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Whether we sell services, products or ideas, the first thing we need to do is find and understand our audience. Because no matter how effective we may be at communicating our value proposition and connecting to a need, we’re not going to see the results we want if we’re talking to the wrong people—or talking about our offering in the wrong way. Positioning is about defining your market and your relationship to it. So you can see why it’s a necessary process before effective marketing can happen. The challenge is taking a fresh, dispassionate, analytical look at your company, your service and your competition. In this week’s episode, we hear from April Dunford, a marketing and positioning maven who has launched many products into market and served as a senior executive at IBM, Huawei, Nortel and other firms. Today she travels the world, sharing her wisdom and passion about positioning. Guest - April Dunford, CEO Ambient Strategy As a consultant, April helps technology companies position their products for market—in other words, she makes them easier to understand and purchase by the customers most need them most. As an international keynote speaker and lecturer, she offers trainings on go-to-market strategy based on the methodologies she’s developed over 25 years as an executive in successful technology startups as well as global tech giants. In that time, she has positioned and launched 16 products and grown the revenue of the companies she’s served from zero to more than a billion. April is also a board member, angel investor and mentor to dozens of startups. The release of her book Obviously Awesome: How to Position Your Product so Customers Get it, Buy it, Love it is anticipated in early 2019. Host: Alex Langshur

Entrepreneurs today can get a lot of inspiration from reading books by people like Dale Carnegie, Barbara Corcoran, Guy Kawasaki, Richard Branson—people who achieved exceptional things over the course of their lives. But for the generation now at the start of their careers, few figures could be as interesting as Brian Wong. At 27, has has already pioneered a category-defining rewards network that’s redefining mobile advertising. And he has amassed a level of savvy far beyond his years. In this episode, Brian shares some of the insights he’s gathered and lessons he’s learned as a rising business leader and innovator. Guest - Brian Wong, co-founder and CEO of Kiip Author of The Cheat Code, Brian Wong’s talent has been recognized in Business Insider’s Top 25 Under 25 in Silicon Valley, 30 Under 30 in Advertising, Forbes’ 30 under 30 three times, and Mashable’s Top 5 Entrepreneurs to Watch, to name a few. He has also been called the youngest person ever to receive venture capital funding by CNBC and The Wall Street Journal. He received his Bachelor of Commerce from the University of British Columbia at age 18 and co-founded Kiip the following year. Kiip is a mobile rewards network that leverages “moments of achievement” in games and apps to simultaneously benefit users, developers and advertisers. Backed by American Express, Interpublic Group, Verizon Ventures, and others, the company has raised $15.4 million in funding to date. Kiip has earned a place in Forbes’ 4 Hot Online Ad Companies to Watch, Fast Company's 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World, and the Dow Jones FasTech50 List. Host: Alex Langshur

Building a business is hard, particularly when growing revenue depends on the staff needed to recognize that revenue. When growth is fundamentally tied to scale—as it is in service-based businesses—market cycles and other factors can create serious challenges. For instance, what happens when your enterprise becomes the hot commodity? How do you manage through meteoric growth without compromising quality? And when revenue drops, how do you protect morale and preserve the company’s culture through the hard choices of downscaling? As a three-time company co-founder, Ben West has lived through the booms and downturns of the past decades. Here he shares stories and lessons from his long experience in growing businesses and steering them through the unpredictable economic landscape. Guest - Ben West, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, Eventbase Ben West oversees design, product management and technology strategy for the event app platform, Eventbase. Formerly, he was CIO at StockHouse.com, growing the company from 2 to 250 people worldwide and making it, for a time, the highest-trafficked website in Canada. Ben also founded digital agency Intergalactic and co-founded a digital rights protection software company used by leading record labels. Ben is a previous winner of the “Top 40 Under 40” award by Business in Vancouver. In his spare time Ben volunteers with branding, marketing, and knowledge-worker training, and he funds a granting program for small businesses to build digital tools as well as a scholarship program. For this work, he was a finalist for the Prime Minister's Canadian Volunteer Awards in 2016. Host: Alex Langshur

Many are getting into the podcast game in order to connect with an interested audience and build a brand. But creating a successful podcast is a lot more complicated than buying a couple of microphones and clicking “record.” If you’re in the marketing world, there’s a good chance you’ve heard John Wall on the “Marketing Over Coffee” podcast. In this episode, John shares five strategically tactical ideas for people venturing into the podcast world. John Wall, VP of Marketing, EventHero John speaks, writes and practices at the intersection of marketing, sales, and technology. He is the producer and co-host with Christopher S. Penn of “Marketing Over Coffee”, a weekly audio program on new and classic marketing. The podcast has been featured on iTunes, has hosted luminaries like Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, David Meerman Scott and Simon Sinek, and has been profiled by Forbes, CBS Evening News, The Associated Press, NECN, The Boston Globe, Boston Herald, and DM News. John is the author of B2B Marketing Confessions, which Kirkus Reviews calls “a lively, accessible guide to today's most effective sales and marketing techniques.”

In today’s day and age, we wear many hats. A full-time mother can be a working professional, a part-time graduate student, and a community leader, all at the same time. It’s common. Though some people seem to have it all figured out, many of us struggle to keep it together and stay on top of it all. How do people manage multiple different pursuits and maintain that fine balance between work and life? What drives us to excel in all aspect of life? In this episode, Mitch Joel lets us in on his secrets to juggle work and life. The first two steps to stay on top of it all are to be engaged in what you do and to always be intentional with your time. Listen to find out the rest. Guest - Mitch Joel, President of Mirum, Marketer, Speaker, and Author of Six Pixels of Separation Marketing Magazine dubbed Mitch Joel the "Rock Star of Digital Marketing" and called him, "one of North America's leading digital visionaries." Mitch is the President of the digital marketing agency Mirum, and a podcaster, blogger and speaker on all things related to digital marketing and business transformation. He has also written two books: Six Pixel of Separation and the most recent CTRL-ALT-DEL. Mitch is the Chair of the Digital Marketing Council for the Canadian Marketing Association, and an advisor for many businesses and charitable organizations. He has been named one of the top 100 online marketers in the world, and was awarded the highly prestigious Canada's Top 40 Under 40.