Awarepreneurs interview - Dr. John E

Welcome to AwarePreneurs, the world's longest running social entrepreneur podcast. If you could take a moment and hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps our guests help more social entrepreneurs. Thank you so much. Today Our guest is Dr. John E. Harmon and our topic is you're in business to win. John E. Harmon, Sr.

Is the founder, president and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey, aaccnj, the state's leading organization advocating for black owned businesses and economic empowerment. A former chairman of the National Black Chamber of Commerce and a current board member of the US Chamber of Commerce, John has spent more than 27 years building bridges between government, corporate leaders and entrepreneurs to advance equity and opportunity. He is the host of the award winning Pathway to Success TV show and the Empowerment Hour radio program and the author of Power Moves the Life and Legacy of a Black Chamber Executive. John, welcome to the show.

Paul. I'm delighted to be here and looking forward to the conversation today.

Reading that bio like, I want to talk to this guy.

I do too.

So, John, what would somebody want to know about? We'll get into your professional accomplishments, but if somebody wanted to know a little bit about you and your background and how you got into this work, what would they need to know?

Yeah. Well, again, thank you for the invite and the question. I'm a father of three adult sons. Unfortunately, my sons lost their mother a little coming up on five years ago and so we had to plow through that. I'm born in the city of Trenton, New Jersey. I'm one of seven kids, the only one to complete college. I worked in banking in New York for just under 10 years or so. I also ran my own transportation company for 16 years.

And I think I want to underscore all that by saying, you know, God has blessed me, has blessed me. I have what we would deem unmerited favor. Paul and I have not taken his blessings for granted. And I try to live life every day helping people where I can, somewhat by the golden rule, if you will.

Beautiful. So we'll get into what the Black Chamber of New Jersey looks like. But before now, but before we get into that, like, give us a sense of how did you start to get into this work of combining economic empowerment and, you know, a chamber as a vehicle for doing that? Like, was that something that came to you? Did you come up with that idea? How did that start?

You know, Paul, again, that's a great question. And to the listeners today, in order to it doesn't always have to be your idea. Let me start with that. I was fortunate to join a group of about 20 people who had already started the framework of creating the Metropolitan Trenton African American Chamber of Commerce in 1997. So I was one of the 21st founding members of that group. And so, Paul, I was just around the table trying to hear, contribute where I could. But the goal was Trenton population was a little south of 90,000 people. We had a black mayor, black city council, but the blacks were not really part of the economy, notwithstanding being about 51 or 52% of the population or higher at that time.

And so this group was trying to be the economic resource partner with the state, with the county, and clearly with the local municipality. And so that's how it started. And ironically, two years into his existence, the chairman, who was the chief visionary and. And the president both decided to move on. The chairman started a charter school, and the president had an existing insurance practice and he wanted to spend more time on his business. So by default, I became the president.

By default, the last person standing phenomenon, right?

Yeah, yeah. And so I had to become a student. I had to learn what a Chamber of Commerce was all about and from the lens of a CEO. And so I studied Booker Tree Washington, who founded the Negro business league in 1900, which ultimately led to 300 some odd business organizations, in essence, chambers across the country. And another note about Booker Tree Washington. He was an advisor to President Taft, who founded the US Chamber of Commerce, as we know, the largest business federation in the world. And so, you know, I got in connection with the National Black Chamber, I worked with the US Chamber since around 2001 and attended a multitude of chamber events, both locally, regionally and nationally. To really understand the inner workings of a chamber and then to kind of put my own spin on the organization that ultimately I would run for the next 10 years.

And then I founded the current organization in 2007. And so this clearly is something that I started now and been doing this now about 28 years. So I can say firsthand, I know the chamber of business a little bit.

Yeah. So started in 1997, you became president somewhere around 1999. What were some of your early successes and what were some of your early challenges?

Let me start. Let me start with the challenges first. And so again, when you come in behind someone, they've already put some framework in order to move the mission of the organization. So at the time, we had a relationship with the regional chamber or county chamber, and we had our board member makeup was very similar in terms of Industries and representation. So that was fine. But what I come to find out, Paul, is that we had a revenue share relationship. In addition, we, we had two representatives on our respective boards. But in essence, 80% of the revenue that we were generating was earmarked back to this regional organization.

And I didn't quite understand that. I'm like 8 out of $10.80 out of every dollar I'm giving you and how am I going to grow my organization? So that was the first decision I made, was to restructure that relationship and that we would take maybe a corporate level membership with that organization because they were kind of serving as a strategic partner, as an advisor, as a mentor, if you will. And I don't think that was worth 80% of our revenue. So that was the first major decision that I made that got people's attention. And some folks really didn't like the decision. They thought I was making a bad decision there. But we began to grow our organization and to really be a part of the region, part of the. We were, you know, a chamber that was now finding its way into the mainstream.

I would get questions like, well, why do we need a black chamber? Like, wow. So my answer kind of evolved on that a bit, Paul. But I could tell you I saw that there was so much underperformance on the balance sheet. Black businesses, the black community. I felt that it was important that one, we acknowledge the underperformance and two, create partnerships in the public private sector that we can work in collaboration to mitigate the challenges and introduce our members and black businesses as a value imperative to push back on perceptions that black businesses and or people didn't have the wherewithal to be competitive in the workforce and or with a business enterprise. And that started to marinate. We would have monthly networking events with feature speakers that would be all about educating business owners about resources, opportunities and information, as well as some of the best practices that one could deploy and execute in the business. So those were the early stages and we finally, finally got a hold and here we are today.

Yeah, one of the words you just used, John, and in my notes, I have two stars by the word partnerships. You're a big believer in partnerships and how much, how important they are in working with communities that have been under resourced historically. If you were going to give our listeners, social entrepreneurs and people who want to use entrepreneurship as a lever for change, some guidelines, some tips for successful partnerships, what would you suggest?

Well, I think it starts, Paul, with really any individual or business owner doing a swot Analysis on themselves, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and really identify the gaps. What do I need to make my team complete? What do I need to be more efficient, more effective, more impactful, more sustainable? And so that's where you start to identify who within your ecosystem or in your reach that you could potentially collaborate with or to leverage to attain and achieve and just execute your business model with success. And so sometimes business owners, maybe we like athletes and entertainers, they think they're the best that ever could do it, right? I'm the best. No one's better than me. I think that's great if you have the data to support that. But if you don't have the data to support it, you must always realize that you can't be all things to all people and you're definitely not the best at everything and find those folks that could contribute or hitch to your wagon to make it more effective. And so I think as a business owner, you gotta also be able to look in the mirror every day and, and do a personal assessment on you and on your organization. And if you're okay with that, you're going to be able to realize bigger returns, greater market penetration, and more respect for the products or services that you provide.

Business is not complicated. People make it complicated because, you know, being in denial, not really adhering to what the data tells you. Numbers don't lie. People lie to the numbers. And so you can easily get yourself on a slippery slope by not being attentive to what's going on and not responding accordingly when you see or anticipate that things may be getting off course.

Absolutely. So you were there at the Black Chamber in Trenton from about 97 to about 2007, basically a decade. What does it look like towards the end of your reign there? We're going to get into moving to a statewide entity in just a second. But 10 years in, what did the organization look like? And maybe even more importantly, how had things shifted in the community that you were there to serve after 10 years of impact work?

So it's a great question. There's a lot of things that occurred. I'm going to talk about the Chamber specifically and then I'll talk a little bit about what was occurring around me in the community. In the state capital of New Jersey, in the county seat of New Jersey, the Chamber was growing and that's what led me to start the African American Chamber of Commerce or take a more statewide organization forward. We looked at the data, we initially mapped out a 25 mile radius for membership and we started to see growth about 32% outside of our defined geographical area. And so when we saw those numbers trending in that direction, we sensed that there was interest outside of our community. Additionally, there was not a statewide black business organization. You had a statewide hispanic chamber, you had a statewide mainstream chamber.

And blacks were not visibly across the state talking about business. And so we saw an opportunity there to follow the data, as I said earlier, and then construct a business plan that would now get us engaged with corporations that run statewide activities, like your gas and electric, so all your utilities, water on the telecommunication, we was able to adopt them as members. Some of your colleges and universities, Some of our major auto dealerships, we only had a few. We had a ford and chevy franchise, Financial services institutions. Today we have about 35 to 40. But again, we had a nice little remnant of those institutions. Because, Paul, in order to be successful, we had to create an ecosystem to position black businesses to engage corporations and government agencies for a mutually beneficial exchange based on a value imperative. That's how we structured the model and got away from emotion.

This is not emotional, but the fact of the matter is the data tells me that black people have something to offer, but they're not in a place where deals are flowing, where commerce is taking place. And so this vehicle, the statewide organization, we felt, was what was needed. Back to the city of Trenton property. I did run for mayor in 2005 of the city. And the reason I ran for mayor, Paul, six years, I tried to get a meeting with the mayor of the city. Can you imagine you running a chamber of commerce in the city? And the mayor was, we're in a 200 block. The mayor was in the 300 block. And for the life of me, I couldn't get a meeting.

And so I eventually. Now I'm born in the city, on top of it. I eventually went to city council and made my case. And we finally got a meeting with the mayor, and we sat down, we laid out a game plan for a partnership that didn't materialize. And so that led me to run unsuccessfully for mayor. But what it did was it got more people to think about the possibility. And so we see more people running for office in the city of Trenton today than before. And this mayor was going for his fifth term.

The prior term, he won by 86% of the vote. And the election that I participated in, he ended up winning with 51% of the vote. And that was his last stint as mayor. He moved on, but ironically, he and I had a lot of clashes. I had clashes with the county executive during that period you referenced, we were forging a paradigm shift for equity and inclusion. And so it was like taxation without representation. You have the majority population, but they're not a part of the economy. And logically, that didn't make sense to me, didn't make sense to a lot of the taxpayers.

And so we forced, you know, we pressed their hand a little bit, and here we are today. But the mayor today and I have a very good relationship.

That's great to hear.

Ironically, he and I are working really well today, but unfortunately, had we been able to do that back then, we both might be in a better place.

Yeah. One of the things I love about what you said, John, is your attention to the data that 32% of your membership outside of your original intended service area. So I want to just highlight. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you sometimes hear me joke about my spiritual highlighter. Right? I want to highlight what you just said. For other entrepreneurs to be paying attention to that kind of data, what are you actually seeing? Not just your theories or your, you know, how you'd like change to work, but who's actually showing up and the kind of input you're getting from them. In this case, you paying attention, realized that there was a great opportunity to go statewide and help more people and build a more robust organization that you would have missed if you weren't paying attention to the data. So thank you so much for that story and listeners, I really encourage you to pay attention to what just happened there.

Really from the front lines, valuable sharing of a tip of how you can use data to have more positive impact and also create a more thriving enterprise. So thank you for that so much, John.

Well, thank you.

So talk to us. All right, so you said, all right. Opportunity to go statewide. And now you're like going from Trenton, widening the circle to the whole state of New Jersey. You had a foundation, you already had some membership outside of your original service area. But what was that transition like?

You know, it's interesting, man. We're going to go back to the data and I'm going to get right to your question. So we constructed the business plan and the business plan confirmed that this would work, provided that we have to stay tuitiveness and being able to collect the coalesce, the resources. And oftentimes people have great ideas. For example, you know, you might make the best pies, doing Thanksgiving fry the best fried chicken, but that doesn't always translate into a business. And some folks jump out there they have an audience and say, man, you got some good chicken. That pie was great, man. If you had a restaurant, I'll buy it.

Okay, yeah, that's only one person, Right. And so if you don't construct a plan that would validate that this is a good idea and just go off of emotion or some anecdotal information you get, you may be setting yourself up for failure. Our initial thought was, okay, we have an established regional chamber. If we structure this statewide organization as an umbrella. There was a group in Atlantic City and we had worked with a group in Newark to create the North Jersey Black Chamber. And Newark is the largest city in New Jersey. I felt that the Newark organization would eventually blow us out of the water. So we set it up, outline it with a state umbrella and three regional chambers, and I was pretty excited.

But again, we talked about relationships earlier, talking about having a team and having folks that were like minded. And because I was so ginned up with emotion and excitement, I thought we were like minded. Right. And so the group in North Jersey, the person who was the president at the time, also had a newspaper that he was running that had been doing for years that was very successful. And I said to him, you can't serve two masters. You got to make a decision. Although you have the potential to be the biggest and the baddest thing as it relates to black business in the Northern region, if you don't make a decision, it may not work out that way. And the guy in South Jersey, he had an insurance business and also the chamber.

And so I view both of them now as they got like placeholder organizations because they're not really committed to. And so, long story short, they both kind of petered out. And so we try to. That gentleman moved on, got more focused, back to his newspaper, and there was a lady that took over. So in the transition, we were building this statewide organization, and we tried to get everyone as board members at a minimum. And her pushback was she wanted to be the chair. And I'm saying, and the other guy who now was coming in to run the metropolitan organization, he wanted to be the chair. And I'm saying, neither of you could be the chair.

We got somebody else to be the chair. The kick is off, but you'd be in line to be the subsequent chair. And that created a little hostility, animosity. And so our first convening, you know, five people from northern New Jersey bailed out. This is the first meeting.

Wow.

We're taking our sand and we're going home. And so it was heartbreaking. We had some other issues with the guy in Trenton. The guy in Atlantic City had reserved a number of the names so we could not use the name that we initially wanted to use. But he act like he didn't have it, you know, like, okay, so long story short, today the group in Atlantic City is pretty much dormant. The group I was involved in in Trenton is non existent and the group in Newark is non existent. But fortunately the board in Newark, as they were about to sunset, they had $10,000 and we had 4,000. So they gave us 14,000.

We took that 14,000, Paul, and was able to rent a space in Trenton. And from there we're off to the.

Races up and running. How many members do you have now? 20, 25. We're recording this September 2025.

Yeah. So we're north of 850, between 8, 900 members. We're very strong in the corporate sector. We got about 40 financial services institutions alone. The major gas and electric companies in New Jersey are members AT&T, Verizon, Comcast members, the water utilities of members. So we've grown that ecosystem for black businesses to be a part of exponentially. We own two buildings, Paul. Our main office, which we acquired in 2012, 2013, it's about 5,500 square feet.

And we just closed on a 27,000 square foot building last week.

Congratulations. That's fabulous.

That's going to be our training and development center. So we're going to focus on workforce growing and scaling businesses. Also be able to hold events there. And so we just did a walk through the day. We're waiting for our plans to come from the architect. How are we going to repurpose some of the space? But we're playing at a whole new level, Paul. We're the only accredited Chamber of Commerce with the US Chamber in New Jersey. There's 154 chambers in our state.

We're the only accredited black chamber in the US with the US Chamber of Commerce. So we've continued to leverage best practices, try to be best in class. But if we're going to be in this spaceball, we have to have the wherewithal to compete and add value for those who invest.

What a fabulous story. Thanks for sharing it, John. And congratulations. 850 members. Over 30,000 square feet of facilities increasingly so people could come and learn and grow together. Just inspiring from where you started. Just completely inspiring. Let's do this.

There's some more questions I have about your growth as a chamber in that world. But I'm also really interested in something right behind you. There is a book that you went out with recently. I wanted to get to your book and what you know, why you wrote it and who it's for, what's in it. Before we do that, I just want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Are you feeling stuck growing your impact business? You're not alone. Most social entrepreneur founders hit the same three roadblocks. Number one, too many priorities.

You're spread thin, working hard but not moving the needle. Number two, capital. Figuring out how to raise the right kind of money feels overwhelming. And third, business model fog. You want to make real impact and generate profits. But the path forward isn't clear. After 18 years coaching thousands of impact leaders and 300 deep dive conversations with the world's top social entrepreneurs and investors on awarepreneurs, I've seen what actually works. That's why I created my 90 minute strategy sessions.

Together we'll cut through the noise, identify your best opportunities and map out three to seven clear action steps. You'll also get two weeks of implementation support so you can have guidance beyond the call. If you're ready to stop spinning your wheels and start growing with clarity and confidence, check out the link in the show notes. So welcome back everybody. I am here with Dr. John E. Harmon and we are talking about you're in business to win. And right before the breakdown was telling us about this incredible journey from idea to 850 members, 30,000 plus square feet of space with all kinds of innovative program, being the only certified or accredited chamber, black chamber in the US So many amazing things happen, John.

And part of what you do, in addition to building the community in New Jersey, you also have, I think there might be some similarities between us. Like you have a TV show, a radio program and now a new book called Power Moves. Tell us a little bit about like your, your journey into sharing with a wider audience through the TV show, the radio hour. And then I want to go in and focus on the book.

Well, Paul, you know, I tell you as I look back on, on this journey, because that's what it's been. There's a lot of people I met along the way and so you can have a great idea but without the team, without the relationships, without the ability to leverage resources, opportunities and information, your success is going to be marginal. And so I thank God for his favor. I thank God for, you know, once I'm engaged in conversations with people who represent those resources or opportunities, information that you have the courage to engage them. You know, I mean, you're not in the game unless you get dirt on your uniform, right? And so you can be around all these great people. So it's not about who you know, but ultimately who knows you. And, and so that's what I've learned over, over time. Someone said you, you, you don't, you won't ever make a shot that you don't take.

And, and then I guess the biggest lesson learned, Paul, is being able to accept no and not have a pity party and move on. Right? Because no is a part of the process of getting to a yes. And the more nos you get, you can perfect your game a little bit and your yeses should improve. And so, yeah, so the process of.

Sharing your message is something you've been thinking about for a while, and that's culminated in this book called Power Moves. Tell us a little about the book. Why'd you write it and who is it for?

So, Paul, I mean, over the years, I've always been a good note taker. I don't know how many legal pads that I accumulated over the years to help construct this book, but there are many. And I always had a desire one day to write a book. And so I started talking to one of my chamber colleagues at the Alabama Bill. And Bill had written a book. And he shared with me, you know, I was doing a visit down in, I think Montgomery and did a visit with him and he shared with me why he wrote the book, how he wrote the book. And one of the things he told me was just start listing thoughts. And these thoughts would ultimately become titles and build it from there because I told him I had a desire to write a book and I had all these notes at home, and so it kind of pushed me a little bit.

And so the book was all about my journey as a father, as an employer at a major bank. Two banks in New York coming out of college, interviewed for a management training program that would ultimately lead to becoming the president of the bank. I spent a year working in every department of the bank to understand how bank operated. There were 151 candidates. I was one of 12 selected. The only black person selected out of the group. And I learned a lot from that experience. You don't know what you don't know until you tell the vigilante magazine.

Wow. I was green as a bell pepper, right?

Yeah.

And so that experience, getting married, having kids, what that was like, and then being the breadwinner and then having a job where they wanted to relocate me I chose not to relocate, starting a business during the recession around 1990, and then the trials and tribulations of running the successful business notwithstanding, a plan, but the challenge to get capital and getting capital in a timely manner, and then getting enough capital, because you can get capital, Paul, but if it's not enough capital to execute your plan successfully, you might have been better off not taking the capital. And that was a lesson learned for me. And we talk about that in the book. We talk about some of the opposition I had starting the Chamber, the ins and outs with the mayoral run. And then as you kind of matriculated from tragedy to triumph, if you will see the upslope and the upward trajectory of things coming together in a way that people start to recognize you. I was kind of fast forwarding a bit. Around 2020, 2021, I was recognized as the most influential person of color in the state of New Jersey. And that particular morning, my phone was buzzing, text messaging, like, early in the morning.

I had no idea what was going on. Congratulations. I'm like, congratulations for what? And I reached out to my chamber colleague and he said, hey, you've just been nominated as a top person of color in the state of New Jersey. And I can tell you, Paul, I sat on the side of the bed, very emotional, because it all kind of came together and I was being recognized for something that went from a desire to a passion to a purpose. And then, lo and behold, next year, I got the same recognition for the first time. Someone was recognized two years in a row to receive this award, and it was me. And I had similar recognition then and up even to now, just a top business leader in the state, including everybody. And so I guess the unfortunate thing for me personally is that my parents, neither of them are here.

I lost my mom when I was 17, and my dad died in 96. So none of that was shared. To tell them and thank them how much I appreciate their investment in me. And this is what I was doing to make them proud. So I talk about that in the book. I talk about my kids mom dying during the pandemic, my older brother dying during the pandemic. And these were tough times. 30 people at a funeral, you know, 20, 20.

She died, he died. And it's very difficult. But how do you grief, grief and then still stay focused on driving or doing your job when you have people that work for you? So we talk about all that in the book. You can get it on Barnes and Noble or Amazon.

Great, we'll put a link to it in the show notes. You can find it there. Listeners as well as links to the Chamber of New Jersey and other resources that we've talked about. So there's some great resiliency strategies and stories in the book. And right now we're in another complicated time, particularly for entrepreneurs of color, in a time when in some circles, it's not so easy to bring up conversations about equity or different folks being underrepresentative. Not everybody is on the same starting line at the same time. Right. Not same access to resources.

Some people are still very willing to have that conversation. Some people are not. Right. So in all that you've learned about resiliency, John, what would you recommend to entrepreneurs and business owners in 2025, especially those who are from underrepresented communities, didn't have, you know, they didn't get to go to Stanford Business School and do a round of friends and family, you know, capital raise that got them $3 million to get them off the gate. Right. What do you what would you say to an entrepreneur that in 2025 right.

Now, Paul, there's a lot you could say and some of which you're going to share. It may not be well received, but the bottom line is first they got to acknowledge that the ground is shifting beneath us. There's no question. And so you start with acknowledging the second thing. You, you part of that acknowledgment is that these are real tough times, all right? But on the other side of that, there's still activity in the economy, right? And so I think a little bit about Booker T. Washington. You think 1900, you're about 30, 1863, 37 years removed from the Emancipation Proclamation and 35 years removed from Juneteenth. So there's this mass exodus or migration of blacks to the North.

And he's this, you talk about tough times. That was a tough time. And he, in the middle of the square, in my opinion, is trying to tamper down some of the tumult, some of the what's going on, this adverse volatility that is occurring. And he said, hey, notwithstanding all that you're going through, there's some opportunities that could be had. There's a supply and demand issue here, mass exodus from these enterprises, these plantations, et cetera. Somebody still has to keep the business going. And so you sit down and you're cutting the deal with people who oppose you, people who hate you. This is business.

And so for those out there in business today, the SWOT analysis takes on a whole new meaning. If you're Mediocre. In business, if you're playing at the C level, you're going to have some tough times. And there's no way of sugarcoating that. If you're emotional in business and not looking at your data, shoring up your relationships, if one relationship doesn't work, if you have a good product or service that has value, there's somebody out there that's going to take a shot with you. And so your intentionality and your focus is at a whole nother level. Right? You got it. Excellence is, is going to, has to be across your marquee because anything else is not going to cut it in this marketplace.

And so that's what we're sharing with the members here. When you talk about D, E and I, based on these current characterizations or definitions, you're not talking about me, you're not talking about the members of my organization. For us, diversity, equity and inclusion is about a value imperative. When I look at the light bulb, Thomas Edison created the light bulb, but he could not stay on without the importing of Louis Latimer's filament, the son of a slave. When we look at the air conditioning Unit and the H Vac Systems, Frank McKinley Jones was very instrumental in creating refrigeration systems across this great country. Gladys west with the GPS mapping. So if you look down in the history of blacks and their contributions to the U.S. we have to go back to that same mindset.

We're innovative, we bring efficiency, we have strategies that will expand market penetration and growth and sustainability. And so you talk about Elon Musk today who's sending spacecraft up all over the place. He could not, nor could NASA send spacecraft up without the calculation of Katherine Johnson. So sometimes we have to come to these conversations, anticipating adverse perception and push back on them with a solution, with a level of innovation, a level of creativity that's going to be transformational. There's always room. There's always room for someone at the table that offers value. Emotion will get you in the room, but it will not retain your seat for long.

I love that focus on excellence. Really appreciate it. John and there's also something I think implied. Sometimes I joke with clients. I'm going to put some words in your mouth, spit them out if they don't taste good. The network effect, like having strong networks in these challenging times. It seems like somebody who spent as many decades as you have growing a chamber and building a network sees that there's value in investing in networks. And at least in the conversations I'm having People who have robust networks of other excellence oriented entrepreneurs are doing better than those who are very isolated.

Is that fair? Am I reading your career somewhat accurately or you want to spit those words out?

No, Paul, Paul, no one's successful by themselves. You cannot be successful in a vacuum. And this is why we have positioned this chamber strategically in all sectors, all partnerships. Politically, we play the game right down the middle. Whoever's in power, that's who we're working with. Right. And so you can't be overly emotional about this party versus that party. What does the data say? Who can you align with that's going to align with your mission, your value and be able to foster a relationship of mutual benefit, reciprocity and or return.

And so that's critically important. But if you engage emotionally, you're going to go one way or the other and that may or may not be good.

Absolutely. John, I could hang out with you all day. You've done such good work for so long and there's so much wisdom there and that's why you wrote the book. So listeners, please go check out the book. The link is in the show notes as we start to wind down. What's something you want to leave our listeners with or something that you were hoping to recover to cover that we haven't yet covered?

Well, I can't overemphasize networking effectively. You know, if you go to a networking event and I see this times time and time again where there's three or four people and I see more with women than guys, but you go four deep at an event and you're all sitting around the table, I think that's not an effective use of your time. You already know each other. Your strategy should be that you pan out four corners of the room and you all gather notes or cards and then you come back together and then you discuss who you met with and cross pollinate or exchange information. The second piece, if you're in networking by yourself, if you're gathering cards or you're making notes on the back of the cards, most people don't follow up. A significant number of folks get a card, whether it be electronic or old school, and they don't follow up. So why are you there? When you go to an event, you got to be intentional. Why are you there? What are you seeking to accomplish? Everything that you do has to have a value.

Your time has to be, has to have a value. So you don't want to waste your time, you don't want to waste your resources. So I would say networking relationship building. And lastly, you got to operate with integrity because at the end of the day, your name is all you got and people will grow and respect you for being a man or woman of your word and your willingness to admit where you might have made a mistake, a step or just wrong. I think people will respect you more in the end.

Don, if somebody wants to get a hold of you or get a hold of the book, how can they do that?

Yeah, so J harmonacnj.com our website is aaccnj.com or they can go to infoaccnj.com and my book Power Moves can be found at Barnes and Noble or Amazon. You know, check it out. The reviews have been very encouraging.

Paul John, thank you so much listeners. Again, all that'll be in the show notes. Really appreciate having you on the show today.

John thank you. Have a wonderful day.

Yeah. So listeners, if something in this episode stirred something in you, please share it. That's how we can get the word out and help John spread his message and more entrepreneurs learn how to have more positive impact. And a quick reminder, if you're ready to develop a bold strategy for your impact business, whether you're navigating uncertainty or stepping into something new, you can learn more about my strategy sessions@paul zelizer.com until next time, keep working for positive impact and letting your values guide your actions in your business.

Sam.