Craig Swanson Guest Appearances

The Mixergy podcast was one of the first tech business podcasts I followed. And I love how Andrew Warner pushes below the surface for a deeper understanding of how startups work and doesn't accept pat answers. In this conversation with Andrew Warner, we returned to the startup days at CreativeLive. --- Podcast: Mixergy Episode: The untold story behind CreativeLive Website: https://mixergy.com/

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

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

Diane Helbig had me on as a guest for her Accelerate Your Business Growth podcast for a discussion around the challenges small business owners face growing a small business that revolves around themselves. “I started my small business in 1988 when I was 18. I dropped out of my first year of college and started a small business in the IT space, helping design agencies with computers. And I spent 20+ years in that business growing through different phases. “I made it above $250,000 in annual revenue by the year 2000, and after that, I bumped around that size for a long time. Even while I was saying I wanted more and saying I wanted to grow, I settled into this plateau, and was stuck there for years. “I was standing my own way. And it wasn’t until I started to make shifts in my own mindset that the tactics that I’d studied intellectually started to actually work.” --- Podcast: Accelerate Your Business Growth Episode: Step Back From Your Businesses Website: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/accelerate-your-business-growth/id385108650

David Ralph had me on as a guest for his Join Up Dots podcast for a free-ranging discussion about entrepreneurship and finding balance and peace in life. “I am perpetually in the space that I love, which is trying to figure out how to take a business that is just on the cusp of figuring out product-market fit and getting it up to stability, getting it to grow, and building a team... These days I am living my dream of working with entrepreneurs and building in this space where I'm helping create stability, create something that works, and then mentoring a team to run it. Once it's built, I get to step back and watch it work.” --- Podcast: Join Up Dots Episode: How To Build Life And Business Balance Website: https://joinupdots.com/