BOOTSTRAPS : professional journey of Black Excellence Aniefre Essien

My guest Nick Lopezzo, Director of Marketing for Gatorade, offers a master class on marketing, aka brand building. His most recent work includes a marketing campaign that's an homage to Serena Williams, narrated by Beyonce, that has been critically acclaimed worldwide. 
Because many people don't have a background in marketing, they wrongly think marketing is just advertising, and they launch their company with no marketing at all. Then once they're down the road a ways and they're having a hard time scaling their business, they discover that they need marketing; and they've needed it for a while. Marketing, done right, is the revenue driver for the business. It identifies strategic opportunities for growth, and the most efficient way to go get it. Put another way, launching a company without marketing is throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping something will stick. And hope is not a strategy. 

As an entrepreneur, you’re the captain of the ship. And as such, it’s up to you to chart the course for the crew, so the speak, by crafting a vision that both outlines success and also inspires action. I can tell you from first-hand experience, the top performing team isn’t always the best funded or stacked with the most talent. Instead, top performing teams are clear about WHY their work is important, and they’re motivated to help the team achieve success. The reason “quiet quitting” is a trending topic in work world is because workers don’t know what the company’s vision is, or they’ve stopped believing in it. As a result, a large portion of the work force is only doing enough to not get fired. As an entrepreneur, a key contributing factor to your success lies in the quality and authenticity of your vision.

Guest: Tisha Sampson
If you want to be a leader, you must serve others. Far too often, we think leading is about having others serve us, but it's the exact opposite. As an entrepreneur, if you want your venture to be successful you will need employees, contractors, and agencies to rally around your vision and set of goals. Success will require day in and day out dedication, and that comes when your team believes you are genuinely invested in their best interest, not just what you can get from them. Your level of concern for your team members will directly reflect their level of commitment. If they perceive you, the leader, as only looking out for yourself, they will begin to only look out for themself. They won't go above and beyond in their effort and it will immediately show up in the quality of what your company creates. If you do, however, commit to serving your team as a leader--to ensuring they have clarity in their role and all that they need to succeed--they will outperform expectations regularly. And that's how you succeed as a leader of people. 

Guests: Jason Brown, BJ Jacobs.
As Aniefre has stepped away from corporate America to launch his own company 30FIRST, he sits down with fellow entrepreneurs Jason Brown of PGP Advisors, and BJ Jacobs of Goshen Park Capital, to discuss what it’s like to take the entrepreneurial leap, and steps you can take to set yourself up for success. “Playing it safe” with a job isn’t always safe. If you have the skills, you have to put up or shut up. Having an advisory circle helps mitigate risk.

From Far Rockaway to far away places, both physically and mentally. Hear the inspiring story and acquired professional wisdom of Kareem Edwards, whose worked for esteemed companies such as Lehman Brothers, Kraft, and Google before opening his own Chick-fil-A restaurant in Chicago.

Julius Bryant is an ideal combination of curiosity and ambition. Being curious is an important trait in life, and it’s vital as a business leader. It’s been said that as soon as we open our mouths, we stop learning. So it’s important to want to ask questions and observe instead of jumping to conclusions because you will understand the topic at hand to a greater degree. That’s the reward of curiosity! And if you couple curiosity with ambition, you will be able to act on what you discover to get ahead in this world.