#36 - Wisdom from a Millennial Leader, with Brian Wong

09/26/18 • 33 min

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

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#35 - Building your market, one landing page at a time, with Oli Gardner

For anyone even thinking about building and testing landing pages, Unbounce is an essential tool and the platform that almost single-handedly created the field. Oli Gardner, the company’s co-founder, travels the world speaking and evangelizing about the importance of the landing page experience in marketing. He’s taken a hard look at more landing pages than anyone on the planet, and he’s obsessed with identifying and reversing bad practices. His rants against marketers who send campaign-specific traffic to their general homepage can peel paint off an unpainted wall! Today’s episode explores how Oli got to where he is today, and how he turned a passion for crusading against marketing mediocrity into such a key online business platform. What are some of the important learnings he’s gleaned along the way? Guest - Oli Gardner, Business Coach Unbounce co-founder Oli Gardner is a prolific international speaker who’s on a mission to help businesses use data-informed copywriting, design, interaction, and psychology to create a more delightful experience for marketers and customers alike. He became a marketer the day Unbounce was founded. As an early pioneer in the realm of content marketing, his goal was to position Unbounce as the global leader in everything related to landing pages and ways to deliver high-converting and delightful marketing experiences. Host: Alex Langshur

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#37 - Grow Sales and Margins Through Positioning, with April Dunford

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