Leadership

Business Leadership Interview Questions for Don Scott Schnure / 1AutomationWiz As a digital marketing professional, software designer and former video production executive Don Schnure brings a unique perspective to the online shopping cart company 1AutomationWiz.com. With offices in St. Louis Missouri and a data center in Ottawa Canada, Don’s company offers a unique work environment where over 80% of the employees can telecommute. This provides new opportunities for working mothers and the flexibility in work schedules that attracts some of the industry’s top talent. Don’s company was founded in 2001 and is responsible for millions of dollars in online transactions and thousands of online stores. We had a chance to sit down…

Desi Dobreva – The Branding Queen Desi Dobreva is a professional creative, specializing in content creation, social media, PR and helping your business reach rock star status. She can be found on a plane, writing the night away, standing up for animal rights or hugging her sloth. Business and Leadership sat down with “The Branding Queen” to talk about being an entrepreneur, growing a team, and fighting mediocrity and creating big wins for her clients’ businesses. As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up and in what ways does that relate to what you do now? Words and stories have captivated me ever since I…

There are two ways leaders motivate people to do what they want—power and influence. People may give us our way—out of fear or respect—because of our power. But they might not agree with us. The goal of influence is to motivate others to want what we want. Influence is the most desirable way to effect lasting change because it produces commitment, not just compliance. Even when influence fails, it builds goodwill. Steps to influence and make friends. Present the facts. You won’t get far unless you explain the arguments supporting your view. This includes doing the necessary cost-benefit analyses. Appeal to emotions. If logic fails, present a vision of your…

Wade Lombard, The Man Behind Square Cow Movers As every great leader will share, the foundation of their leadership skills and vision was instilled in them at an early age. As was the case with Wade, his inspiration came from his father, he saw what his father built and wanted to be a part of it. Great leaders are not lazy. Wade is the true example of that statement. When you co-own a thriving, up-and-coming moving company in a booming city like Austin, Texas, the customers rarely see the owners. Instead, they see the front-line employees and those are the faces of the company. The ones the company is graded…

Tesla is burning through cash at an alarming rate. Their stock took a dive of nearly 8% today as it was announced yesterday that the car company has burned through $785M in just three months time. To make matters worse, Musk delivered an earnings call which can best be described as bizarre. He cut off analysts as they attempted to ask questions by calling them “boring.” And to add even more bizarreness to the earnings call, Musk preferred having an open conversation with a young YouTuber, which some joked had a mere 50 shares of stock and was nothing but an amateur. Grumbings in the press was that Musk has…

According to Hoffman, the one thing you don’t learn as a student is to leave the beaten path. How do you be the entrepreneur of your own life? This opening to his interview is quite puzzling, especially with Hoffman’s Oxford education. Surely he is well aware the writings of beloved essayist Ralf Waldo Emerson who penned the famous Self Reliance essay . Emerson clearly admonishes the reader to go off the beaten path. Listen to their heart. Owe a debt to no man and become self-reliant so they can be free of their own thought and convictions. He mentioned questioning himself during his younger years of “How can I get into Stanford?” or “How can I get…

The purpose of the London Leaders programme is to demonstrate the power of leadership, collaboration, and innovation in tackling the sustainability challenges inherent in global cities such as London. London Leadership Personified According to Mark Woodcock, Managing Director of BigFoot Digital in London, “Community, connectivity, networking, and more – everything a business needs to succeed can be found right in London. While London offers plenty of opportunities to grow your business, it’s also brimming with competitors all looking to generate profit.” There is a strong movement in purchasing not just products, but services online locally due to the heavy stress of the traffic congestion in London. Woodcock continues, “If you…

Damien Trevatt – The Man Behind Ungagged “Take risks, make mistakes, learn from both, but most importantly, don’t look back, just keep going.” – Damien Trevatt In an age with a never-ending supply of advice givers, Trevatt walked the walk as he took a huge risk in the Fall of 2014, creating what was then labeled, “The Un-Conference.” Trevatt saw a problem in the digital marketing space. Current conferences were stagnant. Speakers shared very little real information as the conferences were often recorded or live streamed. Presentations became generic and the “nuggets of information” to help online business owners and consultants were few and far between. He foresaw a conference…

In the fall of 2017, Tim Ash , CEO of Site Tuners , was the keynote speaker for the digital marketing conference  Ungagged . Typically, keynotes at conferences like this are described as stand-offish, snooty, and unapproachable. Those keynote speakers who claim that they are “approachable” will excuse themselves from conversations with conference attendees as if they are a surgeon rushing to the OR. And then there is Tim Ash. We observed for well over an hour Ash spent time with two attendees discussing everything from their respective online businesses, politics, and how to improve human relations. It was apparent Ash is well read, astute, and genuine. His respect toward the female attendees was also observed,…

Update: Peter Sutherland dies at 71. Chairman of Goldman Sachs and former head of the World Trade Organisation Peter Sutherland is to co-chair a new international group to boost global trade. The experts’ group has been created following talks between the UK and Germany and was announced over the weekend by UK Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “Trade is the engine of global growth. That is why we have put boosting trade and tackling trade barriers high on our governments’ agendas and want to see a strong political commitment to liberalizing trade at the Seoul G20 summit,” the leaders said in a statement. Open markets and free trade should be at the heart…