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

6 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:

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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.

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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

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S. Anthony Iannarino

January 3, 2014 at 10:39 am

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

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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.

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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

GM’s new $3B commitment to Michigan means thousands of new jobs

(BUSINESS NEWS) GM is stepping up their electric vehicles investment with new factories and cars in the making. They are looking to the future and want to help build it.

Published

4 hours ago

January 29, 2020

Allison Yano, Staff Writer

On Monday, General Motors announced its $2.2 billion investment into its assembly plant located in Detroit-Hamtramck for the purpose of producing fully-electric SUVs and trucks. Additionally, the investment will go towards G.M.’s subsidiary, Cruise, for the development of a self-driving vehicle. Another invested $800 million will be used towards these future product launches.

The Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant will the be first fully dedicated to electric vehicle production under G.M., creating over 2,200 job opportunities.

The following day, Cruise backed up its parent company by unveiling Origin, an electric driverless, ridesharing vehicle. Deemed “production ready”, Origin is designed similarly to a train car complete with sliding doors and seats facing each other. Cruise CEO Dan Ammann stressed the importance of low cost and the vehicle’s anticipated operation capacity of 1 million miles. These kinds of production stats show the company’s serious intention to change transportation in our cities.

G.M.’s investment comes on the heels of earlier December promises to fund development for mass production battery cells for electric vehicles with South Korean partner, LG Chem. That venture was also granted $2.3 billion by both companies and its own assembly plant to be constructed near Lordstown, Ohio later this year. 1,100 new jobs are expected to come out of the investment.

One of the largest obstacles to electric vehicle manufacturing is the cost of battery packs, deterring many mainstream consumers from electric vehicles. G.M.’s long-term plan is meeting this challenge head-on by fully creating electric vehicles to compete with cost of their internal combustion counterparts.

In a December press conference, G.M.’s chief executive, Mary T. Barra, acknowledged the company’s huge push into electric vehicle development by aiming to sell one million vehicles worldwide by 2026. The reason? “G.M. believes in the science of global warming,” she said. Perhaps another equally lucrative reason is the future of transportation is shifting towards electric models, and G.M. intends to carve out its own territory in this developing market.

Business News

How SmileDirectClub uses NDAs to silence bad reviews

(BUSINESS NEWS) SmileDirectClub wants to tell you, in the land of freedom of expression, how to talk about their service even if a dentist has to fix their mistakes.

Published

2 days ago

January 27, 2020

Brittany Vance, Staff Writer

Bad reviews can hurt any business, which is why many companies will go out of their way to ensure a customer is pleased. A restaurant might offer to replace a bad meal free of charge, for instance. A business might send customers additional free products to make up for any mistakes. SmileDirectClub, on the other hand, has taken a different approach to handling bad reviews: non-disclosure agreements.

SmileDirectClub is an aligners company that positions itself as a cheaper alternative to braces. It’s also an online company. All of this work is done remotely, with customers getting their aligners mailed to them. So, cheap and convenient. What’s not to love?

Well, turns out there might be trouble in paradise. According to an article by the New York Times, “SmileDirectClub has been the subject of more than 1,670 Better Business Bureau complaints since 2014.” In comparison, Invisalign, SmileDirectClub’s competitors, has only had five complaints over the last twenty years.

Many report that SmileDirectClub’s aligners don’t work and some have even claimed the aligners made things worse. Yeah, that’s right. Some people paid for SmileDirectClub just to turn around and have to pay an actual orthodontist just to get back to normal.

So, naturally, SmileDirectClub is having some customers sign NDAs, which according to the New York Times includes the following: “[customer] will not make, publish, or communicate any statements or opinions that would disparage, create a negative impression of, or in any way be harmful to the business or business reputation of SDC or its affiliates or their respective employees, officers, directors, products, or services.”

Non-disclosure agreements are just one way that big companies will try to silence bad reviews. Another method is to file a lawsuit for copyright infringement. GoPro attempted this method a few years ago. Companies can also claim that bad reviews are slander written in bad faith, which is a method many organizations have abused.

It’s possible for these sorts of lawsuits can backfire, but often, the time and money it takes for an average person to take on a big company aren’t worth it. People opt to simply take down their bad reviews instead.

For a country that values freedom of speech and a robust capitalist market, silencing critics (many of whom have legitimate things to say!) doesn’t seem in line with our beliefs. Not to mention, from a more practical standpoint, I’d sure like to know the potential risks or downsides of a product.

Especially when said product is supposed to replace dental work.

Business News

Asking the wrong questions can ruin your job opportunity

(BUSINESS NEWS) An HR expert discusses the best (and worst) questions she’s experienced during candidate interviews. it’s best to learn from others mistakes.

Published

1 week ago

January 22, 2020

Taylor Leddin, Staff Writer

When talking to hiring managers outside of an interview setting, I always find myself asking about their horror stories as they’re usually good for a laugh (and a crash course in what not to do in an interview). A good friend of mine has worked in HR for the last decade and has sat in on her fair share of interviews, so naturally I asked her what some of her most notable experiences were with candidates – the good and the bad, in her own words…

“Let’s see, I think the worst questions I’ve ever had are typically related to benefits or vacation as it demonstrates that their priorities are not focused on the actual job they will be performing. I’ve had candidates ask how much vacation time they’ll receive during an initial phone screen (as their only question!). I’ve also had them ask about benefits and make comparisons to me over the phone about how our benefits compare to their current employer.

I once had a candidate ask me about the age demographics of our office, which was very uncomfortable and inappropriate! They were trying to determine if the attorneys at our law firm were older than the ones they were currently supporting. It was quite strange!

I also once had a candidate ask me about the work environment, which was fine, but they then launched into a story about how they are in a terrible environment and are planning on suing their company. While I understand that candidates may have faced challenges in their previous roles or worked for companies that had toxic working environments, it is important that you do not disparage them.

In all honesty, the worst is when they do not have any questions at all. In my opinion, it shows that they are not really invested in the position or have not put enough thought into their decision to change jobs. Moving to a new company is not a decision that should be made lightly and it’s important for me as an employer to make sure I am hiring employees who are genuinely interesting in the work they will be doing.

The best questions that I’ve been asked typically demonstrate that they’re interested in the position and have a strong understanding of the work they would be doing if they were hired. My personal favorite question that I’ve been asked is if there are any hesitations or concerns that I may have based on the information they’ve provided that they can address on the spot. To me, this demonstrates that they care about the impression that they’ve made. I’ve asked this question in interviews and been able to clarify information that I did not properly explain when answering a question. It was really important to me that I was able to correct the misinformation as it may have stopped me from moving forward in the process!

Also, questions that demonstrate their knowledge base about the role in which they’re applying for is always a good sign. I particularly like when candidates reference items that I’ve touched on and weave them into a question.

A few other good questions:
• Asking about what it takes to succeed in the position
• Asking about what areas or issues may need to be addressed when first joining the company
• Asking about challenges that may be faced if you were to be hired
• Asking the employer what they enjoy most about the company
• I am also self-centered, so I always like when candidates ask about my background and how my current company compares to previous employers that I’ve worked for. Bonus points if they’ve actually looked me up on LinkedIn and reference specifics :)”

Think about the best and worst experiences you’ve had during an interview – and talk to others about the same topic – and see how that can help you with future interviews.