In The Trenches

Abby Walker is the CEO of Vivian Lou Inc., a single-product company with multi-million dollar annual sales dedicated to helping women look and feel better in high heels. She started her company as a “hobby” business (while being a full-time working mom) after picking up the phone and asking one simple question. Abby has also written her book Strap On a Pair to inspire fellow middle-aged, middle-ma...

Shawn Askinosie left a successful career as a criminal defense lawyer to start a bean to bar chocolate factory and never looked back. Askinosie Chocolate is a small batch, award winning chocolate factory located in Springfield, Missouri, sourcing 100% of their beans directly from farmers around the world. Recently named by Forbes "One of the 25 Best Small Companies in America", Askinosie Chocolate...

Max Kolysh is a serial entrepreneur and investor. After graduating early from MIT with a degree in Computer Science, Max co-founded Zinc.io, a 15 person startup in San Francisco, California, which now powers tens of thousands of e-commerce companies around the world.   During today’s conversation with Max, we zoom in on his entrepreneurial journey and how he grew his startup to $6 million in reven...

Tina van Leuven helps soulpreneurs align their energy and mindset with the intentions, desires, and vision they have for their business and their life. She does this by helping to clear their money blocks and energetically release lifelong limiting programming that have been sabotaging entrepreneurs from creating the results they know deep within their hearts are possible, yet haven’t been able to...

Kyle Gray is an entrepreneur, the founder of ConversionCake , and a bestselling author who helps startups and small businesses grow their businesses with content marketing. He has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs create scalable content marketing strategies while also creating step-by-step processes and templates to automate and delegate tasks. Kyle’s book The Story Engine outlines his process for...

Anne Janzer is an award-winning author on a mission to help writers communicate more effectively. She has worked with over a hundred technology businesses, from industry giants to innovative start-ups, helping them articulate positioning and messaging in crowded markets. Anne also coaches business leaders on communicating their ideas with impact, clarity and marketing teams on telling brand storie...

Mojca Zove is a Facebook Ads expert, author of the Facebook Ads Manual, and international speaker. Her work focuses on helping businesses generate more leads and increase profits with a professionally-made Facebook Advertising Strategy so that they can devote their time to other aspects in their business. Mojca works with multimillion-dollar businesses from all over the globe. In her work, she foc...

Adam Anderson is CEO of Hook-Security . He is also a long-time small business owner who happens to be one of the leading authorities on small business cybersecurity. This serial entrepreneur is an author, who has written several books on cyber security and cyber crime to help other business owners understand and navigate the digital world. Adam is on a mission to help fellow business owners find t...

Joshua Zloof is the CEO of Sudden Coffee, a premium instant coffee brand. He has 10 years of combined experience in Mobile App Product Management, Lean Operations, Supply Chain, and Logistics.   I brought Joshua onto In The Trenches to discuss his startup journey and what it was really like for him to develop his idea and actually launch it. To many, Joshua’s idea of founding a premium instant cof...

Gregory Diehl has always understood the importance of universal ideals. Though he was raised in California, he soon embarked on a journey of global quest for learning, self-discovery, entrepreneurship, and inquiry. Since then, Gregory has lived and worked in 48 countries and continues to use his experiences to help others along the path of self-fulfillment through exploration. Gregory is the autho...

Chelsea Clark is a blog and marketing strategist. She also helps aspiring bloggers to start money-making blogs over at HerPaperRoute.com.   In today's call, we talk about how Chelsea Clark started blogging and started monetizing her blog and manage to do it numerous times now by figuring out exactly what's working in 2019.   My big takeaway from today's conversation is that blogging still works, a...

Roland Frasier is co-founder and principal of three current Inc. Magazine fastest growing companies. He has founded, scaled or sold 24 different 7 to 9 figure businesses ranging from consumer products to industrial machine manufacturing companies with adjusted sales ranging from $3 million to $337 million. He is currently growing DigitalMarketer , RivalBrands , and Plattr while advising over 150 o...

Connie Ward is career coach and counselor.   As an ex-broker working in financial services, after crashing and burning she decided to help people differently, which lead to creating Passion And Purpose Mastermind for people who are confused about their career path, wanting to start a business or those who are in business and want to help more people. She is using Meetup as a way to leverage her bu...

Nick Usborne is an online copywriter and site optimization expert with over 20 years of experience online. During a career spanning 40 years in the marketing industry – offline and then online – he has worked with dozens of major companies. Since 1997, he has been working exclusively on marketing online and internationally recognized as a leading expert on the subject of writing for the Web.    He...

Michele Moreno is a camera coach who works with entrepreneurs, creators and anyone who wants to get in front of the camera. She helps them show up, present and crush their video presentations. As an actress, singer, business writer, confidence expert, Michele helps people become a better versions of themselves, and turn their viewers into clients. My big takeaway from today's call is that the 20%...

AJ Wilcox is an online marketer since 2007 and founder of B2Linked  which is a LinkedIn Ads performance agency. Extremely active in the online marketing community, he is a LinkedIn Certified Ads Partner , and he manages the official LinkedIn Ads group forum , and he is a board member of SLC | SEM among other things. An exotic car nut and a triathlete. He lives in Utah with his wife and four kids....

Travis Ketchum, founder & CEO of the contest-optimizing service Contest Domination, joins the show today. Since 2012, Travis’s software has allowed him to give businesses the tools to expand their email lists and create new customers through contest engagement.   Travis speaks about his entry into the world of contest marketing and the struggles of creating and promoting new software. He delves in...

Yaro Starak, a self-made millionaire, started his internet business model in 1998. Since then, he has owned several businesses and made millions of dollars with his simple model. He has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, and HuffPost where he is known for explicitly sharing his entrepreneurial journey.   Today, Yaro talks about his most recent business Inbox Done. He shares his person...

In this episode, I discuss e-commerce cooperatives with Barth Getto, Owner of Empowery. Barth has an extensive background in marketing, and decided to put his skillset to use helping small businesses via Empowery. Empowery is a member-owned e-commerce cooperative that is focused on giving cooperative members a broad range of insight into the e-commerce industry, daily support, and key data that he...

David Burkus is a best-selling author, and a sought after speaker and associate professor of leadership and innovation at Oral Roberts University. David’s innovative views on leadership have earned him invitations to speak to leaders from a variety of organizations. His TED talk has viewed over 1.9 million times, and he is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review.   Today, David speaks abo...

Antonio Centeno, originally a US marine, worked for Google writing over 100 men’s style and fashion articles that have over 800,000 views. Today, with over 11 years of experience in men’s style, Antonio is CEO of Real Men Real Style where he creates videos, podcasts, and articles on Men’s Style. With a focus on dressing men to impact others and make more money, Antonio has turned his content platf...

Ajit Nawalkha is the Co-founder of Mindvalley Teach, Evercoach, and Global Grit Institute. He is also the author of Live Big: A Guide to Passion, Practicality and Purpose. Starting as an intern in Mindvalley Ajit quickly moved up the ranks to become CEO of the company. He has a unique perspective on business and shows us how we, too, can have it all - Passion, practicality and purpose. In today’s...

Michael Zipursky is the CEO of Consulting Success, and is a coach, consultant and author. Michael´s list of clients include organizations like Panasonic, Dow Jones, Financial Times, Royal Bank and many others. He has written 5 books including “Profitable Relations: How to Dramatically Increase Your Profits By Giving Customers What They Really Want,” and “The Consulting Success System: How to Becom...

Jordan Harbinger is the host of a top 50 iTunes podcast (The Jordan Harbinger Show) with over 4 million downloads per month. This makes Jordan's show one of the most popular shows in the world. Today, I sit down with Jordan to discuss how he grew his podcast from scratch in such a short amount of time, how he was able to recover from a challenging business breakup, how he was able to reframe "star...

Today, Seth Godin, a 19 time bestselling author and long-time marketer, joins me on In the Trenches. Seth Godin has been featured in the Guerrilla Marketing Hall of Fame, the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame, the Marketing Hall of Fame, and was recently quoted on the TV show "Billions" (which is braggable, so I had to add that). A self- proclaimed teacher, Seth inspires and teaches others how to leve...