Karen Wickre has worked in Silicon Valley for more than 30 years, including stints as the editorial director of Twitter and a senior global communicator at Google, which she joined when there were only 500 employees. By the time she left, there were 50,000 people on the payroll.

During that time she became globally recognized as an über networker - connecting with the world’s elite and harnessing the power of her contacts.

A self-described introvert, Karen shares with host and award-winning journalist Dean Rotbart steps anyone can take to build and fill their own business network with meaningful connections.

[Be sure to pick up a copy of Karen’s book, “Taking the Work Out of Networking: Your Guide to Making and Keeping Great Connections,” available here.]

Photo: Karen Wickre
Posted: November 25, 2019
Monday Morning Run Time: 39 minutes and 5 seconds

Mary Fran Bontempo, an award-winning speaker, author, and humorist, just came out with a crisis management book called, “The 15 Minute Master.” The book promises to teach readers “how to make everything better 15 minutes at a time.”

With no advance warning, host Dean Rotbart decided to test the premise on Mary Fran, herself, using his stopwatch to give her exactly 15 minutes to explain her method, why it works, and how business people can apply her lessons both at work and in their personal lives.

“15 minutes could save you more than just car insurance premiums,” Rotbart says. “In a crisis, it could save your backside.”

Click here to hear Mary Fran Bontempo’s July 2017 interview on Monday Morning Radio.

Photo: Mary Fran Bontempo, The 15 Minute Master
Posted: November 11, 2019
Monday Morning Run Time: 22 minutes 32 seconds

Everyone knows the unprecedented journey that propelled Jeff Bezos from the owner of a tiny online bookstore that he launched in July 1994, to the head of Amazon, the fastest company ever to surpass $100 billion in annual sales; making him the richest man in the world.

What few people know are the 14 principles that Bezos followed to accomplish the unimaginable feat. In The Bezos Letters, author Steve Anderson dissects the 21 annual letters that the Amazon founder has written to shareholders to glean the essence of Bezos’s business philosophy.

Most amazingly, Anderson tells host and award-winning journalist Dean Rotbart, Bezos is relying on those same 14 principles not only to continue to grow Amazon at a rapid clip, but also, soon, through his privately-owned Blue Origin aerospace company, to revolutionize space travel and manufacturing.

Photo: Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters
Posted: September 30, 2019
Monday Morning Run Time: 51 minutes and 40 seconds

Following a serious ski accident and two failed spinal surgeries, Gina Gardiner had to relearn to walk. Not once, but twice.

The experience led Gina to segue from her role as a school principal in the UK to a motivation coach, helping a large and growing flock of international followers find greater happiness, success, and fulfillment.

From Colchester, England, Gina shares with host and award-winning journalist Dean Rotbart her five secret pathways to “thriving, not simply surviving.” Gina’s mission now, she says, is to help one million people discover their “Genuine Selves” within the next five years.

Photo: Gina Gardiner, Genuinely You
Posted: September 16, 2019
Monday Morning Run Time: 39 minutes 54 seconds

It’s been more than 50 years since Walter Elias Disney departed for the great amusement park in the sky, yet his legacy consistently inspires new generations of business owners and creators.

Michael Goldsby and Rob Mathews, two professors of entrepreneurship at Ball Street University, have encapsulated Disney’s magic rules of success into a must-read book, Entrepreneurship the Disney Way.

As Goldsby tells host and award-winning journalist Dean Rotbart, two traits that Disney embodied that to this day are hard-wired into The Walt Disney Company are an obsessive commitment to product quality and a refusal to stop innovating and creating. 

For businesses owners who wish upon a star that they could emulate the success of the Disney and the Magic Kingdom, Goldsby says the pixie dust is simple: Just ask yourself time and again, “What would Walt do?”

Photo: Michael Goldsby, Ball State University
Posted: September 2, 2019
Monday Morning Run Time: 42 minutes 42 seconds

Owning a business while raising a family is challenging enough. Mix in caring for one or both aging parents, and the complexities of life expand exponentially.

That’s especially true for women, who comprise a majority of the 44 million unpaid eldercare providers in the United States.

Liz O’Donnell, who enjoyed a fast-paced career in marketing, can speak from experience. She was already juggling her job and two children when both her parents were diagnosed with terminal illnesses on the same day.

Liz, author of Working Daughter: A Guide to Caring for Your Aging Parents While Making a Living, not only shares her advice with host and reputation coach Dean Rotbart for coping with the added responsibilities of eldercare, she also spells out ways that aging Baby Boomers can lessen the burden on their kids when they cross the Rubicon into old age.

[Be sure to pick up a copy of Liz O’Donnell’s new book, Working Daughter: A Guide to Caring for Your Aging Parents While Making a Living.]

Photo: Liz O’Donnell, Working Daughter
Posted: August 19, 2019
Monday Morning Run Time: 37 minutes 23 seconds

Rudy Schmid is a veteran accountant and first-time author who’s written a book – America’s Guide to Starting Your Own Company – that’s helping large numbers of young adults launch their own side hustles free of the flaws that too often hobble new businesses.

The concise book is also helpful for established businesses, especially when it comes to hiring and managing people, and sizing up banking relationships.

Rudy seems a bit embarrassed that he waited so long to share the lessons he learned from his own accounting practice with today’s eager young entrepreneurs.

"Nonsense," replies host Dean Rotbart, “At 86 years of age, Rudy is an inspiration to every would-be author who thinks he or she is ‘too old’ to start.”

By the way, the Guide has been so well-received that Rudy is already working on a sequel, “How to Build Your Company for Success.”

Photo: Rudy Schmid, author
Posted: August 5, 2019
Monday Morning Run Time: 24 minutes 46 seconds

Jordan Goodman is one of the country’s best-known personal finance journalists and authors, appearing frequently on national radio and television call-in shows to answer consumer questions on how to save and invest wisely. 

With 13 books under his belt, including the encyclopedic 992-page Everyone’s Money Book, he joins host Dean Rotbart this week to dispense insightful personal finance recommendations with a special emphasis on the finances of small business owners and entrepreneurs.

If you’ve got solid financial assets, Jordan will share his advice on how to generate even more of them. If you’ve got too much debt, he’s got a lot to say about how to offload it.

Visit Jordan’s website: www.MoneyAnswers.com

Everyone’s Money Book

Master Your Debt

Photo: Jordan E. Goodman, Author and Journalist

Posted: July 29, 2019

Monday Morning Run Time: 52 minutes 57 seconds

When seemingly every path to funding is closed to business owners, entrepreneurs, and inventors, Kedma Ough – a national award-winning small business champion – helps them find the money and resources they seek.

Kedma, a fifth generation entrepreneur, learned the secrets of business funding the hard way – by having countless doors slammed in her face. Now, after helping more than 10,000 individuals to get the funding they thought they could never qualify for, she’s written a book – Target Funding: A Proven System to Get the Money and Resources You Need to Start or Grow Your Business – detailing a wide range of alternative funding options.

Too many great concepts never see the light of day, Kedma explains to host, author, and award-winning journalist Dean Rotbart, because they can’t find the necessary funding. She’s on a mission to change that.

Photo: Kedma Ough, Target Funding
Posted: July 1, 2019
Monday Morning Run Time: 49:19

Monday Morning Radio Host Dean Rotbart confesses that he doesn’t know who his guest is on this week’s podcast. 

It’s not that Dean doesn’t have a fascinating guest, or that the guest’s book – “Undistrupted: How Highly-Effective People Deal with Disruptions” – isn’t a valuable business read; it’s just that Dean literally does not know who wrote the book.

The author, who lives in The Netherlands [Dean phoned him there], uses the pseudonym John Vespasian and has written ten books.

What Dean also knows is that this week’s mystery guest is a well-read student of global history [think Russian industrialist Savva Mamontov (1841-1918), and 12th-century French statesman, Abbot Suger], and draws excellent insights from bygone eras that we all can apply to our lives today.

So Dean assures us that his guest has plenty of good advice to dispense; he just doesn’t know who he’s talking to.

Illustration: The author known as John Vespasian
Posted: May 6, 2019
Monday Morning Run Time: 32:45