If you’re passionate about bringing your big ideas to life and want actionable strategies for marketing, branding, sales, mentoring, networking and more this show is for you! You’ll learn from interviews with successful B2B thought leaders and entrepreneurs.
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How to Build Meaningful Relationships in an AI Driven World with Casey Cheshire
Épisode 128
mercredi 9 avril 2025 • Durée 22:50
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 manufactu...
How to Get Through Emotionally Tough Times with Dr. Dorothy
Épisode 127
mercredi 26 mars 2025 • Durée 24:47
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.
How Speakers Bureaus Work with Speakers and How to Get Booked with Brian Palmer
Épisode 126
mardi 18 mars 2025 • Durée 24:21
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.
How to Combine Community Engagement with Content Marketing with Behdad Jamshidi
Épisode 125
mercredi 12 mars 2025 • Durée 22:47
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 Engage Any Audience From Any “Stage” with David Doerrier
mercredi 5 mars 2025 • Durée 22:59
“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,
How to Create and Scale Your Own Networking Group with Clay Hicks
Épisode 123
mercredi 26 février 2025 • Durée 23:16
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.
How to Develop Yourself as a Podcaster with Junaid Ahmed
mercredi 12 février 2025 • Durée 25:38
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 Create Social Media Marketing Strategies That Actually Work with Sophie Zollmann
Épisode 121
mercredi 5 février 2025 • Durée 25:32
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.
How to Create a Mentoring Program for Your Organization with Ken Rusk
Épisode 120
mercredi 29 janvier 2025 • Durée 21:23
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!
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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 mult...
How to Overcome and Eliminate Self-Sabotage with Shiraz Baboo
Épisode 119
mercredi 22 janvier 2025 • Durée 28:21
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.
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