Kevin Price, Host of the Price of Business on Business Talk 1110 AM KTEK (on Bloomberg’s home in Houston) recently interviewed Josh Berger.
About the interviewee
Josh Berger is the founder and CEO of Interconnected Worldwide, which is a social network marketing company with a focus on education of social media for small businesses. After 10 years in the hospitality industry and almost 5 years of running Interconnected Worldwide, Josh has developed a keen understanding of how to implement a social media campaign on a small business budget. And in the ever-changing age of social media, Mr. Berger has created a training program to help small businesses reach their social media goals that increases revenue and brand awareness.
Tell me about your firm (number of employees, location, type of companies you work with, etc.).
Interconnected Worldwide is a small business itself. With Josh Berger as the sole operator, the company employs several virtual assistants that maintain the day-to-day operations. Josh Berger himself approves every aspect of the brand management for each client.
The majority of Interconnected Worldwide’s clientele are restaurants, venues and small businesses, such as kithen24 in Hollywood, CA, but they also represent brands like Radical Studios (Hercules / Oblivion).
Tell us about what you see as the challenge in reaching potential clients today.
I think finding time is always the biggest challenge for me. If most business owners are like me, they have a do-it-yourselves-mentality. This limits the growth of your company substantially. But without new clients, you can’t hire new staff, so you are caught in a catch22.
What mistake do businesses make when it comes to client development?
The biggest mistake is trying to sell to a client, rather then be helpful to a client. If you prove your value, then the sale will be natural.
Tell me how your approach is different.
I have discovered outsourcing. I have hired educated, English speaking, virtual assistants from the Philippines to work on bringing in new clients. Weather this be from data mining to SEO to lead generation, these workers have transformed my business. By having the VA’s set up the sale, they only need to bring me in to close the deal. This has freed up an amazing amount of time for me to work on growing my business, as apposed to just maintaining my business.
As a business owner it is hard to delegate. I have the mentality that “I can do it best,” or “It will take me the same amount of time to tell someone to do it, as it will for me to do it myself.” So I have created a training program for my VA’s, so they will work at the level I do. This also makes it so if I get a new employee or I have to fire someone, then the replacement can get the same training from the program I have already created. This has been a game changer for my business and has changed the mentality of my business from survive to thrive.
Contact information:
www.interconnectedworldwide.com
