The Idea Climbing Podcast

You can’t run a business on relationships without revenue. At the same time you can’t try to sell everybody you meet. Where’s the middle ground? In this episode, I discuss how to navigate that path between relationships and revenue with my guest, Lady Jen Du Plessis. Lady Jen is known as The Business Scaling Architect and The Sovereign Leadership Mentor, boasting 40 years in finance and over $400 million in revenue generated. She is a celebrated numerous Barnes & Noble and Amazon #1 International Best-Selling author, 3X Podcast Host, and TV talk show host who delivers real transformation, not just fast profits - so her clients achieve both business success and personal fulfillment. We dive into topics including: ● Jen’s relationships to revenue origin story. ● The problems with most “one-to-one” networking meetings and how to avoid them. ● How to stop trying to sell and start trying to build relationships instead. ● How to know when it’s the right time to sell your services. ● An example role play of an effective relationship-building first time one-on-one. ● How to successfully grow your business without being “pushy”. ● The five questions that you need to ask in every first-time one-on-one meeting. ● How to prepare for productive and meaningful one-one-one meetings. ● How to know when to start building a relationship after your first meeting and how to do it. ● How to qualify people that might become part of your business’ inner circle of referral partners. ● Why you should aim for 56 people in your inner circle of referral partners and how often to connect with each of them. ● The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to successfully navigate the path from relationships to revenue. …and other golden nuggets of advice!

Making virtual meetings and events engaging can be an arduous task. You must have some key strategies to work with. I discuss some of them with my guest, John Chen. John is the author of the #1 Amazon Hot New Book Release, Engaging Virtual Meetings.  He’s been meeting virtually for over 38 years.  He has produced over 4,000 virtual meetings including an EIGHT language meeting and the only 100% LIVE virtual conference in the training industry. He’s one of only 400 Certified Speaking Professionals designated by the National Speakers Association. We Dive into Topics Including: ● John’s origin story for getting into the virtual event space. ● What most companies do wrong with virtual meetings and how to avoid their mistakes. ● Pro-tips for virtual event facilitation. ● How to create truly active and engaging virtual meetings. ● The importance of “psychological safety” in virtual meetings and how to create it. ● What you need to do in the first five minutes of any virtual meeting or event. ● How to define the purpose of your meetings and address a problem that needs to be solved. ● The ideal part of any engaging meeting or event. ● The structure of a great agenda for a meeting and how to create one. ● Why the sequence of the activities in your meetings and events is of paramount importance. ● The importance of vulnerability from the event facilitator/speaker to create open discussion with your audience. ● How to close your virtual meetings and events strong. ● The one thing, above all else, that you must do to have a successful virtual meeting or event. …and other golden nuggets of advice!

Writing and publishing a business book is an art and science. I discuss pitfalls to avoid along with proven writing and publishing success strategies in this episode with my guest, Weston Lyon. Weston is the author of 23 books, including The Book Writing Blueprint, and the founder of Plug and Play Publishing. Known as one of the only authors to write nine books in 11 months, he has delivered more than 600 presentations and interviews over the past 25 years. Weston helps entrepreneurs and business owners write the right book and use it to build authority, attract clients, and grow their business. We dive into topics including: ● Weston’s origin story when it comes to authorship and profiting from his books. ● Where the book writing process begins. ● The three phases every author goes through when writing a book. ● A deep dive into the five-step process of writing and profiting from your book. ● The concept of time blocking and its necessity in the authorship space. ● The two things you need to look at to set your book up for success. ● How to find a topic that fits your target markets. ● The biggest problem people face when writing a book and other things not to do. ● The two types of book outlines you need to create. ● The three subconscious questions you need to answer for every chapter before you write them. ● The first thing you need to do after you finish writing your book. ● The five steps to successfully publishing your book before you start marketing it. ● How to start the profiting phase of your book after it’s published. ● How to leverage and profit from your book for the rest of your career. ● The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to successfully write and publish your business book. …and more golden nuggets of advice!

Regardless of where you are today you have the power to design your successful future self; also called “Visioneering”. I discuss the pitfalls to avoid and the strategies to embrace to do that in this episode with my guest, Barbara Daoust. In a world where high achievers often struggle to break through the limits they impose on themselves, Barbara is helping leaders, entrepreneurs, and business owners step fully into their greatest potential.     Based in Los Angeles County, California, Barbara is a certified consultant with the Proctor/Gallagher Institute, guiding CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners to achieve measurable personal and professional results. We dive into topics including: The definition of “Visioneering” How to get started with creating your ideal future self. What your reticular activating system is and how to engage with it to create more opportunities. Why your reticular activating system helps you notice opportunities that will get you closer to your desires. The power of writing down exactly what it is that you want and why it helps you. The fact that our subconscious mind doesn’t see words; it sees pictures and the power of visualization. A look at “The Actor’s Technique” and how it helps you create your future self. The first sign of transformation and how to recognize it when it appears. The importance of creating “success habits” and how to do it. How imposter syndrome sets in and how to overcome it. Why there might be some truth to the advice “fake it ‘till you make it”. How to solidify successful change in your life when it happens and not backslide. The importance of taking inspired action every day. Why seeking failure will help you grow in the long run. How to keep on keepin’ on during the tough times. The importance of acknowledging your successes, even the small ones. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to create your successful future self. …and other golden nuggets of advice! Barbara’s Origin Story In what seems like a past life Barbara was director and ran a theater company. She had success in her field. She has a master’s degree in directing. She was also a personal acting coach for the Olson twins for ten years. Barbara also ran an acting academy, and a lot of her past students are now doing very well in the entertainment industry. She also had a show at the Kennedy Center. Barbara directed one of the Olson twins’ videos and their animated series. She has a lot of experience in the entertainment field where people are constantly using their imaginations. And now she’s entered another field and works with high achievers, peak performers, and other people who really want more from life for themselves. The comments Barbara hears often is “There’s so much greatness inside of me and I don’t know how to get it out of me.” “I’m so frustrated with Underearning.” They may not say that they have low self-worth or low self-value, but essentially that’s what they’re saying. Things like “I’m not earning what I think I really should be earning, and I’m not accomplishing as much as I know I can accomplish, and I just don’t know what’s in the way.” Solving problems like those became her passion to pull performance out of a lot of those people who said that they wanted more and started showing people how to get into bold action and becoming their future self. It’s closing that gap between where they were and where they want to go, and doing it in a way that is a little bit more bold and radical. Where does future visioneering start? How does one get started with it? It starts with allowing yourself to fantasize and being honest with yourself; truly honest with yourself. Getting relaxed and allowing yourself to imagine all of the things that you would like to do in your life. What are things that you would like to accomplish? What are some goals that you have in your mind? One of Barbara’s first goals that she started thinking about a while ago was having enough money where she could pick up the tab in any five-star restaurant across the world for anyone who was sitting at my table. That was something that really excited her. So, in that excitement, she started to practice picking up the tab for eight people at the Hilton. It wasn’t a five-star hotel, but it was a start. A start of just starting to activate her imagination; how does that show up in her life? That then that pulled her in a direction of thinking about what is going to help me make more income in order to achieve that desire? It’s really to sitting down with yourself and asking “What is it that I really, really want?” That means thinking of something that you want, not what somebody else wants for you. Not the idea of becoming the lawyer, the doctor, or something else that’s going to make you a lot of money because you were told that it would. There’s an illusion of a title being the thing to go after, Barbara doesn’t believe that we are our jobs. She believes that our jobs are a vehicle for us to express who we are and what we’re here to do and what we want to accomplish in our lives. How to Get Focused on and Create More Opportunities Once you start to fantasize you select something that’s going to excite you and possibly scare you. It has to be something you’ve never done before. Because if you’re doing something you already know how to do, you’re not going to meet the parts of yourself you’ve never yet met. You want to go after something that has been inside of you for a long time, that you want to let out, that you want to express. Then you decide that you’re going to go for it. The first step is to make a committed decision that no matter what you’re aiming for, and once you start aiming and focusing, you’re going to get your desire. The purpose of the conscious mind is to focus and choose. Focus and choose. Once you get highly focused and you start choosing in the direction of your goal, then your reticular activating system in the subconscious mind starts to narrow the field so that you start to see things that were already there, but you didn’t notice before. You’re getting highly focused on bringing your desire to life at that point. It’s like a red Dodge. You don’t notice them until your purchase on and then you see them all over the road. The same happens with opportunities to achieve your goals; you’ll notice what you didn’t notice before. And that’s just the beginning! Listen to or watch the rest of the interview to continue this story and learn more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”     About My Guest In a world where high achievers often struggle to break through the limits they impose on themselves, Barbara Daoust is helping leaders, entrepreneurs, and business owners step fully into their greatest potential. Based in Los Angeles County, California, Barbara is a certified consultant with the Proctor/Gallagher Institute, guiding CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners to achieve measurable personal and professional results. With over 25 years of experience in theater, film, and television as a director, producer, and acting coach, she brings a unique understanding of performance, leadership, and human behavior to her coaching. Barbara helps leaders close the gap between knowledge and action to unlock untapped potential. She is also the author of “True Love, True Self: A Journey to Self-Love”, a keynote speaker, and creator of transformative coaching programs designed to expand self-confidence, productivity, and business growth. “Discover Greatness Within” and “Your Genius Code Unlocked” are two brainwave entrainment programs she developed with Dr. Jussi Erikainen from Spain. Her work empowers people to overcome limiting beliefs, embrace change, and step into their future identity. Click here to learn more about Barbara! Click here to connect with Barbara on LinkedIn! Click here to follow Barbara on Instagram! Click here to learn about Barbara’s “Code to Success” Program! Want more self-improvement insights? Check out “How to End Self-Sabotage and Boost Self-Confidence with Dr. Robyn Lynette”

There’s an art and a science to scaling your service business. A big part of it is learning to work on your business and not in your business. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Rick Elmore. Rick Elmore is the Founder and CEO of Simply Noted, a technology company helping businesses build stronger relationships through automated handwritten communication powered by real pen and ink.     A former college and professional football player turned entrepreneur, Rick has combined his background in sales, marketing, and relationship-building to create one of the fastest-growing handwritten outreach platforms in the world. We dive into topics including:  Rick’s early days in sales that lead to his multi-million-dollar discovery. The importance of getting the right people in the right seats of your business. How to work on your business instead of in your business. Where and when Rick started working on his business instead of in his business. Your life cycle as an entrepreneur from inception to scaling your business. The importance of building an ecosystem of trust in your business and how to do it. What you need to do next after you build the core team of your business. How to scale your marketing initiatives. How to keep your sanity when you’re scaling as an owner/operator. The importance of discipline and how to develop it. Why scaling is a lifelong journey that never ends. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to successfully scale your service business. …and other golden nuggets of advice! Rick’s Origin Story Rick has a pretty unique background. He was an athlete growing up. He played college and professional sports, even though athletics didn’t come to naturally to him. Athletics was something that Rick was able to be successful at because he was a hard worker and didn’t overextend himself. A lot of people discredit what you can get done in 10 years versus all the pressure they put on themselves to get done in a year. Rick had 15 years of experience working on not overextending himself before he became an entrepreneur. Rick made it to the NFL in 2010, but he was an athlete for a long time before that. His first year in the NFL he was playing for the Cleveland Browns, and he was with one of the back office people. They showed me his draft profile and it said, “This guy plays above his potential, is an overachiever, and wins with effort.” Back then he used to think that was like a stab. But now, being 38 years old, Rick looks back and he believes that all of those were his strengths. He used that and leveraged his ability to keep working hard to push on and persevere through any of life’s problems. Then five years in the NFL Rick went back and got his MBA. He was a typical B or C student; nothing special as he recalls. His mindset was that he was just there to memorize stuff and take tests. But he fell in love with learning because he was passionate about and interested in business. He wanted to learn how to start a business. He wanted to learn about what made businesses work even though he was completely green in the entrepreneurship space. When Rick went into sales that was one of the turning points in his life. Life After Sports Because he found something he was interested in, it became a lot easier to dedicate his life to it after sports. He had a marketing professor that said something that changed his life. About a year into his program, the professor said that handwritten mail had a 99% open rate. Rick realized that if you got something in the mail, and it was handwritten, you were going to open it. He grew up in the nineties, when people used to write notes to their friends. It became a lost art over time. BUT there was no way to like do it efficiently at scale. It took Rick a lot of time to sit down and write a holiday card to each of his clients and put them in envelopes. Rick started researching and there was a technology called a “pen plotter” out at that time. It had no paper feed, no technology behind it. He got it from China, built it and went to his friends and said “Hey, this is my idea. Can you help me?” He knew nothing about software, nothing about software integrations and software coding. Rick’s a-HA! Business Scaling Moment But he DID know that if his idea could be flushed out there would be an opportunity for a business because nobody else was doing it. Rick made it work. He created 500 handwritten notes using that simple handwriting robot and sent them out to clients and prospects. The response rate was amazing. Many of his clients and prospects were doctors and many of them responded to his note that it helped Rick bypass his $50,000 a month quota. Rick made over $270,000 in sales. That was the most money he had ever made. He laughed because people think just because he was in NFL, that he made a lot of money, which is not true. Only about 1% of the athletes who go to the NFL make all the money that you think they do. The CEO of his company took notice of the results Rick was getting. When he met Rick, he said “Keep doing whatever you’re doing. It’s working.” Rick figured if the CEO is noticing what he’s doing, it had to mean he was on to something. The Payoff for Scaling His Business the Right Way Rick says he was a football player and a sales and marketing guy who started a robotics/engineering automation business with zero experience. But he wouldn’t have been able to get to over $10 million in revenue, with multi-seven-figure a year runs in business, if he hadn’t gotten the right people in the right seats and built the right systems for scaling everything he was doing. Rick says you can’t just focus on one thing. You must scale your marketing, get the leads, and then scale the team to close the leads. After that you must scale your production. And that was a process. Rick believes what most entrepreneurs do wrong is getting stuck working in their businesses instead of working on their businesses. It was time for Rick to start working on his business. That is just the beginning! Watch or listen to the interview for the rest of the story and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”     About My Guest Rick Elmore is the Founder and CEO of Simply Noted, a technology company helping businesses build stronger relationships through automated handwritten communication powered by real pen and ink. A former college and professional football player turned entrepreneur, Rick has combined his background in sales, marketing, and relationship-building to create one of the fastest-growing handwritten outreach platforms in the world. Founded in 2018, Simply Noted helps companies scale authentic, personalized communication through proprietary technology that integrates handwritten notes into modern sales and marketing systems. Under Rick’s leadership, the company has worked with businesses across industries including real estate, insurance, hospitality, nonprofit, franchise, and B2B organizations. Before launching Simply Noted, Rick played football at the University of Arizona and spent time in the NFL before transitioning into medical sales and entrepreneurship. Today, he is known for his expertise in relationship-driven marketing, customer retention, and helping businesses stand out in an increasingly automated world. Click here to learn more about Simply Noted! Click here to connect with Rick on LinkedIn! Want to learn more about building a successful service business? Check out “How to Package and Price Your Service Offering with Alex Shartsis“

Entrepreneurs face self-sabotage more than most people. We can also experience powerful self-confidence when we have the right strategies. I discuss how to overcome self-sabotage and replace it with life-altering self confidence in this episode with my guest, Dr. Robyn Lynette. Dr. Robyn is an executive strategy partner who has spent nearly two decades working privately with CEOs and founders during the highest-stakes moments of their professional lives.     Drawing on business and sport psychology, she identifies the hidden patterns that can quickly undermine decision-making and leadership at the top, where the pressure is high and the margin for error is thin. The leaders she works with aren’t looking for help; they’re looking for an edge. She’s also the author of the memoir I’d Like to Thank the Cartel for Getting Me Out of a Cult. We dive into topics including: Why playing competitive sports helped form Robyn’s mindset for success in all areas of life. How your brain can either help or hinder you. Specific examples of the best way your brain can help you. The unfortunate reality of our “Fight or flight” response and how to overcome it. The power of intuition and what it really is. Examples of what happens when you ignore your intuition. Where self-sabotage comes from and why it’s there. How to recognize self-sabotage and stop it in its tracks. What your logical brain needs to do to step in and “save the day” on bad days. How to build mental habits to automatically break your stream of self-sabotage. Why people stay stuck in self-destructive or self-sabotaging habits. The definition of self-confidence. Where building self-confidence starts and what it looks like. Examples of confident behaviors and how to develop them. The all important role of self-talk in your life, especially when it comes to self-confidence. The origin of self-fulfilling prophecies and how to create good ones. How to change negative emotions when you realize you’re feeling them. How to maintain self-confidence over time even on the “down days”. The role your logical brain plays when combined with your emotional brain. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to end self-sabotage and boost self-confidence. …and other golden nuggets of advice! Robyn’s Introduction to Self-Sabotage and Self-Confidence Robyn’s story goes back to when she used to play competitive beach volleyball. There were some days when she could get on the court and just nail it; she felt like a phenomenal volleyball player. And then there were other days when she would get on the court and her partner would hold out a volleyball and ask, “Robyn, this is a volleyball. Have you ever seen one before?” Robyn wondered, “Where did my game go?” Because of that, Robyn’s interest was sparked. She had the opportunity in college to study high performance people and how and why they achieve more than the general population. The thing that she noticed was that across all professions, whether you’re in business, sports, or the military, is how your brain can either help you or hinder you.  She likes to joke and say, “Whether you’re using your brawn or your brain, your brain is still gonna be in the way.” Your Brain Can Help or Hinder You… It’s Your Choice! Obviously, your brain can help with critical thinking. For example, we can manage stress and override our fight or flight response. You probably know that in the modern world; we’re constantly in fight or flight mode. Because of that we have all hormones that are constantly flooding our brains; for better or worse. If you’re going to succeed, you must be able to set that mode aside and realize, “I know I’m not being chased by a saber tooth tiger; I can do this.” Doing that starts to help. The hinder part, or problem, is if you’re constantly overcoming fight or flight and pushing down that fear, you’re also eliminating your gut instinct and your intuition. Things like those that can help you get pushed down because you’re in fight or flight mode. Which leads us to intuition… Entrepreneurs and Intuition Intuition is an interesting phenomenon. There’s a lot of science around it that talks about how intuition is your sunconscious picking up on patterns before your logical mind recognizes them. Which means your emotional brain is the part of your brain that makes you think of the perfect thing to say 20 minutes after the argument. That’s the part of your brain that was overriding things. If you want that intuition to come through, you must listen to your emotional, or subconscious part of your brain. So many of us are ignoring it, and we’re all in critical thinking mode most of the time. That’s what keeps us awake at 3:00 AM because we’re thinking of all the things that we didn’t share when we had the opportunities to do so during the day. You should make time during the day to listen to that part of your brain. There are many ways you can do that. It could be meditation. Robyn believes meditation is an excellent practice. But she gets a lot of people telling her that they don’t have time to meditate. Connecting with and Listening to Your Intuition Maybe for you it’s when you’re driving in the car, you leave the radio off, so you don’t have that extra input. Then your subconscious brain has a chance to bubble to the surface. Maybe for you, it’s working with someone, whether it’s a coach, therapist, strategic business partner or someone like that who talks through that stuff with you. That can trigger the part of your brain that brings up with intuition. At the end of the day, it comes down to making time to actively listen to your thoughts. Then there’s the other side of the coin. You’ve probably had this happen to you. You have an intuition (or gut feeling), you ignore it, and then you wonder “Why did I ignore that?” It’s when you’re walking out the door and you’re thinking, “I know I’m forgetting something”, and you get 10 minutes down the road, and your brain reminds you about what you forgot. Then you have to turn around and go get it. That happens when you’re not making time for your subconscious, emotional brain to bubble to the top. Your intuition can actually speak to your logical brain and prevent problems like that. That is just the beginning! Watch or listen to the interview for the rest of the story and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”     About My Guest Dr. Robyn Lynette, an executive strategy partner, has spent nearly two decades working privately with CEOs and founders during the highest-stakes moments of their professional lives: funding rounds, major exits, board crises, fraud inside the leadership team, restructuring, and the quieter weight that comes with making decisions no one else can make. With a background in business and sport psychology she works with leaders to identify the hidden patterns that undermine decision-making, relationships, and performance at the top —where the pressure is high and the margin for error is thin. The leaders who work with Dr. Robyn aren’t looking for help. They’re looking for an edge: the ability to think clearly under pressure, communicate with authority, and lead with greater influence and self-trust. She is also the author of the memoir I’d Like to Thank the Cartel for Getting Me Out of a Cult, which explores the personal experiences that shaped her approach to resilience, leadership, and human behavior. Learn More About Dr. Robyn! Check out Dr. Robyn’s Book! Watch Dr. Robyn’s TEDx talk “Creating Success Out of Chaos”  Want more self improvement advice? Check out “How to Design Your Ideal Life by Creating Fulfillment and Impact with Mo Salami”

How to package and price your service offering are difficult decisions to make. Most entrepreneurs wrestle with them for years. I discuss how to do it faster and more effectively with my guest, Alex Shartsis. Alex is a multi-exit founder and go to market strategist who has led go-to-market at venture-backed startups including Drawbridge, acquired by LinkedIn, and TripIt, acquired by Concur, and ran corporate development at Opendoor.     Today he’s the co-founder and CEO of Skyp — an AI-powered outbound email platform that helps founders and sales teams book more meetings without hiring an sales development representative. He built Silverwood Advisors, an advisory practice focused on GTM strategy, into a go-to resource for teams in Silicon Valley and beyond. We dive into topics including: The difference between charging hourly, project-based, or retainer pricing options. Where to start when you’re packaging a service. The importance of understanding your clients’ needs before determining pricing models. How to make promises that you can follow through on. The importance of setting expectations before the sale and how to do it. How to do research about how to price your service offering. The importance of having a deep understanding of your clients’ business models. How to position yourself for success in the marketplace. Why most service providers underprice themselves and what to do about it. Why pricing low to win business rarely works. How to pick the most profitable target markets. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to package and price your services successfully. …and other golden nuggets of advice! Living in the Startup World Alex has worked with a lot of startups, at least 20 or 30 at this point. He prefers early-stage startups where he must figure out their product market fit and figure out what their customers want. Alex has been advising and selling consulting services for six years now, and he’s become great at packaging his own service as a result. In addition, he’s spoken with many other consultants about how they package themselves successfully. Alex has ended up with a wealth of knowledge that he never intentionally set out to get; but he’s grateful to have it now. The Origin of How Alex Packaged His Service Offerings and What You Can Learn from His Experience For Alex, it’s a funny story. Originally Alex wasn’t looking to get into consulting. He had just left his startup, and it was a rough time. A venture capital friend asked Alex to become an advisor to one of his companies. Even though he was planning to take some time off, Alex agreed. Alex spoke with friends who were in the consulting world. One had only done consulting throughout his entire career. His advice to Alex was to charge $300 an hour. The challenge with that was that startup founders often don’t know how many hours they need. More Ideas and Suggestions for Fee Structures Alex continued his conversations. Next, he spoke with people that worked only on project-based fee structures. He liked that because he believes people don’t want the surprises that come from charging hourly rates. It can hurt your relationships if the hours go over the amount initially proposed. The project-based work they discussed involved payment at certain milestones. When you hit a milestone with your clients, they pay you $10,000 and so on. That structure aligns the work with the results. And then the third fee structure Alex discovered was the retainer-based model. For example, he would charge $10,000 a month for one day a week, and $20,000 a month for two days a week. Then there was the option for $30,000 to have Alex for a full week. Alex realized was that he had a strong opinion after having been a founder who hired consultants, and that was that. Immediately, he didn’t want to underprice. He believed the biggest risk he faced was underpricing his time. And second, he wanted to make sure he didn’t get stuck in a cheaper-will-get-you-more-clients mindset. He didn’t want to be the poor salesperson who drives a Honda Accord, who asks “Why would you ever spend $150,000 on a car?” Thinking that way is self-defeating when it comes to pricing your services. If you put yourself in your buyer’s shoes, they may have a completely different perspective of budget and value than you do. Value and budget are equally important. Alex didn’t want to make that mistake and didn’t want to have to track his hours as the sole way of delivering value. He notices that the consultants that took the hourly route were working with founders who had lots of different things going on and needed a variety of consulting services. An hour here for this project; an hour there for another project. More Decisions About Pricing Models For example, if Alex took the hourly route and asked a client to review his work on their website and then move onto the next step, if it took the client two weeks to get to the next step he couldn’t bill them anything for two weeks because he was waiting for them to review the web site. In that case you must track your billing and you’re at the mercy of wondering if your client will do the thing they said they were going to do (and in a timely manner). In that scenario you can’t send them an invoice that month because they didn’t follow through. So, the retainer model was what Alex decided to go with, at a price point that he initially thought he would have never paid at that rate when he was a founder. But now, looking back on it, Alex says he probably would have in the end because he realized that it reduced the risk for him as a founder. With the retainer model he gradually increased his retainer as he had more clients. And that is just the beginning! Listen to or watch the interview to continue this story and get more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” About My Guest   Alex Shartsis is a multi-exit founder and go to market strategist who has led go-to-market at venture-backed startups including Drawbridge (acquired by LinkedIn) and TripIt (acquired by Concur), and ran corporate development at Opendoor. Today he is the co-founder and CEO of Skyp, the best AI outreach tool for sales teams — an AI-powered microcampaign platform that helps founders and sales teams book more meetings without hiring an SDR. He also runs Silverwood Advisors, an advisory practice focused on go to market strategy and early-stage M&A for founders. Alex writes the Seed to Sequoia newsletter on strategy, and the Skyp Go to Market Newsletter on outbound and sales strategy for founders and operators. You can connect with him on LinkedIn. Want to learn more about entrepreneurship? Check out “How to Go from Employee to Solopreneur to Entrepreneur with Sys Savanh“

The journey from employee to entrepreneur can be confusing. Where do you begin? How to create a mindset to get you there? In this interview we answer questions like that with my guest, Sys Savanh. Sys is the founder of 7 Figure Expert Academy, where he helps entrepreneurs package, position, and scale their expertise into powerful offers that actually sell. In this conversation, we’re going beyond theory!     We’re talking about what’s working right now; how to stand out, how to monetize what you know, and how to build something that doesn’t just look good online… but actually grows your business. We dive into topics including: The fear of making the leap from employee to solopreneur and how to overcome it. How to start building a business as a solopreneur. The difference between a business operator and a business owner. How to make the shift from being an operator to an owner. The four pillars of a successful business. Why you still need people working for you when you’re a solopreneur. How to know when you’re ready to make the leap from solopreneur to entrepreneur. Why you can’t build a brand first; you have to sell first. The characteristics of entrepreneurs that make them different than solopreneurs. How to automate your sales and generate consistent leads. How to maintain success as an entrepreneur and not slide backwards. How to hit the milestone of placing most of your focus on marketing instead of selling. The importance of developing procedures and processes. Why your main job as an entrepreneur is to get yourself seen more and how to do it. The one thing, above all else, that you have to do to be successful on your journey from employee to solopreneur to entrepreneur. …and other golden nuggets of advice! Sys’ Journey from Employee to Solopreneur to Entrepreneur Sys believes that when you’re an employee, there’s often a point when you have something brewing in your gut that tells you there’s something more out there. Just like Sys did for three years as an employee. He just knew that he was meant for more, like he was meant to do something great. Sys believes that if you have something tugging at you, you start asking yourself questions like “What’s my purpose, what’s the meaning of life and is there more to life than this?” Those are the types of questions he started asking himself as he was being the best employee possible for the companies he was working for. Ever since Sys was 10 years old he has always been a hard worker. He would go around his neighborhood knocking on doors asking if he could cut his neighbors’ lawns. When somebody allowed him to cut their grass for five bucks, he did it. Sys considered himself to be the best grass cutter. Then he went onto Burger King and then the VFW where he was the best dishwasher. At every company he went to work for, he was always the best. Then in 2002 he read a quote, “If you don’t build your dream, someone will hire you to build theirs.” That hit him like a ton of brick as an employee. Sys realized that he wasn’t building his dream but he was hired to build someone else’s and he was trading his time for money. That didn’t sit well with him. He realized it was time to… Stop Trading Time for Money There was a catalyst for him to make a transition two years later in 2004. Sys saw another quote from Jim Rohn; “If you didn’t come from a wealthy family, make sure a wealthy family comes from you.” He considered that to be his second sign from God. With that he decided enough’s enough. Sys decided God was speaking to him and he went for it. He  started to figure out a plan. He went back to school to get his business degree. Then what started it all was when Sys was a manager at a very large company called ITT and he went into a board meeting one day. The CEO came out and told everyone he has lay off 57 people because people didn’t sell enough services. That stuck with him. Sys realized the CEO was right. It doesn’t matter what the economy is like, it doesn’t matter what’s happening in the marketplace. If somebody doesn’t sell, they have to lay people off. He had never done sales before, so he took a sales position just to learn how to sell and how to communicate. He was presented with two options. Do you want to get paid $55,000 a year plus bonuses, or do you want to make as much as you want? That would mean he would be on a hundred percent commission. He chose the hundred percent commission. He thanks God he did that because he just crushed it. Sys realized that it’s not that he was great at sales, he was just really good at being himself. That’s how his sales journey started and that’s when it really gave him the confidence to move from employee to a solopreneur. Making the Leap from Employee to Solopreneur Sys says there’s always fear involved with the decision to go from being an employee to being a solopreneur. There’s negative self-talk. He calls it “the crappy committee that’s inside of your head.” He says you have to fire that committee and change your board there. There’s a whole executive board up there in your head. When Sys made the leap the fear was there. He went for it anyways. He future paced myself and pretended he was 70 years old and sitting in his rocking chair and wondering what if he didn’t make the leap? Would he regret it? Then he decided, whether he succeeded or not, at least he could tell himself that he went for it. Then he asked himself what if I actually succeeded? What are my rewards? His rewards outweighed his regrets, and that gave him the courage to go through with it, even though fear was still there. There was a calling, Sys believes that God was calling to him to step out on his own. It was December 3rd, 2005, when he opened his very first business. In December of 2025 Sys celebrated his 20th anniversary as an entrepreneur. That business was a sales company. Sys went out and got contracts to sell other people’s products and services. He did that for close to seven years. And that is just the beginning! Listen to or watch the interview to continue this story and get more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” About My Guest Sys Savanh is an entrepreneur and business strategist who helps coaches, consultants, and experts turn what they know into scalable, high-income businesses. As the founder of 7 Figure Expert Academy, Sys specializes in helping entrepreneurs package their expertise, position themselves as authorities, and build offers that don’t just sound good—but actually convert. His work focuses on simplifying the path to growth—cutting through the noise of overcomplicated marketing and helping his clients create clear, repeatable systems that generate consistent revenue. If you’ve ever felt like you have more value to offer than what your business is currently producing, Sys is the kind of expert who helps bridge that gap—turning knowledge into impact, and impact into income. Connect with Sys on LinkedIn! Learn more about 7 Figures Expert Academy! Get your free gift; special for my audience! Want to learn more about entrepreneurship? Check out this interview, “How to Create a Millionaire Mindset with Cole Vandee”    

Starting a podcast might be the fastest way to grow your brand… or the fastest way to waste your time. That’s the uncomfortable truth most entrepreneurs don’t want to hear. If you want to start a podcast you have to have a damn good reason and a strategy for success. I discuss how to develop those in this episode with my guest, Jeff Dauler. Jeff spent 25 years building top-rated morning radio shows before turning that same audience instinct toward a different medium. Today he co-leads tentwentytwo, a boutique podcast strategy firm that helps executives and brands turn ideas into shows that actually move business forward. He’s here to talk about what makes a podcast worthwhile, the mistakes 90% of podcasters make, and how to build something that actually grows your business.     We dive into topics including: Reasons NOT to start a podcast. The number of episodes you should expect to create when you start a podcast and why. How to create your ideal listener profile. The three questions Jeff asks all his potential clients to decide if a podcast is worth creating. What the structure of a successful podcast show looks like. What you need to say in the first sixty seconds of your podcast. What NOT to do during each of your podcast episodes. How to stay motivated to continue creating podcast episodes after your first few. How to create additional marketing and branding content from each of your podcast episodes. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do if you’re going to start a podcast. …and other golden nuggets of advice! Jeff’s Podcasting Story Jeff started his first podcast in 2016 and started doing podcasting full-time in 2019 when he was asked to leave the radio industry. He’s not bragging about getting fired.  If you’ve worked in radio for 25 years and you’ve only gotten fired once, that’s a good track record. Jeff had a 25-year radio career, working a morning radio, working in a lot of different cities as an executive producer of a morning show and the co-host of another morning show and finally as a host of a morning show. When Jeff got fired in 2019 he had a severance package. That gave him the room to step back an take a look at his life. He didn’t have to rush out and immediately find another radio job. Jeff decided to sleep past 4:30 AM for the first time in his adult life and start a podcast business. The business took off and Jeff never looked back. A couple years after starting the business Jeff’s wife left her full-time job to run the podcast business with him. Her background is also in entertainment. She worked in music and live television. Together they make a pretty interesting and unique team for podcasting. Why Do Most People Want to Have a Podcast? Jeff says that more often than not, when somebody comes to him saying “I need a podcast” they rarely have a reason why they need a podcast in terms of goals, objectives or outcomes. They just think that they need a podcast because somebody told them they needed one or their competition has podcasts. Other times they know they’ve needed one for a while to help establish their brand and get their message out there. But most of the time they don’t know what measurable outcomes they want to achieve. That’s what Jeff’s company does. They help them define their strategy and determine what the goal of the podcast should be. Getting Started in the Podcasting World The first question Jeff asks every client is the same. “What do you want your podcast to do?” Most people candidly don’t know, they don’t realize everything that a podcast is capable of, so they don’t know how to answer that. Many people don’t realize that there’s a lot of work that goes into creating and maintaining a podcast. Too many people start a podcast to create content without ever thinking about what they want as an outcome or the end result to be. First, you have a clear goal and a clear objective for  your show. The first question Jeff asks anybody is, “What does your podcast need to do for it to look like a success?” And then he reminds them that people like Mel Robbins, Joe Rogan and Dax Shepherd, and all of those shows, they exist to get as many listeners as possible because they make their money from advertisers. That’s why they release an episode every week or twice a week because they need a ton of listeners to get enough advertisers to be profitable. For 99% of the people that Jeff talks to, that is absolutely not necessary. What You DO Need to Get From a Podcast Endeavor Instead, what you DO need is six episodes or twelve episodes of really strategic content that is going to deliver a specific outcome. For example, networking or getting new clients. Jeff has to help most of his clients identify exactly what outcome they need to achieve to justify the existence of the podcast. Jeff says for nine out of ten people, it’s money related. They need more clients. They want to sell more books. They want to book more keynote speaking engagements. They usually discover that you don’t have to do what Dax Shepherd, Mel Robbins and Joe Rogan are doing. You don’t have to constantly put out endless episodes and try to grow a large audience. What you need to do is create a podcast that talks directly to a specific person who can move you in a specific direction and engage with you in a way that puts money in your pocket. You can usually accomplish that in six or twelve episodes. It’s not necessary to start a podcast and be committed to one episode every other week for the rest of your life. And that is just the beginning! Listen to or watch the interview to continue this story and get more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” About My Guest Jeff Dauler is co-founder of tentwentytwo, a boutique podcast strategy and production company that helps executives, thought leaders, and brands build shows with a purpose. With a career rooted in radio production, Jeff brings a rare combination of showbiz craft and business strategy to every project. tentwentytwo specializes in finite podcast seasons: twelve episodes designed around a clear goal, a defined audience, and a measurable outcome. Jeff’s philosophy is simple: a podcast that doesn’t serve your business isn’t a strategy, it’s a hobby. He helps clients close that gap. Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn! Learn more about Jeff’s business! Want to learn more about podcasting? Check out this episode “How to Build Your Business with Podcasting with Steve Ramona“

If you want to grow as a successful thought leader, people need to see and trust you if you want to become profitable. I discuss how to move along that spectrum with my guest, Christine Blosdale. Christine is The Expert Authority Coach™ who helps entrepreneurs, creators, coaches, and thought leaders get seen, trusted, and paid for what they already know. She’s an award-winning media personality and five-time #1 bestselling author with over 25 years expertise in broadcasting, branding, and business growth.     We dive into topics including: The origin of imposter syndrome and how it creeps into your life. How to get over imposter syndrome. Examples of the negative stories you tell yourself and how to overcome them. What you need to do to start “being seen” Why if you’re not seen and heard, you’re not hired. How to pick the right kind of content to create to get yourself seen. Why owning your authentic personality your key to success and how to own it. How to craft your “signature story”. How to successfully go from being seen to being trusted. Strategies to author and promote your own book. The importance of taking things in small steps. Tips for successful first-time client meetings. How to gain the trust of potential clients. The biggest marketing mistake thought leaders make and how to avoid it. How to move from being trusted to getting paid without being pushy about it. How to “magnetize” yourself and bring the right people into your world. Examples of how to shift the energy that you’re giving off. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to be seen, trusted and paid. …and other golden nuggets of advice!  Christine’s Journey Christine has had many, many years of entrepreneurship experience and coaching experience with her clients from all around the world. She has found that there is a particular way of expanding your expert authority so that people get to see you, get to hear you, and ultimately get to trust you, which is the most important thing if you’re an entrepreneur. Christine has been working on that formula for several decades. A while back she worked in a major radio station in Los Angeles. She was a host and a producer, so she got to know what people want. Christine raised a lot of money online, about 1.5 million a year, for a nonprofit radio station. It’s about knowing what people want and what they need and then delivering it to them is something that Christine has honed in on over the years. When she worked for America Online it was during the days when there was no TikTok, there was no YouTube, nothing like that. It was just pure communication through written columns and other written content. Christine has honed her skills over the years and she’s happy to be here to tell my wonderful listeners and viewers what we can do to expand our expert authority. Dealing with and Working Through “Imposter Syndrome” Because so many entrepreneurs experience it, when Christine works with clients, they address the “Imposter Syndrome” issue right away. A lot of people experience imposter syndrome and it affects entrepreneurs more than most others. For some people it follows them around in everything they do. For others, they’re fine until they’re asked to stretch themselves. In other words, when they do something that they haven’t done before, or do something that’s a little scary and out of their comfort zone, imposter syndrome appears. There are many potential scenarios. Maybe it’s being asked to speak in front of a crowd. If that person has never done that before, imposter syndrome can creep up. What that is, is basically a fear of being found out of not being an expert. It’s a fear of what other people are going think about you and what people will say about you. So… Who Faces Imposter Syndrome the Most? It’s a comparison mindset that comes with questions like “Who am I to be speaking to these people? There must be people that are better experts in this field or more credible in this field.” Here’s the thing: It mostly happens to overachievers. For example it happens to therapists who have years and years of study and all the certifications and the qualifications and the experience BUT they’re stepping into a new realm like speaking. Overachievers tend to suffer from imposter syndrome more than your average person who’s just going through life living by the status quo. Imposter syndrome can stop people in their tracks. It’s a shame because a lot of people who can be helped by you, who can be impacted by your coaching, by your consulting and such, they don’t get that help if you allow the imposter syndrome to hold you back. Christine tries to get rid of that right away with her clients. There’s a couple ways that she goes about that. We’ll get to that in a minute. For now let’s ask and answer… Why Does Imposter Syndrome Affect Over Achievers More Than Others? It’s because the overachiever actually has more to lose, or they think that they have more to lose. It’s because whatever it is that they approach in life, they try and do their best and try to be perfect at everything. If it’s something that they’ve never done before and it’s scary, then they might just not do it at all. Their stance is “If I can’t do it perfectly, I’m not going to do it”. Here’s the thing: People don’t need thing done perfectly for them. People are craving humanity and craving authenticity, a real person, flaws in all. That’s one thing that Christine works on with her clients: To be authentic and to come through as a real person that people will respect. Your tribe and the people that are meant for you will be magnetized to you. That’s a great reason to get over that perfection aspect of doing things. And that is just the beginning! Listen to or watch the interview to continue this story and get more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” About My Guest Christine Blosdale is The Expert Authority Coach™ who helps entrepreneurs, creators, coaches, and thought leaders get seen, trusted, and paid for what they already know. She’s an award-winning media personality and five-time #1 bestselling author with over 25 years expertise in broadcasting, branding, and business growth. Christine has worked with global giants like America Online and Microsoft, and has guided hundreds of experts to step into their own unique Expert Authority. As the host of The Expert Authority Coach™ Podcast (ranked in the top 2% globally) Christine delivers conversations that engage, educate, and energize audiences. Her interviews are fast-paced, relatable, and filled with sharp insights — all while delivering simple, actionable takeaways listeners can apply immediately. She’s been featured in Woman’s Day Magazine, Ticker News, and on numerous podcasts, and is known for her bold yet approachable style that leaves audiences inspired, empowered, and ready to take action long after the episode ends. Connect with Christine on LinkedIn! Learn more about Christine and her business! Want more marketing advice? Check out “How to Create Story-Driven Content Marketing Campaigns with Katie Wagner”

Designing and living your ideal life is possible IF you have the right strategies. A big part of that is creating fulfillment in your own life while positively impacting the world around you. In this episode I discuss how to do just that with my guest, Mo Salami.     Mo is a High-Performance Coach and International Keynote Speaker. He speaks multiple languages, fluent in English, French, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Mo is a former Senior Mentor for World Class Peak Performance Guru Tony Robbins. Whilst part of his California-based team, Mo generated tens of millions of dollars in sales for Tony Robbins’ events worldwide. Mo has done over 20,000 hours of 1:1 consulting; including consulting with over 8,000 business owners doing a million dollars a year in revenue or more. We dive into topics including: The three-prong approach of designing your ideal life. How to move towards the result that you want even before you see the result you want. How to know what opportunities to take advantage of and what to say no to. How to train today for who you will become tomorrow. How to blend fulfillment and financial success. When the tough times hit how to keep on keepin’ on mentally and otherwise. The “Three R’s” to reset your mindset. The 60-second, three-part strategy to get into a high-performance zone. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to design your ideal life. …and other golden nuggets of advice! Mo’s Origin Story Mo came from a whole other world. The turning point for Mo came from seeing a sign and before we get to the sign, he’ll give this some context. Mo is from a family where having a degree is just the holy grail, if you will, of success and preferably a degree in the sciences. Mo got his first degree when he was 20 years old; he completed a whole college degree. The first one. That was the only definition of success he had at that point. Looking back he realizes how naive he was. He ended up getting three degrees and started his career in the medical field. He bought a nice house in a nice neighborhood, got a nice car, all that great stuff. The challenge was his nice six figure salary came with 16 hour work days. Mo had no free time, no “me time”, and work was his life. When he got to the end of each year his life was just a blur of 16-hour shifts. Mo was a bit confused and unsure of his life choices because success didn’t feel like he thought it would. Then one day he was in a bookstore in Central London and saw a sign and the sign said “How to be Successful”. It turns out the sign was an ad for a book called “The Success Principles by Jack Canfield”. Mo grabbed the book and started reading it right then and there. Mo discovered a whole other world that he knew nothing about. He had a look at the chapters. Mo glanced at the back of the book and saw this huge list of other books, and he read all of them. Mo says the pivot was instantaneous. He didn’t even think about it. It was just an instantaneous pivot. It was literally that sign in the bookstore. Those books led him to… A Fork in the Road The fork in the road Mo encountered was, does he stick to his current path of apparent success? Or does he pursue this new definition of success that he had just discovered? Mo chose the latter. He traveled to Europe, USA, Canada, Asia, wherever, to learn from the best success teachers he could find. Whatever the cost, whatever the distance, he decided he was going to be there. Very soon he got a measure of expertise in online business, sales and marketing, personal development, and public speaking. He even went to work for Tony Robbins for eight years as a Senior Mentor. In that role he helped a lot of very high achievers and aspiring high achievers to get to that very next level as well. Mo’s role as a Senior Mentor was also a sales role. Because of that he had the opportunity to put all the learning he had about sales into practice. One of the highlights was making a million dollars in sales in a 90-day period. That meant he had thousands of opportunities to help people get to the next level. What he discovered was apparent success is when somebody else decides what success means for you; whereas actual success is success that you decide on your own terms. It’s just as simple as that. What he does today is help people get to their own purpose driven success. Mo calls it “Lifestyle Design”. You can also call it your own purpose-driven success. That’s for your own impact on the world and your own fulfillment as you define it.  Fulfillment in many cases was gained through personal development, coaching, and leveraging those avenues to get to design the exact lifestyle that you want. Then Mo encountered… The Pivot That Made All The Difference He asked himself, “How do I get to be the best in this brand new, brave new world that I’ve discovered?” With some reflection, Mo realized it’s not because he wanted to be better than anyone else. It was more about becoming the very, very best version of himself to help him help other people become successful to the best of his ability. And that is just the beginning! Listen to or watch the interview to continue this story and get more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” About My Guest   Mo Salami is a High‑Performance Coach, International Keynote Speaker, and online marketing strategist fluent in English, French, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese — a rare combination that allows him to connect deeply with diverse leaders and drive results across cultures and industries. What sets Mo apart isn’t just what he knows — it’s what he’s proven: Served as a Senior Mentor on Tony Robbins’ peak performance team, contributing to tens of millions in global event revenue. Logged 20,000+ hours of one‑on‑one consulting, coaching thousands of business owners earning $1M+ annually. Helped clients achieve measurable outcomes like 30–300% revenue increases within 6–12 months, improved decision quality, and better work‑life alignment. Learn more about Mo! Connect with Mo on LinkedIn! Want more inspiration? Check this interview: “How to Turn Obstacles into Opportunities with Lasada Pippen“

Everyone faces obstacles; it’s just a major part of everyone’s life. They don’t have to stop you in your tracks IF you have the right strategies. Obstacles can become hidden gifts that open new doors for you if you know where to look. In this episode we’re discussing how to turn obstacles into opportunities with my guest, Lasada Pippin. Lasada was raised in an underserved community as a young African American and defied the odds to build a successful career in engineering and become a first-generation college graduate. His journey reflects the resilience and determination that now fuel his mission as an inspirational speaker.   Lasada’s signature keynote series, “Say It Better: Communicate with Clarity & Lead with Confidence” draws directly from that path: Empowering corporate professionals, educators, and youth to overcome obstacles and pursue meaningful growth. With a message rooted in grit, reinvention, and purpose, he equips audiences with practical strategies to lead with intention, rise stronger, and climb higher. We dive into topics including: How to make and support your decision to “burn the boats” How to successfully step into the new space that you’re striving towards. The importance of finding the finish line and keeping your eyes on it at all times. What you need to do to build momentum to get to the finish line. What to do to stay once you’ve “burned the boats’ and successfully gotten to your island of success. The role of self-confidence in turning obstacles into opportunities. Why it’s of the utmost importance to move towards something that you’re truly passionate about. How to take action in “the moment of now” one small step at a time. How to keep on keepin’ on after the initial excitement of your journey fades. The reason you must really know and understand your “Why” on your journey. How to get strategic about your goals instead of just riding high on excitement and love. The power of starting with the end in mind. The three questions you need to ask yourself and answer to turn obstacles into opportunities. Why your journey never ends, it just evolves over time. The importance of celebrating your small wins. The importance of having a way to measure your progress and how to create it. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to turn obstacles into opportunities. …and more golden nuggets of advice! Starting to Turn Obstacles Into Opportunities Lasada grew up in an underserved community with low resources and not having a whole lot. He feels like during his entire life that he’s had to turn obstacles into opportunities. Lasada says there always seemed to be some type of roadblock, some type of challenge. He has a background in engineering and technology where he spent his professional time for a decade. Making the shift from engineering and technology into the keynote and motivational speaking space was an obstacle. Lasada had to see the opportunity inside of that transitional moment if he wanted to get past that obstacle. An obstacle can be anything. It can be fear, it can be anxiety, it can be procrastination, it can be self-doubt, it can be a lack of self-confidence. There are so many obstacles that we don’t realize are obstacles because they’re wrapped in a different type of clothing. Because of that there are so many obstacles that we need to identify, and that’s the only way that we can turn them into opportunities. For Lasada it was getting over the fear, embracing it, learning how to coexist with it, and building up his self-confidence. He needed to develop the confidence that he could make each leap and go forward and operate in the space of keynote and motivational speaking that he operates in today. It was the start of… A Lifelong Journey Turning obstacles into opportunities has been a lifelong journey for Lasada. He said that it doesn’t have to be a life altering, such as super darkness, but let’s just say “dark times”. When you hit the dark times, you hit obstacles. It’s then that you really need to see and focus on the opportunities and grab them whenever you can. Lasada made… The Decision to Create Opportunities When Lasada was getting ready to leave Corporate America he was faced with a decision. His contract had ended, and so he had the opportunity to renew his contract. He could stay there and prolong the contract and continue being in a place that included a great income and great people. Nothing was “wrong” per se. OR he could take a leap of faith and go after what he really wanted to do, what he really loved, and what he really desired. He said a lot of times you are so blinded by what’s good that it blinds you from getting to what’s great. If you are blinded by darkness in your life, it’s oftentimes going to be hard to see that light. You have to shift your perspective. You have to change the way you see things. You admit the obstacle in the situation at hand, but at the same time realize there’s also an opportunity naturally baked into every obstacle. When you adopt the mindset that for every problem there is a solution, whether you have the solution at that time or not, that’s a whole different story. You can adopt a mindset that within every problem there’s also a solution. Lasada made a mental shift, and when he left Corporate America and took that leap and put himself out there, he did something inspiring. He “burned the boats”. He decided there was no turning back. Lasada did that because he didn’t want to give himself room to go backwards after making a leap of faith. What does this mean for you? You want to give yourself the opportunity to move forward on a new path. Lasada made the leap and jumped out into the keynote and motivational speaking space. The way he burned the boats was by deciding he couldn’t go back into Corporate America and couldn’t go back into contract positions. In short, he couldn’t go back into engineering and technology. The decision was made. Lasada had to figure out where the opportunities were for him to continue to press forward. For every obstacle that he faced Lasada had to believe there has to be some kind of workaround and then embrace that pathway. He believed there had to be some type of solution to get to the island of success he yearned for. Burning the boats needs to start from the moment that you make the decision. For Lasada, it was when he made the decision to leave engineering and technology and go into the keynote and motivational speaking space. The decision to burn the boats started right there at that moment. And that is just the beginning! Listen to or watch the interview to continue this story and get more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” About My Guest   Lasada Pippen’s journey from the tech world to the keynote stage equips him with a unique and powerful perspective as a motivational speaker. A bilingual STEM professional, he spent over a decade thriving in the engineering field before realizing that his greatest impact wouldn’t be made behind a screen, but in front of an audience. Lasada is a former engineer turned keynote speaker and communication coach. He helps professionals, teams, and leaders say it better—so they can lead better, teach better, and connect more effectively. Lasada’s mission is to help anyone who wants to improve their communication, regardless of their profession, background, or reason why. His journey from the tech world to the stage is rooted in resilience, reinvention, and a passion for helping others grow. Lasada has delivered keynotes in over 38 U.S. states and worked with hundreds of clients, from national conferences to Fortune 500 companies to K–12 school communities. He speaks to both school leaders and students, corporate teams and emerging professionals, equipping each audience with practical tools to communicate with clarity, show up with confidence, and lead with purpose. If you’re looking for a speaker who brings real tools, real energy, and real connection, You’ve found him!. Learn more about Lasada! Connect with Lasada on LinkedIn!

When entrepreneurs are on a winning streak it’s called getting into a “flow state” (what athlete’s call “The Zone”). They achieve more in less time. You can train your mind to get into flow states when you have the right strategies. That’s what I discuss in this episode with my guest, Peter Wishnie.     In his younger years Peter purchased a medical practice and after one year, he made more money than the previous owner did in any one of his 17 years of ownership. Peter has been in business for over 33 years and has made multiple 7 figures for 30 consecutive years, landing him in the top 1% in his field. During those years he has learned key secrets that have helped him work a lot less while growing his business year after year. In 2022, he sold that business for $2 million more than he paid for it. The reason he sold it is because his passion is now to help other entrepreneurs learn to live the life they deserve and desire. Peter believes people become business owners or leaders not to be slaves to their jobs, but to have the freedom to enjoy their families, hobbies, and friends. We dive into topics including: Why you have to know and write out you KPIs, your Key Performance Indicators for your business. Why you have to review your KPI’s at least weekly if not more often. How to maintain focus once you’ve gotten started. How to survive and embrace the roller coaster ride of focus. Why consistency every single day is king; it’s not about overloading your schedule. The definition of and examples of flow state, or being “in the zone” as athletes call it. How to stay in the zone and not get knocked out of it for short periods of time. Why creative ideas come when you’re most relaxed. The benefits and rewards of getting yourself into flow state. What comes first; focus or flow state. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to get focused and into flow state. …and other golden nuggets of advice! Peter’s Story of Focus and Flow State Peter says he is far from the expert of ALWAYS being focused. After every video he creates, he says “stay focused my friends”.  It’s a play on words from that beer commercial, “stay thirsty my friends”. He says that because getting focused and into flow states isn’t always easy. We’re constantly getting interrupted with calls and our electronic devices amongst a myraid of other modern distractions. Peter says he’s constantly getting bombarded with messages, and he tries to keep up with them. He remembers when he was younger back in 1989, when he purchased his practice. Peter didn’t even have a desktop computer. People didn’t have cell phones. It was easy to get and stay focused with few interruptions. At the time when the phone rang it was a great thing for a business owner because it could be a prospect. Creating focus and flow state is something Peter has since learned. He loves to study. He loves to listen to and learn from people. Peter purchased his first Franklin Covey planner back in the early 1990s. Peter wrote down his goals for the year; exactly what he wanted to achieve. He wrote them down based on what he was going to do every single month, then every single week, which made staying focused easier. There’s a great book, “The One Thing”. It tells you to focus on the one thing that will make the most impact on your life. Peter adopted that principle. Then he adopted Michael Hyatt’s “Full Focus Planner” system. As a result Peter wrote down the three major things he needed to accomplish every single day. Some people love to cross things out every day. They could be many things. One example is writing 20 pages in the book you’re working on. If that’s the one thing, the other things on your list don’t matter as much. You can also figure out what the top three things you must do are and write them down every day to get more done. You must decide what’s important for your family, your relationships, your health, and so on. Then it’s a matter of putting those things first while you have a business to take care of. If you don’t take care of those other things, take care of yourself, your health, and building up your energy levels you’re going to crash sometime during the day. You might wake up totally fogged up, your brain’s all fogged because you’re not doing the right things to take care of yourself day in and day out. That’s where energy comes into play… Managing Your Energy Imagine having a burst of energy. When you have that energy you can go longer during the day. The day goes by faster because you are full of pep. Peter believes flow states start with that. How did he learn to do that? It came from medical school. Now remember going to college. In Peter’s case he always had those few hard classes, but he also signed up for some easier courses like history of rock and roll. Meanwhile, he was taking physics and chemistry as a pre-med student. Peter had a hard time his first year in school and he read a book called “How to Study”. From that he learned how to organize and how to focus and then how to schedule times to be focused. This lead Peter to discover… The Importance of Writing and Journaling Where do you start to get focused? Pull out a piece of paper or a journal. Write down everything that’s on your mind. Everything that you think that needs to get done or everything that’s bothering you. And just the things that are bothering you. Write down your successes and the things that you are grateful for. Just write down everything and get it out of your head. Then divide your life into a pie. Things like health, relationships, friendships, finances, your business goals, relaxation time, and so on. Then decide what are you going to do and what you want for each of those areas? What are your goals? Just pick one little goal that you want to accomplish in the next 90 days. Pick the one thing and make it happen. Then tackle the rest. And that is just the beginning! Listen to or watch the interview to continue this story and get more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” About My Guest   In his younger years Peter Wishnie purchased a medical practice and after one year, he made more money than the previous owner did in any one of his 17 years of ownership. Peter has been in business for over 33 years and has made multiple 7 figures for 30 consecutive years, landing him in the top 1% in his field. During those years he has learned key secrets that have helped him work a lot less while growing the business year after year. In 2022, he sold that business for $2 million more than he paid for it. The reason he sold it was mainly because his passion is now to help other businesses learn to have the life they so deserve and desire. Peter believes people become business owners or leaders not to be slaves to your jobs but to have the freedom to enjoy your family, hobbies, and friends. Peter wants to help you live your best life. Connect with Peter on LinkedIn! Learn more about Peter’s coaching and speaking! Want to learn about “being in the zone” when it comes to money? Check out “How To Have a Successful Money Mindset with Robin Waite”

Everyone talks about the power of storytelling. But how do you cut through the hype and use it to create real world results? With the right strategies storytelling can become a profitable part of your content marketing campaigns. In this episode I discuss how to create meaningful story-driven content marketing campaigns with my guest, Katie Wagner.     Katie spent more than 15 years as a journalist. In 2010, Katie realized that she could use the skills she learned in the newsroom to help business owners connect with their clients online and started her own agency, KWSM. Katie is a proud member of Vistage, Provisors and the Young Entrepreneur Council. She has served as a member of the Advisory Board for Web Wise Kids, a non-profit focused on keeping kids safe on the internet and social media. In 2012, she was honored with the organization’s ‘Champion for Children Award.’ We dive into topics including: How to use informational interviews with your clients to create your marketing stories. The structure of a great informational interview. Where and how to share your story once you create it. How to get happy clients to share your story with their friends in their language. Why learning why your happy clients are happy can help you learn a lot about your business and ultimately improve your client experience. A deeper discussion into how to create a successful marketing strategy with your content once it’s ready. An examination of the pillars of story-driven content marketing and how to expand that marketing process. How to uncover how prospects discover you and make the decision to become your clients. The definition of “nurturing content” and how to create it. How to nurture your client relationships once you close the deal. How to get qualified referrals from your existing clients. Why case studies are the most compelling way to create story-driven marketing campaigns and how to create great ones. The one thing, above all else, you need to do to create story-driven content marketing campaigns. …and more golden nuggets of advice! Getting Into Storytelling Katie was a journalist for 15 years before she started a digital marketing agency. She specifically worked in television and radio. She worked all over the world and retired from CNN headline News back in 2009 and opened her agency in 2010. She did that because she realized that nobody was going home to watch the five o’clock news anymore. They were craving relatable stories to consume and moving to other social platforms outside of television. They started getting their headlines from places like Facebook and Twitter. As those mediums came to prominence, they became the way people wanted to get their information. Katie saw an opportunity to teach business owners how to tell their story using digital channels. She believed that founding a company in the tenets of journalism and knowing what attracts an audience was a good place to start. Let’s look at… What Successful Marketing is Really About First Katie defined brand journalism. To her that is the act of creating content that builds an emotional connection with the consumer. It’s about the humans involved in a business; not just the business entity. Brand journalism highlights the stories of the people that make or deliver your products or services. It highlights the stories of the people that benefit from your products and services. It’s about emotionally connecting stories that we have to tell beyond just features and benefits also known as the marketing or the sales language. It’s really about human language. Those are the stories they tell at the her agency. Even during the early days of social media gaining prominence, they had to interview their clients to uncover the human side of their stories. When you ask somebody about their business they usually talk about the services they provide and what those services can do for people or their products and what the benefits are. They forget the most important parts. The relatable human parts. What are they? They’re found in answers to questions such as what value do your products or services provide for people? How do they change lives? From there the story focuses on the transformation achieved from using your products and services. The first step with Katie’s clients is to teach people to start thinking of their businesses based on the answers to those questions. From there they focus on the outcomes their clients’ are creating more than the products and services they are delivering. Which leads us to look at… The Structure of A Great Story When Katie’s agency is telling stories for their clients there’s a purpose behind every story they tell. They think of it as the “transformation moment”. There’s what’s going on with your clients before they meet you; what is life like before they interact with you? What are their pain points? Then there’s engagement. They use your product or service. And then there’s what happens in your clients’ lives afterwards. That is the story arc you want to tell. Look at it another way. What are their struggles? What are the fears and motivations they have? And then what happens at that moment they engage with your products or services? Then what is the transformation after that engagement? How is life different? How does life look better, safer or easier for them? If you can start creating content around that transformation point, those stories really resonate with people. Even when Katie’s agency is creating website content for a client they paint a picture of the pain that prospects are facing and how their client’s product or service solves that. Not through what dit does, but what is the emotional state their solution invokes? The before and the after. If you think of that story arc, that’s a great place to start. And then there are a multitude of different spinoffs from that. You can talk about individual types of pain. Is it philosophical or an emotional pain? Is it a physical pain? Is it a tactical pain? Here’s an example using Katie’s own business. People that hire KWSM do so because they want qualified leads for their businesses. The sort of surface pain point may be that their business is slow or they’re not getting as much business as they want, or they need a better way to get business. But really the pain point is “My business won’t survive unless I bring in new clients.” That is the emotional connection they’re trying to get. People need lead generation not just to grow, but because they’re afraid of what happens if they don’t grow. Unfortunately, people don’t usually admit that to each other. But if you dig deep, for example, if most of Katie’s clients are afraid in today’s geopolitical climate, they fear that if they don’t have a good lead generation strategy, their business may not make it through to the other side. And that’s the pain point they have to step into and solve. And that is just the beginning! Listen to or watch the interview to continue this story and get more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” About My Guest Katie Wagner spent more than 15 years as a journalist. After graduating Magna Cum Laude from Boston University with a B.S. in Broadcast Journalism and a B.A. in International Relations, she began her career as an investigative reporter, and then spent a decade as a television and radio news anchor. Katie has worked at CBS, ABC, Fox, CNN and National Public Radio. In addition, she has appeared on dozens of commercials, educational videos and websites. She has hosted her own talk show, had columns published in major newspapers and blogs, and is a popular public speaker. In 2010, Katie realized that she could use the skills she learned in the newsroom to help business owners connect with their clients online. She opened KWSM to help companies and organizations tell their story, building the agency with journalists, whom she knew understood how to establish a relationship with their audience and convey information in an engaging and educational way. Katie is a proud member of Vistage, Provisors and the Young Entrepreneur Council. She has served as a member of the Advisory Board for Web Wise Kids, a non-profit focused on keeping kids safe on the internet and social media. In 2012, she was honored with the organization’s ‘Champion for Children Award.’ Over the years she has served as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Chapman University’s Leatherby Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics, a Mentor for Chapman’s MBA Program, and a guest lecturer for Chapman, California Southern University and California State University, Fullerton. Connect with Katie on LinkedIn! Learn more about Katy’s company, KWSM Digital! Want to learn more about storytelling and sales? Check out “Story Selling: How to Know What Stories to Tell to Sell with Sylvain “Sly” Haché”

Your money mindset can make or break you as an entrepreneur. Where does it come from? How is it affecting your life? If it’s not positive how do you change your mindset? I discuss how to create a successful money mindset in this episode with my guest, Robin Waite. Robin is a dynamic and inspiring public speaker, author, and international business coach. He has a passion for helping others succeed and reach their full potential, and his energy and enthusiasm are contagious. With over 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur and business coach, Robin has a wealth of knowledge and practical insights to share with his audiences.     I asked Robin about his story and he said “I’ve only been in business for 21 years, so maybe I’m a bit of a slow learner. I don’t know. But I finally feel I’ve nailed it when it comes to pricing and money mindset.” We dive into topics including: Why how we choose to buy things is a reflection of how we price and sell things as entrepreneurs. How to break through that pricing barrier in your mind. The two financial things your business needs to be profitable. The makeup of a successful business foundation. The three questions you need to ask yourself to achieve your financial goals. How and when to raise the prices of your service offerings. How to attract the right clients at higher price points. How to sustain a higher value, higher ticket price business model over time. The challenge of “loss aversion” and how to overcome it. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to create a successful money mindset. …and more golden nuggets of advice! In the Beginning… Robin ran a marketing agency for the first 12 years of his career, predominantly doing web design and branding up until 2016. He ended up selling that agency. The timing was a greata because he was raising kids and it meant he could spend more time with his family and enjoy the money from the buyout. Robin eventually needed to make a decision about his professional life; start a new corporate career or start a new business? Everytime he was networking the question loomed large in his head because the first question everybody asks you at networking meetings is “What do you do?” Robin didn’t have a solid answer to that question. While explaining the agency he sold Robin realized that the reason somebody wanted to buy his agency was because there was some value in the marketing space which he’d created through the agency. During the 12 years of running that agency, with a bit of help from therapists and various mentors and coaches, he started to realize that mountain of value that he’d created. Robin also realized that he had gotten rid of the negative money mindset which he had inherited as a child. Robin had undone a lot of past trauma during those 12 years running the agency. He decided to start a new business as a business coach. What does this mean for you? Your Money Mindset Starts in Childhood Many people’s money blueprints are formed before their earliest memories. You’re building emotions even as a toddler based on what’s going on in your home life. Many people Robin speaks typically say most of the arguments were about money. They’ve adopted mindsets such as “money doesn’t grow on trees” and “money’s the root of all evil” and so on. A lot of home-based arguments are familial arguments around money issues. Growing up in Robin’s home was a bit traumatic. There were fights between his mother and father over household bills, holidays, and things like that. It got a point where Robin and his brother used to go and hide upstairs during the arguments. It was very volatile. So, you can imagine at a very young formative age Robin’s associations with money were scary. That’s the same for many people. Much of the population are not necessarily born into poverty; but they’re born into working class family homes where money is tight. Then there’s your… Financial Mindset Growing Up When you went into your teenage years you probably wanted some financial independence. You didn’t want to rely on your parents for money, so you went out and got a paper route or you went to work in a restaurant or something like that. Then you started to earn your own money. Then what you were teaching yourself is that money comes through hard work and getting paid a wage. Part of that is repeating what your parents did because many of our parents worked for a wage throughout their lives. Then your parents are trying to educate you about money. They start telling you to be careful and make wise investments and that you eventually need to buy a house with a mortgage and everything else like that. Then they tell you to plan for college. Robin was privileged to go to college but came out of college with a lot of debt. So, you’ve got these amazing young human beings who are starting off their adult life in debt with a very poor attachment to money. They spend most of their twenties and thirties recovering from that and trying to get back into a state where they no longer owe money; or least have a lot less debt. Then consider entrepreneurs. You can see how all of this baggage isn’t particularly helpful when you’re then running a business as an adult. Everything feels like hard work and how many times do you see frustrated entrepreneurs? That happens because they’ve ended up working fifty-plus hour weeks. They’re scratching their head thinking “I’m not making the money that I thought I’d make.” That’s when it’s time for a change. And that is just the beginning! Listen to or watch the interview to continue this story and get more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” About My Guest From the age of 18, Robin Waite spent four years as a systems analyst for a medical devices company, helping them increase their turnover by 50 per cent, from £1 million to £1.5 million. From 2004 to 2014 Robin ran a successful design and advertising agency serving over 250 clients. During this time, he delivered workshops and masterclasses that helped over 1,000 business owners improve their marketing, product architecture, pricing, websites and digital advertising. Robin loves helping businesses to become more successful and getting results for his clients is what gets him out of bed each day. Robin’s practical, one-to-one sessions are grounded in hard work and a relentless focus on goals. He believes his coaching & mentor program can help ANY business become more profitable… and have a lot more fun while they’re at it! Robin works with ambitious businesses in Gloucestershire, the south west of England and beyond, his goal is to help as many business owners as possible by sharing his 19 years of experience through his talks and workshops, business books, and one-to-one coaching. Learn more about Robert and Fearless Business! Connect with Robert on LinkedIn! Want to learn more about successful money mindsets? Check out “How to Create a Millionaire Mindset with Cole Vandee“

Today we’re discussing how to sell your services without being pushy; because nobody likes to be sold to but everyone loves to buy. My guest is Eric Schulman. Eric brings over 5 decades of business experience to the table.  A “Serial Entrepreneur”, he’s worked with both tangible and intangible products and services in B2B and B2C environments.  After building 5 businesses on his own, he started Consultants Can Sell! specifically to work with Business Owners, Consultants and Sales Professionals to provide sales training that really works.   We dive into topics including: Why most salespeople default to high pressure selling. How to develop relationships with prospects whether or not they buy from you. How to break down the wall of resistance with prospects so they’ll trust you enough to speak honestly with you. The real reason prospects are coming to you, and it’s not to buy something. How to discover the real reason prospects are coming to you. The process of “Building radical empathy” of how to leverage it in your sales conversations. The three steps of diagnosing your prospect’s problem. How to navigate the road between creating a safe space to talk and closing a sale without being pushy. People buy based on emotions. How to get your prospects to emotionally want to buy from you. Why you should discuss money early on in your sales conversations. The principle of scarcity and how to leverage it in sales conversations. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to close more sales without being pushy. …and other golden nuggets of advice! The Accidental Salesperson Eric believes sales is an accidental profession and not everyone in sales planned to be in sales. His story of accidentally falling into sales happened when Eric was young. He would sell stuff door to door (do you remember door to door sales people?). In 1963, when Eric was 12, his parents opened a record store in Levittown, New Jersey. Six months later, there was a group called The Beatles that was on the Ed Sullivan Show. Eric was the 13-year-old kid in Levittown, New Jersey, whose dad owned the record store. Most people’s parents teach their kids things such as children were seen and not heard, don’t talk to strangers and so on. Eric’s mom taught him something different. One busy day Eric’s mom told him to go wait on a new customer. She effectively said “Go talk to a stranger”. What that taught Eric was don’t talk to strangers until you’re old enough to earn a commission. That’s how Eric accidentally got into sales. He found that he was good at it. He connected well with people. All through high school, Eric was one of the only students who always had money in his pocket. In addition to commission Eric also earned an hourly salary. That was nice and he liked having the money. Eric likes to say that salespeople are coin operated; they do what the money tells them to do. If his mom and dad hadn’t opened a store he probably would have wound up in sales anyways, but not at such an early age. That was… The “Official” Start of a Sales Career Eric says his sales career “officially” started in his early teens because by the time he was 18 he had been accepted to three colleges, but he didn’t want to go to college. Eric liked what he did. He was making decent money as a kid. He was making hundreds of dollars a week in 1969. When you were making that much money you could buy a house back then. Eric believed he didn’t need to go to college. He was very, very well read and he went to college but wound up dropping out after one semester. Then he gave college another try one year later and stayed for two semesters. He achieved a 3.9 GPA. His parents sold the store in Jersey in 1973 and moved to Orlando to open a chain of stores. Eric was the heir apparent to the family business and decided that was his career path. So consciously around the age of 19, he decided that’s what he wanted to do. He didn’t need to go to school. Eric worked for the family business until I was 29 years old. Let’s look at… Sales as an Adult Eric came to an interesting realization. At the age of 29, he did the math and realized he was never going to get rich in the family business. So, he made the decision to leave the family business after doing their marketing for eight years. Eric wound up forming a direct marketing agency in 1980 and bought a computer when they cost $30,000. He mortgaged the house and started providing direct mail services. In five years he grew that business to 54 people in a 17,000 square foot facility. Eric was doing 90% of the sales. He sold that business in 1993. Eight months later, he met Sharon (who would eventually become his wife), and she owned a wedding cake business. Eric bolstered the value of her business and they sold the it in 1995. They moved to upstate New York and Eric took a job where he became the number one salesperson in the company. From there he opened a Sandler Training franchise in Orlando, Florida. He made more money in eight months than he had made in the previous year and did that for almost two decades. He sold the business just before the pandemic and struck out on his own as a sales trainer. Eric created a sales system called truth-based selling that showed people how to create a place where people can feel comfortable being honest with you. And that is just the beginning! Listen to or watch the interview to continue this story and get more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” About My Guest Eric Shulman started his career helping build and run a successful chain of music stores in NJ and FL.  He started National List Council, a direct marketing company in 1980.  Over the next 12 years, he grew the business to 17,000 square feet with over 50 employees. When he sold NLC, he joined his new wife’s business: Sprinkles Custom Cakes!  In just 6 months, Sprinkles grew from doing four wedding cakes per month at “grocery store” prices up to 15 to 20 per week at double the price!  After selling Sprinkles in 1995, he led a national sales force selling Business Consulting Services in NY, Boston, DC, NJ, VA, and FL. His close ratio was five times the company average.  When his earnings potential capped out, he opened a Sales Training Business in 2003, and was named Rookie of the Year in just eight months.  After almost two decades in that field, he sold in 2019.  ConsultantsCanSell.com is his latest venture:  Putting his 50 years of business expertise to work for others. Learn more about Eric’s company; Consultants Can Sell! Reach out to Eric directly: (321) 301-5700 [email protected] Want to learn more about sales? Check out this Idea Climbing Podcast episode: “Story Selling: How to Know What Stories to Tell to Sell with Sylvain “Sly” Haché”

Servant leadership will take you a long way as an entrepreneur. When you practice servant leadership people want to get to know you through your “origin story”. Sharing it will help you boost your brand and enhance your marketing while attracting more clients. I discuss how to create and develop your origin story in this episode with my guest, Adrienne Wilkerson.     As Co-Founder and CEO of Beacon Media + Marketing, Adrienne is driven by a passion for developing people and fostering a culture where innovation thrives. In her early 20s, she realized she would make a much better boss than an employee, which led her to found her own company in 2001. Today, she is a visionary leader who’s company has earned it a spot on the Inc. 5000 list of Fastest-Growing Private Companies for three consecutive years. We dive into topics including: Why it’s ok to say “no” to servant leadership opportunities if the people involved don’t fit your ideal client or ideal partnership profile. The structure that makes a great origin story. Why you need to start with your “Why”. Why it’s important to include your failures and what you learned from the challenges you overcame. How your origin story shapes your servant leadership journey. Why if you’re not failing you’re not trying enough new things. Knowing when sharing your trials and tribulations becomes oversharing. The responsibilities of a servant leader. Why people won’t always follow what you say but they will follow what you do. How to create an environment of trust, or a safe space, within your business. Why putting other people first pays dividends as a servant leader. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to create and live your servant leadership origin story. …and other golden nuggets of advice! The Origin of Adrienne’s Servant Leadership Origin Story One of Adrienne’s favorite things about having conversations with founders and business owners is that there’s almost always a powerful story behind why they’re doing what they’re doing. Why did they start their business? Why did they become successful? That “why” has created them as leaders and created their success in the business world. Adrienne believes that’s why their origin story is so important. It’s a powerful connection piece. Entrepreneurship is a lot of Adrienne’s origin story. Her father is an entrepreneur and so was her grandmother. Adrienne has a lot of entrepreneurs in her family and hence she had a lot of excellent examples of entrepreneurship in her life. Her grandmother together with a partner started the very first art gallery in Anchorage, Alaska. She was just an entrepreneurial person. Adrienne’s father started one of the first combined counseling and medical clinics. The idea was to take care of the whole person; the medical and the counseling worked together. It was a beautiful vision. Those origin stories and what both of them accomplished spoke to Adrienne as an entrepreneur and as a leader in business. Growing Up Entrepreneurial Because Adrienne’s father was a therapist there were a lot of times when she would have to tell her dad, “I need you to be my dad and not my therapist right now”. Then we would laugh and switch gears. He passed on his insights on to people and his understanding of what drives people and how people work and tick and interact with each other. He was sharing his experience and knowledge that he learned through school and working with business leaders. That’s how he passed a lot of his insights on to Adrienne organically. He was a natural teacher. Even with the circumstances that Adrienne would grow up in, such as dealing with personal conflict at school, at college, and just even in relationships, he would just walk her through a lot of resolutions. He would tell her you must ask yourself insightful questions to understand what’s really going on in every life situation. He told Adrienne if you’re going to lead, there’s a guiding relationship there. She remembers coming back from high school one day very frustrated. She was the year book editor in chief and they were just coming off a big deadline; and Adrienne did a lion’s share of the work. She was venting that her team didn’t do this and that. Adrienne had to take over for that them and had to do their jobs for them. Her father’s feedback was: You met your deadline. You got across the finish line. But how many from your team came across the finish line with you? Or did you just plow through and make it happen and leave the rest of them in the dust? That was one of many… Leadership Lessons Learned That was one of those moments that proverbially hit Adrienne upside the head and shifted how she viewed leadership. Adrienne learned it’s not just enough as a leader to accomplish a goal. You have to try your best to guide your team to accomplish the goal with you. Now granted, not everybody will choose to walk across that finish line with you. But you have to try. If they choose not to, that’s their decision. As long as you are doing everything that you can to create the kind of environment where people want to grow with you, you’re doing the right thing. If you do everybody’s job and cross that finish line by yourself, it was a great hike, but that’s not leading. There are stories such as those that Adrienne’s father wove into Adrienne’s life lessons. They shaped how she chooses to lead now. Adrienne definitely doesn’t nail it on the head every time. That’s part of the process of learning and growing. Let’s look at… Creating and Leveraging Your Origin Story As an entrepreneur, there are smaller stories that make up your overall origin story. Those are powerful because they connect with people and make them want to do business with you. They hate to be sold, but they love to buy. You probably know this concept in business: Who do they want to buy from? They want to buy from somebody they know, like, and trust. In this digital age, how do we as entrepreneurs connect with our audience, with our ideal client profile? We do it in part through our origin story. Through those stories that shaped us and shaped our company because people connect with those stories. There are facets to that formula, and that’s why sharing your origin story, including the really raw and emotional parts of your story (your failures, your setbacks and so on) is so important. That’s what makes you human, and that’s what creates the opportunity for people to connect with you because they feel like they know you. That means they’re going to trust you. And that is just the beginning! Listen to or watch the interview to continue this story and get more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” About My Guest As Co-Founder and CEO of Beacon Media + Marketing, Adrienne Wilkerson is driven by a passion for developing people and fostering a culture where innovation thrives. She is a visionary leader who guides her team to find opportunity in every challenge, pushing creative boundaries to deliver impactful results. This approach has established Beacon as an award-winning digital marketing agency, renowned for its work in the mental and behavioral health sectors. Adrienne believes that investing in people is the key to success, creating an environment where her team can learn, excel, and build with purpose. Her forward-thinking leadership has earned Beacon a coveted spot on the Inc. 5000 list of Fastest-Growing Private Companies for three consecutive years. A respected voice in the business community, Adrienne extends her influence as a sought-after speaker, published author, and podcast host. She shares practical insights on leadership, ethical marketing, and adapting to industry shifts like the rise of AI, encouraging leaders to use technology to deepen human connection. Beyond her professional achievements, Adrienne finds balance and inspiration with her family on their ranch. This life fuels her belief in hard work and resilience—principles she applies to both her business and her commitment to building a legacy of positive impact for the next generation. Check out Adrienne’s Podcast! Connect with Adrienne on LinkedIn! Get Adrienne’s book “Digital Marketing for Mental Health: From Complex to Clarity” here! Want to learn more about servant leadership? Check out “How to Embrace Servant Leadership with Andrew Kolikoff“!

As an entrepreneur you need to surround yourself with successful peers, mentors, and other people that suppor you. That’s why creating a circle of trust can create explosive business growth for your business. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Jonathan Hung. Jonathan is a successful VC and entrepreneur. He has evolved from his role as a prolific angel investor with over 150+ pre-seed and pre-IPO investments under his belt to becoming the Managing Partner for Entrepreneur Ventures.     We dive into topics including: The definition and examples of a circle of trust. How you can start to intentionally build a circle of trust. The types of people that should be in your circle of trust. Why nobody that’s successful has done it by themselves. How to approach the right people to bring them into your circle of trust. Why you should practice being a “giver”. How to maintain a circle of trust over time once you’ve built yours. The role vulnerability plays in building your circle of trust. Jonathan’s philosophy of “living your life in quarters” and how to embrace it. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to build a successful circle of trust. …and other golden nuggets of advice! Jonathan’s Story Jonathan believes that everyone thinks entrepreneurship (especially in the tech space) is all about fundraising. That’s one aspect of building a business; but there’s a LOT more to it. Entrepreneurship is about building trusted relationships from successful peers to business partners to advisors and mentors. The Importance of Being Real Jonathan’s perspective on life is that you’re going to meet a lot of “fakes”. Those are people who try to sell you an idea by telling you it’s all going to be unicorns and rainbows, but really, will that philosophy be helpful to you in the long run? You must find people that you can trust to be honest with you especially when everything isn’t working out perfectly. You can easily like somebody, but can you actually trust them? That’s why the subtitle of Jonathan’s upcoming book is “Why trust drives venture capital success.” Jonthan built his career based on people that he trusted, and who have trusted him. That’s how he’s built success. First, let’s look at… How to Build Trust It’s the simple things. It’s not just saying “Let’s go into business together, I’m going to write you a check.” It’s about both parties communicating openly and meaningfully. That means doing things like giving each other regular updates. Jonathan believes having great communication is the most important rule. It also means asking for help when you need it. If you don’t ask for help people won’t assume that you need it. You have to ask for the sale. The number one rule in sales that you must ask. You have to keep going, you can’t give up when you get discouraged. Getting turned down is part of being an entrepreneur. You might have to hear a hundred no’s before you get to that one yes. But when you got to that yes, it was all worth it. For Jonathan building trust starts with showing up. It’s doing the hard work. It’s not about just executing, it’s also about showing the people that work for you how you did it so they can duplicate your success. For Jonathan it’s also about growing as a human being and helping others grow too. It’s about finding those people you can trust that you know you can count on. Jonathan is a big believer that you don’t over promise and then under deliver. He’s always about under promising and over delivering because he’s had people in his past who he’s invested in give that gave him crazy numbers. He would think, “How are you going to do that? How are you going to 10x your business in a year?” Sometimes promises like that don’t make sense. Jonathan also loves people who give him a plan. It’s all about the execution. It’s how you successfully go through with something to get to your desired results. That’s one amazing way to build trust, in his opinion. And is just the beginning! Listen to or watch the interview to continue this story and get more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” About My Guest   Jonathan Hung is a seasoned venture capitalist and entrepreneur with a proven track record in governance, strategic growth, and financial expertise. He led his family’s textile business across the U.S. and Asia before transitioning into venture capital, where he has invested in more than 250 companies and 50 funds. Today, Jonathan is the Managing Partner of Entrepreneur Ventures, a fund he co-founded with Entrepreneur Media, deploying capital into innovative startups and helping founders build profitable businesses. He also manages his family office fund, J Heart Ventures. His success in raising millions for venture funds, combined with cross-border operational expertise, positions him as a leader in capital growth and value creation. Learn more about Jonathan! Website / Portfolio LinkedIn Want to learn more about entrepreneurship? Check out “How to Create a Millionaire Mindset”!

Today we’re discussing how to write copy that positions you as a thought leader. There are subtle nuances that separate the average copy writer from the excellent copy writer. I discuss strategies to become an excellent copy write and therefore an excellent thought leader with my guest, Kristen Sweeney.     Kristen is a content strategist who has helped over 100 organizations communicate more clearly, especially when the subject matter is complex or highly technical. She’s the founder of Every Little Word, a boutique content and communications agency that believes great ideas—and the people who power them—deserve a bigger voice. Her team builds expert-led content programs in industries like life sciences, higher education, and B2B services. We dive into topics including: What “The curse of knowledge” is to experts and how to overcome it. The ever present “blank page syndrome” and how to get started with writing copy. How to create a content creation strategy and integrate it into your professional life. A few definitions of thought leadership and how to decide which one applies to you. How to create value for your audience through content creation. Why “basic” is a really good place to start to establish thought leadership. Ideas for types of structure for your copy. Examples of copy writing best practices. The case for creating long form copy assets and how to successfully do it. How to consistently write great copy for thought leadership. The project management approach to writing great content and how to implement it. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to create great content for thought leadership. …and other golden nuggets of advice Getting Started with Copy Writing Kristen did not come up as a professionally trained marketer, but she considers herself as someone who’s always been a writer. For many years, freelance writing was one of her many side jobs that she worked while she was an actor in New York City and while she was a yoga teacher in New York City and Boston. Over the course of those years she started to learn more and more about marketing. What happened for her was that classic situation where you hand over something to a client and then you see that the website copy never got launched or the asset was never created or they’re not using something. Something fell short somewhere. She started to ask questions such as what does it take to put these ideas and this information out into the world in a way that’s going to make impact? That led her to learning more about the disciplines of marketing and communications. In 2019, her first daughter was born. Long story short, like for so many people, that was a pivot point that changed everything. She started taking her writing and content work seriously and the rest is history. It’s certainly been a range of ups and downs, but she’s been running her business and team for over five years with over 15 years of experience in the copy writing field in general. Let’s look at… The Origin of Great Copy Writing Kristen believes copy writing starts with good ideas. Her company’s mission is to share great ideas with the world. The way they do that is through their approach to creating content and copy. To her, it’s all about the thinking that goes into the perspectives and the opinions and the ideas that people and companies can share. It should be something of substance. She believes that content for a lot of people and companies has become more like “containers”. It’s a container to try to get somebody to click through on your website. It’s a container to try to get someone to stay on the page longer. It’s a container to be able to track them, cookie them and start following their journey. Kristin’s mindset is that the great ideas and the meaningful substance, or the content of content is what we’re really after. Here are some… Characteristics of a Great Idea That’s Worthy of Creating Content Around Kristen has a piece on her company website explaining thought leadership. Great ideas tend to come from a place of someone who’s taken the time to really develop a unique perspective. That most often comes from their life experiences. It can come from their belief systems and their values. It can come from understanding their space or their industry and taking the time to think deeply about it. In general, Kristen believes it also comes from a high degree of caring. Her team has had situations in the past where they’ve tried to partner with someone to make them a thought leader. What happened was they were there to do their job day in and day out and they weren’t really invested in sharing their knowledge publicly. It takes a lot to be that kind of collaborator and that’s why that caring piece is really important. It’s important to ask… When it Comes to Writing Copy to Become a Thought Leader, Where Does That Process Start? Kristen likes to think of a thought leader as someone who leads with their thoughts. That might sound obvious, but what she means by that is a lot of people define thought leadership by the external markers such as they have a huge following. The ideas come first. You can be a thought leader alone in your room all day long. The problem is you need to have the right platform to share those ideas and spread them and help them grow to get your message out there. When we think about thought leadership, again, the kernel of it is making sure that you are developing and forming your own perspectives and opinions. Ultimately that you’re finding the right messages that align with whoever it is you are trying to reach. Many companies, when they think about thought leadership, they think of trying to reach their customers. Other times you’re trying to reach peers. Think about people who sell to their peers, such as a marketer who sells their courses to other marketers. They want to be seen as a thought leader among their peers who also happen to be their customers. This means that you must… Know Your Audience Understanding your audience and how your perspectives align with and provide value to the people you want to be speaking with is important. That’s different from some common approaches to content where content is generated from the outside. Your content’s main goal should be to answer your audience’s questions. Kristen likes to think of thought leadership as answering questions. That includes questions your audience hasn’t even thought to ask. It goes beyond helpful into something that is thought-provoking, insightful, that gives them some kind of shift in the way they’re thinking about a particular topic. And that is just the beginning! Listen to or watch the interview to continue this story and get more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”   About My Guest   Kristen Sweeney is a writer and content strategist who has helped over 100 organizations communicate more clearly, especially who has helped over 100 organizations communicate more clearly, especially when the subject matter is complex or highly technical. Her agency, Every Little Word, develops expert-led content programs that use an organization’s expertise to build visibility, credibility, and trust. Every Little Word is a boutique content and communications agency that helps organizations in life sciences and pharma, higher education, and B2B professional services. The company is founded on the belief that great ideas—and the people behind them—deserve a bigger voice. Because audiences don’t need more filler content; they’re hungry for real substance. Connect with Kristen on LinkedIn! Learn more about Every Little Word!

If you want great things to happen in your life you have the opportunity and power to manifest them. You just need the right strategies. I discuss some of them in this episode with my guest, Francois Lupien.     Francois Lupien is a dynamic executive coach, mentor and speaker whose experience includes successfully working with Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey (7 Habits of Highly Effective People) and as a consultant with Bob Proctor (Movie: The Secret). Achieving excellence in everything he puts his mind to, Francois has been a Tae Kwon Do Gold Medal Canadian champion, a Top Real Estate agent for 11 years with Remax, and a serial entrepreneur with multiple successful 6-figure businesses. We dive into topics including: Why people pay more attention to help and advice that they pay for. Examples of habits you can develop to manifest greatness. The power of embracing decide, commit, succeed. How to keep on keepin’ on during the dark times after you make a commitment to excellence. What your reticular activating system is and how to engage it to see and manifest success faster. Why you get better answers when you ask better questions and how to do that. How to change your thinking and habits if they’re hurting you. How to stay focused on success and manifesting what you desire. The argument for not taking short cuts on your path to success. How to find your “Why” to stay on your journey to manifesting greatness. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to manifest greatness in your life. …and other golden nuggets of advice! The Beginning Self Confidence for Francois Self confidence was introduced to Francois when he was just six years old. His mom had, when she was young, roller skates, not roller blades, four wheels, two in the front, two in the back. She them on cowboy boots of for Francois. She told him to try them out. He tried this thing and he fell and it hurt like crazy. He came back home and was not happy. Francois’ mom looked at him and asked “What’s the matter?” He told her it hurts, and he didn’t want to try skating any more. Francois remembers, as if it was yesterday, his mom having an adjustment key. She took those roller skates, put them on her feet, and demonstrated how to roller skate on the street with Francois sitting on the sidewalk. Then she came back to him and and said with a smile “You can do anything you want in life if you really want it. Are you ready?” He said “Yes”. Then as Francois started skating, she said, “You got this.” Then she went back into the house as Francois skated all around. That’s Just the Beginning A week later Francois attached a rope to one of his friend’s bikes and he was water skiing down the street with his roller skates. From then, it’s just been on and on with his self-belief journey. His mom always told him “Whatever you want in life, you go for it, you can make it happen.” This opened Francois’ eyes that believing in yourself is the first step to manifestation. How can greatness be created? Francois would say by someone believing in yourself first, then, as a result of that, other people end up believing in you as well. That means first you must learn… How to Find That Someone to Believe in You Francois was blessed that his family that believed in him and supported his dreams. Yet for anybody else, search, dig, knock on as many proverbial doors and ask for help. A wise man once said “Knock and it shall be opened and ask and it shall be answered”. You just need to ask. The good news is there’s people in this world right now that you can easily get access to. Once you find someone, try to get an understanding of what that person is doing that you want to do. Research how they might be able to help you and vice-versa. Francois believes that everybody is good in some way, even if it’s deep down. The quote “Be kind always” applies here. If you encounter someone having a bad day or they’re not feeling well, yes, there’s something broken inside of them for now. So don’t be the one that kicks them while they’re down. Be the one that uplifts other people. You Must Give in Order to Get As you do that, one of Francois’ great mentors, Bob Proctor always said, leave everyone with the impression of increase. Make everybody feel better after they met with you than before they met you. You want to help others as much as you want others to help you. The important thing is to remember here is that you can’t achieve your dreams alone. We need other people to help us along our journey. Some people will see things in you that you don’t see in yourself. Their perspective on you can enable you to refocus and make things happen in a new, better way. It’s the same thing for each and every one of us. There’s things that we don’t see and we don’t know that others can help us discover. Now you can start to understand… How to Build Relationships When You Find Those Special People Francois believes you build relationships by having conversations and asking the real (and sometimes tough) questions. You need to go deep and not be superficial. If someone looks good on paper, that’s fine, but go deeper. You need to discover what the essence of your conversations and your relationships are as a whole. Is it just fluff or is there some substance to it? Once you do that, you’ll have that thing called “a gut feeling”. If it feels good in your gut, go for it. As you develop that relationship and you feel good, the more you pay attention to that person. This thing of having the greatness revealed in you by watching YouTube videos, is not going to happen. You need to have someone that’s been there, done that, sold the T-shirt to the event and is able to help you to get to the next level. That is key to your pivotal relationships. And that is just the beginning! Listen to or watch the interview to continue this story and get more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”   About My Guest About Francois Lupien CEO’s Secret Weapon and Gold Medalist! Helping High-Performing CEOs Reclaim Clarity, Confidence & Leadership Power Francois Lupien is a dynamic mentor, executive coach, speaker, and presenter whose experience includes working with Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey (7 Habits of Highly Effective People) and as a consultant with Bob Proctor (Movie: The Secret). Achieving excellence in everything he puts his mind to, Francois has been a Tae Kwon Do Gold Medal Canadian Champion, a Top Real Estate agent for 11 years with Remax, and a serial entrepreneur with multiple successful 6-figure businesses. Why CEOs Call FrancoisTheir Secret Weapon For decades, he’s worked alongside driven, high-achieving CEOs who have built incredible companies but found themselves trapped in isolation, overwhelmed by decision fatigue, and burdened by relentless expectations. I tell them what no one else dares to say. I bring relentless energy and mindset mastery I shift their perspective instantly. Learned from the Best in the Industry Francois offers CEOs a confidential and trusted partnership, drawing on his experience being mentored by some of the most influential figures in the industry. National Trainer for Tony Robbins – Mastering the art of high performance and peak psychology. Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (13 years) – Helping leaders across North America implement transformational leadership. Personally mentored and coached by Bob Proctor for (6+ years) – Becoming a master in mindset mastery and the science of success. Canadian Taekwondo Gold Medalist – Bringing the same relentless discipline, focus, and mental toughness to coaching that it takes to win at the highest level. This rare combination of elite mentorship, business acumen, and gold medal mindset is what makes François an unstoppable force for CEO transformation. Francois Lupien The Performance Enhancer. 613-662-8377 HowToBecomeMore.com Connect on LinkedIn Visit Youtube Chanel  My Favorite Video Tool >>> FREE Gift, just for you <<< Want a quick chat? > Click Here < More about Francois Here

Effective storytelling is an essential component to successful sales results. People love engaging stories and you can grab and keep their attention once you become an expert storyteller. There’s storytelling and then there’s story selling. In this episode I dive into the components of “story selling” from the stage with my guest, Sylvain “Sly” Haché.     Sly is an ex-chronic stutterer who has created a new public speaking system that turns regular people into ‘‘naturals’‘—without scripts, stress or memorization. Clients include international keynote speakers, TV hosts and national trainers. His methods have helped people from 18 to 81 years old get over stage fright and his systems have replaced yearly incomes with 20-minute talks and produced multiple 6-figure days from the stage. In this episode we dive into topics including: Why people don’t do what they know they should do to get what they want. How to keep your audience’s attention once you get it. What parallel storytelling is and how to use it in story selling. How to set up the plot of your story and how to build on it. How to dispel ignorance and myths when you’re teaching. The best ways to overcome objections. Why trying to sell with traditional logic doesn’t work. The definition of emotional logic and how to leverage it. Why if what you’re saying isn’t wrapped in story it doesn’t go deep enough into peoples’ psyche to move them forward. Where and when the sale happens in the story selling process. Why the stories you tell yourself dramatically affect your sales presentations. Why your entire presentation is actually a “close”. Why sales is 10% overt and 90% covert. What the true purpose of your presentation is. The one thing, above all else, what you need to do to tell stories that sell. …and other golden nuggets of advice! The Beginning of Sly’s Story Selling Journey Everybody knows you must be adept at storytelling if you want to sell something, especially when you’re selling from the stage. Sly’s first experiences on stage weren’t the best to say the least. One time he had a panic attack on stage and because of that panic attack he made no sales. And at the time he was still a part-time stutterer. Picture this. He started out as a chronic stutterer, meaning he was somebody that couldn’t easily form cohesive sentences. On top of that Sly was starting to learn English. He went from being a chronic stutterer in French (his native tongue) to now teaching international keynote speakers, TV hosts, and national trainers while speaking English. Getting Into Story Selling from the Stage The story selling part comes from the fact that if you don’t have the proper conversational frame straight from the beginning of when you open your mouth on stage, it’s nearly impossible to get people to take the action you want them to take by the end of your presentation. The only reason people do something is because they feel like doing it. The reason they don’t do something is because they don’t feel like doing it. So, the question becomes, how can you make people feel like doing the thing you want them to do? And how can you get them to do it when you ask them to do it so that your conversion rates go up, your buy-in goes up, and your sales go up? One of the best ways is to be a professionally trained conversational hypnotist. But it takes a long time and it’s a difficult process. How do you get similar results without being a professionally trained conversational hypnotist so that you can do it without scripts, without stress and without memorization? The best way is to tell stories. So, when people hear that, they think, well, that’s easy enough. I just have to tell a story. So let me tell the story about how I discovered whatever the solution is to my audiences problems. And they start telling stories that, frankly, their audiences don’t care about. You can’t be making up stories just to say what you want the audience to hear, because otherwise it’s inauthentic. How do you tell your story in a way that people care about your story? And so it makes them take the action that want them to so that they end up doing what you want them to do? Buy, vote, click, download, swipe, stop polluting the ocean, whatever you want them to do by the end of your story. With any story you’re telling, you need to be mindful of this: What the purpose of each part of your story is so that you can chunk your information based on when the audience is ready to move on to the next section of taking some kind of action.  Where Do Stories Start? You start to build stories by meeting your audience where they are. It might sound simple, but you can’t know where they are before you actually know for sure. If you don’t know where they are, you must ask them. When Sly is story selling he shares stories about him this system to have six figure days selling from the stage. He gets his audience to ask themselves “How do I have a six figure days” What he doesn’t do is immediately “go in for the kill” by just saying “Do you want to work with me? here’s what you have to do. Let’s do it. You ready?” That doesn’t work. Then you need to know what their pain points are. What’s the bottleneck in their lives? What are they bumping up against? In Sly’s case: Out of all the problems his audience could be having that prevents them from having six-figure days, which ones are they struggling with the most? How long have they been struggling with this? What’s the consequences of that struggle? Ideally you want to send a pre-event questionnaire. You can do an email campaign. You can do what Sly teaches his clients to do, get answers to their audience’s key questions. Even if you have ideas beforehand, double down at the event. During your presentation you want to take live questions from the audience. Then share how what they tell you fits in one of the pillars of your service offerings, one of the steps of your process, or one of the things you help people with. Then you offer to share your secrets to solve their problems. This means that the answers to the questions the audience asks you fit into one of those boxes, one of those checkpoints in your system. Based on that audience, you can customize in real time all the answers to their questions. You get to offer to share everything that’s congruent with and fits within your system. That addresses a problem or problems that your audience is stuck on. You can stop holding back. You can tell all the stories you need that reflect the transformation that that audience needs to have to get past that sticking point. You don’t hold back as a storyteller, as a teacher, as a pedagogue, or as a coach. You don’t hold back. But at the same time, you connect each little thing your audience is struggling with through stories. Then your audience gets their “a-HA!” moment. Oh, my God. This is amazing. I can see clearly now the rain is gone. Then you tie that to your system that you want to sell. And for those that want to move forward, they can move forward with you and your offer by purchasing the rest of your system. And that is just the beginning! Listen to or watch the interview to continue this story and get more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About My Guest             Sly is an ex-chronic stutterer who has created a new public speaking system that turns regular people into ‘‘naturals’‘—without scripts, stress or memorization. Clients include international keynote speakers, TV hosts and national trainers. His methods have helped people from 18 to 81 years old get over stage fright… And his systems have replaced yearly incomes with 20-minute talks, and produced multiple 6-figure days from the stage. Learn more about Sly here!

A seven-figure income doesn’t start with a business plan; it starts with a mindset. I discuss how to create a millionaire mindset in this episode with my guest, Cole Vandee.     Cole is a strategic marketing mind behind more than 300 million dollars in found revenue generated for clients ranging from celebrity coaches to DTC brands in the pet industry. With his unique perspective to bridge the gap between what’s working now and what the future marketplace will demand, Cole has catapulted several brands to 9 figures and beyond. We dive into topics including: Why your early perceptions of money are really about running away from something; not moving towards something. How to start running towards the life you want. How to avoid chasing the wrong purpose. How to get and keep traction after getting over your initial hump when you’re getting started. The income numbers and plateaus when people stop trying and how to rise above them and keep going. Why in order to change your money mindset you need to find something outside of personal goals and needs to get ahead; you need a clear purpose that is greater than yourself. How to discover how much you need to make to feel fulfilled; it’s about more than the dollar amount. How to discover and connect to your bigger purpose. Why at the end of the day we all want to help somebody and how to find your somebody to help. What you mentally need to do and who you need to be once you hit a seven-figure income to maintain it. Why, once you hit a certain revenue level, you can’t afford to stop and you must keep growing. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to create and maintain a millionaire mindset. …and more golden nuggets of advice! The Early Pathway to Cole’s Millionaire Mindset While Cole’s life isn’t exactly the normal rags to riches story, he grew up in the American Midwest on the border of Illinois and Iowa on the Mississippi River in a small farm town. Success in his town, or even the rest of the country for that matter, wasn’t anything like what we see on the Internet today. Success in his hometown was more along the lines of having a sixty-thousand-dollar home. You work at a factory making 18 bucks an hour. You drive a pickup truck. And that was considered wealthy for the most part where Cole grew up. There were a few outliers that owned local businesses and were doing better than most, but nothing like we see today with YouTubers, TikTokers, and internet celebrities. Cole had a burning desire because he believed more was available for him in this life, but he didn’t know exactly what that meant or what it felt like. He chose to go into sales because it provided a virtually unlimited paycheck because of commissions. If Cole worked really hard and got really good at what he did, he could make as much money as he wanted. That seemed to be the path to follow at the time. You have to start somewhere, right? The Beginning of the Path to Success Cole took on a few random sales jobs. He sold auto parts for a while and then moved on to selling Cutco knives door-to-door. Then he got into car sales but didn’t love the industry. He knew he was there to learn how to sell cars, take care of customers, and then move on to do something better. Cole was bridging the gap between not having a resume and having a resume to be able to get a job he actually wanted. Rather than continuing to add to his resume, Cole quickly moved on to owning his own businesses. He started many different companies. A lot of them failed. Reflecting, Cole says that most of his companies have failed at this point. He’s only had a handful of things that have actually worked; but those few made all the difference. To date he’s been a part of many companies that scaled up from zero to millions of dollars, millions of dollars to tens of millions of dollars and tens of millions of dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars. What Most People Don’t See or Know About When it Comes to Creating A Millionaire Mindset Cole believes the most important thing is to understand that your favorite, more mature business gurus out there that are very successful today got to their first million dollars without the internet. They weren’t doing it with paid ads. They weren’t relying on funnels. They weren’t relying on marketing efforts. They weren’t relying on Instagram views or anything else like that. They were picking up the phone and talking to human beings and making money with them and then moving on to the next human beings and making money with them and so on. The Starting Point of YOUR Millionaire Mindset When Cole reflects and compares himself to other people that have gone on to build multimillion dollar organizations (and some that have gone on to billions), it’s the same mindset across the board. It’s an audacious belief that you’re going to make it work. When you look at it as an investment on paper, starting a business is the worst possible thing you could ever do. Almost every single business that starts will fail. Of the ones that do succeed, most of those will fail within the next 12 months. Of those that make it that far, most of those will fail in the following 12 months. So, when you look at it on paper, if you were to go to the casino and you put down a thousand bucks and you had a 0.0002% chance of making that thousand dollars back, let alone a profit, would you put your money down? Most people would say, “Why would I ever do that?” But when you run the numbers on new businesses, that’s what the odds are. On the surface it doesn’t make any sense. There must be a little bit of a delusion to believe “I’m going to make this work.” Even though you don’t know how, you don’t have experience, you don’t necessarily even have a roadmap. No one’s really encouraging you. You must have some very intense beliefs that you’re going to make it work. You Need to Do Something You’re Passionate About Steve Jobs mentioned in quite a few interviews that if you’re going to go into business, you better be passionate about it. You’re going to have days where you think the entire world is against you. You’ll feel like the world wants to beat you down and make you fail. It’s those days where you must have great reasons why you’re doing what you’re doing. Business is like war in many respects. If you don’t know why you’re in the middle of that war, you’re going to want to give up. That means leaving your business. That’s where Cole believes most businesses end up failing. A lot of people preach about becoming passionate about something in life. Figuring out what to be passionate about can get you spinning your mental wheels. What are you passionate about? It’s about betting on yourself and being passionate about being great at something. You need to know that taking the next step means finding the gap between solving a problem helping people in some way and then finding a solution to that problem. Having some strong, undeniable, unshakable reason to do it is a huge starting point for those that end up becoming successful. Watch or listen to the interview for more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About My Guest             ranging from celebrity coaches to DTC brands in the pet industry. With his unique perspective to bridge the gap between what’s working now and what the future marketplace will demand, Cole has catapulted several brands to 9 figures and beyond. Click here to learn more about Cole!

Public speaking is an excellent way to grow your business as an entrepreneur. You just need the right strategies and ways to get started. We discuss some of them in this episode with my guest Lisa Reid.     As the Founder of Get Speaking Gigs Now, Leisa trains entrepreneurs who want to use public speaking as a soul-fulfilling business growth strategy. Clients who work closely with her “Get Their Talk Ready to Rock” and build their speaking skills and confidence through the Speaker’s Training Academy. Leisa has booked and delivered over 600 speaking engagements, and she teaches her clients all of the strategies she uses to get booked, stay booked and monetize their talks. In this episode, she will share the #1 secret she uses to get speaking gigs along with other golden nuggets of advice! Why and How Lisa Got Started in Public Speaking For Lisa, public speaking is near and dear to her heart because she has always wanted to be a teacher. Even as a kid she remembers teaching her friends gymnastics amongst other things. It wasn’t so much that she needed to be the center of attention or to have the spotlight on her. It was just that when she knew that she could help other people understand something quicker, easier, better; she had to do it. It was very fulfilling. Now she’s basically a teacher disguised as a speaker. She knows that because she works with entrepreneurs all the time, there’s quite a few of us who have that same type of drive for teaching. When we get the opportunity to teach, we get a natural high, a shot of dopamine. Something amazing happens when you give the gift of teaching to an audience whether it’s virtual in person. You know that what you’re offering is going to help them solve problems or help make something easier for them. That’s a very fulfilling way to market your business! Leisa believes that people don’t get into business to do the sales and marketing themselves. They are suddenly surprised how big of a part of their responsibility is sales and marketing. She loves teaching speaking because it’s one of the easiest and most fulfilling ways to do effective sales and marketing for them to market their businesses. Many entrepreneurs welcome that opportunity. Why Speaking Should Be a Big Part of Your Sales and Marketing as an Entrepreneur Public speaking is especially important if you have something that many people haven’t heard of; such as your own philosophy or framework about how to do something. Then there are people who have problems that you can help with, but they don’t know it yet. They may need more information than they can get by reading a synopsis of what you do on your website. Speaking always allows you to educate people and it allows you to educate more than one person at a time. With many live and virtual presentations, you can even record them and have evergreen marketing and branding content for future prospects. That means there are a lot of ways that you can duplicate your efforts while attracting your ideal clients and potential referral partners. That’s a great reason to get speaking coach. When you find someone that you want it’s because you can relate to their story. You like their personality. You like their humor. You like how fast (or slow) they talk. They resonate with you because it seems like they’re genuine. That’s the kind of person that you should work with. The Starting Point of Public Speaking as a Sales and Marketing Tool  In Leisa’s world the starting point of working with her is when you’re ready to get your talk “ready to rock”. That means you need to decide what your talk is going to be about, what your title is going to be, what your learning points are, your description of the talk, and what your call to action will be. That’s what she means when she says, “Get your talk ready to rock.” When you say that you’re a speaker and update your LinkedIn profile to include “speaker” you’re claiming that title. That means when you’re at a networking event and someone asks what you do and you tell them you’re a speaker they’re immediately going to ask, “What do you speak about?” You don’t want to be hesitant or say something like, “I speak about quite a few things.” You want to be focused with a niche to explain. You need at least one talk to share. Having that talk in your pocket will give you confidence and assuredness in the speaking world. It’s like planting a proverbial flag in the ground. If your talk is ready to rock, you’re going to be madly in love with your talk. You won’t be able to wait to share with everyone. That’s the kind of energy you want to start conversations with. Where to Go to Practice When You’re Getting Started in Public Speaking You can find lots of different places but it’s kind of like getting exercise, you can work out at home, especially if you’re just getting started. That’s what Leisa still does when writing a new talk. It gives her fortitude to do that. She’s been practicing that way since she was in college. She had a walk-in closet that she shared with her roommate. She would go into the walk-in closet and practice her new talks. Practicing out loud on your own is very easy. It’s very affordable. You don’t have to get in a car. You don’t have to involve anybody else. If you have a dog or a cat, they can listen. Then doing it in public is where people get scared; maybe they do it in front of a live audience and then it doesn’t go as well as hoped. That’s where dedication to practice comes into play. There is immense value in saying the words out loud, like dress rehearsal, to nobody. Three times at least. Then, with time, maybe after the third time, it’ll start to get smoother. You’ll start to transition easier. You’ll add things. You’ll change some things around. That dedication to practice ultimately makes all the difference for your public speaking success. We also dive into topics such as: The qualities of a “talk that is ready to rock”. The dichotomy and power of planning your talks in reverse, with the title coming last. The case for not using AI to write your speech but writing about what is unique about yourself instead. The good news is that when you’re getting started it’s possible to market your talk without cold calling and what you can do instead. The concept and three steps of Leisa’s “Speaker Soul Mate System” and how to find your “Speaker Soul Mate” to support and refer you speaking gigs and vice versa. Why as a novice you need to start with one speech and then create two more as you grow and how to do that. Rules of etiquette and strategies for working with meeting planners to get booked more. What meeting planners really want as well as what they avoid and why. How to stay consistent with getting speaking gigs after you’re established as a speaker. How and when to ask for referrals for speaking gigs without being pushy. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to build your business through public speaking. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About My Guest             As the Founder of Get Speaking Gigs Now and the CEO of the International Speaker Network, Leisa Reid trains entrepreneurs how to use public speaking as a soul-fulfilling business growth strategy and facilitates the birth of new talks all around the world in her “Get Your Talk Ready to Rock” sessions. Throughout her years of working with speakers, the most frequent confessions she hears are: “I’ve always wanted to be a speaker,” but “I’m still working on my talk,” and “I’m not sure where to get booked.” It is her mission to collaborate with her clients so they can quickly and easily create their talks and deliver them to audiences that are a right fit. Leisa has booked and delivered over 600 speaking engagements, is a 7-time author, podcast host and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate. Although she has both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s Degree in Speech Communication, she assures her clients those degrees are NOT required in order to be a speaker. She is a mom, a wife, a dog-lover and loves live rock concerts. Want speaking gigs? Get Immediate FREE Access to the “5 Top Tips to Get More Speaking Gigs NOW”  

The epitome of leadership is the ability to share your leadership story and leave a legacy. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Shelley Goldstein. Shelley Goldstein is a leadership development coach specializing in communications affectionately known by clients as “The Coach Whisperer”. The moniker stems from her intuitive ability to pinpoint untapped potential in leaders and cultivate it into speaking mastery with remarkable ease and speed.     As the architect of Remarkable Speaking, Shelley has created a proprietary framework that has evolved into a global leadership development platform. Rooted in 30-plus years of experience in leadership, entrepreneurship, marketing, and design, her expertise allows her to creatively integrate time-saving drills, persuasive storytelling, and behavioral psychology, driving significant real-world impact. Your Leadership Story Your leadership story begins with the origins of why and how we do things. It can go back to your youth when you’re joining a music program or getting involved in sports. It’s a study of behaviors involved with those activities. It’s those stories that build one on top of the other that become your legacy, who you are today, and why you lead the way you do when situations call or leadership. Shelley’s Leadership Story: Back to the Beginning Shelley says her story goes back to when she was eight or nine years old and her and a group her friends put together a neighborhood newspaper. The three of them were about the same age. They included hosted a beauty pageant and had articles and recipes that they got from their neighbors. Being able to organize that at such a young age and publish it month after month had a profound impact on leadership in Shelley’s adult life. Looking back, she learned a lot about leadership skills and taking the initiative at a very young age. Some of the things she carries forward with her today is the idea of sharing that responsibility and delegating to other people. Whether she was aware of it or not, it just naturally happened. And Shelley believes that’s what helps her be a better leader today; that sharing of ideas and giving people autonomy to create some of the most innovative, creative ideas of their childhoods. Leadership Showing Up Shelley remembers her earlier career as a costume designer. She had the responsibility of creating a look, making sure the costumes could be perceived from the audience. That meant meaning when that curtain goes up, she can’t be up there with the assistants hemming and sewing. It was showtime. Shelley believes that whole idea of “it’s showtime” was an early leadership development experience in her adult life. She realized that she can’t do everything. She had to prioritize and realized you can’t sweat the small stuff. To lead through that and make sure her team understood that the work that they were doing as individuals contributed to their combined success; and that bigger vision of what things need to happen. The Beginning of Leadership in Your Adult Life It’s so hard to say where it actually begins. If you have an idea, let’s start with the incubating. You have a great idea. How you strategize that, how you move forward with that, that’s an innate leadership skill. I’m going to have a marketing strategy. I’m going to have a sales strategy. I’m going to develop my brand this way. Those are all leadership skills because you’re making important decisions. Those stories of how you eventually do that, that becomes the legacy. That becomes your competitive advantage and unique story to only you. The stories are so important because that’s where the money flows. Money is how people respond to the stories. That’s what people buy into. That’s the journey. The Structure of a Great Leadership Story A great leadership story is the journey, the mistakes, the decisions you made when you were building your business. You know what? I’m going to go with my marketing strategy and hire this team and go forward with them. And let’s say it’s a bomb. Nothing happened. Six months, you spent thousands of dollars. That’s a learning moment. So, what did you do to compensate for that, to switch gears and become the success you are today? It’s the little things that we think are so unimportant. For example, Shelley coached a young guy who was a very successful entrepreneur. He made well over a hundred million dollars in his twenties. He was a college dropout, and he created a watch company. He built his company and sold the organization for hundreds of millions of dollars. After the company’s sale, he came to Shelley and said, “I have nothing to talk about. The company sold and that was my identity. I don’t know what to talk about and how to show up now. Who am I? I’m nothing without that organization.” What they unpacked together was the fact that that journey, whether it’s in the past or it’s current, is part of that story, is part of that legacy. Identifying with that as an entrepreneur and focusing in on the little moments, the pivotal moments, the early days where you had no followers, let’s say, to the time where you had millions of followers, to the time where you couldn’t fulfill your first order for your product, to the time where you sold hundreds of millions of units. All those details are every bit of who you are today and where you’re going tomorrow. And changing that story and being able to express that story changed everything for this young entrepreneur. He’s now running a lot of other businesses based on that experience because that’s what people want to know and that’s what they’re buying into. We also dive into topics including: Why it’s important to create and share your genesis, or origin story with the world. The failures as well as the successes, the nuanced moments when you felt that it was over; that’s what inspires people. Why superheroes are great examples of origin stories; they share their weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and failures with the comic world. You should in your world too. How to keep on keepin’ on during the dark times in your life. The importance of creating and following a vision for your business and how to do it. When to hold the course and when to change directions in life. Where the growth and change happen along your journey and how to embrace them. The definition of “legacy” and how and when to create yours. How to move your audience forward by sharing your legacy. Why and how “the money flows as an extension of your story”. How to get people to buy into your legacy. The importance of vulnerability and humbleness in leadership. Why you need to have an open-door policy with your team for sharing ideas and feedback. How to create a safe environment for tough conversations. How to get the people around you to embrace and share their legacy. The one thing, above all else, you need to do to share your leadership story and leave a legacy. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About My Guest             Shelley Goldstein is a leadership development coach specializing in communications affectionately known by clients as “The Coach Whisperer”. The moniker stems from her intuitive ability to pinpoint untapped potential in leaders and cultivate it into speaking mastery with remarkable ease and speed. As the architect of Remarkable Speaking, Shelley has created a proprietary framework that has evolved into a global leadership development platform. Rooted in 30-plus years of experience in leadership, entrepreneurship, marketing, and design, her expertise allows her to creatively integrate time-saving drills, persuasive storytelling, and behavioral psychology, driving significant real-world impact. Through a fusion of her multicultural experience and multidisciplinary approach, Shelley has personally coached over 1,000 C- and V-suite executives, senior officers and managers, and has led more than 150 cohorts worldwide. Her extensive work spans a diverse array of industries, with a particular focus on the technology, financial, legal, and manufacturing sectors. The Remarkable Speaking brand speaks for itself; empowering high-achieving leaders and visionaries with the directness, clarity, and composure essential to command authority and truly influence individuals and industries. Connect with Shelley on LinkedIn! Check out Shelley’s Book! Click here for all things Shelley!  

Creating and embracing your leadership promise can change your life and your business as an entrepreneur. You just need a strategy for creating it and then maintaining it over time. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Jason Hewlett. Jason has delivered thousands of presentations around the world; performed in every major casino in Las Vegas; inspired the Troops in wartime Afghanistan; and authored “The Promise to The One”. He utilizes entertainment, musical impressions and comedy to teach leaders how to capture their unique Leadership Promise and Signature Moves.   In the Beginning There was Leadership Teaching about creating and embracing your leadership promise has taken Jason years to create the language around what your leadership promise is. He’s been teaching it subliminally, he believes, for decades. He now believes your leadership promise is to identify, clarify, and magnify the signature moves of the people you lead. Jason wrote a book called “Signature Moves” years ago. He’s also written a book called “The Promise to the One”, which is a promise to yourself. That all comes together with that language to help people say, “Can I help identify the talents and the gifts of the people I lead? Can I help them clarify that that’s something they need to do every day in their work? And can I help them magnify it and all that we do together?” As entrepreneurs, especially for solo entrepreneurs like Jason for the past 25 years, hiring independent contractors, bringing people in and getting rid of them as people come and go brings with it a lot of responsibility. It’s interesting to see how often entrepreneurs get stuck in the minutia of doing their everyday work.  You could probably spend 12 hours working on a broken printer, and not doing your signature moves, your greatness. That’s not time well spent. Instead, you could just hire somebody who could do it in about 10 minutes and fix it for you. Yes, you spend a little extra money, but you get into the things that you do best that way. Jason truly believes your leadership promise is not only for yourself to identify, clarify, magnify your signature moves, but also to help others to identify and clarify and magnify theirs. He calls that the ICM process (Identify, Clarify, Magnify). The Leadership Promise Showing Up in Jason’s Life Jason recalls it probably appeared back in high school; he was the student body President of his high school. He says perhaps it came from seeing people on their student body council that didn’t follow through with the things they promised they would do. And then it all fell on him as the President. Jason realized he was the last one in line because leaders eat last, as Simon Sinek says. He remembers that he would always have to be the one that picked up the slack. And so, the leadership promise came down to that. It came from examining: Who is keeping their commitments and who’s not? He told me “What’s fun to think about is that it goes all the way back to the school days all the way into adulthood and now into the leadership of not only leading my own company, but I lead several organizations and yeah, when it comes down to that it’s about who makes a promise and keeps it.” The Start of the Leadership Promise Journey for Entrepreneurs Jason believes it comes down to your own personal accountability for the things you’ll do for yourself. That’s why he wrote the book, “The Promise to the One”, which is a promise to yourself. You could keep a promise to your audience, to your customers, to your employees, to the independent contractors. But if you are waking up and not keeping those promises that you made to yourself, then it’s going to trickle down eventually, and you’re going to drop the ball. Whether it’s creating a morning routine, the Hal Elrod “Morning Miracle” stuff, or if we’re talking about even the Gay Hendricks and “The Big Leap”, how do we get to that place of doing our greatness in our zone of genius? Jason says a majority of humanity at this point is living in a certain zone, especially if they’re listening to or watching this podcast but, if they think about it, they could get to that zone of genius. That comes down to keeping promises and involves setting a goal that you can make a promise for. It’s not to say goals aren’t important because, of course, they are. If you’re an entrepreneur, you know that you must have goals as your metrics. But if you’ve ever set a goal and you missed it, you just set another one. Whereas if you make a promise and break it, that’s a one and done. So, what are the goals that are your particulars and your promises that are proclamations? The particulars lead to the proclamation. Jason’s saying that a goal is a sacred promise, something that you’re going to do no matter what. And then you’re also going to say that if you set a goal and I miss it, you need to make sure that you set the right goals in the future. But what are the promises that you keep no matter what? Jason would say that that’s where the leadership promise comes into play. We also dive into topics including: The definition of a “promise proclamation” and how to design yours in different areas of your life. Examples of personal and business promise proclamations. The importance of journaling every day. How to maintain your promise proclamations over time and not have them just be a blip on your radar. The power of gratitude and appreciation and how to practice them regularly. How to instill the practice of promise proclamations in the people that work with and for you. The importance of praise and when and how to give it to the people around you. How often to check in an reevaluate your promise proclamations and when to update them. An introduction to your “signature moves” and how to create and embrace them. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to create and embrace your leadership promise. …and more golden nuggets of advice!   You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         About My Guest             Having delivered thousands of presentations over 2 decades, Jason Hewlett utilizes entertainment, musical impressions and comedy to teach leaders how to capture their unique Leadership Promise and Signature Moves. He has performed in Las Vegas, is one of the youngest inductees in the Speaker Hall of Fame, and is the author of the “The Promise to the One”. Husband, Father, Writer, Mentor, and Coach, Jason’s blog “The Promise” is enjoyed weekly by people worldwide, his online videos and courses inspire learning and   entertainment, while educating and uplifting corporate executives, artists, leaders and families. Jason’s hobbies include hiking in the mountains, writing music, playing with his kids, and staring at his wife. His greatest accomplishments all live within the walls of his home. He is a husband to the most beautiful woman in the world and Dad to four incredible young children who serve as his inspiration. Jason Hewlett Social Media Links https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhewlett/   LINKEDIN https://twitter.com/jasonhewlett  TWITTER/X https://www.facebook.com/jasonhewlettentertainer/    FACEBOOK https://www.youtube.com/user/jasonrhewlett   YOUTUBE https://www.instagram.com/jasonhewlett/  INSTAGRAM https://jasonhewlett.com/ WEBSITE

We all have an “Emotional Source Code” that is set when we were children. It’s what drives us and is why we do everything we do. What if that code isn’t working to your advantage? You can change it! In this episode I discuss how to do that with my guest, Dov Baron.     For over 30 years, Dov Baron has been empowering inquisitive leaders and influential figures worldwide to explore their own “Emotional Source Code” and their organizations “Emotional Source Code” to discover how to generate Fierce Loyalty. He is the creator and host of The Dov Baron Show podcasts (previously known as Leadership and Loyalty), named the #1 podcast for Fortune 500 Executives by Apple podcasts. The Dov Baron Show has featured hundreds of hours of interviews with top leaders, entrepreneurs, theologians, military intelligence officers, and artists. What is Your “Emotional Source Code”? Your Emotional Source Code is a thesis that has come out of a blend of quantum physics, neuroscience and psychology, organizational psychology and subjective personal psychology. It’s profoundly insightful into what it is that drives us. Very often you’ll meet somebody, and they’ll say, “I really have this bad behavior, and I want to change it.” You might say, “I can help you with that.” Great. And then you help them, they change their behavior, and it doesn’t stick. They wonder “Why didn’t it stick?” Maybe the problem is that they have a belief system or a value system that’s holding that behavior in place. That’s when they realize they have to do some real work on their behaviors and to my beliefs. Then they do some belief restructuring. They get happy because the belief’s better now, and as a result, the behavior’s gone away. And then a year later, they’re back in the same boat. Why? Why does it not change? Because you have an emotional source code. That’s what Dov calls your Emotional DNA. Your DNA is not dominant. It’s just the most… obvious place to start. What Dov means by that is you may have a predetermination for certain situations from something in your DNA. It doesn’t mean they’re going to happen. It just means it’s there in your Emotional DNA. It’s waiting to kick in. That’s the same with your emotional DNA being in your Emotional Source Code. Going Back to the Beginning Your Emotional Source Code starts at the base level at the foundation of it, which is the origin of your Emotional Source Code itself. That’s the environment and the circumstance you grew up in. Now, you might be thinking “Oh, my God, we’re going to spend 20 years on a couch talking to a therapist.” No, it doesn’t have to be like that. Consider your parents, especially if you have siblings. Not only have your parents changed and matured over the years, but as parents, they as parents respond differently to their firstborn than they do to their thirdborn. On top of that, there’s also an economic situation. There’s a pretty good chance your parents were in better financial shape by the time they had their third kid than they were when they had their first child. They’d matured in age, hopefully emotionally. Their relationship had also matured, again, hopefully to make it better. And there was an economic change also. That means you and your siblings didn’t have the same parents. In fact, none of you did. You all had different parents. And so, as a result, you built your Emotional Source Code based on the environment you were in at a moment in time. Dov was born into abject poverty with violence, crime, abuse, addiction all around him. That told him how to survive. He remembers thinking, “If I’m going to make it through this, I’ve got to work out certain things about how to be.” He would look at the world and think that’s dangerous, that’s safe. We all do it. It’s not because of his background. You did it even if you had a wonderful childhood. You still did it because your primary objective is to survive. Finding Meaning in Your Life That early Emotional Source Code determined the next level of your Emotional Source Code, which is your meaning. You determined the meaning of everything. So, for instance, you’re standing in the edge of the crib and you’re watching your mom and dad have a fight about paying bills. There’s not enough money. You don’t stand there and go at two years old, “You know, I think my mom and dad need some therapy. They’ve got some serious issues around money.” You don’t do that. You look at this scene and your programming becomes money equals stress. So, as an adult you believe if you have money, you’re going to have a lot of stress. If you don’t have money, you’re going to have a lot of stress. It becomes a catch 22. What you’ll find is somebody in that situation will either collect a ton of money, really gather in, and be fixated on making more and more money, or they never break through. They never financially break through because the mind operates in polarity. That’s how it operates. We assign meaning to circumstances and situations. Now money was just one example, but it could be a million different ones. And you have assigned them in your childhood. Then from that base foundational emotional DNA to your meaning, then you go, well, “Who can I be in this environment?” That determines a lot of things you can’t be. For instance, in the environment Dov was growing up in, there was no room for me to be highly intelligent. There was no room for Dov to be more spiritual. There was no room for Dov to be highly creative or intuitive. All those things had to get pushed into the shadows. They became quote-unquote disenfranchised. They become part of who Dov is. He didn’t have access to those things because he built his identity to survive based on the meaning he assigned to certain situations in his life. We continue to dive into topics such as: How childhood beliefs and identities are formed and what that means to you as an adult. The five foundations of your emotional source code. How to start to change your emotional source code as an adult. The importance of looking for the meaning that you assign to situations in your life. Examples of how you can incorrectly assign meanings to everyday situations that has a profound affect on your life. How your emotional source code is playing out in how you are doing business and how you are building friendships and associations. How to recognize character traits of people in your life as opposed to simple, situational bumps in the road. Why you’re building your entire business on your emotional source code. Why you’re not selling a product or service, you’re selling what you emotionally need most in your life. Why you don’t need more “a-HA!” moments in your life; you need “F&#@ it” moments. Why we are emotional beings who make rational decisions after an emotional decision is made. How to embrace and lean into new meanings in your life. How to shift your offering(s) out of commoditization into something that is emotionally visceral. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to embrace and change your emotional source code. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”       About My Guest             Dov Baron is a Speaker, Facilitator, Podcast Host, and Bestselling Author. Dov is the preeminent expert on Creating Cultures of Belonging because “Fitting in is not the same as belonging.” For over 30 years, Dov Baron has been empowering inquisitive leaders and influential figures worldwide to explore their own Emotional Source Code™ and their organizations to discover how to generate Fierce Loyalty.  The Emotional Source Code process drives deep loyalty and purpose through the power of emotions. Dov assists leaders in creating life-and-work meaning. His models and strategies of the Emotional Source Code and the Anatomy of Meaning are used by leaders in business and government worldwide. He is the founder and CEO of Dov Baron International. Dov has been named a Top 30 Global Leadership Guru five times and an Inc. Magazine Top Leadership Speaker twice.  He is the creator and host of The Dov Baron Show podcasts (previously known as Leadership and Loyalty), named the #1 podcast for Fortune 500 Executives by Apple podcasts. The Dov Baron Show has featured hundreds of hours of interviews with top leaders, entrepreneurs, theologians, military intelligence officers, and artists. He has written for or been interviewed by many media outlets, including CEO World, CNN, Elle Italia, Entrepreneur, and FOX.  He is the author of several books, including “One Red Thread: How to Find the Purpose Already Woven Into Your Life,” and “Fiercely Loyal: How High-Performing Companies Develop and Retain Top Talent.” Both were bestsellers on Amazon.  As a speaker, Dov has presented to the United Nations, the Department of State, the World Management Forum, the Servant Leadership Institute, The World Management Forum in Iran, and the United States Air Force. Dov is also the co-founder of The Authentic Speaker Academy for Leadership — where he teaches leaders how to use ethical persuasion skills to impact and influence change-makers. Click here to learn more about Dov!

Many self-help books and programs are overly complicated with dozens of steps or components. My guest, “Doc” Thom Mayer believes we can (and should) do simple things savagely well. We discuss how to do that in this episode. Doc is the Medical Director for the NFL Players Association, as well as a prominent figure in the fields of emergency medicine, sports medicine and leading in times of crisis.     He has built a distinguished career focused on athlete and patient health, safety, emergency response, as well as the skills required to lead from the front lines, making significant contributions to clinical practice, medical education, and thought leadership. Doc has always thought that we’ve made life more complicated than it really needs to be. It shouldn’t be as complicated as we’ve made it. And he believes all of us who are in the business of trying to help others, that’s his business, that’s your business, should simplify, simplify. Einstein said, “Simplify, simplify, but not too much.” Doc’s great friend, Mark Verstegen is the founder of Team Exos. Team Exos is the best athletes’ performance company in the world. Had they been a country in the Paris Olympics, they would have finished sixth in the medal count. That’s how elite the athletes are and how diverse the sports world is that he’s involved with. And Mark is the one who said, “Do simple things done savagely well.” So, combining Einstein and Mark Verstegen, Doc has tried to do simple things done savagely well. What Does “Too Simple” Mean? An simple example of “too simple” is looking at the equation E equals MC squared. Energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light. When Doc learned that he thought, well, that’s awfully simple. I Why didn’t somebody come up with that before? The reason is that wasn’t the equation. It turns out the real equation is not that simple. The real equation is E equals MC squared divided by one, divided by the square root of one minus V (velocity) divided by C squared. Well, that’s a little more complicated. So, some genius in marketing somewhere decided let’s just do E equals MC squared. So yes, simplify, but not too much. To simplify too much is when people fail to make the connections that are simple but have failed to be made because there’s all kinds of corollaries of logical consequences that come out of that. How Do You Start to Simplify Something That’s Complex? Doc says to start by taking something that is considered to be the status quo, thinking about it, reflecting on it, and starting to think, well, how do I put it to work? For example, Doc’s most recent book is titled “Leadership is Worthless, but Leading is Priceless, what I learned from 9-11, the NFL, and Ukraine”. Doc was in all those places. So, the simple idea is, leadership is worthless. How can that be? There’s 50,000 books on Amazon alone that have leadership in the title. The problem is that most leadership titles and advice include the 25 this, the 7 of this, the 14 things, and people can’t remember them. So, it’s not simplified enough. So, to Doc, that contrarian idea is very simple. Leadership is worthless because it’s what you say. And anybody can say anything. They often do say a lot, tediously and at length, and usually about themselves. So leading is priceless because it’s what we do all day, every day. So, the simple thought is that leadership is worthless because it’s a noun, leading is priceless because it’s a verb, what we do. So Doc always tells his audiences, or anybody who will sit and listen, you must change the noun to a verb. Once you change the noun to the verb, life becomes so much more simple. And therefore, new ideas are born, including the answers that are not above us in life, in an organization, in our family. They’re within and among us. The question that we should be asking ourselves is not am I, will I become a leader? You already are. You’ve got to say “Today I’m a leader.” Doc suggests abandoning the wistful, worthless word someday and embrace the word today, because that’s actionable. So, all simple, but contrarian. Breaking Things Down into Lists vs. a Singular Idea Doc says he’s OK with lists, but only if they’re lists of three. Any more than three, and most people aren’t going to be able to remember them. No offense to everybody who’s got lists. He always says he doesn’t have a to do list. He has a to don’t list. The reason is he can take care of it immediately so he doesn’t have to worry about it or think about it or put it on a list and come back to it at some point. There are things he simply doesn’t focus on or do. We also dive into topics including: Why you need to figure out where your deep joy intersects with the world’s deep needs. Where burnout comes from and how simplifying your life can help you avoid burnout. How to combine your daily actions with longer term plans and goals. The definition and meaning of the phrase “savagely well”. How to execute your goals increasingly well. How to see and discover meaning and then pull the components of your life together. How to turn failure into fuel. A deeper dive into the root causes of burnout and how to address them in your personal and professional lives. How to pull out of downward cycles when you’re having a bad day. The importance of creating a cycle in your life of performance, rest, and then recovery. The definition of being “adaptile” and how to embrace it and practice it in your life. The importance of gratitude and ways to practice it every day. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to do simple things savagely well. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             “Doc” Thom Mayer, MD is the Medical Director for the NFL Players Association and Clinical Professor of Emergency Medicine at George Washington University and a Senior Lecturing Fellow at Duke University., as well as Executive Vice President for Leading for LogixHealth, which “Makes Intelligence Matter.” He is one of the most widely-sought speakers on healthcare customer service, trauma and emergency care, pediatric emergency care, medical leadership, and sports medicine. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, 100 book chapters, and has edited or written 25 textbooks on emergency medicine, including Leadership for Great Customer Service: Satisfied Patients, Satisfied Employees, Leadership for Smooth Patient Flow, Hardwiring Flow, and Strauss and Mayer’s Emergency Department Leadership: Principles and Applications. Tom Peters, the internationally acclaimed leadership guru, has referred to his work as “gaspworthy.” Dr. Mayer was named the ACEP Outstanding Speaker of the Year in the second year the award was given and has twice been named ACEP’s “Over-the-Top” award winner. Click here to learn more about Doc! Click here to connect with Doc on LinkedIn!

If you want more quality sales conversations, you must ask more meaningful questions. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Leslie Venetz. Leslie is a top 1% B2B sales expert, sought-after speaker, and founder of The Sales-Led GTM Agency. Leslie has been recognized as a global sales thought leader and her insights have been viewed over 100 million times.     Awarded LinkedIn Editorial Top Voice, 5x top 50 Sales Thought Leader, and 2024 Sales Innovator of the Year, Leslie’s also been featured in the Wall Street Journal and Success Magazine. Leslie is the co-author of Heels to Deals and author of the upcoming Profit-Generating Pipeline: A Proven Formula to Earn Trust & Drive Revenue. A Story and a Roadmap for a Successful Sales Journey Leslie didn’t realize that her ability to ask questions was so central to her sales success because it wasn’t the thing she was told is most essential to success in the sales world. The things that you’re told are essential to sales success are things like “never take no for an answer” and to “grind and crush objections” and other cliche sales advice. A couple of years into her sales career Leslie reflected on why she was having so much success, examining things like her sales style and overall sales philosophy. She realized that her approach to selling was drastically different than most of her peers. The types of questions Leslie was asking weren’t just traditional qualifying questions or the superficial “What’s keeping you up at night?” style questions. She was going much deeper. She realized those deeper, more meaningful questions are her sales superpower. It’s something she’s embraced as a skill and has gotten even better at creating meaningful conversations with her prospects as a result. How to Go Deeper with Questions In middle school, high school, and college Leslie was a bit of a self-proclaimed nerd, a geek, and she means that in the most positive light ever. She was a varsity policy debater. Her weekends were spent on stage winning awards for policy debate. Later, she participated in her school’s Model UN (MUN). She was even the president of her college MUN group for a handful of years. So, Leslie spent a tremendous amount of time practicing rhetoric. She didn’t know at the time that she was developing a sales skill, but she was, in fact, accidentally practicing the exact foundation that eventually made her wildly successful in sales. That means when she was participating in a policy debate or a model United Nations round of debate, she couldn’t just ask “What’s keeping you up at night?” and then move on to something else. That would never work if she wanted to have a focused conversation and effective debate. In that context, she had to pull the evidence together or create the reports to support her arguments. When it comes to sales conversations, it’s nice to know that somebody, for instance, is worried about budgets. If you can create the dynamic where you have the privilege of asking, say, two or three more questions, what you might uncover is that it’s not that they’re just worried about budgets. They’re worried that if they don’t hit their budget numbers, that might require them to lay off some of their staff. And so, what’s really causing the pain and what they really want to solve for isn’t a little bit of ROI (which is what most salespeople commonly pitch). It is to avoid laying off one of their staff members, all of whom they worked with for years and have strong relationships with. Laying them off could damage those relationships. Leslie found that the ability to ask meaningful follow-up questions that allow you to go deep and uncover not just a superficial sort of pain that they’re giving you gets to the real issue. Fast. You get to that thing that is going to cause them to want to put the time and effort and budget into solving their problem now instead of later. Those deeper questions make all the difference. Sales Conversation Strategies to Get to the Real Issue Leslie told me three things that immediately come to mind: Focusing on Cost Of Inaction (COI) over ROI language. Indexing on open-ended questions instead of closed-ended questions. Practicing active listening as a skill. When we think about COI (Cost Of Inaction) language, what we need to keep in mind is that we as humans, have an extremely difficult time picturing future gains. We get stuck in today’s problems. Unfortunately, salespeople and entrepreneurs alike tend to default to ROI language. They promise things like “We are going to 2X your revenue.” They ask questions like “What would it mean to you if I could get you 30 more meetings a month?” Both sales people and entrepreneurs tend to focus on more, more, more. More is a much more difficult way to sell people on taking action than COI language. COI language is going to help them avoid pain. So, it’s a balancing act. You also don’t want to come at people too hard and only use COI language. The way Leslie coaches her clients when they’re working on sales messaging is having a blend of “pain and gain” messaging. For example, thinking about how she can help them avoid the pain and clearly illustrate that. She tells them what her proposed outcome looks like and what the resulting gain is. She has found that to be extremely valuable to move past the superficial part of the conversation. They save time, they save money, and they reduce risk to get to what really matters. We also dive into topics including: Why big numbers are not believable; why promising less is more when it comes to selling. How to avoid setting off red flags in your prospect’s brain during sales conversations. The power of open-ended questions and how to leverage them. How to “retrain your brain” from old school sales tactics to strategies that actually work in today’s world. Why soft skills mean more than technical skills. How to successfully practice the four pillars of active listening. Why you need to resist the temptation to overtake the conversation by sharing your own experiences. How and when to share relevant stories in sales conversations. How to hone your questioning skills over time to stay sharp. How to balance planning the next question in your head with active listening. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do when it comes to asking meaningful questions. …and more golden nuggets of advice!   You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Leslie Venetz is a globally recognized B2B sales expert, corporate trainer, and founder of The Sales-Led GTM Agency. With nearly two decades of experience, she specializes in modern outbound sales strategies that drive revenue, build trust, and empower sales teams to excel. As a LinkedIn Editorial Top Voice and top 1% sales thought leader, Leslie’s insights have reached over 100 million views worldwide, transforming the performance of sales leaders and their teams. Having personally made more than 250,000 cold calls and influenced over ten million through her training programs, Leslie has helped thousands refine their prospecting skills, overcome objections, and lead sales conversations that convert. She has delivered hundreds of keynotes and workshops for top-tier B2B brands and consulting firms across four continents and has been featured in prestigious publications like The Wall Street Journal and Success Magazine. A recipient of 20+ industry honors, including 2024 Sales Innovator of the Year, Leslie is redefining what it means to be an ethical, effective, and high-performing sales professional. Click here to connect with Leslie on LinkedIn! Click here for Leslie’s YouTube station!

The digital networking scene is booming. So is a growing lack of respect for common people skills and decency. I discuss the case for bringing them back through face-to-face networking with my guest, Brian Wallace.     Brian is Founder of NowSourcing, an industry leading content marketing agency that makes the world’s ideas simple, visual, and influential. Brian has been named a Google Small Business Advisor for 2016-present, joined the SXSW Advisory Board in 2019-present and became an SMB Advisor for Lexmark in 2023. He is the Co-Founder for The Innovate Summit which launched in May 2024. We’ve gotten used to interacting in a digital landscape, including video conferencing most of the time. As we get further towards the edge of a proverbial cliff, assuming AI is going to make everything better and we have the totality of everything on the phones in our pockets, what do we do to avoid falling? We can perfect our sales pitches on LinkedIn and elevator pitches on Zoom, and it’s still not nearly as impactful as face-to-face networking. Getting Back to Being Human in Business Networking Situations What people need to understand is, we need to stop running away from humanity and trying to do everything at scale in a virtual world. We need to get more personal again instead of just building new connections on LinkedIn like a video game. Think about it… when is the last time you checked in on somebody you’ve known for a couple of years but haven’t spoken to recently and set up an in-person meeting?  Brian says he can guarantee that everybody right now has a ton of missed messages they’re sifting through because they were focused on playing the LinkedIn game for so long. In person interactions have taken a big hit. We’ve forgotten how to make eye contact, we’ve forgotten how to shake hands, we’ve forgotten how to be human. The world needs to get better at being human again. When it comes to networking in general, more so for in person networking, we need to stop selling everybody, stop coming up with canned sales pitches, and start connecting meaningfully again. At the end of the day meaningful relationships are paramount to your success (or failure) in the business world. Brian believes the main thing to remember about face-to-face networking is to figure out how to be the most interesting person in the room or at least the most interesting version of yourself. That doesn’t mean you have to brag, grandstand, or be over-the-top energetically if you’re normally introverted. It just means that instead of asking meaningless questions about the weather, come up with better stuff and ask more meaningful questions that yield more meaningful answers and interactions. We don’t need dumb party tricks instead of connecting as humans, and that is what is wrong with the networking world. What NOT to do in Face-to-Face Networking Situations Let’s start by unpacking the word “networking”. Brian believes there’s a lot of misuse of the word, and that means developing the understanding of and behind that word. Because a lot of people depending on your personality type, how you show up in business, if you’re introverted or extroverted, in sales or a different career, “networking” means different things to different people. So, let’s just examine the networking event game. When you’re at any kind of conference, meetup, or event where part of the agenda is networking there are many misconceptions. So, what do we automatically think? We better come armed to the teeth with a fancy suit and a bunch of business cards. We’re just doing the business version of speed dating.   We run around in this horrible, cutthroat way, and we’re just focused on sales and transactions instead of trying to make a good impression. But the truth is that people buy, people interact, people engage with the people that they know, like, and trust. It’s not rocket science. But it can seem that way if you have the wrong approach. You have endless choices of who you want to do business with. Why would you work with somebody that you don’t know? Why would you work with somebody that you don’t like? Why would you work with somebody that you don’t trust? If your toilet is overflowing and its midnight maybe you’re not so picky about your plumber. That’s not how it is in the business world. Aside from plumber scenarios, in a normal business situation, we actually have choices. So, instead of these dumb networking games where you try to meet people as fast as possible with terrible messages, there is a way to evolve that conversation. Many people think networking is bad because they think that it’s just salesy and superficial, but I think if they understood the true art and science of networking, they wouldn’t hate it so much. Yes, sometimes you have the Type A personalities that just want to talk about themselves. That’s not networking. You don’t have to be like that. Networking is a skill that can be finely honed. It’s something in your brain that you can flex as a muscle when you choose to. How to Successfully Move Along the Spectrum of Know, Like, and Trust Brian loves the philosophy of Bob Burg and the “Go-Giver” movement. A go-getter is that annoying guy at networking events who’s being so over the top, so salesly, that no trust can be built. You run away from him. Those people think that business is just a numbers game and if they talk to enough people maybe somebody will buy from them. Brian believes there’s a better use of your time that can be more reflective and thoughtful for everybody around you. That way you don’t come off as a jerk by showing up and acting too aggressively. A Go-Giver, instead of taking first, is giving. “You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” ~Zig Ziglar People are interested in you when you care about them. When you’re a nice-natured human being you genuinely care about people and are genuinely interested in them. If you want somebody to do business with you should have at least a cordial, reciprocal personality. You should be useful to them, and you should be resourceful when it comes to helping them. Brian gives talks all over the world where he talks about being the most interesting person in the room. He doesn’t mean be that egomaniac. He just means that when you’re really interesting you’re going to leave this indelible mark in somebody’s mind. They leave the interaction with you thinking “That guy was kind of cool. I want to learn more about him.” Then they’re selling themselves on you instead of you trying to sell them. That way you start the proverbial dance to set the stage for something better for the both of you. We also dive into topics such as: How to introduce yourself in a different way than the traditional elevator pitch. Why being on stage or running an event builds your brand faster than the usual networking techniques. Ways to use LinkedIn during conversations at live events. Things you can do after meeting somebody (they now know you) to become likeable. How to move into the trust phase of a professional relationship faster. The power of reaching out to people that you know but haven’t spoken with in a while instead of always chasing new connections down. Why people get “shiny object syndrome” and how to avoid it. How to balance making new connections with fostering existing relationships. How to effectively ask your network for introductions and referrals. The networking problem with most “super connectors”. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to be successful at face-to-face networking. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”       Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Brian Wallace is the Founder and President of NowSourcing, an industry leading infographic design agency, based in Louisville, KY and Cincinnati, OH which works with companies that range from startups to Fortune 500s. In 2014, Brian started #thinkbig, a grassroots movement to make the Louisville / Cincinnati corridor a more competitive player in the global marketplace. Brian also runs #LinkedInLocal events nationwide, hosts the Next Action Podcast, and has been named a Google Small Business Advisor for 2016-present and started serving on the #SXSW advisory board in 2019.

Embracing Servant Leadership can bolster your business and change your personal life. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Andrew Kolikoff. Andrew helps leaders create better journeys and greater profitability through the elevation of their people, teams, culture and customer experiences. He is considered to be one of the leading thought leaders in the world on the topic of Servant Leadership.     Andrew grew up in a remarkable home where his parents were madly in love and openly affectionate and his grandparents were the same way. His parents lived their lives completely in service; it was just who they were at heart. His home was like Grand Central Station every day, it was the place of joy, love, laughter and safety for the world.  That dramatically affected Andrew’s early outlook on life. As a child and teenager, Andrew thought all of that was normal. It wasn’t until he was ejected from the bubble and went to college that he learned two things very quickly. One, the world was not what he thought it was. And two, his parents were heroes, he just didn’t know it at the time. So, this got him very early on in his life to really think about who he wanted to be in this world, both daily and for the remainder of this life. The Importance of Your “One Thing” Andrew believes the hardest thing to do in life is to know what your “One Thing” is. Andrew decided that his “One Thing” is that he had to pay it forward, he wanted to live his life in service too. But he was single, young, and he didn’t have a house or have a way to replicate what his parents and grandparents did. He had to come up with a way that he was going to keep himself accountable to that way of living his life. So, Andrew developed this metric that he was going to live by every day. He decided he was going to do two things every single day of his life, which he’s done now for over thirty years. One, to have a coffee, breakfast, lunch, or now Zoom with somebody that he has not met. And two, he would find out what their personal and professional challenges were and help them. He changed the traditional radio station of WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) to WIFFT (What’s In It For Them). Andrew would show up to serve, not to get anything. He still averages making five introductions a day to help people with their challenges. It All Comes Back to You What Andrew has experienced is so much has come back to him as a result of giving without expectations. He becamse a 40 under 40 of the top 40 business leaders in New York City amongst other accolades. It wasn’t because of his status as the Chief Science Officer of an international company and a University Adjunct Professor. It was not because of what he did, it was a result of who he was. That laid the groundwork for the reinvention of himself post-corporate-career. So far in the second act of his life he has spent his time building great cultures inside of organizations and his own organization, “The Secret Sauce Society”. Not only are those organizations more profitable and their people more productive; Andrew always facilitates more purpose and meaning for everyone involved. If anyone wants to strive for alignment with their “One Thing” in life, it may not be easy at first, but it’s worth it in the long run. Andrew told me it’s always provided him with more joy and purpose in his life. Bridging the Gap Between Giving and Getting When it comes to Andrew’s giving without expectations advice people often tell him “I did what you say to do and it just doesn’t work.” He responds with this very simple question: “Do you do it every day and are you committed to it every day?” The answer is almost always “No.” Everybody wants breakthroughs in their life. Andrew reminds them how breakthroughs happen. Andrew uses the example of learning how to ride a bicycle. At first you had training wheels, you kept falling off and getting on, and then somebody helped you. Eventually, there was that moment when you successfully balanced yourself. You were off and running, or in this case riding. Remember: You got on that bike every day. If you had got on it once every other week or once every other month breakthrough would never have happened. Breakthrough happens from commitment. One thing, every day. Andrew was and is committed to his “One Thing” every single day and that’s how it comes back. Because consistency matters. The same can be said about becoming a Servant Leader. We also dive into topics including: How you find your “One Thing”. How to get out of your own way. Why you must have a happy place or happy places that you can visit every day or almost every day. The importance of finding someone you admire to emulate. Examples of your responsibilities to those around you once you become a servant leader. What servant leadership is in its essence. What’s lacking in most organizations in the world and what makes a culture truly great. How to develop other servant leaders once you become one. Why leadership isn’t the exercise of authority; it’s the exercise of influence. The one thing, above all else, that you must do to successfully embrace a life of servant leadership. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Andrew Kolikoff is a multiple time C-Level executive/company founder, one time landing him on the Cover Page of USA today for a product he invented and received licensing from the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL in 2003. After selling his company in 2006, Andrew has dedicated his life to giving leaders their lives and freedom back while simultaneously scaling sales, cultures, customer experiences and other supportive business-related operations via his authentic alignment method. Andrew is an dynamic executive leadership coach, business consultant, and a top 1% keynote speaker that will change the way everyone in the room thinks about their careers, businesses and themselves. Servant Leadership is at the heart of Andrew’s business transformation philosophy. Click here to connect with Andrew on LinkedIn! Click here to learn more about Andrew’s Business! Click here to learn about Andrew’s Secret Sauce Society! Want to learn more about leadership and peak performance? Click here to check out “How to Achieve Peak Performance by Creating a “Performance Bubble” with Craig Domann“

Marketing is much more powerful when it’s driven by a purpose and a mission. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Ryan Chute. Ryan leads an award-winning creative agency within the legendary Wizard of Ads® group. As an Emmy-award winning Producer and an Executive Producer, Ryan has a deep-rooted passion for powerful storytelling and pivotal moments in entertainment. He builds creative, data-driven strategies that tap into the psychology of persuasion and the science of decision-making.   What Does “Mission” Mean to You? What is a “mission”? Mission starts as something internal to the company, and then becomes external to the public. When we think about that in the military sense, where “mission” derives from, that means the “commander’s intent”. Commander’s intent got popularized in the Napoleonic era where the Germans were fighting the Napoleon armies and they were losing miserably. The Germans realized one profoundly important thing: That they were going to have to sacrifice their autocratic way and come up with new flexibility of the army to take the hill however they might. Not every decision would come straight from the leader. When they did that the tides of the campaign changed. Ryan believes that everyone is a leader. They just need help bringing out the leader inside of them regardless of rank, authority or title. That ideology was the beginning of mission-based marketing and mission-based businesses.  The idea here is that you, as the commander, you have this notion of how you want to start and run a business. Ways that you feel are righting rights that are wrong and fixing things in the way that they were injust in the past. You need something bigger than you and that is greater than the sum of just you. The Three Buckets of Your Mission So you come up with the commander’s intent. The commander’s intent lives in three buckets: Helping people win. Being grateful. Being trustworthy. Helping people win comes from being grateful and being trustworthy. This notion of gratitude is a definition of terms; what does gratitude mean to you? Is it through the way that you pay your employees, is it the way that you present policy and return policies for your clients? How do you deliver your deliverables? All of this lives in the humility and abundance of gratitude. Then there’s trustworthiness. What does being trustworthy mean? What does the action of trust and being a trustworthy person actually mean to you? That’s going to show up in what you decide to do when it’s convenient for you and when it’s inconvenient for you. This is the foundation of values and beliefs. Beliefs are like the constellations in the sky, they move around, they’re pretty, and they’re informative. But they’re convenient and they move. In any situation where it’s inconvenient for you, you’re willing to change, to take action for the greater good, and follow your mission. How to Connect to Your Mission When we all agree that the mission is to help people win in a trustworthy and grateful manner, the next step from that mission is to decide the rules of engagement. What is the objective that trying to achieve, what hill are you trying to conquer? In the HR department you’re trying to get the right employees, in sales you’re trying to close every sale that you ethically can, and so on. Ultimately all of those things are missions within your business, within your campaigns. Why does this all matter to the mission driven business? Until you understand what mission is, you can’t have a mission driven business. If we can all agree for a moment that helping people win in a trustworthy and grateful manner is the mission, what does that mean to you in your business? What does helping people win mean? In trustworthiness it’s the beliefs and values, the values are the things that you take consequence for. You accept the consequence, you suffer, you struggle and that’s when your true value shows up. People only value the things that they receive from you means you had to concede on something; both tangible and intangible in nature. Helping people win start with your employees. How can you help your employees become more successful and setting it up to make things easier for them to sell then they’ll be helped in being able to close more sales. Buyers will be able to buy more stuff. Then your company will win. Ultimately, This is Your Mission Your mission ends up being the thing that stands out that your competition is unwilling to do. It’s the consequence you are willing to receive that your competition is not willing to receive. All of these places where you can create less challenge for your clients to work with you makes it easier for the people to buy from you. So the mission becomes making it easy to do business with you. Last but not least is doing it in a grateful way by throwing in extra rewards for doing business with you and making it an environment where you receive as part of the package. We also dive into topics including: How to build the bridge between having a mission and having a marketing strategy that includes that mission. How to create situations where people are self-subscribing to your business and your mission. How to make it easy for people to say “Yes!” to doing business with you. How to create an enduring, successful marketing strategy and not just be a blip on your market’s radar. Why you need and how to include emotion in your touchpoints with clients and potential clients. The three kinds of emotions you want people to feel as a result of your marketing campaigns. When you need to and how to update or change your mission in the public’s eye over time. Why your mission is a key internal driver for your company. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to create a successful mission based marketing strategy. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Ryan Chute is an award-winning creative strategist and the Wizard of Ads® who helps small businesses transform into BIG brands. With a passion for removing friction, Ryan specializes in crafting innovative sales and marketing strategies that drive profitable growth. Drawing from his extensive experience in retail and automotive, Ryan’s insights empower entrepreneurs to dominate their markets with bold, frictionless solutions. Connect with Ryan! https://www.ryanchute.com/ https://www.tiktok.com/@wizardryanchute https://www.instagram.com/wizardryanchute/ https://www.facebook.com/wizardryanchute https://www.linkedin.com/in/wizardryanchute/ https://www.pinterest.ca/wizardryanchute/ https://x.com/wizardryanchute https://www.youtube.com/@wizardryanchute

Becoming a great podcast host is a blend of art and science. I discuss how to become a great one with my guest, Mark Iorio. Mark is the host of Language of Leadership, a seasoned business culture expert, and a passionate advocate for helping organizations align purpose, people, and performance to build thriving, values-driven cultures.     Eight years ago Mark was in the studio shooting an episode of his TV show, “CEO Chat”, and his business partner was one of the co-hosts. As Mark was walking off the set a woman asked him to guest on her podcast and Mark agreed. When Mark arrived to record the show, the CEO of the studio, Keith, came into the lobby asked him who he was there to see. When Mark mentioned the woman that invited him Keith told him she was gone but he would interview Mark. As the interview progressed, they were discussing marketing. Keith told Mark that he believed Mark would make a good podcast host. Mark blew it off as just another compliment to be nice, but Keith persisted. Mark agreed to be a host and decided to brainstorm topics and names for the potential show. He eventually came up with “Rainmakers’ Roundup” and ran the show for seven and a half years. What it Takes to Get Started in Podcasting Just do it, just step into it. First, you must be genuinely curious. You must focus on the person that you’re interviewing. Mark had 75 episodes of Rainmakers’ Roundup in the studio and he noticed there were dozens of hosts from other podcasts that read from a script. There was no flow to it, there was no real cadence. Just a list of questions. Mark was more improvised. He told me that if you can be curious about your guests’ lives, and be curious about the subject matter, your show will flow very nicely like a conversation over a cup of coffee. Creating a Successful Structure for a Podcast Conversation In your head, create and go through a process. Maybe its discussing how your guest got started in their business or career. Maybe it’s learning about why they love what they do. Have a specific cadence and let them answer the question. Make the show about them. If you go in thinking your show is about you because you’re this great podcaster, then you probably shouldn’t do it. If you’re there to shine a light on them and their career path, their service, what they’ve done for society and so on, then you’re taking the right approach. You’re in the right ballpark. How  to Find Your First Guests You must have a mission for your podcast. When you understand that mission, look for people that match that mission. As an example, Mark is starting over with his new podcast “The Language of Leadership”. Language of Leadership is all about people in leadership positions that not only use meaningful language, but their behavior is such that people want to follow them. They want to follow their behavioral patterns. Because of his purpose Mark knows he needs to find branding people, HR people that care about their staff, heart-centered leaders and so on. What does this mean for you? Don’t try to squeeze someone into your podcast just because they’re a warm body. Know your mission and then figure out the types of people that fit your mission. That helps the conversation flow effortlessly and that makes it easier for you to ask the right questions because you know your mission so well. We also dive into topics including: More ways to find and connect to the mission for your podcast. How to develop your marketing message once you decide on the mission for your podcast. How to create the right mindset to “keep on keepin’ on” in the early stages of your podcast. Why keeping a cadence is important for your marketing. The pros and cons of live podcasting vs. prerecorded episodes. Advice for keeping on track with your podcast once you’re established. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to be a great podcast host. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Mark Iorio is a dynamic keynote speaker, media host, and business culture strategist with more than 30 years of experience helping organizations align their people, purpose, and performance. As host of Language of Leadership and Rainmakers Roundup, Mark engages top executives and thought leaders in powerful conversations about authentic leadership, team alignment, and purposeful growth. Mark is the creator of the Brand and Culture Alignment Toolkit (BCAT)—a science-based framework that visualizes a business as a single high-performing individual, helping teams clarify their collective purpose and drive consistent, values-based behavior. His talks blend real-world business insight with emotional intelligence, storytelling, and actionable strategies that resonate with leaders across industries. Click here to connect with Mark on LinkedIn! Click here to learn more about Mark’s company!

Creativity and strategy can seem like two sides of the same coin when it comes to business scaling, but they run well together when combined. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Lysle Wickersham. Lysle’s unique crossover skill set and insights not only transform startups and SMEs into scalable, successful ventures but also redefine the very essence of creative capitalism, masterfully blending positioning strategy with storytelling and building intangible equity to drive growth and build enterprise value.     Lysle is an combination of two career paths that led him to his current business. He grew up as a creative director in integrated communications and brand development and advertising and eventually built a large agency that he ended up selling. After that Lysle ran a couple of tech companies connected to venture capital groups. He founded an investment bank and did a strange crossover for a creative person into mergers and acquisitions working with private equity and venture, a more strategic endeavor. What felt natural to him was the integration between the pragmatic side developing sound business strategies and the creative side of expressing the attributes of a company that builds the emotional connections. The truth is if you do both of those things well, that’s where the money is. Where to Start When it Comes to Blending Creativity and Strategy Creativity and strategy don’t run at the same time; it’s a linear process. To be creative you first need to be strategic. Every business must start with core positioning. Who is the target market that you’re trying to reach? All of this at first is connected to the founder by the company’s goals and visions and what they want to be and build. You take that and decide who would buy that and who’s going to scale with you so you can grow. You need to ask: What is the context that you are in the market in other words what space are you playing in, what’s your primary point of differentiation and what’s the proof that you can deliver on that point of differentiation? You must be able to deliver on that brand promise. If you do that stuff well and you have that core foundation that naturally leads to the attributes of your brand that align with your positioning and audience. That means answering questions such as: What do you look like? What do you sound like? What are the brand values from that you can discern your primary messaging? All of that then moves into things such as brand identity and communication strategies. The marriage between the two comes when you know who you are as a business and how you tell your story in a way that emotionally resonates with your potential clients. That’s the natural connection between the strategic foundation and the creative expression of that foundation. How to Know When You’re Ready to Scale It’s kind of an abstract way to look at the word, everybody wants to scale or grow. Every business’ goal is to get bigger and make more revenue. That’s a natural progression. There is no specific trigger for that. When you’re figuring out positioning for your business you want to make sure that the audience you want to build has room to grow. Then there’s market potential. That’s where there’s white space competitively where you can be different and be desired. All those things must go into consideration when you’re figuring out how to position a business to raise capital. You’re looking at the size of those marketplaces, how big they are, and what your potential to attract a piece of that market is. All those things must be calculated, especially if you’re talking to investors and you want to present a financial story to them about how your company can grow. How to Differentiate Yourself in the Marketplace That is the connection between strategy and creativity. When you create your positioning one of the core functions of that positioning is to articulate your core point of differentiation. You’ve got to nail that right away and that takes market research and understanding your competitive environment. You must also figure out where the place where you can put a stake in the ground and own that position lies. That includes your point of differentiation. A lot of that is understanding how you build equity, and equity over time is how you create wealth. Equity happens by owning space in people’s minds. That is what brands do, and they do that by creating emotional connections and having a good service. Those two things become your table stakes. Sometimes the differentiator can be emotionally driven. That’s the difference between Reebok and Nike. Nike has been unparalleled at owning space in our minds and having a position of performance. They own that space and nobody can take that away. Those are the emotional connections. The objective of doing positioning early on is that it allows you to own that space. That’s how we remember things, that’s how our memory systems work. Consistency over time is key so you do that strategic foundation work in the beginning. That forms how your brand lives and breathes. When you stick with it and over time and that’s how you create alignment. That’s how you get consistency. That’s how you build equity. We also dive into topics such as: How to know if you have a viable, profitable business idea with which to grow. How smaller businesses can get started with owning space in people’s minds. How to uniquely differentiate yourself in a crowded marketplace. How to determine your messaging structure around your points of differentiation. How to maintain mind space once you start to get it. Why building brand and building equity is not about spending money and what they’re really about. How to reinforce your market position and continue to own that space in people’s minds once you’ve created it. Why scaling your business is something you need to consider even while you’re still building your foundation. How to know when it’s time to make noise in the market and ramp up your scaling initiatives. How often you should evaluate and re-evaluate your market opportunities. What to do when a competitor tries to copy you and take away a share of your market. Why businesses don’t scale in a consistent linear fashion and what to do instead. How to measure whether you’re on track with successful growth. The characteristics of a great business goal. The types of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that you should define and measure for your business. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to be both creative and strategic when scaling your business. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Lysle Wichersham A uniquely right- and left-brained strategist, Lysle is a true brand capitalist. He understands the power of branding and positioning, as well as the practical aspects of operations, managing a P&L, and scaling a business to raise capital or achieve a liquidity event. Drawing on a career in brand development, investment banking, and management consulting, he has refined his craft over 30 years. As Chief Creative Officer and Managing Director, Lysle built and sold a $170M integrated agency, where he created and positioned numerous world-class brands. He then worked with a VC group, managing several tech startups and successfully exiting from one. This experience ignited his passion for value creation and scaling businesses, leading to the co-founding of an investment banking and M&A firm. Lysle’s diverse skill set, which integrates the pragmatic strategy of scaling business with the creativity and storytelling that builds intangible equity, explains BRANDThink’s holistic and integrated approach to positioning, building brand equity, scaling companies, and accelerating value creation. Today, BRANDThink works with startups and early-stage businesses on competitive positioning and brand development, strategic planning, modeling, pitch decks, and data rooms for raising capital. You can connect with Lysle at [email protected]. Click here to learn more about BrandThink! Click here to connect with Lysle on LinkedIn!

If you want to build a meaningful personal brand online you need authenticity, gratitude, and a few other strategies. I discuss them in this episode with my guest, Vladimer Botsvadze.     Vladimer came to the United States on a work visa in 2006. He eventually moved to New York City, the best melting pot in the world. In NYC Vladimir realized how important it is to build a personal brand. He started rubbing shoulders with successful people and left no stone unturned. Vladimer became a lifelong learner, reading 400+ pages a day and working 16 hours a day. He built Twitter/X followers from zero to 57,000 in a year because he’s an authentic storyteller that loves to provide value. The Starting Point of Creating a Meaningful Online Brand Start small, build gradually for the long term, and give more than you take. You have an iPhone at your fingertips; you can easily record videos and upload them to YouTube to share your knowledge and your journey with your audience. Steve Jobs said the most powerful person in the world is a storyteller. He also said people that know what they are talking about don’t need PowerPoint. Be on different social media channels, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Remember, great oaks grow from small acorns. Long term thinkers give more than they take by sharing content that is in their followers’ best interests. Many people that connect with you on LinkedIn send sales pitches. People don’t pay attention to those pitches. They pay attention to value. How to Provide More Value to Your Social Media Audience Give away your best advice for free. Vladimir has never charged his followers for “picking his brain”. He leads by example, not by titles. That is one of the things that sets him apart from the rest of the herd. A majority of executives lead by their titles. Gary V. leads by example, Tim Ferris leads by example because they are self-made success stories. Both are examples of why you should never give up. There is always light at the end of the tunnel if you are positive and see the glass half full. Inspiration Along the Way It doesn’t matter where you were born, your background or your education. If you take massive, strategic action you will succeed. Vladimer was born in Georgia and dreaming about experiencing the Western world. In the nineties he was burning the midnight oil and pursuing his dream. Now he’s a global citizen. He loves instilling confidence in other people. If he can do it, anybody can do it. Establishing and Building Your Reputation You start to build a robust personal brand by showing gratitude. When people leave you comments or like your social media posts you should respond to them and thank them. Vladimir did and still does consistently express gratitude to his followers. He brought and brings his followers together which built and further builds his personal brand which translates to his personal success including hundreds of endorsements on LinkedIn. He treats his followers as his friends. You need to consistently create great content. That means creating content with authenticity, compassion, and devotion. Vladimir shares his authentic story with the world. That helps him build emotional connections with his followers. A Cohesive Strategy for Building Your Personal Brand You need to have a presence across a variety of social media channels. You need to create content consistently. You need to interact with your audience because a majority of people don’t consistently interact with their audiences and hence, they don’t grow their audiences. Then they complain that they have never built their personal brands because they almost never interacted. They get on their high horse while Vladimir does the opposite; he shows up and is down to earth. You need to be curious on a daily basis. You need to collaborate with influencers. When he began his social media journey in 2014 he had the foresight to interact with big brands. As he was interacting with big brands. We also dive into topics including: How to keep your ego in check as you build a strong personal brand. How to embrace the golden age of one-on-one marketing. The biggest difference between traditional marketing and social media marketing. The importance of being pliable and adaptable to different personal branding opportunities. Why real time product development is important to your social media strategy. The key components of a meaningful personal brand. How to position your personal brand as a media company. The case for being authentic across social media platforms. How to adapt to the rapidly evolving world of consumer behavior. The four components of today’s social media landscape and how to leverage them to build your personal brand. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to build a meaningful personal brand on social media. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Vladimer Botsvadze is a world-renowned thought leader, influencer, mentor, keynote speaker, and internet personality specialising in digital transformation and AI. Acknowledged as the №1 Global Marketing Thought Leader and one of the Top 5 Global Startup Thought Leaders, as well as a Top 20 Global AI Thought Leader by Thinkers360, Vladimer is at the forefront of the digital landscape. He serves on the advisory boards of the United States Artificial Intelligence Institute, United States Data Science Institute, and United States Cybersecurity Institute. Website and social media links: Website: www.vladimerbotsvadze.com Instagram: www.instagram.com/vladimerbotsvadze Facebook: www.facebook.com/vladimerbotsvadze Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/vladimerbotsvadze Twitter/X: www.twitter.com/vladobotsvadze Youtube: www.youtube.com/@VladimerBotsvadzeProfessor SoundCloud: www.soundcloud.com/vladimerbotsvadze  

When you create a Market Dominating Position (MDP) you’re on track to successfully scale your business. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Ed Middlebrooks. Ed is not your typical business coach—he’s a strategic weapon for entrepreneurs who are done playing small. Ed Middlebrooks is the founder of Elite Profit Coach, where he works with driven business owners to uncover hidden profit, outmaneuver competitors, and install dominance into their markets.     Ed was the kid in the server closet for 25 years working a job in IT services. That job got him involved with business planning. He realized that technology affects the growth of a business. He found himself interfacing with high-level executives about more than just small technology issues. Ed began asking “How does the infrastructure of the business really allow us to foster growth and increase communications which ultimately increases sales and marketing results? “ Entering the Entrepreneurship World After 25 Ed left the corporate IT world because he learned about real estate investing and how to automate a business using what he calls “The Five Steps of Every Business”; which is: To get customers, you must first generate leads. Prescreen those leads. Construct and present offers. Close quickly. Follow up with everybody. Those five steps exist in so many places within a business. In his real estate investing career, his firm bought 24 houses with none of their own money, no banks and no credit. He had 17 Air BnBs. He built a multimillion-dollar business providing rentals. He took the strategies that he learned from working with C-Suite executives, negotiating and networking. Ed discovered that the secrets of growing and scaling a business appear to be fairly unique to each business, but they all come down to a singular strategy or pattern. When you put the building blocks in the right order, things happen, your strategies work, and your business grows. The Starting Point of Marketing Strategy and Business Growth First, you must take an analysis of your business. When it comes to growing and scaling a business, most entrepreneurs look at how to generate more revenue. They’re always thinking about the income. They want to foster more business. Whereas that’s true to a point, what Ed finds is that a lot of businesses are just chasing good money after bad. For example, they spend money on ads without really understanding the fundamentals of their business and how the ads boost (or don’t boost) the bottom line. Ed has a mantra that he’s learned along the way. That is “Revenue feeds the ego, but profit feeds your family.” When he talks about growing and scaling a business, he’ll show a business how to become more profitable without spending any extra money on marketing. This is assuming that there’s already a steady flow of business coming into that company. What they can do is make some changes. They can reduce the cost of goods sold, they can look at making more compelling offers, and so on. Creating Your Market Dominating Position (MDP) One thing stands out above everything else. That is understanding your company’s Market Dominating Position (MDP); sometimes referred to as the Unique Selling Position. What is the MDP of your company? If you don’t have that all you’re doing is throwing money into marketing, hoping that people connect with your messaging. You’re doing what everyone else does. When you do that, you can end up stuck in a red ocean (filled with “sharks”) and you’re not in a blue ocean. Ed’s not talking about creating a product that nobody else has. He’s talking about what the capacity of your business is to provide and deliver unique and superior value amongst your competition. Here’s another question that you must ask regardless of what your industry is. The question comes down to “What are the benefits you offer to your target market that set you apart from all of your competitors?” Once you figure that out, decide what the capacity of your business is to deliver those benefits. That means your MDP can be defined by the capacity of your business to deliver unique and superior value in the marketplace. How to Leverage Your MDP to Create a Successful Marketing Strategy Let’s change the word “capacity” to “competency” or “capability”. What is the capability of your company to provide unique and superior value? Now that’s the question; that is the key to everything. You must answer this cornerstone question before you do anything. Before you build your website, before you start a social media campaign, before you throw any money behind a marketing strategy. Once you figure out those benefits, you have to ask yourself are those benefits based on the hot buttons of your prospects? What are the problems that your prospects have and don’t want, or what are the results that they want and don’t have? Once you know who your target customer is, down to what kind of car they drive, you have identified your customer avatar. Then you need to learn where they are; that’s your target rich environment. Now you’re discovering what their hot button items are and what the benefits are that you offer that can solve their challenge. You need to give them what they don’t have but they want or whatever solves the problem that they have and don’t want. How do you discover how much more effective your strategy is going to be when your MDP is defined? Your MDP statement needs to be put into the marketplace. It promises to solve particular challenges for your particular client avatar(s). Once you do that, writing copy for your website is going to be easier, running your social media campaigns is going to be easier, and going to networking events and giving your elevator pitch is also going to be a whole lot more effective. We also dive into topics including: Why you need to create an ideal client avatar and how to go about it. How to structure your business to meet your market’s demand. What you need to do once you define your ideal client avatar. The three things that prospects need to see before doing business with you. More ways to differentiate yourself in your marketplace. The minimum things people want or they’re not going to do business with you. The four step strategy to discover and launch your MDP and dominate your market. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to create your MDP. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Ed Middlebrooks is a business strategist, data tactician, and the founder of Elite Profit Coach—a business advisory firm built to turn struggling entrepreneurs into dominant market players. Through his proprietary approach and intent data engine RealSpeak.ai, Ed tracks over 70 billion buyer behaviors every week to identify exactly where, when, and how his clients should strike. Armed with cutting-edge software, persuasive marketing systems, and decades of hands-on experience in IT, real estate, and high-stakes consulting, Ed delivers results that defy convention. He’s not here to motivate—he’s here to install clarity, strategy, and unstoppable momentum into businesses that are ready to scale with certainty.

In our more and more AI driven world meaningful relationships are harder to come by and maintain over time. We’re getting more and more disconnected from our social and professional circles. We’re using AI tools because we think they will make everything better. We think they will make doing business easier, which is true in some cases. They look fancy, they have cool reporting, so we think we’ll get more leads and then maybe we’ll get more clients. Unfortunately, often they’re putting layers of separation between us and our prospects and clients. When that happens, we don’t really understand what’s going on with our business outreach. We start to make up scenarios because we don’t have all the personal information to go alongside the data. We can end up not knowing much personal information about many of our prospects, instead we could primarily know what AI tells us about them.     I discuss how to create meaningful relationships in this AI driven world with my guest, Casey Cheshire. Casey is a seasoned marketer with over two decades of experience and the author of “Marketing Automation Unleashed,” a guide to leveraging marketing technology for business growth. As the founder and CEO of Ringmaster Conversational Marketing, a B2B podcasting agency, he helps businesses build authentic connections with their audiences. The Unfortunate Trend of Weakening Ties Prospect and client relationships are weakening. We no longer remember many of their names off the top of our heads, we certainly don’t know what’s keeping them up at night, so we just make up what we think is keeping them up at night. Then our products and our services start to morph in that direction. No wonder that email campaign you just sent out only got crickets back. Or maybe you had a webinar, and nobody showed up or just a few people did. AI is one of the big reasons. You wanted an in-person or virtual room full of people; why were those marketing messages falling flat? Because you’re disconnected, you didn’t know what your prospects wanted because you put apps in the way. The crazy thing is that AI isn’t making those scenarios easier. AI isn’t getting us more connected; it’s adding more noise to our world. Let me get this straight, it’s always been noisy but now it’s getting noisier. AI is behind tons of content, tons of marketing strategies, and at times it’s having fake conversations with people. Overall, it’s just going to be a noisier world for everyone. We’re not going to be able to do more of the same or do better than the status quo unless something changes. The old ways of doing business just aren’t working anymore. We must pivot hard to avoid getting wrapped up in all that disconnected noise. Getting Started on the Journey of Cutting Through the Noise How can you reconnect with your existing network or connect with new prospects or potential referral sources? It’s a revolutionary thought: By making calls. Having one-on-one calls whether you’re the founder or the marketer and so on. In the case of sales roles, they’ll reach out, but that’s a different kind of outreach. We need to be reaching out to learn, to ask personal questions, not just to make a sale. It means you’re asking things like what are your goals this year? What are you trying to achieve? What are your responsibilities? What are the things that are really bothering you? Get to know their real wants and needs. We’re not really inquiring. Sometimes if we do get on the phone with people, we’re just pitching them. We’re soft pitching and we’re not really listening to them. We’re just looking for an opportunity to talk about our product or service. We’ve got to take a step back and have a conversation where we’re trying to learn about the other person. Things change all the time. It makes it harder for you because you think you know everything. For example, when you think you understand the customer because you are marketers selling to marketers or manufacturers selling to manufacturers and so on. You need to put that thinking aside and pretend like you’ve never been in your industry and ask some meaningful questions about the other person. Once you’ve cut through the noise you need to know… How to Prevent the Noise from Coming Back into Your World The amount of noise is not getting better. It’s accelerating and it’s continually getting more and more noisy. What you can do now to prepare yourself is to build an audience of people who trust you. Much of that is going to come from the one-to-one conversations and one-to-many conversations. LinkedIn is a great place to have one-to-one conversations. Podcasts are a great tool for the one-to-many conversations. Posts and communities here on LinkedIn are also great for that, based on your podcast or topics related to your personal brand. You need to build the audience now and then get your audience talking to each other. Help them make meaningful connections with each other. Build those trusted communities of real people so as things start getting more and more fake, everyone knows who to turn to. They’re going to turn to you because they view you as a trusted resource. We dive into topics including: Unique ways to build trusted communities. The number one rule of building a trusted community. Examples of ways to help people solve their problems. The best ways to build trust in both one-to-one and one-to-many situations. How to grow your business and community with integrity without “pitch slapping” everyone you meet. How to build meaningful relationships without slipping into pushy sales mode. How to positively leverage AI to help build your community. Examples of AI prompts to create authentic content true to your voice. The one thing, above all else, you need to do to create and build meaningful relationships in an increasingly AI driven world. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Casey Cheshire is a seasoned marketer with over two decades of experience and the author of “Marketing Automation Unleashed,” a guide to leveraging marketing technology for business growth. As the founder and CEO of Ringmaster Conversational Marketing, a B2B podcasting agency, he helps businesses build authentic connections with their audiences. With more than 500 hours spent interviewing industry leaders on podcasts like “The Hard Corps Marketing Show,” he delves into real-world marketing strategies and tactics. A former U.S. Marine, he brings discipline, commitment, and integrity to his professional life. His style blends professionalism with fun, shunning traditional marketing approaches that feel impersonal. Outside of work, he is a proud husband and father of two who enjoys adrenaline-fueled activities like skydiving, mountain climbing, and off-roading in his Jeep. Committed to sharing knowledge and making a positive impact, he connects with professionals passionate about pushing boundaries. Click here to learn more about Ringmaster Conversational Marketing! Click here to connect with Casey on LinkedIn!

Everyone faces emotional downturns, especially entrepreneurs. We can get caught up in a negative story. We can get caught up in an emotion that keeps us from achieving our goals. It is possible to get to that healthy place where you can feel happiness, joy, and the full spectrum of positive emotions.     Sometimes you’re going to feel anger, sometimes you’re going to feel sadness or defeat. You can come back to the joy of living and take your personal and business lives to the next level with the right strategies. I discuss some of those strategies in this episode with my guest, Dr. Dorothy A. Martin-Neville. Dorothy A. Martin-Neville, PhD, is a speaker, author, consultant and master coach. She has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Network as well as the New York Times, the Huffington Post, NBC, and ABC. As a psychotherapist, Dr. Dorothy (or “Dr. D”) was in practice for 25+ years. As the founder of four companies, Dr. Dorothy has knowledge of the challenges facing leaders in business and in life. As a Business & Life Coach, her focus is on Mindfulness, Emotional Intelligence, and NLP. The Stories We Tell Ourselves When Dr. D works with folks, she asks questions such as what’s that bad place about? How did you get there? What’s the story you’re telling yourself in that moment? When you’re in a bad place you’re always telling yourself a story. You need to get to the root cause of that story. The story could be you’re focusing on one incident in your life and that’s the filter through which you see everything. So, if you were abused as a child you’re going to see abuse everywhere in your life. If somebody doesn’t return a phone call, they’re abusive. If somebody doesn’t recognize you at a networking event, they’re being abusive and so on. We create filters through which we see the world. If you’re in a funk Dr. D’s first thought is to examine what’s going on in your life, what is it you’re caught up in? If you can look at what you’re caught up in and begin to put that in the big picture you can get context for the situation. You’ll see there’s some legitimacy to what you’re saying but there’s a whole other big picture around it. You can choose to focus on that problem piece or see it in the perspective of the bigger picture. That will help you begin to shift your focus. Shifting Your Focus to Shift Your Story Dr. D trains folks to do a reality check. Let’s say you’re going through a divorce. All the sudden you’re caught up in betrayal, abandonment and other similar feelings. Ok, that’s what you’re experiencing, and legitimately so. How can you get beyond that? You have the option of spending the rest of your life in that space. Or you can recognize that’s a horrible thing that’s happening, it’s not what you’ve planned for your life but it’s there. How can you get through it and come out on the other side? Where do you want to land when you reach the other side? It’s not denial of what’s real for you in that moment. But that’s the situation that you’re in; that’s the period of life you’re going through. The funk happens when you’re caught up in a period of life and you see that as your whole life. How can you go through that and learn from it? What do you need to learn about yourself and life in general? Answering those questions will, again, shift your focus to the bigger, more positive picture. Challenges in Your Personal and Business Lives When you’re an entrepreneur it’s impossible not to have problems affect both your personal and business lives. Your personal life affects your business life, and your business life affects your personal life. You need to separate the life you’re living from the reality of who you are. If you’re consumed emotionally with what’s going on in your personal life that’s time you’re taking away from your business life. Emotionally it has you in a bad head space personally instead of focusing on your business. At that point your business is paying the price. Dr. D’s objective is to support you to put things into perspective. You need to chunk out time in your day to only focus on your business and compartmentalize your personal life. Then in the evening you can focus on your personal life and compartmentalize your business life. This will keep your world stable. You must give yourself permission to focus on one area of your life at a time. In this episode we also dive into topics such as: How to successfully and safely compartmentalize the areas of your life. How to embrace emotional intelligence in your life. How to break the pattern of telling yourself destructive stories. Ways to stop thinking about the negative “What If’s” in your life. How to recognize negative patterns in your life and separate from them. How to stop digging an emotional hole and climb out instead. Why it’s ok to admit, “I need help” and get the help you need. How to pragmatically get the dream life that you want. How to prevent yourself from slipping back into the proverbial hole once you climb out. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to get out of a funk. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Dorothy A. Martin-Neville, PhD, speaker, author, and consultant/master coach has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Network as well as the New York Times, the Huffington Post, NBC, and ABC. A psychotherapist, Dr. Dorothy was in practice for 25+ years. As a Clinical Instructor in a Connecticut Medical School, Co-Chair of the Advisory Board of a multi-million-dollar NIH grant, and recipient of NIH grant funding to research her work, she is a pioneer in CAM in the United States. As founder of 4 companies, Dr. Dorothy has knowledge of the challenges facing leaders in business and in life. As a Business/Life Coach, her focus on Mindfulness, Emotional Intelligence, and NLP. call her clients to far greater success and joy in life and business. Click here to learn more about Dr. Dorothy! Click here to connect with Dr. Dorothy on LinkedIn!

If you can align yourself with a speakers bureau your public speaking business can grow exponentially. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Brian Palmer.     Brian is the Senior Vice President of Premiere Speakers Bureau and a respected leader in the speaking industry. With decades of experience, Brian has built a reputation for helping business professionals select the perfect speakers for their events. He does this by delivering engaging, relevant, and high-impact presentations that align with organizational objectives. Brian’s Journey into The Professional Speaking World In 1972 when Brian was a freshman in high school his dad started National Speakers Bureau. His dad was a band leader who got tired of traveling all over the country. He decided to do something on the fringes of the entertainment business. The speaking industry seemed like a fit. Brian started with envelope licking and note card sorting. During college Brian worked there during the summers. In 1980 he finished college, and he started working at National Speakers Bureau full time and he’s been around ever since. For reference for the rest of this post: National Speakers Bureau was eventually purchased by Premiere Speakers Bureau (PSB) and Brian stayed on board as a Vice President. The Process of Booking Professional Speakers There’s a variety of ways to book great speakers. PSB has established themselves as a great place to turn to when you need a good speaker. People reach out to them, describe a situation where they need a speaker, give them their criteria and their budget parameters. They make recommendations and provide potential clients with the means with which to plan for an outstanding event. That includes biography, presentation descriptions, video samples and more. Proposals started out long ago with audio cassette tapes. Now it’s obviously video and it’s a lot easier now through online video. Many buyers are also very interested in testimonials from past speaking engagements. Sometimes people have other questions and PSB tries move the process along and help people make a decision that they’re happy about. Then, once it’s booked, PSB handles all the arrangements in a way that builds the buyer’s confidence. The speaker shows up prepared, ready to go, ready to make a contribution to that organization’s objectives. They speak, they get a lot of applause, the client’s really happy because their boss says “That was a great choice”. The Process of Vetting and then Working with Professional Speakers To a certain degree, Brian knows an outstanding speaker when he sees one. He studied speech in college and some of what he learned makes a good speech back then still applies today. Sometimes he prefers to watch full speeches. He watches a speech, watches the stories they tell, how relevant they are to the audience, how personalized the presentation is, and so on. One thing Brian does is study how much time elapses between a laugh or some kind of emotive response. All those things factor together to delineate a good speaker from an excellent speaker. There are so many people that want to speak, and Brian chooses to recommend people who are excellent. PSB books over 2,000 engagements a year and their clients rate the speaker, and they rate the speaker as well. They consider things such as how cooperative the speaker is, how good they are at personalizing the presentation, how they work with PSB overall. All those things combine to drive the recommendations that they make. Speakers Bureaus: Do They Approach You or do You Approach Them? When PSB learns about a speaker that they’re not involved with, and they hear the speaker does a great job or PSB loses business to somebody repeatedly that gets their attention. Speakers often refer other speakers that they’ve seen or that they’re friends with. On average PSB hears from 30 people a day interested in PSB booking speeches for them. There’s a veritable flood of people that want to speak. One of the factors that drives that is that during COVID many good speakers with a lot of good experience took a buyout, were let go, or decided to retire. Because of that there were a lot of newer people with a lot of interesting experience who wanted to speak. They’ve been working on honing their craft and practicing more and more. Brian says that it seems over the last few years a lot of people have decided to try to get the attention of companies like PSB. Brian’s peers tell stories about the incredible number of people that are approaching them now and it’s a lot to deal with. Speakers bureaus simply don’t have the capacity or the bandwidth to consider all the good speakers that are out there. In this episode we discuss ways to stand out in the market and we dive into topics such as: The right way to approach a speakers bureau and get them to represent you. When and why to engage with a speaker’s bureau. What to expect from a speaker’s bureau when it comes to marketing your services. What to do before you approach a speakers bureau to create more demand for your services. How to get booked more when you’re a “decent” speaker. How to mentally “keep on keepin’ on” during the tough times when you’re a professional speaker. How to stay ahead of the ever-changing market demand curve for speakers and how to stay relevant. The one thing, above all else, you need to do to get booked by a speaker’s bureau. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Brian Palmer is the Senior Vice President of Premiere Speakers Bureau and a respected leader in the speaking industry. With decades of experience, Brian has built a reputation for helping business professionals select the perfect speakers for their events—prioritizing engaging, relevant, and high-impact presentations that align with organizational objectives. Throughout his tenure, Brian has been instrumental in advancing the speaking industry, guiding clients toward speakers who not only entertain but also leave a lasting impact. His expertise has earned him numerous industry accolades, including the Council of Peers Award for Excellence (CPAE) from the National Speakers Association and recognition as an industry innovator by Meetings & Conventions Magazine. Brian’s deep understanding of the speaking business, combined with his commitment to transparency and client success, has made him a trusted partner for associations and corporate event planners alike. Click here to learn more about Premiere Speakers Bureau! Click here to connect with Brian on LinkedIn!

Community engagement and content marketing go hand in hand if you have the right strategies. I discuss how to combine the two in this episode with my guest, Behdad Jamshidi. In the past 6 years, Behdad (or Bee) has met with and assessed 992+ marketing agencies and vetted them down to a lean 100+ preferred partners across all marketing niches. After pairing hundreds of businesses with the right partners, he’s found his skillset lies in the matchmaking process.     Getting Started with Community Engagement and Content Marketing Bee specializes in connecting businesses with the right marketing partners. He got into that space by engaging with a variety of communities. During COVID everything hit a wall, and everyone rushed into online communities for engagement. In one of the communities that he was in he built up his brand and landed a lot of customers by sharing knowledge and sharing information. In those communities people got to know him over the course of three years. That’s how he got into the community engagement and content marketing space. Bee’s purpose was to always share value first; he loves learning about new ideas and sharing content. Bee wasn’t trying to sell, and he was adding value and as a result potential clients reached out to him. Sharing the Right Kind of Content for Marketing Bee shared his experiences growing as an entrepreneur, including trials and tribulations. He was always learning more and more from mentors and other business owners. Bee realized that not everyone gets access to those people at the level that he did. He learned about new concepts and ideas through those conversations he would then take it in and journal about it. From there Bee would create content around his journal entries in various communities. Bee learned about some common mistakes that businesses make when they’re trying to pick the right marketing partner and then shared how to avoid them. Some questions included, “I’m about to hire a business coach, what should I think about?” Then afterwards he would share “I hired this business coach, here’s what I learned.”  You create a continuity of business advice within those communities. Making Deeper Community Engagement Connections Bee spent a lot of time learning on calls. He’s a super connector in the marketing world, so he was always on calls. The byproduct of those calls turned into meaningful content. He also went to a lot of in-person networking events. At those networking events he would create deeper connections with the people that he interacted with online. That’s where a lot of the content would come from. Bee used to be an engineer. He would do sales engineering for businesses that were in the 50 to 1,000 employee range. So, he got a lot of content and a lot of knowledge from his past work experience that he could share. Bee was unique because most entrepreneurs that are running purely entrepreneurial businesses haven’t worked in or with large organizations. When you come in with insights that others don’t have you have unique content to share. How to Stand Out and be Remembered Through Content Marketing You must discover what your core theme is. What do you like to talk about? You can even start out easily, with “This is who I am, this is a little bit of my background, here’s what I love talking about, here’s how I can support you”. Just be an open book. The next piece after that is to continue sharing what you know that most people don’t know. For Bee it was seeing businesses constantly failing with marketing partners. He provided feedback in his communities about how to avoid those mistakes. That’s where a lot of his content started out, it was just what he was naturally doing. That content helped Bee focus on the topic that would become the core of his business. We also dive into topics such as: How to keep the attention of the people in the community after you get it so you’re more than just a blip on their radar. How to find and engage with the communities that will be most valuable to you and vice versa. The importance and value of showing up and commenting on other people’s content. How to create and build your personal brand in communities. The number of communities you should get involved with when you’re just starting out. Why finding new communities gets easier on your journey. What a system to successfully engage with communities looks like. How to pick an ideal target market and how to find communities of them. How to keep humming along after you find communities of your ideal target markets. How to know what your communities want you to post about once you’ve established your brand. How to convert conversations and connections into clients. How to maintain a high level of meaningful, valuable content over time. How to find and foster relationships with marketing and referral partners. What successful sales conversations look like and how to have them. How to turn happy clients into referral partners. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to develop a community engagement and content marketing strategy. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Behdad Jamshidi (or “Bee”) started CJAM Marketing after realizing that most companies don’t know how to evaluate the value of a marketing agency or assess their own needs. Since every business is different not only in their needs but where they are at in the growth process, it isn’t a one size fits all. In the past 6 years, Bee has met with and assessed 992+ marketing agencies and vetted them down to a lean 100+ preferred partners across all marketing niches. After pairing hundreds of businesses with the right partners, he’s found his skillset lies in the matchmaking process. Featured in MarketWatch, Bloomberg, National Post and the Financial Post, Bee’s unique background in marketing, engineering, consulting, leadership, sales and strategy, has allowed him to serve as the conduit between business owners and the marketing teams they need. Click here to learn more about CJAM! Click here to connect with Bee on LinkedIn! Click here to get Bee’s Pricing Benchmark Guide!

“All the world is a stage” is very true, especially in the business world. By becoming an engaging presenter you can succeed from sales meetings to training presentations to speeches. I discuss how to do that in this episode.     Today, we have a game-changer in the world of communication—David D. Doerrier. With a background spanning radio broadcasting, stage acting, corporate training, and even playing Santa Claus, David specializes in helping subject matter experts, business leaders, and sales professionals transform their technical expertise into engaging, high-impact presentations. He had to learn how to get his information to stick with his audiences, which he has done successfully. David also comes from being very shy and introverted to becoming comfortable and gregarious on stage. He discovered that one way to do that is by making it more about the audience and less about him. That’s a perspective shift from many speakers’ viewpoints. It’s Not About You; It IS All About Your Audience The first thing you have to do is start with your objectives in mind. Let’s use a training session as an example. Ask yourself, “At the end of this training session what are the things that my audience needs to walk away with and understand better?” Not only understanding it better but at what level do they need to understand it? Do they need to be an expert when they leave the training? Do they just need to have some knowledge when they leave the training? So first it’s understanding what the objectives are that you need to achieve. So, now again, that’s all about them. It has nothing to do with you or your background or what you think you need to teach. It’s first understanding what it is that they need and what it is that they want to get out of your training. Your “Stage” Could be Anywhere Many people think they don’t “do” any public speaking because they don’t get up in front of a room on a stage. When David says “engage from any stage” what he means by “any stage” is it could be anywhere. It could be on a Zoom call, on a podcast, it could be a sales call, it could be a workshop, a physical stage in front of a room full of people and more. What platform or what process are you using to communicate with your audience? Are you mentoring someone? Are you training someone? Are you selling to people? The techniques that David talks about can be used in any of those situations, when you’re talking to one person or hundreds of people. Sales Blends with Training A caveat here is that David is not a sales coach. However, what he does applies to sales people to connect better with their audiences. The processes that he has come from his background as an instructional designer. How can you create material that is going to stick in the mind of your audience? The more he worked with it, the more he saw that anybody (including salespeople) could benefit from those types of principles. In some ways there is an overlap with training and sales. Because as a salesperson you must educate your audience enough for them to say “Yes!” to purchasing your offering. Whereas if you’re training a group of people you’ve got to educate them enough, so they say “Okay, I see how I can use these new strategies”. The sales process is first understanding your audience, the same thing as with training. You first must understand who your audience is. What is their learning style? What is their buying style? And then adjusting to that scenario. Preparing for Your Presentations It’s a mix of interviews before you give the presentation and figuring it out on the fly during your presentation. There are questionnaires that can go out beforehand to help you evaluate your audience. Let’s use a training example, certainly in that situation. You can reach out to the organizer and get an idea of the make-up of the group and try to get as much information about them as possible beforehand. In a sales situation, just like in a training situation, you must ask questions up front. What brings you in today? What about this product or topic attracted you here today? And so on. He does the same thing in training; he asks a lot of questions up front. One question David asks up front is “Why are we here?” What purpose, what objective, what problem are we here to solve? All of you received an invitation that attracted you enough to say “Ok, I’ll show up”. So, now that you’ve shown up what was it that you read that made you show up? It’s all about learning about your audience and giving them what they believe they need. We also dive into topics such as: How to plan for a successful presentation when you can’t poll the audience ahead of time. Why you need to start with your key objective in mind. How to be flexible enough in your presentation to change focus if you start to lose your audience’s attention to get to your ultimate objective. Examples of how to set objectives for sales presentations and training sessions ahead of time. Why your audience wants you to be successful. How to deal with anxiety when you’re on your “stage”. Tips for mentally preparing yourself for presentations. The “A.B.C.’s” of the foundation you need to build to be successful at public speaking. How to respond to and rebound from mistakes on the stage. The five core communication skills and how to best embrace them. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to engage any audience from any “stage”. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             David D. Doerrier is a seasoned presentation skills coach and communication strategist who helps business leaders, technical professionals, and sales teams transform complex ideas into engaging, audience-friendly presentations. With a background in radio broadcasting, stage acting, corporate training, instructional design, and even portraying Santa Claus, David brings a unique blend of storytelling, performance, and engagement techniques to every session. His approach is rooted in the 8 Principles of Engagement, ensuring that every presentation captivates, connects, and drives action. Whether you’re a subject matter expert struggling to simplify your message, a sales professional looking to boost conversions, or a leader aiming to inspire, David provides practical, results-driven coaching that elevates confidence and impact. He knows he’s not the cheapest coach out there—but he’s also not the most expensive. What he offers is a premium experience tailored to professionals who are ready to level up their communication skills and make every word count. Connect with David! Click here to learn more about “Present Your Way to Success! Click here to connect with David on LinkedIn!

Creating and scaling your own networking group is an excellent investment of your time. The rewards can be great and far reaching. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Clay Hicks.   Clay is a serial entrepreneur with a portfolio of 5 different companies, an author, a speaker, and trainer on professional relationships. Clay Hicks founded his first company, H7 Network in 2008, in the hopes of positively impacting the many under-served entrepreneurs and all sales professionals. Many years ago, Clay was searching for and trying out a variety of networking groups. More often than not he left each one more disappointed than anything else. Most of them judged people by how many referrals they were giving and how much money they made without much thought for meaningful relationships. They were very transactional and that didn’t sit well with Clay. He decided to start H7 Network to do things the way he believed was right. Build Your Leadership Team Early On First, he surrounded himself with five leaders that helped him start the group. That support system was crucial to their early success. It wasn’t just one person trying to figure everything out alone. The team framed out their first style of networking group which was 60 second commercials and a speaker. He began to build more meaningful relationships and that changed everything. There was no pressure to give referrals, Clay and his team let that happen organically. Clay has always looked for potential in other people. He doesn’t see them just for who they are, he also sees them for who they could be and how valuable having a relationship with them could be for both people. So, when he went to make those choices early on, he picked people he had or could have a good relationship with. Those were the early days of his “Connect, Serve, and Ask” methodology. He knew back then he couldn’t do it without them and knows today that he still couldn’t do it without his team. He and the original board went their separate ways and Clay turned to his existing network from his real estate industry days. He invited the people to join H7 leadership that he already at least had a connection with, and explained what he was creating. Clay’s a natural promoter. The people he invited to join him also had relationships to share. Everyone was involved with invited people to the meetings. Getting Traction for Attendance in Your Early Days They started free so the traction gained was around getting people into the room. The attendees in turn brought more people from their networks to the meetings. Clay had to make the structure of the meetings interesting and valuable. The meetings started with attendees sharing celebrations of the good things that were going on in their lives. That immediately created positive energy in the room. Then there was the value-add component. He shared strategies to network effectively with his “Connect, Serve, and Ask” methodology. They would do 60 second commercials with a unique, non-traditional format. He then encouraged the attendees to continue their conversations and set up 1-to-1 meetings after the event. The push for 1:1 meetings created value between the meetings because people were having more meaningful conversations than they had time for at the events. Soon they began to charge and people began to see it as more valuable. They grew by 60 members in their first six months. Once they hit 60 members some of his support system left so Clay had to update his support system with new people. The big lesson here for you is to get some support from strong relationships, even if its an informal board of advisors, as soon as possible when starting your group. Lone wolf to pack. You can go fast by yourself, or you can further by surrounding yourself with good people. Your relationships are the key to your success! In this episode we dive into topics such as: How to know if you have strong relationships. The importance of being open to constructive criticism. How to create engagement and collaboration in your meetings. Why you need to know what moves your attendees’ needles to grow their careers and not just set your own agenda. Why traditional 30 or 60 second commercials don’t help with engagement. How H7 doubled in size in twelve months in the early days. How to build relationships to scale when your group hits critical mass. How to approach people to become Alpha Team leaders to help you run your group. Advice for building and scaling your group through virtual meetings. Suggestions for creating engagement in virtual meetings. What, above all else, new networking group leaders need to do to scale successfully. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Clay Hicks is a serial entrepreneur with a portfolio of 5 different companies, a bestselling author, a speaker, and trainer on professional relationships. Clay Hicks founded his first company, H7 Network (in 2008), in the hopes of positively impacting the many under-served entrepreneurs and all sales professionals. His vision is to globally revolutionize the way business professionals “Connect” first, “Serve” with purpose, and “Ask” of their peers. H7 Network, a Franchisor, is a national B2B networking platform, In person and Virtual, for professionals to create their own network and develop champions for their business. Clay’s responsibility as the CEO is to innovate new programs, develop new markets internationally, training and development, implementing new processes for retention, business and relationship development overall. H7 Network currently has members in 48 states and 20 countries. Connect with Clay! www.h7network.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/claytonrhicks/ Clay’s scheduler https://calendly.com/clayhicks

Today we’re discussing how to develop yourself personally and professionally to become a great podcaster. My guest is Junaid Ahmed. Junaid is the Founder of Humblezone and Creator of Home Studio Mastery, designed to teach you how to build your home studio.  He has two decades of video production experience, as well as designing websites & apps focused on a systematic process and seamless user experience.  He provides podcasters, speakers, and content creators with a comprehensive plan for their studio equipment, lighting, and layout.     Junaid started his creative career creating fliers for his uncle’s business over 30 years ago. He then grew into graphic design, mobile app design, he just found himself creating, creating, creating. It wasn’t until 2005 that he discovered podcasting, but he didn’t really get into it until 2012 when a friend of his wanted to start a podcast. Junaid ended up starting a podcast with two of his friends that lasted for four episodes. While that run ended abruptly, Junaid was bitten by the podcasting bug. He wanted to get back into podcasting, but he just didn’t have the drive until he read the book “Crushing It” by Gary Vaynerchuck. Gary wrote “Just go and document your journey…” Junaid started a podcast documenting his journey into becoming a podcaster, a beekeeper, and other hobbies he’s had. Junaid says podcasting is elevating because when you empty your mind, when you put stuff down in Audio Note you’re releasing space in your brain to do other things and that’s how you start developing your personality. What does using podcasting as a self-improvement tool mean to you? When Junaid went to college for English Composition his teacher said, “Just free write, write whatever comes into your mind”. She was trying to get him to empty his mind because over time, your writing becomes more refined. Junaid views podcast through the same lens because the more you record, the clearer your messaging becomes over time. As you’re recording the episodes you get to go back and listen to and critique yourself. You’ll get better as you do more of it. From that perspective it helped him develop his speaking voice, from his ability to talk about a topic or to teach him how to overcome something that he once struggled with. What advice do you have for new podcasters about interviewing? To become a good interviewer, you’ve got to be able to articulate the point of the interview. To get moving you can start out as a solo podcaster. When Junaid started his podcast, it was just him talking about what he was going through with his hobbies. The more he did that the more he understood how to tell a story. It still wasn’t as refined as what he wanted it to be, so he started inviting his friends to be interviewed. The more he did that, especially with people he already knew, the better he got. It’s easier to talk to somebody you already know. It’s hard to talk to somebody brand new unless you have topics that you share a passion with. Another way to be a good interviewer is to research who you’re going to be interviewing. We’ve seen some great examples of that, particularly people like Simon Sinek and Jimmy Fallon. They research the people they’re going to be interviewing. You can do the same thing. When possible, watch previous interviews of your future guests to know what other people are asking them and then ask different questions. Suggestions for Finding Good Guests A good guest is only as good as the topic that you’re going to come and talk about. It all comes down to the purpose of the podcast episode that you’re going to record. It all comes down to the focus of your podcast and what you are going to be talking about. This is decided by knowing who your target audience is. This will help the guest who’s taking time out to record the episode get a ton of value as well. We also dive into topics such as: How large or small of a niche should you pick as the topic of your podcast. How to decide what type of podcast to have, self-help, business, etc. Technology tips for setting up a podcast. The story about how Junaid found his niche when he was just getting started in podcasting. Easy ways to test the water if you’re thinking about podcasting. How podcasting can be a self-development tool for the host. Tips for being a great podcast guest and how to get comfortable being one. How to “stick with it” after you become an established podcaster to avoid getting burnt out. The one thing, above all else, to do when it comes to developing yourself as a podcaster. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Junaid Ahmed is the Founder of Humblezone and Creator of Home Studio Mastery, designed to teach you how to build your home studio.  He has two decades of video production experience, as well as designing websites & apps focused on a systematic process and seamless user experience. He provides podcasters, speakers, and content creators a comprehensive plan for their studio equipment, lighting, and layout. He also enables video creators to create effortless content in a comfortable and impressive home studio setting.  He’s the author of Mastering iPhone Video Production, and Host of Hacks & Hobbies podcast. He also speaks frequently at national events such as Podfest and multiple virtual summits. Click here to learn more about Home Studio Mastery! Click here to connect with Junaid on LinkedIn!

There are almost too many ways to go about creating social media strategies. I discuss some strategies that actually work with my guest, Sophie Zollmann. Sophie is the Founder of FMD Strategic Partners. They take the guess work out of marketing to get real results for 7 and 8 figure service providers.     Sophie was a stay-at-home mom and got into online businesses instead of paying daycare all her money. Customer service, business management, clerical work, etc. Then in 2009, after a short break, she came back to the work world and launched herself as a virtual assistant. One of the first things she did to get in front of people was to get on social media. She got on Twitter and Facebook, and six months later after meeting other virtual assistants and business owners who needed social media help, she had a business model, and she formed an LLC. She used digital marketing, especially social media, to grow her business. In the process, she fell in love with social media. It’s become the bread and butter of her business. Sophie built a team and leverages their skills to help her clients grow their businesses like she has hers. Where People Go Wrong with Social Media Marketing The biggest thing is that they don’t have a strategy. People are throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks, they’re trying the latest trends that may or may not work for them, and they may be on platforms that they don’t need to be on because they think they have to be everywhere. They’re also doing it themselves, even though oftentimes they dislike doing it. That dislike is reflected in what’s produced and only ends up hurting them in the long run. If you don’t love it, you really shouldn’t do it because your distaste come through in your copy. Last but not least is people don’t have a strategy and a clear plan. They aren’t creating initiatives and campaigns that have measurable components such as KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), goals and objectives. Success comes from knowing what works. You’ve got to be able to measure what you’re doing. Once you know what works, then you can maximize that. But you can’t figure that out without strategy, hiring people to do it for you, and having measurable campaigns and initiatives that you can know if it’s working or not. How to Get Started with Creating a Social Media Strategy It involves a lot of research. You’ve got to know who your ideal client avatar is. In most cases there’s multiple client avatars. Even in one industry you will have different demographics, psychographics, income levels, all the things that make them human beings. We are marketing to human beings. You must speak to them in a way that they can hear you. Knowing them deeply is a key component of your strategy, that’s your first step. That research dictates what platforms you’re on, what you offer, how you speak about it and what you do to get them in the door. Your strategy must also have your competitive analysis. You must know who your competitors are, how you stand up against them, and how you can beat them. Because if you’re just doing the same thing that they’re doing you’re going to be lost in the sea of all the other people doing those things. You Have to be Unique And then of course once you’ve done that, there is making sure you have a very solid and unique value proposition, that’s a part of your research. You’re going to be looking at branding, do you really look good? Is it consistent and does it appeal to your ideal client? Branding is very important. It all works together. When you have a completely defined strategy that takes in all the aspects of online marketing and what it takes to succeed then you have the monthly marketing plan. That’s where you get your measurable initiatives, you get your content strategy, you figure out where you need to be and where you don’t need to be, then you rearrange everything to make it fit together so that it all feeds each other. That makes your efforts more effective and also more measurable so you know what’s going to work and what’s not. We also dive into topics such as: How to pick an ideal client avatar and not try to be everything to everyone. How to create a foundation to end up in a successful place to launch your social media marketing strategy. How to know what content to put where and when in your monthly marketing strategy. The components of a successful monthly marketing strategy. How to stay consistent with your marketing efforts and not burn out. What to get started with when you build out a team. How to know when to change course and when to stay the course on your social media platforms. When and why to leave a social media platform. The one thing, above all else, to do when it comes to creating a successful marketing strategy. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Sophie Zollmann is the founder of FMD Strategic Partners, a digital marketing expert, best-selling author, and speaker with 20 years of industry experience. She leads a fractional marketing department that delivers enterprise-level strategy and execution for 7+ figure businesses. As a pioneer of the fractional marketing department model, Sophie specializes in helping CEOs and 7-8 figure service providers scale smarter, not harder. Her team provides comprehensive marketing solutions, from strategic planning to full implementation, that drive sustainable growth and position clients as industry leaders. Her data-driven approach combined with innovative strategies has established her as a trusted partner for businesses ready to scale. In her spare time, Sophie loves reading Harry Potter, relaxing on beautiful beaches, and doting on her grandson. Website: https://fmdstrategicpartners.com Email: [email protected]

Mentoring programs can skyrocket your organization’s success if you have the right strategies. I discuss those strategies in this episode with my guest, Ken Rusk. Ken is a best-selling author, entrepreneur, and blue-collar advocate that proves there is no degree needed to achieve comfort, peace, and freedom. Ken spent his younger years digging ditches and working in construction.     He is passionate about helping people achieve their dreams regardless of their educational background or past. In Ken’s book, Blue-Collar Cash, he shares his insights from over 30 years of working in blue collar trades as an entrepreneur, mentor, and life coach. Why is Mentoring Important? Ken believes it should be incumbent to anyone who is successful to give back to the people that are following in their footsteps. He believes that it’s a good idea to shorten the learning curve of those who follow us because you can prevent them from making a lot of expensive mistakes. That’s just part of being successful to share that kind of advice; especially if those people work for you. To grow your company there’s a lot that you can do to help people within your company that are intrapreneurial at heart to be successful. They win, you win, everyone wins at that point. The Case for Mentoring Intrapreneurial People As the owner of a business, your goal should be a couple of things. Number one, it should be to become as irrelevant to the business as possible from a mechanical daily standpoint. If you’re going to be a visionary you can’t be involved in doing the day-to-day stuff. You need to hand it off to people and make them feel they have some ownership of the results. He’s said in front of his staff of over 200 that he can’t get what he wants, his company can’t get what it needs until all of his employees get what they want first. The more they win the more you’re going to win in the end. Advice for Leaders You must be planning what you want to do with your business, meaning drawing it out to the most minute detail. It’s like creating a brochure that is about yourself. You must have a clear idea of the goals your company is moving towards and why. Once that reason is clear then passing that goal along to the people in your company that you’re mentoring is paramount. You want to get your team to feel like they’re in it for themselves and they relish the fact that they’re allowed to swim in that intrapreneurial pool. When they create results and share ownership of those results your business is poised for explosive growth. We also dive into topics such as: Characteristics of good mentees. How to create successful mentorship experiences for intrapreneurs. How to create a platform for mentorship within your organization. How to approach potential mentors. Why you want to hire people that are self-managing. Advice for bosses about how to be good mentors. Examples of what Ken’s mentoring programs look like. The importance of recognition and bonus plans. Why dropping the ego as a boss/owner will make your business more successful. How to successfully co-create and achieve goals with your employees. The criteria of good goals. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do as an owner/boss to create a mentoring program within your organization. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Ken Rusk is a best-selling author, entrepreneur, and blue-collar advocate showing that there’s no degree required for comfort, peace, and freedom. Ken spent his younger years digging ditches and working in construction. He never went to college. Instead, he made goals, planned, and worked hard for thirty years. Now, Ken is a very successful entrepreneur with multiple businesses and revenue streams. Ken Rusk specializes in mentoring and has coached hundreds of young people in areas such as short-, mid-, and long-term goal setting, life visualization, career paths, and sound financial planning. He is passionate about helping people achieve their dreams regardless of their educational background or past. Click here to learn more about Ken!

Self-sabotage runs rampant in many professions, especially entrepreneurship. We discuss how to overcome and eventually eliminate self-sabotage in this episode with my guest, Shiraz Baboo. Shiraz is a multi-award-winning author, international speaker, and Reality Interventionist. He is known for helping people to rewrite their reality to overcome challenges in their lives. Shiraz has helped thousands of people to overcome illness, poverty and unconsciously addicted struggles.     Shiraz was stagnant for decades as an entrepreneur. He made about $100,000 a year; but when you’re at that level year after year and it never increases it becomes very, very frustrating. He knew he knew how to make money because he got from nothing to $100,000 but he didn’t know what was going on that had him stuck. Then he had an idea to earn $1 million in one year when he met the people from “The Secret”, including Bob Proctor, John Assaraf and more. Shiraz got their contact information and was going to create an app that involved all of them and their mailing lists. While anticipating success Shiraz’s income went from $100,000 to $0 in two years. He left his business because he was so sure his plan was going to work and started working on the app full time. So Close and Yet So Far Shiraz experienced the effects of self-sabotage. It’s not that his potential business partners didn’t like him, the relationships just started to fizzle out and Shiraz and his app fell off their radar. Shiraz kept trying to develop the app and he kept getting delays. He’d have to go back to them and tell them it’s still not ready. Eventually they gave up and Shiraz gave up. He went back to his old business, and he went right back to earning $100,000 a year. How to Prevent Self Sabotage Many years later Shiraz was presented with another opportunity to start making more money. Shiraz was more self-aware and learned techniques to prevent self-sabotage. He realized the last time he took certain actions his income went down. He didn’t want his income to go down so he searched out and found the reasons his income declined. Shiraz believes that most people don’t realize that you don’t self-sabotage because of circumstance and you oftentimes don’t do it because you’re afraid. You self-sabotage because you’re so comfortable and you’re addicted to that state of status quo.  So, when you leave that state your body goes through withdrawal and your body makes you do things to go back to that space where it’s addicted to, the status quo. The exception is if what you’re trying to do scares you so much it pushes you in the opposite direction. That’s what happened with Shiraz. There was a big fear of earning a million dollars a year. Shiraz worked with a coach and found out when he was a teenager his family and friends told him they had zero doubt that he would be making millions of dollars. His brain went oh my god they’re going to leach off me. If I have a million dollars everyone will want my money. So, his brain decided that at $100,000 a year he would be safe from leaches so that’s where he stayed. Once they got that belief cleared by the next year Shiraz had made over $200,000 and he was on his way! In this episode we also dive into: How to discover and clear your negative beliefs. Why 95% of what’s keeping you from success in your business has nothing to do with your business. How Shiraz got to $1,000,000 in sales. How to match your conscious beliefs with your unconscious beliefs. How to recognize emotional triggers that tell you something inside needs to shift. How to start stopping self-sabotage. Why the biggest things your mind tries to avoid are guilt and shame. How to train your brain to think the thoughts you want and feel the feelings you want. Ways to avoid the withdrawal from your self-sabotage addiction. Once you “get out of the self-sabotage hole” how to maintain your success in just 10-15 minutes a day. The power of visualization combined with positive emotion. How to get into a feeling of gratitude every day. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to eliminate self-sabotage. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Shiraz Baboo is a multi-award-winning author, international speaker, and Reality Interventionist. He is known for helping people to rewrite their reality to overcome challenges in their lives. Shiraz has helped thousands of people to overcome illness, poverty and unconsciously addicted struggles. Overall, he is a renowned personality in the area of reality addiction, and his book, How to Rewrite Reality has changed lives across the globe. Connect with Shiraz! https://www.linkedin.com/in/shirazbaboo/ https://www.youtube.com/energeticmagic/ https://www.tiktok.com/@energetic.magic https://www.instagram.com/energetic.magic/ https://www.facebook.com/energeticmagic/

You need to stand out in the sales world to be successful and video is an excellent tool to leverage if you have the right strategies. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Jason Zygadlo. Jason, a seasoned expert with nearly 20 years in medical device sales, now channels his unique skills into Build.Your.Own.Brand., where he helps individuals and organizations stand out creatively and memorably.     Jason has always tried to do things differently to be memorable. He spent his earlier career in medical device sales. Fast forward to 2024, in his business practice, he was still looking for ways to be different and be more efficient. The video world was introduced to him by a friend who also sold medical devices. Jason was very quick to adopt the technology himself because he realized he could be more efficient by sending videos instead of regular emails. He particularly liked the analytical part of video technology. You could know if and when the video was watched and for how long. That allowed him to fine tune his messaging to get longer video views. Getting to Know Him It’s getting harder and harder to see potential clients. So how can you engage with them? If you’re not delivering your message effectively, then what good are you doing? If the information you’re trying to deliver to the potential client isn’t currently getting through, what other ways are out there? Email is the starting point. Almost everyone shares their email address now. You can also send the videos through LinkedIn. Jason realized he could be very efficient and send a lot of videos in a personalized and tailored way and then know when they were opened. When he did end up getting in front of the potential client in person he would often be greeted with “It seems like we’ve already met”. They would know him from the value that he had sent. It was usually a video introduction followed up by some kind of white paper or other material. Getting Your Message Past the Gatekeeper The beauty of videos is how versatile they can be. Jason would stop by an office and leave some information with the gatekeeper. He would then follow up with his potential client by sending a video saying he had left the information with the gatekeeper. Then (in the video) Jason would introduce himself and let the potential client “get to know him”. The next video would be a demo of the product Jason was selling. Once the potential client met with him Jason would send a thank you video. How Many Videos to Send You can’t just knock on the door once or twice, it’s a persistence game. Jason talks about being “pleasantly aggressive”. The videos don’t replace the stop-byes, the drop-offs and the traditional ways of doing things. Videos are a supplemental tool to tack onto the other things that you’re doing to close the sale. There’s no magic number of videos you should send. It takes as long as it takes to get what you’re trying to get and what you’re trying to accomplish. We also dive into topics such as: What the first meeting looks like after you get past the gatekeeper. Why you should create personalized videos and how to do that. The power of curiosity in the world of video and sales. How to be different and memorable. Why different is better for breaking through the noise. Examples of video platforms you can use to stand out. Why you should send thank you videos after the sale is closed. The importance of practicing being on video. The one thing, above all else, that you should do to stand out in the sales world with video. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Jason, a seasoned expert with nearly 20 years in medical device sales, now channels his unique skills into Build.Your.Own.Brand., where he helps individuals and organizations stand out creatively and memorably. As a Kent State graduate and active community advocate, Jason leverages his strategic prowess and passion for branding to empower clients to break through the noise. When he’s not crafting standout strategies, Jason is dedicated to his nonprofit, ZIGGYSTRONG, and enjoys family time, college football, and Lake Erie. Jason’s website: https://www.careercoachbyob.com/ Social links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-a-zygadlo-9051311/ https://www.facebook.com/jason.zygadlo https://www.instagram.com/jzig1978/    

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to break the bank to get great PR. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Jill Lublin. Jill is a 25+ year Media Magnet.  She is a world-renowned publicity expert, international speaker and 4x Best Selling author. Jill has made thousands of stage appearances alongside celebrities such as Tony Robbins, Barbara Corcoran and Jack Canfield, to name a few.     Jill got into the media like many people find their careers; in a circular and roundabout way. She originally thought the legal field was going to be her career. In college, she started working in the music business in promotion and publicity and fell in love with that. She turned her career around to be the director of promotion and publicity at four independent record labels. She eventually opened her own business in publicity, wrote the book “Guerilla Publicity” and now she speaks all over the world. She also runs media master intensive workshops and helps entrepreneurs get their name out there without having to spend a fortune. We dive into topics including: Why publicity isn’t a “one and done” situation, it’s an evolutionary process. What you need to do once you have your messaging down. The power of local publicity and how to get it. What “earned media” is and what it gives you. How to approach media outlets to get publicity. The power of “Seven Follow Ups”. Two ways to publicize your publicity. Why you don’t have to spend a fortune to get publicity. How to do Guerilla Publicity. When to think about hiring a publicist. The one thing you need to do above all else to get publicity. …and other golden nuggets of advice! Why Entrepreneurs Need Publicity Publicity is happening whether you want it to or not. It starts at the minute you walk out your door, enter a Zoom room or go out for coffee. Your publicity is happening so you should embrace it and make it authentic for yourself. Jill believes that’s really important. One thing she waves her flag about is having a great, focused message. That means being resonant to who you are. Your reputation comes down to publicity so make it count. The message that you have should be attracting clients, referrals, trust in your industry, credibility, visibility, all the other things that publicity does for you. The results lie within being powerful with your own publicity and consistently being in the practice of sharing your message. Why You Must Make Publicity a Conscious Effort This means being conscious about your message. In other words, be clear about who you are. If you’re outgoing and extroverted, embrace it. If you’re shy and introverted, embrace it. Here’s what Jill knows from working with over 100,000 entrepreneurs: When you’re clear about your message, it gives you confidence to share it at networking events and in the media. The confidence that it gives you helps you speak more concisely and precisely. People will be attracted to that because when you’re confident about what you do people will want to work with you. Getting Over the Fear of Elevator Pitches Sometimes it’s fear because you don’t know what to say, sometimes people think their elevator pitch sounds like everybody else’s. When yours is authentic to you and you push the right buttons with your message that is who you are. What’s wonderful about that is that it gives you the ability to say it anywhere, anytime no matter what you’re feeling, and it helps you successfully run your business. And that’s just the beginning! Listen to or watch the episode for the rest of the story and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Jill Lublin is a 25+ year Media Magnet.  She is a world-renowned publicity expert, international speaker and 4x Best Selling author. Jill has made thousands of stage appearances alongside celebrities such as Tony Robbins, Barbara Corcoran and Jack Canfield, to name a few. She has worked with over 100,000 clients implementing her signature formula for getting media attention, creating next-level visibility in the marketplace that results in boosted sales.  These lead and profit generating formulas are included in her signature program, the Media Mastery Intensive and her monthly Kindness Circles. LinkedIn:  http://linkedin.com/in/jilllublin Twitter/X:http://twitter.com/JillLublin Facebook: http://facebook.com/jilllublin Facebook business page: facebook.com/publicitycrashcourse Her free gift to you is here! https://JillLublin.com/guide

If you want to achieve peak performance, you can probably benefit from creating a Performance Bubble. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Craig Domann. Craig is a veteran NFL agent who has negotiated more than half a billion dollars’ worth of contracts for more than 300 NFL athletes, coaches and now high school and college athletes for their NIL. His journey as a sports attorney has shown him that having a Pro Mindset is key to a successful pro-athlete career. Craig released a book, Pro Mindset: Be Your Best In Your Biggest Moments, and he has a podcast Pro Mindset Podcast where he discusses with guests on his show, the mental ingredients that are common for elite performers and then he transfers that knowledge in insightful stories and daily applications.     Your Performance Bubble Explained The Performance Bubble is like a secret weapon that the best of the best utilize to create a mental space so that they can be “in the zone”. The Performance Bubble is applicable to all areas of life, whether you’re in business and you have a big-time sales call or if you’re an athlete and you have a big game. What it does is creates this safe zone where you block out all the things that work against you; fear, doubt, what happened the last time, what somebody told you, etc. When you’re in your Performance Bubble those types of things don’t throw you off your game. Everyone has been in those situations where they had their act together, they had their game plan, they show up for whatever they need to show up for and their bubble got burst by some curveball, some unexpected comment, objection, whatever it may have been. The Performance Bubble creates a safe zone, a safe mental space where you can be your best in your biggest moments. What Does a Performance Bubble Do for You? Number one is the awareness that you have one. If you don’t have one you might be awesome for a short time because you’ve prepared for it, you strategized, you might have visualized it, you think you’re all set. Until they throw you that curve ball and then it blows up in your face. Or you have that pocket voice which is talking to you at the same time you’re doing the presentation that says “Hey man, remember the last time that you were in this situation? It didn’t work out so well.” And that negative thought comes in and now you’re operating on that negative thought. The Performance Bubble is boundaries and anchors. The boundaries block out the noise, past failures, and so on. In business, if you’re counting your commission check before the sales meeting is over, most of the time you don’t get the check because you’re so attached to the results and the outcome. When you can embody why you’re there and what you’re doing and let the results take care of themselves, the scoreboard usually tilts in the right direction. Your bank account looks pretty good. And so, the bubble is going back to the boundaries and anchors, it’s blocking out the things that don’t serve you and everything that does serve you gets to come in. Craig always talks about how you step into that bubble on game day, you step into that bubble when you walk into the board room and the only things that come with you are belief in who you are, confidence in what you’re going to do, all the preparation you did, gets to come in. All the practice you did gets to come in. You visualized yourself on the drive to the meeting or the bus ride to the stadium. You visualized it maybe for the whole week. That gets to manifest itself in the Performance Bubble. In this episode we also dive into topics such as: Two ways to lower the volume of the negative voices in your head. How to create a regulator for your mental state. How to turn up the volume for the positive voices in your head. The three parts of the pro mindset. How an entrepreneur can find good council to shorten their learning curve. What to do create a Performance Bubble for success before a networking event. Four ways to maintain the Performance Bubble once you’re in it. The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to create your Performance Bubble. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             “Over my 30+ years representing elite NFL athletes and football coaches, I’ve dissected what sets the most successful professionals apart. I’ve developed a mental framework with actionable strategies that transcend sports, applying equally to business, entrepreneurship, and personal development.” Craig’s journey as a sports attorney has shown him that having a Pro Mindset® is key to a successful pro-athlete career. Craig released a book, Pro Mindset: Be Your Best In Your Biggest Moments, and he has a podcast Pro Mindset Podcast where he discusses with guests on his show, the mental ingredients that are common for elite performers and then he transfers that knowledge in insightful stories and daily applications. Craig’s passion lies in sharing Pro Mindset® principles through both group and individual coaching, as well as keynote speaking. “This isn’t just another mindset book or program—it’s a comprehensive system designed to unleash your inner pro! With Pro Mindset, you’ll cultivate the optimal mental environment for excelling in your most critical moments. Pro Mindset guides you to: (a) craft a new narrative that empowers you to perform at your best when it matters most, (b) elevate your standards, devise innovative strategies, and implement new systems to reach your full potential, and (c) create and thrive in your own invincible Performance Bubble™ to unleash the champion within you!” At his core, Craig wants to see people shatter barriers, overcome limitations, and transform their future through developing a Pro Mindset.  Craig’s passion is to share how to unlock your Pro Mindset through his private and group coaching, keynote speaking and Pro Mindset Podcast. For more information, visit www.CraigDomann.com.  You can also follow him @ProMindset on LinkedIn, IG, FB, X, YouTube, Pinterest, TruthSocial, and TikTok.  Or listen weekly to Pro Mindset Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts and SoundCloud.

People love to hear and listen intently to great stories. If you can craft them for your marketing initiatives, you’ll build your business faster. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Thom Van Dycke.     Thom is a business advisor for solopreneurs and small agencies and a certified StoryBrand Guide. He works to help his clients develop strategic offers that deliver huge value to their customers. Thom was a pastor for 19 years. When you’re in that kind of role there’s a lot of storytelling already involved. In 2020 he left the ministry and started his own business after reading the book “Building a Storybrand” by Donald Miller. In the back of the book the author described how to get certified as a “Storybrand Guide”. Thom realized that the Storybrand framework is very powerful for organizing your thoughts around storytelling. That sparked the idea: “I wonder if it’s time for a switch”. After getting certified Thom launched his business and started out as a copywriter. He fell in love with taking the genre of communication, marketing, and figuring out ways to interweave it with storytelling. Thom has been copywriting for four years and now and is starting to do more storytelling consulting work. When it comes to storytelling and marketing, where do you begin? Many people think storytelling is about telling their story and being autobiographical. While there is a place for that in marketing, that’s not necessarily what it means to tell your story in marketing. Storytelling in marketing really looks at what other parts of a story are and how do we can use them in our marketing strategy. Storytelling begins with a hero who wants something and can’t get it, they have an external problem. Then frustration about that leads to internal problems for them. Then the hero meets a guide. The guide gives them a plan, paints a picture of success and failure, and calls the hero to action. The whole arc of the story is one of transformation. So, the idea is the framework for a story. The reason that is so powerful is that our brains are wired to recognize the patterns of stories. From the beginning of written communication humankind has used stories to make sense of their world. The more ancient you go, the more the stories are more supernatural in nature. The Need for Storytelling In modern times we’re still creating stories to explain the world around us. We are still using stories to make sense of the universe, often in scientific and naturalistic ways. It’s part of our DNA to make sense of the world that way. When Thom starts working with a client, he first makes sure they understand that concept. Then he helps them understand that when it comes to marketing, in order to be effective, you need to be extremely clear. The brain wants to find the shortest path to an understanding or meaning as possible. When we put our marketing and messaging into a story format, we’re helping people’s brains get to the point we’re trying to make faster. It helps us land more deals and close more sales because it cuts out some of the brain’s confusion of trying to get to the point. In this episode we also discuss: How to get to the point quicker in your marketing strategy. The case for making your clients to heroes of your stories instead of yourself. The pitfalls of the least effective marketing campaigns and how to avoid them. How to articulate your hero’s (customer’s) problems effectively and show them how you solve them. The role of and need for compassion in marketing. How to position yourself as the hero’s guide in your customer’s journey. How to arrange the content on your website to create a hero’s journey. The need for a call to action and how to create one. How to balance explaining problems with explaining solutions in your marketing. Two common storytelling mistakes most people make and how to avoid them. The one thing that, when it comes to storytelling and marketing, that you need to do above all else. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Thom Van Dycke is a business advisor for solo and micro-preneurs. After 19 years as a pastor, he launched his business at the height of the pandemic in 2020 and grew it to six figures in the first year. Already a certified StoryBrand Guide, Thom expanded his services to include business development consulting in the summer of 2023. He helps his clients to scale to $50,000/month of recurring revenue. Thom is married to Tara and they have 7 children. They are both advocates for foster and adoption and have welcomed 30 foster children into their home since 2011. Connect with Thom! Email: [email protected] Website: thomvandycke.com LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/thom-van-dycke/ Book a call: https://tidycal.com/thom/introductions Monthly Strategy Design Workshops: https://link.thomvandycke.com/Strategy-Design

Everyone can be and probably should be a lifelong learner; that practice can change the course of your life. I discuss how and why to do that in this episode with my guest, Eric Pfeiffer. Eric is the founder and CEO of MPWR Coaching. Eric has been in the leadership development space for over 15 years, having helped build a multi-million-dollar coaching business and trained over 150 coaches worldwide.     Eric says becoming a lifelong learner didn’t start early enough in his career. In his twenties and even into his early thirties he felt pressure to know everything, to have arrived, to have achieved, and to have whatever knowledge base he needed to be successful. He constantly ran into roadblocks and to different challenges that kept reflecting to him “You don’t know everything.” There was a long season when every time some inadequacy was exposed in him through some deficiency, usually by other people, he would take that as an insult as somehow diminishing his value, disqualifying him from something better. This eventually changed with help from mentors. One day a mentor said to Eric “You need to get over yourself! You’re going to spend the rest of your life becoming a better version of you. If you see every exposure of something you don’t know or don’t know how to do as some kind of diminishing of your value, you’re going to stay plateaued and stuck. Then what you’ll do is create a world around you where what you know and know how to do currently is the only thing that’s required. That means your success level and trajectory are diminished as well.” Something Changed He says he “flipped that script” and recognized that every time some deficiency in him was exposed he decided to celebrate it. He realized that he could be grateful and appreciative because it’s exposing a potential new growth opportunity. If he can embrace the positive perspective, he sees it as an opportunity instead of being an obstacle. Then what happens is every time something’s exposed as a deficiency he gets to experience another area to grow in. He could go on another journey of personal transformation and development. As that became more and more the norm for his life Eric realized that his trajectory radically changed, and he found himself on this continual growth path. How Does Becoming a Lifelong Learner Begin? At first, it’s a choice, it’s a mindset shift to “flip the script” by realizing we can always choose how we interpret an experience. When we experience an area of life that we’ve fallen short in we’re either going to self-protect and project responsibility on everybody else or decide in that moment to choose to see those circumstances as opportunities for our own personal growth and development. That is the starting point because until we have that mindset, until we can control our mindset about our failures and shortcomings then we will always see those as roadblocks rather than the opportunities that they really are. From there Eric believes that we have to learn some basic mechanisms to squeeze the learning out of our life experiences, whether they be positive or negative. It’s all up to you! We also dive into topics such as: How to flip the script on internal dialogue/shift your mindset. The importance of and how to practice self-awareness. How to shift your mindset from my failure is an obstacle to it’s an opportunity. How developing and adopting small habits leads to big success. How to know what to take in and what to leave out. Words for time: Chronos (sequential/stopwatch/calendar time) and Kairos. How to recognize moments that are most relevant to you and embrace them. What are brains are hardwired to do in our best moments. How to maintain a life of lifelong learning and not just have it be a blip on your radar. The ROI of being a lifelong learner versus just being a momentary learner. How to create a paradigm shift from obstacle to opportunity. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”         Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About My Guest             Eric Pfeiffer is the founder and CEO of MPWR Coaching. Eric has been in the leadership development space for over 15 years, having helped build a multi-million dollar coaching business and trained over 150 coaches worldwide. He founded MPWR Coaching in 2019 to expand his efforts to unlock leaders’ potential so they can grow their organizations and teams in new, never-imagined ways. He is known for creating one of the only Leadership Operating Systems available today, which empowers the true engine of any business – its people. He has published two life-transforming books: Leadership Gravitas and Transform Your Trajectory, each introducing simple tools that give leaders a competitive advantage in any context. Eric speaks and leads out of the overflow of his own journey. He is a fierce practitioner of what he teaches and is committed to becoming a better version of himself daily. Click here to learn more about MPWR Coaching!