http://carolwain.com I help professionals to re-position, re-brand and rebuild a business that brings joy and, of course, money. Mon, 18 Mar 2013 19:25:36 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 I help professionals to re-position, re-brand and rebuild a business that brings joy and, of course, money. Carol Wain = mentor, trainer, consultant, best selling author and award-winning entrepreneur no I help professionals to re-position, re-brand and rebuild a business that brings joy and, of course, money. http://carolwain.com/wp-content/plugins/powerpress/rss_default.jpg http://carolwain.com http://carolwain.com/harris-rosen/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=harris-rosen http://carolwain.com/harris-rosen/#comments Fri, 01 Mar 2013 04:59:55 +0000 Carol Wain http://carolwain.com/?p=794 Continue reading →]]> http://carolwain.com/harris-rosen/feed/ 0 Carol Wain here with the Founder and President of Rosen Hotels and Resorts, Harris Rosen.  I met Harris at his Rosen Shingle Creek resort in Orlando and I was immediately impressed by not only his success but most importantly, Carol Wain here with the Founder and President of Rosen Hotels and Resorts, Harris Rosen.  I met Harris at his Rosen Shingle Creek resort in Orlando and I was immediately impressed by not only his success but most importantly, how unique he is in his approach to growing his business and the support he provides his employees, customers, community and the industry.  Welcome Harris, thank you for joining me today. Carol:               You have an amazing story, so why don't you tell me who you are, and what is your background? Harris Rosen:  When you say that, amazing story, that’s interesting because I don't find it amazing. It is a story that has been essentially replicated, with different details of course, throughout our history millions, and millions, and millions of times. People coming from overseas, people born in very difficult circumstances here, and then taking advantage of the extraordinary opportunities this wonderful country has, and achieving some success. I don't think that it’s amazing. My grandparents came from Eastern Europe, from Austria- Hungary, and the Ukraine about the same time. I need to do more research, but I think it was about 1909, 1910. My granddads came alone leaving their families at home. Hungarian-Austrian granddad had four daughters, and a wife he left at home, and Harry Rosenowski from Russia had four sons, and a wife he left at home. They both went through Ellis Island. Both of them had their names changed, or shortened, I should say from Rosenowski to Rosen, and Rosenhouse to Rosen, and they both settled in the lower eastside of Manhattan. Both immediately went to work, overcoming initial disappointment that they would find gold in the streets, of course they didn't. Working very hard, Rosenowski after a couple of years leased a storefront, and opened a little restaurant that as I understand it, had a capacity around 15 people. Rosenhouse went into business with a friend making barrels, wooden barrels. He was a coppersmith. Back in those days, in the 1900s, virtually everything was in a wooden barrel, from oil to pickles, to herring, tomatoes, and everything. He did very well. His partner passed away, and he then was the sole proprietor of a very successful little business. They both sent for their wives and families at about the same time, as best we can figure, 1913, 1914, and both of them had another child. Rosenowski had another son, and Rosenhouse had another daughter. They grew up on the lower eastside. They did not know each other until after high school and they met, dated, fell in love, got married, and had me rather quickly. I was born and raised on the lower eastside of Manhattan, between the East River, Fulton Fish Market, and Little Italy, The Valley, and Chinatown. My dad worked a number of jobs. He did not permit my mom to work. She raised me and my brother. My dad spent most of his time working. We lived in an apartment complex. We lived on the second floor in a rather small apartment, but we were comfortable. The neighborhood was a typical low middle-income neighborhood. All of the games we played, we played in the streets, stickball, punch ball, Johnny and the pony, kick the can. I went to school there. I went to high school in the Bronx, Music and Art High School. My brother went to Siberson High School. I had plans to become an artist. I inherited some of my dad's artistic ability. He did caricatures as a hobby and place cards at the Waldorf Astoria. I was planning on going to art school, apply to some of the major art schools, Cooper Union, Pratt, Carnegie-Mellon, but a chance meeting at the Waldorf Astoria of a very famous person caused me to rethink my original plan, and to apply to the Hotel School at Cornell. Dad did place cards at fancy weddings. He had a wonderful and beautiful handwriting, and he would invite me to his little office to help the cards out, put them in alphabetical order, erase the pencil, Carol Wain = mentor, trainer, consultant, best selling author and award-winning entrepreneur no 48:58 <iframe width="320" height="24" src="http://carolwain.com/?powerpress_embed=794-podcast&amp;powerpress_player=default" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> http://carolwain.com/dave-smith/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dave-smith http://carolwain.com/dave-smith/#comments Fri, 01 Mar 2013 04:56:00 +0000 Carol Wain http://carolwain.com/?p=792 Continue reading →]]> http://carolwain.com/dave-smith/feed/ 0 Carol Wain here with Dave Smith, the founder and general manager of Spice, which is an adventure sports and leisure membership group in the UK. Dave, welcome and thank you for joining me today. You have one of the best jobs in the world, you know. Carol Wain here with Dave Smith, the founder and general manager of Spice, which is an adventure sports and leisure membership group in the UK. Dave, welcome and thank you for joining me today. You have one of the best jobs in the world, you know. David Smith:    I think I agree with you as well. I’ve been very privileged in my journey. It really has been an amazing experience so I’ve been very lucky.   Interviewer:     So, tell us your story: Who are you and what’s your background?   David Smith:    Well, big question. Well, obviously I’ve been running Spice and I created Spice, if you like, founded it 31 years ago now and Spice is easiest understood as an adult use club, so that’s the easy way to grasp it, or a play group for adults, I guess, and that’s been what the last 32 years have been about. Prior to that, I was in the police force in the UK. I did six years in the police force but I was also very, very social as a youngster and I was involved in scouting, the boys, and eventually came through the scouting system and ran a scout group for the teenagers, but the problem was that once they got to 19–18, 19, 20, they moved on and I really got to a situation where I wanted to–it’s a bit like the youth club as well. We have youth clubs and there’s lots of services for youth and so on, but when you get to your 20’s, it somehow all dissipates and unless you were really, really interested in climbing and joined the climbing club and became a real enthusiast, there wasn’t out there a multi-activity sports club and it wasn’t just about sport and adventure. It was about–I wanted to do unusual things and I was always into whacky things and a bit funky things and spicing up my life, if you like, and that (main)–I don’t know–going golf and potholing with the group of friends in fancy dress or something and sleeping overnight in the local house that’s rumored to be haunted and telling ghost stories around candles and so I did all of that sort of thing but I was always organizing things like that and so one day it dawned on me that it would be great to run that as a club, if you like and so that’s how the seeds of Spice started. Spice actually stands for Special Challenge of Initiative–sorry, it’s Special Program of Initiative Challenge and Excitement.   Interviewer:     Well, that’s cool.   David Smith:    Yeah, that sort of sums it up.   Interviewer:     So Spice offers its members many, many different ways to be social. What are the various ways that people can get out, meet and have fun?   David Smith:    Oh, well, we basically operate around our program which is served to the members now through mostly the website and e-mails and obviously Facebook and social networking sites, but also a magazine that comes to them every couple of months with the program in it and it’s a huge program. There’s probably–locally, in your branch, so you were affiliated with the local branch, and we’re actually a franchise so you might join the Manchester Spice group which is a franchise, or the London one and that group then serves you the program. So Monday to Friday there’s activities like meals out and quiz nights and walks and workshops, all sorts of–pub nights, parties, cinema nights, theatre visits, all the usual things you might think of. Then there’s a lot of unusual things as well, so we might–even from a point of–like, a tour around the local dogs rescue home or there’s all sorts–we try and find unusual things: back scene visits of factories or around the local prison or something like that. So there’s all sorts going on, because again, it’s still about adding some spice to life and obviously every day is special, so the idea is that you have opportunities to do things that are unusual and different and exciting and funky. So you’re going into work; it’s full of life. It is all about having life flow through you really; that’s what Spice’s purpose is. Carol Wain = mentor, trainer, consultant, best selling author and award-winning entrepreneur no 45:00 <iframe width="320" height="24" src="http://carolwain.com/?powerpress_embed=792-podcast&amp;powerpress_player=default" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> http://carolwain.com/rob-warner/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rob-warner http://carolwain.com/rob-warner/#comments Fri, 01 Mar 2013 04:54:04 +0000 Carol Wain http://carolwain.com/?p=790 Continue reading →]]> http://carolwain.com/rob-warner/feed/ 0 Carol:               Tell me your background. - Rob:                 My background is very strange.  I spent 15 years as a chartered accountant over here, equivalent of a CPA in the US. - Carol:               We have chartered accountants in Cana... Carol:               Tell me your background. Rob:                 My background is very strange.  I spent 15 years as a chartered accountant over here, equivalent of a CPA in the US. Carol:               We have chartered accountants in Canada. Rob:                 Similar sort of thing, that I guess is [inaudible 00:00:19].  My first 15 years of my professional career were spent usually head of finance and IT in companies of varying sizes.  My most recent one before I stopped doing all that to do something far more interesting, we were doing about 150 million Sterling turnover a year, that sort of size of business, quite big.  I then left that five years ago to set up my own software development business.  Technology is my real interest if you like.  Started then.  Spent 12 months developing products.  Started to then realize, actually no one was in the business who knew a damn thing about marketing. While we developed a lovely product, it might be kind of useful if somebody would buy it from time-to-time.  I set the business up and the only guys I got working with me were far geekier than even I am.  It fell on my shoulders to become a marketer and sell it.  We started to sell our own products in 2009.  We did that very well, selling that entirely online, built up a good customer base across the UK.  By early 2011, we're starting to get these phone calls from people saying, "I like what you've done when you're promoting for this.  Would you promote something for us?"  One call led to two calls, led to five calls, led to ten calls. By the second half of last year we reached the conclusion, that, “Hang on a minute guys, this is, people keep asking us to do this and we keep saying yes, but it's not really what we do.  Why don't we either stop saying yes, or make it what we do.”  That's what we did.  We set up a separate part of the business to purely focus on all our marketing for other businesses.  Since then we're growing quite quickly.  We've now got a team of people doing predominantly Google AdWords marketing because it works very, very well for us.  Other bits and pieces as well, but particularly our focus is on PPC advertising, whatever the source may be.  We've now got a team. The size of the business is almost as big as the original software business it was build out from. Carol:               Wow, wow. Rob:                 By the end of the year, it will be significantly bigger, because we keep recruiting, taking on more clients, so that's a good thing. Carol:               Cool.  What was your software just as a sidebar?  What kind of software did you create? Rob:                 We developed originally for the public sector forces in the UK.  We developed originally two products.  The first one was a means of delivering audio, newsletters, and magazines and publications straight over the air automatically to phones. Carol:               Interesting, cool. Rob:                 In the days before the iPhone existed we were breaking other phones, and proving that we were unlimited to that technology at the time.  The idea being that busy professionals would get their professional journals delivered to their mobile to listen to on the way to work.  We developed that.  Then we moved on to a text space solution for public authorities in this country.  Again, that has worked really well, and we still continue to sell that every day of the week.  I spend probably one day a fortnight working that part of the business because it largely just runs itself now.  It's just a subscription business, so it's easy. Carol:               Cool.  Now you had told me that you've got some tourism related clients, that you do PPC for, right? Rob:                 We mainly do hotels.  We work with a number of hotels.  They all, whatever hotel it seems to be, they all telling us they have the same problem.  The problem they all seem to have is the online booking agents. Carol Wain = mentor, trainer, consultant, best selling author and award-winning entrepreneur no 23:46 <iframe width="320" height="24" src="http://carolwain.com/?powerpress_embed=790-podcast&amp;powerpress_player=default" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> http://carolwain.com/jay-rosenberg/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=jay-rosenberg http://carolwain.com/jay-rosenberg/#comments Fri, 01 Mar 2013 04:51:41 +0000 Carol Wain http://carolwain.com/?p=788 Continue reading →]]> http://carolwain.com/jay-rosenberg/feed/ 0 J. Rosenberg:   My background, I'm a marketing person.  I had an ad agency for many years.  Direct response, then got online and that's what I do.  Over the course of my years at the agency, we had some bumps. J. Rosenberg:   My background, I'm a marketing person.  I had an ad agency for many years.  Direct response, then got online and that's what I do.  Over the course of my years at the agency, we had some bumps.  That's when I learned about this personality marketing.  That's how we recruited new clients.  You know a little bit about what I do? Carol:               Yes.  Currently I'm a Diplomat.   J. Rosenberg:   Yes you are.  I'm a Mastermind.  I'm your opposite.  You might find me a little abrupt because we don't seem very friendly, hopefully I'll be friendly and it will be fine.  We recruited clients and that gave us an edge because the other agencies, it's a very competitive business, the other agencies didn't get this.  They didn't know about this.   We could speed read the personality types on the telephone with prospects.  When they came for an office tour, we knew that the Diplomats would like to meet lots of people.  Diplomats love people.  Masterminds just want to have a business meeting.  They don't need to meet people.  Masterminds are very objective types.  Diplomats are quite subjective, they have feelings.  They are very feeling people.  We got to a level where we knew what kind of tour to give them.  What they would like for lunch.  We knew they pretty much would dress and we knew all kinds of things.   We got a lot of new business and we recovered very well from our difficult time.  I had put the whole office on a four-day week rather than fire anybody because I really liked them.  At the end of two months, everybody was happy.  They still had their job and we started hiring again.  That really worked well one-on-one and I always thought if I could do only this on a mass basis.  I teamed up with a firm that goes all the way back to Myers-Briggs, their founder.   We created a two minute test.  With that two minute test, we can determine the personality types of the people who take it.  From that, we have a sales tactics, our sales psychology that we guide our clients with so that they can be more effective and influence their prospects and clients.  When you said incentives and bonuses, or you said incentives I think, that is especially good for Olympians.  Olympians are very responsive to shiny objects.  They don't like facts, but they love to talk about themselves and they love testimonials and stories.  They love incentives which would be great for employees or for guests that are coming, little extras.  I think a lot of people who are Olympians would be interested, very responsive to tourism on the consumer side because they are very sense-driven.  They like new things, they like to explore.  They like a fun-glamorous, exciting, adventurous things to do.  Olympians would be one of the personality types that would be very nice to reach and to address in this kind of flavor or manner of selling.  Is that the kind of information you're looking for?   Carol:               Absolutely.  Just how different segments within the tourism industry could use this to close more sales and to increase the customer lifetime and so on and so forth?   J. Rosenberg:   Got it.  OK.  Did I send you our white paper?   Carol:               No.   J.Rosenberg:    Well, I'm giving you information on the white paper and elaborating on it.  It's not too long.  It's kind of fun to look at.  Famous Olympians included Marlon Brando as the Godfather.  Elvis Presley, Donald Trump, the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz and I'll send them to you after the call.  The Olympians doesn't like the details, but the Thinker loves details.  They adore details.  No detail is too small.  If I were a hotel and I knew that my prospect was a Thinker, I would give them a very organized, step-by-step presentation about the hotel and the amenities and we also know they don't like risk.  They like everything to be logical and thorough.  We also know this.  They, of the four personality types, Carol Wain = mentor, trainer, consultant, best selling author and award-winning entrepreneur no 31:04 <iframe width="320" height="24" src="http://carolwain.com/?powerpress_embed=788-podcast&amp;powerpress_player=default" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> http://carolwain.com/david-zinger/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=david-zinger http://carolwain.com/david-zinger/#comments Fri, 01 Mar 2013 04:49:15 +0000 Carol Wain http://carolwain.com/?p=786 Continue reading →]]> http://carolwain.com/david-zinger/feed/ 0 My name is David Zinger and my background is in educational psychology and counseling psychology to begin with.  I worked for about 17 years with Seagram as their employee assistance counselor and really got to know the workplace from the inside out, My name is David Zinger and my background is in educational psychology and counseling psychology to begin with.  I worked for about 17 years with Seagram as their employee assistance counselor and really got to know the workplace from the inside out, b... Carol Wain = mentor, trainer, consultant, best selling author and award-winning entrepreneur no 30:06 <iframe width="320" height="24" src="http://carolwain.com/?powerpress_embed=786-podcast&amp;powerpress_player=default" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> http://carolwain.com/james-schramko/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=james-schramko http://carolwain.com/james-schramko/#comments Fri, 01 Mar 2013 04:47:22 +0000 Carol Wain http://carolwain.com/?p=784 Continue reading →]]> http://carolwain.com/james-schramko/feed/ 0 Carol Wain here with James Schramko, founder of SuperFastBusiness in Sydney, Australia.  Welcome, James.  Thanks for joining me today. - James:             It’s my pleasure, thank you. - Carol:               James, tell me your story.  Who are you, Carol Wain here with James Schramko, founder of SuperFastBusiness in Sydney, Australia.  Welcome, James.  Thanks for joining me today. James:             It’s my pleasure, thank you. Carol:               James, tell me your story.  Who are you, what is your background and what are you doing now? James:             I have a business that predominantly operates online now and we supply different services and products to people all around the world.  I was quite interested in having an online business, having come from a Mercedes-Benz car dealership background.  I worked my way up through the sales ranks through to management and then finally I was running these large multimillion dollar businesses.  I realized that a lot of the same principles that apply to running a shop also apply to running an online shop so to speak, the same marketing fundamentals of getting people to come find out what you have to sell, making them an offer, then making a purchase and then you delivering the goods. A lot of things can be leveraged online that can’t be done in a normal shop.  I saw there was potential in that and I’ve built quite a large business for myself that operates from home. Carol:               That’s a great success story.  What is the best advice you’ve ever received in business? James:             One of my mentors ran a $100 million business with me and he kept talking about his idea of making Grange.  That won’t mean anything to people outside Australia, but in Australia there is a famous red wine called Grange and it’s the most sought after, highly prized, very expensive wine.  I think it’s somewhere around $700 a bottle, just to give you an example, and the whole story behind this wine was fascinating.  The guy that made it, when he started making it people didn’t like it and they told him to stop making it.  The owner of the vineyard said, “Stop making this wine, it’s no good.”  He kept making it in secret in the basement, in the cellar.  Years later it came back out and they took it off to a show and it actually won the best wine.  It became known as the best wine you can get in Australia. Australia is known as a wine region anyway so basically this guy had a long-term vision of making the best wine.  It wasn’t a short journey, it wasn’t an easy journey, but he had belief in it and he persisted.  It’s very hard for people to then come and compete with him.  If he has the best wine, that might have been a 10 or 20 year process to get to. The most important lesson I’ve learned is that you’re going to have to stick through some difficult patches.  There may be hard work at times, but if you really have a strong vision on where you’re going and the end result, then it can be worthwhile.  You can create something that’s almost impossible for other people to replicate or to clone, which happens a lot online.  Having those core qualities and I think this also came from the brand values that I was getting exposed to with Mercedes-Benz. Carol:               That’s so true.  Being unique, thinking about long term vision and not losing your focus is so important especially when things aren’t going well.  Did anyone ever give you advice that you wished you’d never followed? James:             People gave me advice that turned out not to be great advice, but I was lucky in two ways.  One is that my Grandfather, who I worked with when I was about 17, taught me to always question people you’re getting advice from and make sure that they’re actually qualified and that they’re good at the thing you want to learn.  That probably helped me filter out a lot of bad advice in the first place. The second thing is I recognized that there’s no point having regrets about things I’ve done in the past.  I can just see what I’ve learned from it.  Sometimes I did something and it didn’t work out, but that was a great lesson in what not to do and an investment in experience, so I have a different way of looking at it. Carol Wain = mentor, trainer, consultant, best selling author and award-winning entrepreneur no 29:06 <iframe width="320" height="24" src="http://carolwain.com/?powerpress_embed=784-podcast&amp;powerpress_player=default" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> http://carolwain.com/sohail-khan/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sohail-khan http://carolwain.com/sohail-khan/#comments Fri, 01 Mar 2013 04:15:44 +0000 Carol Wain http://carolwain.com/?p=781 Continue reading →]]> http://carolwain.com/sohail-khan/feed/ 0   - Carol Wain here with Sohail Khan, one of the top JV experts in the  world.  Thank you for joining me today. - Sohail:             Thank you, Carol for having me.  It’s a pleasure. - Carol:               Firstly, Sohail, what is a joint venture?   Carol Wain here with Sohail Khan, one of the top JV experts in the  world.  Thank you for joining me today. Sohail:             Thank you, Carol for having me.  It’s a pleasure. Carol:               Firstly, Sohail, what is a joint venture? ... Carol Wain = mentor, trainer, consultant, best selling author and award-winning entrepreneur no 40:56 <iframe width="320" height="24" src="http://carolwain.com/?powerpress_embed=781-podcast&amp;powerpress_player=default" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> http://carolwain.com/ive-been-soooo-bad/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ive-been-soooo-bad http://carolwain.com/ive-been-soooo-bad/#comments Tue, 26 Feb 2013 21:31:51 +0000 Carol Wain http://carolwain.com/?p=713 Continue reading →]]> http://carolwain.com/ive-been-soooo-bad/feed/ 0 http://carolwain.com/what-exactly-does-carol-wain-do/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-exactly-does-carol-wain-do http://carolwain.com/what-exactly-does-carol-wain-do/#comments Fri, 04 Jan 2013 23:37:46 +0000 Carol http://carolwain.com/?p=478 Continue reading →]]> http://carolwain.com/what-exactly-does-carol-wain-do/feed/ 0 http://carolwain.com/if-i-could-change-the-world/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=if-i-could-change-the-world http://carolwain.com/if-i-could-change-the-world/#comments Thu, 03 Jan 2013 23:28:57 +0000 Carol http://carolwain.com/?p=474 Continue reading →]]> http://carolwain.com/if-i-could-change-the-world/feed/ 0