Archives for July 2018

July 16, 2018

6 min read

Jon Rubinstein started his own company in 2005 for a very simple reason: “I needed a job,” he laughs.

OK, maybe he’s oversimplifying things a bit.

For years, Rubinstein worked at a successful management company that represented actors, writers, directors, comedians and digital personalities, but, he says, he wasn’t happy. He wanted to get out, but the problem was that most of his opportunities were in Los Angeles and his kids were in New York. 

Rubinstein wanted to stay close to his children, but at the time, there weren’t a ton of management companies in the area. So after considering his options, he decided that if there wasn’t a New York-based company doing what he wanted to do, he’d start his own. 

Related: Daymond John Explains His Crazy Ride to Success (Podcast)

It was a risky move and came with its fair share of those classic middle of the night “What am I doing?!” moments that almost all entrepreneurs face. But with hard work, hard work and then some hard work, the gamble paid off. Rubinstein’s company, Authentic Talent and Literary Management, currently reps an impressive roster of creators, writers and actors including Michael C. Hall and Brie Larson. But speaking with Rubinstein, it becomes clear that his goal wasn’t simply to land a bunch of A-listers. He wanted to create a company that not only improved the careers of its clients but also had a culture and philosophy geared toward improving the world at large. Here’s how he went about doing that

He asked himself, “Why?”

“If you ask most people why their company exists, most people cannot tell you, other than to make money. So the first thing is I thought about was why should Authentic exist. There were two things that kept coming to mind: 1. I wanted to have a company that when I look back on it — hopefully when I’m 100-years-old — I can really proud of what we did. And 2., I wanted to focus on adding value to my clients’ lives. I wasn’t interested in being their best friend and going to parties. I wanted to empower and enable my clients to make a difference with their work.”

He educated himself.

“I didn’t have a business education, so I did a lot of reading when we started out. I was really knocked out by Blue Ocean Strategy. I noticed that in my field, year after year, there would be some new client that everyone was clamoring for — it’d be like a shark feeding frenzy among management companies. And I wasn’t particularly eager to play those games. So the premise of the book is that everybody is fighting on this small patch of bloodied, red ocean, but there’s this big wide blue ocean out there and if you start looking in different areas you start to find something that there’s plenty for everyone.”

Related: 4 Super Business Lessons From Marvel’s Decade of Box Office Success

He embraced “the suck.”

“Initially, it was just a grind. I’ll just be really straight about it. It was me in a cubicle on Lafayette Street, and then I hired an assistant eventually. We just worked really hard and tried to figure out how to do this thing. And you quickly find all the things that don’t work. At the end of the day, I’d get together with my first colleague Robert Glennon, who is still with the company, and we’d just say, ‘Well, that sucked.’ And we’d just learn from it and move on.”

He pursued happiness outside of the office.

“As hard as we were working when we started, it was and is important to me that people who worked at this company have a life. I want people to have a good life. I’ve studied meditation and Buddhism, and everything I’ve learned comes back to the idea that all happiness comes from serving others. I’ve done a lot of work in Haiti as Board President of Mimsi International, which provides medical training and pregnancy care in remote areas of the world. One of my proudest moments was during a trip, my girlfriend and I were on a beach waiting for a boat to take us to this little island and a woman approached us … [with] these little twin 6-month-old girls in her arms. And she said, ‘You did this, you helped me have these babies and they’re healthy.’ It was amazing to be a part of that.”

He looks for ways to make more doing less.

“We’re definitely a performance-focused company and people are accountable for their results. But we don’t, for example, have a set vacation policy for our managers. They have the capability they do whatever they want. You have got to trust people and create a structure so they’re incentivized to be successful, not just glued to their desks going through the motions. And I listen to my managers. When they tell me, ‘Oh my God dude, I’m working so hard!’ the answer isn’t ‘Too bad, that’s life.’ We try to figure out what to do about. How can we support you in making 10 times the money with half the effort? That’s what I’m interested in.”

He encourages criticism.

“We do reviews with our clients every year where we ask them how we are doing. We look at what’s working and not working. I got that from some management book I read somewhere but it’s been great. If people say ‘everything is great’ we don’t accept that — we truly want to know what we can do better. And if they do have a problem with us, we address it. It’s one mistake I’ve seen over and over in business: people are reluctant to admit a mistake and reluctant to admit that they don’t know everything. My philosophy for myself and for the company is to be constantly improving, constantly learning and constantly on the lookout to be more effective at our jobs.”

July 15, 2018

2 min read

The marketing industry isn’t the same as it was 10 years ago. And much of that is thanks to the rise of smartphones.

Today’s marketing initiatives go far beyond print ads and desktop computers, and it’s more important than ever to have a mobile marketing campaign in place for your business. If you’re feeling stuck, there’s no need to worry. With a few quick tips and an understanding of how other businesses are using mobile marketing to their advantage, you’ll be well on your way to creating a stellar campaign.

Related: Teach Yourself Online Marketing With This Simple Technique

People spend 59 percent of their time on mobile, according to research compiled by App Geeks. But marketers spend 15 percent of their budgets on mobile and the remaining 85 percent on desktop. In addition, mobile ads have higher conversion rates. Overall, average smartphone conversion rates have gone up 64 percent compared to average desktop conversion rates.

Now that you know the importance of mobile marketing, it’s important to understand the different types. SMS marketing, app-based marketing, push notifications and email marketing are some of the most popular methods. When it comes to SMS, 79 percent of smartphone users say they rely on SMS opt-in to help them make purchasing decisions. In addition, push notifications drive nearly 10 times more users to make a purchase.

Related: 104 Facts You Didn’t Know About Mobile Marketing (Infographic)

It’s clear there are plenty of mobile marketing opportunities. To take advantage of them and to learn more, check out App Geeks’ infographic below.

July 14, 2018

2 min read

Some rituals might seem like nonsense, but it turns out, they can be helpful when it comes to productivity and job performance. Studies have shown that rituals can help us take on tough challenges at work, boost productivity and even decrease anxiety. How do you know what type of ritual is right for you? Here are some ideas.

Related: 7 Steps to Peak Performance in Business and in Life

Instead of starting your day with a hot shower, try opting for a cold one. Cold water increases blood circulation and releases endorphins, which can boost a person’s mood and make them more productive. Another helpful ritual is shutting down distracting devices. For example, turn your smartphone on airplane mode for a few hours so you can hone your focus on a single task until its full completion.

Whether you’ve got a big deadline approaching or an upcoming presentation, if you’re feeling anxious, one ritual to help calm your nerves is counting your breaths. A quick daily mindfulness practice, such as counting your inhales and exhales for 10 minutes, can help relieve stress and get you in the right headspace for getting work done.

Related: 4 Ways to Decrease Stress and Maximize Performance

From journaling daily to doing five-minute desk exercises, check out Pound Place’s infographic below for nine daily rituals to boost performance at work.

July 13, 2018

5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

When you’re finished crafting an engaging blog post for your readers, you may be disappointed to see that no one is reading it. It would be nice if, as soon as you posted that content on the web, you got a ton of traffic; but that’s not realistic. Some 63 percent of marketers in a Marketing Charts study said their biggest content challenge was driving traffic and generating leads. So, how do you promote your blog and get more traffic?

Related: 5 Smart Ways to Integrate Cross-Promotion With Online Marketing

You can’t rely on SEO alone to drive traffic to your site; instead, you’ve got to work at bringing in more of your target audience, yourself. And the only way to do that is to promote your content.

Here are some great tips you may not have considered that will get your content in front of your audience. Check them out for how to promote your content like a pro.

Promote your blog in your email campaign.

You should know by now how important building an email list is. So, if you’ve already started building one, you’re in a great position. The people who sign up for your email list are probably going to be the ones most interested in your content. That’s why it makes sense for you to promote your new posts to them, first.

Related: A Guide to do Effective Content Marketing on LinkedIn

For example, fitness guru Chalene Johnson includes links to blog posts in her emails with a clear call to action like “click here.”

Email newsletter, chalenejohnson.com

Choose a headline that sparks curiosity to make sure your email gets opened, and keep your email short and interesting. You can also promote your new posts in your monthly newsletter. Letting your email list members know about your new post first is an effective way to get early traction and encourage shares right away.

Participate in forums and aggregate sites.

You may not have considered promoting your blog posts in forums or aggregate sites, but this is actually a really easy and effective way to get your content noticed. An aggregate site is basically a place where you can find information from many different sources related to a specific topic.

Share your own content in these places to help other users with questions they might have. This is a great way to connect directly with your target audience members, provide them with some of your expertise and share a link back to your blog. 

A popular choice for many is Reddit, where there’s a community for almost anything under the sun; and many of those communities boast hundreds of thousands of members: 

Reddit digital marketing posts, https://www.reddit.com/

Just do a quick search to find a community or topic that relates to your industry and join the conversation. Other popular forum and aggregate sites include Quora and Triberr. Just remember not to be spammy, and only promote your content when it’s relevant.

Share on social media.

Sharing on social media is a given for promoting your content but there are a few tactics you might be missing. First, make sure to share your content on many different platforms. Also link to your blog in all your social media profiles to make sure it’s one of the first thing visitors to your social media pages see.

Below, BloggingWizard.com is consistent in sharing its unique blog posts on social media; consistency attracts a larger following. 

Tweet from BloggingWizard.com, https://twitter.com/bloggingwizard

In addition, repromote your older, most popular posts so that your new followers will be able to see your best content. Twitter and Facebook allow you to pin your most popular posts to your profile, so they’re the first thing people see.

Share your new content on social media as soon as it’s published, and share your brand’s new content multiple times. You can use a tool like CoSchedule, to see how your posts are doing and to schedule more posts so you can get more of your content out there. Don’t forget to thank readers who share your content too.

Use retargeting.

According to CrazyEgg, you can reach up to 84 percent of your visitors with retargeting. Retargeting is a great tool that allows you to entice your website visitors to return to you and check out more of your content.

Retargeting essentially involves a pixel that you install on your website; this allows you to “follow” your previous visitors around the web and show them ads for your website.

For example, if you visit your Pinterest business page, you may be retargeted on Facebook with the following ad: 

Pinterest retargeting ad, https://www.facebook.com/

This is a low-cost tactic you can use to promote your most important content, whether it’s your latest blog post or the paid course you offer. Retargeting allows you to engage with your visitors even after they’ve already left your website without checking out your content, making it a valuable tool to get your content seen.

Related: How to Use Content and Social to Promote Your Small Business

The more time you put into promoting your blog posts, the better results you’ll see. These tactics for promoting your content will almost certainly boost your traffic and increase engagement.

July 12, 2018

10 min read

In this series, The Gambit, Entrepreneur associate editor Hayden Field explores extraordinary risk, speaking with successful people about how they overcame unusual obstacles to found a company or switched industries entirely in a “career 180.”

Jeff Bonaldi told himself he’d never launch a company again.

The 25-year-old had just decided to cut his losses and move on from the business he’d been working on since age 21. After Bonaldi shuttered his first company, he set his sights on a safer path in the realm of business and banking, ending up as a top-level executive at Citibank. That is, until, he became riveted by a centuries-old legend.  

It was October 2012, and Bonaldi, now 35, sat at a wooden table inside Small World Coffee, a local favorite in Princeton, N.J. His companions: green tea and The New York Times. One article in particular had drawn him in, penned by foreign correspondent Edward Wong. Even the title, “Myths and Mountains in Nepal,” snared him. The piece covered the tale of Guru Rinpoche, an Indian Buddhist master who is believed to have emerged victorious from a wide-ranging fight with a demon in Nepal.

A seed was planted in Bonaldi’s mind, which would later grow into a fully formed idea for his adventure travel company. About a year later, he’d travel to Nepal’s Mustang District and follow the path of the Guru Rinpoche legends himself. And in 2015, with the story as inspiration, he’d lead his company’s second-ever trip: a trek along the same path that legend says Guru Rinpoche traveled.

Today, Bonaldi’s idea has evolved into The Explorer’s Passage, an adventure travel company that plans each trip with captivating stories from history as through-lines. Guides lead travelers between different sites that shed light on the historical story they’re following, all in the context of an adventure trip. It’s been around for about four years, and in 2018, the company will guide more than 750 travelers on trips spanning all seven continents. But Bonaldi’s path to founder and CEO was a winding one.

The Detour

When Bonaldi was 18, his father took his own life unexpectedly. The elder Jeff Bonaldi had been an inventor, and his chief idea was “Sports Klip” — a thin, waterproof, clip-on pouch for runners, swimmers and other athletes who wanted to keep their keys and money safe. The patent approval came in the mail the day after he died. 

At 21, his son thought the next logical step for him was finishing what his father had started. Then a college senior, Bonaldi reached out to a Chinese manufacturer, created a website and brochure, then launched the company at The New York Times Travel Show to rave reviews. Manufacturing and packaging were set in motion without a hitch, but the sales area tripped him up. A few years later, Bonaldi felt certain he’d never successfully break into the market in retail stores. Feeling like a failure, he decided to cut his losses and move on to something less risky. He told himself he’d never launch a company again.

Bonaldi chose business and banking as his safer path. He took relevant courses at the University of Pennsylvania, then used any connection he could swing to land an interview at Merrill Lynch. That led to a one-year stint in marketing, which led to a portfolio manager position, which led to Bonaldi overseeing $90 billion in client portfolio assets. He ended up as a top-level executive at Citibank, overseeing sales and marketing strategy across both North and South America.

The Itch

When Bonaldi was 18, he discovered his love of history and storytelling through a visit to Princeton University. He’d never traveled outside the U.S. before, and he imagined that the campus resembled Europe. The stories of historical figures who had frequented the halls also fascinated him. Bonaldi attended a small public college nearby, but whenever friends or family visited, he would take them on informal tours of his favorite historical landmarks at Princeton, like a bench where Einstein had often sat or the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Image credit: Jeff Bonaldi

That love of storytelling had been asleep in Bonaldi, but in 2007, as an executive at Citibank, key changes in his life began to force him awake. There was the divorce. There was the financial crisis. And there were the many layoffs at his company, hitting staffers in their fifties the hardest. That stuck with Bonaldi. He didn’t want anyone else to control his fate.  

During this upheaval, Bonaldi began feeling restless. He didn’t feel connected to what he was doing, and he wanted to rebuild his life into something he was passionate about — he just wasn’t quite sure what that looked like. Things came to a head at a corporate conference he attended, where explorer Robert Swan was keynote speaker. Swan, who has been lauded by Queen Elizabeth II and the United Nations, is a leader in energy innovation and the first person in history to walk both the North and South poles. Hearing Swan speak onstage served as the final sign Bonaldi needed. “He was so passionate about his life and his goals, and I just said, ‘One day I want to live like him,’” Bonaldi says.

The Leap

“I wanted to live through my heart,” Bonaldi says. After he saw Swan speak, he decided to start a company that combined the three things he was most passionate about — adventure, history and stories — and see if he could one day turn it into his primary source of income. For about seven years, Bonaldi essentially worked two full-time jobs — by day, he was a manager, but by night (and weekend), he was a founder and CEO. With no travel industry experience, he leaned heavily on outside resources like the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA). He started a corporation and a business bank account with his accountant’s help, enlisted a graphic designer to help with a logo and branding and finally landed on a company name. “The Explorer’s Passage” was inspired by the explorers of old and the Northwest Passage, a sea route which once seemed impossible to cross. 

Image credit: Jeff Bonaldi

Dreaming up trip itineraries came most easily to Bonaldi. The first would be a crossing of the Chilean Andes, following the story of Argentine revolutionary José de San Martín — the “George Washington of South America,” Bonaldi says. The second would follow the story of Guru Rinpoche through Nepal’s Mustang District. And the third would focus on the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1800s, crossing from Alaska into British Columbia. To this day, Bonaldi says travelers can spot gold rush-era cups on the side of the trail. “We’re trying to find these places that have this deep history where you can see it in the land,” he says. “The places where people walked … the places where people did these incredible things.”

The Breaking Point

Bonaldi officially launched The Explorer’s Passage in February 2014, at the same place he’d debuted his father’s product 14 years before. The company won the title of best booth in the trade show, out of about 400 overall. But the following year and a half were so difficult that Bonaldi almost threw in the towel. Despite a positive reception at the travel show, the company led no trips in 2014. Sales issues similar to the ones he’d had with Sports Klip plagued Bonaldi, and he realized that his experience with corporate sales wouldn’t help him as much as he’d thought. The trip itineraries he’d designed weren’t taking off. The reminder of what he had gone through with his father’s product was painful, and anger and self-doubt that he’d since buried came rising up to the surface. “Here we go again — I’m going to fail again,” he says he thought. But there was a difference this time around: Now, he was doing it for himself — and it was something he loved.

Bonaldi told himself to stop blaming others or the market for what was going wrong. Instead, he asked himself, “How do I need to change the product? How do I need to change myself to make this work?” When he turned his honesty on himself, things began to move forward. Bonaldi worked on his negotiation skills and did some soul-searching about why he might be fearful of success and power. He introduced trip itineraries in more popular destinations and launched a New York walking tour and day trip to get the word out about his company. It worked.

In 2016, Bonaldi reconnected with Robert Swan — the keynote speaker who had inspired him to launch his company. Swan was looking for someone to serve as partner in running a trip to Antarctica through his foundation, 2041, which raises awareness about environmental issues across the board. Bonaldi jumped at the chance, and together, they led about 90 people from 18 different countries to Antarctica in March 2018, with the aim to educate them about sustainability and leadership so they could become environmental leaders in their hometowns.

The Next Step

In February 2018, Bonaldi stood up from his desk, walked across the trading floor to his boss’s office, closed the door and told him he was resigning. Bonaldi told him: “I’m not going to a competitor. … My business — it’s thriving.” His boss smiled. Bonaldi was on to a new adventure — a full-time one after shedding his safety net.

Image credit: Jeff Bonaldi

The Explorer’s Passage currently offers trips on six continents, including trips through Machu Picchu, Iceland, Chile and Nepal. And together with Robert Swan and his son Barney, Bonaldi is launching a strategic expedition series to areas around the globe that are most in danger from the effects of climate change. Next year, they’ll bring a group of travelers to the Arctic in June 2019, and another group will head to Mount Kilimanjaro in September 2019 and plant 1 million trees around its base to offset carbon dioxide effects. One more thing in the works: In coming months, Bonaldi plans to launch Gladiator Trek, a healing program for people experiencing depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It’s partly inspired by his father’s story.

On Feb. 28, 2018, Bonaldi posed for a photo at the southernmost tip of South America — nicknamed the “End of the World” —  with Swan and about 90 other travelers in their group. They were about to board a ship called the Ocean Endeavor that would take them to Antarctica. In that moment, Bonaldi couldn’t believe he was standing next to explorers from 18 countries as the founder and CEO of his own company. “I had this idea years ago that I wanted to take people and show them history’s greatest stories with the greatest explorers on the planet,” Bonaldi says. “I’m standing there … and it was real. It was exactly how I had planned it in my head.”