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...

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.

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,

Recently I had a conversation about sticking with what you’re good at and delegating the rest with Bill Bloom. Bill is an abundant thinker, delegator and lifetime income specialist.  He just released his latest book, "Money Habits For Success." The first thing that he brought up is that he knows that he is a simplifier and not a multiplier. Simplifiers take things that are difficult to understand and make them easy to do and understand. Multipliers, sometimes called influencers, multiply ideas and other messages into the world. He takes retirement planning and simplifies it for people. Bill isn’t in the business of taking an idea, a book launch and multiply that into the world. He DOES work with multipliers that will do that for him. That’s a great piece of advice for you: If you’re not a multiplier or influencer don’t try to be one. Find those people to work with and stick to what you’re best at. On a day to day basis he takes complex situations and makes them easier to understand. Building The Right Team To Get Things Done The first thing Bill brought up when I asked him about hiring teams was personality tests. He uses one to assess potential candidates to find out if there’s a place on his team for them based on their personality. Bill then went on to discuss a book he recently launched. Because he’s a simplifier he doesn’t have a far reach on social media. He reached out to his multiplier friends and asked them to share the book on LinkedIn and other social media outlets. Delegating things that you’re not good at is so important – find the people that LOVE to do what you HATE to do. Listen In! In this episode we also discuss: How simplifiers and multipliers can collaborate. Why you should be investing in yourself and how to do it. The steps to successfully launching a book, pivoting your business or launching a new product or service. How to find the people that you need to collaborate with. If you enjoy this episode please subscribe and rate us on iTunes or your podcast platform of choice. About The Guest Bill Bloom is a husband, father, author, Retirement Income Certified Professional and a big soccer enthusiast.  Bill spends his time serving others by creating customized retirement income plans so that they can have purpose and clarity for his client's futures.  He also loves spending time with his wife, Jude, and his son, James.

Networking and business development are different things – you shouldn’t sell someone as soon as you meet them. That’s what I recently discussed with Steve Fretzin, who coaches and trains lawyers in modern-day business development skills, providing precise tips, fresh ideas, and actionable tasks that drive tangible results. Steve is also a three-time author, monthly contributor to the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, and has his own podcast BE THAT LAWYER. Steve defines networking as the act of developing relationships and strategic partnerships. He defines business development as the next stage where you take strategic partnerships and relationships and identify needs to solve problems and create the opportunity for a sale as a result. The new way to do business development is to ask questions, listen and walk someone through the process of making a buying decision based on the need to solve a problem vs. the old school sales method of trying to convince someone to do something. Selling During The First Meeting? Steve doesn’t recommend trying to sell somebody something during your first meeting. Consider your first meeting with someone an opportunity to learn about them. This means you make the first meeting all about them – not trying to sell yourself and your product or service. If you discover that you can’t solve their problem or give them what they need then try to refer them to someone else. It’s better to make a referral than to make an unqualified sale. If you discover that you can help them set up another meeting and present solutions that they can decide to buy or not to buy. A Common Networking Mistake One big mistake is networking for the sake of networking. You might be joining multiple groups and, without realizing it, be meeting with the wrong people for the wrong reasons. Rather than doing that you should define who you’re targeting as a potential client and who you’re targeting as a potential referral source. Then answer the question “Where are they?” Once you answer that question go to where they are instead of just randomly going to networking events. Listen In! In this episode we also talk about: How to create a profile for your ideal clients and referral sources. How to successfully network during the pandemic. The positive side of networking during the pandemic. How to have successful virtual sales meetings. …And other golden nuggets of wisdom! If you enjoy this episode please subscribe and rate us on iTunes or your podcasting platform of choice. About The Guest   The host of the BE THAT LAWYER podcast, Steve has been featured in the Chicago Tribune, Crain’s, and Entrepreneur.com and has appeared on NBC News and WGN Radio. He has written three books on legal business development, is a regular contributor to the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin and has published articles in Attorney at Law magazine, the National Law Review, the American Bar Association and the Illinois State Bar Association.

There’s a lot of negativity in the world these days. It’s more important than ever to be happy and share happiness. In this episode I discussed HOW to be happy with Steven Lefkoff, the founder of Small Claims Academy, a business established during the pandemic in 2020 to empower individuals and businesses to perform as well as they can in small claims cases. When it comes to building a business during the pandemic happiness is key. Simply put, people like happy people. When you’re happy your happiness rubs off onto other people and they want to be around you and, when all goes well, work with you because of the happiness that you’re exuding. This is important because no business can exist in a vacuum. You need to surround yourself with great people to grow. How To Shift Gears Into Happiness When you wake up in the morning you have a choice of how you’re going to approach that day. This isn’t a focus on your schedule for the day or the tasks that you’re going to accomplish. The focus is on answering this question: “Am I going to approach this day and be happy, or am I going to be miserable?” When you start happy you’re at least beginning the day in the way that you want to begin the day. Yes, things will go off the rails and bad things will happen. When bad things happen, you have the choice to focus on the bad things for an extended period of time OR to recalibrate. You can take 30 seconds, close your eyes, take a deep breath and recalibrate by focusing on what IS going good in your life. In that moment you’re essentially starting over and choosing the path of happiness. It’s not difficult to do. The difficulty lies with remembering to do it – and then doing it. If It Works For Children… Steven has a daily practice with his children to help them start their day coming from a place of happiness. If it works for children, it will probably work for you! Steven’s children come downstairs around 6:45 in the morning in SOME kind of mood. Sometimes, unfortunately, they’re in a miserable mood. When this happens, Steven tells them to go back upstairs, get back into bed even if it’s for a short period of time, and start over. They’re instructed to come back downstairs with a smile on their face. When necessary this process repeats until his children choose to be happy instead of miserable. That’ just one of the happiness practices that we spoke about in this episode. It doesn’t benefit anybody, including yourself and the people around you, to be miserable. It DOES benefit everybody you come into contact with throughout your day to be happy. Listen In! In this episode we also talk about: How to shift your emotional reactions to negative situations. How to use the “Flip The Pancake” methodology to create more happiness in your life. Steven’s story about how he started a business during the pandemic. Why happiness leads to confidence for you and your clients. Why YOU being happy is helpful to OTHER people. …and more golden nuggets of advice! If you enjoy the show please subscribe and review us on iTunes or your podcast platform of choice. About The Guest   Steven Lefkoff is an attorney with a focus in helping people and business owners navigate the law in court without an attorney. Licensed in Georgia, Steven is the founder of Small Claims Academy, a business established in 2020 to empower litigants to perform as well as they can in their small claims case by providing individuals and businesses with products designed to help them navigate their state’s small claims court. Small Claims Academy's first product, Gavel (www.gavel.legal), is an online course to teach litigants the tips, tricks, and procedures of small claims courts.

Everyone is moving to Zoom for meetings and presentations and there are a LOT of mistakes that you can make. There are distracted learners, the ever-possible Zoom fatigue, multi-tasking and more that can destroy the effectiveness of virtual communication. The key is to know what NOT to do and what you SHOULD do instead. That’s what I spoke about in this episode with Matthew Confer, who is the VP of Strategy at Abilitie, an experiential learning company based in Austin TX that does simulation based learning with organizations and universities in more than 30 countries around the world. How Do You As A Leader Make Your Content More Interactive and Engaging? Matt’s company schedules a LOT more breaks for virtual events than they do for in person events. They just make the breaks shorter in duration, usually five to ten minutes. Matt also lets virtual attendees know to expect more and shorter breaks in advance. Otherwise the attendees go into an hour-long virtual meeting expecting to be sitting for an hour and that is not a good expectation to have. You can embrace the things in the virtual space that people usually look forward to during in person events. That helps to fight the dreaded “Zoom fatigue” that people are getting used to. Virtual events usually lose the networking benefits of live events – there aren’t the hallway conversations while you’re waiting in line to get food and coffee. To solve this problem Matt suggests scheduling virtual coffee breaks where you put small groups of people together in Zoom breakout rooms while they drink their coffee at home. This gives attendees the opportunity to meet new people. How to Create Success Online Interactions and Successful Learning Experiences There’s a BIG difference between active learning and passive learning. There’s a study that showed that learning that drives achievement and development shares two characteristics: It’s active and it’s collaborative. Whatever you do add activities to your virtual presentations, otherwise it’s too easy for participants to get distracted. It’s easy for participants to get disengaged when they’re only listening to you and looking at a screen. To make your virtual events collaborative you can assign teammates to groups or partners to individuals. This way they have people to interact with and bounce ideas off of. You can also use Zoom’s whiteboard features, chat features, polling features and more. How can you use them? If you want to keep your presentations engaging you must keep people guessing. You want them to know that the next 30 or 60 minutes of your presentation isn’t just going to be content coming at them. You want them to know that at any time they could be asked to add something to the chat or that during the next five minutes a poll might be popping up asking them to answer a question. Setting this expectation helps keep participants from getting distracted with email, texts or any of the other things that they otherwise would be taking their attention away from your presentation. Listen In! Is this episode we also discuss: The three kinds of key interactions that you NEED to have in your virtual presentations. How often you should meet virtually if you’re the leader of an internal team and what you should talk about. How to know when to have structured virtual meetings and when to have freeform virtual meetings. How to have engaging virtual mentorship conversations and what to talk about. If you only do ONE thing to enhance your virtual conversations and meetings, what that ONE thing should be. …and more golden nuggets of advice! If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe and rate us on iTunes or your podcast platform of choice! About The Guest Matthew Confer is the Vice President of Strategy at Abilitie, a Leadership Development company based in Austin, Texas that provides immersive business simulations to a global client base that includes over 50 members of the...

Mentorship is VERY much needed in the business world. You just need to know how to find mentors, engage with them and build successful relationships with them. That’s what I discussed in this episode with Matt Granados. Matt is an international coach and trainer working with individuals and teams to increase bandwidth, increase motivation, and minimize stress.  This ranges from CEOs of billion-dollar companies to individuals trying to get back to where they want to be. Matt and his team have created programs for individuals to get the exact results they desire in all areas of life. The first thing that Matt shares is that having a mentor is like going to a buffet, you don’t have to eat everything. When it comes to advice, pick what you like and take action with it while leaving behind the advice that doesn’t resonate with you. Why leave things behind? Because you’ll never find a perfect person who has all the answers. This means that you shouldn’t put your mentors on pedestals because if you do, they’ll fall down. Nobody can be everything to everyone. One caveat? You should be open minded when it comes to what you can learn from your mentors, even if it’s tough love that you might not want to hear. How Do You Find Mentors? With most of Matt’s mentor/mentee relationships there was never a formal agreement that they were in a mentoring relationship. That agreement wasn’t needed. How do you know when someone is your mentor? When they respond to your emails. When they take interest in what you’re doing. Then you’ll know that you have a mentor and that it happened organically. A BIG mentoring tip: Don’t try to engage with someone to create a mentoring relationship just because that person is famous or successful. Seek out people that have done what you want to do so you can find out 1) is it really what you want to do, 2) how do they accomplished it, 3) what did they sacrifice to get there and 4) if you really want to do what they’ve done and, when needed, sacrifice what they’ve sacrificed to do what you think  you want to do. How to Create Successful Mentoring Experiences One day Matt’s wife pointed out to him that he didn’t have any physical goals – even though his company is all about vitality. So, he “accepted her challenge” and signed up for an Iron Man competition. The first thing Matt did was to find someone that completed an Iron Man in the World championship and got the person to coach him. The tip for you? Find people that have done what you want to do and have done it WELL. Then talk with them and ask them how they did it. If they share advice that you don’t necessarily agree with, prove them right instead of wrong. As Matt told me about his Iron Man mentor – who is Matt to say that someone’s wrong who has successfully done something that Matt wants to do? Take your mentor’s advice, implement that advice, get a result, and then bring that result back to them. You’ll either: Share that you followed through with what they told you to do and didn’t get the right results – and then ask, “What else can I do?” Or you’ll share that you tried what they told you to do and succeeded and ask, “Now what do I need to do to get to the next level?” Either way you’re on a mission to move beyond the results that you’re currently getting to get new, and better, results with the proper guidance. Listen In! During the rest of this episode we discuss: Why mentee should guide the relationship, not the mentor. The four things that you need to come into a mentoring relationship ready to do. When and why you should put mentoring relationships on pause or end them. The sure-fire way to destroy a mentoring relationship and what NOT to do. How to respect your mentor’s time AND get more of their time for calls. …and more golden nuggets of advice! If you enjoy the show please subscribe and rate us on iTunes or your podcast platform of choice! About The Guest Over the last decade,

If you want to build your personal brand you probably know that writing a book will help. The challenge becomes know HOW to write a great book. That’s what I discussed with #1 Bestselling Amazon author and architect Bill Hirsch. As soon as you write something down and publish it you’re seen by your reader or anyone that’s hiring you as a consultant and expert in your field more than the day before you wrote the book. In the months before publishing his book Bill hoped that people would let them become his clients. Rather than writing a book as a marketing vehicle Bill wrote his book as a way to help people out and provide useful information. As a result of that his email inbox filled up and his phone started ringing with people that were eager to become his clients, a complete flipping of the script. How to Get Started With a Book Plan The best way to start? Start writing SOMETHING. Don’t wait until your ideas are perfect. Writing will help you collect your ideas so that they will start becoming your book. Writing out a book plan is a good way to start because if you don’t know where you’re going you won’t know when you’ve gotten there. Bill also hired a writing coach which further helped him organize his thoughts in a better, more readable book form. The start of your book plan can be as simple as an outline of and titles for your chapters. With a little further analysis beyond that Bill’s book plan let him look at each chapter to make sure that he had an equivocal amount of content for each chapter. This became the blueprint for his book and let him know where he was going. Find Your Niche There are a LOT of books on the market about general topics, such as leadership. Unless you have a huge marketing budget publishing and successfully selling a book about a general topic can be a daunting task. When you write a niche book that can work in your favor because you don’t have as much competition. Using this strategy helped Bill sell over 30,000 copies of his book. As a benchmark, traditional publishers need you to sell at least 5,000 copies of your book and if you don’t hit certain benchmarks a traditional publisher can take your book out of print leaving you with nothing. Bill chose to take the independent publishing route so he would have full control over the content of the book. Listen In! In this episode we also discuss: How to find the right creative design and editing partners for your book. How to successfully market your book and get your book reviewed in publications. The primary objective that you should have in mind for your book – and it’s not about promoting yourself. …and other golden nuggets of advice! About The Guest Bill Hirsch has spent nearly 50 years designing homes of all sizes that reflect the lives, personalities, and desires of his clients.  With a bachelor’s degree from George Mason University and a Master of Architecture from the University of Virginia, Bill has spent his career at the intersection of psychology and home design, creating dwellings that allow occupants to relax, rejuvenate, and recharge. Bill’s first Amazon #1 best seller, Designing Your Perfect House: Lessons from an Architect has sold thousands of copies around the world.  His newest #1 best seller,  The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where Your Live, takes his design philosophy to the next level, moving from architecture to an even finer scale, encompassing the psychological and emotional elements of homes of all sizes and styles. A past president of the Delaware Society of Architects, a member of the American Institute of Architects and certified by the National Council of the Architectural Registration Boards, Bill now lives in South Carolina with his wife, Maureen.  They have four children and seven grandchildren.

Recently I spoke with Brian Wallace about influence. 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. Many people do not have a clear understanding of what influence is. There’s a gap between the word “influencer” and “influenced”. When you hear the word “influencer” you might cringe and think of people posting pet pictures on Instagram or people lip syncing on TikTok. Are they making money from it? Do they just want the rush of more likes? Oftentimes you just don’t know. It seems to be very self-serving instead of serving others. In this commencement speech the speaker discusses using your influence to positively impact others. Influence should be about empowering other people. Power doesn’t mean that you can take the stage; power is giving OTHER people the stage. “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.” ~Zig Ziglar How To Expand Your Influence The RIGHT Way It all starts with looking in the mirror and knowing what you want to do and WHY you want to do it. Many people look at celebrities and extremely successful people and try to copy them. When you do that you can be aiming for targets that don’t exist. Instead of doing that you should be comfortable with who you are and be self-aware. When you are a fully transparent version of yourself without an act people will relate to you and naturally gravitate towards you. One thing you can do is explain the facets of who you really are. Let’s take LinkedIn as an example. Most people, in their headline, just put their work title. Some people think of it as an “elevator pitch”. As Brian points out, first you have to get INTO the elevator. Look at your headline as a getting INTO the elevator pitch. If a bunch of high-level executives or successful entrepreneurs were in an elevator that you’re running towards, what would you scream down the hall that would make them hold the door for you? Just a title, the line “all thoughts are my own” or a list of hobbies won’t do the trick. Brian puts his qualifications and why people should want to follow him in his headline. It’s about what he does and he makes it interesting. His headline is “Founder, NowSourcing - Infographic Expert | Google Board Member | #LinkedInLive | Podcaster | Featured: NYT, Forbes, Mashable | #SXSW Advisory Board”. Find Your Tribe Everyone is influential in some way. If they say they’re not it’s because they don’t believe in themselves. This is where being authentic can help because you’ll attract more people to you and feel better about yourself. Brian believes that the inauthentic “influencers” with a bunch of fake likes are going away. Rather than trying to be everything to everyone, find an expertise niche to fill with people that should be part of your tribe. Listen In! During this episode we also discuss: Tips for successfully marketing yourself to become an authentic influencer. The types of content that you should be sharing and how to be interesting. Why having true fans is valuable. Where to spend your time online if you want to become an influencer. …and other golden nuggets of advice! About The 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. Brian also runs #LinkedInLocal events nationwide, and hosts the Next Action Podcast.  Brian has been named a Google Small Business Advisor for 2016-present and joined the SXSW Advisory Board in 2019. Brian can be reached here on LinkedIn.

Many people are going through tough times right now and giving back and paying it forward is more important than ever – you just need to know HOW. That’s what I discuss with Jon Ferrara, the creator of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in this episode. “You can get anything you want in the world by helping other people get what they want.” ~Zig Ziglar What is Important in Life and Why? We’re not on this planet to make money, we’re on this planet to make memories out of moments. Jon believes that ultimately, we’re on this planet to grow our souls. After doing some spiritual work, Jon came to the conclusion that the best way to grow your soul is by being present with other people, especially those that love you. You need to be present with other people because, if they really love you, they’ll throw your shit right back at you. That’s important because if you take a hard look at yourself and your shit that’s how you really grow. If you really listen and you learn, you’ll find ways to add value to other people’s lives and you’ll change your life for the better. When you do that at scale you can change the world for the better. As an example: When Jon invented Customer Relationship Management (CRM), he didn’t do it because he wanted to make $100 million dollars. He did it because he loves building solutions, and in the case of CRM the solution was something that Jon needed. While working in sales before CRM Jon had leads in various places and it was hard to track the customer’s journey as it got closer to closing the sale. It turned out that a LOT of people, literally MILLIONS of them, had the same problem. By serving those people and helping them achieve their dreams, Jon achieved a dream that very few people ever achieve. And it came from serving and helping other people, not just himself. How to Be a More Successful Person Let’s look at sales, Jon believes that in many ways everyone is a salesperson in one way or another. Unfortunately, many salespeople are only interested in “bagging and tagging” you to make money. That can make sales a four-letter word. That’s why service is the new sales. If you enter into every engagement not with the intention of what can you get from this person but what can you give to this person you can’t help but walk away from that engagement with a positive boost, and the other person walks away with the same thing. If you want through life without being present, without really listening and without an intention to serve you’re just focused on “getting”. The alternative to that is to live by the mantra “the more that you give, the more that you get.” That applies to not only everyone that you know but also to strangers that you interact with. How to Stay Top of Mind with People First, you DON’T send them a quarterly email that tells them how great your products and services are. That’s selfish and people don’t care about that. They care about themselves and what good things you do for them. What can you do instead? Follow them online, follow their digital footprint on a regular basis and add VALUE to the conversation so that when you do reach out it’s not a cold call, it’s a warm call because you’ve been staying in touch with them. Listen In! During the rest of our discussion we discuss topics including… How to take your business relationships beyond “just business” and touch people on a personal level by using the “Five F’s of Life” and the “Five E’s of Social Business”. How to build your personal brand at scale to reach more people. How to balance being nice and serving others with making sales. How to reach out to people that you haven’t spoken with in a long time and successfully reconnect with them. …and many, many more golden nuggets of actionable advice! If you enjoy this podcast, please rate it and subscribe to it on iTunes! About The Guest Jon Ferrara is a serial entrepreneur and noted speaker about social,

The networking landscape has DRASTICALLY changed. We’re not seeing our clients, potential clients or people that we want to get to know in person anymore. We’re at home and we’re trying to make networking work from behind a screen. That’s a BIG challenge if you’re the type of person that’s used to shaking hands and having lunch meetings. There are things you can do instead, and that’s what I discuss with B2B digital marketing agency Founder and CEO Sonny Sultani in this episode. Advice for People That NEED to Be Networking There’s no better safety net than a good network at this moment. You need to foster your existing network AND create new connections. Everyone wants to have some kind of human connectivity again, so give it to them! You can even have fun with it. Have virtual coffee meetings. Send somebody a bag of coffee and say, “I want to get to know you, can we hop on a Zoom call?” Important point: Resist the urge to sell something to everyone that you connect with, this isn’t the time to be doing that. What can you do instead? Be a resource to people. Everyone needs resources right now; we’re all trying to navigate something that we’re not quite sure of. In addition to sharing ideas one way to be a resource to people is to promote THEM and not just yourself. One of Sonny’s client’s posts about the people that he’s meeting with during these hard times. He goes onto LinkedIn and shares something like “I just met with Bill Smith, he’s an amazing management consultant that you should get to know” and he tags them in the post. That is a phenomenal way to start an online conversation today, wouldn’t you agree? Now is the PERFECT Time to Be Networking, Here’s Why and How There are directors, Vice-Presidents, Founders and CEOs amongst other busy people that would have never had the time to talk with you six months ago. This is a prime time to get people on the phone that previously wouldn’t have had time for you, take advantage of it. Leverage your current network by having them introduce you to new people, there’s nothing like a warm introduction. Promise NOT to sell anything on the first call, just focus on getting to know the other person. The challenge is that many people aren’t used to sitting in front of a screen and asking for stuff. They’re more comfortable when they’re face to face. The best replacement for that, as most of the world has discovered, is to set up video meetings. It’s the next best thing and it’s easier than ever to leverage video services in lieu of in person meetings. Listen In! Other topics that we discuss in this podcast include… How to ask for referrals and new connections during virtual meetings How to ask potential clients for meetings (and GET the meetings) without trying to sell them anything immediately Why now is the perfect time for introverts to go head to head with extroverts in terms of filling their sales pipeline and how to do it How to get potential clients to know, like and trust you so that you’re the person they go to when budgets start opening up The ONE thing that you NEED to do now to drive business before the opportunity disappears …and more golden nuggets of actionable advice! If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe and rate us on iTunes! About The Guest Sonny Sultani is the Founder and CEO of 120/80, a digital marketing agency specializing in growth for B2B and Professional Services. Prior to 120/80, Sonny held positions including CEO, Chief Creative Officer, and VP of various companies in the creative, technology, and marketing space. With 20+ years of experience, what makes Sonny unique is his ability to navigate a variety of businesses and understand the challenges to grow a company. Sonny has received over 60 accolades in communication & marketing and holds a Bachelor's & Master's in Communication from Northwestern University. He is an avid volunteer of Not for Profits in the Chicagoland area.

The pandemic is affecting everyone in some way shape or form. If you’re staying home more that gives you extra time to work on your business. It’s an opportunity to work on your branding or rebranding, your marketing strategy and many other things. That’s what Troy Sandidge, A successful social media marketer who provides marketing strategies and solutions for growing small to medium size businesses to multi-billion-dollar enterprise brands, and I discussed on this episode. Maybe your website wasn’t up to par pre-COVID, maybe your sales funnels and online calls to action weren’t up to speed and you weren’t getting as many online conversations and conversions as you would have liked. Screen time during the pandemic has increased 80-90%, which means many markets, possibly including yours, have become oversaturated with competition for views. Now is the time to take a step back, monitor and update your website and implement new, improved marketing strategies. With all the competition chances are that not many people are coming to your site – that’s the perfect time to rebuild. Taking a Step Back to Move Three Steps Forward Look at your messaging from the last six months and examine what worked and what didn’t work. If you’re interested in creating new video content or getting into (or improving your current initiatives in) podcasting, now is the time to create in bulk – use that extra time wisely! Recoup, retool and repurpose your content while you’re not getting as many eyeballs on your site. Where should you start rebranding? First and most importantly, examine your messaging. Start with understanding your audience and WHY they’re coming to your site in the first place. Then make that messaging more attractive based on who actually converted from viewing your products and services to BUYING your products and services. Who actually made you money? Focus your messaging on THEM. Then ask yourself who is your IDEAL visitor? Who do you really want to focus on? Answering those questions will tell  you where to start retooling your messaging. One Way to Wisely Spend Your Marketing Time During COVID-19 you can’t meet people in person so you’re missing opportunities for richer connections. During the pandemic you can shift to highly focused videos and livestreams that are no more than 10 minutes long. Forget about the longer hour long, rambling videos that could actually work against you. In the videos and copy surrounding them tell your audience what the focus is and what important information you’re going to share with them – and then provide value in shorter sound bites. Focus on being conversational instead of just broadcasting messages. Listen In! Other topics we cover include: How to create high quality content through interviews How to use your notes and repurpose your content to create podcast episodes for people that don’t watch videos. Why you shouldn’t hard sell your audience and what you can do instead The key components of successful marketing conversations and how to integrate them into your marketing strategy The right and wrong ways to market yourself on LinkedIn …and more golden nuggets of marketing advice!

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. 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. We also dive into: 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! 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 Ton...

During the pandemic Zoom has been doing VERY well and it seems like everyone wants to have a video call these days. But are they doing their video calls the RIGHT way and making them as productive as possible? That’s what I recently spoke about with Susan Ibitz, professional “Human Behavior Hacker”. Some Tips for Video Meetings Video conversations have great benefits. Having video conversations speeds up the process of meeting new people. Instead of setting up a coffee meeting three weeks out you can set up a 30-minute video meeting the same week as making contact with the other person. This also shortens the amount of time you have to research the person before speaking with them, so you have to be ready to act quickly. Susan calls her clients every six months to ask what she can fix for them or how can she help them. She then asks a series of questions to get to know her clients better. If you do not have the right questions, you are not going to have the right answers that could move the relationship forward. One way to know what questions to ask is to understand modalities. An important thing to know is that people primarily learn and interact in one of three modalities: Visual, auditory, or kinesthetic (touch). If you have too many things going on in your background during a video call people are going to get distracted, especially if they are visual learners. You can tell if someone is a visual learner by the words they use, even in emails. An example of this is “I’ll SEE you later”. Another thing that helps communication with visual people is changing your background on Zoom. If you put up a background with your logo and the other person’s logo you’ve already put the two together. Another important thing for rapport is smiling while you’re on camera. A good handshake replaces three hours of communication. Smiling on a video call replaces the in-person handshake. Introverts & Extroverts It’s also important to know if the other person is an introvert or an extrovert. Generally speaking, extroverts prefer video calls and introverts prefer a mix of video calls with phone calls. When you’re on phone calls it helps to walk around. That increases the oxytocin in your brain and helps you be more creative and focused on the phone call. One way to discover the best way to communicate with people is to give THEM the option of a video call OR a phone call. Let them tell you what their preferred mode of communication is. Listen In! On this podcast you’ll learn: How to go to your “happy place” during video calls which makes your calls more productive How to remind yourself to look at the camera instead of the other person during a video call How to communicate in the other two modalities, auditory and kinesthetic How to read someone’s face for important non-verbal cues What questions to ask to move the sales process forward …And more great nuggets of advice! About The Guest Susan Ibitz Human Behavior Hacker | Keynote | Corporate Trainer | Sales Trainer | FORBES.COM | TRIBE GLOBAL | Imagine you can learn a SUPERPOWER Susan can deliver training and consult on Human Behavior,  Micro-Expression, Body Language, Deception-Detection, Statement Analysis, Face Reading (Physiognomy), & Personality types, in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Susan has trained, consulted, and worked with people and fields such as: Journalists & Producers - Politicians & Political Campaigns - Law Enforcement - Realtors - Lawyers - Market Research - Insurance Fraud - Headhunters - Match Makers - Managers - Medical Field Professionals - Sperm Donor Selection - Couples Compatibilities - Love Life - Sales Team - Job Seekers - Human Resources Professionals - Negotiation - Hospitality - Customer Oriented Services

Mentors can change your life if you know how to create and leverage mentorship experiences like entrepreneur Danielle Pierce learned to do over the years. When Danielle got started things seemed really challenging because she had to wear all of the hats in her company; the graphic designer, the accountant the attorney and everything else. The missing piece is that you can accelerate your results significantly faster the minute you release control and stop trying to be “manager of the universe”. She spent 11 years trying to do everything herself and only realized that piece of advice during the last two years or so. Now she welcomes outside advice and collaborating with other people. Now her business life is fun and exciting as opposed to being just another job that needs to be done. Get Uncomfortable and Take Action! A great mentoring relationship isn’t the most comfortable relationship because it can push you in directions that you don’t want to be pushed in and create new experiences that you didn’t plan on. Because of that many people that say they want a mentor aren’t ready to take on the responsibility of that kind of relationship. When you’re ready to get uncomfortable and be vulnerable then you’re ready for new mentoring relationships! Danielle’s current mentor found her. They went to high school together, lost touch, and then reconnected through Facebook. The relationship started with him giving her some advice here and there. She began applying that advice and getting new, successful results in her business. When he noticed that she was taking action and taking the relationship seriously it became a more formal mentoring relationship. That’s a great tip for YOU! Mentors want to see that you’re doing more than just talking, they want to see you taking action. When you do that, you’re respecting the time that they invest in you and taking the relationship seriously. How to Be Prepared for Successful Mentoring Relationships As the mentee you must be ready to hear a lot of things that you don’t want to hear. You must be ready to admit that you’ve been doing things in not the most effective and efficient ways. You must be ready to put in a significant amount of work in a relatively short period of time. You need to be coachable. You cannot get advice and then ignore it and do things your own way. You must TRUST your mentors’ advice and take action in a way that goes along with their advice, not just the way you think that you should do it. Listen In! In this episode we talk about: How to foster trust in your mentoring relationships What you can do to become a better mentor More ways to become a better mentee Danielle’s first mentoring experience and why it was successful at the time How to release control as a business owner …and more great nuggets of advice! If you enjoy this podcast please rate it and comment on it on iTunes! About The Guest   A graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, by way of the Chick Evans Caddie Scholarship, Danielle Pierce has an accounting degree which she has not utilized in over 12 years.  She began her entrepreneurial career after a sudden layoff from her corporate audit position. Danielle took this as a sign from the Heavens that she was meant to be a full time entrepreneur. Although she did look back a time or two (or three lol), she has held on to the reigns of entrepreneurship and never plans to let go. Danielle’s online courses and group training programs (Real Estate Profit Lab), teach aspiring business owners  how to establish and grow profitable six figure enterprises within the real estate industry, outside of sales. Her current areas of specialization include the following: tax lien investing and managing bank owned properties. Danielle is an author, highly regarded speaker, the founder of a highly specialized real estate consulting firm, and a member of the Forbes Real Estate Council.

Recently I spoke with Aaron Stahl about his journey in entrepreneurship. One of the first things he brought up was the importance of mentoring. To be a good mentor you need to listen to what the other person has to say. You’re listening to learn what specific problems they’re facing and discovering if you can help them. If you can’t help them you can try to connect them to someone who can help them. Being in that mindset will help you become a good resource to people and a good mentor. Aaron also learned that entrepreneurs need to start small and grow big. When Aaron was in his early twenties, he started calling on Fortune 100 companies to get them as clients. He wanted to instantly become a millionaire, but that plan didn’t work out. He learned that you have to invest time and energy to grow into success. Another lesson learned is that if you leave your business for any amount of time you should come back to a business that’s as good or better than when you left. To make that happen you need to only do what you’re best at and hire and train people to do things that you’re not good at. Listen in! In this episode we discuss more about mentoring, how to grow your business the RIGHT way and how to empower your employees to collaborate with each other to run a successful business for you. About The Guest Aaron got his start in the cost recovery business in 2004 at the age of 22 when he started P3 Waste Consulting. After helping numerous clients save money on their waste expenses the business grew from there to become what it is today. Aaron expects revenue to grow to $4 million in 2020. Aaron is an expert in the waste and recycling industry and has been the CEO/President of P3 since the beginning.  In his spare time he enjoys flying airplanes and is an instrument rated pilot and certified flight instructor. He also enjoys traveling abroad, hunting, hiking, mountain biking and attempts to surf whenever possible. He is an Eagle Scout, avid Arkansas Razorbacks fan and holds a degree in small business/finance from the University of Arkansas You can learn more about Aaron on LinkedIn.

Mentoring can change the arc of someone in Generation Z's career, and that’s what I recently discussed with 23-year old entrepreneur Austin McCulloh who has been a mentor and been mentored. Two of the biggest lessons from one of Austin’s early mentors was not to burn bridges and not to take everything personally. If someone cancels a meeting or ends a conversation abruptly that doesn’t mean you should take it personally or get upset with them. It’s better to come from a point of understanding and knowing it’s not always about you, they might have things going on in their life that you know nothing about. You never know how the relationship will develop over time. Mentoring tip: Why was Austin’s early mentoring relationship successful? His cared about Austin’s well being and made himself accessible. If you want to be a mentor to someone else those are two things to consider before you start mentoring someone. Austin’s mentors taught him that getting real world experience early one will help your career. Instead of getting a fast food part time job Austin started in the financial services industry as a financial advisor so he could shave years off of his learning curve and get real world experience while he was still young. Mentoring Generation Z: Give them clarity and support so that they can set productive goals and start moving towards them. Using clear and effective communication can go a long, long way when you’re mentoring other people. “Clear and effective communication” means being honest with the other person and not just telling them what they want to hear. This means being transparent with the other person and definitely not lying just to make them feel better about a situation. Just giving one or two hours a week to an individual that’s not as fortunate as you are can change the trajectory of their life. A Great Book The one book that Austin says you NEED to read? Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate and at one time the richest man in the world, saw something special in Napoleon Hill. He gave Napoleon a 20-year mission to unlock the key to success and then Carnegie opened his rolodex and introduced Napoleon to some of the most successful people of the time (the early 1900’s). Napoleon took what he learned and combined his learnings to create 13 success principles which he outlines in his book. Self-Awareness Having weaknesses is not what makes or breaks you; knowing how to deal with them or not dealing with them does. You’re not going to know what your weaknesses are if you’re not self-aware. At one point during high school Austin’s football coach said something simple and profound “Austin, you’re uncoachable”. And at the time Austin says he was because he wasn’t taking accountability for his own life. Austin remedied that problem by taking accountability for his actions and results in life and becoming more self-aware. He took 30 days off from social media and most social interactions and got to know himself. Once he became more self-aware mentors were better able to help him. Listen More and You Will Learn More Practice being intentional – close your mouth and just listen. When you practice that enough you’ll become good at it, even if it doesn’t come over night. For yourself you will learn more and grow faster as a person. When you listen and learn what OTHER people’s problems and pain points are, you’ll learn how you can better help THEM by not making the conversation all about yourself. Listen In! Some other topics we cover in this episode are: If you want anything in life, from a mentor to a job, ASK! You’ll learn how to ask the right way How to leverage the Law of Reciprocity to get what you want in life and give others what they want How to ask someone to mentor you How much time to ask your mentors for How to reach out to potential mentors on LinkedIn …and other great nuggets of advice!

Recently I spoke with Phil Gerbyshak, he really knows SALES. He’s a sales speaker, a sales expert, a sales trainer, a sales leader mentor, a sales podcaster and a sales coach. We spoke about how to successfully build relationships ONLINE that turn into business OFFLINE. We started our discussion talking about the fact that relationships are what we all want when it comes to growing your business or advancing your career. Nobody buys unless they know, like and trust you. So how can you get people to know, like and trust you faster? By adding VALUE to their life. If you are initiating a relationship it is not about you, it’s about the other person. Getting to know them as a person, what they are working on right now and what they need help with right now helps you kick start any relationship. There are two key factors for creating and fostering relationships in the business world. They are relevancy and recency. Relevancy is important. There are three ways to become relevant faster. Discover what you have in common. Focus on what and who you have in common with them. Insight into the other person. Research the other person online so you know what they’re talking about so you can join the discussion. Interesting or Interested. Become interesting by being interested in the other person and what they are working on. Recency is also important. You need to keep in touch with people and foster your important relationships. If you haven’t spoken with someone for years you need to re-build that relationship and become relevant again. Remember: The goal isn’t just to have more conversations, it’s to get more business or advance your career. This is why what you talk about is so important. To have more successful conversations use the three H’s: There are three H’s to building successful business relationships: Be human. Be authentic with the other person, get to know them and let them get to know you. Be helpful. Come from a place of service and be willing to help the other person in some way. Be humble. Instead of saying that you’re the greatest in your field you need a third party to say it. Go Offline When you make an online connection, you need to make it more than just another online connection. You need to take things offline. Set up a phone call or if you have the time a coffee meeting. A great way to start a conversation is reaching out to say happy birthday.  Everyone has a birthday and social media channels remind us when their birthday is. That creates an opportunity to reach out to them, make that phone call. After happy birthday ask them what they’re working on and who they need to know. Chances are they will reciprocate by asking you the same thing. Maybe they need your services quickly or maybe time will go by. It’s just a matter of keeping the conversation going so they think of you when they have a problem that your services can solve. Phil goes on to talk about: How to turn online relationships into clients How to earn a conversation with new connections How to add value to every conversation More about leveraging the three components of relevancy And more great nuggets of advice! If you like what you hear please subscribe and rate The Idea Climbing™ Podcast on iTunes.     Phil Gerbyshak knows SALES. He’s a sales speaker, a sales expert, a sales trainer, a sales leader mentor, a sales podcaster and a sales coach. He's written 5 books, more than 3000 articles, and has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Daily Globe and Mail, Financial Times, Investor's Business Daily, Inc. and many other publications, including earning 3 covers: Speaker Magazine, Marketing Media and Money, and Social Selling Made Easy. Phil is known as a Sales, Leadership and Technology Authority with a particular expertise in inside sales, LinkedIn and social selling.

Using videos for marketing purposes is a hot topic. How can you create a successful marketing campaign that turns into dollars for your bottom line? That’s what I recently discussed with the CEO of WireBuzz, Todd Hartley. Todd has been leveraging video for marketing purposes for over 15 years. His first project generated over 36 million unique visitors a year on zero ad dollars. How Long? One hot topic in the video world is video length. How long should your marketing videos be? It depends upon the product or service. How long does it take you to explain your product or service compellingly and in the most succinct way possible? That’s how long your video should be. People tend to think that everything has to be short because people’s attention spans are shorter. That’s true if you just want to grab someone’s attention for a minute. Unfortunately, people don’t buy because of short videos. Short videos should only be used as teasers that get people to watch your next, longer video. If you’re trying to get someone to purchase from you longer videos outperform shorter videos every time. What is longer? 10 minutes, 14 minutes or 30 minutes. In the case of infomercials an hour works. Infomercials convert viewers into buyers at a much higher rate than short videos.  The lesson here: Don’t be afraid to make longer videos. With regards to short attention spans – attention spans are selective. They’re selective to buyers. Todd doesn’t watch knitting videos on YouTube, but his mother eats them up. Why? Because she’s a buyer. They provide value to her and help her make buying decisions. That’s what your videos should do. 3 Indisputable Laws of Using Video to Create Bingeworthy Buying Experiences They’re all related, and they’re all taught to us on a daily basis by Netflix. 1) It must be personalized and relevant. If a video comes on about your favorite topic, it grabs your attention. One size fits all videos don’t work. 2) It needs to be on demand. People need to be able to watch your videos when the time is appropriate for them. 3) It needs to be bingeable. You need to structure the information so somebody goes down that “rabbit hole” and they binge all the way through it. You can’t do that with a 30 second video. Listen In! Todd shares, in detail: How to successfully apply all three laws to the videos that you produce The #1 thing that you MUST do to create successful bingeworthy buying experiences How to get your prospects to experience clarity because that’s when they become a buyer How to turn your videos into sales machines How to answer late stage buying questions …and more! About the Guest   Today my guest is Todd Hartley, the founder and CEO of WireBuzz. Embracing the power of video early on, Todd has spent the last decade mastering video marketing. In 2010, he created WireBuzz to help businesses amplify sales, reach marketing goals, and dominate the competition with video. In this episode we’ll discuss what it takes to make a successful business video, 3 Indisputable Laws of Using Video to Create Bingeworthy Buying Experiences, how to turn your videos into sales machines and more.

Networking is the life blood of many businesses. It’s how business gets done and referrals get made. Recently I spoke with Justin Breen about networking. He’s the founder of BrEpic, a PR firm that writes compelling, newsworthy stories for its clients and pitches those stories to media across the world. Breen also has his first book, Epic Business, launched in May of 2020. He was a journalist for 20 years before starting his business on April 16, 2017. As you get started or when you’re rebranding yourself Justin had this to share: Do what you love to do and do what you’re really good at. Partner with other people that will do the rest. Once you have those people in place you can focus on networking. Get Focused With Your Networking When you get the opportunity to have a mentoring experience: Learn from and listen to people and then implement the things that you learn from them. Taking action is important, you need to do more than just listen. Turn their advice into focused networking. Don’t wait for people to come to you, proactively reach out to them. On the day of our podcast recording Justin had 13 or 14 calls. He shares that it’s important to constantly and consistently be reaching out to people. You need to foster the relationships you have while creating new ones. Justin says this will lead to you building your “tribe”, or the people that you want to hang out with. To get his first five clients he reached out to 5,000 people. He shares that you might have to reach out to 300 or 400 people to find 20 that you want to be part of your tribe. Build Your Network the RIGHT Way How can you build your network? Give as much, if not more, than you get. Justin makes 10-20 high quality introductions a day for other people and gets 5-6 high quality introductions a day. Be intentional about who you want to work with AND who you DON’T want to work with. Find people with an abundance mindset, that’s important. You become a product of the people that you hang out with. Justin says that if he speaks to 20 entrepreneurs about an abundance mindset 17 or 18 of them will look at him like he’s crazy and that’s ok. The two or three that “get it” are the people he wants to associate with. Justin’s introductions via email are short and to the point and get a great response. Sometimes it’s as simple as cc’ing people and saying “You two should know each other. LinkedIn Advice and More Use LinkedIn like a commercial for other people. Tag people on LinkedIn and interact with them. Make the post about what other people are doing and they’ll appreciate you more and will be more likely to reciprocate. Justin goes on to talk about: More about the abundance mindset How to find and join high quality professional organizations How to have pivotal conversations that will lead to landing more clients How to get more valuable introductions And more great nuggets of wisdom! If you enjoy this podcast please rate it in the iTunes store and share it on social media. About the Guest!   Justin Breen is CEO of the PR firm BrEpic Communications. Justin is hard-wired to seek out and create viral, thought-provoking stories that the media craves. And he finds the best stories when he networks with visionary entrepreneurs and executives who understand the value of investing in themselves and their businesses. Justin believes strongly in the power of introductions and creates important relationships through those introductions.

Storytelling in the business world is a popular subject these days.  How do you do it the right way? That’s what I recently discussed with New York Times bestselling author Chris Brogan. Distraction has become the norm, not the exception. People have countless media outlets vying for their attention. How can you grab their attention? You have to package your first message, or story, so small that people will opt to go to that second step and be interested in your longer story. Not everything can be sold in that small bite, but you must at least grab attention in that small window of time. Movie trailers are a great example of this. The short story (trailer) grabs your attention and gets you interested in watching the full movie. The Three Types of Business Stories Every story has an internal story to tell and an external story to tell. External is marketing and PR. Internal is the boss talking to the employees. There are three buckets in the business storytelling world: Mission Stories: They tell you and reinforce what we’re all here for. It’s our mission to go out there and deliver this kind of experience, etc. Belonging Stories: Advertising stories are belonging stories. The key word here is “deserves”, as in you are the type of person that deserves a Harley Davidson. These say, “You’re one of us, you belong here.” Growth Stories: Motivational speakers are growth storytellers. These stories inspire people to do more than they’ve currently accomplished. What NOT to Do When Telling a Business Story Don’t try to tell a story that appeals to everyone. Pick a niche and share stories with them that appeal specifically to them. When you do this, you’re going to upset someone because you can never please everyone. And that’s okay. It’s not necessarily excluding people as it is picking a niche and including people that fall into that niche. Listen In! Chris goes on to share… The need for vulnerability in storytelling More details about how to use the three components of business storytelling The #1 most important component of business storytelling How to tell better stories …and more! If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe here and rate us on iTunes… ABOUT THE GUEST Chris Brogan is president of Chris Brogan Media, offering business storytelling and marketing advisory help for mid to larger sized companies. Chris is a sought after keynote speaker and the New York Times bestselling author of nine books and counting. He’s working on his tenth. Chris has spoken for or consulted with the biggest brands you know, including Disney, Coke, Google, GM, Microsoft, Coldwell Banker, Titleist, Scotts, Humana Health, Cisco, Sony USA, and many more. He’s appeared on the Dr. Phil Show, interviewed Richard Branson for a cover story for Success magazine, and once even presented to a Princess. People like Paulo Coelho, Harvey Mackay, and Steven Pressfield enjoy sharing their projects and best ideas with Chris, because they know he’ll share them with you. Tony Robbins had Chris on his Internet Money Masters series. Forbes listed Chris as one of the Must Follow Marketing Minds of 2014, plus listed his website as one of the 100 best websites for entrepreneurs. Statsocial rated Chris the #3 power influencer online.

Why are mastermind groups important for startups and entrepreneurs and what do they look like? Each one is a community of like-minded entrepreneurs that are coming together, helping each other out and by the end of the session coming up with an action plan for each person in the room to help them solve a problem. Recently I spoke with serial entrepreneur and mastermind group creator Waldon Fenster about how to create successful mastermind groups. First, everyone needs to be vulnerable. It’s about having uncomfortable conversations. It’s uncomfortable because you’re sharing your faults and problems with everyone in the room. The purpose is to get uncomfortable enough to grow. One strategy is to have “hot seats”. In the hot seat the person focuses on ONE big problem or obstacle that is currently in their way. They then open the conversation for solutions from the other people in the room. That could be advice about avoiding some hurdles, growth advice, connections that they have for you and more. Small group masterminds are ideal to keep it to a one-day event. Each person needs time to share with the group and that could take 30 minutes for people to share and 30-45 minutes for feedback. If everyone needs an hour it would be best to keep the number of people at eight. If people share for less time than an hour then the most that is manageable it 10-12. The Key Components of Mastermind Groups If you’re interested in mastermind groups, what do you need to include? You’ll need to include the four key components of mastermind groups to be successful. First, you must be open about sharing problems that you are facing. If you’re not willing to be open and share your problems, then the people in the room can’t help you solve them. Second, you need a diverse group of people in the room. If you all have the same experiences then there aren’t new, outside viewpoints and solutions to share. Third, you need an action plan. People need to walk away with specific strategies to overcome problems, not just  a bunch of random suggestions or ideas. An action plan needs to include dates, goals and deadlines. Without an action plan it’s just wasted time, effort and money. Finally, you need accountability. This is where most people fail when it comes to masterminds.  You need someone to hold you to your promise to take action. Listen In! Waldon goes on to share: How to create accountability How to create shorter mastermind groups How to decide between starting your own mastermind group vs. joining one How much you should expect to pay if you’re joining a mastermind group How much you can charge if you’re starting a mastermind group Along with more great nuggets of experiential advice!   ABOUT WALDON FENSTER – VENTURE STUDIO Small Business/Startup Expert, Corporate Consultant https://venturestudio.com/ Serial business builder, Waldon Fenster is a small business expert and corporate acquisition consultant with an expertise in facilitating brand growth for businesses and startups that want to present their company to the marketplace. As Founder and President of Venture Studio, Waldon has worked with thousands of companies and Fortune 100 brands to expand their business models and amplify their portfolios for immediate financial benefit. Waldon’s expertise ranges from business development, entrepreneurship, corporate growth tactics and brand strategy. Through his savvy and top-level work, Waldon is able to build small businesses and emerging startups from the ground up, to make them attractive to outside investments and acquisitions on a global scale. It is his commitment to the entrepreneurial landscape and desire to educate business owners on the growth potential of their brands, that continue to motivate this innovative corporate leader. Waldon is also the creator of the popular business podcast, “Messes To Successes”, where he explores the strategies, tools,

If you’re actively looking for a mentor but don’t know how to find and approach one, you should first congratulate yourself. You’re ahead of the curve when you take stock of your life and are willing to ask for help. While that’s a great start, how should you approach potential mentors? The answer to that question is what I recently spoke about with bestselling author of The Go-Giver series and professional speaker Bob Burg. According to Bob the first quality that you need to look for is to find someone that’s done what you want to do. It doesn’t have to be something EXACTLY like you do, just along the lines of what you want to do works great. They don’t have to be in the same field that you’re in either. It could be someone that’s had success in the business world solving similar problems to the ones that you are facing. Two Different Ways to Reach Out to Potential Mentors I believe there are two schools of thought when it comes to approaching potential mentors. 1) When you find one you directly ask them to be your mentor and 2) Have conversations with people and let the relationship organically develop over time. Bob believes there is one way to do it that is more effective than the other one. If you’ve just met someone or you are reaching out with a cold call asking someone to be your mentor is like asking “Would you share 30 years of your life experiences with me even though you don’t know me from a hole in the wall?”. When you do that you run the risk of coming off entitled or that you don’t really respect the mentoring process. A mentor/protégé relationship is just that – it’s a RELATIONSHIP that needs to be nurtured and developed. Asking someone to be your mentor too soon is like asking someone to marry you before the first date. On the other hand, here’s what you can do when you reach out to someone even when you don’t know them well: Say “I know that you are very, very busy and if this is something that isn’t appropriate I understand. I’d like to ask you one or two very specific questions…” When you approach it that way you let them know that it’s not entitlement, it’s not something that they owe you. You’re giving them an out and letting them know that you respect their time. Most people will say yes to answering a couple of questions. From there you set up a brief call. You ask if you can follow up with them and sometimes a relationship will organically grow over time on those phone calls. Listen In! That’s just the tip of the iceberg! Bob shares his experiences and advice about successfully growing mentoring relationships after that first phone call with easy, actionable items that will have a great impact on the relationship opportunity at hand. We also discuss more about what NOT to do, what MENTORS should do in this case and how to create value for your mentors among other valuable nuggets of advice. Enjoy! If you like this podcast, please subscribe here and rate it on iTunes… About The Guest Bob Burg is a sought-after speaker at company leadership and sales conferences sharing the platform with everyone from today’s business leaders and broadcast personalities to even a former U.S. President. Bob is the author of a number of books on sales, marketing and influence, with total book sales of well over a million copies. His book, The Go-Giver, coauthored with John David Mann, itself has sold over 925,000 copies and it has been translated into 28 languages. His and John’s newest parable in the Go-Giver Series is The Go-Giver Influencer. Bob is an advocate, supporter and defender of the Free Enterprise system, believing that the amount of money one makes is directly proportional to how many people they serve. He is also an unapologetic animal fanatic and is a past member of the Board of Directors of Furry Friends Adoption, Clinic & Ranch in his town of Jupiter, Florida.

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 e...

Michael Drew went from being homeless and selling drugs to becoming a publisher and an esteemed and in demand business book marketer. He’s helped 99 books become bestsellers – 90 of those are now New York Times bestsellers. Over a 21-year career he’s got the process down to a very successful science which he shares in this interview. The Numbers Michael dispels some myths about becoming a bestseller and sheds light on the process. One of the first things he shares is that not every book that is sold is counted towards becoming a bestseller – which means you have to sell a LOT of books to make up for the ones that aren’t counted. Each retailer, online and offline, has stringent standards that need to be met if you want to make the bestseller lists. You need to understand those standards and work within them when you launch your book. Michael describes the standards and numbers you need to hit in detail during our interview. Your Marketing Strategy We then go on to discuss why you need to start implementing your marketing strategy while you’re writing your book; don’t wait until you get a publishing date to start marketing initiatives. First you must define your objective. Is it to get higher speaking fees? Is it to generate new business leads? Is it to differentiate yourself from your competitors? A clear objective goes beyond “I want to sell a lot of books”. You then need to tie that objective into the content of the book while you’re writing it. You need to be sure that your book supports the outcome that you desire. Of course, you must write a really, really good book. Michael disagrees with the advice to “use your book as a business card”. Use it to create an outcome that fulfills your objective. If you sell widgets you need to write a book that argues the need for widgets, not just a general topic like leadership. Once you’ve found your objective you can start building a marketing strategy by using the four pillars of marketing: What’s your big idea? What’s new, surprising or different? Why should people care about your book? What is the story that you are going to be telling? This is the thread that holds the book together. The nuts and bolts. You need to teach the reader HOW to implement what it is that you’re teaching. If they can’t implement it, you’re just going to frustrate your readers. The hope. If your reader implements what you share, what it the outcome that they will achieve? Listen In! Michael shares a LOT more wisdom and actionable ideas that can help you create a bestseller. We discuss how to reach out to your audience to move the needle with book sales. It’s all about relationships and we discuss how to avoid “douchebag marketing” and instead use relational selling. We also discuss at length the 12-step marketing process to map out your customer journey that culminates in greater book sales and financial growth in other areas of your business. Enjoy! If you like the podcast, please subscribe here and rate it on iTunes… About The Guest Michael R. Drew is a leading book marketer in the publishing industry, propelling 99 consecutive books onto national bestseller lists, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and The New York Times, and garnering over 1,000 #1 rankings for books on Amazon.com through his Profluent services. Through Michael's skills in website creation, his strengths as a speaker, his career coaching, and in his innovative use of personas to intensify the effectiveness of all sorts of writing, Michael has been a force in the creation of a new generation of thought leaders. He has helped them to become even more effective entrepreneurs who nourish today's idea-hungry audiences.

As a professional speaker, developing new business can be a challenge sometimes. It’s easy to get stuck. I recently spoke with Lynne Franklin, a 10+ year professional speaking veteran with over three million views of her TEDx talk, about how you can get unstuck, move forward and successfully develop new business. Getting Unstuck While Developing New Business When things get tough and you’re developing business fast enough you need to take action, not just think about taking action. A lot of times changing things is as simple as picking up the phone and calling someone to say “I’m not having a good day; I could use a little inspiration. What have you done that’s worked well or what has helped you turn the corner during tough times?” Hearing their story and sharing yours changes your energy level which is a great start to changing your situation. Changing your energy level makes it easier to pick up the phone and make that next sales call. Leveraging Networking Events To Build Your Business Lynne doesn’t go to networking events with the goal of finding new business. The goal that she sets for herself in advance is having three interesting conversations and the contact information of one person that she’d like to meet again. How does this help your sales process? People do business with people that they know, like and trust. Build a relationship FIRST and then ask for business LATER. You'll get a much better response that way. Listen In! In this interview Lynne goes into more detail about getting unstuck, building relationships and building your business as a professional speaker. About The Guest After a boy threatened to kill her with a machete, Lynne Franklin started learning all she could about persuasion. She’s a neuroscience nerd: translating how the brain works into practical, easy-to-use communication tools. Leaders and teams work with Lynne to advance their careers by building more rapport, creating more trust, and attracting more opportunities. Her TEDx Talk, on how to be a mind reader, went viral with over 3 million views (http://bit.ly/2C9CE3G). Lynne is a consultant, speaker and trainer, and past president of the National Speakers Association Illinois Chapter. She wrote Getting Others To Do What You Want and is working on her next book—Leaders on Rapport: Secrets to Creating Successful Connections.

10 years ago, Andy Kaufman stumbled into podcasting. At first, he thought it might be a good way to increase his marketing outreach. It did help with that over time, but there was a bigger lesson learned that he shares here. 10 years later the biggest benefit of the podcast Andy realized was the learning experience. By inviting people that he admired to be interviewed for his podcast he got to meet people and learn from people that he otherwise wouldn’t have met. His podcast became a calling card to authors, thought leaders and more. His podcast also created what Andy calls a “forcing function” for learning. At first, he didn’t read the entire book of the author that he would be interviewing, he would skim it at best. Then he started reading the entire book of each guest before the interview and his energy changed. He and the guest were more engaged and shared more ideas. Learning lead to business results too. Some of the best materials for Andy’s trainings and keynotes come from ideas shared during his podcasts. He regularly gets unsolicited offers for speaking engagements from listeners of his podcast. Through the podcast people can “get to know Andy”, his personality and his expertise enough that they reach out to hire him. How to Reach Out to Potential Guests Andy makes it look easy to get guests on his show. It is and it isn’t, especially when you’re getting started.  One tip for getting authors, especially the bigger names? Search Amazon for books that are going to be released in the next quarter and reach out to the authors BEFORE their book launches. That’s when they’re most interested in marketing themselves and their book. Publishers tend not to help much, if at all, with marketing so you’re adding value to the authors’ lives when you share their ideas in your podcast. How do you know what guests to reach out to? Pick a niche to go after and stick with it. Andy’s sweet spot is the intersection between project management and leadership. Decide what you’re most passionate about and find guests in that niche. Another benefit of the interview style of podcasting is that you’re not giving YOUR content away for free. Showcase the genius of your guests. This will bring you listeners in your niche and get you “introduced” to them. When they learn about you and what problems you solve, they might decide to hire you. In Andy’s case he gets paid to teach within the intersection of project management and leadership. Listen In! Andy gets into a lot more detail about how to find and engage with guests, how to asks questions that get them to tell stories and how to have a much more meaningful and successful podcast overall whether you’re just getting started or you’ve been at it for years. You’ll also learn more ways to leverage podcasting to grow your business faster than you could without it. About the Guest Andy Kaufman is a recognized expert on leadership and project management, helping organizations around the world improve their ability to lead and deliver. Andy works with leaders at the United Nations and other global clients to improve their ability to deliver on their initiatives. Before becoming an internationally sought-after speaker, Andy started as a software developer and was promoted into management for all the wrong reasons! He is the author of three books and host of the acclaimed People and Projects Podcast (https://PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com or any podcast app), which provides free PDUs through interviews and insights for his global listeners. To learn more about Andy's keynotes and workshops, check out https://i-leadonline.com/keynotes.

In this episode of the Idea Climbing™ podcast I interview founder and managing partner of a venture capital firm, Jason Jacobsohn. You’ll learn why mentoring is a two-way street and how both parties can benefit from one another. Key point: It’s not an “age issue”, an older person can learn from a younger person and vice-versa. There should be a learning experience going on for both sides. Successful mentoring relationships grow into long term relationships when both sides get value from the relationship. How Can Mentees Give Back? First, mentees should show a genuine interest in the mentor. They should be seeking ways to help the mentor with feedback and possible connections. Sometimes just being a mentee is enough – the mentor wants to give back because someone helped THEM at some point in their career and now, they want to help someone else with THEIR career. To make that happen the mentee has to take ACTION with what the advice that their mentor gives them and then report back with the new results that they’ve achieved and bring more questions to the table to continue the mentoring conversation. This lets the mentor know that their mentee is serious about the relationship. There’s No Quick Fix A mentoring relationship can’t be forced for quick results. It gradually happens over time as trust is built. In the case of Founder Institute, as time goes on mentors become more actively engaged with the companies and continue to provide invaluable guidance as the startups grow. As the mentees continue to take action with their mentors’ guidance, they get to know each other personally, and trust is formed. That’s when mentoring relationships start to thrive. Getting Started If you want to create successful mentoring relationships, you need to reach out to people and ASK for help. The worst thing that can happen is that you hear “no”. The best thing that can happen is that the trajectory of your professional life is changed for the better. Listen In! Listen to the podcast to learn more strategies that you can put into place to create successful mentoring experiences and relationships! About The Interviewee Jason Jacobsohn is well known in the Chicago area as a “connector” and go-to person for entrepreneurs who want to grow and maintain their success.  Currently, Jason is the Founder and Managing Partner of Propellant Ventures, which is an early-stage venture capital firm that boldly invests in a broad range of innovative companies in underserved and undervalued regions across the U.S. Prior to launching Propellant Ventures, he was a Principal at Bascom Ventures, which is a private, for-profit venture capital fund for Wisconsin alumni that invests in seed, growth, and later stage companies with a Wisconsin alumni connection.  In addition, Jason launched and currently runs the Chicago chapter of Founder Institute, which is the world’s largest pre-seed startup accelerator, with chapters across 180+ cities around the world. For most of his career, he has provided venture development services to align emerging businesses with resources for growth.  Jason is looking to meet like-minded people who share his passion and interest in the entrepreneurship and investment communities.

In this  episode I speak with Hassan Akmal from Columbia University in New York. This 7 minute interview debunks mentoring myths and gives you tools to create amazing mentorship experiences. "Mentoring" can be confusing, it's MUCH more than just "having coffee and sharing stories". When done right it can change lives. Hassan was fortunate enough to start experiencing mentoring at a very young age, but some people aren't as fortunate. We discuss how to remedy not having a mentor in your life. Hassan shares how tough love plays a role in mentoring and should be embraced so that you can learn faster than you ever could on your own. We also discuss the need for MULTIPLE mentors because each one will share different advice and give you a deeper well of knowledge to draw from. Hassan shares some experiences from his previous role as Director of Career Services at Loyola University's Quinlan School of Business and lessons that you can learn from his tenure there including the role that leadership plays in mentorship. A fun fact? You can have a mentor and not even realize that they are a mentor (and vice-versa) because the both of you are just looking at the conversations as getting and receiving help and not as a formal mentoring relationship. Whatever the relationship great mentors are great listeners. They listen, probe BUT they make YOU make the decision and take action. A key message? Everyone needs a mentor!   About the guest: Hassan Akmal, MBA, MPH, is the Inaugural Executive Director of Industry Relations and Career Strategies and Founder of the Career esign Lab at Columbia University. An alumnus of Columbia University, Akmal blazed a successful path as a visionary, Career Thought Leader, Chair of Career Education, and Director of Career Services at several universities in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. He is a former professional tennis player and International Athlete Ambassador to the United States, and serves on the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) “Future of We” — Think Tank Committee. Additionally, he spearheaded Columbia’s “Career Week” —a five-day premier conference on the future of meaningful work, one of the largest career center events in the nation culminating with a Future of Career Services symposium. With over 10 years’ experience leading career and professional development, Akmal teaches individuals the importance of capturing their career and life vision, elevating personal brand in multi-layered social media, leveraging self-awareness, and purpose alignment—he believes these elements are both the keys to maximizing career and the means of self-fulfillment. He is the Author of the Amazon Best-Selling Book—How to be a How to be a Career Mastermind™: Discover 7 "YOU Matter" Lenses for a Life of Purpose, Impact, and Meaningful Work. Akmal hosts exclusive global Career Mastermind™ Groups 3x/year that historically sell-out.

In this episode of the Idea Climbing™ podcast I interview successful entrepreneur James Carbary about what he calls "Content-Based Networking" and how he uses it to grow his business. When many people start a podcast they're focused on the number of downloads. Yes, that's important BUT there's a much more valuable opportunity at hand. Your podcast can be a way to build your business. You need to know who your target market is for your clients and also referral sources. Get clear about those people and then invite THEM to be guests on your podcast. That's a great way to start or foster relationships. When you do that you're leveraging the relationships with your guests and driving business results, not focusing primarily on downloads. This also works when you're interviewing people for videos and written content. We discuss in detail how you can easily and successfully kick of your own Content-Based Networking campaign! About The Guest   JAMES CARBARY is the founder of Sweet Fish Media, a podcast agency for B2B brands. He’s a contributor for Entrepreneur.com and he also co-hosts a top-ranked podcast according to Forbes: B2B Growth. When James isn’t interviewing the smartest minds in B2B marketing, he’s drinking Cherry Coke Zero, eating Swedish Fish, and hanging out with the most incredible woman on the planet (who he somehow talked into marrying him).

Mentoring can seem confusing and ambiguous without guidance. In this episode you'll learn how to avoid common mentoring pitfalls and how to create meaningful, successful mentoring relationships. ABOUT TROY HENIKOFF Troy is a seasoned entrepreneur and VC who has built multiple successful technology-based businesses from the ground-up over a 30+ year period. He is the former Managing Director of TechStars Chicago. With one foot firmly rooted in technology and the other firmly rooted in business he seamlessly bridges the divide between business and technology to create profitable organizations quickly. Troy excels in situations where innovation and creativity are required to solve real business problems.

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,

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.

If you’re going to build a business, you should love what you do. Once you build a foundation it’s time to scale the business. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Mary Kelly.     Mary started working for her dad’s business at trade shows when she was just seven years old. Her parents would leave her at their tradeshow booth to write orders while they worked the room to get more business. Mary took a hiatus from the business world for 25 years when she joined the navy and spent 17 of those years in Asia. During that time, she got experience leading teams that were both multi-cultural and multi-lingual. She learned how to manage people, assets, and supply chains. Transitioning into the Private Sector During her last tour in the Navy, Mary taught at the naval academy. The admiral was always being called to give talks about the status of the Navy, leadership, and other topics to government institutions and private sector businesses. One day the admiral was busy, and Mary’s friend called her and asked her to give a talk. That led to more talks. At one of those talks the organizer asked her to come back and train their people. Mary was ready for the opportunity because the premises of what you’re managing doesn’t really change. It doesn’t matter if it’s Navy people or businesspeople. Managing and leading people is still managing and leading people. This is where people get hung up on “How do we lead Gen Z, or millennials, or boomers if they’re older or younger than us?” Mary believes that regardless of the demographic, people need great leadership. You don’t lead demographics, you lead individuals. Lead your people well and the rest will follow suit. This belief has led to a very successful private sector speaking career for Mary. The Biggest Lessons Learned Number one, you must pay attention to your numbers, always pay attention to your numbers. Number two, realize and embrace that your people are your most important assets. You must make sure that people show up every day to serve you, the mission and the vision you’ve got in mind. The third thing is when you see a disruption there’s almost always more to it than what you think. Dig a little bit deeper than you initially want to, look at the surface problem and go “Ok, we’ve solved that, put a band-aid on it, everything is fine, NO. What Mary found is there’s almost always a deeper-rooted problem that needs a solution. Many leaders are worried about making a mistake or going in the wrong direction, so they do nothing. Sometimes they stagnate or believe a decision they made a year ago is still a good decision today. In that case they’re not taking the current market conditions into consideration. You need to ask yourself what is the situation today and how has it changed since yesterday and how might it change tomorrow. How to Start Building a Business and Do It Effectively First you must figure out your vision and your mission. The next question to answer is why are you better at those than somebody else? You can be competitively better (you’re just better) or you can be comparatively better (and have a lower price point, or you’re more convenient, and so on). This means answering: Competitively and comparatively where are you better? Build your value proposition around that. Then you build out your mission and figure out where you want to go. From there you create the action steps to get you there. When you cross the action steps, this is where Mary believes a lot of people get stuck, you must first say, “What’s going to be the biggest obstacle?” Sometimes, it’s your own friends and family. They’re going to say things like “You can’t start that business.” Those are not the people you don’t want to listen to. Once you see those obstacles then you brainstorm on the solutions. If you don’t give your brain a place to go with the solutions, it’s going to focus on the obstacles. And you’re going to stop and make excuses like “I don’t...

Building a strong brand and powerful online presence are necessities for entrepreneurs. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Shon Christy. Shon brings over 20 years of marketing expertise as the founder of Shon Christy Social Media, Fractional Social Pro, and NeuroSocial Labs. He's worked with over 800 companies internationally, pioneering innovative social media marketing and engagement approaches.     When Shon got discovered social media he was just a basic user. When social media got to college campuses, he was getting his master’s degree at the University of Akron. He was in the right place at the right time. Shon launched his first social media company. They were the first niche social media marketing agency in the state of Ohio. Talk about a great start! Shon had to build the business “brick by brick” by practicing what he was preaching and trying new things online. In addition to his company he built his own personal brand, establishing himself as the local leader in social media through public speaking and his online activity. Shon was building his online presence and promoting himself. When he looked back after a couple years of doing that, he examined why some things worked and why some things didn’t work. He realized that attention was becoming the new currency. We’re getting bombarded with marketing messages more and more every day. Our minds are filtering and rejecting information all the time. For this reason, it’s even more important for you to stand out. So that’s what Shon started to do. He focused on some principles that he successfully used to grab people’s attention. You don’t automatically have somebody’s attention during your first interaction with them. Shon realized that saying the same things on social media over and over gets boring to your audiences. He shifted his messaging from time to time to stay fresh in his marketing efforts. How to Start Building Your Online Brand Shon started by asking “Who am I?” The answer guided his online branding messages. Social media is the great digital amplifier, and he was amplifying the right messages. Marketing begins with taking an authentic look at yourself. Shon likens your personal brand to a recipe. It’s the concept of a “secret sauce”. Understanding what that taste palette is for you and understanding the ingredients of your personal brand is where it starts. Shon recommends broadcasting multiple things to attract like-minded people. You might try five or six things, and the sixth thing creates a way to connect with somebody on a human level, that will grab attention. That’s part of his alignment concept. If you’re aligned with other people they’re going to like you a little bit more. Getting somebody to like you because of that branding is a key to long term success. We also delve into things such as: How to get people’s attention. How to eliminate roadblocks for people to communicate with you. How to keep people’s attention after you get it. Two ways to know that you have someone’s attention. The importance of amplifying other people's stories while amplifying your own and how to do that. How to build a reputation and not just have a bunch of people’s attention. How to move along the know, like, and trust continuum faster. How to build and balance your personal reputation with your professional reputation. How to build a reputation and a business without being “salesy”. The importance of practicing the Golden Rule in your professional life. How to maintain your reputation over time after you build it. …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 the Guest             Shon Christy brings over 20 years of marketing expertise as the founde...

Do you ever run into your Brain Bully? What does that feel like? With the right strategies you can build your self esteem and achieve success in all areas of your life. In this episode I discuss how to do that with my guest, Lynn Smith.     Lynn is a national media expert, consultant, keynote speaker, and host of “StrollerCoaster” a parenting podcast brought to you by Munchkin the world most loved baby brand in the world. Previously, she spent 15 years as an anchor on the TODAY Show, NBC News, MSNBC, and CNN Headline News. In 2021, Smith left TV News to launch her company Rylan Media which takes her media insight and expertise to tackle corporate and individuals greatest branding and communications challenges. Meet Your Brain Bully The brain bully is that voice we all have in our mind that’s saying, “What if I screw this up?” or “Does Mark like what I’m saying?” or “What if the audience thinks I’m a total idiot?” Lynn realized after coaching hundreds of executives, after being a news anchor for 15 years, and having her own Brain Bully incidents many times, that almost 100% of us have a Brain Bully. If you don’t, you’re likely a sociopath or a narcissist. Just saying. Her brain bully creeping in was so common that Lynn decided “I have to create something in order to help myself and other people overcome this situation…”, and through self-examination she did just that. As a news anchor she was told many times (to her face) “You’re not good enough, you’ll never make it in TV”. Then she had her own internal audio loop; “Maybe they’re right, maybe I’m not good at this…” She had to create techniques to overcome her Brain Bully to sustain a long term career in television. Now, when she shares her methodology with executives it’s this lightbulb moment for them. “Oh, I shouldn’t ignore this voice, this voice is actually not real, or right, I just have to tame it, I need to know how to manage my Brain Bully”. How do you overcome your Brain Bully? Initially, early on, when Lynn was in her early twenties and started in television, beating her Brain Bully was the result of  pure grit and tenacity. It was a case of “just keep going”. Sometimes she didn’t have any reason or logic to believe in her eventual success, she just had to push through it. There was no other option. From seeing what good came from pushing through her Brain Bully dialogues she realized “Now I can have fun with this, and I can talk to my Brain Bully. I can say, ‘Brain Bully’, listen here, you’re through right now”. She parented her Brain Bully out of the situation. If you have kids, what would you say to them if they had a bully? What advice would you have to get rid of that bully? That’s what she did. You must literally name it and then tame it. You tame it by having those conversations with it. The next step? Reframe it. That Brain Bully could be an asset to you by keeping you on your toes. We don’t want to get complacent. It’s when we lose control of the dialogue that we have problems. So, you must name it, tame it and reframe it. We do a deeper dive into that methodology and discuss topics such as: What’s really holding you back in life, and it’s not your professional skillset or lack of one. How to find ways to do whatever it is you were meant to do with your life. Why just pushing your Brain Bully away won’t work. How to control your fight, flight, or freeze responses in your primitive brain. It doesn’t know the difference between you giving a presentation and you being attacked by a tiger. It’s protecting you from what you perceive as a threat. How to create a Brain Buddy and use it to your advantage. How and why you have complete control over which thoughts you focus on. How to show up as your authentic self. …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”        

LinkedIn is only a powerful tool if you know how to use it. My guest Donna Serdula and I discuss LinkedIn branding strategies in this episode. Donna has almost 20 years of experience on LinkedIn. She is the founder and president of Vision Board Media, a professional branding company that helps individuals and companies tell their unique stories on LinkedIn and beyond.     Getting Started Donna’s relationship with LinkedIn started in 2005. A colleague of Donna’s asked if she had heard of LinkedIn and said “You should join, you will get a lot of opportunities. Things just drop in your lap; you’ve got to sign up for it!” When she signed up, she saw that her profile looked like a resume. So, she copied and pasted her very dry, dull, out of date resume. She thought “Ok, opportunity, hit me! I can’t wait to see what happens here!”. Then nothing happened. It seemed like a huge waste of time. She continued with her professional life and didn’t think much more of that LinkedIn profile for quite some time. She accepted another job, no thanks to LinkedIn. She found herself in a much more cutthroat sales type of environment. She was dialing for dollars; she was cold calling. Suddenly LinkedIn started to cross her path again. She was using it to enhance her cold calling, she wanted to learn about the people were that she was calling before she spoke with them. One day she had an epiphany; she thought about all these people and every time she looked at their profiles, she was disappointed. She wanted to learn more about their story. Then it hit her, how was she showing up? She Googled herself and her LinkedIn profile was the first thing to pop up. She realized by lack of caring and lack of activity she was doing the same thing all the other people were doing – nothing. That’s when she realized that your LinkedIn profile isn’t your resume. It’s much bigger than that, it’s your online presence, often your first impression, and your brand. A BIG Shift in Thinking and Results… Donna contemplated how she wanted to be perceived and what goals she was striving to achieve. She looked at LinkedIn strategically. She created a new profile that was much more aligned with her desired personal brand. As soon as she did that amazing results started to happen. She became a magnet for opportunities. People were searching for someone like her, and she was popping up in the search results. People were seeing her as someone in their industry that is a thought leader and cares about other people in her industry. That’s when she realized she wanted to help other people do the same thing and get the same branding results. They need help with their resumes, help with their bios, help with strategically using LinkedIn as a networking tool, help with thought leadership assistance and so on. How to Build Your Brand to Get Opportunities to Come to You When it comes to LinkedIn certain things have changed, and certain things haven’t changed. When you think of the LinkedIn feed, that has changed massively. The LinkedIn profile hasn’t really changed, it’s still this huge area to really tell your story, to showcase your career trajectory, and it’s a place to get found. Most people forget that LinkedIn is a search engine. A lot of people think LinkedIn is just a professional social network. Many people on LinkedIn are there looking for someone like you. That’s one place where successful branding strategies begin. What terms do you want to be found for? You need to be peppering those terms throughout your profile, that way you can collide with opportunity. Many times, Donna finds big mistakes that people make are doing what she had been doing. For example, she was looking for opportunities in sales, but she was aligning herself as a job seeker. Her target audience wasn’t recruiters, it was sales managers and other people in her industry. She overhauled her profile, and the right people started to find her because she was align...

Networking needs to begin with the development of a successful mindset long before you get into tactics and strategies. I discuss how to develop that mindset in this episode with my guest, Dr. Ivan Misner. Dr. Ivan Misner is the Founder & Chief Visionary Officer of BNI (Business Network International), the world’s largest business networking organization. Founded in 1985, the organization now has over 11,100 chapters in 76 countries throughout every populated continent of the world. Last year alone, BNI generated 15.2 million referrals resulting in more than $23.4 billion dollars’ worth of business for its members.     When I asked how he learned the mindset for networking, Ivan replied “I have a lot of grey hair, I learned the hard way.” Fortunately, you don’t have to do that with a little guidance! One of the big problems with networking (the right way) is that we don’t teach that in colleges and universities. It’s not taught in schools anywhere in the world. So, what happens from lack of education? People go out and they have the wrong mindset; they use networking as a face-to-face cold calling opportunity. Some people teach to end every networking conversation with: “Here are three copies of my card, maybe you’ll pass them along to your friends”. If you don’t know, like and trust someone why would you do that? Ivan was recently the keynote speaker for an event in London with some 900 people in attendance. He asked the audience, “How many of you are here today to hopefully sell something?” 900 people raised their hands. “How many of you are here today hoping to buy something?” Nobody raised their hand. That’s a problem. V-C-P in Action That’s what Ivan calls the “networking disconnect”. People show up to networking events hoping to sell, but nobody’s there to buy. So why go? You go to work your way through the V-C-P Process. This is the beginning of the mindset. V-C-P stands for visibility, credibility, and profitability. First, you must have visibility. Of course, you want to let people know who you are and what you do. Then you must establish credibility, that’s the one that takes a long time. It doesn't happen overnight. It’s more of a marathon than it is a sprint. You must go into networking situations understanding that. Then the third is profitability. Once people know who you are, what you do, and they know you’re credible, they’re willing to pass you referrals because then you have this relationship with them. What tends to happen is we try to jump over visibility, jump over credibility, and get right to profitability. That’s not how it works. Ivan refers to that as “premature solicitation”. That’s the foundation of the mindset. It’s all about relationships, it’s not about transactions. We discuss how to develop those all-important relationships in this episode. We dive into topics such as: How to bridge the gap faster between visibility, credibility, and profitability without being “salesy”. Why givers gain, it pays to be a giver in the long run. How to make quality, meaningful introductions for your network. How to build credibility. Networking is a contact sport, we discuss how to win at that sport. What to say and do in your 1:1 networking meetings to move along the visibility-credibility-profitability (V-C-P) continuum faster. The best way to get more ongoing, qualified referrals with the GAINS methodology. What “profitability” looks like when it’s done the right way. Why the V-C-P continuum is a referral process, not a sales The (big) difference between a lead and a referral. The case for looking for referral partners at events instead of clients. Why the closing rate from referrals is significantly higher than from advertisements. More reasons why if you build a relationship with someone then you’re more likely to get referrals. Why the chances of a referral leading to closed business is much higher than hunting for your next sale...

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.

Entrepreneurs have unique challenges to address. They need peer groups more than most people. We discuss how to create successful peer group experiences for entrepreneurs in this episode with my guest, Craig James. Craig has been running entrepreneurial peer groups for Vistage for many years (Vistage has over 45,000 members in 35 different countries.). He views it as a calling to help fellow entrepreneurs. When you think about the typical entrepreneur, oftentimes they’re operating in isolation and they’re wearing many different hats. When it comes to making big decisions, they oftentimes don’t have many people to tap into to get purely objective advice. Craig addresses those challenges and more!     The Entrepreneurial Support Challenge When it comes to searching for support they might talk to a friend, they might talk to their attorney or maybe their accountant and so on. The problem with that is those people are being paid a fee and the entrepreneur isn’t necessarily going to get straight answers and certainly won’t be challenged in terms of their thinking. You get a lot of “yes men”, and that doesn’t do anybody any good. The benefit of a peer group as Craig has experienced is you can bring any issue you have, challenge, decision, an idea you want to run by people. You can run those things through a group of unbiased peers from noncompeting businesses in complete confidence and they have no skin in the game. They will tell you your baby is ugly (if that’s the case) but also how to make that baby pretty. In this episode we also cover topics such as: The importance of objective advice and the difference between objective and subjective advice. Two ways to start your own peer group. Characteristics of successful peer groups and their membership. How to create a “safe space” to share personal and professional issues. How to develop a growth-oriented mindset as an entrepreneur. The creation of a successful culture for entrepreneur peer groups. How to grow your peer group faster and get on the fast track to getting your first new members. How to maintain a successful peer group culture over time. …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 the Guest             I’ve been a Chair with Vistage Worldwide, the world’s foremost CEO development organization, since 2016. My passion is leading high-performing peer groups whose members outperform their competition, and who develop themselves as better leaders. I’m grateful to be in a field which affords me the opportunity to continually improve my life and the lives of those I am fortunate enough to be working with. Prior to Vistage, I spent a decade in what is today known as the Fintech industry with organizations such as Thomson Financial, Wolters Kluwer, and Zacks Investment Research. I’ve held senior positions in both established enterprises and entrepreneurial ventures, and founded a sales performance improvement business. I was a Contributing Editor to The New York Enterprise Report, which was the leading publication for small business owners in the New York City metropolitan area until its acquisition by SmartCEO in 2014, and subsequent dissolution. From 2003 – 2005, I was an Adjunct Instructor at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, and for several years was part of the organizing committee for the annual NYU Conference for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, as well as a breakout session presenter in each of those years. I was also a 5-year member and President of a local Toastmasters club. Connect with me on LinkedIn! https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigrjames/

Have you ever had someone at “Hello”? Someone that understood your branding and service offering and wanted to work with you? I discuss how to do that with my guest, Kevin Perlmutter. Kevin is the Chief Strategist and Founder of Limbic Brand Evolution - a brand strategy and neuromarketing consultancy, and creator of Limbic Sparks Brand Strategy, which taps into emotional insight to strengthen connections between brands and people. Kevin has been working in brand strategy for many years. When he started his career, he was in advertising but quickly realized that he wanted to be in the customer experience part of the business. He learned different ways to bring brand strategy together.     The Gap with Traditional Brand Strategy It wasn’t until he was at his next job working in a studio that creates sound and music for brands and entertainment companies that he got introduced to emotional insight and neuroscience-based thinking. Kevin created a research capability rooted in neuroscience where he learned about the limbic part of our brain and how people make instinctive emotional decisions that guide how they act, feel, and consume products and services as they relate to brands. He was on his way. Traditional brand strategy doesn’t address how to put emotional insight at the center of branding endeavors. Emotional insight is what guides us; it guides what we think and how we behave. Yet it’s often overlooked with most brand strategy campaigns. Kevin decided to create an approach to brand strategy that puts emotional insight at the center of campaigns. How and Why People Make Decisions Based on Emotion There’s a behavioral science truism which is “We buy on emotion and justify with logic”. Our brains are operating all the time at the subconscious level. We are deciding what we choose to think about and what we choose let go, moving on to the next thing that grabs our attention. We are emotional beings at heart and our brains are trained to guide us based on emotional instincts. If you’re interacting with a brand and it has a negative impact on you, that experience is going to be encoded in your memory longer than another generic, unemotional experience. We’re highly attuned to something positive, highly attuned to something negative, or we’re indifferent to the situation. You want your brand to create positive experiences and emotions with your target audience. We discuss how to do that. In this episode we also dive into: How to create instinctive positive responses that Kevin calls “Limbic Sparks” to have your customers at hello and keep them coming back for more. How to tap into peoples’ positive emotions instead of turning them off. The problems and pitfalls with traditional brand strategy and how to avoid them. How to have conversations that allow your brand to be relevant to your target audience. How to create shared emotional motivation. How to create a brand benefit and invitation rooted in what your potential clients are looking for. How to create “Limbic Sparks” and emotional attachment with a new service. How to create a meaningful benefit for potential clients and then a well-crafted invitation to bring them into your world. What type of people to reach out to and what research questions to ask them when you’re launching a new service offering. The fastest way for a brand to fail. How to build and maintain a successful reputation. How to keep people’s attention when you get it and how to stay top of mind. …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 the Guest             Kevin Perlmutter, Chief Strategist and Founder of Limbic Brand Evolution - a brand strategy and neuromarketing consultancy, and creator of Limbic Sparks® Brand Strategy, which taps into emotional insight to strengthen conn...

Starting a podcast is no simple task. If you have the right strategies, it can be a fun, fruitful endeavor. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, John Golden.     John is a globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Notes. Around 2020 John and his team were migrating their blog. The question “Does the world need more product blogs?” popped into their heads. They decided to do something different. John suggested they start an online magazine. They wanted to create meaningful and valuable content to educate people about niche business topics. They reached out to people to get them to contribute, but with a twist. John started interviewing them. He thought “Why would we create content from only our point of view when there’s global experts out there with genius to share. So, they started doing that. Their podcast was born. They wanted to bring experts’ expertise to the world and give those people a platform to share their genius with John’s audience. What’s the starting point? The place you need to start is with your “Why?”. Think about things like why are you starting the podcast? If you’re starting a business podcast and you think “I’m going to start this business podcast to generate leads for my business” That’s one way you can go about it. If that’s what you’re going to do, then you need to be very specific about who your target audience is and what will be of value to them. That decides what your interview topics will be. You must do your research and get intelligently targeted with your efforts. Otherwise, you’re going to start your podcast and you’re going to be frustrated because you’re never going to build an audience if your podcast topics aren’t focused on your audience’s needs. One key point? It’s better to have a small audience of the right people than a large audience of the wrong people. That’s when you must sit down at the beginning and answer “Why am I starting this podcast and what is the purpose of it?” Will you be happy with your podcast being very targeted and very niche or do you want to go broader? If you’re going to go broader why and how are you going to get there? Unfortunately, a lot of people just jump in before they’ve answered their “Why?”. That’s the first problem to avoid. We get into more things to avoid and strategies for business podcasting success during our conversation. In this episode we also discuss: How to discover and decide on a target audience. Great advice for new hosts. The importance of getting honest feedback and constructive criticism when you get started. The case for not using “canned questions” that you send to your guests ahead of time. How to embrace and be your authentic self as a host. When a new podcaster can expect to get traction with listeners and viewers. The qualities of successful podcasts needed for faster growth. Guerrilla marketing techniques and strategies to grow your audience base. The power of guesting on other peoples’ podcasts. How to approach podcasters to be a guest on their shows. How to sell yourself as a host. Once you get traction, how to maintain it and grow it for the long haul. …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 the Guest             John Golden, a globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP!

Traditional networking doesn’t work anymore. These days it’s all about meaningful relationships. I discuss how to build them in this episode with my guest, Daniel Andrews. Daniel is a native of Columbia, South Carolina where he currently resides after an absence of 13 years. He owns a business that shows businesspeople how to identify, find, meet, and nurture professional relationships with Key Referral Partners. Fundamentally, he shows businesspeople how to STOP “networking,” and START building true networks. This is his fourth career; he’s been successfully self-employed for 36 years (50 if you start with the lemonade stand in first grade).     Networking Origins Originally, Daniel wasn’t good at networking. He decided to work at being good. Some painful lessons, mentoring, reading, doing things right and taking notes and doing things wrong and taking notes eventually led to networking success. He believes that the way we set expectations for other people and confirm our expectations of them is very important. Initially Daniel believed that sales were referral based, but in a very casual way. He thought that getting referrals was networking, and later he discovered that that isn’t the case. The moment that it became clear to him he was in the insurance business doing employee benefit work and got a “referral” that was much more. It was an endorsement. His experience up until then was an introduction was just a hand-off to hopefully get a sale. In direct sales that was enough because he could demonstrate the product that he was selling. Then someone personally vouched for Daniel’s integrity. In that moment he realized that an introduction is not a high-quality referral; an endorsement is a high-quality referral. We build networks because people have credibility with people that we have credibility with. Daniel didn’t need to get introduced to his next client, he had to borrow the credibility he had with a friend. The credibility that his friend had with another person got him where Daniel needed to go. That was the big light bulb moment. His wingman wasn’t there to introduce Daniel, he was there to endorse Daniel. How to Start a Relationship the Right Way Your attitude must be one of mutuality; you need to see who you can serve and who you can be served by. Daniel says this isn’t reciprocity, he doesn’t like that word at all. Reciprocity usually means that people are keeping score. When he meets somebody in a networking situation, Daniel will give what he can to the other person during their interaction, regardless of the time frame. At the same time, he’s evaluating if there’s a reason to have another, longer meeting. As far as what it looks like stylistically and what the actual actions are, Daniel’s always probing for higher value between the two of them. Traditional networking is “speed prospecting”; people take a one-dimensional model: They meet someone, try to figure out if the other person is a prospect, yes/no/maybe, get a business card and move on. Nobody likes being treated like a prospect until they’ve identified themselves as a prospect and want to buy. There’s a better way to build business relationships and we’ll look at that. In this episode we also discuss: How to get out of “speed prospecting” mode. The best thing you can talk about when you’re meeting someone for the first time. How to gain trust with potential prospects. How to know which relationships to build and maintain, and which ones to let go. How to bridge that gap between serving and traditional selling. How to foster a referral relationship when there’s not an immediate referral to be given. Why not keeping score in business relationships is a good thing. …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 the Guest            

Becoming a great podcast guest is a blend of art and science that you can master with the right strategies. My guest Noémi Beres and I discuss some of those strategies. Noémi is the Co-Owner of the Podcast Connections podcast booking agency. She helps entrepreneurs and business owners enrich their lives through connections, sharing their knowledge, and connecting them to quality podcast shows.     Getting into podcasting was a happy accident for Noémi. She became an entrepreneur in 2007 in the social media marketing and online business travel spaces with her husband. Then the pandemic abruptly halted all travel plans in 2020. Fortunately, they had a mentor that advised them to start a business in the podcasting world because it was booming back in 2020. Noémi hadn’t even listened to podcasts before then. That advice provided them with the pivot that would change the course of their business lives. Preparing to be a Great Podcast Guest First, you must do some self-reflection and figure out what your niche for guesting is. That’s the most important step. Ask yourself “What is my business is about and what stories do I want to share?” You also ask, “Who’s attention am I trying to get, who is my ideal listener?” Then, explore different podcasting platforms and find podcasts that align with your message and your target markets. Once you find a few podcasts, create a document with all their contact information. That gives you a “hit list” of industry specific podcasts which means you have the beginning of a marketing plan to kickstart your podcast guesting journey. Outreach Strategies for Potential Podcast Guests After you define your podcast target markets it’s time to start your outreach. Each podcaster has their preferred method of reaching them. Some podcasts have a submission form, which is the easiest option. The other way is to find their email address and craft a pitch. Your pitch must stand out because podcasts hosts get a ton of emails. Noémi suggests you listen to a couple of your target’s podcast episodes and tell the host, specifically, what you liked most about the episodes. This lets them know you took the time to “get to know their show”. You could also leave a five-star review for them on a podcast platform and let them know that you did. Once you get a podcaster’s attention the fun begins! In this episode we discuss: What great guests do differently than average or bad guests. How to prepare for your interviews beforehand. The best way to answer questions during your interviews. Common mistakes that many podcast guests make and how to avoid them. What to do immediately before your interviews. What podcast hosts can do to help their guests be great guests. The case for not sending “canned questions" to the podcast hosts. How long you can expect it to take to become a great podcast guest. What great podcast guests do after the interview. …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 the Guest             Noémi Beres helps entrepreneurs and business owners enrich their lives through connections, sharing their knowledge, and connecting them to quality podcast shows. In addition, Noemi is dedicated to helping experts grow their businesses with interviews. Noémi started working in online marketing in 2007. She has a Master’s Degree in Danish Literature and Language; she is a linguist, content creator, and “master organizer.” She loves making hand-sewn collages on canvas in her free time and playing on her hang and frame drum. She is also a walker. Connect with Noémi! Website: https://www.podcastconnections.co/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noemiberes/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/noemi_beres_/ Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought le...

Before you can lead others, you must learn how to lead yourself. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Kathy Motlagh. Kathy is the CEO and Founder of ThinkVirtues, is a visionary in a true sense. With a profound commitment to harnessing human potential, Kathy delves deep into the complexities of human behavior, unlocking the latent power within everyone she guides.     It was Kathy’s own journey to her own authentic power that really led her to learn the importance of self-leadership. Along the way she’s been fortunate enough to be coached by some of the world’s best coaches and now is a successful coach. Kathy noticed with all the people she’s served, helped and worked with is that the common ingredient with entrepreneurs that grow phenomenal businesses is they have a beautiful leadership quality not only for their teams but for themselves. When it comes to entrepreneurship self-leadership is extremely important. The reason that a lot of businesses fail is not because it’s a bad idea or it’s a bad business model, it’s the entrepreneur’s lack of self-leadership. That’s why it’s important for all entrepreneurs to understand that leadership is one of the most important components of running a successful business whether you’re leading a team or just yourself. What drives us, what gives us that incentive to get out of bed and execute? That’s an important topic to understand. We need to understand who we are authentically, what’s deep within us. It’s not dictated by exterior forces or how we grew up. Those have influence over us in who we think we are. When we tap into our authentic self, which is really taking the time to understand our past and what impact our past still has on us today. Many people never take the time to understand their past to release and let go of the negative aspects of their past. We delve into that and more. In this episode we discuss topics such as: How to work through your past after you discover the negative aspects of it. What you need to do once you let go of the past. The four-pillar approach to creating successful self-leadership. The importance of emotional management in leadership. The other things that hold you back from your true authentic self. The definition of self-leadership. How to connect to your authentic self. How to raise your level of consciousness. How to maintain a higher level of consciousness once you achieve it. …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 the Guest             Kathy Motlagh is an esteemed transformational coach and strategic advisor, renowned for her deep impact on top CEOs and leaders worldwide. As the visionary creator of the "Power of Authenticity" workshop, Kathy has pioneered a proprietary framework that revolutionizes personal and professional development. This transformative approach has proven life-changing for many, enhancing leadership and fostering profound growth. Under Kathy’s leadership, ThinkVirtues has evolved beyond a mere platform; it has become a crucible for profound transformation. Her training under the legendary John Maxwell has not only shaped her into a paragon of leadership excellence but has also empowered her to craft initiatives that penetrate the core of our being. The "Power of Authenticity" program, Kathy’s brainchild, represents a paradigm shift, unlocking dormant powers within each individual and promoting a culture of authenticity and effective leadership. Click here to connect with Kathy on LinkedIn Click here to learn more about ThinkVirtues Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders!  

Entrepreneurs can be their own media company if they have the right strategies. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Gresham “Gresh” W. Harkless Jr. Gresh is the founder of Blue16 Media and CBNation. Blue16 Media uses media & technology to change lives. These media properties include Blue16 Marketing-a digital marketing agency providing digital marketing services including web design, website support & SEO services.     When Gresh was younger we didn’t have the tools that we have today that can connect us to the rest of the world instantaneously. As a child he would write a newsletter about things that were going on in his family and they would send care packages to his dad (who was in the military) every month. In those care packages were Gresh’s newsletters. He also sold subscriptions to people close to the family. Fast forward to adulthood; Gresh founded a digital marketing company. A lot of their philosophy is around building things to help solve problems just like he was when he was his 10-year-old self. Discovering Who You Are Gresh believes that a lot of time there’s a lot of noise in our lives, and that happens at different times and different stages. Usually, when you’re a kid, you have a little more leeway to do whatever you’re interested in. Many people don’t have expectations that they have to be a doctor or lawyer, or you should be doing this, or you should be doing that. If you look back at seeds that were planted when you were a kid, you will discover what really lights you up and what you really want to be in the world. That’s what happened with Gresh. Media Strategy Questions There are three questions you need to ask and answer to start a successful media strategy. Who are the people that you’re trying to target? You need to paint a picture from an avatar perspective. You want to understand their problems so you can provide solutions to their problems. What resources will you need? These are most often money and time; you need to know where to get them. What does success look like for you? A clear definition of success will help you get there quicker. In this episode we also discuss: Gresh’s definition of media. Why it’s important to have a clear target market and how to define one. The correlation between target markets and the resources you’ll need to reach them. How to compile the right ingredients for a successful media strategy. How to create and execute your next media strategy. How to start a podcast that best suits your “zone of genius”. Why your definition of success will change over time and how to keep up with the changes. Why answering “Why” should connect you to a greater purpose. …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 the Guest             Gresham “Gresh” W. Harkless Jr. is the founder of Blue16 Media and CBNation. Blue16 Media uses media & technology to change lives. These media properties include Blue16 Marketing-a digital marketing agency providing digital marketing services including web design, website support & SEO services. CBNation consists of media properties (blogs, podcasts and videos) helping the business community succeed. Central to Blue16’s marketing philosophy is that You Are a Media Company and that every organization is in the media business and can strategically leverage marketing tools, platforms, and “ingredients” to reach their goals. Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders!

I’m excited to have the King of Sales, Jeffrey Gitomer, as my guest again for part two of this interview. We’re discussing some of his golden nuggets of sales advice from 20+ years of experience. Jeffrey’s books have appeared on major bestseller lists more than 500 times and have sold millions of copies Worldwide. Jeffrey has also delivered over 2,500 speeches worldwide. He was awarded the designation of Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) by the National Speakers Association. The CSP award has been given fewer than 500 times in the past 25 years and is the association's highest earned designation.     Successful Sales Presentations When it comes to sales presentations you need to approach them the right way. Jeffrey makes the clear distinction that you need to come in with an idea, not a pitch, especially if you’re selling a service. When it comes time to have the sales conversation, he shares how to eliminate your competition. You need to say something like: “Mr. Jones, the last time you hired a consultant, tell me about the ideas they brought in. Tell me about the things that sparked you to hire them” and listen closely to the response. Continue with: “I have a couple of ideas today that I’ve brought with me. All I’m asking is if you like them, you run with them, fair enough?” That could be enough to close the sale. Let’s use training for another example. Usually, it’s a guy in a classroom setting, pontificating about a few ideas that he thinks you need to be aware of. But Jeffrey’s approach and conversation is entirely different. He tells his prospect “If you want your people trained, we’re going to call your top ten customers and set something up. We’re going to hire three new people and have them work one day at each of the top ten customers for free. At the end of two weeks, you’re going to know why the customer bought, how they use what you sell, and some ideas about what you can take to another customer because you’re going to know why the previous customers bought from you.” He then continues with: “Your salespeople are going to walk into the next prospects’ offices and say, ‘Would you like to know why the last ten people bought from us?’ and they’re going to make the sale because of their unique approach.” That’s sales strategy gold right there! In this episode we continue our discussion about topics such as: What’s wrong with most marketing campaigns and how to fix those problems. The difference between outcomes and results and why outcomes are better to present. Some critical questions you need to ask decision makers to get them to buy your services. The two things that make a “good idea” to present to potential clients. What are you doing together with people that you can relate to so that you can have experiences to share? How to eliminate your sales slide deck and replace it with shared experiences and shared values. Why traditional “discovery calls” are a waste of your time and your prospect’s time. What first time calls should look like and who they should be with. Why picking up the phone and calling a prospect for the first-time trumps email and social media. How to understand why people buy instead of trying traditional sales tactics. Why finding shared values is better than getting “rapport”. How to be perceived as a person of value, not just another salesperson. The line you should open with during first time meetings. …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 the Guest             Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Sales Bible, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Black Book of connections, and The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude. Jeffrey’s books have appeared on major bestseller lists more than 500 times and have sold millions of c...

I’m excited to have the King of Sales, Jeffrey Gitomer, as my guest for my 100th episode. We’re discussing some of his golden nuggets of sales advice from his 20+ years of experience. Jeffrey’s books have appeared on major bestseller lists more than 500 times and have sold millions of copies Worldwide. Jeffrey has also delivered over 2,500 speeches worldwide. He was awarded the designation of Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) by the National Speakers Association. The CSP award has been given fewer than 500 times in the past 25 years and is the association's highest earned designation.     It's Not about "Pain Points" First, we dive into a common fallacy: Sales is about finding your potential clients’ pain points. When it comes to finding pain points, Jeffrey says his response is “It’s none of your business.” His pain is none of your business. If your prospect tells you their pain, it’s because they’re volunteering it. If you ask them for their pain, it’s none of your business. In sales, people say, “It’s all about the pain points” and Jeffrey says they’re all wrong. Jeffrey does just the opposite, he’s going to start with the pleasure. He’d rather find out where they went to college, where they went on their last vacation and so on. Jeffrey wants to discover things that he may have in common with them because he doesn’t have their pain in common. He’s going to go beyond pain and then he’s going to go beyond pleasure and find shared values. It's all about Shared Values If you can find those shared values, you can create a deeper, more meaningful relationship with your prospect. It’s about finding a shared value, not starting with a shared value. You don’t know what the shared value is until you start to talk about it; but you’re not going to discover it if you’re trying to find out what’s wrong with the person you’re talking to. You need to ask better questions. In this episode Jeffrey shares how to do that and we also discuss: Why salespeople need to understand where they get their opinions from. What makes a good (and bad) sales manager. Why you need to understand that sales isn’t about selling and what it’s really Why “normal conversation” wins over “sales conversation” every time. How to start a sales conversation with humor to drive the conversation forward. How to present yourself as a relatable person to close the deal. How to know when to stop selling and start closing. The best question to ask a decision maker as soon as you walk in the door. More questions to ask to close the deal faster. Nuggets of wisdom such as “sales are not made by telling, they’re made by asking” …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 the Guest             Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Sales Bible, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Black Book of connections, and The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude. Jeffrey's books have appeared on major bestseller lists more than 500 times and have sold millions of copies Worldwide. Jeffrey gives public and customized corporate seminars, runs annual sales meetings, and conducts live and virtual training programs on selling, YES! Attitude, trust, customer service and customer loyalty, and personal development. Jeffrey has delivered over 2,500 personalized and customized speeches worldwide. His "Insiders Club" and "Sales Mastery Program" have become the go-to place for sales content, coaching and community. They contain Jeffrey's practical sales information, strategies, and ideas that start with a skills-based assessment and real-world lessons. Ongoing sales motivation and reinforcement to help salespeople learn more to earn more. In August 2008, Jeffrey was inducted into the National Speakers Association's Speaker Hall of Fame.

If you want to accelerate the growth of your business, storytelling is one of the best ways to do it. That’s what I discuss in this episode with my guest, John Hetherington. John is an entrepreneur and international speaker teaching entrepreneurs how to leverage storytelling to grow their business.     After John graduated with a degree in electrical engineering his career started in financial services. He believed that you get further by working harder. Work long hours, be first at the desk and last to leave. That’s what he did and he watched people getting promoted over him time and time again. What he realized is that you share your value through stories. That realization lead him to start his own business. It became teaching people that success is all about how you convey your story, share your message and put your value across. John studied a lot of movies that demonstrated the classic “hero’s journey”. What he found is that doesn’t always translate into the business world. John created frameworks which break down how to tell stories and get your message across. It Starts with You Before you share stories with other people it starts with the story that you tell yourself. If the story in your head is I can only achieve this, I can only achieve a certain level of revenue, ultimately you’re limiting your behaviors and your potential. The technology sector was all about finding problems and fixing them. When John started his business, he realized that to succeed you also have to focus on opportunities and share your grander vision. The story really starts with what you tell yourself every day, every morning. The Four “P’s” to Create a Powerful Start to Your Day It starts with a daily productivity plan by setting yourself up for success. Before you start with email, before you start with meetings, sit down and write out what you want to achieve for the day. If you’re starting your day off the right way the rest of your day tends to flow better. When you immediately dive into emails and receive a bad email, that sets the tone for the day. You need to prevent that from happening. You start by connecting with your purpose, then the project(s) you’re going to focus on, then the people who do you need to reach out to, and finally your priorities, or your to-do list. From there you set aside time on your calendar for those four “P’s” and you’re off to a great start. We also discuss: How to create an “insight sandwich” to get your message across in presentations. How to create successful growth projects. How to craft your story to appeal to different types of people. The importance of having and sharing a clear vision. Why you need to tell stories instead of just sharing data. What makes a good “hook” to get your audiences’ attention. The first thing you need to do after you get your audiences' attention. The components of a great story. …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 the Guest             John Hetherington is a Technology Strategist, International Speaker and founder of We Deliver Your Vision. He is an expert in using to Technology to scale business and grow revenue and he helps Entrepreneurs use Storytelling to accelerate business growth. John has 10 years strategic consulting experience with Deloitte and Ernst & Young and 25 years delivering technology projects in UK and Canada. He lives in Calgary but travels around the world for his clients and speaking. Connect with John on LinkedIn Learn more about John's company, "We Deliver Your Business" Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders!