You’ve organized your newest book Making Your Creative Mark around nine keys. Can you highlight one or two of them for us?

I start with the “mind key” because I believe that getting a grip on our thoughts and doing a better job of thinking thoughts that actually serve us are supremely important skills to master. Most people do a poor job of “minding their mind” and choosing to think in ways that serve them. It is a completely common practice for people to present themselves with thoughts that amount to self-sabotage and to refuse to dispute those thoughts once they arise. If people did a better job of “minding their mind” by noticing what they were thinking and by making an effort to replace defensive and unproductive thoughts with less defensive and more productive thoughts, they would live in less pain and they would give themselves a much better chance of living the life they dream of living. This is doubly true for artists who can doubt their talent, take criticism too seriously, find a hundred ways to avoid the hard working of creating, and more. There’s really nothing more important than getting a grip on your own thoughts!

Why do you think someone would want to gamble everything on a life in the arts when it’s so hard to make it as an artist?

Human beings crave the psychological experience of meaning. We want that almost more than we want anything else. There are maybe a score of ways that human beings regularly generate that psychological experience: through service, through relationships, by excelling, by seizing new experiences – and by creating. Creating is one of our prime meaning opportunities and for many people the most important. Therefore folks who decide to devote themselves to an art discipline aren’t making some sort of calculation about risk versus reward. What they are doing is honoring their need to make their own meaning. If you look at a life in the arts as a smart career choice it doesn’t make that much sense; if you look at it as a tremendous meaning opportunity, it makes perfect sense.

You present what you call “the stress key.” What are some of your top tips for reducing the stress that a life in the arts produces?

Life produces stress, the artistic personality produces additional stress, creating produces even more stress, and living the artist’s life is the topper! An artist must learn how to deal with all of these stressors—and how to deal with them effectively. There are many tactics an artist can try—the key is actually trying some! You might try “writing your stress away.” Research reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that writing about stressful situations and experiences can reduce your stress levels – and can actually lead to improvements in immune functioning, fewer visits to the doctor, and an increased sense of well-being. You can reframe a given demand as an opportunity, turning your “stressful” upcoming gallery show into a golden opportunity. You can have a fruitful conversation with yourself and answer the following four questions: 1. What are my current stressors? 2. What unhealthy strategies am I currently employing to deal with these stressors? 3. What healthy strategies am I currently employing to deal with these stressors? 4. What new stress management strategies would I like to learn? An artist needs to honor the reality of stress and make plans for dealing with it!

Is there one habit or practice that really makes a difference between getting your creative work done and not getting it done?

Yes. The most important practice an artist can institute is a morning creativity practice where she carves out some time bright and early every day, five, six or seven days a week, to work on her novel, practice her instrument, or get right to her painting studio. There are three important reasons to institute a morning creativity practice. The first reason is the most obvious one—you’ll be getting a lot of creative work done! Even if only a percentage of what you do pleases you, by virtue of working regularly you’ll start to create a body of work. That’ll feel good! A second reason is that you get to make use of your “sleep thinking”—you get to make use of whatever your brain has been thinking about all night. Create first thing and capture those thoughts that have been percolating all night! The third reason is that, by creating first thing, you’ll have the experience of making some meaning on that day and the rest of the day can pass in a half-meaningless way and you won’t get depressed! Getting right to your creative work first thing each day provides you with a daily shot of meaningfulness. That’s a lot of goodness to get from one practice.

I’d like you to chat a bit about what you call the “freedom key.” What sort of freedom are you talking about?

Many different sorts—let’s look at just one, the freedom not be perfect; or, to put it slightly differently, the freedom to make big mistakes and messes. Not so long ago I got an email from a painter in Rhode Island. She wrote, “I’m a perfectionist and I want my artwork to be perfect. Sometimes this prevents me from getting started on a new project or from finishing the one I’m currently working on. I think to myself: If it’s not going to be the best, why bother to do it? How do I move past these feelings?” One way to get out of this trap is to move from a purely intellectual understanding that messes are part of the creative process to a genuine visceral understanding of that truth. You need to feel that freedom in your body. As an intellectual matter, every artist knows that some percentage of her work will prove less than stellar, especially if she is taking risks with subject matter or technique. But accepting that obvious truth on a feeling level eludes far too many creative and would-be creative people. They want to “perfect” things in their head before turning to the canvas or the computer screen and a result they stay in their head and never get started. You have to feel free to show up and make a big mess—only then will good things start happening!

Another key that interested me is what you call the “relationship key.” What sorts of relationships did you have in mind and what can an artist do to improve his relationship skills?

All sorts of relationships! And relationships in the arts are frequently very complicated. You may be very friendly with a fellow painter and also quite envious of her. You may actively dislike a gallery owner or a collector but decide that he is too valuable to cast aside, maybe because he is your only advocate or your only customer. You may respect your editor’s opinions but despise the rudeness with which she delivers them. There may be no such thing as a genuinely straightforward relationship anywhere in life but relationships in the arts are that much more complicated and shadowy. The main improvement an artist can make is to actually think about the matter! You can decide how you want to be in relationships but only if you actively decide. You get to decide if you want to be honest and straightforward even if others aren’t, if you want to be polite and diplomatic even if others aren’t, if you want to be quiet and calm even if others are stirring the pot and making dramas. It may not prove easy to be the person you want to be at all times and in all situations, especially since the marketplace has a way of throwing us off our game, but you can nevertheless hold the intention to try your darnedest to be the “you” you would most like to be. This takes thought and preparation!

MAKING YOUR CREATIVE MARK by Eric Maisel

April 15, 2013 • Creativity • 240 pages • Trade Paperback

Price: $15.95 • ISBN 978-1-60868-162-4

The most recent studies indicate that nearly 20 percent of women using the Internet are on Pinterest, 72 percent of Pinterest users are female, and 66 percent of those are age 35 or older, and the average amount of time visitors spend surfing the Pinterest site is an hour.

Karen Leland, author of the new book “Entrepreneur Magazine’s Ultimate Guide to Pinterest for Business,” has created a comprehensive and easy-to-use guide to hitting the road running and quickly making Pinterest into a valuable source of prospects, promotion and profits.

“Great business brands are about telling compelling, congruent stories, and Pinterest is at its core about storytelling in pictures,” says Leland. “Pinterest has tapped into this visceral lover of visuals, and no small business, entrepreneur or corporation can afford to miss the boat on bringing what they offer beyond words and into images.”

Taken from her new book “The Ultimate Guide to Pinterest for Business,” Leland offers these top tactics for achieving maximum performance in business on Pinterest.

1. Strategize First and Pin Second: Consider your objectives before you pin. Are you trying to: drive traffic to your website, boost your brand awareness, promote new products or services, educate your customer base, enhance customer understanding and enthusiasm, increase prospects and sales or improve customer service? Depending on your strategy, you will want to pick the images that best support your objective.

2. Manage and Balance Your Percentages: Create inviting boards by making 40 percent of your pins motivational and inspiring, 40 percent instructional and educational, and only 20 percent about your brand — including products, services, sales items, profiles, specials and contests.

3. Make Your Website Pin Friendly: Install the Pin It Button on your website and give every page and blog post a featured image that can be pinned automatically. In addition, put a social media “Follow me on Pinterest” button on your home page.

4. Share With, Engage and Promote Others: Build your brand by engaging with others through re-pinning, commenting on and liking other pins. You can also tag @ another pinner you are following in one of your pin descriptions. Engaging with others in these ways generates flow back to your Pinterest.

5. Establish Your Expertise: Craft keyword-rich pin and board titles and descriptions to boost your Google ranking and be found for your expertise. Use hashtags # to highlight key words and phrases your customers search for. In addition, emphasize pins with a focus on problems and solutions you specialize in.

6. Integrate Pinterest With Your Other Social Media: Connect with your other social media by creating a Pinterest tab on Facebook, tweeting your pins, and embedding pins in your blog posts.

7. Organize Your Pinboard: Research shows that pins placed front and center receive the highest percentage of viewers and capture the most attention. So place your most important pins near the middle of the top or second row of the board.

8. Give Away Value-Added Information: According to Pinerly, pins that have a call to action see an 80 percent increase in engagement. Post pins that focus on free reports, e-books, videos and podcasts you offer. Be sure to add a live link to each of those pins’ descriptions.

9. Leverage the Power of Multimedia: Make your Pinboards more interactive by sharing videos, webinars, teleclasses, screencasts and podcasts. Good multimedia pins include: presentations, expert tutorials, product demos, behind-the-scenes tours and excerpts from live recorded interviews, courses and trainings.

10. Analyze Your Metrics: Sign up for access to Pinterest Web Analytics via your settings page and pay attention to which of your pins generate the greatest response and interest. The info will help you see which of your pinning efforts are paying off and shape your future strategy.

About the Author

Karen Leland is the best-selling author of nine business books and the President of Sterling Marketing Group, where she works with entrepreneurs, small businesses and Fortune 500 companies around the globe on building stronger personal and business brands. Her clients have included AT&T, American Express, Marriott Hotels, Apple Computer and Johnson & Johnson, among others.

She is a regular speaker for business groups and has spoken for the Young Presidents’ Organization, American Management Association and Direct Marketing Association, among others. Karen is a frequent guest of the media and has been interviewed on “The Today Show,” CNN, CNBC and “Oprah.”

She writes a regular branding and marketing column for Entrepreneur.com and has been published in Woman’s Day, Self, The Los Angeles Times and others. Her latest book is “Entrepreneur Magazine’s Ultimate Guide to Pinterest for Business.”

Niche marketing is one of the most effective ways to market products or services. When it comes to niche marketing, there are tactics and techniques that work better than others. A niche tends to have a smaller audience that’s better connected than huge markets that everyone in your industry is targeting. A niche also tends to have access to less information, so your ability to provide content and information makes what you have to say much more valuable. Here are three proven tactics for bringing traffic to a website in a niche market.

Here are three proven tactics for bringing traffic to a website in a small market.

Ask Readers to Promote for You

In small niches, people are much more likely to know other people who share similar interests. People interested in fishing know others who are interested in fishing. People interested in smoothie recipes know other people who like smoothies, and so on.

One powerful tactic, then, is to ask your audience to promote your product or service for you. If you have a great product or service that really helps people, existing customers tend to be more than willing to share what they know with others.

Provide your audience with fast and simple instructions on how to promote your business. You can even write the emails, Twitter and Facebook updates, and blog posts for them. Distribute them to your audience and ask them to share this information with their friends, followers and email lists.

You can even set up an incentive program, also known as an affiliate program. For each sale one of your audience members or affiliates make, you pay them a commission on the sale. Some systems are simple to set up, and are better for one-sale affiliates than others.

For example, ClickBank requires a complete registration process and four sales from different payment sources before an affiliate can receive payment, which isn’t optimal for a non-marketing audience. On the other hand, systems that use PayPal to split affiliate commissions can be perfect for splitting commissions with a non-marketing audience.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is another effective way to market to niche audiences. A blog tends to cover one topic or subject. The readers of the blog, therefore, have an interest in the topic. Find bloggers that write on topics that relate to your niche.

Approach them with a list of potential topics you can write about to see if they are interested in publishing your article on their blog. Some bloggers might be interested in covering your business in article that they write for their own blog. Either way, you can reach your target audience by this type of coverage on a blog.

Article Marketing and SEO

Article marketing is also highly effective in niche marketing. You can use keywords in the articles you write to provide the information your niche is thirsting to receive. Using low-competition keywords that aren’t actively being targeted by other marketers gives you an advantage over your competition in reaching your target audience. Take advantage of this edge. It’s a way to drive targeted traffic to any niche.

Marketing to a niche is a highly effective way to promote products and services. Using these three techniques, you can build a profitable business.

Uncover at least three ways the Internet opens opportunities for businesses to find the right article writer for their needs.

Copify

Copify is one place to start. It is a matchmaking service, pairing business owners and those in need of articles with the writers that can compose the content. Copify screens its writers to ensure their professionalism and writing abilities. You can post your project details, including how much you are looking to pay for the article you need.

Talented writers from across the country review projects on a constant basis. Projects are typically claimed by a writer within 24 hours. You can receive your article within 24 hours of the claim.

Search by Specialty

You can also open up your favorite search engine. Conduct a search for a writer that specializes in your industry or in the article topic. While there are numerous article writers that pop up in a generic search, a search by specialty narrows down your options drastically. Conducting a search by specialty tends to come into play when your industry is highly technical or requires more knowledge of the industry than the research a traditional article writer can provide.

Gather Referrals

A third option for finding article writers is to ask your colleagues and fellow business owners. They can send you in the right direction by providing referrals to writers they currently use or have used in the past. Obtaining referrals is one way to find reputable writers because people you know can vouch for their experience in working with one or more writers.

People you know are likely to refer quality writers to you. The issue is that your fellow business owners and people you know might not have article writers in their contacts’ list. If this is the case, then you have to rely on another method for tracking down a writer for your needs.

When it comes to content, it is still king in helping to promote your business—especially online. Fortunately, you have options when it comes to finding the article writers to produce the content you need.

How do you learn the lingo of a new market? How do you make sure you’re using the language that a market uses? Here are a few tips.

Read Blogs and Forums

Anytime you’re thinking of jumping into a market, start by reading the message boards, forums and blogs where audience members congregate. These are the places where old and new users discuss their ideas, problems and solutions. This is as close as can get to hearing a casual in-person discussion in an online setting.

Unlike high-powered websites that have to filter their language carefully, on forums and blogs you get the chance to really pick up the slang of a market. Read these sites until you start to get a sense of how people talk. Anytime a word or acronym comes up that you don’t recognize, look it up.

Pay Attention

There are two primary areas of focus. First, pay attention to how people express their problems. Second, observe how consumers measure their delight or dismay with the product or service. For example, in Internet marketing, the key phrases to pay attention to may include SERPs, unique visitors, CTR, backlinks, PR, and opt-in rate.

To an outsider, these words and acronyms can mean nothing. If an outsider wants to break into a niche, however, they have to “speak marketing.” Figure out how a market talks about their problems. Figure out how they measure their success. Learn to use those words eloquently and you can speak to the heart of your customer.

Read Up on Your Competition

Chances are your winning competitors already have sales letters and marketing material that are well written and crafted to the language of the market. Read all of the marketing collateral you can get. Even if you’ve already read the blogs and forums, you can pick up words and language that works for selling to that market.

What parts of the copy get you the most excited? What are the phrases, stories, emotions that your competitor is using? Take the best parts and adapt them to your own marketing copy. Learning from proven winners can take a lot of work out of the equation.

In short, read the forums and the blogs. Pay special attention to problem words and measure words. Read your competitor’s information. Take the best parts and adapt them to your own marketing messages.

Why is niche marketing such a great choice for someone who’s just starting out? Here are some of the primary reasons.

Low Competition Means Faster Profits

Who wants to wait months to begin to make money? Getting cash flow fast is crucial for any business, but especially so for someone just getting started online.

A lot of people don’t really believe they can make money online until they start to see the cash flow begin. Seeing that cash flow roll in for the first time breaks the disbelief. That first check is often invigorating and very inspirational. It causes people to want to work harder, now that they know it’s real.

Going into a small niche allows you to start making money right away. You’re not competing against million-dollar marketers who’ve spent years establishing their site, their brand and their rankings.

Instead, you’re going in with guns blazing into a market where the top sites probably don’t often face serious competition. In other words, you’re going for the low-hanging fruit.

A Higher Work-to-Profit Ratio

In a niche market, your work translates to profits faster. But it’ll also probably be translated into more profits. Because you have fewer people to compete with, your efforts can quickly get you through barriers that would take a lot longer to break through in a bigger market.

In a bigger market, you can spend hundreds of hours building backlinks and working on your SEO without breaking onto the first page of search engines.

In a niche market, you can put in the same effort and quickly get into the first, second or third place positions for your main keyword. You can instantly start gaining traffic and making money, which you can put back into your business to make even more money.

Simple Techniques Work

With niche marketing, you don’t need complex techniques. You don’t have to understand the ins and outs of AdWords. You don’t need complex tracking mechanisms or custom-built shopping carts.

Niche marketing allows you to learn very basic marketing tactics, put them into action and see immediate results.

In larger markets, you often do need to learn advanced tactics to compete. After all, if you’re competing against very sophisticated marketers, you need very sophisticated tactics yourself.

Don’t try to take on established or well-funded sites until you’ve built at least one or two successful sites yourself. Niche marketing allows you to test out both simple and advanced marketing tactics in easier fields before you try out more difficult markets.

In short, niche marketing is easier, faster and often more profitable. It’s one of the simplest ways to make a good income online, quickly.

The key to effective real estate marketing is targeting the right clients.

Real estate agents tend to think the service they offer is so great that anyone and everyone can use it. While this thought-process may be true to some extent, it is impossible to effectively market your services to everyone. Instead, narrow down your focus to those who are most likely to buy from you. When you narrow your focus, you can create marketing copy and content that speaks directly to them. Fortunately, there are some top ways to identify who your ideal clients are.

Evaluate What You Offer

Look at the real estate services you offer from the point of view of your clients. What characteristics do the top 10% of your customers share? Try to determine:

• Professions
• Gender
• Age groups or ranges

Find out as much detail as possible on these individuals. You want to get to the point where you can write a client profile on the types of people who are already using or most likely to use your services. If you have an existing client base, this exercise is much easier because you can look at existing data on past and present clients. If you are just starting out in real estate, you can make some assumptions to get through this exercise. You can also use other resources to gather the data you need.

Follow Your Competitors

Whether you have an existing base of clients or not, take a good hard look at what your competition is doing. What kind of clients are they serving? Check out their marketing materials. Try to figure out what groups of people they are talking to and trying to attract. You can identify your own potential client groups by mimicking the groups your competitors are attracting. On the other hand, you can even discover groups that are not being marketed to and you can promote your services to this untapped group.

Gather Data

Demographic and geographic data can be a real estate agent’s best friend. Demographics include information such as:

• Age
• Interests
• Income
• Professions

Geographic data is even more of a real estate agent’s best friend. This data helps you pinpoint where your clients live, work and play, so you know where to find them with your marketing materials.

Two primary sources for gathering demographic and geographic data are:

• U.S. Census Bureau
• Small Business Administration (SBA)

You can also gather and analyze your own client data. Track response rates to real estate marketing campaigns. Email marketing programs allow you to track individual emails that go out as part of your campaign.

Collect data such as:

• Who opens your emails
• What links they click on
• Who becomes a client

In this case, you are producing your own marketing research data. You can use this data to write marketing messages and campaigns, or tweak existing ones, for effectiveness.

Identifying your target markets narrows down the focus of your marketing messages and content. It enables you to focus on writing marketing copy that speaks and influences the audience you are reaching out to, so you can increase your business.

While you can segment and sub-segment your clients as you see fit, and in a way that works for your business, the four primary ways to create client segmentation is by:

• Demographics
• Behavior
• Location
• Lifestyle

Once you slide your clients into the categories where they fall, it is much easier to create marketing messages for each group.

Demographic

Demographic information about your clients includes information such as their age, ethnicity, race, household income, gender, education level or profession. If you are a real estate agent that specializes in luxury homebuyers, then your clients fall into a demographic segment. Within the household income segment, you can still identify sub-segments. These sub-segments may be drilled down to other demographic categories such as luxury homebuyers that are single or couples versus those that have children, or can even be separated by gender.

Behavior

Clients can also be defined by their buying habits or behaviors. You may separate your clients by how active they are in seeking a home. You can define a frequent shopper as one that looks at homes almost as soon as you send one that fits their needs. A mid-range client can be someone who looks at homes occasionally, but not on a consistent basis. An infrequent shopper only looked at one or so homes or only bought a home from you and then never worked with you again.

Segmenting your clients allows you to use marketing messages that keep the frequent shoppers engaged with messages meant for them, while trying to reengage those buyers who are not as tightly connected with you. Client segmentation is so important when it comes to your marketing messages because each group requires you to take a completely different approach, but with the same goal in mind, which is to get them to act.

Location

Another client segment to consider is location. In real estate, this is your primary client segment because you generally work within a region or area of the state where you are licensed. You can even drill your location segments down into specific neighborhoods. Regional differences can occur with the types of homes clients buy, so it can change the marketing approach and messaging you use.

Lifestyles

A final major client segment is the lifestyles category, which speaks to the values and attitudes of the clients. Religion, extracurricular activities and household makeup can all be a part of a lifestyle, attitude or values category. If you work primarily with families, your marketing message is going to be different than if you are targeting senior couples that do not have children in the home any more. The housing needs for these two groups tend to be completely different from one another.

So, take a step back and look at what your clients have in common with each other. Also, take a look at any sub-categories that may appear within your group of customers. This segmentation allows you to better alter your marketing messages to really mean something to the group you are targeting. In the end, it makes the difference as to whether or not your marketing message moves them into action.

Real estate marketing can seem like a hurdle that you have to get over in order to take your business to the next level. It’s a hurdle that becomes much easier to tackle when you uncover the number one secret to real estate marketing. The big secret is that you have to identify who your ideal clients are before you can start marketing your business to them.

Pick Your Niche

Effective real estate marketing does not entirely rely on deeming that everyone has a need for your service. In actuality, an effective real estate marketing strategy requires you to narrow down your option to a specific target market. Your target market is the clients that are most likely to buy homes from you.

Some of the most popular niches or client segments in real estate marketing are:

Service to Buy

Identify your ideal clients by viewing the service you offer through your clients’ eyes. Recognize the class, category and type of person or group that uses your area of expertise in real estate. This is easier if you already have a present client base because you can define what their buying habits are. You can even gather additional information from your current clients as to why they choose to work with you as a real estate agent. You may find the information useful in prospecting your next client.

Study the Competitors

Real estate is one of the most competitive professions, so you have to get an edge over your competition. It doesn’t mean you can’t learn from your competitors in the process. Study how your competitors are attracting their clients. Take note of the information they share on their website. Take a look at the design of their brochures, self-mailers, postcards, print ads, home descriptions and other marketing materials. The clients they have help you to identify who your clients are too. It can even be that the client group they don’t cater to is a market opportunity for you to supply the untapped group with the real estate service they need.

Apply Available Information

Once you identify one or more niche areas, it’s time to really get to know your clients. In addition to knowing they are first time homebuyers, for example, you also need to know their age, interests, income level, professions, and hobbies. Knowing these details helps you to create a comprehensive client profile. Once you know precisely who your clients are, then you can write your marketing materials where your choice of topics and words resonant with the ideal clients you have in mind.

If you have existing clients that are part of your niche, you can even turn to them to generate client data. Track the names of the people who open your emails and e-newsletters. Keep a record of the links they click on as they read through your emails and who contacts you and ends up becoming a client. Analyze these marketing research statistics you have compiled to come up with a more effective marketing communications campaign. You can use this data to improve your existing marketing campaigns or to create more effective future marketing messages.

Clients who have a need for your service are the audience that is likely to listen to what you have to say. You need not convince them to buy your service because the need already exists.

“With some merit, analysts are always reviewing contingencies that may change investments by businesses; most recently, the ‘fiscal cliff.’ But there are many ways to invest in your own business regardless of the economic climate,” says Hurn, author of “The Entrepreneur’s Secret to Creating Wealth: How the Smartest Business Owners Build Their Fortunes” (www.TheEntrepreneursSecretBook.com).

Hurn reviews the resolutions business owners and entrepreneurs should consider to make 2013 the most positively transformative year:

• Consider buying: After a business has survived three to six years and is stable, commercial property ownership is a natural next step with benefits that new entrepreneurs often overlook, says Hurn. Ownership is a path to more stability and long-term wealth, and the government program administered by the Small Business Administration – SBA 504 – offers long-term financing at below-market fixed rates.

• Self-investment: Often in business, one measure of strength reflects your strength of character, so invest in yourself! Identify business books that focus on areas you need to develop or lessons shared by successful business people you admire. Commit to reading at least one per month.

• Company culture: Your company’s culture has a lot to do with your success. Come up with three ideas that will improve your company’s culture and take action on them. Improved health, the most universal resolution, can have a profoundly positive impact on the workplace, from boosting morale to increasing productivity.

• Refresh/jumpstart marketing: Identify three new marketing initiatives that you can implement on a regular and ongoing basis. Start small and track which ideas seem to have teeth. Remember — repetition and consistency are keys here.

• Become an authority in your field: Research publications in your industry and pitch yourself as a media source. This can net you some free PR later in the year. The key is to focus on media outlets – become a familiar name so they can turn to you as a reliable source. You have to convince contacts that you know your stuff and that you’re available to comment when there’s news to report. If you simply don’t have time for this, consider investing in a reasonably-priced PR firm.

About Chris Hurn

Chris Hurn is CEO and co-founder of Mercantile Capital Corp. based in Orlando, Fla. He graduated from Loyola University Chicago with two magna cum laude bachelor’s degrees and earned his master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute (formerly at the Wharton School of Business).  He is also the CEO, chairman and co-founder of an upscale men’s barbershop franchise called Kennedy’s All-American Barber Club.