The Impact Entrepreneur Show

Ep. 175 – You Can’t Make An Impact If You’re Six Feet Under – with Jennifer L Carroll

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Jennifer Carroll has been a storyteller her whole life, but she believes the story she’s telling now is one that deserves to have massive impact. She wants to tell men and women that your health is the most important thing – because you can’t make an impact if you’re six feet under!

 

Jennifer grew up with loving parents who gave her the foundation of a strong, value-based upbringing, and she always had coaches and mentors in her life, beginning with her figure skating coach when she was a child. 

 

But it was her late husband, entrepreneur Phil Carroll, who taught her the most – both the good and the bad. She says he had the most positive attitude in the world and chose to live a very forward-moving, impactful life. He also lived as if he was invincible. This was his greatest attribute, but it was also part of his demise. Because Phil didn’t believe in going to doctors, he ignored the early symptoms of prostate cancer and, tragically, passed away at a very young age.

 

With the support of another mentor, speaking coach Joel Weldon, Jennifer is now on a mission to share her story and encourage other people to share theirs because she knows that our stories have an impact on others. 

 

“Phil made his first million in his 20s. And he made his first widow in her 40s,” Jennifer says. “And I feel very driven to share that story to not only bring significance and meaning to Phil’s life, as this incredible man and entrepreneur, but also to bring impact to his death.”

 

 

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Ep. 174 – Make Your Dream Job a Reality – with Ken Coleman

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Ken Coleman is a career expert, the best-selling author of The Proximity Principle, and the host of The Ken Coleman Show. Pulling from his own personal struggles, missed opportunities, and career successes, Coleman helps people discover what they were born to do and provides practical steps to make their dream job a reality.

 

Ken’s parents were the first to breathe life into his dreams, but two of his teachers also made a big impact – the elementary school teacher who gave him an extra jolt of self-esteem by always calling him Doc and a drama teacher who poured gasoline on his dreams by telling him he could do great things.

 

And Ken always had big dreams of becoming a national broadcaster – but, of course, big dreams also come with big obstacles. Ken experienced a lot of rejection when he tried to break into radio, and things just weren’t working out the way he had hoped. Then, one day he was sitting on his patio having a one-man pity party when he realized that nobody was sitting around thinking about how they could help Ken Coleman out. Nobody was waking up going, “Hey, this Ken Coleman guy, I think he’d be a really good broadcaster. Why don’t we give him a call today and just open every door for him?” 

 

Ken says that realization hit him like a ton of bricks. He knew he had the talent to be a great broadcaster, but that day, he realized that wasn’t enough – if he really wanted to make an impact, he had to actually pave that road, and that process was going to be long and arduous. 

 

Ken’s book, The Proximity Principle, is all about helping people pave this road for themselves by showing up and getting to know the right people who are going to help you fulfil your dreams so that the right opportunities find their way to you. Ken says that we humans want progress, and that’s a good thing. But, if you obsess about the next step, you miss what you’re supposed to be doing and learning in the now. He offers three pieces of advice for people working towards their dream job:

 

  • Know your role. You have to have absolute clarity on what is expected and what the win looks like.
  • Accept your role. Be grateful for the job you have now because it’s a step on the ladder to your dream job.
  • Maximize your role. Do things outside of your normal duties and demonstrate value.

 

“If you do those three things, progress will find you, the promotion will find you. You don’t have to worry about it.”

 

 

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Ep. 173 – The Four Phases of the Entrepreneur’s Journey – with Chris Cooper

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Chris Cooper is a serial entrepreneur who has seen a lot of success, so now he’s passing on what he’s learned through a mentorship company for entrepreneurs called Two-Brain Business. Chris is focused on nuts and bolts of entrepreneurship, like what are the phases people go through when developing scalable businesses and how do people move between them? To answer these questions, Chris brings together his personal business experience, incredible consistency (he’s written a blog post every day for the last 10 years), and a keen understanding of the benefits of entrepreneurship.

 

One of the macro benefits that Chris sees is that entrepreneurship makes the economy less fragile. A lot of cities and towns rely on major industrial employers – and when they close down or leave, that has a major impact on the economy of the region and almost every family in it. Chris says what these places need to bounce back is an anti-fragile approach, which is not one big industrial employer but 300 small businesses.

 

Another benefit is that when people don’t have to worry about money, they can worry about the important, impactful things – like spending time with their kids and living in alignment with their values.

 

You may think that being an entrepreneur isn’t for everybody, but Chris didn’t grow up in an entrepreneurial family or have access to a lot of extra resources. In fact, he attributes his jump into entrepreneurship to two former personal training clients who saw that personal training wasn’t paying the bills and pushed him to start his first company.

 

If it sounds like you’re in the same shoes that Chris had on back then, working for someone else but struggling to pay your bills, he has a lot of helpful tips:

  • It’s super important to have both wins to motivate you and losses to keep you humble
  • Get into the habit of paying yourself at the start of your business
  • Focus on the information that applies to you and filter out the rest

 

Through his mentoring practice, Chris also identified four phases of entrepreneurship, which he wrote about them in his book Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief: The Four Phases of the Entrepreneur’s Journey.

 

Want to know what phase of entrepreneurship you’re in? Well, you should be interested, because it can help you figure out where to go next – and you can find out at twobrain.com. 

 

 

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Ep. 172 – Leadership and Life Lessons From a Blue Angel Pilot – with John Foley

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John Foley has some serious flying skills, but for him what’s truly important as a team member, leader, and mentor is connecting with people who have a deep connection to who they are and why they’re there. 

 

John had an amazing childhood, where he received both wisdom and love from his parents, who created a supportive environment for his dreams. His father was an army instructor at West Point and John wanted to be an army officer just like him – until he saw an air show and decided that he wanted to be a pilot. 

 

Of course, there were also rules in John’s family, and the self-discipline he developed as a child served him well when he went to study at the United States Naval Academy. He played college football while he was there and, after graduation, trained as a fighter pilot. Moving up the ranks, he then became an instructor pilot and later joined the Blue Angels, the United States Navy’s flight demonstration squadron. 

 

John’s hairy experiences in the Blue Angels included flying into Russian air space shortly after the end of the Cold War to do a show and seeing Russian fighter jets coming towards his plane. Fortunately, the Russians were also keen to make friends and John ended up waving at one of the Russians from his cockpit.

 

Flying in a squadron means that you and your teammates literally rely on each other to stay alive, and in this episode John talks about how it’s so important to hold up your end of the deal and do your job well. He explains that he sees a huge difference between being scared and being afraid. To him being scared just means, “Hey, I need to do my job. Everybody’s counting on me.” Being fearful means that you go into defense mode.

 

John’s new book, Fearless Success, is about the secrets that elite performers know and practice on a daily basis. You can buy it from Amazon and other booksellers, but if you get it from his website, it comes with a free second book, Breaking Beliefs.

 

Some of John’s tips include:

  • Worry about performing well, not on the outcome. 
  • Take negative thoughts and put them in the back of your head so you can focus on what you need to do
  • The key to doing something difficult is visualization and focus

 

Another one of the secrets to success revealed in the book is that he meditates every morning. He says gratitude is so important because, “Gratefulness changes the way you see the world. And then the way the world sees you changes too.”

 

 

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We are brought to you by the Lawton Marketing Group, a full-service advertising and design agency serving companies and entrepreneurs at all levels. They are your one-stop shop for all your website, logo, social media, print, app design and reputable management needs.

 

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Ep. 171 – Make Shift Happen – with Anthony Trucks

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Anthony Trucks has accomplished so much in his life – he played in the NFL, built two extremely successful business, wrote a best selling book, and competed as an American Ninja Warrior – but that all pales in comparison to the positive impact he’s making on every single person he interacts with. Anthony has experienced extreme ups and downs of his life, and that’s what drives him to “help others take ‘shift’ seriously in their lives to make great ‘shift’ happen.”

 

Anthony was placed in foster care at the age of three, and he stayed in the system until he was adopted at the age of 14. Anthony loved his adoptive parents and says his mom taught him unconditional love, but he still struggled with being the only black kid in a white family and the abuse and neglect he experienced in earlier homes. He says that he used his turbulent background as an excuse until he heard two girls talking about him at school and realized how stupid that excuse sounded. 

 

He played football in high school, college, and the NFL, and he attributes his capacity to withstand pain to a college coach that really pushed him.

 

When Anthony left the NFL, he opened his own gym… although he had no idea how to run a gym, or really a business at all. The problems with the gym also disrupted Anthony’s family life and his marriage ended in divorce (however, Anthony and his wife are now happily remarried).  

 

Navigating these extreme shifts in his life has been extremely difficult, but through a lot of internal work, Anthony was able to make sense of life’s expected and unexpected shifts – How he’d accomplished all the great things, how he’d encountered and endured all the bad things, and how he could’ve handled them differently. But he sees others struggling through this all the time, and that’s why he created Modifidentify, a company focused on helping people take control of their lives by understanding how these shifts impact their identities.


As he says, “I just love being a part of the process of other people’s joy.”

 

 

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We are brought to you by the Lawton Marketing Group, a full-service advertising and design agency serving companies and entrepreneurs at all levels. They are your one-stop shop for all your website, logo, social media, print, app design and reputable management needs.

 

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Ep. 170 – Nothing To Lose – with Vincent Pugliese

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As a child Vincent Pugliese was, in his words, a giant pain in the butt. For example on the 200th year anniversary of the United States of America in 1976 everyone at his school had to wear red, white and blue, but he insisted on wearing a green suit. This rebel streak may not have endeared him to his teachers, but it has worked in his favor in the entrepreneurial world.

 

Vincent didn’t do well at school, dropped out of college five or six times and was arrested when he was 18 years old for stealing. As a 22-year-old he was working at a convenience store and making extra money by overcharging each customer a little. After a customer called him out on it, he woke up one night in a dead sweat and knew he had to change his life. His dad suggested he become a sports photographer and Vincent threw himself into attending games, hustling his way to the front row.

 

He got a lucky break at one game and his sports photography career took off.

 

Now he runs a photography business academy and a business mastermind program while enjoying financial freedom, homeschooling his three sons and traveling with his family. His new book, Freelance to Freedom, is available for free as an audio download.  

 

Vincent’s tips for listeners are:

  • A lie is believing what happened in your former life. We base so much of our adult life on what that kid in eighth grade said on the basketball court.
  • Think, “How do I afford it?” as opposed to “I can’t afford it.”
  • One of the lies we tell ourselves is, I’m not good enough.

 

Vincent’s achievements show how far being curious and generous can take you in life. His goal for his sons is for them “to constantly have a love for learning”.

 

 

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Resources:

  • Take action: https://totallifefreedom.com
  • Email: Vincent@freelancetofreedombook.com

 

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We are brought to you by the Lawton Marketing Group, a full-service advertising and design agency serving companies and entrepreneurs at all levels. They are your one-stop shop for all your website, logo, social media, print, app design and reputable management needs.

 

Visit LawtonMG.com for more info.

Ep. 169 – Late Bloomers with Rich Karlgaard

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Rich Karlgaard is the publisher of Forbes magazine, but when he was younger it wasn’t at all obvious that he was going to be successful. During this episode of the podcast he talks about growing up in North Dakota and developing an interest in running. He got into Stanford on a fluke when his coach misunderstood his race times but, in his words, squandered the opportunity. While his high-powered classmates were finishing law school and so on, he graduated with the minimum number of units and went to work as a dishwasher and a security guard. His story of how he went straight from dead-end jobs to working at Forbes magazine, and ultimately became its publisher, is the impetus behind his new book, Late Bloomers.

 

Late Bloomers
Late Bloomers laments the culture of obsession with SAT scores and early success and explains that finding one’s way later in life can be an advantage to long-term achievement and happiness.

 

Self doubt and the importance of self-discovery
Rich and Mike also discuss how people shouldn’t tie their self doubt to their self worth and how embracing self doubt can be a great strategy. They also talk about how early achievers can reinvent themselves in the face of job insecurity as more and more jobs are automated or taken over by artificial intelligence.

 

How harmful the culture of early success can be
Rich also tells the story of how shame around being academically average led to a spate of depression and even suicide amongst Palo Alto students in 2014 and 2015. It was discovered that the kids who were most at risk were B-plus students.

 

Rich’s tips

  • The task of a late bloomer is to get off the conventional path and become an explorer.
  • There’s no better decade than your 20s to take risks.
  • Self doubt isn’t something to run away from, it’s something to embrace.
  • Be prepared to find new friends and move to a different place if your current environment isn’t serving you.

 

One of Rich’s key teachings is that finding your purpose is everything. As he says, “When people feel pulled, they grow in amazing ways. And they surprise you.”

 

 

Don’t be a podcast junkie…

 

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We are brought to you by the Lawton Marketing Group, a full-service advertising and design agency serving companies and entrepreneurs at all levels. They are your one-stop shop for all your website, logo, social media, print, app design and reputable management needs.

 

Visit LawtonMG.com for more info.

Ep. 168 – Clothe Our Kids: Clothing Kids With Confidence & Doing the Impossible – with Laura Mayer

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Every child deserves the opportunity to feel good and feel safe – it’s a fundamental, foundational need for all humans, and when you don’t have that as a child, it can create limiting beliefs that obscure your potential.

 

That’s why Laura Mayer co-founded Clothe Our Kids, a nonprofit dedicated to providing at-risk children in Tennessee with much-needed clothing and shoes. Their goal is to help these children feel loved, cared for, and good about themselves – what they call “clothing kids with confidence” – and each bag they deliver is custom packed with quality items and with the individual needs of the child in mind.

 

Laura grew up in a loving home with support, where she was home schooled by her mother, but when she left home, she found that the rest of the world wasn’t always so supportive. She found herself in an abusive relationship, and after she escaped it, she felt lost. As a result, she put everyone else and everything else at a distance because she didn’t feel safe.

 

However, a transformative experience at church taught Laura that she had to let go of the past; she didn’t know what that was going to look like, but she was done letting anyone else steal another day of her future. She couldn’t go back, she couldn’t change what happened to her, but she could choose to move forward with her head held high.

 

Laura also found inspiration and support in a wonderful book called Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life, which she recommends to anyone who resonates with her story.

 

It’ll help remind you, like I hope this podcast does, that everybody is here on this Earth for a purpose. We all have God-given abilities, and we all have the ability to create an impact on the world. But before you can find your Why, you must remember and believe that you are worthy of one to begin with – and giving children the opportunity to remember that is really why Clothe Our Kids is making such a positive impact on these young lives.

 

And if you want to make a positive impact today, you can support Clothe Our Kids – or even bringing Clothe Our Kids to your community because every city needs this! You can learn more at http://www.clotheourkids.com/take-action.

 

 

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We are brought to you by the Lawton Marketing Group, a full-service advertising and design agency serving companies and entrepreneurs at all levels. They are your one-stop shop for all your website, logo, social media, print, app design and reputable management needs.

 

Visit LawtonMG.com for more info.

Ep. 167 – Living the Life That You Were Created For – with Tiffany Bluhm

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Tiffany Bluhm is a beautiful writer and speaker with an incredible story that just breathes life into everyone who encounters it – so I am humbled and excited to be able to share it with all of you today.

 

Tiffany was born in India, abandoned as a newborn in New Delhi. She was one of more than 25 million Indian children who were orphaned in the ‘80s. And for most of her life, this origin was a thorn in her side; she saw a world where everyone had baby pictures and memories passed down by family, but she had no evidence of her beginning except for a number and a name given to her by an orphanage.

 

So, at her core, she struggled with her sense of identity. Tiffany was lucky enough, however, to be adopted, and to be given the opportunity to talk about how difficult it was. “So many adoptees go underground with their feelings. It’s called invisible trauma, when you can’t make sense of the trauma that’s happened because you don’t have conscious memories of it, but you can feel it and you’re still dealing with the effects of it.”

 

But Tiffany knew that if she was here, there must be a reason – and she had to make the best of it.

 

Although we don’t always come from such humbling pasts, most of us feel like this at some point in our lives: lost, confused, and a little unsure why we’re here. And when we feel that way, we often end up letting the things that we do to define who we are.

 

However, that’s now how you live a fulfilling life that lights you up. Who you are should define what you do, how you work, what your goals are, and what your values are. When you can align all of that, you can really achieve the life that you were created for.

 

“I am not leftovers,” Tiffany says confidently. “This isn’t going to be the breaking of me, but could potentially be the making of me.”

 

You can get more inspiration and wisdom from Tiffany in her upcoming book, She Dreams, or her own incredible podcast, Why Tho?.

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We are brought to you by the Lawton Marketing Group, a full-service advertising and design agency serving companies and entrepreneurs at all levels. They are your one-stop shop for all your website, logo, social media, print, app design and reputable management needs.

 

Visit LawtonMG.com for more info.

166 | Worthy of Life: The Remarkable Story of Violinist and Holocaust Survivor David Arben | with Rebecca Jackson and Dr. John Jackson

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In this episode, I talk to Rebecca Jackson and her father Dr John Jackson, authors of Arben: David Arben’s Life of Miracles and Successes. They discuss Warsaw-born Mr. Arben’s astonishing story of his survival from concentration camps during the Holocaust, his brushes with death, and subsequent achievements as a classical violinist.

 

His story is astonishing, from surviving a Nazi massacre to world acclamation for his work. We discuss how music helped Mr. Arben to carry on — and thrive— after surviving a number of close calls with death and coming face-to-face with the horror of a World War II Nazi concentration camp. The story of the Nazi guard and the camp orchestra is not to be missed.

 

What gave him the strength to survive? Dr. Jackson tells of the advice Mr. Arben received from his parents: 1) You’re a virtuoso and 2) don’t let anyone disrespect you. He never bowed or was submissive and this incredible courage and resilience was something that came directly from his parents. Others, including Dr. and Rebecca Jackson, were inspired by this strength of character.

 

Mr. Arben’s showed his strong will from an early age. Dr. Jackson tells the delightful and illuminating story of a young Arben dismissing his parents’ concerns about him taking up the violin as a career by going on a hunger strike to get music lessons.

 

After the war, he was classed as a displaced person and it was his determination to get to the U.S and play violin that, again, saved him. Eventually arriving on a converted troopship in Boston harbor in 1949, it was only a matter of weeks before he was able to secure a letter of recommendation from the acclaimed conductor Leonard Bernstein, which helped begin his musical career.

 

But how has Mr. Arben influenced Rebecca and Dr. Jackson? Rebecca shares a story of when he questioned her passion when she played. She vehemently denied this to Mr. Arben. Was he upset? No, it was this passion that he wanted to see come out of her. As her teacher, he saw her as a “connector of people.”

 

As we learn, he has strong views about what makes a great artist: “a combination of intellect and heart,” according to Dr. Jackson. A man of honour, Mr. Arben always kept his word and expected others to do the same. A man who lived in the “now,” he believed in using the gifts Nature had bestowed on him.

 

 

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