Craig Swanson Guest Appearances

Craig Swanson
Craig Swanson Guest Appearances

Here are all the podcast episodes where Craig makes a guest appearance. Contact information at craigswanson.org

  1. 07/18/2022

    Mastering Your Exit Strategy: Craig Swanson - Conversation with a Serial Entrepreneur

    In my first two decades as a small business owner, I couldn't imagine selling my business. And I think, like a lot of small business owners, I felt a small touch of moral superiority over business owners who did sell. In this conversation with Christine Trumbull on her valuable Mastering Your Exit Strategy podcast I had an opportunity to dig into the mind-shift and freedom that I've experienced in my career as I moved from a small business owner into truly viewing myself as an entrepreneur, and moreso now as a serial-entrepreneur. “So my first company I started was my baby, it was the thing that I put all my energy into, it was built around me, I was an integral part. And then when I started hiring employees, I was looking for people who were clones of me. And I couldn't find clones of me, I couldn't find people who would care about the business as much as I did. And over a 20-year period, I slowly learned that good employees don't necessarily see the world the way an owner does. And I started to see that my attachment to the business might actually be getting in my own way. “In a lot of ways, my IT company, which was a small little thing, could grow only maybe like 1x or 2x bigger than me because I was attached to every single facet of it. It was my life.” “...And I think that's what started me on my path towards understanding that a business's needs and my personal needs are not the same. The more that my Venn diagram showed me and my business overlapped, the less freedom in life I had. And the business was never really built to scale because it was always built around me.” --- Podcast: Mastering Your Exit Strategy Episode: Craig Swanson - Conversation with a Serial Entrepreneur Website: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mastering-your-exit-strategy/id1606940274

  2. 06/27/2022

    Smashing the Plateau: How to Sell Your Expertise as a Consultant Featuring Craig Swanson

    I love talking about sales. I was fortunate to be exposed early in my career to what professional sales looks like. David Shriner-Cahn invited me to discuss my early days in selling IT services on his Smashing the Plateau podcast. “My view of sales was framed by professionals. I was trained with a group of professionals who built a lot of trust with their clients. And for me, one of the definitions of a professional in sales is someone for whom every transaction increases trust in the next transaction. “Every relationship I can move forward—if I am doing it correctly—I am making the next one easier because I'm building trust at every phase. It's not my job to make a client's decision for them, and it's not my job to trick them into that decision. At every step along the way, if I can work in a way that helps them get what they say they want, it is going to increase trust next time. “My job is to try to uncover an opportunity. To find if there's a need, if we can help a client solve something, and if they see a problem we can solve. My job is not to convince them past their objections but to help them make a decision, yes or no, about whether this is the right move for them. “Now, I do that with the mindset that I need to be able to close sales and move forward. I think many consultants spend a lot of time discussing potential opportunities but never getting to a clear yes or no because they're so afraid of getting a no. If I'm afraid that someone will say no, I never ask if I can get to a yes. “I got to a place where it was more important to be clear in my relationships. Not to waste my time and not to waste the time of my prospective client. Rather, I’d work to get to a clear yes or no as early in the process as possible. And then start the consulting relationship if there is a relationship to start.” --- Podcast: Smashing the Plateau Episode: How to Sell Your Expertise as a Consultant Featuring Craig Swanson Website: https://smashingtheplateau.com

  3. 03/19/2022

    Built to Sell Radio with John Warrillow: Sue Bryce & Craig Swanson - The 8-Figure Expert

    Sue Bryce and I are guests on John Warrillow’s Built to Sell podcast! I’ve been a fan of John’s for years, and two of his business books Built to Sell, and The Automatic Customer have been at the top of my entrepreneurial recommendation list for years. It’s an entrepreneurial bucket-list moment to have been a guest on his show. This episode is a deep dive into everything we learned during a failed due diligence process for a possible acquisition of Sue Bryce Education in 2019, and then the steps we took to rebuild the SBE business using everything we learned in that process. About one hour into the interview John asks for the specific steps we took to rebuild the business to make it something we could successfully sell. Here are the four key takeaways from that part: Assign a CEO: We needed to align our management team so instead of four partners hashing out every idea, we assigned one partner, Aaron, the responsibility of being the CEO and day-to-day operator of the business No New Projects: We agree to get good at saying no. We realized we had wandered off into a variety of pet projects which sucked cash and attention out of the core business. Instead, we decided to say no to all new ideas and focus on the core business. Professionalize sales and marketing: We made some key hires in the areas of sales and marketing and built a sales process that no longer required Sue’s involvement Empower a new voice: We launched a new podcast featuring success stories of photographers in their community. Sue would have been the natural choice to host the show, but we knew that would undermine the ability to sell the company so we invited one of Sue's most-trusted protege Nikki Closser to be the new voice of SBE. The changes worked. Two years after turning down a reduced initial offer, the Sue Bryce partners completed a successful acquisition of Sue Bryce Education by Emerald in 2021. --- Podcast: Built to Sell Radio with John Warrillow Episode: Sue Bryce & Craig Swanson - The 8-Figure Expert Website: https://builttosell.com/radio/

  4. 03/07/2022

    Craft Industry Alliance: Episode #212: Craig Swanson

    I really enjoyed talking with Abby Glassenberg on the Craft Industry Alliance podcast about creating digital products and teaching online courses. Abby was an instructor at CreativeLive where she taught a workshop on Email Marketing for Crafters, and it was great going back to the days of CreativeLive with someone who had the personal experience teaching on that stage. “The idea behind a CreativeLive workshop was that the people who were watching remotely should feel the cues as if they were in the room. They should feel the emotion in the room, they should feel what's going on. And that is not a natural thing for a lot of online Edtech to focus on. “A lot of education platforms focus on the information. They think if I'm pointing my camera at someone who has the right information, then that is my job. And for me, especially because I've worked with artists and creatives my entire career, most of the learning for me is not about the information, it is about the context. Especially the emotional context around the information. “Because anything that someone wants to know, wants to learn, informationally, can probably be had for free with a properly worded Google search. There's really nothing we've ever created or sold that's not available for free in text form. But we, as humans, learn from watching others. We learn from stories and connection with people. “And so for me, CreativeLive was built around the audience first and then created a space for the instructors. Where most learning platforms put the instructor on a pedestal.” --- Podcast: Craft Industry Alliance Episode: Episode #212: Craig Swanson Website: https://craftindustryalliance.org/podcast/

  5. 02/28/2022

    The Know Like & Trust Show with Britney Gardner: How to Scale a Personal Brand

    Britney Gardner’s podcast, The Know Like & Trust Show, is a podcast that I can find myself listening to for hours. She's smart, grounded, and has genuine conversations that go deep into the world of personal branding — from both the business side of tactics and marketing, as well as the personal side of meaning, purpose, and ultimately making business decisions that support building the life a person values. I could pull favorite quotes from almost any part of our recent conversation, but I love this section about ten minutes in that gets into the nitty-gritty side of the brand consequences we face when scaling a big personal brand... “I am not a brand builder. I am a company builder. But I partner with people who have put the work in to really establish a significant personal brand around themselves and who attracted a large social following. And I work with them to create a scalable model around their business, and to take what they've started and build something significantly bigger than either they think they could do by themselves or necessarily want to do alone. “I tend to work with people that are mission-driven in some fashion that, and have a larger purpose beyond just making money or selling units. And one of the things I've learned to do very early, often before we even become partners or start working together, is we have a deep conversation about brand and values. “What I ask, is to go through their brand and identify what is non-negotiable? And what is everything else? On the non-negotiable side, we have core values, morals, or really deep-seated, ethical beliefs. And then in the everything else category, we have opinions, aesthetics, tactics, wording, and all sorts of details. “And one of the things that I'm really trying to kind of gauge with them is how much control they're willing to seed to the market and to the rest of the world the things that are outside of the non-negotiable side of the brand? How willing they are to allow us to learn from the market, and willing to let the audience educate us as to what is important, rather than us making the assumptions that we know what they, the audience, really value.” Thanks for a great conversation Britney! --- Podcast: The Know Like & Trust Show with Britney Gardner Episode: How to Scale a Personal Brand Website: https://britneygardner.com/blog

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Here are all the podcast episodes where Craig makes a guest appearance. Contact information at craigswanson.org

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