Sometimes Advertising Channels Change and You Must Change With Your Market From Certified Public Accountant to Hypnotist, this week’s interview is one woman's journey from making a living to living an authentic life. In 1990 Angie Monko graduated from SIUE Edwardsville with a degree in accounting and passed the CPA exam. From taxes to auditing she was living a life of numbers. For 20 years Angie felt safety in numbers. Numbers are black and white, but life is not that way. In 2002 Angie was moved to begin working on her health and taking care of herself. She looked at a number of different programs and joined Over-eaters Anonymous. Overeaters Anonymous is a 12 step accountability program and Angie loved it. Within 5 months Angie was sponsoring others who faced the same challenges she was facing. The process of sponsoring others and mentoring them through the 12 steps, while holding them accountable, became fulfilling and a major change of pace from her day job. Angie worked as

Finding Your Niche’ Pays When Dirk Downing first got started in healthcare marketing he was faced with many of the challenges all marketers face. With so much opportunity, where do I put my effort? As a recent PHD graduate from Mizzou in Sport Psychology, Dirk, was stuck and needed to find clients for his sports performance and athletics mentality practice. Starting like every other healthcare practice he had zero clients to serve. Dirk remained open minded when he started his practice 9 months ago. With a website he built on squarespace and not much in funds for marketing, Dirk knew he needed to find revenue and find it fast, if his practice was ever going to survive. This is when he had his breakthrough idea that changed his revenue and started the client acquisition process in his practice. Golf! Dirk was not talking about networking on the golf course, although he still does that, he specialized, niched down, and zoned in on golfers to help them reach peak performance. To fin

Ask, Listen, Share and Give to Network Your Way to Success Meet Dr. Dave Candy. He is a networking superhero that we all can learn from! As a Physical Therapist, you would think that that much of his business would come from marketing to doctor's offices. However, it does not. Business comes from networking. Dr. Dave moved to St. Louis with his wife and daughter only a year-and-a-half ago with few pre-established personal or professional contacts. He briefly started working in a small private practice, but when that practice was acquired by a larger healthcare system, Dr. Dave had the courage to walk away from the security of a salaried job with benefits to continue to be able to treat patients the way he sees fit - with the highest level of clinical care, compassion, and one-on-one attention. And thus, Movement 4 Life Physical Therapy was born! The question is, what did Dr. Dave do that put his practice on the road to success? Dr. Dave got out into his community and gav

If you are new to leadership and you are looking for books that will help you in understanding how to become a great leader the following three books are an amazing choice. When I first got into leadership two of these books were suggested to me, and I currently pick them up from time to time as a refresher in building a strong team.   The Customer Comes Second -   If you are looking for the perfect book about building a great culture, this book is amazing. I love that the author’s philosophy on the importance of happiness in the workplace. I have found that shaming people to be better creates unhappiness and an unproductive team. Bringing Out the Best in People - If you are looking for the perfect book about developing people individually, this is a great book. One of my favorite strategies is the concept of jumping on the bandwagon of team members who are going anywhere you want to be. Leadership Coaching as a Strategy for Employee Development - If you are looking

Y ou have to be a PSYCHO about LEADERSHIP  Getting productivity out of your team is not as challenging as you are thinking. Often times I tell my team leaders that it is first their job to fill in the gaps from poor parenting. While I say this tongue and cheek, I know that most of the staff probably had good parents, the truth is that caring about your staff like you are a parent works well to engage them. Getting your team to be productive requires some planning on your part. You first have to make decisions about what actually moves the needle in production. You must determine what productive looks like.  There was a property management company in St. Louis that was having difficulty getting all the staff on the same page. They were experiencing lots of back biting, they were also experiencing poor results, a low number of leases monthly, poor customer service, and poor collections results. According to Forbes, “ True enthusiasm for a business, its products, and its mi

David Diaz has tremendous knowledge of the things institutional investors look for in real estate partners. As an industry pioneer, he has helped to structure, build, market and grow some of the largest institutional investors in the single family homes industry. During our interview you will learn the importance of three things. 1. Relationship matters 2. Team matters 3. Knowing who you are matters Read the interview... 1. How did you get started in real estate? ​In college I started out as a physical therapy major. Through a rather fortunate turn of events, I ended up in an econ class and saw my first guns vs. butter chart and I was hooked. Math seemed so much more interesting when there was a dollar sign in front of it. After switching my major to finance, I realized that as a poor kid with no equity, I had to focus on something with it's own intrinsic value, like real estate, where I could get leverage (financing). I started in service businesses (Le

1. How did you get started in real estate? My family owns a real estate company at the Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri and I felt it best to go into the business with my family.  Since my family is the most important thing to me, what better way is there to earn a living than to work with my family? 2. What roadblocks did you first have in obtaining clients? There were numerous roadblocks when I first got into the business with obtaining clients.  I started in 2007 just as the “Great Recession” was getting started.  Finding qualified buyers was next to impossible.  Dealing with sellers was even more difficult, as they were unable to grasp how much the market was turning.   The biggest problem that any new agent encounters is “lead generation”.  How do I go about finding leads, either to find buyers or sellers?  I hit the perfect storm with the “Great Recession” and trying to find clients.  It was a very hard time, and yet I cherish that hard time for what it has made me