Tell everyone who you are and what you do. I’m Ramon ray. I like to impact the lives of small business owners and I’m an entrepreneur that started five companies sold three companies, author, writer, event producer, speaker and the publisher of BWC Daily.com and Zone of Genius.Com, But I think the, “what I do” are two things, I work with large brands and mid-sized brands who market to small businesses. Companies like Zoho or Salesforce or AT&T or Verizon, Microsoft, Dell. Many brands like that and they’re looking for those who have stories to help them add value to small businesses. That’s one thing and I do that as an event host and speaker. Then the other thing I do is build media companies. So, I’ve started several media companies where I’m providing value producing content. That content is usually sponsored by a brand that would supply value added services to the community via premium content. That’s the two broad things that I do if that makes any sense at all. Tell us who are some people that inspired you to get to where you are today? That’s a dicey question. Well, there’s two people, I guess. I was fired from the United Nations some years ago and there was a gentleman there named Chidambaranathan, Mr. Nathan for short. I can’t say he inspired me to be who I am today as it were. He’s the one who would tell me Ramon slow down. I know you’re frustrated. Slow down, be careful before you write that e-mail, sleep on it. Things like that then my good friend Yacov Sarinsky. He and I are similar ages, but he was in the business world before me and just being able to be a bird on his shoulder and just watch him build his businesses, inspired me and I would be remiss if I didn’t, of course acknowledge my mother and my father and I’m a person of deep faith. So, God, I thank him for his ability. So, those are a few people who’ve inspired me. So, what made you want to be an author? Well, I didn’t have a PhD. I wasn’t very smart. I didn’t look very good, and I figured you know what, all the cool
people have books, so that’s it. So I wrote a PDF of about 30 pages, a long PDF and I was using that as a download on another company I started, Small Bids Technology.com and years ago I shopped that PDF to a number of publishers and one of them, AMAcom American Management Association, said, you know what, If you did this, I’m sure you could do a full book and they signed me on for my first published book by the American Management Association.
it’s not like a very thick book, but I must say to answer that question in a side way about writers block any time writer block comes you just take your time, breathe, do something else. Open Netflix or you can work with a freelance writer who can help with some of the details, but I don’t think I’ve suffered any writers block, but I did have a good editor and she helped me add life to it and gave me guidance.
Ok, Let’s get into your book. The celebrity CEO and the motivation behind this book. The bottom line of the book is I’m a firm believer that small business owners need to be well known in their marketplace. Celebrity doesn’t mean celebrity like Kardashian, Beyoncé or whoever the famous person of the day is, But that means you’re well known to your core target potential customer base. It could be in your local geography, in your small town. You’re well known, or it could be in your niche in your market. So that the purpose of the book is to give people kind of a road map to how I built my business, and how to become well known to large brands who reach small businesses.
So, what are some tips you can give a person aspiring to be a small business owner and they are having some challenges? Sure, what I would do, is go open National Geographic and watch a lion that is starving and hungry. They go hunting because they must eat. So that’s one inspiration of these small business games, in the beginning you’re hunting. You must be nimble. You must be persistent. The second thing I would do is go look at an eagle flying, and look at the freedom that eagle has. That’s the other side of success that entrepreneurship has, the freedom to dominate the industry you are in. To serve who you want, when you want, and how you want. On one hand it’s a struggle and on the other hand, once you get it running right, the sweet taste of success and freedom is beautiful.
Did you deal with any writer’s block when writing this book? Not really, I mean, writing comes easily to me and I work with a good team. So,
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