This week, founding host Dean Rotbart, a Wizard Academy graduate who served many years on the Academy’s faculty, shares the story of how a self-published children’s book author garnered global media coverage, reaching more than 2 million potential customers in a single day and zooming more than 1 million spots to the top of the Amazon charts. The l…

Duane Scott Cerny is an expert on dead people. Or, more precisely, marketing and selling their possessions after they’ve passed to the afterlife. He is the author of the bestselling book Selling Dead People's Things: Inexplicably True Tales, Vintage Fails & Objects of Objectionable Estates and Vintage Confidential: Retro Rattled, Tales Tattled—Conf…

Mo Bunnell and his colleagues at Bunnell Idea Group have trained more than 50,000 high-end professionals, business owners, and entrepreneurs on the remarkable effectiveness of gifting their expertise to create and maximize client relationships. Mo’s new book, Give to Grow: Invest in Relationships to Build Your Business and Your Career, from elite b…

Peter H. Spitz is an MIT-trained chemical engineer and renowned petrochemical industry expert with seven patents. He is also an author and entrepreneur, having started a company that grew to $20 million in annual sales before being acquired by IBM. This past June, Peter published his most recent book, Reflecting on History: How The Industrial Revol…

As a Walt Disney Imagineer, Brian Collins, helped create the stories and magic for some of the world’s most beloved theme park attractions. While Walt died in late 1966, the company he founded and many of his disciples continue to practice the gospel of Disney. Brian is one the most successful and sought-after adherents. Brian is the founder of The…

There may be observers who know the technology industry better than veteran journalist Eric Savitz, but there aren’t many. Eric worked at Barron’s Magazine as an investment and technology reporter for 24 years — spread over three stints. He began there in October 1988, honing his craft under the direction of the legendary editor and columnist Alan …

Approximately one in five Americans is neurodiverse, which includes conditions such as Autism, ADHD, OCD, Dyslexia, and Tourette’s syndrome. Chances are excellent that some of your colleagues are neurodiverse and face challenges that are not immediately visible. Dr. Matthew Zakreski, co-founder and lead psychologist at The Neurodiversity Initiative…

More than half of all customers and clients are willing to pay more for the exact same product or service if the seller also provides a single intangible: trust. Natalie Doyle Oldfield, president of Halifax, Nova Scotia-based Success Through Trust, has spent years evaluating the dynamics that drive customer loyalty and business growth. Trust, she f…

Michael Hershman is the CEO of Soloviev Group, a privately held, multi-billion-dollar enterprise with investments spanning real estate, agribusiness, logistics, and renewable energy. He is also president and CEO of Fairfax Group, a top choice for governments, corporations, and international institutions that need complex problem-solving for governa…

The client is reclining on a plush leather couch in a softly lit office, the wall adorned with framed degrees and certificates of expertise in psychology. “Tell me what’s troubling you?” the therapist inquires. “Profits are down. Our employees are unhappy. And I don’t know where I should be going.” This imaginary client is not a person but a busine…

Margot Machol Bisnow spent 20 years in government, including as an FTC Commissioner and staff director of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. In her post-government career, Margot has become an evangelist for entrepreneurism, serving as a sherpa for parents on how to raise their children to grow into successful business owners a…

While many business owners and entrepreneurs possess intelligence and ability, wisdom is far rarer and more precious. You needn’t journey to a mountaintop in India to commune with a Swami to accrue the benefits and peace of mind that wisdom affords. Dr. Laura Gabayan, a veteran emergency medicine physician and associate professor at the UCLA School…

David Page is a veteran broadcast journalist and two-time Emmy award winner who is best known for creating the Food Network mega-hit Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives and serving as its executive producer for eleven seasons. His newest multimedia project, Culinary Characters Unlocked, is a twice-weekly podcast featuring fascinating stories from some of …

Being a children’s book publisher is anything but child’s play. Georgia Lininger is a full-time elementary school teacher and children’s book author who launched her own book imprint, Salus Publishing, on the side in January 2020. As she quickly discovered, success is about much more than sweet stories and colorful illustrations. Georgia’s struggle…

Angie Hyche is an organization and clutter expert. Whether the mess swamps your storage room, a self-storage unit, your garage, your basement, or even your email inbox and to-do lists, she knows precisely how to sort out your possessions and calendar. The owner of Shipshape Solutions, based in Kingsport, Tennessee, she is a writer, podcaster, and m…

Our guest this week is Richard Behar, an award-winning investigative reporter who spent 15 years chronicling the life of Bernie Madoff, the mastermind behind the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Behar is the author of the newly released blockbuster book Madoff: The Final Word. Before Madoff died in prison, Behar and Madoff had more than 50 phone co…

This week’s guest, Dean Guida, founder and CEO of Infragistics, has plenty of grit. But as he’s discovered on his way to bootstrapping a company that today serves 100% of the S&P 500, including Bank of America, Exxon, Fidelity, Intuit, and Morgan Stanley — to win in business, you also need: Strategic planning A positive and collaborative company cu…

Nick-Anthony Zamucen has the Midas touch when it comes to starting and growing franchises. As founder and president of BOR Franchising, his successful concepts include a pizza chain, a home care business, a crime scene cleaner, and, most recently, a burgeoning water and fire damage repair company. Nick-Anthony has a proven formula for running a suc…

Rusty Komori was the varsity boys’ tennis coach at the Punahou School in Honolulu from 1994 until 2015. During his tenure, the school won the state championship each and every year. That’s a record unmatched by any other coach in any other sport. But Rusty is not just excellent at taking a diverse group of teenagers and turning them into champions …

Business and brand websites have existed for almost three decades. Yet most companies still don’t know how to design them so that their messaging aligns with and supports their advertising, social media, and point-of-sale communication. Moreover, most present-day websites fail to incorporate language that appeals to each of the four major personali…

In his award-winning 2021 book about the aftermath of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center, September Twelfth, Monday Morning Radio co-host Dean Rotbart described Gwendolyn “Wendy” Bounds, an eyewitness and award-winning journalist. She was, he wrote, telegenically attractive, with big chocolate-brown eyes, a sparkly broad smile, and should…

Pop quiz, hotshot. Hackers have frozen you out of your own databases. They tell you that if you want back in, you have to pay them a ransom in the next 24 hours. Oh, and if you don’t want them to sell your clients’ data on the black market, that’s another hefty fee, too. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO? That’s the question that keeps Terry Ziemniak,…

When business owners and entrepreneurs struggle to resolve an intractable problem, they often blame everyone and everything but the true culprit. Themselves. Often, what they should be thinking, says Steve McCready — who spent more than 15 years as a psychotherapist before becoming a business coach — is, “It’s not you, it’s me.” Steve is a “magic e…

When it comes to talented business people, there is a hierarchy of ability: skilled, expert, masterful, and brilliant. Brilliant is the realm where Simon T. Bailey operates and teaches others how to elevate their performance from proficient to awesome. A former Disney sales executive, Simon has written multiple books on the topic and has been invit…

Michelle D. Gladieux will celebrate 20 years of running her company, Gladieux Consulting, this year. Michelle and her colleagues have advised hundreds of companies, including Best Buy, General Dynamics, Lincoln Financial, and Medtronic, on ways their executives and employees can communicate more effectively to improve their performance and satisfac…

Bryan Clayton, CEO and co-founder of Your Green Pal, uses a proprietary app to match homeowners who need lawn care with small businesses - many of them solo operators - that provide those services. His numbers are impressive: more than 55,000 entrepreneurs serving over half a million customers. Bryan began mowing lawns in high school and essentiall…

Forbes magazine describes Sol Rashidi as one of the nine brightest minds when it comes to Artificial Intelligence. She was part of the first generation of leaders who helped IBM launch Watson, the powerful machine-learning suite of AI services, applications, and tools. In addition to IBM, Sol has worked for EY, Sony Music, Merck, and Estee Lauder. …

Over the course of his career, including stints at PayPal, Cisco, and Nike, Sean Lemson has encountered all varieties of leaders — good, bad, and toxic. Toxic leaders are a special breed of “bad,” capable, often without even realizing it, of chasing off the best employees and slowly killing their companies. Sean is the founder of Motivated Outcomes…

On May 7th and 8th, experts from government, industry, small business, and academia will come together in Washington, D.C., for the 2024 Humans to Mars Summit focused on sending humans to Mars. The event, the largest such gathering on earth, is being organized by Chris Carberry, the CEO and Co-Founder of Explore Mars Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to …

Scott Mautz is a former senior executive with Procter & Gamble, whose free leadership classes on LinkedIn have attracted more than two million registrants. Scott, who ran four of P&G’s multi-billion dollar businesses, knows what it takes to be an effective leader. That’s why he advises all owners and entrepreneurs to work out daily. But Scott doesn…

Whether you are a solo entrepreneur, a small business owner, or the head of a FORTUNE 500 company, innovation is within your grasp — if you understand what it is and isn’t. This week’s guest, Steve Wunker, managing director of New Markets Advisors, is widely acknowledged as one of the country’s foremost masters of innovation. He pioneered the mobil…

Does your business have a mascot, a team jersey, and team-related merchandise for sale? Probably not. Fredrick “Freddy D” Dudek has spent more than three decades studying how companies can turn their employees, customers, and business affiliates into the kind of raging fans that sports teams enjoy. He is the author of Creating Business Superfans: T…

This week’s guest, David Page, is a well-known expert on American cuisine, culture, and entrepreneurship. The two-time Emmy-award winner and veteran broadcast journalist is best known for creating the Food Network hit Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and serving as its executive producer for eleven seasons. David, president and executive producer of Pag…

As a physician, Hanah Polotsky is an expert in treating diabetes, thyroid disorders, and serious hormonal abnormalities. As a leadership expert, Dr. Polotsky excels at showing executives — both in and outside the medical field — how best to run teams and apply the tenets of lean management to their organizations. A native of Belarus who fled to the…

When it comes to running a competitive company, Bob Moog doesn’t play games. Well, actually, he does. Daily. Bob is co-founder and president of University Games, the largest independent game company in the world. For almost four decades, Bob has gone up against the biggest players — including Hasbro and Mattel — and found a way to beat them at thei…

He’d be the oldest man ever to run for president, even as calls grow louder and louder for him to step aside. Joe Biden? No, William Henry Harrison, the successful 67-year-old Whig Party candidate back in 1840. Tying yesteryear to current events is Ron Shafer’s specialty. His contributions to The Washington Post’s Retropolis history column form the…

Most people fail to say their own name correctly. Odd as that may sound, Laura Sicola explains her assertion in a YouTube video that is approaching 7 million views. Dr. Sicola earned her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in educational linguistics and taught there from 2001-2013. She has more than two decades of experience teaching good vocal…

Each year, roughly 700,000 American businesses or individuals submit a trademark application. That may sound like a considerable number, but Andrei Mincov — a superstar trademark lawyer based in Dubai, says it's far less than it should be. Before starting The Trademark Factory, his global consultancy that provides start-to-finish trademark registra…

This week, enter the inner sanctums of Microsoft Corp.’s executive suite and discover the tech wizards and vipers who worked there. \ Our guest is Jane Boulware, author of Worthy: From Cornfield to Corner Office of Microsoft. Over the course of her career, Jane launched three billion dollar businesses, was VP of the largest merger in U.S. history, …

From her base in far-off Christchurch, New Zealand, Rebecca Davison — who spent 13 years in banking, five as a financial advisor to multimillionaires — has built a global, cult-like following among female entrepreneurs, including top business leaders. Rebecca, founder of The Intuitive Life Academy, has the knowledge to advise her followers on ways …

Phebe Trotman knows the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat in both the sports and business arenas. A former MVP Canadian college soccer star and member of the championship Vancouver Whitecaps professional soccer club, Phebe has had plenty of bad days and opportunities to bow out. She’s never taken them. Phebe is the author of Never Quit on a…

Leading business schools and best-selling leadership authors seldom compare the skills required of for-profit CEOs and non-profit fire chiefs. Yet, the two professions share a lot in common. Indeed, battling blazes is excellent preparation for dousing the many firestorms business owners, executives, and entrepreneurs face. This week’s guest, Clive …

After 16 years as a wedding photographer, Ryan Erickson concluded he was barking up the wrong tree. He was making decent money but didn’t have a passion for his work. It was risky, but Ryan decided to try his hand at fine art photography, and he’s been so successful early on that he’s thinking of expanding his fledgling enterprise nationwide. Ryan’…

Can you imagine what it would have been like to have an exclusive four-hour audience with the late Charlie Munger? The billionaire businessman, who died in late November at age 99, never got as much press as his close friend and partner Warren Buffett. But many people credited Munger with helping secure Berkshire Hathaway’s decades-long stellar inv…

A New Year’s Quiz: What do the following have in common: Leadership, Economics, Side Hustles, Online Retailing, Business Exit Strategies, Military Contracts, Bras, Walt Disney, Firefighters, and Worms? Answer: Each was featured on one of Monday Morning Radio’s ten most popular 2023 episodes. This week, the podcast revisits the highlights of the yea…

A Christmas Day Miracle, by Dean and Talya Rotbart, is adapted from their 2020 biography of Margaret and Riyaz Adat, titled Improbable Lives: A Scot, A Tanzanian, and Their Canadian Love Story. A true-life, inspirational adult yuletide tale, A Christmas Day Miracle offers a universal message — regardless of readers' religious beliefs — about the wo…

Chris McShanag has enjoyed a long and productive career in the healthcare field, working alongside two physician entrepreneurs to build a thriving business providing off-site virtual assistants to doctors, dentists, and even veterinarians. Their company, MedVA, founded in 2020, provides medical and dental virtual assistants and has done an admirabl…

Many innovative business concepts fall through because the cost and logistics of pulling them off just wouldn’t work. Uzair Ahmed, a Canadian chemical engineer, recognized all the missed opportunities and figured he could design technology and automation to make unworkable business models workable. Uzair, founder of Cottonwood Automation, tested hi…

If you truly could experience your website or bricks-and-mortar store through the eyes of your customers and prospects, you could do a great deal to increase sales and customer satisfaction. Satyam Kantamneni is the founder of UXReactor, a company whose entire focus is on user experience, referred to as UX. His mission: to design or transform busin…

Every day, 3,000 eager entrepreneurs jump into the online sales arena. Ninety percent of them will never make a single sale. Matthew Stafford, co-founder and CEO of Build•Grow•Scale, knows what goes wrong and how to fix it. He and his team use sophisticated analytics to help business owners and entrepreneurs achieve online sales success. Matthew’s …