Welcome to Business Innovators Magazine…Please introduce yourself and a brief thumbnail sketch of your background.
SJJ: Hello, my name is Stephen J. Joyce, I consider myself a broad-spectrum marketing coach and consultant. A broad-spectrum antibiotic will cure a wide variety of illnesses – my consulting company can ‘cure’ a wide variety of business and marketing problems or challenges. My background includes an Amazon best-seller (Teaching an Anthill to Fetch: Developing Collaborative Intelligence @ Work’ ) an international speaking career and over ten years in online marketing with various start-ups.
Right now I am working on an entrepreneur marketing company ListLaunchFunnel™. The company provides support for the three most important marketing processes that will affect new venture success. Branding isn’t one of them by the way. As a branding expert, I consider building a great brand as a prerequisite to any business success. Branding is a continuous process that is threaded in with the three essential marketing activities that my company focuses upon.
The three activities are:
– Building and growing a responsive list,
– Running product launches (yes just about everyone should be running them)
– Building, testing and tweaking kick-ass sales funnels.
They all support each other in a multitude of ways and used correctly become a ‘trifecta’ that can catapult sales performance way beyond what either of them can achieve on their own.
BI: What would you say is the area in business that you are most passionate about and why?
SJJ: One of my greatest pleasures in life is helping other entrepreneurs achieve success. Thomas Merton once said that “life is a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give others.” Coaching and consulting successful business owners to reach beyond the ordinary is the motivation behind my own company. For us to be ‘successful’ our clients have to be delighted.
I wanted to create a company that could meet a business where it was and take it where it wanted to go, no matter where it is now. Limitations do exist, gravity, immutable laws like that, but in business, the majority of limitations exist only in our imagination. I suppose this is why Einstein said imagination was more important than knowledge. This is why Business Marketing Coaches (and coaching companies that specialize in this arena) are going to be the difference-makers for any entrepreneur wishing to thrive amidst the maelstrom of change that exists today.
BI: How are you different than your competitors?
SJJ: ListLaunchFunnel™ has a strong track record of creating highly successful marketing campaigns. Pushing an unknown author to number eleven on Amazon.com, among several Harry Potter titles, with a business book, is no mean feat. In fact to achieve that, it requires a deep working knowledge of a wide variety of both online and offline marketing processes. Knowing how to use the trifecta of list-building, product launch and effective sales funnels is probably the chief differentiator that our clients benefit from.
BI: Please tell me about any recent business accomplishments that you are most proud of and why?
SJJ: Recently my company created an entirely new brand for a Canadian company specializing in team effectiveness. AboutBeingConnected.com essentially was built from scratch. The client (and their clients) have been delighted with the results. The project involved going back to the business model, creating a new value proposition and establishing a sales funnel that enables the company to capture highly targeted subscribers, ensuring they attract the ‘right kind of client.’
BI: What Leadership qualities in Leaders do you most admire and why?
SJJ: Authenticity is very high on my list. Of all the high points in my professional career, marketing authentic people, products, and services that make a positive difference in the world has always been the most enjoyable. What I mean to say is that company leaders who are authentic are easy to work with and consequently comparatively easy to bring success towards.
Persistence is another wonderful quality. I love the Japanese proverb ‘fall down eight times, get up nine – success’. It has a great deal of personal relevance for myself as I have had my fair share of challenges. Not only in business but when I was in my mid-thirties, I was almost killed in a road accident and was told I would never walk properly again. Well, the doctors were wrong, but only because I when I fell down, I got up again and persevered to reach almost complete health again.
BI: What has been a key element of your success?
SJJ: I have a great deal of curiosity. This is one of the key element of my success, in my professional and personal life. Curiosity causes us to ask questions and as we get better at asking ‘good questions’ we learn more and more about how the world really works. Curiosity also causes us to want to know more about others – rather than spending all our time thinking and talking about ourselves. The result of that is that we build deeper, more intelligent and productive relationships with others. This, in turn, enables us to be more successful in all walks of life.
