Our next guest is Craig A Handley. He is hard to describe but let me try. He is an author of a best selling book called “Hired To Quit”, he is musician writing music for artists all over the world, he is a bit of a comedian who has done Stand Up on broadway in NYC he also moonlights as CEO of his company ListenTrust which was named #1 in Business Products and Service (#27 overall) on Inc. Magazine’s 500/5000 list where they do about 150M in sales for their clients, and answer 100’s of thousands of CS calls and Lead generation calls and employs close to 1000 awesome people.
He has cage dived with great white sharks and rappelled down Table Mountain in South Africa, driven the Baja 500 trail in Mexico, hiked through the jungles of Malaysia, and in Iceland he snowmobiled across a live volcano, swam in the Blue Lagoon, and dove in the famed Silfra Fissure which is the only dive site in the world where your dive is in the crack between two continental plates. He is also the 85th civilian in the world ever to jump out of a plane from over 32,000 feet (HALO Dive)…
He’s hung out on Necker Island with Richard Branson. He’s met Ringo Starr and bumped into Paul McCartney before security escorted him back to his table while trying to get a selfie, and,in Calgary, he had a scarf blessed while meeting the Dalai Lama (which he has since misplaced). He has partied with Akon, and Snoop Dogg and many other celebrities who asked him for his autograph (because they thought he starred in Vikings or Game Of Thrones and he did not correct their thinking)
He served five years in the U.S. Army infantry during the first Iraqi war, leaving with an honorable discharge. Handley studied voice and piano in college. He has written and produced hundreds of songs, from rap to pop to ballads to humorous parodies, and even opened for Coolio and hosted the Adult Entertainment Awards. He once turned down a record deal because it would have been “a pay cut” from his profitable businesses – and the required tour schedule didn’t leave him enough time for his business or family…
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
- Sir Richard Branson
- Tony Hsieh Co-Founder of Zappos
- TJ Kelly
- Bob Hicks
When business started difficulties overcame:
“I didn’t have any money and I kind of the call centre out of blood sweat and tears. I had a friend of ours I dragged him to an event where I wanted him to know we were for real and had people talk about how successful our business was. But what I also told him was we old 250,000 dollars to even make our payroll and I needed to borrow money. And I didn’t have any credit line or anything like that. He went and saw that people thought we were for real and he loaned us 250,000 dollars without any collateral and with just five percent interest rate on it”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
The Success System that Never Fails Book by William Clement StoneFavourite Quote:
“Little hinges swing big doors” W Clement Stone
Recommended Online Resources:
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/ – 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.
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“don’t get down, focus on the positive, seek out mentors… But really understand that being an entrepreneur means you are in for a rollercoaster ride and to try and enjoy the downs as much as you enjoy the highs. Try to understand what you can learn from the worst day of your life, don’t just learn from the best days of your life. And that’s the only way an entrepreneur is going to survive the emotional rollercoaster that you have from being an entrepreneur”…[Listen for More]
More About Craig A Handley:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“Success for an athlete follows many years of hard work and dedication.” Michael Diamond
Other Quotes From the Chat with Craig A Handley:
- “there were years earlier on when I was making a lot more money than I made in some of the later years. So maybe one of my learnings would have been don’t spend all of your money”
- “set your P&L up as you are growing… I was set my P&L’s up on how to do a turnaround for an organisation”
- “make sure people are fitting in their lane”
- “owning a business means you have got to make our decisions”
- “I think if you don’t have a three-year vision you are not going to be successful because there is going to be lots of bumps and bruises along the way and turns in the road… I think you’ve always got to have a shared three-year vision within your company so everybody in your management team is rolling in the same direction. And you have got to redo it every year because if you have it, it is going to be close but every year there is going to be things you achieve and things you don’t and reasons to change”
- “I think everything that you do if you focus on the little things they add up to a huge impact. And I think that’s true in everything in life”
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