Success Advice
The Path to the Top Starts at the Bottom
The objective is to start at the bottom, not to stay there.

Regardless of whether you are a recent college graduate, just obtained a two-year associate degree from a vocational school, or did neither and are about to enter the workforce straight out of high school, if I could tell you one thing—aside from “be willing to work your ass off,” it would be this: All you need to know to be at the top is learned at the bottom.
READ THAT AGAIN. Take a moment and let it sink in. We all want to be at the top — to be the top dog, the head honcho, the one calling all the shots. But not everyone is suited to be there, oftentimes because they skipped the lessons they should have learned at the bottom. The value of those at the top is frequently a reflection of their willingness to start at the bottom.
Analyze Romantic Career Notions
Some careers lend itself to idealized notions more than others, but in reality, all demand hard work if you hope to succeed at whatever it is you choose to do. Every career starts somewhere, and more than likely, that’s an entry-level position.
We start at the bottom and, through persistence and perseverance, make our way up the employment food chain.
Someone who knew a thing or two about food chains is Bobby Flay, successful restaurant owner in a business that is often overly romanticized by aspiring chefs. It should be noted, however, that Flay, who has appeared on numerous Food Network shows like Iron Chef America, Grillin’ & Chillin’, Beat Bobby Flay, Brunch @ Bobby’s, and Throwdown with Bobby Flay, was not always a household name.
You’d be wrong if you thought he did not first pay his dues spending time at the bottom of an industry known for repetitive tasks like slicing, dicing, chopping, and mincing.
After he dropped out of high school at seventeen, Flay took a job at Joe Allen’s, a popular restaurant in New York’s Theater District, where he spent hours just making salads. While doing this, and “cranking out countless meals,” as he says in his cookbook, Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill Cookbook, he dreamed of the restaurant concept for Mesa Grill.
“All you need to know to be at the top is learned at the bottom.”
Pay Your Dues to Keep Moving Ahead
Flay’s boss at Joe Allen’s noticed something special about Flay and paid for him to attend NYC’s French Culinary Institute, an investment of time to learn his trade. After this, he worked several jobs learning what it was really like working in the kitchen of a restaurant.
During this time, he realized he was not quite ready to run his own kitchen. “It was all fine and good to dream big, but I needed the skills first. I had no culinary point of view of my own yet.” And so, he took a job as a chef—not executive chef—at another restaurant where he was introduced to his now trademark southwestern-style flavors.
Flay has since amassed a culinary empire that includes restaurants, TV shows, cookbooks, and food products. His example shows that it takes wisdom to hone your skills in order for your vision to manifest.
Said another way: Working in another person’s kitchen can help you sharpen the knives that you will use in your own. If you bypass time at the bottom where you learn what is needed to live at the top, the spotlight that shines on you may show not only what you have, but also what you lack.
Cold Calls: A Dose of Reality
In the staffing industry (or any sales related job), the bottom rung is cold calling, what those in the biz call dialing for dollars. For me, that meant plowing through the business Yellow Pages, line by line, hoping someone would pick up the phone so I could discuss the services offered by the firm where I was employed.
I hated doing it, but it had to be done. I didn’t know it then, but making those calls laid the foundation for the numerous business relationships that would ultimately foster the establishment of my two firms, BF Consultants and Encore Professionals Group.
Cold calling—spending time on the bottom rung grinding and cranking away—helped me learn the business.
When I first started, I knew nothing about the accounting and finance positions I would be filling. I knew nothing about professional services and asking customers about their hiring needs. I knew nothing about business development or being a valued resource for those seeking to identify talent for the companies they worked for.
I learned about all of it through cold calling, by talking with customers about their challenges and by asking them how I could help. By starting at the bottom, I gained the foundational knowledge that I needed in order to be at the top and, one day, be my own boss.
Many of the deals I now work on come from people I have known for twenty-plus years. Any success I have had in business is in direct proportion to the relationships I cultivated years ago. And many of them started with that dreaded cold call.
The Bottom: A Place to Visit Not to Live
The objective is to start at the bottom, not to stay there. Entry-level positions are opening points not endpoints. This is the time for your roots to go deep so you remain grounded, no matter how lofty the heights to which you ascend.
It is the place that helps shape who you are and what type of employee (or employer, perhaps) you will eventually become. Experiencing the progression, and knowing what it feels like, flavors and seasons your character. Tasting what it is like at the bottom does not mean you have to cultivate an appetite for it. But it is essential you know how it tastes.
Change Your Mindset
You Become What You Absorb: How Input Shapes Your Life
We let the world dictate who we spend time with and what input we allow in, rarely stopping to consider the effects it’s having on us

“Input” is anything from the outside world that influences your mood, mindset, and emotional state. It includes the media you consume, the books you read, the podcasts and music you listen to, and the movies and shows you watch. But it also encompasses much more: the environment you live and work in, the conversations you have, the people you surround yourself with, and the events, personal or global, that unfold around you. (more…)
Success Advice
This Overlooked Skill Drives Real Business Growth
It strengthens relationships, enhances decision-making, and fosters trust.

In every successful leader’s toolkit, one skill stands out above the rest: the ability to listen. While good leaders are known for making confident decisions, great leaders understand that those decisions are only as strong as the information they’re based on. And that information? It comes from truly listening to their teams, peers, and even critics. (more…)
Scale Your Business
Tired of Wasting Money on the Wrong Marketers? Here’s How Smart Entrepreneurs Are Finally Hiring Right

If you’ve ever Googled how to hire a Facebook marketer or best TikTok marketing agency only to spend thousands on someone who couldn’t deliver…congrats, you’ve joined a very expensive club! For many entrepreneurs, hiring a digital marketer feels like more like visiting a casino and gambling with your runway, than it feels like securing a partner who’ll help build your business. Often, it feels like you’re betting on a stranger to grow the dream you’ve poured your savings into.
And way too often, you lose that bet.
You don’t need another list of the “Top 10 Agencies” with five-star testimonials and polished logos. You need to know which marketer can actually drive results for your business. Not in theory. In practice.
This is where entrepreneurs are learning to pivot. And it’s why a new platform called TruthMetric.com is turning heads across the startup world.
Why Most Startups Burn Through 3–6 Marketers Before Finding the Right One
Here’s the hard truth: most startups don’t fail because of their product, they fail because they can’t get sales or sell it fast enough. And in trying to fix that, founders usually go through five or six marketers, burning tens of thousands before finding someone who truly knows how to convert.
You build your product, get your website live, maybe even launch an ad campaign. But when you search for help and look up how to “hire a YouTube ads agency” or “top Facebook ad expert for Shopify”, you get hit with a sea of shiny portfolios, “ninja” titles, and endless promises.
Three months later, you’re still waiting on your first profitable campaign, and you’re most likely out tens of thousands, feeling utterly defeated…and maybe grinning with an affinity for that upcoming boxing class with a picture of that marketer’s fac……nevermind.
If this sounds like you, it’s time for what one entrepreneur called a strategic shift to scale smarter, not harder.
Introducing TruthMetric.com: The Transparent Marketplace for Hiring Marketers Who Deliver
TruthMetric.com isn’t just another freelancer platform or agency directory. It’s the first hiring solution where you can see three years of real, verified marketing performance before spending a dime.
That includes:
- Verified ad campaign performance
- Actual return on ad spend (ROAS)
- Industry-specific experience
- Platform specialties (Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Google Ads, and more)
Whether you’re looking for a Facebook ads expert, a TikTok marketer, or a YouTube growth strategist, TruthMetric.com lets you filter and compare based on what actually matters, results.
This level of clarity is something you won’t find on platforms like Upwork or Fiverr. And it solves what many founders know too well as the New York Pizza Problem: where every marketer claims they’re “the best,” just like every pizzeria in Manhattan says they’re #1. Often without showing you results, you get sucked into this dream of collaboration, until the nightmare commences the moment you fork that first invoice payment. Hence the deception that leads to many business owners losing their hard earned savings and budget to launch their grand idea.
With TruthMetric, you finally get the data to decide for yourself, BEFORE you hire. Now if only New York Pizza shops had the same transparency then maybe you’d finally find the best pizza in New York, perhaps the perfect post work out after a boxing sesh? I think so!
Why Founders Are Shifting to Results-First Hiring
Most entrepreneurs think they need to do it all themselves, until they burn out or burn through their budget. That’s exactly why this founder had to drop the Superman complex and hire a marketing genius.
What makes TruthMetric so powerful is that it turns hiring into a confident move, not a hopeful one. You’re no longer guessing. You’re choosing from proven performers. You know what vertical they dominate. You know their past client performance. You see the monthly results from the campaigns they ran, and the outcomes they achieved.
It’s not just efficient. It’s empowering.
Scaling Quickly Requires Automation and Eliminating the Noise
Founders who scale quickly understand one thing: growth isn’t just about hustle, it’s about systems. TruthMetric is the system for finding great marketers at speed. No more DM’ing ten freelancers or interviewing agencies feeling like you are asking the world of them to just see some prior results. Instead you get to see the information you need to make an informed decision and plug into verified talent, all ready to perform.
This difference allows for you to match perfectly with the right talent quickly. If you’re building your business to run lean and fast, this convenience plugged in with automation can help you scale your small business right alongside your new marketing hires.
Why TruthMetric Is Also a Boon for Marketers, Not Just Founders
This isn’t just a win for founders, it is a gift for great marketers, too.
If you’re a freelance marketer who’s been quietly pulling 10x ROAS for clients while being passed over for flashy agencies, you now have a stage where your results speak louder than your brand.
TruthMetric is a true meritocracy. No fluff. No sales tricks. Just data.
If you’re tired of being overlooked and ready to stand out based on what you actually deliver, this is your home.
The Secret Weapon for Investors and M&A Operators
There’s another angle here that some of our readers might miss.
Investors, private equity firms, and M&A advisors should be drooling at the thought of having a proven talent pool they can plug and play and the ability to use TruthMetric to revive underperforming companies. Imagine acquiring a business or becoming an active investor, then dropping in a verified operator with a history of explosive growth in that niche.
It’s plug-and-play. Scale on demand.
That kind of insight has never been available before. You couldn’t do this on Upwork. You certainly can’t do it through a friend-of-a-friend referral.
And when it comes to attracting high-performing talent, here’s how to hire top talent and keep them around.
Let’s Really Drive This Home…
If you’ve wasted money on agencies or freelancers who couldn’t deliver, it’s not because you’re bad at hiring, it’s because the game was stacked against you. Trusting dreamy charismatic sales pitches over data was a doomed approach from the start.
TruthMetric levels the playing field by showing you what no other talent marketplace does and that’s proof.
Real marketers. Real results. Real growth.
It’s time to stop guessing and start hiring based on data.
Visit TruthMetric.com and make your next marketing hire the one that actually works.
Personal Development
The Real Reason Successful People Are Never Late
More than just good manners, punctuality is a vital professional and personal trait.

How do you feel when your flight is delayed, throwing your entire schedule into chaos? Or when a patient dies due to a doctor’s tardiness? What about missing a job opportunity because your driver showed up late? And how do you react when someone walks in late without the basic courtesy of apologizing? (more…)
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