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

8 years ago

January 2, 2014

The American Genius Staff

Prev9 of 11Next

Use your ← → (arrow) keys to browse

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

Up Next

Target gift cards improperly activated over the holiday

Don't Miss

How agents can stay busy in the slow season

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.

Reply
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.

Reply
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.

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
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.

Reply
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
Pingback: Liva Judic on #MindfulSocial this weekMindful Social Marketing

Business News

What small business owners can learn from Starbucks’ new D&I strategy

(BUSINESS) Diversity and inclusion have been at the forefront of Starbucks’ mission, but now they’re shifting strategy. What can we learn from it?

Published

2 days ago

January 21, 2022

Jessica Martin, Staff Writer

Hands of all different skin colors on green background representing Starbucks' D&I.

Starbucks was one of many companies that promised to focus on diversity and inclusion efforts after the death of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020. What sets Starbucks apart from other companies were its specific goals.

How It Started

They began with hiring targets and have now added goals in corporate and manufacturing roles. Starbucks’ plans and goals revolve around transparency for accountability. They released the annual numbers for 2021 as a way to help hold themselves accountable. The data they’ve released so far show that they’ve met nearly a third of their 2025 goals according to Retail Brew. Because of this information, we can see why they are choosing to move in the direction of manufacturing and corporate jobs. In 2021, POC’s fell to 12.5% of director-level employees from 14.3% in 2020 in manufacturing.

How It’s Going

Per Starbucks’ website stories and news, “[I]t will increase its annual spend with diverse suppliers to $1.5 billion by 2030. As part of this commitment, Starbucks will partner with other organizations to develop and grow supplier diversity excellence globally.” To put that into perspective, they spent nearly $800 million with diverse suppliers in 2021. With these moves, by 2030, it will increase by almost double.

As part of their accountability and progress, they plan to partner up with Arizona State University to give out free toolkits to entrepreneurs on fundamentals for running successful diverse-owned businesses. Another goal they’ve listed is to boost paid media representation by allocating 15 percent of the advertising budget to minority-owned and targeted media companies to reach diverse audiences.

At the heart of all this information on their goals and future plans, data transparency and accountability are what’s forcing them to look at the numbers to make specific goals. They are doing more than just throwing money at the problem, they are analyzing how they can do better and where the money will make a difference. Something that, as entrepreneurs, we should all do.

Business News

Peloton is back-pedaling: Reports of price increases, layoffs, and cost cuts

(BUSINESS) After a recording of layoffs leaks, ‘supply chain’ issues cause shipping increases, and they consult for cost-cutting, Peloton is doomed.

Published

3 days ago

January 20, 2022

Dawn Brotherton, Staff Writer

Man riding Peloton bike with instructor pointing encouragingly during workout.

Is Peloton in Trouble?

According to many reports, Peloton had success early in the pandemic when gyms shut down. Offering consumers a way to connect with a community for fitness along with varying financing options allowed the company to see growth when many other industries were being shuttered.

After two years, CNBC reports that the company is “being impacted by …supply chain challenges” and rising inflation costs. According to the report, customers will be paying an additional $250 for its bike and $350 for its tread for delivery and setup.

As demand has decreased, Peloton is also considering layoffs in their sales and marketing departments, overheard in a leaked audio call. The recording details executives discussing “Project Fuel” where they plan to cut 41% of the sales and marketing teams, as well as letting go of eCommerce employees and frontline workers at 15 retail stores.

Nasdaq reported that the stock fell 75% last year, after a year where it soared over 400%.

Peloton reviewing its overall structure

According to another report from CNBC, Peloton is working with McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm, to lower costs as revenue has dropped and the growth of new subscriptions has slowed since the pandemic. Last November, according to NPR, Peloton had “its worst day as a publicly-traded company.” It also anticipates greater losses in 2022 than originally predicted. It makes sense that the company would reexamine their strategy as the economy changes. They aren’t the only one that is raising prices amid supply chain issues.

It will be interesting to watch how Peloton fares

Peloton has a large community that pays a monthly fee for connected fitness. While growth has slowed, the company still has a strong share of consumers. Although it is facing more competition in the home fitness market and more gyms are reopening, as Peloton adjusts to the new normal, it should remain a viable company.

Business News

CEO is offering folks thousands to quit their jobs, with one catch

(BUSINESS) A CEO out of Arizona is challenging employment norms by offering a sort of “sign-off” bonus upfront, but this method has one fatal flaw.

Published

6 days ago

January 17, 2022

Jessica Martin, Staff Writer

Man counting cash in his hand representing the CEO offering money to employees who quit.

Chris Ronzio, the CEO of Trainual, a software company in Arizona that aims to systemize and scale your small business, is offering cold hard cash to quit your job in an unconventional ploy to bypass the effects of the Great Resignation.

Before you rush to turn in your notice and make some extra cash, you should know that this offer is dependent on being selected as a hirable candidate and making it through the hiring process for Trainual. This option is also offered to new hires after 2 weeks of employment.

This model of employment gives the employee the ability to fire the company and walk away with a little sum of money. The thought process of the CEO was outlined in an article by the Insider, saying it is a strategic move to retain top talent and maintain a strong company culture. While this is a unique approach…it has a glaring flaw. The offer is only good for the initial two-week period. However, it can take some time to recognize the shortcomings of any company when you begin employment. We can all recognize the long-term financial potential of reoccurring income and while $5,000 is not anything to shake your finger at, it will eventually be gone. I think we can all agree that constructive criticism can be difficult to swallow at times, however, if Trainual was truly invested in this model they would extend the offer at other key times during employment. What if this offer was again available at the 1-year mark? If the offer reappeared at a one-year review, the turnover may increase.

Per the Insider article, Ronzio was quoted as saying, “With today’s market, hiring teams have to move quickly to assess candidates and get them through the process to a competitive offer, so it’s impossible to be right 100% of the time,” Ronzio said. The CEO added, “The offer to quit allows the dust to settle from a speedy process and let the new team member throw a red flag if they’re feeling anything but excited.”

These statements detail another dimension to consider which is the employment hiring process and timeline. If top candidates are in such high demand that the process has to be sped up to secure a workforce, this monetary compensation can help to ensure the hiring decision. Although, when the offer was implemented in May of 2020, the offer was $2500, half of what it is now. Ronzio reasoned that they could stay while they looked for another job so they increased the amount to compensate for those with a higher salary range.

Let me preface this by saying that yes, accountability should exist, but I would be interested to know the turnover rate for the hiring team. The cost to the company from this unique approach adds extra weight for those making the decisions on who to hire. The stress the hiring team faces has to be factored into the candidate decisions. How many times can the hiring team get it wrong before they’re let go? While the pressure to hire the right candidate should always factor in, one has to wonder about the effects of this model.