Monday Morning Radio

The days when men shaved with safety razors – where the user inserts a single double-edge blade into a shaving implement – are long gone, made obsolete by cartridge blades and electronic razors. Or are they? Since 2012, Douglas Smythe, founder of Phoenix Shaving , has seen demand for his safety razors, blades, and other related grooming products for men boom. Douglas attributes the success of his...

Not for the first time, or even the second, or the tenth: Dean Rotbart's scheduled guest on this week's edition of Monday Morning Radio was a no-show. You absentee guests know exactly who you are.  Shame on you! The good news is that without a guest, Dean is able to reach into his Reputation Tool Chest and share three self-marketing gems for companies and individuals who seek the attention of jour...

If the most popular episodes of Monday Morning Radio in 2018 are an accurate barometer, then last year was one filled with both hopes and anxieties for America's entrepreneurs. Listeners by the thousands tuned to the weekly podcast, hosted by Wizard Academy alumnus and faculty member, Dean Rotbart , to learn how fellow entrepreneurs were succeeding, overcoming their mistakes, and discovering means...

After almost 30 years in business, Roland "Buddy" and Dixie Huthmaker , owners of Huthmaker Violins – one of the finest violin and string instrument stores in the country – faced a choice that many owners do after pouring their hearts and souls into a business: sell it, close it, or pass it on to a willing heir. Fortunately for the Huthmakers, their daughter Anna (photo), a gifted musician and ent...

In her 1957 classic, Atlas Shrugged , author Ayn Rand argued that the business of business is to make money – nothing more. In her new book, The Conscious Professional: Transform Your Life at Work , due out next month, Jennifer Hartung pointedly disagrees. There is much more to business than pursuing profits and earning a paycheck, Jessica argues. Founder and CEO of Integrated Work , a Boulder, Co...

If Jeremy Dale hadn't spent the last eight years as a vice president of Microsoft Corp ., people might dismiss his new book, The Punk Rock of Business: Applying a Punk Rock Attitude in the Modern Business Era , as a flight of fancy.  But Punk Rock and successful businesses have much more in common than you might imagine, starting with authenticity and a refusal to conform. Coincidentally, Jeremy's...

Imagine if 95 percent of your marketing messages were opened, and not merely opened, but read within three minutes of you hitting the 'send' button. What would you call that kind of turbocharged email?  Jim Koch calls it text message marketing – and he built a budding global empire on the fact that while email and social network marketing are now saturated and largely ignored – few people ever ign...

Can two entrepreneurs with limited previous online retail experience take a meaningful chunk of business away from Amazon ? The concept of XYZBuys is a good one: to serve as an "online mall" with Amazon, Best Buy, and dozens of other leading retailers as so-called tenants. While consumers may be drawn to the mall by one anchor store, in theory they'll buy from other retailers – big and small, whil...

Host and reputation coach Dean Rotbart is talking trash this week, but even those with delicate ears will want to listen in. His guest is Patty Penke , the CEO of an Omaha estate sales company who has been selling collectibles and antiques for more than 20 years. Patty is the author of " Stop Throwing Cash in the Trash ," a book that shines a spot light on the hidden treasures that so many people,...

Most people hope the day will never come when the SWAT team arrives at the door of their business, school, or house of worship. But calling in the Calvary – before they are actually needed – could very well prevent, or at the very least mitigate, the kind of massacre of innocent lives that occurred on October 27th at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, and just last Friday at a yoga studio in Tallahassee,...

There are plenty of lessons to be gleaned from the bankruptcy filing of Sears last week, and Steven D. Goldstein is just the expert to articulate them. Steve, a one-time chairman of Sears Financial and member of the company's executive committee, is an expert on management disengagement and the problems that ensue. He is currently president of Engaged Leadership Advisors , advising corporate leade...

Elliott Neff , a United States Chess Federation National Master, is passionate about helping others – especially young people – discover valuable life lessons through the game of chess. Elliott is the author of the just-released novel,  A Pawn's Journey , a motivational speaker, and the founder and CEO of Chess4Life , which teaches sportsmanship, good decision-making, patience, planning, and how t...

Shay Myers is general manager of his third-generation, family-owned business – Froerer Farms – winning national acclaim for the innovation he's brought to his company.  Just about any entrepreneur can profit from hearing Shay's story of breathing fresh life into a long-established business. In Shay's case, the business is produce - onions, asparagus, sweet potatoes and yams. Do you think you could...

Readers of Roy H. Williams' Monday Morning Memo are well-acquainted with Indiana Beagle , the legendary curator and editor-in-chief of the Rabbit Hole .    Although "Indy" is a metaphorical, metaphysical canine – the twin brother of Intuition , a leading character in the Destinae trilogy – he embodies spontaneous, impulsive, reckless curiosity. Which is exactly why Monday Morning Radio host and re...

Michael Diamond is an expert when it comes to building, motivating, and growing business teams. He honed his skills in war zones – first fighting Iraq in Operation Desert Storm – and more recently, battling the fierce competition in the highly competitive mobile products marketplace. Michael is currently general manager of payments for Mitek Systems . If you've ever deposited a check by taking a p...

What was once science fiction, is rapidly becoming reality – especially when it comes to the prospects of small businesses operating in space, or at the very least, feeding commercial space operations. Earlier this month, a group of scientists, entrepreneurs, and space futurists gathered in St. Louis for Gateway to Space 2018: Destination Moon – a one-day conference about working and living on the...

In a very, very crowded market for pizza restaurants, Drew French discovered the recipe to stand out from the crowd – offering made-to-order pies, baked in brick ovens, using a wide variety of fresh ingredients, hand-tossed doughs, and served in just four minutes. Drew's Athens, GA-based Your Pie , launched a decade ago, now has 58 locations in 19 states, with nearly 60 additional locations in dev...

Millions of small business owners stand to realize big savings on their 2018 taxes, thanks to revisions of the federal tax code that were signed into law in late 2017. Only in the past few weeks, however, has the IRS fully explained who stands to profit from the so-called Section 199A deduction for qualified business income – and who will be left out. Rachel Sawyer , a partner in Denver-based TaxO...

[ Note : Our guest on last week's podcast, was Dr. Nate Regier, who discussed harvesting conflicts in your life, rather than fearing them. However, due to a mix up, some listeners instead were treated to an advance airing of this week's podcast, featuring Alex Vorobieff.] If you already heard what Alex had to say last week, we encourage you this week to go back and hear our conversation with Dr. R...

It sounds like an oxymoron: Positive Conflict But Dr. Nate Regier , a former practicing psychologist, has built a successful second career as an author, business coach, and popular keynote speaker teaching business people how to fight productively – both on the job and at home. With endorsements from management gurus including Dan Pink , Ken Blanchard , and Marshall Goldsmith , Nate's book,  Confl...

It's not been easy, but Azi Hendi and her husband, Dr. Ali Hendi – a lawyer and a cancer surgeon – have combined their talents to launch 15-month-old Luminora , a stylish clothing line designed to protect women from the sun's harmful rays. The Hendi's know that three million Americans are diagnosed annually with a form of skin cancer, and most fashionable clothes do little, if anything, to protect...

When Ross Kimbarovsky started his company, crowdspring.com , a decade ago, he had a vision for a new kind of logo creation service – one in which logo buyers would be offered a wide range of original, creative, logo concepts at a readily affordable price. Today, more than 200,000 designers from nearly 200 countries compete to design the winning logos for crowdspring's 50,000-plus clients.  Ross kn...

What would you guess is the percentage of small business owners who hope that one day their children will follow in their footsteps? For all the headaches that ownership brings, a surprising 84% of the more than 1,000 small business owners who responded to a recent survey said they'd wish the blessings and the curses of entrepreneurship upon their kids. Kathryn Petralia , president of Atlanta-base...

Ten years from now, 20 years, even 50 years, will anyone remember you or your company? In a short-term world, too few business leaders contemplate their long-term brand. Mark Miller and Lucas Conley , authors of the new McGraw-Hill business book, Legacy in the Making , are out to change that. Miller and Conley argue that leaders with long-term ambitions are the best equipped to stand out, get ahea...

40 million Americans, or roughly one-third of the workforce, have at least two jobs – their fulltime position and what many Millennials have come to call the "side hustle." There are advantages for both the primary employer and the secondary employer to bringing aboard side hustlers, but there are also a host of legal landmines that could prove a costly nightmare to employers who are caught unawar...