Steve Gordon is the author of Unstoppable Referrals: 10x Referrals, Half the Effort, and his latest book, The Exponential Network Strategy. He’s the host of The Unstoppable CEO Podcast and has written over 400 articles on marketing for service businesses. Through his firm, he helps service business entrepreneurs create leveraged marketing systems so they can spend less time on business development, and more time on what matters most.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
a combination of business owners that I have admired over the years and none of them are famous
When business started difficulties overcame:
“I think the biggest challenge to overcome when I started because it was a completely new market, I didn’t really have any experience other than I’d built a business before and I knew a lot about marketing and sales. The difficulty was figuring out what are we selling and who’s buying it and how do we charge for it, really kind of figuring out what the model was. And in hindsight that was probably the most difficult thing. In terms of actually getting the business off the ground I faced like every start-up does that time. When you have no revenue coming in. When you haven’t quite figured all those things out, and thankfully didn’t last very long, but it is certainly a hugely scary time ”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
Outwitting the Devil: The Secret to Freedom and Success Book by Napoleon HillFavourite Quote:
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” – Calvin Coolidge
Recommended Online Resources:
Basecamp – Trusted by millions, Basecamp puts everything you need to get work done in one place. It’s the calm, organized way to manage projects, work with clients
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“just get started. Whatever it is you are thinking about doing, whether you are starting a business, whether you are in business and you are thinking about taking some step, you learn a whole lot more along the way then you do when you are sitting contemplating the journey… There’s only so much you can plan and you learn a lot more once you begin interacting with the marketplace on any level. So get out and do it.”…[Listen for More]
More About Steve Gordon:
- The Unstoppable CEO
- The exponential network strategy
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“Be undeniably good. No marketing effort or social media buzzword can be a substitute for that.” Anthony Volodkin, founder of Hype Machine
Other Quotes From the Chat with Steve Gordon:
- “how do we engineer that trust, how do we be purposeful about it, intentional about creating it so that it’s not just chance. I think too many businesses just leave it up to chance”
- “when you are trying to build someone else’s business and particularly when it doesn’t fit who you are as an entrepreneur it can be really really difficult”
- “you just have to start”
- “I’ve watched a lot of people over analyse. They will do the big business plan, they will really think through every little thing. But all of that’s based on assumption and chances are your assumptions are wrong and that’s not anything that is a deficiency in you as the entrepreneur who is looking to start this business it’s just that as an entrepreneur you don’t actually get a vote, the people that get to vote are the people that write the cheques. So the best thing you can do is do the minimum amount of planning and then go and get in front of somebody who could write you a cheque and see if they will. You will learn far more out of that”
- “if I had known what the right offer had been from day one the whole thing would have been a piece of cake. I think that’s the thing that most businesses struggle with, what are we offering. And we see that with our clients when they come to us, they are just offering what everybody else in the industry offers and that’s not very exciting”
- “the fundamental skill is being able to simplify things. I think that plays out in almost every aspect of business, on the operational side, on the communication side, been able to simplify your message and communicate it more clearly, being able to simplify your selling process”
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