Chatter With Steve

Liz Drury is typically hired by companies to be a freelance voiceover artist with a British Accent. She is based in the UK and works for clients around the globe. Some of the well-known brands that have used her voice include JCB, Booking dot com, Nestlé, Phillips, and BMW and many others. She works across a number of voice over genres including commercials, corporate video, e-learning, telephony, audio tours and more. You can find Liz in several places! Liz on Instagram Liz on Facebook Liz on LinkedIn Want more small business advice? We're talking about getting freelancing all week on my social channels and my exclusive email list. Here's how to find me:  Instagram  Tik Tok  Facebook

Having over $20,000 stolen from you at once will get any business owners attention. Sitting around crying about it won't do any good though. If you want to learn my lessons from that experience, stick around!  For more information about me For questions or to reach me To find me on social  To hear from me 

Protecting your business against disaster is all too often on the backburner for small business owners. Brian Blakely walks through three practical steps to check within your insurance policy to make sure you will be covered when disaster inevitably strikes.  Want more small business advice?  We're talking about getting insurance all week on my social channels and my exclusive email list.  Here's how to join:    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealstevencook TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@therealstevencook Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealstevencook

Hiring and Marketing were a common theme with the guest on my last episode. This episode is a deep dive into those two topics and some practical advice to get your small business going in that area again. 

Barry Moltz gets company owners growing again who have not yet reached their potential.  As a small business expert with decades of experience in his own business ventures as an entrepreneur as well as an angel investor, Barry has discovered the formula to get business owners unstuck. In this episode he focuses on two things that most small businesses struggle with, marketing and hiring.  Visit my website for more information Visit my Instagram for more advice 

In this episode I took the principles expressed by Taren Gesell in episode 038 and transformed them into a business context. Niching down your business can seem counter intuitive, but doing that, along with finding your ideal customer can transform your business.  

This episode is split into two parts. In the first half Taren Gesell (who has amassed over 500,000 followers online) talks about the business side to building a personal brand and now into a whole fitness business called MoTTiv. We then spoke in the later half of the episode about business owners and their relationship to personal health and fitness.  “Triathlon” Taren Gesell is an age-group endurance athlete who in late 2015 started a YouTube channel around his passion for endurance sports. Since then the Triathlon Taren YouTube channel has grown to become one of the largest triathlon related YouTube channel in the world, the Triathlon Taren Podcast is the largest triathlon podcast in the world, The Triathlon Foundations series of books are some of the most highly rated triathlon training books on Amazon, and the community of followers (known as "Trainiacs") has grown to over 500,000 athletes all around the world. For questions for me (Steve) reach out to me on my website 

Seeing any business's process in hiring, marketing, sales, or any facett is typically helpful to learn from. In this episode I walk through my small business's process from posting a job to hiring a candidate. If you have episode ideas or questions feel free to reach out on my website! 

Erin and Kristen from People Spark Consulting joined me to talk about HR. Yes, no one wants to talk about how tough it is to find employees, how none of them show up on time, and how they all steal when they get there. But it's important to any business, if you have aspirations of having a sizeable company, to be able to get a process around hiring and firing. Listen to a few tips on HR, hiring tips, how to keep employees, and even a few stories about businesses worst nightmares!   You can find them at https://peoplesparkconsulting.com/ You can find more info on me at stevendcook.com

On this episdoe we talk about the three things that every new business should avoid. There can be a lot of pitfalls a young or new entrepeneur can face when trying to quickly scale their business. For questions reach me at  stevendcook.com

In this episode I talked with Dj Boles from Oklahoma Gourmet Popcorn. He talked about how he had the courage to start a business- with no money, experience, or expertise in the food industry. DJ started his business in the late summer of 2016 only 3 months after graduating college. The business came from a paper he wrote in his “retail management class” in the fall of 2015. In 2018 he opened his 2nd store! As a recent college graduate and first job (post college) he tackled his own business. Popcorn wasn’t something he had done in his garage for so many years, it was just a niche in the market that he thought needed filling. He wasn’t opening it based off his cooking skills or management skills he simply went off the pure determination that he could make it work. The best way to get something done isn’t a dream, wish or effort. If you want something to work you have to work and he knew he could do that. For more information about the episdoes visit me at stevendcook.com

Kyle Cline is a young business man who is quickly climbing the ranks in one of the largest plumbing/HVAC/Electrical supply companies in the midwest- Locke Supply.  He has grown to his position by being with the company since he left school and stayed with the along the way.  Kyle helped me a ton on questions with interviewing, purchasing, distribution, and tons of other things! 

Daryl is the principal of Mustang Alternative Education Center. I was drawn to him after I found out some of the things he was doing to educate his students outside of the normal things like studying math, history, and English.  Daryl talks about hosting business and community leaders for speeches to his students, mock interviews, and having a "life skills" class for his students.

John Orman spit some serious business chatter in this episode.  From explaining the benefits of distribution, to employee owned business benefits John covered it all.  John is the CEO of Locke Supply a 500 million revenue company with 180 locations over 7 states.  

Employee retention is the most important thing in business. To have good customer service you kind of have to have someone to work with the customers. Lets go over the best ways to keep your employees happy and staying just where you need them.

eCommerce can either change your business or waste your time. Did you know that you can use simple human psychology to convert? Lets get down to small business.

Another out of the park hit from Entrepreneur.Com. An article wrote by Kim Walsh-Phillips helps people truly understand converting people from likes and followers to paying customers. We breakdown the article and go over real world uses on today's small business news!

Productivity in life, hobby and especially work right now need to be highest priority. Today we go over another home run article from Small Biz Trends that talks about what tends to kill productivity and how you can avoid that trip!

5 free marketing hacks for your business that only require some sweat equity! These things taken from an article by Small Biz Trends were great things to try if you don't have a lot of revenue coming in right now.

Why should your business go cashless? Less theft, less danger, easier close outs. Steve goes over an insightful article on why YOU should go cashless!