Monday Morning Radio

Earlier this month, a group of scientists, entrepreneurs, and space futurists gathered in St. Louis for Gateway to Space 2018: Destination Moon – a one-day conference about working and living on the moon. Christine Nobbe, an educator and president of St. Louis Space Frontier, was the opening speaker. She is host and reputation coach Dean Rotbart’s guest this week, as the two explore out-of-this-world business concepts and realities.

Drew French’s Athens, GA-based Your Pie, launched a decade ago, now has 58 locations in 19 states, with nearly 60 additional locations in development.   Drew is widely credited with pioneering the now-popular and highly competitive “fast casual” pizza concept. The distinction is all the more impressive, says host and reputation coach Dean Rotbart, given that Drew only recently turned 35 years old.

Rachel Sawyer, a partner in Denver-based TaxOps, a respected business tax specialty and advisory firm, joins host and reputation coach Dean Rotbart this week to delve into the nuances of the new tax code and what entrepreneurs can do to take maximum advantage of the savings it offers. If you qualify, Section 199A could mean tens of thousands of dollars of extra cash in your pocket come next year.

Alex Vorobieff, founder and CEO of The Vorobieff Company, is a business alignment expert. Sometimes hired as a stand-in CEO or CFO, Alex uses a suite of alignment tools to get a poorly operating business back on track. The secret to fixing most ailing businesses, Alex tells host and reputation coach Dean Rotbart, rests with remediating its core, NOT focusing on the surface where the issues are most visible.

It sounds like an oxymoron: Positive Conflict   But Dr. Nate Regier, a former practicing psychologist, has built a successful second career as an author, business coach, and popular keynote speaker teaching business people how to fight productively – both on the job and at home.   With endorsements from management gurus including Dan Pink, Ken Blanchard, and Marshall Goldsmith, Nate’s book, Conflict without Casualties, has become must-reading in boardrooms and business schools across the country.

It’s not been easy, but Azi Hendi and her husband, Dr. Ali Hendi – a lawyer and a cancer surgeon – have combined their talents to launch 15-month-old Luminora, a stylish clothing line designed to protect women from the sun’s harmful rays. The Hendi’s know that three million Americans are diagnosed annually with a form of skin cancer, and most fashionable clothes do little, if anything, to protect wearers from the sun.

When Ross Kimbarovsky started his company, crowdspring.com, a decade ago, he had a vision for a new kind of logo creation service – one in which logo buyers would be offered a wide range of original, creative, logo concepts at a readily affordable price. Today, more than 200,000 designers from nearly 200 countries compete to design the winning logos for crowdspring’s 50,000-plus clients.

Kathryn Petralia, president of Atlanta-based Kabbage – the global financial services and technology company that conducted the survey, tells host and reputation coach Dean Rotbart that in the eyes of survey respondents, nothing defines the American Dream better than being your own boss and owning your own business.

In a short-term world, too few business leaders contemplate their long-term brand. Mark Miller and Lucas Conley, authors of the new McGraw-Hill business book, Legacy in the Making, are out to change that. Miller and Conley argue that leaders with long-term ambitions are the best equipped to stand out, get ahead, and make their mark.

Mark F. Kluger, founding partner at the New Jersey employment law firm Kluger Healy, is an expert at clearing all types of workplace landmines, and this week Mark walks host and reputation coach Dean Rotbart step-by-step past the explosive, often-hidden, issue of side hustlers.

The annual Fireside Conference – held at a remote retreat a 3 ½ hour drive from Toronto – attracts a small group of top innovators, thought leaders, and investors in the entrepreneurial universe. Fireside’s co-founder, Daniel Levine, tells host and reputation coach Dean Rotbart just why every year Fireside gets more than ten times the number of applicants than it accepts.

For just shy of four decades, Mark H. Fowler has helped reengineer companies that are underperforming or outright failing. His Santa Monica consulting firm, Stowe Management Corporation, relies heavily on building enhanced communication between corporate management, employees, and customers to achieve amazing operational turnarounds. Mark has created a proprietary set of tools to foster what he terms “Revolutionary Conversations.”

This week Professor Carl J. Schramm conducts a Master’s Class in entrepreneurship exclusively for host and reputation coach Dean Rotbart, using the professor’s new book – Burn the Business Plan: What Great Entrepreneurs Really Do – as assigned reading. Think you need an MBA to be a business success? Think again. Professor Schramm says that the proven path to business success is one of passion, determination, and a willingness to experiment and innovate.

Guest Davia Temin serves as an advisor to senior executives and boards at the highest levels of American business, and she has emerged as the go-to consultant on what companies and other organizations must do to eradicate sexual harassment in their organizations.

Greg Jameson, author of The Influencer Effect, specializes in helping companies identify the influential men and women who can provide them the greatest endorsement leverage, and then negotiating terms with those influencers. As Greg explains to host and reputation coach Dean Rotbart, an effective influencer needn’t have a household name. Anyone with a loyal following, no matter how small, can often produce over-sized results for the companies and products that they endorse.