DFW Rockstars

Master Computing
DFW Rockstars

The overnight success, 20 years in the making.

Episodes

  1. 12/14/2020

    5. Avoiding Debt Like the COVID Plague

    Justin Shelley  My concept when I started this podcast, DFW Rockstars, is around two things:  I think all of us, every human on the planet, they have something to offer me. They're smarter than me at something. They have an experience that I can learn from. I believe that about everybody on the planet. So I'm a big believer in community and relationships and leveraging each other's experience. All right. So that's, that's one.       Richard Gibson  I would love to see that one, right? Yeah.    Justin Shelley   There's nobody that I know that came up with a business plan executed on it and went right where they projected, they were going to go.     Richard Gibson  No, everyone falls. They fall a lot. And hopefully if you fall on your face, you're at least going the right direction. It's when you fall on your rump and don't get back up, but you got to learn to get back up. And I think that's part of what you're helping do here is finding people to help you get back up and keep going, because you can't win every time in every business idea. Right. You know, you know, I hate to use baseball as an analogy to use it, but would you rather have someone that gets on base every time they get to bat or someone that hits a home run, you know, 20% of the time, which batting 200 for home runs is an amazing, right? Yeah. That's amazing. So would you rather have someone that gets on first, every time at bat batting a thousand to get on first or batting, you know, 200 to get a home run?    Justin Shelley   I mean, we want to, we want to get there every time, right?    Richard Gibson:  I think so. Yeah. You guys, that gives you, you know, cause that's the strategy you want to do and because you can't have every business ideas, a home run.    Justin Shelley:  And not only that, but the execution's never going to be perfect. The forethought, the strategy that you thought was going to work isn't I mean, hell who saw COVID coming, right? Let's beat this dead horse.    Richard Gibson:  Well, there are a few people that have been saying we were due another pandemic. They didn't see COVID itself, but they saw a pandemic coming true, you know, but you know it, but it's going to be like every other pandemic is going to circle the globe at least two times. Right. You know? And, and that's what we're going through as the second one we've been able to, as they say, flatten the curve, but at what cost.    Justin Shelley:  Yeah. Ooh. Now you're going to get me fired up.    Richard Gibson:  Well, yeah, me too.    Justin Shelley:  Cause that's not what we're here to talk about today, but that is my Oh, nothing gets me lit more than that. What the CDC refers to as excess deaths, suicide rates, you know, all this stuff that we're not even talking about. As we try to control something that is largely uncontrolled.    Richard Gibson:  Oh yeah. All's we're doing is mitigating.    Justin Shelley:  Right. Which is fine and mitigate away, but at the cost of what we've got to do a cost benefit analysis. And, and so few people do that.     Richard Gibson:  I'm not a real political guy, but poor governor Abbott. Yeah. I mean, try to make rules for a state this size. I mean, what's good for DFW metroplex. Doesn't work for Alpine, Texas. Doesn't work for Tyler, Texas. And so, you know, what he's doing is giving guidelines to the local ones to try to make the decisions. But then you have the problem, like when this was early on, you know, like you have a city, like Plato decides they're closing everything down and then the city right. North of, at Frisco, this is all we're not closing anything down. All right. And so I think that's where governor Abbott did actually an excellent job of saying, okay, here's the criteria. So like now with the hospital beds utilization over a seven day, rolling average being above 15% for COVID patients, we have to roll back. The, okay. That actually made sense to me, but going to zero and closing ever

    1h 13m
  2. 08/25/2020

    4. Seven Steps to Grow your Company's Revenue Using LinkedIn

    7 Steps to Grow your Company's Revenue Using LinkedIn with Mark McIntosh  Mark is the founder of RevGrow.com, a B2B lead generation and revenue growth firm headquartered in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with regional offices nationwide. Helping businesses grow revenue with proven strategies.     Subscribe   Google | Spotify | Stitcher   Resources   Visit their website – www.RevGrow.com   Schedule a time to talk with mark on his calendar - www.ScheduleACallWithMark.com   Show Notes  There’s no straight line to success    [3:00] - Tell me something, one of your most significant challenges in your career.    Mark shares a couple of roadblocks that changed the trajectory of his career  In 2011 I came to DFW on a business trip, first time ever to Texas. I was doing some calling to DFW and Texas and knew there was something unique.  What I didn’t know when I came to Texas on that 3-day business trip, was the second day it came upon me that I needed to uproot the family and move to Texas. Try explaining that to my wife, we had three kids they were all 10 and under.  Two months later we made the move to DFW. The biggest challenge, which I realized rather quickly, is how important those 15 years in the Midwest were. My entire network, everyone I knew, knew me, it was all based there. I came to DFW in 2011 without any contacts or connections in any real significance or volume. I was coming into the market from scratch. And that was a big hurdle to overcome.  That time period, although it was one of the most challenging, I’ve had, it was also one that I can point to as being foundational to what we’re doing now. Because I developed some systems, process and strategies for leveraging LinkedIn to not only get in front of more prospects out there but to do it in a more scalable way.  An example of a very big challenge in my career that has turned into a blessing because it really forced me to rethink and figure out how in the world do I come to a new geography, from complete scratch, turn that into a workable situation from a sales development and marketing situation. [7:00] - You said you came to DFW, you found the people friendly, then you said you learned you had to move... Was that a lightbulb moment or kind of forced on you by an employer?   Mark say, no I wasn’t forced. I made the decision to move on my own. Which made it a more difficult sell on my family.  [9:00] - You said two words “scalable” and “repeatable” those are huge.     If you were to give me the formula as simple as possible what would I do on LinkedIn to build up a base that I want to sell into?   [9:40] - Mark gives the formula “7 steps to grow your revenue using LinkedIn”:    Position your personal brand by creating a client-centric profile. Key to step #1 starts with the headline: what you do, who you work with, and most importantly how you help them. That’s your value proposition. Develop a content strategy. Tip on content is giving your best stuff away free.  Using LinkedIn search and other resources outside of LinkedIn to find your high value prospects who fit your criteria.  Start narrow and the sooner you can niche down the better off you’ll be. Build your data base. Focus Quality Over Quantity Set up your messaging machine. The key here: Develop messages that are value-add and non-salesy messages. Then, develop a system and process for sending out your messages. Develop a system in a way to manage all these. We recommend doing it outside of LinkedIn Continue to nurture those leads so you get the call when the time is right.    [18:15] - Justin is going to try this and put it to the test. I’ll report back in a few weeks on what I’ve done. Hold myself accountable. We’ll be back in touch    [19:00] You’ve given us the formula... final thought on why do I need to do that?  The bottom line is we’re all focused on running our business and doing things we love to do and do best. The real val

    24 min
  3. 08/20/2020

    3. Tony Roberts Breaks Down PPP Loan Forgiveness

    SubscribeGoogle | Spotify | Stitcher Resources If you have questions for Tony, he can be reached at 972-409-4311 For IT questions, contact Master Computing at 940-324-9400 Show Notes [1:50] - Let me Introduce today’s guests.   In studio we have Andrea from Master Computing and Tony from Insperity  [2:45] - Tony, you reached out to me on LinkedIn and at the time I was just looking for people to connect with and I kind of asked what you did and what’d you tell me?   You told me you help small businesses that want to grow. Help them run better.  [3:50] - Tony’s bullet points of the main ways he helps businesses.  Payroll Onboarding Recruiting Compliance Taxes Whatever it might be for someone who is great at one thing and wants to start a business in that thing and maybe they don’t have too much an idea in the other areas.  When you have questions or concerns or maybe there’s something you’re not comfortable with, that’s when someone like Insperity comes in and help you make sense of some of those issues.    [5:50] - Tony, tell me a little bit about a significant challenge you’ve delt with in your professional career.   Tony started with Insperity March 16th of this year (the week most businesses started sending employees home and shutting their doors) I was in the office 2 full days and a half day before COVID lockdown. Significant challenge - he started a new career among the pandemic. In addition to starting a new career in pandemic he is also planning a wedding in October. [8:14] - What was your Initial reaction when you started your career 2 days prior to the lockdown?   Terrified. Deeply concerned for my well being, not from a health standpoint but for a career standpoint. Because, like I mentioned, my intention for this job and being a business performance advisor was to truly be involved in the community. That’s the Insperity mission. I didn’t want to just be a stranger over the phone cold calling businesses.  Hard to do that when you can't meet business owners. So, I sat there really concerned, new to any sort of undertaking like this. Before I worked tutoring children in math and running a math learning center. So my focus really was in I need to build relationships however possible. LinkedIn became a huge resource to me.  [13:05] - What do you expect will be the long-term value of having to go through that for your career moving forward?  Being seen right now, being here on this podcast with you. Be a resource and provide value for small businesses. Long-term, been fortunate enough to build relationships, meet people, and engage with them in a way that’s more organic and not so sales focused.  [15:00] - Timeout to give Tony a shoutout:  If you have any of the issues that Tony takes care – weather it’s HR, Payroll or group health Insurance - give Tony a Phone Number is 972-409-4311   Shift gears - Value we can add for our listeners –   [16:10] - My question is, as you’re going out and meeting with people, whether it’s LinkedIn conversation, zoom meetings, or whatever. What do you see as the #1 fear, concern or problem that your clients or potential clients are dealing with?   We have this PPP Loan, it helped a lot, it’d be great if we don’t have to pay it back. What do I need to do to make sure that it’s not the case? What do I need to have prepared? What are the steps I need to have done?  There is 5.2 Million outstanding PPP Loans as of last week. This represents about 15-20% of all small businesses in America.  And that’s about $520 Million dollars in loans.    [26:20] - As a non-finance professional, if someone were to ask me in a state of panic, what they need to do about this PPP Loan – My advice would be: Take a breath.   As Finance professionals, both of you, would you give different advice? No. Take a breath. Relax.  If you’ve been documenting everything, you should be good. [28:07] - Which brings me to my next question. You h

    40 min

About

The overnight success, 20 years in the making.

To listen to explicit episodes, sign in.

Stay up to date with this show

Sign in or sign up to follow shows, save episodes, and get the latest updates.

Select a country or region

Africa, Middle East, and India

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

The United States and Canada