The Idea Climbing Podcast

If you want great things to happen in your life you have the opportunity and power to manifest them. You just need the right strategies. I discuss some of them in this episode with my guest, Francois Lupien.     Francois Lupien is a dynamic executive coach, mentor and speaker whose experience includes successfully working with Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey (7 Habits of Highly Effective People) and as a consultant with Bob Proctor (Movie: The Secret). Achieving excellence in everything he puts his mind to, Francois has been a Tae Kwon Do Gold Medal Canadian champion, a Top Real Estate agent for 11 years with Remax, and a serial entrepreneur with multiple successful 6-figure businesses. Francois is here to serve and help you thrive! The Beginnings of Manifestation for Francois Manifesting greatness started with when Francois was six years old. His mom had, when she was young, roller skates, not roller blades, four wheels, two in the front, two in the back. It was an adjustable thing. And she decided to put them on little cowboy boots of for Francois. She told him to go for it. Well, he tried this thing and he fell and it hurt like crazy. He came back home and was not happy. Francois’ mom looked at him and asked “What's the matter?” He told her it hurts, and he didn’t want to try skating any more. She goes, hmm, come with me. Francois remembers, as if it was yesterday, his mom having an adjustment key. She took those roller skates, put them on her feet, And started demonstrating how she would roller skate on the street with Francois sitting on the sidewalk. Then she came back to him and she knelt in front of him. She said with a smile “You can do anything you want in life if you really want it. Are you ready?” He said “Yes”. And then as he started skating, she said, “You got this.” Then she went back into the house as Francois skated all around. She unknowingly created a manifesting monster. A week later Francois attached a rope to one of his friend's bikes and he was water skiing down the street, so to speak, with his roller skates. From then, it's just been on and on with his self-belief journey. His mom always told him “Whatever you want in life, you go for it, you can make it happen.” How can greatness be created? Francois would say by someone believing in you first, then, as a result of that, you end up believing in yourself. How to Find That Someone to Believe in You Francois was blessed that it was his family that believed in him first. Yet for anybody else, search, dig, knock on as many proverbial doors and ask for help. A wise man once said “Knock and it shall be opened and ask and it shall be answered”. You just need to ask and the good news is there's so many people in this world right now that you can easily get access to. Once you find someone try to get an understanding of what that person is doing that you want to do. And yes, many people may “look good on paper” and yet they don't deliver. Be sure to do your due diligence but don’t be afraid to talk to more people. Francois has a belief that everybody is good in some way, even if it’s deep down. The quote “Be kind always” applies here. If you encounter someone having a bad day or they're not feeling well, yes, there's something broken inside of them for now. So don't be the one that kicks them while they’re down. Be the one that uplifts other people. And as you do that, one of Francois’ great mentors, Bob Proctor always said, leave everyone with the impression of increase. Make everybody feel better after they met with you than before they met you. So, in a nutshell, you must look for it. You need to find out what type of person they are. You must be able to figure out who's who, what's what, and dig, ask deep questions. And if there's an opportunity for a connection, well, go for it! The important thing is to remember you can't do it alone. You and I cannot do it alone. That's for sure. We need others. Francois always says,

Effective storytelling is an essential component to successful sales results. In this episode I dive into the components of “story selling” from the stage with my guest, Sylvain “Sly” Haché.     Sly is an ex-chronic stutterer who has created a new public speaking system that turns regular people into ‘‘naturals’‘—without scripts, stress or memorization. Clients include international keynote speakers, TV hosts and national trainers. His methods have helped people from 18 to 81 years old get over stage fright and his systems have replaced yearly incomes with 20-minute talks and produced multiple 6-figure days from the stage. The Beginning of Sly’s Story Selling Journey Everybody knows you must tell stories if you want to sell something, especially from the stage. Sly’s first experiences on stage weren’t the best to say the least. One time he had a panic attack on stage and because of that panic attack he made no sales. And at the time he was still a part-time stutterer. Picture this. He started out as a chronic stutterer, meaning he was somebody that couldn’t easily form cohesive sentences. On top of that Sly was starting to learn English. He went from being a chronic stutterer in French (his native tongue) to now teaching international keynote speakers, TV hosts, and national trainers while speaking English. Getting Into Story Selling from the Stage The story selling part comes from the fact that if you don't have the proper conversational frame straight from the beginning of when you open your mouth on stage, it's nearly impossible to get people to take the action you want them to take by the end of your presentation. The only reason people do something is because they feel like doing it. The reason they don't do something is because they don't feel like doing it. So, the question becomes, how can you make people feel like doing the thing you want them to do? And how can you get them to do it when you ask them to do it so that your conversion rates go up, your buy-in goes up, and your sales go up? One of the best ways is to be a professionally trained conversational hypnotist. But it takes a long time and it's a difficult process. How do you get similar results without being a professionally trained conversational hypnotist so that you can do it without scripts, without stress and without memorization? The best way is to tell stories. So, when people hear that, they think, well, that’s easy enough. I just have to tell a story. So let me tell the story about how I discovered whatever the solution is to my audiences problems. And they start telling stories that, frankly, their audiences don't care about. You can't be making up stories just to say what you want the audience to hear, because otherwise it's inauthentic. How do you tell your story in a way that people care about your story? And so it makes them take the action that want them to so that they end up doing what you want them to do? Buy, vote, click, download, swipe, stop polluting the ocean, whatever you want them to do by the end of your story. With any story you're telling, you need to be mindful of this: What the purpose of each part of your story is so that you can chunk your information based on when the audience is ready to move on to the next section of taking some kind of action.  Where Do Stories Start? You start to build stories by meeting your audience where they are. It might sound simple, but you can't know where they are before you actually know for sure. If you don't know where they are, you must ask them. When Sly is story selling he shares stories about him this system to have six figure days selling from the stage. He gets his audience to ask themselves “How do I have a six figure days” What he doesn’t do is immediately “go in for the kill” by just saying “Do you want to work with me? here's what you have to do. Let's do it. You ready?” That doesn't work. Then you need to know what their pain points are.

A seven-figure income doesn’t start with a business plan; it starts with a mindset. I discuss how to create a millionaire mindset in this episode with my guest, Cole Vandee.     Cole is a strategic marketing mind behind more than 300 million dollars in found revenue generated for clients ranging from celebrity coaches to DTC brands in the pet industry. With his unique perspective to bridge the gap between what's working now and what the future marketplace will demand, Cole has catapulted several brands to 9 figures and beyond. The Early Pathway to Cole’s Millionaire Mindset While Cole’s life isn’t exactly the normal rags to riches story, he grew up in the American Midwest on the border of Illinois and Iowa on the Mississippi River in a small farm town. Success in his town, or even the rest of the country for that matter, wasn't anything like what we see on the Internet today. Success in his hometown was more along the lines of having a sixty-thousand-dollar home. You work at a factory making 18 bucks an hour. You drive a pickup truck. And that was considered wealthy for the most part where Cole grew up. There were a few outliers that owned local businesses and were doing better than most, but nothing like we see today with YouTubers, TikTokers, and internet celebrities. Cole had a burning desire because he believed more was available for him in this life, but he didn't know exactly what that meant or what it felt like. He chose to go into sales because it provided a virtually unlimited paycheck because of commissions. If Cole worked really hard and got really good at what he did, he could make as much money as he wanted. That seemed to be the path to follow at the time. You have to start somewhere, right? The Beginning of the Path to Success Cole took on a few random sales jobs. He sold auto parts for a while and then moved on to selling Cutco knives door-to-door. Then he got into car sales but didn't love the industry. He knew he was there to learn how to sell cars, take care of customers, and then move on to do something better. Cole was bridging the gap between not having a resume and having a resume to be able to get a job he actually wanted. Rather than continuing to add to his resume, Cole quickly moved on to owning his own businesses. He started many different companies. A lot of them failed. Reflecting, Cole says that most of his companies have failed at this point. He’s only had a handful of things that have actually worked; but those few made all the difference. To date he’s been a part of many companies that scaled up from zero to millions of dollars, millions of dollars to tens of millions of dollars and tens of millions of dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars. What Most People Don’t See or Know About When it Comes to Creating A Millionaire Mindset Cole believes the most important thing is to understand that your favorite, more mature business gurus out there that are very successful today got to their first million dollars without the internet. They weren't doing it with paid ads. They weren't relying on funnels. They weren't relying on marketing efforts. They weren't relying on Instagram views or anything else like that. They were picking up the phone and talking to human beings and making money with them and then moving on to the next human beings and making money with them and so on. The Starting Point of YOUR Millionaire Mindset When Cole reflects and compares himself to other people that have gone on to build multimillion dollar organizations (and some that have gone on to billions), it's the same mindset across the board. It's an audacious belief that you're going to make it work. When you look at it as an investment on paper, starting a business is the worst possible thing you could ever do. Almost every single business that starts will fail. Of the ones that do succeed, most of those will fail within the next 12 months. Of those that make it that far,

Public speaking is an excellent way to grow your business as an entrepreneur. You just need the right strategies and ways to get started. We discuss some of them in this episode with my guest Lisa Reid.     As the Founder of Get Speaking Gigs Now, Leisa trains entrepreneurs who want to use public speaking as a soul-fulfilling business growth strategy. Clients who work closely with her “Get Their Talk Ready to Rock” and build their speaking skills and confidence through the Speaker's Training Academy. Leisa has booked and delivered over 600 speaking engagements, and she teaches her clients all of the strategies she uses to get booked, stay booked and monetize their talks. In this episode, she will share the #1 secret she uses to get speaking gigs along with other golden nuggets of advice! Why and How Lisa Got Started in Public Speaking For Lisa, public speaking is near and dear to her heart because she has always wanted to be a teacher. Even as a kid she remembers teaching her friends gymnastics amongst other things. It wasn't so much that she needed to be the center of attention or to have the spotlight on her. It was just that when she knew that she could help other people understand something quicker, easier, better; she had to do it. It was very fulfilling. Now she’s basically a teacher disguised as a speaker. She knows that because she works with entrepreneurs all the time, there's quite a few of us who have that same type of drive for teaching. When we get the opportunity to teach, we get a natural high, a shot of dopamine. Something amazing happens when you give the gift of teaching to an audience whether it's virtual in person. You know that what you're offering is going to help them solve problems or help make something easier for them. That’s a very fulfilling way to market your business! Leisa believes that people don't get into business to do the sales and marketing themselves. They are suddenly surprised how big of a part of their responsibility is sales and marketing. She loves teaching speaking because it’s one of the easiest and most fulfilling ways to do effective sales and marketing for them to market their businesses. Many entrepreneurs welcome that opportunity. Why Speaking Should Be a Big Part of Your Sales and Marketing as an Entrepreneur Public speaking is especially important if you have something that many people haven't heard of; such as your own philosophy or framework about how to do something. Then there are people who have problems that you can help with, but they don't know it yet. They may need more information than they can get by reading a synopsis of what you do on your website. Speaking always allows you to educate people and it allows you to educate more than one person at a time. With many live and virtual presentations, you can even record them and have evergreen marketing and branding content for future prospects. That means there are a lot of ways that you can duplicate your efforts while attracting your ideal clients and potential referral partners. That’s a great reason to get speaking coach. When you find someone that you want it’s because you can relate to their story. You like their personality. You like their humor. You like how fast (or slow) they talk. They resonate with you because it seems like they’re genuine. That's the kind of person that you should work with. The Starting Point of Public Speaking as a Sales and Marketing Tool  In Leisa’s world the starting point of working with her is when you're ready to get your talk “ready to rock”. That means you need to decide what your talk is going to be about, what your title is going to be, what your learning points are, your description of the talk, and what your call to action will be. That's what she means when she says, “Get your talk ready to rock.” When you say that you're a speaker and update your LinkedIn profile to include “speaker” you’re claiming that title.

The epitome of leadership is the ability to share your leadership story and leave a legacy. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Shelley Goldstein. Shelley Goldstein is a leadership development coach specializing in communications affectionately known by clients as "The Coach Whisperer". The moniker stems from her intuitive ability to pinpoint untapped potential in leaders and cultivate it into speaking mastery with remarkable ease and speed.     As the architect of Remarkable Speaking, Shelley has created a proprietary framework that has evolved into a global leadership development platform. Rooted in 30-plus years of experience in leadership, entrepreneurship, marketing, and design, her expertise allows her to creatively integrate time-saving drills, persuasive storytelling, and behavioral psychology, driving significant real-world impact. Your Leadership Story Your leadership story begins with the origins of why and how we do things. It can go back to your youth when you’re joining a music program or getting involved in sports. It's a study of behaviors involved with those activities. It's those stories that build one on top of the other that become your legacy, who you are today, and why you lead the way you do when situations call or leadership. Shelley’s Leadership Story: Back to the Beginning Shelley says her story goes back to when she was eight or nine years old and her and a group her friends put together a neighborhood newspaper. The three of them were about the same age. They included hosted a beauty pageant and had articles and recipes that they got from their neighbors. Being able to organize that at such a young age and publish it month after month had a profound impact on leadership in Shelley’s adult life. Looking back, she learned a lot about leadership skills and taking the initiative at a very young age. Some of the things she carries forward with her today is the idea of sharing that responsibility and delegating to other people. Whether she was aware of it or not, it just naturally happened. And Shelley believes that's what helps her be a better leader today; that sharing of ideas and giving people autonomy to create some of the most innovative, creative ideas of their childhoods. Leadership Showing Up Shelley remembers her earlier career as a costume designer. She had the responsibility of creating a look, making sure the costumes could be perceived from the audience. That meant meaning when that curtain goes up, she can't be up there with the assistants hemming and sewing. It was showtime. Shelley believes that whole idea of “it's showtime” was an early leadership development experience in her adult life. She realized that she can't do everything. She had to prioritize and realized you can’t sweat the small stuff. To lead through that and make sure her team understood that the work that they were doing as individuals contributed to their combined success; and that bigger vision of what things need to happen. The Beginning of Leadership in Your Adult Life It's so hard to say where it actually begins. If you have an idea, let's start with the incubating. You have a great idea. How you strategize that, how you move forward with that, that's an innate leadership skill. I'm going to have a marketing strategy. I'm going to have a sales strategy. I'm going to develop my brand this way. Those are all leadership skills because you're making important decisions. Those stories of how you eventually do that, that becomes the legacy. That becomes your competitive advantage and unique story to only you. The stories are so important because that's where the money flows. Money is how people respond to the stories. That's what people buy into. That's the journey. The Structure of a Great Leadership Story A great leadership story is the journey, the mistakes, the decisions you made when you were building your business. You know what? I'm going to go with my marketing strategy and h...

Creating and embracing your leadership promise can change your life and your business as an entrepreneur. You just need a strategy for creating it and then maintaining it over time. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Jason Hewlett. Jason has delivered thousands of presentations around the world; performed in every major casino in Las Vegas; inspired the Troops in wartime Afghanistan; and authored “The Promise to The One”. He utilizes entertainment, musical impressions and comedy to teach leaders how to capture their unique Leadership Promise and Signature Moves.   In the Beginning There was Leadership Teaching about creating and embracing your leadership promise has taken Jason years to create the language around what your leadership promise is. He’s been teaching it subliminally, he believes, for decades. He now believes your leadership promise is to identify, clarify, and magnify the signature moves of the people you lead. Jason wrote a book called “Signature Moves” years ago. He’s also written a book called “The Promise to the One”, which is a promise to yourself. That all comes together with that language to help people say, “Can I help identify the talents and the gifts of the people I lead? Can I help them clarify that that's something they need to do every day in their work? And can I help them magnify it and all that we do together?” As entrepreneurs, especially for solo entrepreneurs like Jason for the past 25 years, hiring independent contractors, bringing people in and getting rid of them as people come and go brings with it a lot of responsibility. It's interesting to see how often entrepreneurs get stuck in the minutia of doing their everyday work.  You could probably spend 12 hours working on a broken printer, and not doing your signature moves, your greatness. That’s not time well spent. Instead, you could just hire somebody who could do it in about 10 minutes and fix it for you. Yes, you spend a little extra money, but you get into the things that you do best that way. Jason truly believes your leadership promise is not only for yourself to identify, clarify, magnify your signature moves, but also to help others to identify and clarify and magnify theirs. He calls that the ICM process (Identify, Clarify, Magnify). The Leadership Promise Showing Up in Jason’s Life Jason recalls it probably appeared back in high school; he was the student body President of his high school. He says perhaps it came from seeing people on their student body council that didn’t follow through with the things they promised they would do. And then it all fell on him as the President. Jason realized he was the last one in line because leaders eat last, as Simon Sinek says. He remembers that he would always have to be the one that picked up the slack. And so, the leadership promise came down to that. It came from examining: Who is keeping their commitments and who's not? He told me “What's fun to think about is that it goes all the way back to the school days all the way into adulthood and now into the leadership of not only leading my own company, but I lead several organizations and yeah, when it comes down to that it's about who makes a promise and keeps it.” The Start of the Leadership Promise Journey for Entrepreneurs Jason believes it comes down to your own personal accountability for the things you'll do for yourself. That’s why he wrote the book, “The Promise to the One”, which is a promise to yourself. You could keep a promise to your audience, to your customers, to your employees, to the independent contractors. But if you are waking up and not keeping those promises that you made to yourself, then it's going to trickle down eventually, and you're going to drop the ball. Whether it's creating a morning routine, the Hal Elrod “Morning Miracle” stuff, or if we're talking about even the Gay Hendricks and “The Big Leap”, how do we get to that place of doing our greatness in ou...

We all have an “Emotional Source Code” that is set when we were children. It’s what drives us and is why we do everything we do. What if that code isn’t working to your advantage? You can change it! In this episode I discuss how to do that with my guest, Dov Baron.     For over 30 years, Dov Baron has been empowering inquisitive leaders and influential figures worldwide to explore their own “Emotional Source Code” and their organizations “Emotional Source Code” to discover how to generate Fierce Loyalty. He is the creator and host of The Dov Baron Show podcasts (previously known as Leadership and Loyalty), named the #1 podcast for Fortune 500 Executives by Apple podcasts. The Dov Baron Show has featured hundreds of hours of interviews with top leaders, entrepreneurs, theologians, military intelligence officers, and artists. What is Your “Emotional Source Code”? Your Emotional Source Code is a thesis that has come out of a blend of quantum physics, neuroscience and psychology, organizational psychology and subjective personal psychology. It's profoundly insightful into what it is that drives us. Very often you'll meet somebody, and they'll say, “I really have this bad behavior, and I want to change it.” You might say, “I can help you with that.” Great. And then you help them, they change their behavior, and it doesn't stick. They wonder “Why didn't it stick?” Maybe the problem is that they have a belief system or a value system that's holding that behavior in place. That’s when they realize they have to do some real work on their behaviors and to my beliefs. Then they do some belief restructuring. They get happy because the belief's better now, and as a result, the behavior's gone away. And then a year later, they’re back in the same boat. Why? Why does it not change? Because you have an emotional source code. That’s what Dov calls your Emotional DNA. Your DNA is not dominant. It's just the most... obvious place to start. What Dov means by that is you may have a predetermination for certain situations from something in your DNA. It doesn't mean they’re going to happen. It just means it’s there in your Emotional DNA. It's waiting to kick in. That's the same with your emotional DNA being in your Emotional Source Code. Going Back to the Beginning Your Emotional Source Code starts at the base level at the foundation of it, which is the origin of your Emotional Source Code itself. That’s the environment and the circumstance you grew up in. Now, you might be thinking “Oh, my God, we're going to spend 20 years on a couch talking to a therapist.” No, it doesn’t have to be like that. Consider your parents, especially if you have siblings. Not only have your parents changed and matured over the years, but as parents, they as parents respond differently to their firstborn than they do to their thirdborn. On top of that, there's also an economic situation. There's a pretty good chance your parents were in better financial shape by the time they had their third kid than they were when they had their first child. They'd matured in age, hopefully emotionally. Their relationship had also matured, again, hopefully to make it better. And there was an economic change also. That means you and your siblings didn't have the same parents. In fact, none of you did. You all had different parents. And so, as a result, you built your Emotional Source Code based on the environment you were in at a moment in time. Dov was born into abject poverty with violence, crime, abuse, addiction all around him. That told him how to survive. He remembers thinking, “If I'm going to make it through this, I've got to work out certain things about how to be.” He would look at the world and think that's dangerous, that's safe. We all do it. It's not because of his background. You did it even if you had a wonderful childhood. You still did it because your primary objective is to survive. Finding Meaning in Your Life

Many self-help books and programs are overly complicated with dozens of steps or components. My guest, “Doc” Thom Mayer believes we can (and should) do simple things savagely well. We discuss how to do that in this episode. Doc is the Medical Director for the NFL Players Association, as well as a prominent figure in the fields of emergency medicine, sports medicine and leading in times of crisis.     He has built a distinguished career focused on athlete and patient health, safety, emergency response, as well as the skills required to lead from the front lines, making significant contributions to clinical practice, medical education, and thought leadership. Doc has always thought that we've made life more complicated than it really needs to be. It shouldn't be as complicated as we've made it. And he believes all of us who are in the business of trying to help others, that's his business, that's your business, should simplify, simplify. Einstein said, “Simplify, simplify, but not too much.” Doc’s great friend, Mark Verstegen is the founder of Team Exos. Team Exos is the best athletes' performance company in the world. Had they been a country in the Paris Olympics, they would have finished sixth in the medal count. That's how elite the athletes are and how diverse the sports world is that he's involved with. And Mark is the one who said, “Do simple things done savagely well.” So, combining Einstein and Mark Verstegen, Doc has tried to do simple things done savagely well. What Does “Too Simple” Mean? An simple example of “too simple” is looking at the equation E equals MC squared. Energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light. When Doc learned that he thought, well, that's awfully simple. I Why didn't somebody come up with that before? The reason is that wasn't the equation. It turns out the real equation is not that simple. The real equation is E equals MC squared divided by one, divided by the square root of one minus V (velocity) divided by C squared. Well, that's a little more complicated. So, some genius in marketing somewhere decided let's just do E equals MC squared. So yes, simplify, but not too much. To simplify too much is when people fail to make the connections that are simple but have failed to be made because there's all kinds of corollaries of logical consequences that come out of that. How Do You Start to Simplify Something That's Complex? Doc says to start by taking something that is considered to be the status quo, thinking about it, reflecting on it, and starting to think, well, how do I put it to work? For example, Doc’s most recent book is titled “Leadership is Worthless, but Leading is Priceless, what I learned from 9-11, the NFL, and Ukraine”. Doc was in all those places. So, the simple idea is, leadership is worthless. How can that be? There's 50,000 books on Amazon alone that have leadership in the title. The problem is that most leadership titles and advice include the 25 this, the 7 of this, the 14 things, and people can't remember them. So, it's not simplified enough. So, to Doc, that contrarian idea is very simple. Leadership is worthless because it's what you say. And anybody can say anything. They often do say a lot, tediously and at length, and usually about themselves. So leading is priceless because it's what we do all day, every day. So, the simple thought is that leadership is worthless because it’s a noun, leading is priceless because it's a verb, what we do. So Doc always tells his audiences, or anybody who will sit and listen, you must change the noun to a verb. Once you change the noun to the verb, life becomes so much more simple. And therefore, new ideas are born, including the answers that are not above us in life, in an organization, in our family. They're within and among us. The question that we should be asking ourselves is not am I, will I become a leader? You already are. You’ve got to say “Today I'm a leader.

If you want more quality sales conversations, you must ask more meaningful questions. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Leslie Venetz. Leslie is a top 1% B2B sales expert, sought-after speaker, and founder of The Sales-Led GTM Agency. Leslie has been recognized as a global sales thought leader and her insights have been viewed over 100 million times.     Awarded LinkedIn Editorial Top Voice, 5x top 50 Sales Thought Leader, and 2024 Sales Innovator of the Year, Leslie’s also been featured in the Wall Street Journal and Success Magazine. Leslie is the co-author of Heels to Deals and author of the upcoming Profit-Generating Pipeline: A Proven Formula to Earn Trust & Drive Revenue. A Story and a Roadmap for a Successful Sales Journey Leslie didn’t realize that her ability to ask questions was so central to her sales success because it wasn't the thing she was told is most essential to success in the sales world. The things that you're told are essential to sales success are things like “never take no for an answer” and to “grind and crush objections” and other cliche sales advice. A couple of years into her sales career Leslie reflected on why she was having so much success, examining things like her sales style and overall sales philosophy. She realized that her approach to selling was drastically different than most of her peers. The types of questions Leslie was asking weren't just traditional qualifying questions or the superficial “What's keeping you up at night?” style questions. She was going much deeper. She realized those deeper, more meaningful questions are her sales superpower. It's something she’s embraced as a skill and has gotten even better at creating meaningful conversations with her prospects as a result. How to Go Deeper with Questions In middle school, high school, and college Leslie was a bit of a self-proclaimed nerd, a geek, and she means that in the most positive light ever. She was a varsity policy debater. Her weekends were spent on stage winning awards for policy debate. Later, she participated in her school’s Model UN (MUN). She was even the president of her college MUN group for a handful of years. So, Leslie spent a tremendous amount of time practicing rhetoric. She didn’t know at the time that she was developing a sales skill, but she was, in fact, accidentally practicing the exact foundation that eventually made her wildly successful in sales. That means when she was participating in a policy debate or a model United Nations round of debate, she couldn’t just ask “What's keeping you up at night?” and then move on to something else. That would never work if she wanted to have a focused conversation and effective debate. In that context, she had to pull the evidence together or create the reports to support her arguments. When it comes to sales conversations, it's nice to know that somebody, for instance, is worried about budgets. If you can create the dynamic where you have the privilege of asking, say, two or three more questions, what you might uncover is that it's not that they're just worried about budgets. They're worried that if they don't hit their budget numbers, that might require them to lay off some of their staff. And so, what's really causing the pain and what they really want to solve for isn't a little bit of ROI (which is what most salespeople commonly pitch). It is to avoid laying off one of their staff members, all of whom they worked with for years and have strong relationships with. Laying them off could damage those relationships. Leslie found that the ability to ask meaningful follow-up questions that allow you to go deep and uncover not just a superficial sort of pain that they're giving you gets to the real issue. Fast. You get to that thing that is going to cause them to want to put the time and effort and budget into solving their problem now instead of later. Those deeper questions make all the difference.

The digital networking scene is booming. So is a growing lack of respect for common people skills and decency. I discuss the case for bringing them back through face-to-face networking with my guest, Brian Wallace.     Brian is Founder of NowSourcing, an industry leading content marketing agency that makes the world's ideas simple, visual, and influential. Brian has been named a Google Small Business Advisor for 2016-present, joined the SXSW Advisory Board in 2019-present and became an SMB Advisor for Lexmark in 2023. He is the Co-Founder for The Innovate Summit which launched in May 2024. We’ve gotten used to interacting in a digital landscape, including video conferencing most of the time. As we get further towards the edge of a proverbial cliff, assuming AI is going to make everything better and we have the totality of everything on the phones in our pockets, what do we do to avoid falling? We can perfect our sales pitches on LinkedIn and elevator pitches on Zoom, and it’s still not nearly as impactful as face-to-face networking. Getting Back to Being Human in Business Networking Situations What people need to understand is, we need to stop running away from humanity and trying to do everything at scale in a virtual world. We need to get more personal again instead of just building new connections on LinkedIn like a video game. Think about it… when is the last time you checked in on somebody you’ve known for a couple of years but haven’t spoken to recently and set up an in-person meeting?  Brian says he can guarantee that everybody right now has a ton of missed messages they’re sifting through because they were focused on playing the LinkedIn game for so long. In person interactions have taken a big hit. We’ve forgotten how to make eye contact, we’ve forgotten how to shake hands, we’ve forgotten how to be human. The world needs to get better at being human again. When it comes to networking in general, more so for in person networking, we need to stop selling everybody, stop coming up with canned sales pitches, and start connecting meaningfully again. At the end of the day meaningful relationships are paramount to your success (or failure) in the business world. Brian believes the main thing to remember about face-to-face networking is to figure out how to be the most interesting person in the room or at least the most interesting version of yourself. That doesn’t mean you have to brag, grandstand, or be over-the-top energetically if you’re normally introverted. It just means that instead of asking meaningless questions about the weather, come up with better stuff and ask more meaningful questions that yield more meaningful answers and interactions. We don’t need dumb party tricks instead of connecting as humans, and that is what is wrong with the networking world. What NOT to do in Face-to-Face Networking Situations Let’s start by unpacking the word “networking”. Brian believes there’s a lot of misuse of the word, and that means developing the understanding of and behind that word. Because a lot of people depending on your personality type, how you show up in business, if you’re introverted or extroverted, in sales or a different career, “networking” means different things to different people. So, let’s just examine the networking event game. When you’re at any kind of conference, meetup, or event where part of the agenda is networking there are many misconceptions. So, what do we automatically think? We better come armed to the teeth with a fancy suit and a bunch of business cards. We’re just doing the business version of speed dating.   We run around in this horrible, cutthroat way, and we’re just focused on sales and transactions instead of trying to make a good impression. But the truth is that people buy, people interact, people engage with the people that they know, like, and trust. It’s not rocket science. But it can seem that way if you have the wrong approach.

Embracing Servant Leadership can bolster your business and change your personal life. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Andrew Kolikoff. Andrew helps leaders create better journeys and greater profitability through the elevation of their people, teams, culture and customer experiences. He is considered to be one of the leading thought leaders in the world on the topic of Servant Leadership.     Andrew grew up in a remarkable home where his parents were madly in love and openly affectionate and his grandparents were the same way. His parents lived their lives completely in service; it was just who they were at heart. His home was like Grand Central Station every day, it was the place of joy, love, laughter and safety for the world.  That dramatically affected Andrew’s early outlook on life. As a child and teenager, Andrew thought all of that was normal. It wasn’t until he was ejected from the bubble and went to college that he learned two things very quickly. One, the world was not what he thought it was. And two, his parents were heroes, he just didn’t know it at the time. So, this got him very early on in his life to really think about who he wanted to be in this world, both daily and for the remainder of this life. The Importance of Your "One Thing" Andrew believes the hardest thing to do in life is to know what your “One Thing” is. Andrew decided that his “One Thing” is that he had to pay it forward, he wanted to live his life in service too. But he was single, young, and he didn’t have a house or have a way to replicate what his parents and grandparents did. He had to come up with a way that he was going to keep himself accountable to that way of living his life. So, Andrew developed this metric that he was going to live by every day. He decided he was going to do two things every single day of his life, which he’s done now for over thirty years. One, to have a coffee, breakfast, lunch, or now Zoom with somebody that he has not met. And two, he would find out what their personal and professional challenges were and help them. He changed the traditional radio station of WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) to WIFFT (What’s In It For Them). Andrew would show up to serve, not to get anything. He still averages making five introductions a day to help people with their challenges. It All Comes Back to You What Andrew has experienced is so much has come back to him as a result of giving without expectations. He becamse a 40 under 40 of the top 40 business leaders in New York City amongst other accolades. It wasn’t because of his status as the Chief Science Officer of an international company and a University Adjunct Professor. It was not because of what he did, it was a result of who he was. That laid the groundwork for the reinvention of himself post-corporate-career. So far in the second act of his life he has spent his time building great cultures inside of organizations and his own organization, "The Secret Sauce Society". Not only are those organizations more profitable and their people more productive; Andrew always facilitates more purpose and meaning for everyone involved. If anyone wants to strive for alignment with their “One Thing” in life, it may not be easy at first, but it’s worth it in the long run. Andrew told me it’s always provided him with more joy and purpose in his life. Bridging the Gap Between Giving and Getting When it comes to Andrew's giving without expectations advice people often tell him “I did what you say to do and it just doesn’t work.” He responds with this very simple question: “Do you do it every day and are you committed to it every day?” The answer is almost always “No.” Everybody wants breakthroughs in their life. Andrew reminds them how breakthroughs happen. Andrew uses the example of learning how to ride a bicycle. At first you had training wheels, you kept falling off and getting on, and then somebody helped you. Eventually,

Marketing is much more powerful when it’s driven by a purpose and a mission. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Ryan Chute. Ryan leads an award-winning creative agency within the legendary Wizard of Ads® group. As an Emmy-award winning Producer and an Executive Producer, Ryan has a deep-rooted passion for powerful storytelling and pivotal moments in entertainment. He builds creative, data-driven strategies that tap into the psychology of persuasion and the science of decision-making.   What Does "Mission" Mean to You? What is a “mission”? Mission starts as something internal to the company, and then becomes external to the public. When we think about that in the military sense, where “mission” derives from, that means the “commander’s intent”. Commander’s intent got popularized in the Napoleonic era where the Germans were fighting the Napoleon armies and they were losing miserably. The Germans realized one profoundly important thing: That they were going to have to sacrifice their autocratic way and come up with new flexibility of the army to take the hill however they might. Not every decision would come straight from the leader. When they did that the tides of the campaign changed. Ryan believes that everyone is a leader. They just need help bringing out the leader inside of them regardless of rank, authority or title. That ideology was the beginning of mission-based marketing and mission-based businesses.  The idea here is that you, as the commander, you have this notion of how you want to start and run a business. Ways that you feel are righting rights that are wrong and fixing things in the way that they were injust in the past. You need something bigger than you and that is greater than the sum of just you. The Three Buckets of Your Mission So you come up with the commander’s intent. The commander’s intent lives in three buckets: Helping people win. Being grateful. Being trustworthy. Helping people win comes from being grateful and being trustworthy. This notion of gratitude is a definition of terms; what does gratitude mean to you? Is it through the way that you pay your employees, is it the way that you present policy and return policies for your clients? How do you deliver your deliverables? All of this lives in the humility and abundance of gratitude. Then there’s trustworthiness. What does being trustworthy mean? What does the action of trust and being a trustworthy person actually mean to you? That’s going to show up in what you decide to do when it’s convenient for you and when it’s inconvenient for you. This is the foundation of values and beliefs. Beliefs are like the constellations in the sky, they move around, they’re pretty, and they’re informative. But they’re convenient and they move. In any situation where it’s inconvenient for you, you’re willing to change, to take action for the greater good, and follow your mission. How to Connect to Your Mission When we all agree that the mission is to help people win in a trustworthy and grateful manner, the next step from that mission is to decide the rules of engagement. What is the objective that trying to achieve, what hill are you trying to conquer? In the HR department you’re trying to get the right employees, in sales you’re trying to close every sale that you ethically can, and so on. Ultimately all of those things are missions within your business, within your campaigns. Why does this all matter to the mission driven business? Until you understand what mission is, you can’t have a mission driven business. If we can all agree for a moment that helping people win in a trustworthy and grateful manner is the mission, what does that mean to you in your business? What does helping people win mean? In trustworthiness it’s the beliefs and values, the values are the things that you take consequence for. You accept the consequence, you suffer, you struggle and that’s when your true value shows up.

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

Creativity and strategy can seem like two sides of the same coin when it comes to business scaling, but they run well together when combined. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Lysle Wickersham. Lysle’s unique crossover skill set and insights not only transform startups and SMEs into scalable, successful ventures but also redefine the very essence of creative capitalism, masterfully blending positioning strategy with storytelling and building intangible equity to drive growth and build enterprise value.     Lysle is an combination of two career paths that led him to his current business. He grew up as a creative director in integrated communications and brand development and advertising and eventually built a large agency that he ended up selling. After that Lysle ran a couple of tech companies connected to venture capital groups. He founded an investment bank and did a strange crossover for a creative person into mergers and acquisitions working with private equity and venture, a more strategic endeavor. What felt natural to him was the integration between the pragmatic side developing sound business strategies and the creative side of expressing the attributes of a company that builds the emotional connections. The truth is if you do both of those things well, that’s where the money is. Where to Start When it Comes to Blending Creativity and Strategy Creativity and strategy don’t run at the same time; it’s a linear process. To be creative you first need to be strategic. Every business must start with core positioning. Who is the target market that you’re trying to reach? All of this at first is connected to the founder by the company’s goals and visions and what they want to be and build. You take that and decide who would buy that and who’s going to scale with you so you can grow. You need to ask: What is the context that you are in the market in other words what space are you playing in, what’s your primary point of differentiation and what’s the proof that you can deliver on that point of differentiation? You must be able to deliver on that brand promise. If you do that stuff well and you have that core foundation that naturally leads to the attributes of your brand that align with your positioning and audience. That means answering questions such as: What do you look like? What do you sound like? What are the brand values from that you can discern your primary messaging? All of that then moves into things such as brand identity and communication strategies. The marriage between the two comes when you know who you are as a business and how you tell your story in a way that emotionally resonates with your potential clients. That’s the natural connection between the strategic foundation and the creative expression of that foundation. How to Know When You’re Ready to Scale It’s kind of an abstract way to look at the word, everybody wants to scale or grow. Every business’ goal is to get bigger and make more revenue. That’s a natural progression. There is no specific trigger for that. When you’re figuring out positioning for your business you want to make sure that the audience you want to build has room to grow. Then there’s market potential. That’s where there’s white space competitively where you can be different and be desired. All those things must go into consideration when you’re figuring out how to position a business to raise capital. You’re looking at the size of those marketplaces, how big they are, and what your potential to attract a piece of that market is. All those things must be calculated, especially if you’re talking to investors and you want to present a financial story to them about how your company can grow. How to Differentiate Yourself in the Marketplace That is the connection between strategy and creativity. When you create your positioning one of the core functions of that positioning is to articulate your core point of differentiation.

If you want to build a meaningful personal brand online you need authenticity, gratitude, and a few other strategies. I discuss them in this episode with my guest, Vladimer Botsvadze.     Vladimer came to the United States on a work visa in 2006. He eventually moved to New York City, the best melting pot in the world. In NYC Vladimir realized how important it is to build a personal brand. He started rubbing shoulders with successful people and left no stone unturned. Vladimer became a lifelong learner, reading 400+ pages a day and working 16 hours a day. He built Twitter/X followers from zero to 57,000 in a year because he’s an authentic storyteller that loves to provide value. The Starting Point of Creating a Meaningful Online Brand Start small, build gradually for the long term, and give more than you take. You have an iPhone at your fingertips; you can easily record videos and upload them to YouTube to share your knowledge and your journey with your audience. Steve Jobs said the most powerful person in the world is a storyteller. He also said people that know what they are talking about don’t need PowerPoint. Be on different social media channels, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Remember, great oaks grow from small acorns. Long term thinkers give more than they take by sharing content that is in their followers’ best interests. Many people that connect with you on LinkedIn send sales pitches. People don’t pay attention to those pitches. They pay attention to value. How to Provide More Value to Your Social Media Audience Give away your best advice for free. Vladimir has never charged his followers for “picking his brain”. He leads by example, not by titles. That is one of the things that sets him apart from the rest of the herd. A majority of executives lead by their titles. Gary V. leads by example, Tim Ferris leads by example because they are self-made success stories. Both are examples of why you should never give up. There is always light at the end of the tunnel if you are positive and see the glass half full. Inspiration Along the Way It doesn’t matter where you were born, your background or your education. If you take massive, strategic action you will succeed. Vladimer was born in Georgia and dreaming about experiencing the Western world. In the nineties he was burning the midnight oil and pursuing his dream. Now he’s a global citizen. He loves instilling confidence in other people. If he can do it, anybody can do it. Establishing and Building Your Reputation You start to build a robust personal brand by showing gratitude. When people leave you comments or like your social media posts you should respond to them and thank them. Vladimir did and still does consistently express gratitude to his followers. He brought and brings his followers together which built and further builds his personal brand which translates to his personal success including hundreds of endorsements on LinkedIn. He treats his followers as his friends. You need to consistently create great content. That means creating content with authenticity, compassion, and devotion. Vladimir shares his authentic story with the world. That helps him build emotional connections with his followers. A Cohesive Strategy for Building Your Personal Brand You need to have a presence across a variety of social media channels. You need to create content consistently. You need to interact with your audience because a majority of people don’t consistently interact with their audiences and hence, they don’t grow their audiences. Then they complain that they have never built their personal brands because they almost never interacted. They get on their high horse while Vladimir does the opposite; he shows up and is down to earth. You need to be curious on a daily basis. You need to collaborate with influencers. When he began his social media journey in 2014 he had the foresight to interact with big brands.

When you create a Market Dominating Position (MDP) you’re on track to successfully scale your business. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Ed Middlebrooks. Ed is not your typical business coach—he’s a strategic weapon for entrepreneurs who are done playing small. Ed Middlebrooks is the founder of Elite Profit Coach, where he works with driven business owners to uncover hidden profit, outmaneuver competitors, and install dominance into their markets.     Ed was the kid in the server closet for 25 years working a job in IT services. That job got him involved with business planning. He realized that technology affects the growth of a business. He found himself interfacing with high-level executives about more than just small technology issues. Ed began asking “How does the infrastructure of the business really allow us to foster growth and increase communications which ultimately increases sales and marketing results? “ Entering the Entrepreneurship World After 25 Ed left the corporate IT world because he learned about real estate investing and how to automate a business using what he calls “The Five Steps of Every Business”; which is: To get customers, you must first generate leads. Prescreen those leads. Construct and present offers. Close quickly. Follow up with everybody. Those five steps exist in so many places within a business. In his real estate investing career, his firm bought 24 houses with none of their own money, no banks and no credit. He had 17 Air BnBs. He built a multimillion-dollar business providing rentals. He took the strategies that he learned from working with C-Suite executives, negotiating and networking. Ed discovered that the secrets of growing and scaling a business appear to be fairly unique to each business, but they all come down to a singular strategy or pattern. When you put the building blocks in the right order, things happen, your strategies work, and your business grows. The Starting Point of Marketing Strategy and Business Growth First, you must take an analysis of your business. When it comes to growing and scaling a business, most entrepreneurs look at how to generate more revenue. They’re always thinking about the income. They want to foster more business. Whereas that’s true to a point, what Ed finds is that a lot of businesses are just chasing good money after bad. For example, they spend money on ads without really understanding the fundamentals of their business and how the ads boost (or don’t boost) the bottom line. Ed has a mantra that he’s learned along the way. That is “Revenue feeds the ego, but profit feeds your family.” When he talks about growing and scaling a business, he’ll show a business how to become more profitable without spending any extra money on marketing. This is assuming that there’s already a steady flow of business coming into that company. What they can do is make some changes. They can reduce the cost of goods sold, they can look at making more compelling offers, and so on. Creating Your Market Dominating Position (MDP) One thing stands out above everything else. That is understanding your company’s Market Dominating Position (MDP); sometimes referred to as the Unique Selling Position. What is the MDP of your company? If you don’t have that all you’re doing is throwing money into marketing, hoping that people connect with your messaging. You’re doing what everyone else does. When you do that, you can end up stuck in a red ocean (filled with “sharks”) and you’re not in a blue ocean. Ed’s not talking about creating a product that nobody else has. He’s talking about what the capacity of your business is to provide and deliver unique and superior value amongst your competition. Here’s another question that you must ask regardless of what your industry is. The question comes down to “What are the benefits you offer to your target market that set you apart from all of your competitors?” Once you figure that out,

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.

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.

Community engagement and content marketing go hand in hand if you have the right strategies. I discuss how to combine the two in this episode with my guest, Behdad Jamshidi. In the past 6 years, Behdad (or Bee) has met with and assessed 992+ marketing agencies and vetted them down to a lean 100+ preferred partners across all marketing niches. After pairing hundreds of businesses with the right partners, he’s found his skillset lies in the matchmaking process.     Getting Started with Community Engagement and Content Marketing Bee specializes in connecting businesses with the right marketing partners. He got into that space by engaging with a variety of communities. During COVID everything hit a wall, and everyone rushed into online communities for engagement. In one of the communities that he was in he built up his brand and landed a lot of customers by sharing knowledge and sharing information. In those communities people got to know him over the course of three years. That’s how he got into the community engagement and content marketing space. Bee’s purpose was to always share value first; he loves learning about new ideas and sharing content. Bee wasn’t trying to sell, and he was adding value and as a result potential clients reached out to him. Sharing the Right Kind of Content for Marketing Bee shared his experiences growing as an entrepreneur, including trials and tribulations. He was always learning more and more from mentors and other business owners. Bee realized that not everyone gets access to those people at the level that he did. He learned about new concepts and ideas through those conversations he would then take it in and journal about it. From there Bee would create content around his journal entries in various communities. Bee learned about some common mistakes that businesses make when they’re trying to pick the right marketing partner and then shared how to avoid them. Some questions included, “I’m about to hire a business coach, what should I think about?” Then afterwards he would share “I hired this business coach, here’s what I learned.”  You create a continuity of business advice within those communities. Making Deeper Community Engagement Connections Bee spent a lot of time learning on calls. He’s a super connector in the marketing world, so he was always on calls. The byproduct of those calls turned into meaningful content. He also went to a lot of in-person networking events. At those networking events he would create deeper connections with the people that he interacted with online. That’s where a lot of the content would come from. Bee used to be an engineer. He would do sales engineering for businesses that were in the 50 to 1,000 employee range. So, he got a lot of content and a lot of knowledge from his past work experience that he could share. Bee was unique because most entrepreneurs that are running purely entrepreneurial businesses haven’t worked in or with large organizations. When you come in with insights that others don’t have you have unique content to share. How to Stand Out and be Remembered Through Content Marketing You must discover what your core theme is. What do you like to talk about? You can even start out easily, with “This is who I am, this is a little bit of my background, here’s what I love talking about, here’s how I can support you”. Just be an open book. The next piece after that is to continue sharing what you know that most people don’t know. For Bee it was seeing businesses constantly failing with marketing partners. He provided feedback in his communities about how to avoid those mistakes. That’s where a lot of his content started out, it was just what he was naturally doing. That content helped Bee focus on the topic that would become the core of his business. We also dive into topics such as: How to keep the attention of the people in the community after you get it so you’re more than just a blip on their radar.