Today’s featured guest is Josh Linkner. Josh has spent his career harnessing the power of creative disruption. His journey has been non-traditional at every step. As the founder and CEO of five tech companies, Josh built his businesses from a blank page into a combined value of over $200 million. As a hyper-growth CEO of over 20 years, he’s used innovative approaches to topple competitors, fight through adversity, and achieve at the highest levels.
In addition to his own startups, Josh has been involved with the launch, growth or financing of over 100 other companies. He’e helped raise over $150 million of venture capital and has mentored leaders and entrepreneurs through the struggles of explosive growth. He is the founding partner of Detroit Venture Partners, which invests in tech startups as a platform to help rebuild his beloved hometown of Detroit, Michigan. He’s also the founder and CEO of ePrize where Josh built the largest digital promotion agency in the world, serving 74 of the top 100 brands.
Working with many of the most progressive CMO’s in the world, he’s a pioneer in digital marketing, winning dozens of awards for groundbreaking innovation at the intersection of technology and advertising. Josh is also an internationally recognized thought leader and a top-rated keynote speaker on innovation, creativity, reinvention, and hyper-growth leadership. His keynotes are focused not only on inspiring audiences but also sharing actionable strategies to drive meaningful outcomes. He is also a two-time New York Times best-selling author of three books, he’s a weekly contributor to Inc. Magazine, Forbes, and the Detroit Free Press, and a professional jazz guitarist. He has twice been named the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and is a President Obama Champion of Change Award recipient.
Today’s featured guest is Ben Foster. Ben is a full-time product advisor who’s currently working with over a dozen start-ups up and down the East Coast, through his firm, Foster Innovation. He has a top notch reputation amongst entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who are eager to get his guidance as they scale their companies.
Previously, Ben was the VP of Product Management and User Experience at OPower, a company he helped lead to a $1 billion IPO and was later bought by Oracle. Ben started his career in the first big Internet boom and rose through the ranks at eBay in the early 2000’s and he hasn’t looked back since.
Today’s featured guest is Sally Hogshead. Sally skyrocketed to the top of the advertising profession in her early 20’s. By age 24 she was the most award-winning advertising copywriter in the U.S. Her campaigns for brands such as MINI Cooper, Nike, Godiva, and Coca-Cola have fascinated millions of consumers. At the age of 27, she opened her first ad agency and her work still hangs in the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
Drawing upon this remarkable branding legacy, Sally developed The Fascination Advantage, which is the first algorithm to measure personal brands, and unlike traditional personality assessments such as Meyers-Briggs or Strengthsfinder, Sally’s test does not measure how you see the world, but how the world sees you. She frequently appears in national media, including NBC’s Today Show and The New York Times. She was named the #1 brand guru in the world, and her practical marketing system now lives inside organizations such as IBM, Twitter, and the YMCA as well as thousands of small businesses.
The science of fascination is based on Sally’s decades of research with dozens of Fortune 500 teams, hundreds of small business, and over 1,000 C-level executives. Her newest book, Fascinate: How to Make Your Brand Impossible to Resist, is a New York Times bestseller. Sally is one of only 172 living members of the Speaker Hall of Fame, which is the global speaking industry’s highest award for professional excellence.
Today on the podcast we are delighted to welcome Jay Newton-Small. Jay is the co-founder of MemoryWell, which is an online platform that empowers caregivers to provide compassionate and empathetic care. They do this by having journalists tell the stories of people who can’t tell their own, which helps caregivers understand them and improve their quality of life. MemoryWell was launched in September of 2016, and it’s off to a really impressive start. Just a few weeks ago, in March 2017, Jay and her team took home the top prize of $130,000 in the Launch category at the Inaugural WeWork Awards.
Prior to her life as a startup founder, Jay served as the Washington correspondent for Time Magazine and is also the author of Broad Influence: How Women are Changing the Way America Works. Jay has written about everything from Washington politics to foreign policy and national trends. She’s covered stories on five continents for Time from conflicts in the Middle East to the earthquake in Haiti, to the Scottish Independence Movement, and attacks in Paris. She has also covered the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns for Time, as well as Congress and the White House, and interviewed numerous heads of state, including Presidents Obama, and George W. Bush, along with senators, governors, and foreign dignitaries. She has written more than half a dozen Time cover stories and contributed to dozens of others. Jay is also still a regular contributor on MSNBC and CNN and continues to contribute to Time Magazine.
Today’s featured guest is Bob London, the founder and CEO of Chief Listening Officers, which helps mid-sized B2B tech and professional services firms in the software, SaaS, data, financial services, and healthcare sectors really listen to their customers and develop marketing strategies that speak to them. Bob is a 20-year marketing leader who pioneered the outsourced chief marketing officer concept in 2003 when he founded London, Ink., a B2B marketing consultancy. He’s worked with, advised, and mentored dozens of small and mid-sized companies on their marketing strategy and execution, serving as an interim or part-time CMO.
Bob wears a number of other hats as well, including serving as an Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Maryland’s Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship. He’s mentors and advises numerous startup companies, he speaks at a ton of events, and he publishes the DriveTime Marketing video blog, as well as Bobservations, a blog series that looks at the often humorous intersection of business and life.