IAM2262 – Entrepreneur and Marketing Consultant Helps Individuals Launch Their Business with More Confidence

Mr. Masudi Stolard is an entrepreneurial and marketing consultant. He holds a business and management degree and an MBA with a concentration in marketing.

He helped individuals launch their businesses with confidence and was passionate about educating and equipping others to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams.

Masudi shares his journey from childhood interests in business to becoming a consultant, helping clients launch their businesses confidently.

He explains the distinction between a marketing plan—focused on creating awareness—and a business plan, which outlines the overall business structure.

Masudi emphasizes the significance of timely communication with clients and understanding their needs.

In addition, he highlights the importance of scheduling time for family to maintain personal support systems.

Website: MSTOLARD  – Cultivate Brand Clarity with Strategy

LinkedIn: Dr. Masudi Stolard

Previous Episode: iam159-entrepreneur-marketing-consultant-helps-individuals-launch-their-business-with-more-confidence

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Transcription:

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Masudi Stolard  Teaser 00:00

But I found in most cases, people who just, if you just get a web page and you don't have a marketing plan to go along with it, they tend to be a little bit more unsuccessful because you have a page and like I said before, your website, it's not just a glorified business card.

It's kind of an extension of your office or storefront. You want people to kind of interact with it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Intro 00:30

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:45

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. And I have a very special guest on the show today at Masudi Stolard of MStolard.com. Masudi, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Masudi Stolard 00:55

Hello. Thank you for having me. I speak with you again, Gresham.

Gresham Harkless 00:58

Yeah, it was great to connect with you. And I'm glad to hear a little bit more about you. So what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Masudi so you hear about all the awesome things that he's doing.

And Mr. Masudi Stolard is an entrepreneurial and marketing consultant. As a result of working with him, the books he has written and his public speaking, individuals have been able to launch their businesses with more confidence.

He holds a business and management degree from St. Edward's University. He holds an MBA with a Marketing Concentration and a specialization in brand Customer Management from Georgia State University.

His mission is to educate, challenge, and equip individuals to go after their entrepreneurial dreams and position themselves for greatness. Masudi, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Masudi Stolard 01:39

Yes, yes, I am. I'm ready.

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Gresham Harkless 01:41

Awesome. Let's do it. So the first question I had was just to peel back the onion a little bit and hear a little bit more about your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Masudi Stolard 01:48

Okay, first of all, we'll just say hello to everybody out there in the I AM CEO community. Again, thank you for having me.

So I've been an entrepreneur, well, I've been interested in entrepreneurship from the time I was a kid, even before I even knew the word.

As a child, I used to play the lemonade stand game on my Apple LLC computer. It probably tells you how old I am.

So even before I understood the word entrepreneurship, I was always interested in that kind of genre. I was probably watching the news for business and reading the business section, not really understanding all the words as a child, but just I was always trying to find out more.

Fast forward years later, I am as a love for computers, I got into graphic design. And then that led me to kind of web page development as well.

And throughout that time, when you're building, you're talking to people about what their projects are, what they're trying to accomplish, whether you're as a graphic designer or as a web designer, you're talking about their business, you're kind of consulting them along the way.

So that's kind of what kind of led me to kind of where it was. And I kind of officially kind of formulated a specific organization and started the LLC. And that's kind of where I've been at since.

Gresham Harkless 02:46

Yeah, well, I love to hear those stories. It's always great to hear how entrepreneurial people, true entrepreneur people, when they look back at when they were younger, they can always pinpoint to say, hey, I did this entrepreneurial thing when I was younger and that.

And then it kind of propels you. And it kind of never goes away, but it propels you into what you're doing now, it sounds like.

Masudi Stolard 03:01

Yeah, yeah, because people, you're building websites for people and we probably talk about this a little bit more and then they kind of want to know, so what do you think I should do? What's the next step as I launch this website? So yeah.

Gresham Harkless 03:10

Yeah, it makes sense. And like the website always kind of seems like the digital storefront, so to speak, is one of the first things that people kind of look at to do whenever they're starting their business.

Yeah, and so now I wanted to drill down a little bit and hear a little bit more on how you're helping out these clients that you work with. I know you touched on it a little bit, so could you tell me a little bit more?

Masudi Stolard 03:26

Yeah, yeah, so a couple of things that I do with my products or services, I think it's important to kind of have an accountability partner.

So I have a couple of services where people will meet up with a kind of decided if we're going to work together and if we decide to work together, we'll probably have an initial conversation not longer than 30 minutes, 45 minutes or an hour, kind of figure out what the goals are going to be.

And the main two services I had with this particular part is whether you want to check in twice a week, so even twice a month, or check in 4x a month.

And so what that is, sometimes people need a little more time in between sessions to kind of work on their plan and kind of move forward with it.

Some people need a little bit more accountability, and so they say, hey, let's check in every Friday at XYZ and just kind of go over it.

And in those meetings, we're kind of also determining, did we achieve what we said we were going to accomplish?

Do we need to make some changes and so forth? And if you're not achieving, you're not what is going on with that?

Is it outside entities? Is it, we'll just kind of have to make adjustments if needed from there.

Another one of my services, I do a lot of copyright editing and proofreading. So people have books, manuscripts, papers, resumes, and so forth.

It's one of my skill sets. And so a lot of people will try to me to kind of say, hey, can you take a look at these 20 pages, whether it's the whole document or just a portion of the document.

Sometimes we just want to read like the beginning to kind of make sure they're kind of on the right track and it's clarity and so forth.

So then, of course, I have a marketing plan creation, and then I have also my business plan creation.

And with both of those, usually I either create the plan for you and let you execute it yourself, or if you actually want me to help you kind of walk you through the whole process, we can definitely do that.

The main thing, just want to kind of differentiate a little bit between the marketing plan and the business plan for those out there is that the marketing plan is gonna help you kind of bring awareness to your company and how you're gonna execute and let people know that you are around and so forth.

The business plan is the overall structure of the entire business itself. And of course, we mentioned the web design and so forth earlier, and sometimes that's usually included with the marketing package.

But some people just want web designs by them, marketing pages by themselves. But I found in most cases, people who just, if you just get a web page and you don't have a marketing plan to go along with it.

They tend to be a little bit more unsuccessful because you have a page and like I said before, your website, it's not just a glorified business card.

It's kind of an extension of your office or storefront. You want people to kind of interact with it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

And then as an author, I've written a couple of books as well. One is called An Introduction to Entrepreneurship. Yep, the second one is Entrepreneurs Preparation Checklist.

And then as a public speaker as well, then that would kind of help people kind of, like I said earlier, as you said earlier in my bio, kind of help people get more confidence as they kind of go along these paths to kind of launch their business and kind of move forward.

Gresham Harkless 05:57

That makes perfect sense.

Masudi Stolard 05:58

Yeah. So those are some of the services, those are some of the main services that I do in a nutshell.

Gresham Harkless 06:03

Yeah. That's awesome. And I think that anytime that anybody's thinking about starting a business, especially, like I know you mentioned that if you're really good at baking cakes, you know how to bake cakes, but you don't really understand all this business stuff.

And sometimes when you start to work your business and start to build the business, all of a sudden you realize it's not just baking cakes, which is always interesting to see.

So it's great that you, it sounds like from soup to nuts, you're able to help people with their strategy from the overall business strategy, but also the execution of the marketing plan, building the website and all those things that are integral to having a successful business.

Masudi Stolard 06:32

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 06:33

Awesome.

Masudi Stolard 06:34

And that's kind of the thing with, so just to mention like the two books that I wrote and introduction to entrepreneurship, that kind of goes to the basic steps. If you're a reader, you just need to read the book and kind of figure out that's kind of the best move for you.

Then what I also found is that people, they are ready. They kind of understand the basics, but they're like, what is actually step 1? How do I kind of prioritize everything?

And so the Entrepreneurs Preparations Checklist kind of gives you literally, do this on day 1, do this on day 15, do this on 20, and it's about 60 something steps in there that kind of helps you walk you through the whole process.

Gresham Harkless 07:02

Yeah, and that's huge. And I know, especially like in this day and culture, a lot of times, at this day and age, I should say, a lot of times, entrepreneurs and business owners are sometimes like kind of DIY do it yourself.

So they want to know exactly how they do it. So it's great that you can work with somebody, but at the same time, if somebody wants to go and be a DIYer and do it themselves, they're able to go and read your book and get a copy of exactly how to execute on that.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce.

And this could be what you feel kind of distinguishes you or your organization. So do you have an example of a secret sauce you can share with us?

Masudi Stolard 07:31

Yeah, so a couple things I think is important. I think this is something that I think businesses tend to forget. When you launch your business, it's now about you.

So you have to kind of want to change your mindset and realizing that you're no longer working for someone else.

So you are responsible for every aspect of the business, whether you're contracting somebody out and so forth.

So one of those key things I like to tell people, I try to also do it myself, is to return all calls and emails within the first 12 hours to 24 hours.

You don't really want to go long in a couple of days, especially when you're first starting out.

When you're first starting out, that's going to create a niche for you that the bigger businesses that may be in your same genre are not doing.

Because they're a big business, they don't feel, they say, I can reach you back to you within a week or 3 days and so forth.

And for them, it may work. But if you're trying to get that business to try to just establish a core relationship or rapport, you want to return all calls, all emails within 12, 24 hours.

You just want to make sure you're addressing their need. People don't want to feel cheated.

People don't want to feel, we've all had calls where you kind of feel like somebody's pushing you maybe to subscribe for a newspaper, but you don't necessarily read that particular brand of newspaper.

Or maybe you're more of a digital person, but they're trying to push you to say, hey, take this physical piece of copy of newspaper once a week, but that's not necessarily your genre.

So you want to make sure you're listening and hearing what the customers, what your potential customers and clients are saying and addressing those specific needs. So those are the things I would like to see with sauce.

Gresham Harkless 08:44

Yeah, I think those are great examples. And especially the last one, so many people here, but a few people actually listen.

So to be able to listen to what people are saying and actually understand and provide them the best solution, not just a solution that you have, but a solution that actually helps them to reach their goals and is in alignment with what they're trying to do is super important.

And a lot of people don't do it. So it's great that you kind of reminded us of that. Yeah. And then, yeah, absolutely.

And now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app, a book or a habit that you have, but it's something that you feel like makes you more effective and efficient, as an entrepreneur or business owner.

Masudi Stolard 09:19

One piece of software, this is probably a shout out to Microsoft. Microsoft has done a lot of great things.

The one piece of software that I think, and they really just started pushing a little bit more maybe 2 or 3 years ago, but it's a software called One Note. One Note is just literally an app to kind of take notes.

And people think, well, I can take notes in anything. And you can, you really can. But One Note is actually set up so you have separate tabs, you can actually links inside of the note, and it's mobile, it's mobile friendly, which is always the key in here in 2018, right?

So that's one of my main things I'd advise people. If you don't have One Note on your phone or accessible to it, you may want to get it. It's also transferable.

So you can actually email those notes from your phone to anybody, to your desktop, and so forth.

You can actually print them out as well. Another app I would probably try to, I think it's important, please just about taking care of your health.

I think that a lot of times when you start getting into business, entrepreneurs don't make health a priority.

And that's something I actually had to learn myself. So even for myself, I can just even be a full disclosure. I probably lost about 35 pounds in the last couple of months.

And, I used to always kind of go up and down and so forth. But one of the things I think is tracking your health, make that a priority.

So tracking the things that you eat. So I use a particular app called MyFitnessPal app. And this is the thing, I actually signed up for the premium service.

And the key with that is, and let me just give a, I'm not a doctor, this is just my own self, what's kind of worked for me.

But it helps you to track your sugar, helps you to track your sodium more so than some of the other sites.

But it's two things you got to make where you got to be honest with yourself about what you're eating so you can put it in there and you have to be diligent and disciplined about tracking what is your eating.

Because if you eat a chocolate bar, put it in there and then they'll tell you, okay, are you close to getting your sugar, to make your sugar for the day, are you not?

And then that'll also help you too, because that also creates more energy overall, if you're taking care of your health, to give you more time to work the long hours that we tend to do in entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial environment.

If you're traveling a lot as well, that's another way to kind of make sure that you are tracking your health. So MyFitnessPal app and then the One Note app as well. Both of those.

Gresham Harkless 11:07

Yeah, I love those. Both of those hacks. And then I love the idea about MyFitnessPal as well, too, because I think a lot of times as an entrepreneur and business owner, you automatically think I'm going to work, 25 hours in a day, even though it's not 25 hours in a day. Right.

You're just going to go, go, go, but you forget to take care of yourself. You forget to pay attention to what you're eating.

And I always remind myself, we had on a previous episode that someone said your food is your fuel for your body.

So understanding that if you want to be able to you know work the longer hours that sometimes we work you want to make sure that you're putting in the right things so that you are able to be that effective and efficient.

Masudi Stolard 11:42

Absolutely, absolutely. It's been a great help for me kind of being more diligent and then learning more about health stuff and again tracking you just kind of sees the overall picture so absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 11:50

Awesome awesome awesome and now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget and this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice or if you can hop into a time machine what would you tell your younger business?

Masudi Stolard 12:00

Okay well I guess 2 things I would say. One, I think it's important to read. You gotta be willing to read everything.

But I also want to say that it's important at least once a week, really once a day, but at least once a week, read something, even if it's an article in a book or that you wouldn't normally read.

So we entrepreneurs tend to focus on the Wall Street Journal and those, and Barron, and those are great, great sources.

But go read a magazine article on heavy metal or something, or plants or flowers or whatever

the case may be.

It may not be your normal interest, but you never find where they may become useful just to be able to create a conversation about somebody you may meet later on.

Say, hey, you know what? I just read something on plants and stuff. And you happen to be a botanist? I got some questions for you.

So if you make that a priority, it just kind of helps you to kind of expand your mind. And again, as entrepreneurs, we kind of think out of the box anyway, right?

So kind of making a diligent plan to kind of read things that you wouldn't normally do can kind of help that as well.

Second piece is I would say is make time for your family. So I'm currently not married, but I have a mother and a brother.

And so we entrepreneurs, we tend to work, as you said, 25 hours in a day, 40 plus, 60 hours a week, and so forth.

But make family a priority, because those are your backbone. When you have a long day and so forth, you happen to have kids, set that, even you have to schedule it in advance, and then keep that appointment.

Make sure you keep that appointment. I mean, even if it's just 2 hours a day where say, hey, let's go grab dinner and so forth, then that's gonna be key and that's gonna be long run.

Because then what you're happening is as your success increases, your family's willing to them be like, okay, it was way more supportive, more involved and so forth.

Whether you choose to talk about what you're doing to them or not. That's a different conversation. But definitely make time for them.

Gresham Harkless 13:34

You know, it all goes back to kind of filling up your cup, because like we said, even about the health and what you're eating and what you're doing as far as activity, making sure that you fill up your cup and sometimes filling up your cup is being around, family, friends, loved ones, that you make time to do that because like we said, the 25 hours, you can really go run, run, run around and do a million and 1 things.

And then now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the question of being a CEO.

And we're hoping to have different quote unquote CEOs on the show. So I wanted to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Masudi Stolard 14:02

I think the most important thing about being a CEO, what it means to me is the ability to multitask, right?

We said in the beginning that you are responsible for every aspect of your business and so forth.

But if you are able to multitask, now it doesn't always mean that you have to physically do every single responsibility.

But you should have some knowledge about every aspect of your business, from the business side to the marketing side.

And again, it comes with also, we talked about reading as well. All these things kind of go together.

So if you can actually multitask, you kind of know what's going on. Most of the major CEOs that you know about, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and so forth, they're very strong at their core stuff.

But when you talk to them, you listen to interviews, they know a lot about all kinds of stuff. Bill Gates is very strong on philanthropy right now and so forth.

And so when you look at his background, he's always kind of touched on that. And so that's one of the main things I would say. Multitasking is key.

Gresham Harkless 14:54

Yeah, yeah. It's definitely huge. And like you said, being well-rounded, I know that, the Bill Gates, the Warren Buffets of the world, they read a tremendous amount of it.

You touched on it earlier. It's like that's why they know so much stuff, not because they've done all those things, but just because they're so well read and they know just about all types of industries and all types of businesses.

So it's very hard to give them or tell them something that they haven't heard at some point, I'm sure.

Masudi Stolard 15:15

Exactly, Exactly.

Gresham Harkless 15:16

Well, Masudi, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out. What I want to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know how best we can get a hold of you. And of course, get a copy of your books.

Masudi Stolard 15:28

I have some online course content coming out early 2019. So there's going to be a couple of courses where you can 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, kind of get some of the training.

If you're one of those people who just prefers to just go online and kind of learn so forth, that's gonna allow you to do that as well.

I have a couple of books that I'm working on. I'm also a doctoral student, so I have a dissertation that I'm working on as well. So those are the things.

As far as my books, we mentioned earlier, both of them are available on Amazon. If you search MStolard, S-T-O-L-A-R-D, Amazon.com, you should be able to find both of them as well.

And so, and everything, my website is mstolard.com, M-S-T-O-L-A-R-D.com. All my information is out there, All my contact information is out there. And so thank you very much for having me.

Gresham Harkless 16:06

No problem. Thank you. I truly appreciate you for all the awesome things that you're doing. We'll make sure to have those links in the show notes.

And yeah, I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day. Congratulations on, you know, working on your doctoral tail end of that. And again, I appreciate you. Have a great rest of the day.

Masudi Stolard 16:20 – 16:22

Nice talking with you, Gresh. Appreciate it.

Outro 16:22

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CBNation and Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a 5 star rating. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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