Ed Crain is president and CEO of Kingstar Direct, a performance-driven video production company, and Kingstar Media, a digital brand advertising/marketing agency. He has specialized for more than 30 years in entrepreneurial product launches and brand building, as well as in strategic media campaigns that drive ROI across multiple platforms.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
When business started difficulties overcame:
“I think I was generally a good pitch person. If I was selling something or I had to get my point of view across and I wanted to take you one-on-one and sell you this product or service that I had I think I was above average at doing that, I learned to be above average doing that. As an entrepreneur when you start a company and you hire an employee you all of a sudden realise I have to train them, I’m their boss. I think the hardest thing for me was being somebody’s boss because I didn’t really know how to do it because I’d only known by being an employee at other companies what a good boss was like and what a bad boss was like. So I was like okay now I’m a boss how do I get this person who is working for me to be motivated to work for me. And so I think that’s very difficult”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
- I Moved Your Cheese: For Those Who Refuse to Live as Mice in Someone Else’s Maze Book by Deepak Malhotra
- Tom Peters books
- Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography Book by Walter Isaacson
- Outliers: The Story of Success Book by Malcolm Gladwell
Favourite Quote:
“be so good they can’t ignore you” Steve Martin
Recommended Online Resources:
- LinkedIn is a business and employment-oriented service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Founded on December 28, 2002, and launched on May 5, 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking, including employers posting jobs and job seekers posting their CVs.
- Inc Magazine get advice, tools, and services that help your small business grow
- Profit (magazine)
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“Don’t give up, you are going to fail, you are not going to get an account or there’s going to be scary weeks maybe months, you might lose everything. What is everything? If you start and you do fail you can go and get a job. So for me it is contained the fear when you are starting a business. You have to be so committed, it’s not a hobby, it’s your life. Don’t go into business unless you are prepared to give hundred and ten percent and you are prepared to make sacrifices and you are prepared to have those around you that love you all work with you make sacrifices to because they understand or they get to understand enough of what you need to do to be successful ”…[Listen for More]
More About Ed Crain:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
J.K. Rowling, British novelist “Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I’ve met people who don’t want to try for fear of failing…”
Other Quotes From the Chat with Ed Crain:
- “I like to think he can be a successful business person and also be well liked”
- “if you want to do a business you have to do sales. Call it what you will but you have to take time to convince somebody that your ideas are good”
- “we don’t get to choose everything happens to us but we need to take advantage of the things that do happen to us”
- “I think you get lucky sometimes”
- “You have to be a good negotiator. So to me that is a key to being an entrepreneur”
- “you are not mouse in the maze chasing a piece of cheese you actually have the power to create your own maze”
- “whatever you take on as long as your commitment to that goal is a hundred percent then you are going to be good at it”
- “you have got to do it, it’s a challenge, it’s fun, it’s satisfying when you win”
- “take care with your connections and you end up with 1500 or 2000 strong business connections on LinkedIn then they start publishing”
- “my failures were along the way, scary weeks and months not knowing how I am going to get to the next… sometimes you have way more money going out and you have coming in but you just have to keep your head down and you have to really really do that run and drive through the rain”
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