Follow The Brand Podcast with Host Grant McGaugh

The BRAVE Path: Your Blueprint for Professional Growth and Advancement

• Grant McGaugh CEO 5 STAR BDM • Season 2 • Episode 23

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Ever wondered how to make your brand pop in a sea of sameness? Get ready to ignite your brand strategy and business development with your host, Grant McGaughan, as we dissect the secrets behind creating a standout personal brand and a bulletproof business game plan. This action-packed journey dives into the BRAVE Framework, discusses the necessity of market research, and celebrates the empowering forces like the Black Business Expo, all dedicated to carving out a niche for trailblazing leaders.

It's time to speak the language that C-suite execs can't resist – the language of results and benefits. I'll unpack the art of positioning your offering to resonate with the financial priorities of your customers, helping your brand emerge as the clear choice amidst a landscape littered with competitors. Embrace the strategies that pivot the conversation from features to value, and watch your brand clinch the spotlight it deserves.

Trust and communication are the twin pillars of a spectacular sales and brand strategy, and in this episode, I’m laying the foundation for your success. Discover how to build a fortress of credibility by discussing potential risks and rewards upfront, creating a solid referral community, and ensuring customer satisfaction is always at the heart of your sales framework. Join me in crafting a brand strategy that not only promises but also delivers, fostering enduring connections with your audience and leading you to glorious business achievements.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest marketing trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates from us, be sure to follow us at 5starbdm.com. See you next time on Follow The Brand!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to another episode of Follow the Brand. I am your host, grant McGaughan, ceo of 5 Star BDM, a 5 Star personal branding and business development company. I want to take you on a journey that takes another deep dive into the world of personal branding and business development, using compelling personal story, business conversations and tips to improve your personal brand. By listening to the Follow the Brand podcast series, you will be able to differentiate yourself from the competition and allow you to build trust with prospective clients and employers. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Make it one that will set you apart, build trust and reflect who you are. Developing your five-star personal brand is a great way to demonstrate your skills and knowledge. If you have any questions from me or my guests, please email me. At. Grantmcgaw spelled M-C-G-A-U-G-H at 5starbdm B for brand, d for development, m for masterscom. Now let's begin with our next five-star episode on Follow the Brand. Welcome everyone. I'm Grant McGaugh, ceo of Five Star Medium, where we help build five-star brands that people will follow. Welcome to another enlightening episode of Follow the Brand, where we're dedicated to empowering businesses and paving the way for brand excellence. Businesses and paving the way for brand excellence. Today's episode promises to be a game changer for entrepreneurs in every stage of their journey. Have you ever found yourself wondering how to truly stand out in a crowded market, how to craft a brand that not only resonates but commands unwavering loyalty, or how to devise a strategy that seamlessly converts insights into revenue growth? Well, you are in for a treat. In the Entrepreneur's Roadmap Navigating Brand Strategy and Revenue Road, I embark on a guided journey through the essential pillars of business success. I will uncover the secrets to building a magnetic brand, explore strategic frameworks that ensure your business not only survives but thrives, and reveal the pathways to sustainable revenue growth. But this isn't just another business podcast. I am diving deep into the Brave Framework, a powerful tool that will equip you with the courage and finesse to navigate the competitive landscape. I will also discuss the pivotal role of market research and how to position your offerings to speak directly to decision makers, transforming casual browsers into passionate believers. And, in a segment close to my heart, we will spotlight the empowerment of Black entrepreneurs and students through initiatives like the Black Business Expo, where we are fostering educational advancement and building a community of future leaders ready to excel and innovate. So, whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur or you're just starting your venture. This episode will provide you with actionable insights and inspiration to elevate your brand, your strategy and revenue growth. Get ready for another episode of the Follow Brand Podcast, where we are building a five-star brand that you can follow.

Speaker 1:

Good day business owners, entrepreneurs, thought leaders and corporations. Welcome to the Black Business Network. My name is Grant McGaugh, ceo of Five Star BDM and host of the award-winning Follow the Brand podcast and TV series, and I am your business moderator for this day on the Black Business Network. The Black Business Network is a 24-hour business network showcasing Black businesses, business owners, entrepreneurs and thought leaders worldwide. We have speakers from North Carolina, london, knowledge to empower, inspire and educate businesses about business. Now I will be your speaker for this particular hour and I want to talk to you about brand strategy, why that's so, so important.

Speaker 1:

A lot of people when I engage with them and I ask them so what is your strategy? How are you going to achieve your particular goal and what are you doing around that? What is that going to look like from a day-to-day business application? What are you going to do when you wake up in the morning, type of thing. And a lot of times, what I find out is that you don't have a business plan or there's a difference between a business plan and a business strategy, so two different things. A business plan, for the most part, is something that you gather, you pull together and you're going to present that to a financing entity to tell them how are you going to achieve your goals and why they want to invest in you. That's the overall business plan. Or it's also something that you would share with potential employees or anyone interested in your business. You have an overall business plan that would come together and kind of tell the story about your business and why it's important. Strategy is how you get there. So so important Because getting into the playbook of the day-to-day grind of running your business is so important. And if you just kind of, like you know, wake up each day and you don't have a very sustained plan for your Monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, what they're going to do and what is important, what is your focus on, what is your revenue generating activity. And that is so important when you start looking at an overall structure of a strategy, of how you attain the goals that you've set out in your mission.

Speaker 1:

And a mission is very, very important Because you look at your mission, you kind of unfold it. Everybody has seen that movie. You know Mission Impossible. He's given a mission, he goes into this. You know dark room. He finds some kind of way. This mission comes out and the person who's employed them says, hey, I need to go out and do this impossible task and then, if you're successful, you know you're going to be able to get more opportunities, that type of thing. That's your mission, right? What is your mission state about you and why is that important? Because if you don't have your mission, this is your guiding overall framework for why you're doing what you're doing. What is the big? Why that you're here?

Speaker 1:

For my mission is around small business development. I want to take my 20, 25 years of corporate experience and bring it to the small business owner. I want them to understand what it takes to be successful, because even though I was in Fortune 500 companies that's a huge, either national or international corporation but they still operated in departments. So a department is really like a small business. So I'm very, very familiar with the tenets of small business operations and what it takes to be successful on a day-to-day basis and as a more of an individual contributor, as an account manager or business development manager, I understand ownership. So in entrepreneurship you've got to take ownership of your particular business model and then have goals that you've set for yourself and then reach those goals or exceed those goals, and you've got to have an overarching strategy to do that.

Speaker 1:

Now, when you're in the sporting arena and you have a coach, and that coach now then recruits his team, he says you know what? I need a quarterback, I need some running backs, I'm going to need an offensive line that can block, I'm going to need my wide receivers that can catch the ball from the quarterback and I need a stellar defense, because the other side of the ball also has an offense that's trying to score. And the strategy is like how am I going to achieve that goal? And each game, each game, each business opportunity that you involve yourself in is a game. And if you're following sports and I love the sports analogies that each opponent that you're going to go against has a different strategy. It's not cookie cutter for every single game, every single business opportunity that you're involved in. All of them have different nuances, they have different strengths, they have different weaknesses, there's different opportunities. Obviously, there's threats. So there's a SWOT analysis that you're going to have to do for each and every engagement that you involve yourself in, and you've got to understand the objectives.

Speaker 1:

Have you defined your objectives in very succinct matter, meaning, you have objectives and then you have results from those objectives that you want to achieve, and then what are the tactics that you're going to use to achieve those results? That is what is so important. Especially when you get into the brand world, you're going to have to have brand objectives and these are business objectives simultaneously. That's why I do branding and I do business development, because I see them working together a lot of time. If you've got a great brand, that's going to help your business development actually to operate easier than if you did not have a brand, and vice versa, right? Very, very important. So I want to ask you this and this is from a branding perspective Do you have a dominating market position statement?

Speaker 1:

What is your dominating market position statement that says this is who I am? It's a bold statement. It's part of my brave framework that I use in my strategy. Brave, right, because you've got to be brave. You've got to be bold in today's business world, right? So that B is so important when I'm talking about the brave framework. It's a bold statement.

Speaker 1:

What is your dominating market position? My dominating market position statement is that five-star BDM. We create five-star brands that people will follow. That is my dominating market position. That is what I'm leading with, that's my chart, that's my flag, that's what I'm going out. That's like when you see my logo. That's what you say. You know what that's five-star BDM? He actually builds five-star brands that people will follow. Those are personal brands, those are business brands, these are brands that we're creating that has a voice, that has a pulse, and that pulse is to have people to follow them.

Speaker 1:

When you have a charge, people like to follow leaders. You have to have a leading statement. So when you have a leading statement, you automatically attract followers Like I believe in that, that's a cause I believe in. I want to follow that. That's interesting. I like what you're saying. So that's part of that big bold statement that you want to get out there. You know, a lot of times I say I'm pioneering the future of branding, I'm empowering businesses, I'm enriching communities. I want you to join me in doing this. This is part of my bold statement, it's part of my brave framework and you've got to have a signature branded program. I always encourage my business owners, when I'm consulting with them, to have some type of signature branded program. Like what do you mean, grant? This is something that you're doing that is different. It's a differentiator from your competition.

Speaker 1:

What is your signature brand program? When you think of five-star BDM, what is my signature branding program? It's Follow the Brand, the Follow the Brand podcast right, where I feature business owners, entrepreneurs, career professionals in areas of technology, innovation, career business development, financial empowerment, brand mastery, personal branding. This is my signature brand program that I lead with. Every single day. Every week I have a new episode Every week. You can see it as a TV series as well as an audio podcast. This is a signature branded program that I'm putting out there. That's building brand awareness constantly. That I'm putting out there, that's building brand awareness constantly, and if it's doing that, it automatically goes to the next level people will do in their contemplation of if they want to do business with you. It goes from awareness and then it goes to consideration and then it goes to conversion, where you're actually engaging with them in sales activity.

Speaker 1:

So I want to ask you what is your signature branded program? What does that look like. Do you have that? Does that come together for you? And, as you're thinking through that, think about your competitive landscape. Have you done your research? Because that's the R in the BRAVE framework I talked about the B being bold, your brand identity right so important. Your brand strategy, so important. Now we get into the R, that's your research, the market research and understanding the competitive landscape. A lot of times, and I've seen it so many times, when people want to go into business, you know what. I'm ready. I'm ready to do this. I have the technical skills to be effective in the market.

Speaker 1:

Now, last one right Define your market and they kind of fall short. They don't understand what that market landscape looks like. Because if you don't understand the market landscape and what you're operating in, who your competition is, what does that look like? Your competition may not always be another business. It can be the status quo. This is really the biggest, and I have found this so many times in my sales careers and and my journey in corporate America that the the biggest problem, biggest obstacle, wasn't another company that did something similar to my product and services. It was the status quo, the mindset they did not want to change. They want to keep doing the same thing they've always done and that is a big inertia that people naturally don't like to change. So you're offering change and if you're offering change, you have to understand that your competition actually is the status quo and you need to actually market to that and understand that and understanding your audience's position, your customer's position.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes people think about positioning and think about their position in the market. We're there, I'm at the low end, I'm high end. I'm offering high pricing. I'm offering low pricing. Where am I at? Am I in the niche business? Am I at the more prestige part of the economic? That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is the position and the mindset of your consumer, of your target market, of your target persona, the people or the businesses that you're going after. What is their mindset? How do they look at what you're trying to do and how does that change their business and is there an impetus to change?

Speaker 1:

The only reason that someone is going to change is because it has a better outcome, and I have talked to business owners about this very fact that organizations and people don't buy your product and service. What do you mean? They don't? They don't buy your product and service. They buy the results. They want the results. They want the results. So your positioning has to be around the new results that they will gain if they do business with you. What does that look like? And you have to understand the financial metrics around that. To understand the financial metrics around that, what are they going to gain by working with you, your company, that they can't gain by doing what they're doing already?

Speaker 1:

Then it starts once that's been established, right now they're in the consideration phase and then they start thinking all right, I hear what Grant's saying. I see what a five-star BDM does for product and services. I see that they're offering a different result that's 5x, 10x better than what I have today. I'm going to consider that and you know what they're going to do. Then they're going to do more research. They're going to start saying, okay, I have five-star BDM over here, let me see companies that are similar to his and see if I can get a similar result by working with them, but maybe at a lower price point or something to that effect that I can't get from them. Now they're starting to do research on you and that's when you need to understand the other part about knowing the competitive landscape, understanding the market size, understanding who they're going to truly go to to get that comparison, because that's all they're doing. They're going to compare you with someone else.

Speaker 1:

What does that look like? So you need to understand those competitors in that space and if you understand that competitor in that space, you can even recommend to them. You know what you need to go. Talk to so-and-so, talk to so-and-so. They do something similar to me and you're going to find out some things, but you already know your heads and tails above them. You already positioned yourself in your messaging that everything they're going to potentially get from them, you're going to be able to offer them something better, be able to offer them something better, and you have an irresistible offering for them that the competition cannot deliver as well. That's part of the foundations of driving brand and business development.

Speaker 1:

I want you to understand this at a very high level and understand the language of business. What are you talking about? The language of business? The language of business is money, understanding profit, understanding revenue, understanding return on investment, capital and the values of time. This is what they want to understand. They want to understand revenue potential. And what does that look like? You need to have a differentiated strategy that talks to this and talks in the language of business. So if you're only talking in products and you're only talking in services, you have not spoken in the language of business. You're only spoken in the language of the technical aspects of what you're trying to get across. I've seen this over and over again in a lot of the companies that I work with that they had this particular issue that their messaging, their marketing, was always in technical language, but they're not talking in the language of business. The language of business is financial.

Speaker 1:

Ready to elevate your brand with five-star impact? Welcome to the Five Brand Podcast, your gateway to exceptional personal growth and innovative business strategies. Join me as I unveil the insider strategies of industry pioneers and branding experts. Discover how to supercharge your business development, harness the power of AI for growth and sculpt a personal brand that stands out in the crowd. Transform ambition into achievement. Explore more at FirestarBDMcom for a wealth of resources. Ignite your journey with our Brave Brain Blueprint and begin crafting your standout Firestar teacher today.

Speaker 1:

So when you understand financial language that you can then explain them and understand that it can enable this financial gain through a technological edge or an enablement tool, you start to get their attention at the highest levels. Right, because that is what the C-suite is really really about. They're kind of the banker of that organization. They're only going to invest capital if it says they're going to get more capital in return. So if I give you $1 today, I'm going to get $10 next week. That's a great deal and if you can articulate that kind of development with your business, it becomes a no-brainer why they're going to do business with you instead of someone else, because if they're only articulating at a technical level and they haven't articulated at a business level, they're going to be behind the eight ball. You're going to win the deal, right, because you understand the strategy. Now you've got a service strategy that goes in. You've got considerations that are so important.

Speaker 1:

Then you start talking about success factors. What are your success factors? What is the strong network that you have, the unique value proposition You're delivering measurable results Because they're going to know like okay, grant, I'm now considering you for this. Prove to me that you can deliver, show me that you can do this. Can you show me another company that you work with, like mine, and deliver results? These are where your testimonials are so important. Your referral network is so important Someone that vouches for you, someone that will advocate for you because you've delivered the results.

Speaker 1:

This is one of the big things people get in the sales game, not because they just don't like salespeople, it's that they look at them and they're not trustworthy. They're not speaking the truth, and the reason why they get that kind of connotation is because they don't tell people about the results. They start talking about the product and the service. Remember, people don't buy those things, they buy the service. Remember, people don't buy those things, they buy the results. So if you can talk about the results, you're going to be much further along. People are going to trust you more because, hey, you have a proven method. Right, it's proven. I see it, one plus one equals two in this world. It's not a wiggle room, it's not a maybe here. It's going to be a strong result. And if we invest in you, a dollar today gets me $10 next week. Guess what? I'm definitely going to roll the dice and we're going to work with you, because it's always a risk factor in anything that you do.

Speaker 1:

If you can articulate the risk before they do. Articulate the risk because I guarantee you, depending on what it is that you are presenting to them as an opportunity of investment. They're going to look at the risk risk mitigation. Any chief financial officer is going to look at the risk. What is the risk? I could lose that dollar that I invested with you. Okay, what does that cost us? To lose that dollar, lose that time, lose all those different things. But if we win, we gain 5x, 10x in amount enough time. So they weigh those things out.

Speaker 1:

If you can articulate those things as strengths in your particular proposal that you're putting together, you're going to go a long way. And then you could talk about the weaknesses. Don't let them assume weakness. There's always weakness in every proposal. Anything in life has strengths and weaknesses. It's just part of nature. Life has strengths and weaknesses. It's just part of nature. What are those weaknesses? What are the conditions that could actually upset the result that you're trying to gain from doing business with you? And if you can articulate those things, it's going to go a lot better.

Speaker 1:

I know in the world I was in technology there's always risk and I would have conversations around it. I'd say well, graham, what is the risk? I want to get the result? The risk is a lot of times is adoption. Will your workforce adopt this new technology and utilize it? Because if they utilize it, we're going to get the result. If they don't utilize, it're going to get the result. If they don't utilize it, you won't get the result. It's like I'm going to buy this car but then they don't drive the car. It doesn't give you the result that you're looking for, because that enables you to get to another location.

Speaker 1:

Very, very important to understand your weaknesses, or the weaknesses of the project, and tell the product or service that you're offering what are the weaknesses, potential weaknesses that could occur If you articulate those things in your business proposal, your presentation, your messaging. They understand that because everybody you're on this planet Earth, everybody understands that there's light and there's darkness. There's things that happen that you don't want them to happen. There's always that oh my God that what if occurs? You want to be able to let them understand that you know these things. You're not just assuming it's 100%, it's an A plus, every single time. No, talk about those witnesses so that all of a sudden you get buy-in and you're not just doing something that the customer's over here and you're over here, you're now in the middle, you're together. You articulate that, that we're doing this together.

Speaker 1:

The results that we're going to gain comes from our collaboration of working together and merging our team. So we share in the results. Good or bad, it's our results. So you want to get to that. Those are the great opportunities for doing business and being successful in your business because you have bias business because you have bias. So at the end of the day, before you've gotten the results, you begin to set up that referral community.

Speaker 1:

People will speak very highly of you, especially when you're not in the room and they ask you know this particular individual, tell me about your experience with Firestore BDM. He's like you know what it took me through this entire process and we talked about the project, we talked about the results, but we also talked about the detractors. We talked about the risk mitigation. We talked about how we have to work as a team to deliver this result. So we came together and we all had buy-in and then we were successful in what we accomplished.

Speaker 1:

So if you're going to work with Grant and his team at Firestar BDM, make sure your team is on board with what you're going to do. You're like, wow, you know the sales game. This is what it should look like, this is how this should work. But if you're not messaging and positioning yourself in this way in the beginning, it won't work right, because you're going from awareness to consideration, to conversion and understanding that you have to have a framework in which you're working within. So if you don't have a framework, it's going to bite you over time. So my framework again is the brave framework.

Speaker 1:

We talked about being bold, that B, that brand identity, so important brand strategy, developing what that strategy is going to look like. We talked about research. You've got to do your research. You've got to understand your positioning. You've got to understand your positioning. You've got to understand your client.

Speaker 1:

This is one of the big statements I make almost every single time I talk to an audience, especially around business. You have to understand your client and their situation and their problem better than you understand your own product and services. You will be so successful if you understand their problem, understand their situation, much better than just your own product and services, because you're expected to know that. But if you articulate your understanding of their business problem and where they're at, you can solve that big problem. Like you know what we went out? We talked to everybody. We talked to IBM, we talked to Cisco, we talked to Lucidify, we talked to all these different people. They couldn't solve the problem. You can solve the problem. Show me and if you solve that problem, your goal. So you've got to understand that right and then you start to develop.

Speaker 1:

Once you've got that put together, you really start to get into your audience and you really start to understand your audience and you understand their persona. In the brand world, the marketing, where you talk about your persona, what is that? That is your ideal client, what they look like, who they are, what their needs are, how they do business, what are their interests, what are their psychographics, their demographic. They get into all these kinds of different things. You need to understand this and live this reality with them, because if you start to see that there is a big problem here that does need to be solved and my product or service is not on point it's not quite there that allows you to go back and do some reiterations to change some things. That's why there's always new versions of software that come out. They don't stay on the same version.

Speaker 1:

If you're using chat GPT right now, your first came out was a 3.5. When it first came out, people were like, wow, it was new. They didn't know what it could do, but it did it very fast. It did it super fast. But then it started to see, no, it's not very human-like, it's very, very scientific and very analytical. It doesn't have any emotional content, it just slow off. So they came out with ChatTTP4. They listened to the feedback that they were getting. Then they came out with a whole new version that became. This is now the paid version. Guess what it's worth paying for? Because it begins to speak in the language of humans and it became easier to articulate. It became faster to use and incorporate into your business.

Speaker 1:

Very, very important to understand, as you come up with a product or service, that you know that you're going to have to innovate it. It's going to have to change over time and that change comes from working with the audience that you have right, your clientele that you have, because customer behavior, customer segmentation is so important, the delivery on your promise is so important. So if you make a statement and you want to deliver on that promise, you have to understand that you're going to make changes. But you have to have open communication, open dialogue with the people that you're working with. So they have to understand that if you talk to a lot of Fortune 500 companies and they have have their vendor list and they depend on these vendors right for successful projects, because that's how they are promoted forward in their corporations they have to have true, open dialogue. You want to have true open dialogue with your particular business opportunities and clients and companies that you're working with, so that there's transparency that's taking place.

Speaker 1:

This is going to help you with your business development. It's going to help you with your blueprint and your strategy. You're becoming more visible. This is when you start to accumulate what I call the A in your assets Getting your assets together and understanding what those assets truly look like. An asset is something that's valuable, right, and it's valuable to you and it's valuable to your clients. What does that look like? What are the aesthetics around that, so that your brand and its aesthetics and the assets they all have style, they all have personality.

Speaker 1:

There's something that you can then go to, that V world, which is making it visible, your visibility and your vision action plan is so important and that details the tactics that you will utilize to achieve your objectives. So, so important. How are you going to get the results? You've got to strategize around them. You've got to then look at the tactics that you're going to use to achieve those team results, and you've got to have advocates. You've got to have your stakeholders. That's why I talked about earlier about having transparency, because you can't do it alone. They've got to be buying from both sides of the ball in order to achieve your objectives and to have victories and a winning attitude. And along those ways, those milestones, you're building momentum.

Speaker 1:

So when you get into that V world, when you're making it fit your visibility, that's like driving down the football field. You're making a bunch of first downs and you're celebrating. You see how? You get a first down, the crowd goes wild. Right, you get another first down, the crowd just goes wild. You start to get into scoring position. Everybody, all the intention is up, there's dramatic tension in the room and you're right there. You can win the game, you're in winning position and then you score. That is the kind of emotion and enthusiasm you want in the room when you deliver on the, on what are your promise, and you have the result you were looking for and everybody in the room is like wow, wow, this is what we're talking about. This is what we're talking about Now. You've made your brand. You've made it visible. That's the visibility when you've actually delivered the result. You won the game. That is what you've done.

Speaker 1:

And then you get to that e-world. What is that Grant? That e-world again? Is that evaluation, right? You evaluate what you've done, you evaluate how you got it done, you measure everything that was necessary. You look at the metrics that you took to achieve your goal, because, guess what? You're going to have to do it again. You know, if you're in the NFL, you have to do it. Next week. You're going to have to go out there and win again. You're going to have new clients. You, you're going to have to go out there and win again. You're going to have new clients. You're going to have new situations. You're going to have new stories that you're going to have to tell.

Speaker 1:

This is all so very important. So you want to understand your vision, you want to set your goals. You want to have alignment with your client. All these things are so very important as you go around your business. So I'm taking you through the BRAVE framework All right, beginning to understand this better. You've got to be bold. All right, you've got to be resilient. All right, you've got to be adaptable, all right. You've got to be visible, correct, correct, right, and that E that means you're going to have energy. See, there's different ways I can look at all these different things. You've got to put energy in everything that you're doing. You've got to power beyond the resistance when you've got to do it in a very methodological way in order to achieve your results that are repeatable. You want something that's repeatable over time so you can continue to move the ball forward. You've got flexibility built in. You're ready to move and shake. So, week after week, the different team that you're going to face, week after week, you have a winning attitude. You can go in there, you can win the game and then you can strategize on what they're trying to do.

Speaker 1:

If you want to know more about 5 Star BDM, I encourage you to go to my website. At 5, that's the number 5, star S-T-A-R B for brand D, for development and for masterscom 5 Star BDM. You can also send me an email. At grantmcgau, it's M, c, g, a, u, g, h. At five-star B, e, m. We'll go to my LinkedIn page. I do a lot of activity on LinkedIn. It's a lot of information there. You'll see a lot of my guests.

Speaker 1:

I've got over 150 plus episodes that you can learn about technology innovation. You can learn about career and business development. You can learn about technology innovation. You can learn about career and business development. You can learn about financial empowerment. You can learn about branding. You can learn from brand masters. All this is for free for you. So I want you to be educated, I want you to be armed, I want you to win your game Very much so.

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So I want to talk about now the Black Business Network, because it's so important. I'm glad they're having me on today to be the moderator this morning and where I'm located in Miami, florida, and I want to tell you about the Black Business Expo's mission, which is to raise funds for high school seniors going to college. Okay, through 12 entrepreneurs. This Expo is a fundraiser for students. You may go to wwwblackbusinessexpousacom to donate to the scholarship fund and you can use the cash app that is on the screen below. That's $BBXUSA, and our goal is to give laptops and up to $5,000 to 10 students and students. You can go and register online at blackbusinessexpousacom. Every dollar counts. So we want to remind you to donate to the scholarship fund, you to donate to the scholarship fund and we would like to thank our Black Business Expo USA sponsors for April 2024.

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They include NC100, moody Capital Partners, suede Soul, 5 Star BDM, lotus for Shade, coaching and Training, carolina, virginia Minority Supplier Development Council. Step Management, hello LLC, bhs and Associates. Margie McLean Foundation Incorporated. Genius is Common Earth Essentials. Milani. Shiny Global Executive Women's Success Institute. Shiny Global Executive Women's Success Institute. Equality Coaching Company. Superwoman Business Services. Creator for Studios. Lee Entertainment Artistic App Design. Black Business Expo USA. Genius is coming and I'll see you. Thanks for joining us on the Follow Brand Podcast. Big thanks to Full Effect Productions for their incredible support on each and every episode. Now the journey continues on our YouTube channel Follow Brand TV Series. Dive into exclusive interviews, extended content and bonus insights that will fuel your success. Subscribe now and be a part of our growing community, sharing and learning together. Explore, engage and elevate at Follow Brand TV Series on YouTube. Stay connected, stay inspired. Till next time, we will continue building a five-star brand that you can follow.