Unpolished MBA

In this episode, Monique is joined by Walter Melanson, the Co-founder of PropertyGuys.com, a Canadian-based real estate and technology innovator that's transforming the market. Walter breaks down the history of the company that was formed over 20 years ago and how that wealth of experience has led him and his fellow founders towards building a company that truly understands the needs of an ever-evolving housing market, both in Canada and now in the US.

Monique and Walter also discuss how remaining partners with his co-founders for over 20 years has taught him the value of diversified skills within a team. Walter also informs listeners about the compounding power of franchising and how the real estate markets in the United States differ from and also share common traits with the housing market in Canada.

Topics Include:

• The Intersection of Tech and Real Estate
• Understanding Customers Needs When Innovating
• The Value of Diversified Skill Sets
• The Power and Effectiveness of Franchising

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In this episode of Thursday Thoughts, Monique reflects upon hearing the news of a friend who has decided to shut down their consulting business in the wake of ungrateful clientele and internet trolls. Perhaps counterintuitively then Monique explains why this move will likely be great for her friend!

So many times founders and entrepreneurs find themselves in a rut with the way they are running their business. For a combination of reasons including fear, pride, or even lack of motivation they continue to operate a business that is neither fulfilling nor impactful.

Monique encourages entrepreneurs who have found themselves burnt-out and unable to summon the courage to start again with a clean sheet. She reminds listeners that the lessons you have learned from starting your business won't go away if you elect to restructure or restrategize, and often a new beginning is just what your business needs to thrive!

Topics Include:

• Dealing With Ungrateful Trolls
• The Danger and Causes of Burnout
• Impacting the World on Your Terms
• Reinventing Your Business to Work for You

In this episode, I was so excited to speak with Jared Yellin, the founder of 10X Incubator who has set the audacious and revolutionary goal of starting 10,000 tech start-ups in 10 Years. After founding and building the hugely successful marketing platform Synduit, Jared decided to refocus his energies on helping small tech startups achieve launch by creating a unique network of profit-sharing partners who are committed to investing their resources into companies and individuals they truly believe in.

Today 10X Incubator is helping hundreds of tech companies ranging from small African start-ups, to major tech players to launch, capitalize, grow, and eventually sell. The 10X model is based upon shared ownership amongst partners and strives to build companies that take no venture capital infusions leaving them nimble and connected within a shared network of like-minded individuals, team members, and entrepreneurs.

Topics Include:

• Believing and Executing Bold Ideas
• Achieving Growth Without Investors
• Tech Innovation Outside Silicon Valley
• The Value of Audacious Thinking
• How Remote Working Forms Global Networks

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Does your innovation, software, code, or brave idea actually put money in your bank account? If you're like most entrepreneurs, start-ups, or small business owners…the answer is no.

In this week's Thursdays Thoughts, Monique shares her insights and experience on why the value of your product cannot be overlooked.

More often than not, innovators can be seduced into giving their intellectual property away for free with the promise of hype, promotion, and huge returns in the long term. In reality, this is often a case of false promises that will drain your business of time, money, and resources.

Topics Include:

• The Falsity of Free Promotion
• Valuing Your Product
• Defining Customers Vs. Users
• How Free Customers Drain Resources

In this premiere episode of 2022, Monique helps us to reframe resolutions by reimagining how to make goals that focus on the impact that we have on individuals and the larger world.

Monique also explores a simple 5-step technique developed by Tim Ferriss that helps participants to continue focusing on positive and nourishing things that produce the most reliable and powerful peaks throughout the New Year!

Topics Include:

• Reframing New Year's Resolutions
• Evaluating What Makes Us Truly Happy
• Practicing Past-Year Reviews
• Filling Your Calendar With Nourishment, Not Stress
• The 5 Steps of the Post Year Review

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In this week’s Thursday Thoughts, Monique shares how incorporating boundaries in both your personal and professional life can be a transformative step towards reducing stress and becoming the person you are striving to be. With the Holidays in full swing, it’s more important than ever to take a step back and take time for yourself. In today’s reflection, we learn just how healthy self-care and boundary setting can be.

Topics Include:

• The Practice of Setting Boundaries
• Saying No So You Can Say Yes
• Powering Through the Discomfort of Boundaries
• Identifying Toxic People in Your Life

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In this episode, Monique walks listeners through the incredibly important process of defining the relationships that you have with potential customers. Often founders or salespeople can deceive themselves into believing that the number of potential leads or prospects is far greater than they are in reality.

Today Monique will help us to define the differences in these various levels of customer relations by clearly defining the difference between suspects, prospects, leads, and actual customers. By using an analogy based on the dating world, Monique helps to more clearly illuminate the difference between these lines that salespeople and startup founders often blur, much to their frustration and peril.

Topics Include:

• The Importance of Focusing on Customer Empathy
• How Speaking With Customers Differs From Selling to Customers
• Differentiating Between Suspects, Prospects, Leads, & Customers
• How Correctly Labeling Potential Customers Alleviates Frustration

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In this week’s Thursday Thoughts, Monique reminds listeners of the importance of staying focused on consistency and frequency when marketing your brand and remembering that no matter how good you think your product is, your brand is only as strong as your last customer interaction.

Topics Include:

• The Importance of Consistency in Marketing
• Building a Community for Your Product Pre-Release
• The Relation Between Recency Bias and Brand Perception
• How Lack of Communication Causes Churn

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In this week’s Thursday Thoughts, Monique shares a little about her experience interviewing Augusta Uwamanzu-Nna on Episode 35 of the Unpolished MBA podcast. After interviewing this incredible young woman, Monique was reminded that despite Augusta’s unique gifts each of us has our own unique fingerprints to place on this world.

We can often be bogged down by negative signals coming from social media, stereotypes, or society at large. However, it’s vital that we remember to take the time to reflect upon what makes us unique and passionate so that we can share that passion with the world, and in turn make the world a better place!

Topics Include:

• Remembering Your Unique Purpose
• Finding Inspiration in Other’s Stories
• Taking Time to Be in Tune With Your Uniqueness
• The Importance of Taking Time to Dream

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In this episode, It’s my honor to be joined by one of the most incredible young women I’ve ever had the pleasure of speaking with. Augusta Uwamanzu-Nna is the Chief of Staff of the Black Women in Science and Engineering. At the age of 13, Augusta began experimenting with cement samples in the basement of her Elmont, New York home only to discover that she had a prodigious gift for science and engineering.

Augusta’s journey has taken her from that basement to the halls of Harvard University where she graduated cum laude with a degree in bioengineering AND biomedical engineering. With plans to attend medical school for a dual Ph.D./MD, Augusta is passionate about advocating for educational and networking opportunities for black women and minorities in STEM fields. When not meeting with Michelle or Barack Obama to discuss her research, she is working with BWISE to find ways to level the playing fields in both education, medicine, and innovation.

Topics Include:

• STEM Education for Minorities
• Black Women in Science and Engineering
• The Future of Biomedical Entrepreneurship
• Minority Leadership and Support Systems

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In this week’s Thursday Thoughts, Monique shares her opinions on why being “ghosted” by a client can be a growing experience for innovators or entrepreneurs whose products have not found their market fit.

Topics Include:

• What Is Ghosting in a Business Context
• What Ghosting is Actually Communicating
• Remembering That Not All Clients are Early Adopters
• Only Innovation Causes Lost Clients to Return

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In this episode, we're joined by Talisha Shine. Talisha is an IT Professional and Certified Blockchain Consultant with over 20 years of experience in the information technology and software fields.

In this episode, we cover the basics of blockchain technology and how blockchain is the foundation of everything from cryptocurrency to NFTs. 

Topics Include:

• Understanding the Basics of Blockchain Technology
• Misconceptions Regarding Crypto Currencies
• The Relationship Between NFTs and Blockchain
• Real-World Applications of Blockchain
• Defining and Contextualizing the Term Web 3.0
• Understanding Decentralized Finance

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In this week’s Thursday Thoughts, Monique shares her unique insights on why not all entrepreneurial-minded people are best suited to becoming founders. In this day and age, millions of driven professionals have been told time and time again that the way to get ahead in today’s economy is to start their own business.

Though this may be true for many, in this episode Monique reflects on the advantages of being a startup employee and how having a front-row seat to the formation of a business without all the stress and responsibility of leading may be the best fit for many self-starters.

Topics Include:

• The Realities of Being a Founder or CEO
• The Advantages of Joining a Startup as an Employee
• The Joys of Being on a Startup Sales-Team
• Questioning Your True Motivations for Starting a Business

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In this episode of Thursday Thoughts, Monique breaks down the fallacy of developing products or services that are cheap, fast, and good while dissecting the unique attributes of differentiation vs cost leadership and how these two very different strategies have been implemented by brands such as Tesla, Walmart, and WeWork.

Topics Include:

• The Cheap, Fast, and Good Fallacy
• Defining Differentiation vs Cost Leadership Strategies
• Real World Implementation of Each Strategy
• How Brand Perception Factors Into Business Strategy

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On Thursdays, in under 10 minutes, we "Connect The Dots" from real-life situations to help you as an entrepreneur, leader, innovator, or just a person who is venturing out to try something new. These stories will help you make sense of situations you may find yourself in and provide encouragement to keep you moving forward in your journey.

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward." ~Steve Jobs (I think)

Dr. Steven Goudy, the inventor behind the brand Dr. Noze Best, shares his professional journey as a pediatric surgeon, MBA, and entrepreneur as well as his thoughts on self-awareness.

No time to listen? To read the transcript for this episode just go to —>

This episode is a conversation with Mike Tatum, a military soldier turned marketing guru. He lends his talents to Corporate America, but also runs his own marketing firm and somehow he manages it all.

Chris Walker, CEO of Refine Labs, was always meant to be an entrepreneur. He took his "bad ideas" and created a multi-million dollar business for himself. 

This episode is a conversation with Steve Blank, a world-renowned Entrepreneur and Entrepreneurship Professor at Stanford University, Columbia University, and UC Berkeley.

This episode is a conversation with Matthew Sciannella, a writer turned marketing strategist for B2B industrial companies after obtaining his Master's degree. He finally made the jump after spending many unhappy years in a job that he performed well in, but hated. If you can identify with that, you'll certainly want to listen to this episode. 

Listen to this conversation with Andy Raskin, an entrepreneur and previous tech startup founder that many people underrated throughout his journey. Upon learning how to tell stories in a compelling way, similar to a movie screenwriter, the trajectory of his career changed. Surprisingly, his degrees from Yale and Wharton played just a small part in his journey, earning him the status of "self-employed" at a school reunion.

Listen to this conversation with Dan Sanchez, a marketer at Sweet Fish Media which produces podcasts for brands.  We talked about how he aggressively completed his MBA in 6 months and realized how much it filled in the gaps of information that he didn’t know were missing.  As they say, you don’t know what you don’t know, so listen in as Dan describes his startup experience and the journey to becoming the marketing maven he is today.

This is a conversation with Dan Chan, an early employee of PayPal before its IPO, and now a magician to the stars of Silicon Valley. He has an untraditional career, but a business background that has enabled him to create a profitable business doing what he loves.

Listen to this conversation with Julian Roberts, an Executive Leadership coach who threw in the towel for Corporate work to focus on unlocking another’s potential while unlocking his own at the same time.  

Listen to this conversation with Bethany D. Valente, a doctor of business administration with experience that includes working with high tech scientific organizations. Though she doesn't have a science background, growing up with a mom who was a nurse and dad who was an entrepreneur the foundation was laid long ago for what she would become today.  This episode is dedicated to the late Justice "Notorious" RBG.

Listen to this conversation with Erika Jefferson, a Chemical Engineer turned entrepreneur. Somehow she fell into entrepreneurship several years after receiving her MBA and has since created a thriving business that serves women in science and engineering. We point of some of the stereotypical engineer personality traits and discuss how engineers and scientists can still win in business.

This episode is a conversation with Dee Acosta, better known as Batman, but with an MBA. This interview is riddled with his candid thoughts on the impact (or lack thereof) of the MBA on his career, but most importantly how it inspires his family.

This episode is a conversation with Steve Worthy. While he is currently an entrepreneur, the majority of his career was in Corporate and he talks about how getting his MBA caused him to question everything. It was a gamechanger for him in many ways, especially as an Executive coach now.

This episode is a conversation with Emma Gasking who started her career as a Midwife in the UK and upon getting her MBA, her career took a 180---or as it may seem at first glance. Things didn’t quite work out as she'd initially planned, but it did work out for the best. She's now changing lives, one person at a time.

This episode is a conversation with Karen Hunter, an innovation expert with experience in Corporate as well as consulting for global brands like Coca-cola, Kraft, Snapple, Sara Lee, and Kimberly-Clark. She shares some great wisdom about innovation that applies to both corporations and startups. You’ll never believe what sparked her desire to pursue her MBA. 

I’m sharing a conversation I had with Bryan Smith, the co-founder of a startup called Leon Health Science. He was a rebel growing up but always had the natural instincts to find problems to solve to earn money.  With his background in Professional Sports Performance coaching and understanding the data science behind sports performance, he's found a new problem to solve---helping people be better employees and happier individuals overall using data science. Bryan's fascinating journey from being a young rebel to being a US serviceman in the Army to now being a startup co-founder is a compelling example of how discipline can be life-changing.

Here's a conversation with Faheem Moosa, a serial entrepreneur with an MBA who had a short stint in Corporate life although he was born into entrepreneurship. His family has had a business for generations---120+ years to be exact.  Despite that background, Faheem shares how he still had to invest in learning new things because he, like many entrepreneurs, was missing the essential marketing and sales skills.

Listen in and see what more he had to say.

Here's a conversation with Walter Ley, founder of Branch, a tech startup in Atlanta, Georgia. He talked about how not having an MBA can create self-doubt when you’re a new entrepreneur. He also talked about: Having the courage to create something from scratch to solve a problem and understand that you’re going to have some “face down in the dirt” lessons in life overall, not just entrepreneurship. 

Listen in and see what more he had to say. 

Here's a conversation with Tondaleya Carter, a Realtor from Keller Williams Commercial. She talked about how having an MBA relates to her success in commercial real estate.

She also talked about:

• How she innovated herself out of a job.
• How while working in “old school” Corporate they didn’t innovate and the people who worked there had been there for their entire career.  Listen to how she got her job because the person before her died after being there 25 years! These stories….these companies…

So was the MBA degree helpful to Tondaleya’s entrepreneurial journey?  

Listen in and see what she says.

Intrapreneurs and Entrepreneurs ---One is not better than the other, just different. 

But some will say you're not a "real" entrepreneur if you're only doing entrepreneurial stuff inside of a corporation and collecting a steady paycheck. There's something about letting go of the certainty of an income that earns respect in the startup streets. 

However, in Corporate, you get the benefit of being creative and solving problems without taking on the risk---some say intrapreneurship is the best of both worlds. 

In this episode, we talk about the different types of innovations and how creating innovations inside your organization can be "risky" too.....

Listen to this conversation between Monique Mills and Andy Rosic, a serial startup founder, advisor, and investor in multiple tech companies. We're in a global pandemic and Andy gives his perspective to those entrepreneurs who want to know: "Do I stop selling? How do I move forward to survive?"