Ruhlin was a humble farm kid from Ohio who became the biggest Cutco distributor in the company’s history. Today he helps companies with his Giftology approach which focuses on cutting through the noise, strengthening relationships, and increasing referrals through tho...

There is a paradigm shift when it comes to selling within the automotive industry towards servicing and not selling, shares our Ask an Expert guest. Jose Morales, CP of Corporate Relationships at Applied Concepts, shares how they are coaching and training dealerships to deal with a much more informed consumer. He also shares, automotive sales & marketing trends, and clever ways dealerships are...

There are headhunters everywhere, but Pronexia Co-Founder Marina Byezhanova shares their unique human-to-human approach that produces better A-list matches. In this Ask an Expert interview Marina shares one of the best hiring practices to ensure you get the talent you want. She also discusses the importance of a personal brand and how she personally outperformed a professional PR firm by strategic...

85% of the most meaningful interactions between you and your child happen before the end of their 18th Summer. Jim Sheils, a successful real estate entrepreneur, started looking for ways to maximize his relationship with his kids more during this period. As these ideas and techniques came together, he soon founded 18 Summers, which has helped improve the relationship of thousands of individuals an...

Imagine joining 1-800-GOT-JUNK as employee #15 and scaling it up to over 3,100. Our Ask an Expert guest today Cameron Herold, Founder of the COO Alliance, talks about how COOs and CEOs should have a dynamic yin/yang relationship. Effectively filling in the deficiencies of the CEO, no matter what those are, to provide a better framework for companies to follow their vision and mission more efficien...

Sasha Strauss shares his insights on several topics from brand strategies, meaningful customer communication through storytelling, corporate responsibility, the value of being empathetic, and how valuable video can be moving forward for companies. Sasha is a USC professor and the Founder and Managing Partner at Innovation Protocol, a branding and strategy firm working with companies from Google, P...

Meals on Wheels Diablo Region has seen a 40% increase but has faced difficult challenges serving a senior community that is especially at risk for COVID-19. Caitlin Sly, newly named Executive Director, has talked about how they’ve strategically and operationally pivoted through these challenging times.

Geoff Smart, Chairman and Founder of ghSMART, a Leadership Advisory Firm that was just voted #1 firm to work for by Vault shares key leadership and hiring strategies. These ideas come from his book Who, which is the global top-selling book on hiring talented teams.

Why should you pay for marketing that’s 50/50 win or lose when you can be focused on performance-based marketing? Robert Glazer, the founder of Acceleration Partners, talks about how they help businesses build and scale performance-based marketing platforms. The backbone of his organization though is an award-winning culture that has helped them quickly become one of the biggest performance-based...

“Successful people don’t get everything done, they get the most important things done” states today’s Ask an Expert guest, Christo Popov. Christo is the Founder and CEO of Fast Track, an organization that has studied hundreds of companies around the world in an effort to show companies the beauty and simplicity of the 80/20 rule. He outlines how successful businesses approach this, gives a brillia...