Social Capital

Meet Tracy Brinkmann From hitting the rock bottom of drugs, divorce, bankruptcy and even the death of an 18 month old daughter to running the planning and marketing of some of corporate America's finest companies to his own marketing company. Tracy helps small business owners be seen. And now his podcast is focused on Driven Dark Horse Enterprises. Tracy Brinkman is also a business and success coach that realizes life isn't fair and participation awards do not feed your family or your drive to succeed. This Driven Dark Horse Entrepreneur is looking to share all that he has learned and is still learning about starting, restarting, kick starting and stepping up your entrepreneurial game all while not ignoring that amazing tool between your ears! What is the importance of reputation on and offline? I think reputation sometimes flies under the radar anymore. If you think even way back to the early days, when I say early days, I mean, pre internet, word of mouth was a big marketing tactic. And when someone told

Andy Gallion Andy is the CEO and co-founder of InCheck, Inc. A nationally accredited screening company. InCheck provides customized nationwide background screening and drug testing solutions to employers, volunteer groups and sports organization. Early in his career as a recruiter, Andy recognized an opportunity to fill a gap in the background screening industry and build a service-oriented business. Twenty years later under Andy's leadership, InCheck has been named as one of Milwaukee Business Journal's fastest growing firms. In Milwaukee BizTimes Future 50 company and Milwaukee’s Best and Brightest organizations to work for. InCheck is also a SPEARity certified organization with Andy being named SPEARity a strategic leader of the Year in 2017. Andy is past president of the Wisconsin Society for Human Resource Management Board. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about why you decided to start InCheck and what were you striving to create? The story is kind of interesting because I never in a million y

Meet Chris Larsen Chris Larsen is the founder and Managing Partner of Next-Level Income, through which he helps investors become financially independent through education and investment opportunities. He began syndicating deals in 2016, has raised more than $12M and been actively involved in over $150M of real estate acquisitions. What are some of those connections between generating wealth and relationships? When I was younger, my father passed, I was five and a good family friend, Clint Provenza not only introduced me to cycling, which was one of one of my real loves in my life, but also the miracle of compound interest. So it's one of those things where if I didn't have that relationship, I would have never been introduced to both of those concepts, and then just fast forwarding through life, and cycling partnerships, turned into business partnerships. And then ultimately completing our first syndicated real estate deal came from our network of investors that we put together. So I mean, whether you look

Today, Lori does a solocast in which she focuses on data and analytics. She shares 3 simple rules for where you should focus your measurement efforts. Don't overwhelm yourself focus on what's easily available, confirm its accuracy, and most important is the information being collected going to allow you to make an intelligent business decision? So let's dive into available. The data you're collecting should be collected quickly, you don't want to be investing a ton of time to collect information that who knows if it's really going to help you to make some smart decisions. You don't want to expend the effort that far exceeds the value of the data. When you're looking at what you want to measure, make sure that this is something that is within an arm's reach. You can quickly export information or you're using tools that are compiling these data points. At the end of the day, you want to make sure it's available. So you've got Google Analytics or maybe you can see the number of followers on a social media chan

Meet Takeyla Tyson I am an Accountant with 22 years of experience. I started as a bookkeeper and grew into a leadership role. I discovered that I really loved the field and was always asked questions by small business owners an thought about my own business one day. In January of 2016, I launched KMT Accounting Services, LLC. I wasn't quite sure what I would specialize in and so I took a more a la cart approach when I started. I now specialize in taxes, business operations/consulting and general accounting needs. Why don't you just tell us a little bit about how you got started in the accounting field? I started as a bookkeeper and when I first got into it, I really wasn't quite sure what accounting was. But I did know two things; one, I liked numbers and two, I liked puzzles. And for me, accounting was a good mix of that. So I started as a bookkeeper and ended up getting some good opportunities with some local entrepreneurs who had a bunch of different locations that they needed managed. And from there, I

Meet Dr. Susan Lovelle Dr. Susan Lovelle, The Thrive Architect, helps smart, busy women who are just surviving on caffeine and willpower design their own unique blueprint to the energy, power, and balance they want in their lives. Dr. Susan is the creator of Premiere Wellness, a comprehensive holistic health company based in Raleigh, NC, serving clients globally with customized wellness solutions for weight, energy, hormones, and more to help them heal from the inside out, leading to lasting, powerful change. What's the best thing that I could do or any of our listeners could do right now to optimize their health and begin to thrive? I come across so many people who literally are just surviving right now whether it's caffeine, wine, willpower, whatever it is, medications that they're on, they're just really kind of surviving. And what tends to happen is that you get stuck in that mindset, you feel that there's nothing that you can do other than just survive. And the most important thing is to realize that

Today Lori’s solocast is on Digital Marketing Research Fundamentals. Now this is important because networking is all about building relationships and connections and likely for more reasons than not it’s because of business. And business comes down to understanding who that audience is that you want to be communicating with. So why is research important when we're talking about a marketing strategy? Well, the definition of research, according to Wikipedia, is research comprises of creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of humans, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications. So if you think about this, you're going to be spending more time and money experimenting before you're getting things done, versus moving forward and doing the research to help you focus on where should you be targeting, where should you be investing your time. A lot of the guests that we have on the show talk about being very strategic i

Meet Dr. Jim Bohn Dr. Jim Bohn has organizational expertise and insight from decades of successfully leading leaders and business savvy derived from observing the organizational behavior of multiple Fortune 500 organizations. He has taught as an adjunct at UWM, Marquette and Concordia, and has spoked at conferences and workshops throughout the U.S. After several decades with a Fortune 100 company, Dr. Bohn launched his own Change Management and Organizational Transformation Practice. So what is your motivation for writing and sharing your knowledge? I've worked in the corporate world for over 40 years, I've worked with literally thousands of people through that time. And what I want to do at this stage of my life is to share my experience, specifically targeting southeast Wisconsin from the Madison, Green Bay, Milwaukee chord and just share the things that I've learned my successes, my failures, through my podcasts, through workshops through keynotes, through books. I mean, my books are obviously available

Meet Deb Seeger Deb is the managing director at BDO Resource Solutions. Deb has been recognized as a female entrepreneur by receiving the woman of influence award in 2015. Prior to joining BDO Deb was a co-founder of Patina Solutions. She spent over a decade in professional services consulting. She's an innovator, keynote speaker and panelists in the field of employment trends, workforce of the future, agile talent solutions and building strong cultures. How do you tie in the personal networking goals that you have to align the goals of that of your firm? Networking is so important because it's really part of everything we do as we go out into the business world. I thought of it from early on is this idea of really building friendships, maybe more for a business reason, but friendships to me start with getting to know people. And understanding that we can go a lot farther in with a group of people and the resources that we all bring together than we can alone. How does one appropriately tap their network

Meet Tanya Stanfield A brand strategist, sales leader, performance activator, and well-being advocate, Tanya is a multi-dimensional entrepreneur dedicated to using her superpowers of content and connection to build brands and create communities for good. Her most recent project, MKTG XT, is a cross-training community built for marketers of all types to gather and build stronger skills, stronger networks, and transformed careers. What are some of the general struggles that everyone's experiencing right now in this current environment? First, I think a lot of people are experiencing a lot of uncertainty. And some might argue that goes without saying. But we all know that a lot of times marketing is the first to go when companies are struggling financially. So that's definitely top of mind. It's just a lot of uncertainty. But I think another thing marketers struggle with, and I think particularly marketers who work in house, more on the client side, is the thing I see here over and over stakeholder engagement

Meet Jennifer White Jennifer began her career as an engineer and combines analytical ingenuity with a talent for leadership. With a decade of professional experience informing her expertise in supply chain strategy and process and systems design, Jennifer is a talented communicator with a passion for motivating clients to transform their assumptions and achieve high performance. She is known for applying her sharp analytical skills to develop innovative solutions. So what is a business transformation? Business transformation is essentially a change management initiative. So we typically walk our clients here at the MJW group from a current state to their ideal future state. And we focus on four essential levers which is people, processes, data, and technology. So within those four levers, whatever you're trying to change it normally will impact one of those four essential operations. Let's talk a little bit more about people, process, data, and technology. Why are those so important to business? People a

Meet Wayne Breitbarth I'm still, as in three years ago, helping folks, organizations, companies understand how to use LinkedIn better. I know the site is confusing. It has a ton of power. And that's where, you know if it was easy, people would need me but it's not. It's complex. It's confusing. The objectives for people change so they don't know how to use it. And so I'm still in that space of helping people understand how to take the world's largest database, which now has almost 700 million and put it to use for them. Are there new rules to how you use LinkedIn now or are businesses jumping on board? Because everyone's online now, what do you see happening? So it's interesting because I do think there is more recognition of virtual tools like LinkedIn. Because virtual is something that like sales teams, especially sales teams have been at home, not able to go to networking, not able to go visit customers. And so they've had to find a way to stay in contact with their existing customers. Start some new pr

Meet Heather Breedlove Heather grew up striving for the perfect life: a fairytale romance, the perfect family and a successful career. But while working her way through the checklist, she found a disconnect. The person she was at home was not the person she was at work nor even the person she is. She's now found excitement in bringing full self to every aspect of her life. Through Shine Your Bright, she hopes you find the peace and courage to do the same. Can you just tell us a little bit more about what the checklists we all kind of have for our lives are? I grew up with what I consider a white picket fence family. I met my husband in college, I had my checklist in front of me and I was going to graduate high school, go to college. start my career, married by 25 children by 32. I think a lot of us grew up with our life put before us. And we just worked down the checklist constantly striving to hit that next little notch. And, for me what happened is I made it right up and got married at 25, just like I'd

Meet Agostino Pintus As a former INC 500 Technology Chief, he had great success...until he failed in spectacular fashion that kicked off his "10 Dark Years". He was rudderless, with no direction and financially broken. It wasn't until a friend introduced him to the power of buying large real estate deals that changed the entire course of his life. Agostino ended up building a real estate portfolio as the General Partner on over $42M of deals in 32 months! Today, he helps people get into real estate deals and build their wealth. Why don't you start by sharing your thoughts on how we think we've been conditioned to not take risks? I was talking to my friend about this the other day actually. And if you think about it, when we were kids in grade school, and you made a mistake on a test or something like that, at least when I went to grade school. We had nuns that ran the school and if you made a mistake, they whip out the ruler and wrap it right across your knuckles. Right? Because you made an error. And if y

Meet Lyle Stoflet Lyle is the Managing Partner at Stratus Industries, Gear Grove and Containers Up. He’s a lifelong learning advocate. People connector. And strives to be 1% better every day. What is the difference between networking and real connections? You can collect a lot of business cards and have those fun conversations at the different events. But it's really about after that event of what you do, and making those real connections, and some of them for myself have been many years of connecting with people, and if it's personal, or if it's on the business side of things I've had both and some morph to both of them. So it's really about caring for people and trying to have their best interests at heart when you meet them. But also take that to the next step and not just talk about things but actually put action to it. How do you anticipate small specialized events evolving or taking place in what is being referred to as our new normal now? In our containers upside of our business, we take shipping

Meet Matthew Clark Matthew Clark is the founder of The Virtual Edge and co-creator of The Rainmaker System - an online marketing system that helps entrepreneurs get 2-5 high value leads per day from LinkedIn without paying for ads. With their flagship programme Matthew and his business partner Wesley Longueira have helped thousands of businesses in seventeen countries grow exponentially. They are now on a mission to reach 10k businesses worldwide and build a vibrant community of Rainmakers along the way! Tell us a little bit about the Rainmaker system? What we do is that we help entrepreneurs get two to five high value leads per day from LinkedIn without paying for ads. we've got a three stage process that we take people through, and how it works is the three main stages are position connect and scale. So first stages is all about positioning yourself for success. You want to go from being in visible and just being you know, another person on LinkedIn to someone that's completely irresistible to your ideal

Meet Richie Burke Richie Burke is founder and CEO of GGMM (GoGeddit Marketing and Media) a marketing agency that helps brands including Trek Bicycle, Colliers International, Thrivent Financial, Komatsu, Marquette University and many more grow through services including podcast production and marketing, brand strategy and digital marketing. He is the co-founder of PodFest MKE and regularly speaks on digital marketing, storytelling and podcasting. He is also the host of The GoGedders Podcast, a local Milwaukee podcast, which is syndicated by OnMilwaukee over 100 episodes, and it generates 10,000 downloads per month. How long have you been podcasting and why you decided to get started? We started our show in 2016. The GoGetters, it's a Milwaukee Community big show we do a very wide range of topics. I had the idea for it and kind of started it back in 2012 as a YouTube show. And then I pivoted my business in 2013. I was a fan of some podcasts and I saw an opportunity in the local market. Again, not very many p

Meet Laura Nicolaisen Laura has over 10 years of experience on the life coaching and career coaching side in the university setting and through my own business, and most recently at a start-up and in the outplacement industry. Her alma maters respectively for my bachelor's and master's are at the University of Nebraska and Concordia University Wisconsin. In my spare time, I love listening to podcasts, exercising, spending time with animals, reading, traveling, real estate investing, meeting new people and giving back to her community. What is one rule of thumb that you live by? You know the phrase treat others the way you want to be treated. I actually rephrase that to say treat others the way they want to be treated. So the way I kind of phrase that is really listen to who you're speaking with, understand what their needs and aspirations are, and treat them the way they want to be treated, as long as it's a way that you feel authentic for yourself and that it's okay with you. And the rule of thumb can eas

Meet Roman Roberts Roman Roberts grew up in foster care until the age of 9 when he was adopted into a family that was less than ideal. At 18 Roman joined the US Army as an interrogator and deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan, and worked with Special Operations. Once he returned home Roman had a challenging transition, and almost lost his family. It was there he finally found himself, and then utilizing his skills from the military and foster care he began to help businesses with policies and more. Let's talk about you being an interrogator. How does that translate into the business world? The first thing that people always think of when you say that is that it translates over in like an aggressive way of questioning, right? Like figuring out who did this or that and that component certainly does exist. But the main piece is, it's about rapport. It's about conversation. It's about understanding and really and truly, every business is in the business of communicating no matter what you do. How yo

Meet Dylan Sessler Dylan lost his father when he was 6 years old to suicide. In the aftermath, he struggled through a number of difficult experiences to include domestic violence, bullying, and suicide ideation. At 18, he joined the military as an infantryman and deployed to Afghanistan by 22. Dylan's personal struggle with PTSD, trauma, and the difficulties during his childhood brought him to the brink of life at just 25. He built Invictus Development Group to help others overcome adversity and choose to live. What is your message and the goal behind what it is that you're trying to do? I'm writing a book that that pretty much states it. The title of the book is, “Defy the Darkness.” So many things that I've been through in my life have really just brought me to the brink of life, of happiness, of sadness. I've seen every emotion from the bottom to the top. And the one thing that I want to help people with is to find a way to move forward. To progress their lives and defy that the pain, the struggle, the