Business News

AGBeat’s top 50 industry influencers

(Business News) In an effort to expand horizons, we have listed 50 influencers that we are inspired by and learn from on a regular basis.

Published

7 years ago

January 2, 2014

The American Genius Staff

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Marsha Collier

marsha collier [dropcap style=”style1″]M[/dropcap]arsha Collier specializes in writing, social media marketing, eBay business, e-commerce, user experience, community relations and online customer service.

What is most fascinating about Collier is that she has already written over 45 books, several of which are a part of the “for Dummies” series. She sold over one million books by 2007 and now spreads her passion for social media to universities and conferences around the world and hosts #techradio.

Few people in the industry have worked as hard as Collier, and her determination and devotion are clear in her accomplishments.

Matt Hixson

matt hixson tellagence big data expert [dropcap style=”style1″]C[/dropcap]o-Founder and CEO of social media prediction company, Tellagence, Matt Hixson is passionate about changing how businesses approach social media by identifying trusted relationships in social networks and predicting behaviors within specific topics of interest. Prior to Tellagence, Hixson spent over a decade delivering corporate initiatives from bringing an enterprise startup from concept to market in nine months, to pioneering social strategies, to driving strategy development at an $80 million organization. Hixson never puffs his chest, never condescends, yet is one of the smartest people in his industry and his company Tellagence, is poised to explode in 2014.

Meghan McCain

meghan mccain millennial expert [dropcap style=”style1″]E[/dropcap]xamining important topics for Millennials on her television show, Raising McCain, Meghan McCain has offered a unique insight into a budding generation.

On her Twitter account, she is authentic, brash, cusses, and is real, just as she is in her show. She is influencing not only her own industry, but viewers and listeners who desperately seek to understand Generation Y.

With her determination and refusal to accept the status quo, watch for McCain to be a voice for her generation for years to come.

Michael McClure

michael mcclure real estate professional, influencer [dropcap style=”style1″]C[/dropcap]EO of Verified Professionals, offering a CPA- like certification for the real estate industry, Michael McClure is also the founder of Professional One Real Estate and the co-author of the Swanepoel Technology Report.

McClure is also a CPA and worked at Price Waterhouse for a decade before entering real estate where he went on to co-found RaiseTheBar Radio and the Raise the Bar Facebook Group.

One of the perpetual good guys, McClure has devoted an unfathomable amount of unpaid hours to helping the real estate industry to suck less.

Miriam Slozberg

[dropcap style=”style1″]A[/dropcap]s a SEO and Social Media Consultant, owner of Gemini Rising, and co-owner of Social Influence University, Miriam Slozberg is highly invested and influential in social media.

Slozberg has captured our attention through her evangelism for and expertise regarding Klout, social media scoring site.

She is one of the few excellent source of information about Klout and what it means for businesses, and freely on her Twitter account, @msmir.

Keep clicking for other influencers you must meet:

Related Topics:agbeat's top 50 industry influencers influencers

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The American Genius Staff

The American Genius is news, insights, tools, and inspiration for business owners and professionals. AG condenses information on technology, business, social media, startups, economics and more, so you don’t have to.

34 Comments

Linda Bernstein

January 2, 2014 at 2:22 pm

So many terrific people here! I love this list.

Reply
Christopher S. Penn

January 2, 2014 at 2:40 pm

Thanks for including me! Much appreciated.

Reply
Ted Rubin

January 2, 2014 at 3:50 pm

Honored to be included 🙂

Reply
Miriam Slozberg

January 2, 2014 at 4:05 pm

Very honored to be included! Thank you.

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Amber Osborne

January 2, 2014 at 4:27 pm

Honored to be included among those who inspired me to get into this industry. Thank you!

Reply
annhandley

January 2, 2014 at 4:45 pm

This list is stuffed full of people I’m lucky enough to call friends, as well as many who have influenced *me*. Thanks for adding my name to the roundup.

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Charles E Gaudet II

January 2, 2014 at 5:51 pm

Thank you for the honor! I’m both humbled and grateful to be included among this least of extraordinary people.

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AmyVernon

January 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm

Thanks so much for the honor folks. I’m fortunate to have met many of these folks, and now have a whole list of others I want to make sure I catch up with!

Reply
AmyVernon

January 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm

Thanks so much for the honor folks. I’m fortunate to have met many of these folks, and now have a whole list of others I want to make sure I catch up with!

Reply
AmyVernon

January 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm

Thanks so much for the honor folks. I’m fortunate to have met many of these folks, and now have a whole list of others I want to make sure I catch up with!

Reply
AmyVernon

January 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm

Thanks so much for the honor folks. I’m fortunate to have met many of these folks, and now have a whole list of others I want to make sure I catch up with!

Reply
AmyVernon

January 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm

Thanks so much for the honor folks. I’m fortunate to have met many of these folks, and now have a whole list of others I want to make sure I catch up with!

Reply
AmyVernon

January 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm

Thanks so much for the honor folks. I’m fortunate to have met many of these folks, and now have a whole list of others I want to make sure I catch up with!

Reply
AmyVernon

January 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm

Thanks so much for the honor folks. I’m fortunate to have met many of these folks, and now have a whole list of others I want to make sure I catch up with!

Reply
AmyVernon

January 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm

Thanks so much for the honor folks. I’m fortunate to have met many of these folks, and now have a whole list of others I want to make sure I catch up with!

Reply
AmyVernon

January 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm

Thanks so much for the honor folks. I’m fortunate to have met many of these folks, and now have a whole list of others I want to make sure I catch up with!

Reply
Liz Strauss

January 2, 2014 at 7:31 pm

Thank you, AGBeat, for the thought and work that went into writing about all of us. You captured the people who have influence not just their resumes, making this fun to read. I’m honored that you included me.

Reply
Michelle Poccia

January 2, 2014 at 8:34 pm

This list is chock full of GENIUS! Congrats to all who are on it! And thanks AGBeat for my 2014 Stalker List!

Reply
Danny Brown

January 2, 2014 at 8:56 pm

Nice to see such a diverse group, and appreciate the fact you took the time to share reasons why people might want to connect, versus a generic “OMG, these guys are just awesome, y’all!!”

Cheers for the kind inclusion, and Happy New Year!

Reply
J Philip Faranda

January 2, 2014 at 9:33 pm

I hope to meet Michael McClure in person someday! He is remarkable.

Reply
Belinda Summers

January 2, 2014 at 11:00 pm

Gee! A bunch of people I look up to. 🙂 How I wish to be one of them someday.

Reply
Matt Hixson

January 2, 2014 at 11:38 pm

This was a great way to start the year. Thanks for including me.

Reply
Belinda Summers

January 3, 2014 at 1:00 am

Gee! A bunch of people I look up to. 🙂 How I wish to be one of them someday.

Reply
Lucretia M Pruitt

January 3, 2014 at 3:02 am

Some of my favorite people on here… Glad to see AGBeat and I agree on so many awesome people as influences!! Congrats for a solid list and kudos to some awesome folks.

Reply
Lucretia M Pruitt

January 3, 2014 at 3:02 am

Some of my favorite people on here… Glad to see AGBeat and I agree on so many awesome people as influences!! Congrats for a solid list and kudos to some awesome folks.

Reply
Michael Q Todd

January 3, 2014 at 6:37 am

Great list and especially great endorsements well done for taking the time and effort have subscribed to you

Reply
S. Anthony Iannarino

January 3, 2014 at 10:39 am

Thanks so much for including me on this all-star list! I am honored!

Reply
Heather MacLean

January 3, 2014 at 11:34 am

Great list. Nice to see some really familiar faces as well as some new ones.

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agbenn

January 3, 2014 at 1:36 pm

As the Founder and Publisher of The American Genius, I certainly do not want to sound callous, and text can be so impersonal. We hear your feedback, and have noted it for future reference. When we see people, we see human beings, whatever their race or gender.

In saying that, our pick if we were considering race or gender ie. a particular Hispanic Influencer, it would have undoubtedly been His Holiness, Pope Francis. However, because we’ve covered His Holiness, several times in the past month, it gave way to another open spot out of hundreds of thousands of potential people we considered one by one. To be quite honest, I actually had to go back and look and read every entry to see if anyone was or wasn’t Hispanic.

For the record, I am Hispanic, and I am honored to have our team present this list as it is, and with innocent hearts. We do know several of the persons you’ve mentioned and do hold them in very high regard.

So thank you so much for your thoughtful feedback and encouragement, and we look forward to meeting and getting to know a few on your list. 🙂

Reply
Brian Hansford

January 3, 2014 at 1:47 pm

So nice to see some new faces in a list. It gets old seeing lists with the same names over and over just to get SEO juice.

Reply
agbenn

January 3, 2014 at 2:01 pm

Maya, bless your heart for sharing your kind thoughts and ideas with us. We agree with your sentiments profoundly, and thank you for recoginizing the complexity of what we’re presenting through our lists. We’ll take your idea and have the team bounce it around and see if we can’t do something as meaningful more often. As you know, things become passe when over done, even when done well. For the record, you influence me in thought provoking ways, and that’s not easy to do with a guy like me.

Happy New Year, and kick 2014’s ass!

Reply
tracysestili

January 3, 2014 at 5:19 pm

I love listening to Brian Carter speak. He’s not only funny, but real. Plus he presents data in a way that you didn’t think of. Glad to see he made the list and a few of my other faves. 🙂

Reply
Eve Mayer

January 4, 2014 at 5:47 pm

Whoa, I’m so lucky to be on this list! Thank you very much for thinking I’m somewhat as cool as all those respected peeps!

Reply
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Business News

How well-meaning diversity and inclusion hiring practices could backfire

(BUSINESS) More companies than ever are considering their diversity and inclusion hiring practices and internal culture, but there is an unintended consequence already happening that could easily be stopped.

Published

2 days ago

June 21, 2021

Lani Rosales, COO + News Director

It is a widely accepted fact that hiring for diversity improves profitability, whether a small business or a massive company that pours resources into diversity and inclusion (D&I) practices companywide. You probably already know this, but if it’s news to you, Google around – it leads to improved innovation (since you’ve avoided an echo chamber), customer support ranks better for diverse teams (since your team has a wider ability to address more pain points), and it attracts more talent.

Imagine if you build a company and fill it with people that look, act, sound, and think like you. And imagine how agreeable everyone is during every moment of production, and no diversity of thought is ever injected. Any investor can tell you it’s a death sentence. To be blunt, it’s hiring “yes men,” so to speak, and does little more than serve your ego (consciously or subconciously).

American culture has rapidly evolved regarding diversity and inclusion (D&I). There are entire teams in companies dedicated to it (#profitability). I can tell you firsthand that the people devoting their jobs to this really do care. And today, more than ever, the topic of race (which is only one of many components of diversity) is top of mind, so we must all individually, and as companies, push to improve our workplace for the BIPOC while also remembering the LGBTQIA+ community, avoiding ageism, and so forth.

And while positivity surrounding D&I practices abounds, something is happening that is going to backfire.

Businesses are resorting to a “checklist” mindset wherein a CEO says, “we don’t have enough Hispanic women or trans employees, fix that” and drops the figurative mic. It sounds noble to see there is room to improve, but diversity and inclusion is about creating a company culture and hiring practices wherein people aren’t discriminated against, NOT fulfilling some impossible checklist.

I was in a meeting of a company inviting us to be on their board, and one of their first questions was if we knew any black women or Asian men that would join the board because they already had “most of the rest of the rainbow.” Again, sounds like the right direction, but it’s a hollow effort if you’re building a rainbow, not examining merit, not building out an actual culture of inclusion. Try harder.

And that brings us to a weak spot in this practice that we’re already seeing come to fruition. Large companies, particularly in the tech sector, are putting in the real effort to be inclusive, but it’s backfiring.

Companies are inadvertently segmenting their populations for D&I purposes, and while it’s not some evil plot, it negates all D&I programs. We’re witnessing “diverse” companies allow their teams to be built out, diversity-free. Perhaps their development teams are only white men, their marketing teams are only white and Hispanic women, their support teams are primarily Indian Americans, their sales teams are mostly black team members.

It’s wild to walk into a large company and see this strange… segregation.

It is natural to surround yourself with people that look like you, and I have endless theories on this topic, but I’ll confess to you that most of my thoughts have been influenced by reading “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” by Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum back when I was in high school (required reading for anyone pondering the topic of race now or in the future). And many practices are well-meaning, but companies are sabotaging themselves with flawed methods.

A company might look great as a whole with various ages, races, religions, gender identities, ethnicities, sexuality, national origin, and so forth, but if they’re all segregated into their own teams based on how they were hired (or by whom), it’s literally the opposite of diversity or inclusion. Swing and a miss, y’all.

If you’re in a decision making role at your company, please bring this topic up as soon as possible, and examine how your own diversity efforts are going – are you sincere, or just looking for positive press?

Are you helping overall?

Or just making things worse?

Business News

Etsy is trying on second-hand fashion with purchase of Depop

(BUSINESS NEWS) With the younger generation moving away from fast fashion, it makes sense that Etsy has acquired one of the most popular Gen Z second hand apps.

Published

5 days ago

June 18, 2021

Taylor Leddin, Staff Writer

Woman looking at a rack of clothes in a second hand thrift store

Over the last few years, sustainable shopping has been a bullet point in the large-scale topic of the environment. Burning through clothing by disposing of old clothing and shopping from places specializing in “fast fashion” is causing damage to the earth.

According to the UN Environment Programme, the fashion industry is the second largest consumer of water and is responsible for 8-10% of global carbon emissions – more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.

As a result, shopping second hand has become more popular, as opposed to mass-produced fast fashion. Online platforms like Poshmark and ThredUp have grown tremendously over the last 3 to 5 years.

Now, Etsy is getting in on the resale action through its acquisition of Depop – a second hand fashion app that allows for the buying and selling of used fashion items.

Etsy paid $1.6 billion to acquire the UK-founded company, which has attracted a younger, Gen Z-based audience due to its social media use and messaging on shopping in an ethical and environmentally-friendly fashion.

Etsy CEO Josh Silverman said the company was “thrilled” to be adding what it believes to be the “resale home for Gen Z consumers” to Etsy. Depop has approximately 30 million registered users spanning 150 countries.

“Depop is a vibrant, two-sided marketplace with a passionate community, a highly-differentiated offering of unique items, and we believe significant potential to further scale,” Silverman said in a statement Wednesday.

“We see significant opportunities for shared expertise and growth synergies across what will now be a tremendous ‘house of brands’ portfolio of individually distinct, and very special, ecommerce brands.”

Due to the COVID-related e-commerce boom, shares of Etsy have more than doubled in the last year. The stock was up about 6.7% Wednesday afternoon.

According to data from Crunchbase, Depop had raised a total of $105.6 million from investors including General Atlantic, Creandum, Balderton Capital, Octopus Ventures and Klarna CEO and co-founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski, prior to their agreement with Etsy.

With fashion being so cyclical, it may be safe to say that second hand will never fully go out of style.

What are your thoughts on resale apps being the answer to fast fashion woes? Let us know in the comments.

Business News

As masks become optional, businesses find themselves stuck in the middle

(BUSINESS NEWS) One liquor store’s decision on mask policy following changes in local laws has become a recurring story throughout the nation.

Published

1 week ago

June 15, 2021

Jack Lloyd, Staff Writer

Woman in front of small business with two children, all wearing face masks

The American mask debate has comprised a whirlwind of clashing political ideologies, legal dilemmas, and personal agendas, with businesses placed directly in the middle of the storm. As the pandemic continues to run its course, a disparity in state mandates and legislation is only serving to increase the strain on these establishments.

With increased access to vaccines and several states rolling back their COVID guidance, the option to wear—or not wear—masks is becoming more discretionary, with businesses often having the final say in whether or not they expect masks to be used on their premises. One such business, a liquor store, posted a notice regarding their staff’s decision to continue wearing masks:

“In accordance with Johnson County mandates: Masks are now optional. Please do not berate, verbally assault, or otherwise attack the staff over their choice to continue wearing masks.”

The notice went on to say, “It is painfully depressing we have to make this request.”

That last line epitomizes many business owners’ stances. Places across the country have started allowing customers to discard their masks with proof of vaccination, but if employees choose to keep their masks for the time being, it’s difficult for clients not to view it as a kind of political statement—despite their decisions often being corroborated by local laws.

And, as long as businesses continue to operate within the confines of those laws, their decisions should be free from public scrutiny.

Sadly, that’s not what’s happening as evidenced by the notice posted by the liquor store in Johnson County. The same disparity that allows for some freedom despite COVID still being present in many Americans’ lives often leaves those who choose not to wear masks to conclude that those who do wear them are being judgmental or unnecessarily cautious.

Those judgements work in reverse as well, with businesses who allow their employees to work maskless facing criticism from masked clients. It seems that the freedom to choose—something for which people strongly advocated throughout the pandemic—continues to cause separation.

As businesses change or adapt their regulations to fit state mandates and employee (and customer) concerns, everyone would do well to remember that the decisions these establishments make are usually meant to affect some kind of positive work environment—not to welcome harassment and abuse.