The Friday Habit

Whether you have created 2021 business goals yet or not, Ben and Mark have some great pointers on this episode of The Friday Habit for you to keep in mind as you try to crush your goals. Here are 5 common mistakes that may undermine your business goals and how you can shift the equation to point you in the right direction. Setting the wrong goals – If your goals are unclear or vague, you will lack...

We dive a bit deeper into the four pillars of building an authority brand with Curt Mercadante during this episode of The Friday Habit. When it comes to the right ways to gain attention for your business or brand, Curt says that it is important to have a LinkedIn presence and consistently publish content there. But this will not be effective unless you have a concrete understanding of who your ide...

Our guest on this episode of The Friday Habit podcast is Curt Mercadante, Founder of Merc Enterprises, author, certified Gallup Strengths trainer, certified human behavior specialist, and host of The Freedom Mindset Podcast Radio show. Curt shares his insights about creating an authority brand rather than just a commodity brand, providing value, attracting customers, and cultivating loyalty. Every...

Merry Christmas, everyone! Ben and Mark take a break from their previously scheduled programming to bring you reminiscences from Christmases past and some great ideas for bonding as a family or as a work team. Mark paints a picturesque scene from Christmas mornings spent at his grandmother’s house as a big, happy, Italian family and the laser tag set that brought him such joy. Ben remembers the su...

Time blocking is the topic on this episode of The Friday Habit, and Ben’s insights could be beneficial to you whether you currently use time blocking in your business or not. Time blocking is helpful in a business because it keeps you away from overcommitting, it makes you better at estimating how long things will take you, and you can have foresight in working with your clients to ensure that you...

With the end of the year quickly approaching, it is a good idea to recalibrate your business, looking inward to determine where you are, how you got here, and where you want to be. This episode of The Friday Habit is all about this topic and integrating this introspection into your process occasionally. Here are the four questions and where Mark and Ben currently find themselves on their answers:...

Our guest on this episode of The Friday Habit podcast is Jeremy Slate, host of the Create Your Own Life podcast and co-founder along with his wife of the Command Your Brand agency. As we discussed in our last episode, Jeremy built his success on a series of hard-earned lessons. He found his passion in helping others grow and evolve their businesses, but none of it would work without a few core pri...

On this special holiday edition of The Friday Habit, Ben and Mark bring listeners their very timely gift guide for entrepreneurs and clients. These are things that Ben and Mark have either received, given, or purchased for themselves and they are now self-proclaimed unofficial brand ambassadors. Here are the gifts they recommend and why: Miir water bottles – These water bottles are vacuum-insulate...

Our guest on this episode of The Friday Habit podcast is Jeremy Slate, host of the Create Your Own Life podcast and co-founder of the Command Your Brand agency with his wife. Jeremy went to college with the hopes of becoming a college professor one day, but after he finished his Masters’ degree and entered the job market, he realized that he was either overqualified or underqualified for every job...

On this episode of The Friday Habit, Ben and Mark discuss the idea of making time and space for thinking, planning, and reflection, as inspired by the book “The Road Less Stupid” by Keith Cunningham. What if you were to spend the same amount of time thinking as you do mindlessly scrolling through social media? You may be surprised by how much clarity you can gain from setting aside this intentiona...

Our topic on this episode of The Friday Habit is emotional intelligence. Mark and Ben start out the episode by posing a couple of hypothetical scenarios and talking through the emotional intelligence implications of the typical responses to the situations. Emotional intelligence is your ability to understand and manage your own emotions and recognize the emotions of others, which are key component...

On this episode of The Friday Habit, Ben summarizes the main points of one of his favorite books: “Fix This Next” by Mike Michalowicz. As we all learned in that one college psychology class, humans have needs in life that fall into 5 basic categories as defined by Maslow, from most basic to most complex: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. Maslow explained th...

This episode of The Friday Habit podcast is this second part of our interview with Claire Chandler, author of “The Whirlpool Effect” and thought leader on great company culture. She begins by offering an exercise that founders can do in order to gain clarity and make decisions more easily. Claire suggests writing down and drawing a circle around the core principles your company started with. Then,...

Our guest on this episode of The Friday Habit is Claire Chandler, author of “The Whirlpool Effect” and thought leader on great company culture. During Claire’s career, she has noticed that startups and small companies tend to have really good collaboration and culture, but as the companies begin to scale, they fall apart. There is a disconnect, she explains, between the people and the culture once...

We are picking right back with Mark and Ben’s interview with Matthew Barnett on this episode of The Friday Habit. Matthew continues to expand on his vision for customer service, being accessible and hospitable to every customer (or potential customer) who contacts your team. His approach is data-driven, recognizing that satisfied customers come back and buy more or new products and they also recom...

On this episode of The Friday Habit podcast, our guest is Matthew Barnett, founder of Verbate, a company using video data for qualitative research, and Bonjouro, an app that makes it simple to integrate video into your business operations and connections with your audience. After growing up in the U.K., Matthew decided to take the leap across the huge pond and start his adult life in Australia. He...

On this episode of The Friday Habit, successful entrepreneur Kevin Urrutia continues his conversation with Mark and Ben from the previous episode, so go back and listen to that episode if you missed it! Kevin describes the thought process that led him to get into e-commerce after the cleaning company he was running got to a certain sustainable point and he wanted to gain some new experience in a d...

On this episode of The Friday Habit, Ben and Mark talk with Kevin Urrutia, co-founder of Voy Media in NYC and many startups along the way. Kevin went to school for computer science and started a web development consulting business by generating leads through Craigslist. When he graduated, he got a job in Silicon Valley working for Mint.com, but he knew within a month that this 9-5 structured work...

On this episode of The Friday Habit, Ben shares his 5 practices that will make you a better leader in the hopes that they will be an encouragement to you and will be spurred on in your influence of those around you.  1.      Learn your weaknesses – This is how you will grow and come to trust those around you to fill in the gaps. Be vulnerable about what you need and what you expect from others tha...

In this episode of The Friday Habit, Mark provides 5 of the top ways to be a more positive person. It has been proven time and again that your emotions have the power to change your body at a cellular level, so here are a few techniques to ensure that those are positive changes rather than negative. Have a lens of positivity – Let your first reaction to any situation be to ask yourself “What is th...

On this episode of The Friday Habit, Ben and Mark discuss lead magnets, the tools that allow you to trade something of value to the consumer for their email address. Even with social media dominating the digital landscape, email is still the most cost-effective method of communication for lead generation, so what should you be doing to tap into this power? 1.     E-book 2.     Self-evaluation chec...

You’ve heard people talk about their mastermind groups before, but maybe you’ve just assumed that you aren’t “big” enough to be a part of one. Or, maybe you’ve never been invited, or perhaps you don’t know what’s in it for you. In this episode of The Friday Habit podcast, Ben and Mark break down for you the benefits and how-tos of creating your mastermind. A mastermind group typically consists of...

Delegating is a buzzword that is overused and underutilized in business. In this episode of The Friday Habit, we will outline five tips to using delegation effectively to help you accomplish more, serve more customers, and make more profits. 1. Identify what can be delegated – Ask yourself these questions: Is this something that only I can do? Is this the best use of my time and energy? Can someon...

This episode is the second part of Mark and Ben’s conversation with Allan Langer, an expert in the field of pricing and how to sell more by selling less. Ben asks Allan about the best ways to delegate some of the selling to other team members so you can focus on other things. Allan explains the importance of having a sales philosophy that can be easily enumerated, absorbed, and replicated by your...

Allan Langer, the bestselling author of “The 7 Secrets to Selling More by Selling Less," joins Ben and Mark on this episode of The Friday Habit. Allan has committed his career to understand and teach about pricing psychology and consumer behavior, and his insights could be game-changers for entrepreneurs and business owners.  Allan has found that most decision-makers come up with their pricing bas...