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Sherpa Growth Insights

This blog is for owners and executives of growth-oriented businesses who share our growth mindset and passion for building value. Here, we share insights and experiences in our growth journey, things we learned with or from our clients, that can help you reach your next mountaintop. Enjoy!

Ep. 27: Plan Strategically & Remain Situational – Lessons from the Art Business

Posted on: December 17th, 2020

How do you keep growing when both your product and your customers constantly shift? Since 2003, Gary Levine’s company has sold licensed art (with constant shifts in taste and trends) to manufacturers and to retailers (where store counts, store types, and the explosion of ecommerce have shifted the balance of power dramatically in recent years).…

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Ep. 26: Community Colleges – American Dream Growth Engine

Posted on: December 10th, 2020

“Community colleges have low self-esteem” – as a graduate of both a community college and an ivy-league university I can relate to that sentiment. Because community colleges serve an important role in supporting the American Dream, to aid continued upward mobility in our country, I asked Sarah Leggesse to share her insights about students and…

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Ep. 25: Purpose-driven Business: Fusing Clean Energy with Capitalism

Posted on: December 3rd, 2020

My guest Steve Melink shares a powerful and very important story: highly knowledgeable about clean energy, he built a case why clean energy is critically important for humankind, wrote a book about it (Fusion Capitalism – Clean Energy Vision for Conservatives), has taken risks by building a purpose-driven business around a politically charged issue, and…

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Ep. 24: eDesign – Virtually Design Virtually Everything

Posted on: November 26th, 2020

As our life becomes more digital, we need to grow and learn new skills to keep up. Covid has accelerated that trend – not just Zoom calls and filesharing, but remote collaboration for all kinds of problem solving. My guest Jenna Gaidusek is an online interior designer who has decorated hundreds of rooms across the…

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Ep. 23: The World’s First Ever All-Digital Designer Showhouse

Posted on: November 19th, 2020

When an entrepreneur envisions boldly… risks… invites industry stars to participate… creates a first of its kind in the history of the world event… and invites you behind the scenes of its creation….and to its unveiling…you’ll want to listen. Gary Pettitt, CEO and Editor of Seasonal Living Magazine, the creative and entrepreneurial force behind this…

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Ep. 21: You are not the Hero – Storytelling for Marketers

Posted on: November 19th, 2020

Mark Haas talks about story structure and how to ‘flip the script’ – focus on the customer’s problem, not the product, not your company. The pattern in storytelling is (2:42): “hero goes on a journey, looking for a treasure…a dragon is in the way… along comes a mentor, helps to put a sword in your…

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Ep. 20: Settler vs. Pioneer – Lessons from a Cannabis Start-Up

Posted on: November 12th, 2020

Despite (relatively minor) audio challenges, this turned out to be a great episode. If you ever moved from big “settler” company to “pioneer” work in a start-up, you know the difference between the two; if you’re considering the move, listen to Leah Bailey who talks thru her experience starting a Cannabis grower and vertically integrated…

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Ep. 19: Storytelling – or: Bootstrapping a $100M Start-up

Posted on: November 12th, 2020

Remember FiveFingers Shoes? Neither did most consumers a dozen years ago, until it became a B2B manufacturer’s amazing B2C success story. Michael Martin, who spent 20 years in consumer goods, as sales and sales operations manager then executive, shares with us how he became the Chief Storyteller for a component manufacturer and helped to build…

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Ep. 18: Never Integrate or Grow: Pre/Post Acquisition Challenges

Posted on: November 5th, 2020

Spoiler alert: integrate or grow is a false choice, you can and should do both, walk and chew gum, integrate and grow. But too often poor integration between acquirer and acquired hurts revenue growth, certainly in the (too lengthy) short term. Steve Nunn shares his definition of integration, how to tackle integration – in stages,…

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Ep. 17: Can Three Things Improve Your Business, Really?

Posted on: October 29th, 2020

Paul Heagen has a talent for making the complex simple, and in our discussion about his latest book These Three Things we talk about Pride, Safety, and Love as a leader’s focal points to unleash passion, move people to be loyal to the business, and committed to extraordinary performance. All three are things we remember…

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