Tiffani Bova on Growth, Experience, and Finding Happiness

Tiffani Bova is the Global Growth Evangelist at Salesforce, and the Wall Street Journal Bestsellers Growth IQ and The Experience Mindset: Changing the Way You Think About Growth. Over the past two decades, she has led large revenue-producing divisions at businesses ranging from start-ups to the Fortune 500. As a Research Fellow at Gartner, her cutting-edge insights helped Microsoft, Cisco, Salesforce, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle, SAP, AT&T, Dell, Amazon-AWS, and other prominent companies expand their market share and grow their revenues. She has been named one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50 twice. She is also the host of the podcast What’s Next! with Tiffani Bova.   Tiffani had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include: “I am a teacher in some way” (6:50). “Through all the noise, we have to find a way to stay and be happy” (7:50). “Even though people may think [sales] is an individual sport, it is a team sport” (13:15). “As a salesperson, you never do it solo” (13:25). “Rarely does a company do 100% of the things it needs to do on its own” (17:15). “The one thing about growth is it’s not one thing” (24:50). “Great culture drives great innovation” (25:25). “Everything is an ‘and’ play” (27:40). “When you don’t have that understanding, you start making decisions that have unintended consequences to your people, that then impact your customers” (33:20). “Whatever you’re trying to do in the business, the first place to go is to your employees because they usually know the answers to the questions you’re trying to find out” (34:15). “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few” (35:55). “We’ve thrown so much at our people, that it’s not that they don’t want to change, it’s just that they’re burnt through change” (40:50). “I’ve become a master asker” (45:45). “People can copy your products, your services, your marketing campaigns. They can copy all that. It’s impossible for them to copy your culture. It’s impossible for them to copy the way you lead, or the way you run team meetings, or the way you train” (46:50). “When you make a change for the customer… do not forget about your employee” (48:15). “Your employees are the ones who show up every day to deliver on the promise you made as an executive” (50:10). “Self-awareness is really challenging” (58:15). “You really want to make sure that you’re always looking to hone your craft so that you are helping people be as successful as they can be” (1:01:35). “95% of people believe they are self-aware, but only 10-15% really are” (1:03:40). “If you are willing to be self-aware, it’s going to be a very reflective journey for you” (1:08:00).   Additionally, you can connect with Tiffani via email ([email protected]) or on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. Lastly, you can find Tiffani’s website here, and also purchase her book here. Thank you so much to Tiffani for coming on the podcast! I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers. Thanks for listening.