Ty Crandall is CEO of Credit Suite, the largest business credit coaching operation in the United States. He and his colleagues know the ins and outs of finding the funds to fuel your business and its growth, without having to provide lenders a personal credit check or personal guarantee.

Ty tells host and reputation coach Dean Rotbart that he is shocked by how little most business owners know about business credit and how best to obtain it. Even simple strategies, such as selecting the right name and email address for your business, can often make the difference between being approved and being denied credit.

If you need business credit, or need more business credit, you won’t want to miss what Ty has to say.

Photo: Ty Crandall, Credit Suite
Posted: May 28, 2018
Monday Morning Run Time: 35:53

Chris Ronzio knows the anatomy of a successful small business better than most owners and CEOs.  Chris recently launched a new software venture – a tool called Trainual – that dissects every small business and professional office, breaking them into core components: every process, every job responsibility, every policy, every document – all in one place.

Trainual is a digital company handbook on steroids.

As Chris explains to Monday Morning Radio host and reputation coach Dean Rotbart, Trainual takes the painful process of onboarding and training employees that has been in use for decades and gives it a thorough 21st Century makeover.

Photo: Chris Ronzio, Trainual
Posted: May 7, 2018
Monday Morning Run Time: 37:27

Back in 1995, when the internet was still only a toddler, Jeff Hall started a search engine optimization company from his bedroom in Ontario, Canada. In time, Jeff developed programs and systems to help his clients show up high in the organic results of Google and other search engines.

Today, Jeff 's Overflow Cafe boasts more than 45,000 small business and professional clients in 170 countries, most of whom pay no more than $29 a month to draw relevant traffic to their websites, and sell lots more products and services.

You could do what Jeff and his team do on your own, although as Jeff tells host and reputation coach Dean Rotbart, it would take most owners 100-plus hours monthly. In less than one hour on this week’s episode, Jeff breaks down effective SEO strategy in terms that anyone can comprehend.

Photo: Jeff Hall, Overflow Cafe
Posted: April 23, 2018
Monday Morning Run Time: 46:26

Steve Clayton was a 7^th grade teacher with a love for DJing; a vocation he used to earn some extra cash. 

Self-taught, and relying primarily on grit and determination, Steve took his tiny DJing side business, Soundskilz, and built it into an industry-leading major event production and talent booking company, landing festival headliners including Wu Tang Clan and Ice Cube.

One event alone, the annual Chalice Festival held outside of Los Angles, Steve grew from 8,000 attendees to almost 40,000 in just four years.

No long spinning records, Steve, a self-made man, is now teaching and coaching other would-be entrepreneurs of all types how to develop their own entrepreneurial hits, and this week, he shares some of his favorite business tunes with host and reputation coach Dean Rotbart.

Photo: Steve Clayton, Soundskilz
Posted: April 2, 2018
Monday Morning Run Time: 35:25

This week’s guest on Monday Morning Radio is Adam Witty, CEO of Advantage Media and ForbesBooks.

Adam is “The Authority” on authority marketing, having helped more than 1,300 now-published authors conceive, write, publish, and market their books. In 2016, he joined with Forbes, the influential financial news media company, to launch its own business book imprint.

Advantage Media is a vanity press, but not your run-of-the-mill self-publishing concern. Adam and his team think, act, and get results that are more akin to Simon & Schuster and Random House than conventional vanity publishers. 

If you’ve ever thought of writing a book to serve as a calling card for you professionally, Adam is just the man you want to hear from. But even if you know there is no authorship in your future – and some people shouldn’t write books for reasons you’ll hear, you’ll learn a lot from Adam about how influence and authority are “manufactured” in the competitive marketplace in which we all operate.

Host and reputation coach Dean Rotbart, who interviews Adam, says, “You may think that Adam Witty is in the publishing business. But he’s not. His unassailable core product is not ink on paper, or even digital ink, but raw, impactful influence.”

Photo: Adam Witty, Advantage Media
Posted: February 19, 2018
Monday Morning Run Time: 49 minutes 38 seconds

Not since John Chapman introduced apple trees to large swaths of the U.S. and Canada – earning the nickname Johnny Appleseed –  has one man on his own done so much to introduce a thriving agriculture industry to North America.

Indeed, Jim Henry may well go down in history as Jim Oliveseed, because he single-handedly can claim credit for seeding the commercial olive industry in the United States – and Texas, in particular.

Jim is the owner and founder of Texas Olive Ranch, which was the first U.S. commercial producer of high quality olive oils and today struggles to keep up with demand for its growing line of products.

Host and reputation coach Dean Rotbart shares the unique tale of the Texas Olive Ranch with all due credit to Wizard Academy graduate, Lem Lewis, aka The Ranch Broker, who conducted the interview.

This is an abridged version of Lem’s interview with Jim Henry. To hear the full interview, visit http://www.ranchcast.com/.

Photo: Jim Henry, Texas Olive Ranch
Posted: January 22, 2018
Monday Morning Run Time: 29 minutes 02 seconds

Since its humble beginnings in 1981 as a small storefront in Astoria, Queens, New Yorker Bagels has grown into the universe’s largest baker of fresh, crispy-on-the-outside, chewy-on-the-inside Sesame, Poppy, Cinnamon Raisin, and Pumpernickel bagels, among other popular varieties.

Stephanos Evangelinos, president and COO, and his crew already produce one out of every two bagels consumed daily in the greater New York area. Now, as Stephanos and his masterful digital strategist Rob Kenney tell our bagel-loving host Dean Rotbart, New Yorker Bagels is expanding its distribution nationwide, offering fresh next-day delivery direct to consumers everywhere.

The story of how New Yorker Bagels overcame the incredible odds and obstacles, and how it now plans to spread its bagels nationwide, is one worth chewing on, right now, along with your favorite hot morning beverage and, of course, a healthy schmear of cream cheese.

Posted: September 25, 2017
Monday Morning Run Time: 32 minutes 46 seconds 

Mark Nation has developed and managed businesses in five diverse industries for companies including SAP, Oracle, and UNUM. Doing so, led him to conclude that the vast majority of people have the innate talent to live amazing personal and professional lives, but don’t know how to identify and release their unique abilities.

Mark, a former Ironman triathlete and founder of Nation Leadership, has made it his mission as an executive coach, speaker, and author to help people transform their lives from ordinary to superlative.

On this episode featuring host and reputation coach Dean Rotbart, Mark will be previewing some of the best insights gleaned from his forthcoming book, Made for Amazing – due out in late October. The book is an inspiring self-help parable designed to motivate each of us to see our own, deeper meaning in life, and reach our fullest potential.

Mark believes each of us has a voice – an internal song – that we need to nurture and share with the world.

This week … a podcast version of Name That Tune – Your Personal Song, featuring Mark Nation and Made for Amazing.

Photo: Mark Nation, Made for Amazing
Posted: September 18, 2017
Monday Morning Run Time: 36 minutes 32 seconds 

This week, on a special holiday-weekend edition of Monday Morning Radio, host Dean Rotbart interviews Richard G. “Rick” Ross, founder and owner of GALERIE Candy & Gifts. GALERIE is known the world over for creating highly original, trendy novelties and gifts around candies, including collector’s items, interactive toys, plush characters, and the like.

Rick’s company also produces and distributes branded treats for Hershey, Disney, Warner Brothers, Marvel – and tons of popular movies, including Star Wars, Despicable Me, Minions, and Trolls.

The interview is a reunion of sorts for Dean and Rick, who first met back in 1981 – when Rick was a 19-year-old jelly bean entrepreneur and Dean, then 24, was a cub reporter working for The Wall Street Journal in its Cleveland bureau. 

That year, Dean actually profiled Rick on the front page of the Journal, a distinction that few small business owners will ever be lucky or successful enough to merit.

Rick, now 56, is in the Candy Hall of Fame. 

This week, Rick not only catches up with Dean, he shares his storybook journey from teen tycoon to candy industry senior statesman, and talks about the pluses and minuses of achieving success and recognition at such an early age.

Fittingly, Rick’s mother, Helen, makes a cameo on the podcast, as it was Rick’s mother who really launched him on his path to success.

Photo: Richard G. "Rick" Ross, GALERIE 
Posted: July 3, 2017
Monday Morning Run Time: 38 minutes 40 seconds 

This week's episode of Monday Morning Radio is ripped from this month's business headlines. It will be of special interest to listeners who own or operate online businesses.

Our guest is Tom Kemp, CEO and co-founder of Centrify, one of the fastest growing security vendors in the industry, serving more than 5,000 customers, including a majority of the Fortune 50.

Initially, our plan was to speak Tom about data breaches - such as those that hit Yahoo and Target. These much-publicized cyber attacks are becoming more frequent, more costly, and more widespread among all online businesses - big and small.

Then the WannaCry ransomware attack hit, impacting hundreds of thousands of the world’s computers in more than 150 countries. The malware forced some businesses to close while their IT people scrambled to find solutions.

So we expanded the scope of our interview with Tom Kemp to include data breaches and ransomware. - They are, after all, cyber attack first cousins.

Centrify recently commissioned an independent study, conducted by the Ponemon Institute, to gauge the impact of data breaches on companies and their customers. The study is unique in that it incorporates the view of three diverse groups: IT experts; senior level marketing and corporate communication professionals; and consumers.

What Centrify discovered are insights that every CEO and business owner should be aware of: Cyber attacks are never confined to your IT staff. They impact every aspect of your company, including sales, marketing, finances - and for publicly held companies - shareholder value.

Whether you work at  an Inc. 5000 company, a Fortune 50 company, or simply a business that does business with these companies, you need to know how to protect yourself from data breaches and other cyber attacks sure to make you - and your customers - wanna cry.