Meet Lynn Lynn is the owner of Data2Profit Consulting. He helps small to medium-sized companies make more money with their data by using financial ideas and tools he learned at Procter & Gamble. He has a unique ability to help clients think big picture, while at the same time digging into the details of their results. When you feel you have a lot of numbers around but no answers, Lynn will make those numbers work as hard as you do, and turning your data into profit. There are lots of different people out there who help businesses keep their finances together. What makes you different? There are lots of part-time accountants out there, there are lots of types of bookkeepers, you get your part-time CFOs and where they're focused oftentimes on the preparation of your finances, and taking a very traditional view of here's your income state, here's how you look at it, here's your balance sheet, here's what it can tell you, what I do is take those numbers and reverse engineer them to not only be able to tell people what happened, but why it happened, and more importantly, give them recommendations about what you should think about doing next. That is a completely different perspective than I think a lot of business owners get from their accountants and their CFOs. In one of your blogs, you said that what accountants report isn't enough. Can go talk about what you meant by that? Absolutely. It really comes down to what the accountants give you is a score, right? It's where are you at, at the time. What happened last month and what were your results over the past year? And they give you that which is good, but again, it doesn't always give you an idea of what you should be doing going forward because the perspective is getting a gap financial statement. You're your business owner, and you can always say "Okay, how much profit did I make that month?" But the real question is where's the profit because you can't spend what's on the balance sheet. What is your profit, how did it get there, most importantly, where is it, and finally, when can you actually spend it? I can say that I made all this profit by selling this stuff, but if nobody's paid me for it, yet, I can't spend that money. Or if I look at my bank statement today, it may say I have $10,000 there, but it doesn't tell you five days from now you may need 15,000. So what will happen with the other 5000? It's a moving piece that if you just rely on that static perspective, without both and understanding how you got there, and where you're going, what's coming up, then you're really missing a big chunk of what's going to impact your business results. I've heard you you say that the numbers that business owner should look at are more than dollars and cents. What else should business owners be looking at? Everyone says that their sales are growing, but the question is, why or how? And again, you could look into very easily say these customers, or this particular region or this product line, but when you put that all together, who are your most valuable customers? How many most valuable customers do you have? I worked with a business for a long time and they said we love all of our customers and while that is true, everybody loves all their customers, you may not love them all equally. How many of them really depend on that? How many times are they buying? What's their average purchase order spend? How many lines are they buying? What number of products are they actually buying? When you look at your gross margins, there are seven different groups of people within your company that can impact your gross margins. Which one is it? Is as your customers? Is it your salespeople? Is it your marketing people? Is it the logistics people, the manufacturing people, the purchasing people, or is it just simply a mix? And so you really have to dissect a lot of the numbers that you look into and look at the activities that people are doing and that's really what it comes down to? How else can you look at the activities and what is occurring in your business? Because, at the end of the day, all finance and accounting do are assign numbers to the activities that people have done. How many sales calls are they doing? How many sales calls are your people making to the best customers? What are they talking about? There's a lot of qualitative information that you can mind to get an understanding of where your people are coming from. So when you really get into it, that's part of what I like to do is talk to them about the non-financial numbers that you could be or, should be looking more at in terms of the activities of your business? Can you share with our listeners one of your most successful or favorite networking experiences that you've had? I'm one of those people that actually loves meeting people. In fact, my current coach has told me, "Lynn, you have to stop having as much fun." I'll talk to anybody about networking because I think people are fascinating, and there are so many different opportunities out there for people that if you're not networking, you're just really not learning as an individual about the world around you. So when you think about networking, you're really building a network of people that you meet, know, and can refer to each other. Once you get really into this, I met a banker once and she said, "Oh, you have to meet Angelica, she's forming this group called go givers." I joined and we're all basically people who help support small businesses. If they need me, they should need another accountant base, you need a lawyer, they should need a banker, they should need a coach, or are a part-time HR group. I met a part-time CFO through that group who recommended me to a client. I was able to help this client do what I was hired to do, but they also said, "By the way, you should meet Jeff. He's a specialist in r&d tax credits." All of a sudden, they hook up because now I've made the introduction and three months later, my client find out that they're going to get over $100,000 returned to them from r&d tax credits because I became that trusted business advisor who recommended somebody else. When you look at somebody, you can really help somebody in a very tangible way like that is important to me.  How do you stay in front of and best nurture the relationships you’ve created? That's one of the biggest challenges that I've come to realize I was not doing a great job of. I am now actively designing and building that system, and that capability. I've tried all different kinds of things on my own, and unfortunately, I've met a lot of really interesting people, and probably some of them may have been more valuable contacts, but I let those relationships drop. This was really before I began to truly appreciate the value of it. I would say right now, if you're beginning to network, figure out a way that works for you to really keep in contact with these people. I've spent a lot of time on occasion going back and realizing that it's been a long time since I have checked in with certain people, and so I have now got my sales process outlined or my contact management process outlined, and am beginning to build that. I made that early mistake of not having a great system to be able to do that so I'm playing a lot of catch-up right now.  If you could go back to your 20-year-old self, what would you tell yourself to do more or less of or differently with regards to your professional career? I would be more intentional and have a life plan that gave me a little more direction because I allowed myself to accept things that came my way without really exploring what else was out there. For example, when I look back and see what I really enjoy doing now, I probably would not have gotten into corporate finance. But that's where I interviewed with P&G, I did a temp job with them. They interviewed and over the next 14 years, I moved through P&G and moved up in PNG to the point where I had to ask myself if this was really what I want to do for the rest of my life? I decided that it wasn't so I went to work for a smaller company, which I did a lot of that same stuff. But then I got into marketing and sales and I found out that this is really where the fun is when you're getting closer to the customer and what they're doing. I've really gotten to the point where I believe that this is what I was meant to do. I enjoy the challenge of meeting people and finding out how I can help them. But at the same time, I could have gotten here a long time ago. Here now, I feel like this is like the second career for me. All my friends are now retiring, and I started a company three years ago. Do you have any final words of advice for our listeners with regards to growing and supporting your network? You've got to own it. Not very many people come reaching out to you, and yes, there are people who are reluctant to engage in those situations. But it really is an opportunity to step out of your own little comfort zone and meet some really cool, fascinating people that otherwise you never would have. You have to get out there, and particularly, if you're a business owner, whether you are networking within your own industry segment, or a different direction, just get out and do it. Don't be afraid to be that one in the room that steps into a group of four or five other people to introduce yourself and to ask a very unique question about them. Remember, it's not all about you, And believe me, that's that was my rookie mistake. You will mess up, you will make mistakes, you will say the wrong things, but you know what? You've just got to get up and do it again and once you get comfortable with the idea, it really can be a lot of fun.   Connect with Lynn   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynn-corazzi/  Website: https://www.data2profit.net/  Phone: 920-948-3355

Social Capital

338: Looking At Your Business' Finances Through A Different Lens - with Lynn Corazzi

Meet Steve Steve is the founder of The Globally Conscious Leader & Dotcomjungle. His ability to absorb information about brands, strategies, and technologies, then impart their context and opportunities in simple language, has proved invaluable as a trusted advisor to owners & CEOs. His use of Spousal KPI is a humorous, effective way to help executives develop healthy lifestyles & thriving businesses. Dotcomjungle is his technology team supporting companies in making and implementing wise technology choices. Why do you talk about 'Spousal KPI' and 'River KPI', and why does it matter? I came across this because in my work as a trusted adviser with owners and executives of CPG companies, oftentimes the question is how do I measure effectiveness? I found that what's true is that the executives that end up getting to know me and that I work with, need someone like me, because they're lonely, frankly. They might have a set of managers inside their business or a Board of Directors, but they're still sitting alone at the top of that heap. When you're someone who's made something with your hands, and it's somewhere along the line said, "Gosh, if I sold these to people, I can make a lot of money," which is a lot of what manufacturing is the United States, you have an ownership responsibility and an emotional stake in the company than someone who's an executive of let's say North Face, doesn't have. So you go home every night to your spouse and you often take the emotions of that day with you. So with Spousal KPI, what I try to do is I say I want to meet your wife or I want to meet your husband, and we're going to go to dinner because I want them to know that if you're happy when you come home, that their life is going to be better and if that's what's true, then I've done my job. So the KPI is the key performance indicator and as I said, if you have a better relationship with your spouse because you're not bringing home all the crappy stuff that happened that day, and dumping it on their table, then I'm doing my job. The other one, the River KPIs, I happen to be a fisherman and I like standing in the river and I know when my businesses are going well, I spend more time in the river and I get better ideas when I'm standing in the river, and I come home refreshed and go to work refreshed. That's where those come from and I say it with a smile on my face, but they're very real because you change the lifestyle of the owner and you often change the culture and the lifestyle of all the people who work in the company as well. How do you go about discovering the underlying needs of your business and how do you turn that into actionable value? Well, this is more thinking along the lines of what my trusted advisership leads to which is often bringing in Dotcomjungle, which is my technology arm to understand the true challenges that are happening in a company. The first thing is you have to ask that question of what's going wrong with your business, or where do you think the struggles are? The main answer to that question is something that we like to call engaging your MBWA, which is different than an MBA, it's management by walking around. We work with a lot of manufacturers and as I said, they're usually salt-of-the-earth folks who invented something with their hands and 20 years later, they're the CEO of a $40 million company that's shipping to Home Depot and Cabela's. That management by walking around is something that a lot of executives kind of forget, and part of it is just the nature of a company. As you grow, you build up a team of people who are workers who do the stuff, they do the shipping, you got the janitor, you have somebody answering the phone, and eventually, you have managers, and then you have managers of managers. What gets left behind is that MBWA, and the typical example would be, let's say a company that is worth 120 million. They have an executive management team that includes the CMO, the CTO, the CFO, the President of Operations, maybe the shipping manager, the supply chain person, and the CEO, and lets they have a question like, we think we need to update our ERP. Well, the natural thing for those folks to do is say, Well, I have three people or two people working under me, and under those people, 18 people are doing the work so they think about it as a flagpole. I bet that I'm at the top of the flagpole so I'm going to move down the flagpole to the next person and I'm gonna say, let me know what we need for an ERP and then that next person is going to then talk to their 18 people and say, give us all the feedback of what you want. What gets lost is that no one's going and sitting next to those 18 people, walking up to them (this is the MBWA) and sitting next to them and watching them work for a day and saying, "Why did you do that? What did you expect to happen? What is it that you would rather have happened?" If you get into what some people call the five why's, you have to ask why five times before you get to the real answer. In a certain way, that answer answers the second half of the question like how do you turn those into actionable items? Because if you're on that executive board, and either you or someone you truly trust, maybe the person that reports to you goes down and talks to those 18 people, the actionable items become clear. You don't even have to know technology, or systems, or people if you know that you should ask why five times, because they'll tell you. So sometimes people look at what we do like it's magic and it's not. If you own a company, whether its manufacturer or not, you actually want to know what's going on, it's not trite to say, Go talk to the stakeholders who are actually using your systems and see what they're doing. Go hang out with the shipping team for a day, and help them. Go hang out with your sales team and watch what they do and ask them what their frustrations are. You won't get better answers from other people who are trying to ask those questions that you will if you ask them yourself, and you will create a better culture for your company if you do that.  How do leadership, communication, and technology becoming HR issues (and vice versa) in most businesses? Everywhere I go, people love to do good work and if you give them good systems that measure the right things and allow them to succeed, they're going to be really happy working for you. It doesn't matter how much you pay them, to some extent. I don't mean to minimize how much someone should get paid, because we need to pay people well, but happiness matters, and a feeling of success is one of the most important things about happiness. So conversely, if you have systems and processes that people have to trudge through, and they don't feel successful, and especially if you give them sales goals that are incommensurate to the ability of the systems to support, and they feel like they can't hit their sales goals because they're hampered by technology, you're gonna have a bunch of unhappy people and it doesn't matter how much you pay. We all know people who left jobs for lower-paying positions somewhere where they just knew they'd be way happier. That's how technology becomes an HR issue and vice versa. Most companies look at HR, it's a department and the HR's job is to provide the legal framework to hire people, and fire people, and then they sit in their silo. But HR means human resources, and the humans don't stop existing once they've been hired and then start existing again when the HR has to deal with them and get rid of them if something crazy is going on like they're drinking on the job or just underperforming. True HR happens every single day, inside the culture of the company. The technology supports that, the goals of the company support that, the way people talk to each other supports that, so they're all interconnected. Can you share with our listeners one of your most successful or favorite networking experiences that you've had? Gosh, I've had a lot of painful moments too when it comes to networking. I am a naturally gregarious person, but I also have a lot of hesitations about networking, direct marketing, and meeting people that I have never met before. At the same time, in the last 30 years, what I've realized is that the relationships that I've built in the past and the ones I'm going to build in the future are really important. I've come to learn that I'm no longer afraid to cold call somebody if I have a real reason to cold call them. I don't really ever make cold calls, I make warm calls, and I and I do not have a traditional sales funnel. So when everybody out there is thinking about this, they might be thinking about, lead magnets and sales funnels and people getting warmed up, I don't do any of that. I come out of the outdoor industry and in the world of Patagonia, North Face, rock climbing, mountaineering, skiing, snowboarding, all that fun, active stuff. I was a fishing guide in my youth, I was a rock climbing and mountaineering instructor, I've been a hard goods buyer for outdoor stores, I've owned an outdoor store, I've worked with a ton of consumer products goods inside the outdoor industry and the some of the relationships that I have there go back 30 years. Some of the people who own the larger sales repping organizations in the Pacific Northwest used to be dirtbag rock climbers that I climbed with. We were sleeping in our tracks, not taking showers, and climbing 12 hours a day together back in 1992. I have learned through those relationships that there are a lot more people I don't know than I do know. One of the success stories I would say is part of my personality is what led me to form The Globally Conscious Leader. It's different than having a business like Dotcomjungle, like when I call somebody and say, "Hey, my name is Steve from Dotcomjungle," I wouldn't blame anybody if they held up the phone, because they don't know what that means. But when I call somebody and say, "This is Steve from the globally conscious leader," and there's somebody from the outdoor industry, which by its very nature, cares about global responsibility, cares about circular supply chain, circular economy thinking, cares about the longevity of the product, repairability of product, the right to repair as a legal concept, they're very likely to say, "Oh, that's interesting, what can I do for you?" The success is that it has given me a lot more confidence in just calling up someone. So recently, I had somebody recommended me. It was somebody I've known for about 30 years and all he said to the other person was, "You need to call Steve, he's legendary!" So I asked him, why he called me, and he said, Well, Mike said you were legendary," He said that he saw everything that I do and that he was lonely and needed somebody to talk to. So that was a situation where, like I said, because of the name, The Globally Conscious Leader, the person who's making the recommendation didn't even have to tell him why he should call me, and it turns out, there are maybe five different things that can help that person with.  How do you stay in front of and best nurture your community? I'm always working on that and I think that changes a lot. Right now, I think for what I do, LinkedIn is a really great place for me to be. It's a good place where I can develop my persona, and I'm fortunate that my persona is just me and I don't have to pretend to be something else. The challenge is finding time to be myself. So part of what I'm learning is that if I could just be on phone calls with you and 50 other people every week, not only would I have more fun, I'd have a better Spousal KPI, I'd sleep better, and I make the connections I need that would not just bring me business, but I bring a lot of value to businesses and that's what brings me joy. So nurturing those relationships through LinkedIn and making connections via live chat and I grill people, I find out how long they've been married, how many kids they have, where they were born. We talk about a lot of stuff before we even talk about business. What advice would you offer the business professionals looking to grow their network? Two things: In a protective way, watch out for groups of social networks that aren't really going to service you. At the same time, you really have to be open to everyone who connects with you, because you don't really know until you get to know them, whether they're going to be helpful or not. Every time I get judgmental about somebody in a social network, especially LinkedIn because I get anywhere between two and 15 connection requests a day. If I get judgmental, and say, No, I usually find out later that that was somebody that I should have just said yes to. So I really do say yes to everyone on LinkedIn, that now connects to me and I've also learned that the more I do for other people, the more they do for me so I'd say, don't be afraid of communities of people who do similar things to you. They could bring you into a community and it'd be easy to look at that group of folks and say that there are all these people and none of them are my customers. Well, it turns out they all work with people that are my customers, and what I provide is so unique that those folks who are very likely to recommend me to their customers, as an adjunct to what they're doing. Likewise, speaking specifically about manufacturing as an example, if I want to talk to manufacturers, the best thing I could do is actually go to a manufacturers conference or get in touch with the manufacturing extension program which are in every state, because they're already talking to my customers all the time and they're looking for people like me who can educate their folks. In so doing, what I'm going to do is get those folks to know me, trust me, like me, and then they're going to give me a call. So take those networks seriously, and don't be afraid of them and support them, and eventually, they'll support you. If you could go back to your 20-year-old self, what would you tell yourself to do more or less of or differently with regards to your professional career? I think I would say don't be afraid to step out and start a business now. For those of us who've never started a business, whether it's consulting or another business, it can often seem like a scary thing. My wife kind of heckled me about this. Because once I started one, and I was all of a sudden starting more and more, and partnering with people and trying some things. So she was like, "Can you stop making business and just focus on the ones that you have?" Well, they're all interrelated and each one special! So I'd say Don't, don't be afraid to take that step and create a company, even if you have to work your company and your job to make it happen. That's that would be the advice I'd give myself. Do you have any final words of advice to offer our listeners with regards to growing and supporting your network? I like to say be fearless and be kind. Don't be afraid to reach out to people. You'd be surprised how many people actually will be receptive to you if you truly want to help.    Connect with Steve:  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevefrazierrice/  Phone #: 541-821-2733

337: Cultivating A Positive Company Culture Through Leadership - with Steve Rice

Meet Nicole Over the past 30 years, Nicole has empowered 1000s of business owners and entrepreneurs to play to their strengths, grow their business, and make a greater impact. As a coach and strategic advisor, she is passionate about helping leaders shift their perspectives and solve complex business and relational issues with the aim of creating a better world for everyone. She is the founder of Discover The Edge and The Leaders of Transformation Podcast, reaching listeners in 140 countries. What are the fundamental steps to creating transformation in our business and relationships? I think it all starts with self-awareness and being present with yourself and others. Too often, we are so worried about what we're going to say and how we're going to say it, and what we look like, and all of that we lose connection with the person we're actually seeking to connect with. That's why self-awareness is really important. Presence with yourself and knowing how you're showing up and knowing also then recognizing what's going on for the other person. That's number one, number two, I would say is choosing to care. Having a real sincere interest, and empathy, and just an interest in what is going on with the other person. I think especially nowadays, we need to encourage each other because we don't know what people are going through. To have that spirit of encouragement for other people is really important. The third thing is follow-through. Do what you say, have integrity. If you're not going to do something, don't say you're going to do it. That goes for also saying things like "Oh, yeah, let's do lunch," when you know, in your mind, you're not ever planning to do that, well, then don't say it. Because what it does is number one, it breaks trust with them, because they actually might think that you're going to follow through on that and you don't. But even more importantly, it comes back to yourself, how do you feel about yourself. If I'm constantly saying things and not doing it, even if the other people don't, nobody else knows, I know. So it's really important in creating the transformation that we're looking to create that we have some foundational pieces in place. That applies to business, applies to relationships because of course, every business is a people business. Can you talk about how we tailor communication and networking styles to match the different personality types that are out there? It really comes down to going into the other person's world first. So often, we operate from our point of view, and you got to realize in order to connect and relate to different personality types, you have to understand how they receive information because communication is the response you get. Predominantly, I use the disc model of human behavior. That really describes the 4 primary personality types and there's Myers Briggs and all these different ones that you can use. I'll just give you a quick run through it. What's really cool about this tool is that you don't have an opportunity to meeting somebody new, you don't have an opportunity to have them do a full assessment, Myers Briggs to figure out what they are so that you know how to relate to them, you've got to have a way to connect quickly. So there are two questions you can ask yourself: Is this person more outgoing or more reserved? The second question is, are they more task-oriented, or people-oriented? You can get a sense of where they are operating, at least in the moment by answering those questions. So the outgoing task-oriented personality is the D personality and they are dominant. They like to get to the point, lead, and be in charge, they like results and they want to know what are we doing, where are we going, what are we going to make happen. The I personality, which is outgoing and people-oriented are the inspiring type. They like to have fun, and they like to express themselves, they like recognition, they're motivated by recognition, and they want to know who else is doing it. Who else is buying your product, who else is going to that event? The reserved and people-oriented personality is the S, the supportive type. They like to listen, they're people-oriented, but rather than the inspiring type that likes to talk, they like to listen, and they want to get to know you as a person, and they are motivated by harmony and how will this bring harmony? How will this help us work better together? Then the reserved and task-oriented personality, which is the cautious type, they like to learn, they like to be correct, they'll like process and procedure and bring value through details and they like quality. They believe that there's a right way to do things that are wrong ways to do things. So when we understand that there are four different ways to communicate or four different personality types, and of course, there are infinite combinations of all of that, we're all a blend of all four, when you understand that, you can start to relate to people more effectively. Then you can also understand how they make decisions. So a D personality, for example, will decide quickly, an I will decide emotionally, an S will decide slowly, the C will decide carefully. In fact, the C personality type is really the only personality type that really when they say let me think about it, they actually mean, let me think about it. A D will tell you no, generally speaking right off the bat, or they'll say yeah, and then they just want you to go away. The I of course, and the S, are more people-oriented and so forth. So when they say I'll think about it, it really means I don't want to hurt your feelings, I want you to like me, I want you to know that you're cared for and valued as an S personality type will think that. So if you understand how people are thinking and how it's translating on there, and you can go a long way in creating better communication and networking more effectively with other people. What can we learn about building trust and value from some of our greatest leaders in history? There are so many great leaders in history and as much as I talk a lot about a leadership crisis. Now, we also do have great leaders in this day and age as well. Some of my favorites are people like Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln, Jesus, Solomon, in the Bible, Moses. One of the things that when you look at it as it relates to what we're talking about here, which is social capital, building relationships, and what I wanted to point out was, how they related to others, and especially those who are against them. One of the things that they were definitely practicing is presence. They sought wisdom and understanding that we've also talked about, they realize the value of understanding people skills. Every business is a people business, life is full of relationships, you can't actually have success without other people being involved. Ultimately, life is all about relationships and they understand that and so they learn to develop those skills. Some of them weren't very good in the beginning, and they learned them over time. The other thing is empathy. They had a lot of empathy for people, and like I say, even those that were against them, and I think about Abraham Lincoln, he had one of a general in his army that he disliked and he said, "I don't like this person, I need to get to know them better." It's hard to not like somebody that is up close and that you get to know you start to realize how much commonality that you have. Patience is another thing is. We can learn patience from them. Gandhi was patient even with some of his own followers, who wanted to go off and get violent. I think of Nelson Mandela, 27 years in prison and coming out, and everybody thought that there's going to be hell to pay when he gets out. He came out and said, "No, that's not the way to lead, that's not the way to create reconciliation." Perseverance is another one and I think one of the most important things, especially nowadays is demonstrating responsibility. Our responsibility for communication, our responsibility to lead, and recognize that when we're talking about building trust and value these are the things that people need. I had a guest on my podcast recently, who talked about how you build trust, the speed of trust in businesses and he said that you build trust through predictability. So people know what to expect from you, they know that you're going to act a certain way. If you're unpredictable then it's hard for them to build trust with you. Building value is when you build value for others, you are, it's when you're going into the world, you're getting to know what's important to them and not just from an angle of what can I get. All of these leaders that I just described had outcomes, but they came from a perspective of what can I give, how can I support and encourage and see the best in other people, and as a result of that if you help enough people get what they want, you'll get what you want. Can you share with our listeners one of your most successful or favorite networking experiences that you've had? So I've done a lot of networking. I started out my business when I was in my teens and I knew I wanted to be in business for myself. I didn't know what I wanted to do, or what it would all look like, but I just knew that I want to be in business for myself and I started selling things door to door. I went quickly from door to door to cold calling because it was more efficient. Then I discovered networking events and it was so cool because all of these people are were in one place and I could talk to them, and they were not doing their work so they would have time to talk. There are some fun examples of going into networking events and meeting people that were game-changers, or that led to another person. I'm from Toronto and I was going to a networking event. It was raining, and I was tired, it was almost nine o'clock and I thought I am done. So I left and then I realized I forgot my business cards because back in the day, you could put your business cards on this table and so I ran back to get my business card because if I value my business and I value my business cards, I'm not going to let them just be going to waste. So I go back to get them and on the way out the door the second time, I ran into a lady. Her name was Susan and we were both kind of half running to the car cars in the rain, but she introduced herself to me and asked what I do. I said that I was a business coach and she actually said that she was in need of one! We exchanged our contact information and one thing led to another she ended up becoming a client, she also introduced me to someone else, his name was Mike. Mike introduced me to and convinced me to go to BNI which I was not interested in doing at that point and to his chapter. From there I've met so many clients and people that I've mentored and it was such an incredible opportunity but it was being present to what's going on and taking the moment even though we were getting wet to take that moment and meet Susan and that was such a blessing. The second one was down here in California and I was living in LA and I got this message from someone on LinkedIn that I did not know who said that there was a seminar coming up and this guy is going to be speaking and he's super awesome. Normally, you get so many of those you ignore it, but this one something told me to go and so I went and it was Evan Money speaking, which is his real name by the way. I went, had a great time, followed up with him afterward, we got to know each other and he became a good friend. He's introduced me to several amazing people who have become some great friends of mine. I've introduced him to people, I've had him on my podcast a couple of times. He met some of the people and I referred him and he's gone and done business deals and events and masterminds with some of the people that he's met. It was such an incredible opportunity, but it started with me just listening. That person on LinkedIn, I never heard from them or spoke to them again. They were the messenger and that was it, but somehow something said, go to this event. What advice would you offer the business professional who's looking to grow their network? I would say there are three things. You need visibility, credibility, and consistency. So, visibility, you've got to establish your presence, you've can establish your online presence. You have a podcast, this gives you a lot of visibility, this also gives you credibility and consistency is that you don't just go and do a whole bunch of anything, and then stop. So it's having the visibility, making sure that people know you exist, because if people don't know you, how can they possibly hire you? How can they possibly even just get to know you and build a friendship or relationship with you, if they don't know you exist? So first of all, it's important to have that visibility. So maybe you start a podcast, maybe you guest on other podcasts, maybe you go online, and you reach out to other people, comment on other people's posts, and genuinely, not just to try to sell them something, but literally go into their world get interested in them. Your credibility is whatever your space is, what your passion is. As so you start to establish your credibility that way, establish it in a way where you're showing your value to others. I believe that every single person has value to bring and has value and a purpose to be here. Because I believe that God is a God of order and he's got an order, and it got a purpose. So if you're here, listening to this message, you have a purpose, and you have value. So it's finding out what that is and share it and you'll make the world a better place when you do.  If you could go back to your 20-year-old self, what would you tell yourself to do more or less of or differently with regards to your professional career? Take bigger risks. I fail forward faster. I wouldn't try to do it the right way. I think of Gary Vee, he encourages young people all the time, right? It's like just screw up, make mistakes, try things, see what you like, see what you don't like. That's the first thing and the second thing is to find a mentor and a coach, somebody to help you along the way that has been where you want to go and can give you perspective to save yourself a lot of time. Back then, there weren't mentors and coaches as accessible and as in the volume that there are now. So I always want a mentor I wanted somebody to just tell me what to do. I had to figure it out on my own and it took a lot longer to do it that way. When you find a mentor and a coach and that's what I get to now share with others what I've learned to save them a whole lot of trouble. I can share with you what you can do to compress that time. Is it still going to be an effort? Are you still going to need to go through trial and error and fail forward fast? Yes, you will. We can compress that time and you can learn from my experience or your experience or somebody else's experience with a mentor. Do you have any final words of advice to offer our listeners with regards to growing and supporting your network?  First of all, I'll say believe that you're enough. Believe that you're enough when you're going to know that you have value and believing that what you have to offer is valuable and who you are. I would encourage that because then when you're not so worried about your own enoughness, you can actually be with the other person and really hear what's going on. The other thing is from a practical standpoint, I've had people ask me and say how can you get so many referrals and I used to say that the very best way to get referrals is to give them. Don't just give them with the goal of getting something back. I would encourage people to give what they want to receive more back from.   Connect with Nicole:   Leaders of Transformation Website: https://leadersoftransformation.com/  Discover The Edge Website: https://www.discovertheedge.com/

336: The Fundamentals of Creating Tranformation In Your Business - with Nicole Jansen

KJ Eichstaedt KJ is the Co-Founder of Ike Media, the international sports brand started in Wisconsin and is now found in 90 plus countries across the world. He's a designer, dealmaker, consultant, podcast host, video producer, and graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with degrees in International Business and Marketing. Words that describe KJ are optimist, bold, creative, and driven. KJ currently lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he helps athletes, businesses, and individuals grow their brand. Could you tell me about the origin of IKE and what you do?  IKE is an international brand that helps individuals, athletes, and businesses position and grows their brands through creative media vehicles and podcasting. We have an international reach, but we have local roots. On Twitter, there are a lot of people who follow IKE specifically for the IKE Packers podcast, or IKE badgers podcast, or our Brewers and Bucks podcasts which allows us to have a very strong local footprint because that's what we're all about. Home and family are some of our biggest values, but also having international backgrounds we work with anyone throughout the world. We enjoy being creative, we model and position all of our work after some of the highest brands in the world. We love helping anyone grow, helping them grow their business, helping them grow their brand, helping them bring their dream to life. They say the best companies have a story and we like to think of ourselves as the pen and paper to help them write that story. Why do you think people in companies need that strong brand? Frankly, people are starting to see through the BS. They're seeing that these companies aren't as sincere as they portray themselves as, and they aren't sure if these big Fortune 500 companies really care about them. People are getting smarter, they're getting smarter with their emotional intelligence, they're getting smarter with their actual intelligence and I think people in today's world which is so run with media and technology, crave a genuine connection which is why we're seeing a lot of local brands, regional media networks really rising up. The big fortune 500 companies really having to do a lot of whether it's donations, whether it's PR, they have to kind of prove to the world that they are actually good for the world. It just allows people to connect with the little guy, the local person down the street, the woman with the flower shop, the athlete who is going to Wisconsin who wants to take his dreams to the NFL. Everyone has a story and it's really hard to stand out in this digital landscape without one because there's just so much media. People have no shortage of it and the story is one of those things that cuts through the noise. It's really something you have to have and if you don't have one, you're behind the game. What would you recommend are some of the best ways to build a brand in 2021? At IKE we take an approach that's all about deeper connection. What I mean by that is, there are certain crazes going around, whether it's tik tok or Instagram. An overall trend is that video keeps getting shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter. We love data as a society, companies love data because it tells a story. What we try and cut through the noise of is that maybe you get a million views on a tik tok video, but maybe someone only watches it for seven seconds. How many of those people can you actually make a genuine connection and in seven seconds? How many of them are just going to scroll past and go and laugh at the next thing? We take the approach where in a world where long-form content seems to be getting pushed more and more to the back burner, we don't even care. We'd rather make 10 deep, meaningful connections with people we can help, form a relationship with, help them grow their dreams, help them follow their dreams, help them grow their business, their finances, whatever it might be, help them get in touch with a certain individual who they thought there's no way they would ever be able to get in a conversation with. We produce results and it really starts with that long-form approach in actually getting a connection. So if someone even has 100 listens on a podcast episode, for example, those people are essentially spending 30 minutes in the room with you. If you spend 30 minutes in a room with someone, you can really connect with them and then you might have a relationship, you might have something that can benefit you both whether it's, a mutual friend, or maybe it's something like a business deal. It could be all of those things, but we take a quality over quantity approach and we're really not afraid to show it because we've worked with some of the most incredible athletes in the world, frankly, and that helps us gain credibility. Can you share one of your most successful or favorite networking experiences that you've had? Growing up, I would wake up in the mornings on Saturdays and I remember as a family we would watch the Badger game. Sometimes we would even be able to go to the Badger football game in Madison. They were 11 o'clock games and you would have to get up super early and get on the road. At that age, I probably wasn't very enthusiastic about it, but I would go to these games and it had an impact on me early on, whether I realized it or not. It all started with one connection. We met someone, we formed a genuine connection and he happened to be a player on the team. Instead of making relationships transactional, Brian Anderson emphasizes making relationships, not transactional. You can't approach relationships transactionally because it'll just never work. But basically, we ended up meeting this one guy and he ended up being the first athlete guest to come on our show. We've since turned it into dozens and dozens of athletes by producing high-quality content, providing value, leveraging opportunities of a brand, leveraging connections and now we work with athletes all across the board and are able to tell their stories on our podcasts, which help us gain credibility in the eyes of people in business, you know, people with their own companies, people with their own practices, such as the real estate market. We've actually had clients of ours have the Top Producing real estate agents, and also the Top Producing real estate team, that leader on his podcast. So it doesn't really matter what field it's in, if you apply the appropriate tactics, if you lead with value, if you do a good job, if you form a genuine connection if you actually try and help people and show them what they can gain the sky's the limit. If I were to go back when I was a kid and tell myself, "Hey, you'd be talking to these guys pretty frequently," I would have said, "No way you're lying!" It's really opened my eyes to just the possibilities of it all. Networking can change someone's life, whether it's a job or something else. You might apply to 100 jobs, but you might have a phone call with someone you know and that might be the door opening that actually leads you to an opportunity that is worthwhile, and you follow up on. We've seen podcasts turn into this vehicle that allows people to both benefit while also connect. It's just been this unbelievable experience and cultivated in front of our own eyes, whether it's the IKE Podcast Network, or whether it's even podcasting in general. Over 200 million Americans are familiar with podcasting and over half of Americans have listened to a podcast increasing exponentially each year. Really, the key is starting. It doesn't matter if you have 10 people listen. If you have 10 people in your podcast, that's still like you doing 10 meetings a day and that's pretty impressive. But once you start to work at it, and you get up to 100 listeners, you get up to 1000 listeners, that's when the benefits are really unbelievable. It's almost like you don't know what the possibilities are until you jump into the arena. I encourage everyone if they're a little worried about if it will actually work, if you stick with it it's going to create a lot of positive opportunities. What advice would you offer that business professional who's really looking to grow their network? I think you have to be willing to do it. Podcasting is one of these ways to do it that applies to today's world, in regards to someone looking to grow their network. A lot of the people, whether it's a kid, whether it's a CEO, are afraid to put their image out there. They see what goes on online, they know they have to network online, they know if they just network in person they might be missing out on valuable opportunities. But really, for better, for worse, most likely for worse, online isn't always the nicest place to be. There might be cyberbullying there might be whatever going on. I find that a lot of business leaders, a lot of professionals, love podcasting as this opportunity because they don't necessarily have to put their face out there. They can still give themselves to an audience in a deep, long-form, meaningful way, without having to be in the camera. Some CEOs are like, "Hey, I'm a great business person, but I'm not an actor, I'm not a movie star," well, they love podcasting because it allows them to thrive in that role. I think was LeBron James who said, "Be a star in your role," and some people are meant to be stars in podcasts, some people are meant to be on TV, some people are meant to be on the radio, some people are meant to, and people are meant to connect online in person. This is one of those ways that really allows people to touch on all those points. If you could go back to your 20-year-old self, what would you tell yourself to do more or less than or differently with regards to your professional career? I think you can always tell yourself to be patient. I think you can always tell yourself that you're going to maybe have to reinvent a few things. IKE originally started off as a sports website. I was seeing all the fake news being spewed by ESPN, I was seeing how they were covering the Oscar Pistorius trial and it wasn't really about the sports. So I saw an opportunity to cover this in a blog format, more like an article format to be accurate. We made this beautiful website we modeled after Apple and Tesla and ended up being called IKEsportreport and we put all these beautiful articles on the site in various categories, but we didn't really have an audience yet to read these articles. So from there, we had to reinvent in a sense, and we started working at building a following. We found that sportspeople who love what we're offering existed a lot on Twitter. What that meant was a reinvention of what the original concept of IKE was. What ended up happening from there is these Twitter accounts gained a lot of popularity, but even then, we didn't want to just be a popular Twitter account, we had to be more so we evolved into podcasts. If I were to go back and tell myself anything, I think I would preach patience. I think I would preach being open to adapting and evolving. I think I would tell myself that it's going to work out and you're not going to regret this when you're 90. As I go back to that story about watching the Badgers going up and now talking to them, and potentially unveiling something special with some of them, potentially, in the future, it's all just like, pinch me moments, and I definitely don't consider myself someone who has made it by any means. I've got a long way to go, but I don't think I'm going to regret that I didn't try and follow my passion when I'm older.  I understand you have an offer for our listeners today? We have some really cool things we're doing in the podcast world. We're actually going into this phase in our business where we're able to take on more clients. No matter what size your business is, whether you want a basic package, we're actually offering some specials right now, where if you want to pay in bulk, we offer some pretty hefty discounts, to say the least. I think one thing that's also becoming more and more relevant in today's world is a subject matter expert’s time, right? So it's not even just the act of getting a podcast or getting a brand, it's the act of you know, really working with people who have cultivated brands and are doing it at a level that makes them proud and something that you can truly own and be proud to show off because that sometimes doesn't show up in the value proposition. I love working with people from all different backgrounds and I'm excited to keep work with some new people. You need a story to connect with someone, you need a story to grow your business, you just a story to sell products or just a story to meet people. I would encourage everybody just to start. We've been doing podcasts for a long time and we have cultivated some great audiences, we've charted top 40 multiple times, we've been listened to in over 90 different countries, we've had professional athletes, collegiate athletes, CEOs, entrepreneurs, you name it, and we'd love to help anyone listening today who might be saying, "Hey, maybe video isn't my bread and butter, but I do have an incredible story and I'm ready to tell that story in a certain way. I'm ready to work with someone to do that." I'd love to help.   Connect with KJ   Website: https://www.ikepodcastnetwork.com/  Email: kjeichstaedt@gmail.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenneth-john-eichstaedt/

335: Telling Your Story To Build Your Brand - with KJ Eichstaedt

Meet Colleen Colleen is an award-winning peak performance consultant with over 20 years of experience, has launched over 340 businesses, is an international speaker, author of a number one international bestseller, Anatomy of Accomplishment and Step Into The Spotlight To Expand Your Influence. The CEO of three businesses, including Lead Up For Women, a community that boasts 10s of 1000s of female entrepreneurs that are driven by their passions, support and promote others with the purpose to fuel female voices.  Why is joining a community essential for growth in a business? Let's just think about anyone who's ever launched a business or anything we've ever done in our lives out there. When we worship, we go in a community to a church, right? When we learn, we are in a classroom, or we're in a group of children. When we are learning a sport, we drop our children off at sports teams that have a coach. If you think about everything we do in our life, it's all about the team, it's all about the community. Football teams would be nothing if they didn't have the community of the supporters that they have that are their fans. So when we think about that, it shares a different light on what community is. When we move into a neighborhood, we move into a neighborhood to be part of the community. We were born to crave others and community. With that being said, when you're launching a business, it's one of the hardest times of your life. It really is like when you're having a family or getting married or doing something new that you've never done before. Imagine doing that on your own. I think about traveling and hiking Mount Everest, something I've always wanted to do and I know that if I had a guide if I had a community of people that were supporting me and given me advice, I would be able to do it step after step, day after day to put those pieces together with that map. So many people tried to do this feat of building a business on their own, and why not tap into the likes of others who've already done it before you? Why not learn from them? Why try and reinvent the wheel all by ourselves and not utilize the fuel of a community that can open up so many doors for you and create additional exposure for you? What are the biggest hurdles that women face as entrepreneurs? It's different than what men face. It has to do with our makeup of centuries and centuries and decades and decades of how we were raised. I was even raised in my younger years to get married, have babies, not to start a business. That's not how my mom raised me. So if we go back decades and centuries, the females have always been mothers and nurturers, right? That's why we have the ability to have babies and the men are the providers. So with that being said, they have this view of building businesses as providing for their families and that's why they're doing it. The only reason why they're doing it most of the time is to provide for other people, whether it be their employees or their family. Women are nurturers, so because we tend to nurture, we nurture our clients, we nurture those people around us, we nurture our contacts when we're networking, we are actually some of the best business builders out there, but we lack self-esteem and the self-confidence for what the worth piece is. The worth piece is about selling your products, knowing that someone else out there needs them, that you're solving a problem. I've seen this across the board that so many women struggle with their worth of bringing in a million dollars as an entrepreneur because it scares them. They don't feel like they have that ability to be this powerful businesswoman, and a mother and a wife and a sister and an aunt, etc. So we struggle with identities and I say we because I've been through this already, I struggled as my children got older and moved out of the home because I identified as a mother and I put Colleen on a shelf somewhere where she got really dusty. Then when I brought her and dusted her off, it was like What do you like? What colors do you like? Where do you like to shop for clothes? What type of food do you like to eat? When you're raising children you adapt to what it is that your children are doing and it's almost like we become the mother but forget that we're an individual as a female. Keeping that identity is so important because by permitting ourselves to be who we are, we permit our children to be who they are meant to be, we give others around us that we're modeling to that permission to be who they want to be and it's just a beautiful gift. Why is exposure important for female entrepreneurs? One thing I've taught all the CEOs that I've worked with was to tell everybody about you and that's why I love that you're so connected in the networking side of things and promote networking so heavily. You mentioned at the beginning about reciprocity and I really believe in the reciprocity rule of giving first to someone else and opening up a door connecting them to someone. Through networking, we can do that, we can connect with other people, we can get ourselves out there and meet people. I look at the world that I'm in now as being an entrepreneur for the last several years compared to what I was when I was in corporate America, and I'm not even surrounded by the same people. We talked about this earlier, but your network is your net worth, right? You want to be asking people that started a business before you or have already created a community. I can't tell you how many women I interviewed, that created female communities and just dug in to say, Tell me how you did it. I remember before I published my first book, I met someone that had 11 and I simply asked how they did it. When I met my first Millionaire, I sat him down and said, "Okay, teach me how to become a millionaire." I want to learn from others that have done it before me and unless you get out there unless you ask, you don't get. Unless you tell everyone about you, they don't know who you are. I love it when I hear people say to me, "Oh my gosh, I see you everywhere, how do you ever have time to do what you do?" I love it when they say that because it's not necessarily that I'm showing up everywhere, but the point is, we're, we're showing up on all these outlets that people are utilizing for information all the time. When people consistently see you, they're like, "What the heck, what is this person about? I want to learn more." Then when you're not at an event that maybe you go to regularly, and then before you know it, you're getting phone calls or emails, and someone will say, "Wow, everyone was talking about you at the event," and I realize that now I'm becoming a brand and becoming someone that people are sharing my community and what I'm doing because they know the benefit of that and they think other people should be involved. That doesn't happen when you sit behind your computer and become a keyboard warrior. It doesn't happen when you put your head down and just stay quote, unquote, busy. It happens when you're out there and you're talking one too many. Can you share with our listeners your most successful or favorite networking experience that you've had? I teach this in some of the groups that I work with because I know how important networking is. So I think tip number one is just be yourself. So many women asked me how do I stand out from all the other women that are there in the networking room or the Zoom Room? How do I stand out? It's not like you have to wear bright red glasses or have your hair bright pink or wear a certain shirt to stand out or bright bold earrings. You don't have to have that, you just need to show up as you. When you are you and you show up authentically as yourself you're relaxed, you're confident, you're self-assured and that comes through, that energy comes through the camera. It comes through the way that you're walking into a room and people will notice you because your shoulders are back, your chin is up because you're self-assured you feel confident about who you are. You're not apologizing, you're not worrying about what anyone else thinks because it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. So when you walk into a room or show up in a Zoom Room, tip number one, just be yourself. Second tip if you are on zoom and this is just a side tip, please make sure your background is not your unmade bed. That's like the worst thing I would have to say, be in a professional setting. So have a white background, or maybe it has a logo, you can print off your logo or have something in the background that could be some books. People notice what is in the background when you're on zoom. The other thing is, I'm the first person to speak up when I walk into a room, or if I'm in a Zoom Room. So I'll walk up to someone and say, "Hi, my name is Colleen, what's your name?" So I reach out and put my hand out for a firm handshake. If we can't do that in person, and we're doing that on zoom, right when they move us into breakout rooms, I'm the first person to unmute myself, turn my video on and I start welcoming everyone in the room and I just start asking questions. Then right away, because I'm talking people think she's the leader of the room. I'll say, "Well, it looks like they said we had 20 minutes, does anyone want to keep time? I think we could just go around the room and everyone introduce themselves. It looks like we've got times however many people in this room three minutes each." Someone will volunteer to take the time and I'll say, "We'll just start with Lori, and after you're done in your three minutes or up why don't you volunteer the next person? What that does is it starts connecting the room. Lori gets to go first and after her three minutes are up, she looks around, and then someone she's drawn to she will volunteer to go. Then all of a sudden everyone's laughing which cohesively brings the group together. I always go last because I don't want anyone to feel like they're picked last on the softball field. You don't have to be the one last I always bring up the caboose and then I tie it all together about something that each person said and an impression that they made. Then the last tip I would give you that is to follow up and follow through. This is where I see that most individuals, including males and females, really falter in the follow-up and the follow-through. I can't tell you, Lori, how many networking events I've been to and no one follows up with me. I follow up with everybody and that is just horribly wrong. But when I do follow up with them, and I say that it was great meeting them and I'll say one thing I remember about them when I met them, whether they said something funny, or their cat jumped up on their computer, or they had awesome earrings on whatever it was. Then I say that I'd love to chat with them and get to know them better when we're not crunched for time. About 99% of those people I follow up with book a call with me because they want you to remember them and I remembered them I said something about them. I never approach it in a salesy way and approach it from the perspective of just connecting and seeing if there's something I can help them with or if there's a door I can help open for them. I think the other piece is when you are offering something for someone in person or a zoom breakout room, don't make it confusing for them. Just drop a link in there for them to book a call with you or a download. Find what is it that you could offer them that would be the best thing at the moment for them to connect with you and then for you to continue nurturing them. Don't drop every Facebook link, you have every Instagram link you have on your YouTube. It would be like walking into a room and throwing your business cards across the room and say call me and then walk out, we don't do that. So connect with people, care about people, show them that you care, and they'll show you that they care. How do you stay in front and best nurture your network? I do that in several different ways. I do the podcast every week and interview members so that my community, including my community on the podcast, is getting tips like your community of interviewing people on different subjects. I do a bi-monthly magazine that our members write articles in and we digitally send that out to all of our members so that they can read the different articles and really take away so many tools in the business and leadership and lifestyle sections of the magazine, we even have a philanthropy section of our magazine. I invite my community to other communities. I have a very abundant mindset and by inviting them to other communities and showing them that it's important for them to expand their influence to attract the right clients beyond lead up for women. Because if I'm talking about how showing up everywhere, and networking everywhere and so important, it would be wrong of me to lock them down in my community. We do weekly teaching Tuesdays and each week a different member comes forward and teaches about different subjects in our lives. Today we talked about sleep, it could be more about your business and business insurance. Sometimes we're talking about tips on leadership. So a different member comes forward every Tuesday, teaches a free workshop and I attend those, I host those along with our members. I do member Monday spotlights every Monday where I interview a different member in our community, for them to offer to our community, a way for us to add additional tools to our toolbox. I'm always out there on Facebook Lives, I'm out there teaching whenever I can, I love to do one-minute teaches in the morning where it's like the word of the day, and put it out there and just have fun with it. There are so many little things that we can do, of the years that we've been in business and the skills that we've learned and honed in over the years that we can share with other people. Most of us just tend not to do it. I don't know if it's because we're lazy, or we just don't feel comfortable on camera. But another tip for your listeners is people don't want the perfect you. They just want you and I've gotten on camera and cried before. I've gotten on camera and laughed before, I've gotten on camera and forgotten what to say before. If you would just get out there and get out in front of your communities so they could get to know who you are. It's just amazing to me how many people really want a peek into your world and what you're doing. That's the likable factor and that's how we get people to like us and know us. We can't stay hidden. You just can't stay hidden. If you could go back to your 20-year-old self, what would you tell yourself to do more or less of or differently with regards to your professional career? I would have said quit corporate America today for one. But I needed to be in corporate America to learn a lot of the skills that I gained. The other piece is patience. I was so caught up in what was happening around me that I fell out of control a lot. We are all in control of our realities. We're in control of our mindset, we're in control of the choices that we make every day. Whether we work for somebody or not, we're still in control of our choices. So 20 years ago, I had a lack of patience, I felt like everything that happened around me was happening to me, and I just had to navigate through what was happening. The truth of the matter is, that's not what reality is. The reality is you can choose how you feel, you can choose how you react to a situation. We have choices, we have freedom of time and we also need to be patient. We're on God's time, that's just what it comes down to and we try to force things that it's just not the timing for. So that's probably what I would say to myself 20 years ago. Do you have any final word or advice to offer listeners with regards to growing and supporting your network? I'm glad you said growing because the one thing that I would like to leave with your listeners would be this: If learning is beneath you, then leadership is beyond you and you should always be out there for growth for yourself, growth for your company growth for your employees and growth for the people that you serve. How can you be learning and growing to be helping and impacting the world in a positive way? Connect with Colleen   Join The Lead Up For Women Community: https://www.leadupforwomen.com/    Sign up for a Lunch-N-Learn Networking Event and use the code guestlnl to register 3 months in advance! https://www.leadupforwomen.com/lunch-n-learn 

334: Don't Go Solo: How Communities Fuel Business Growth - with Colleen Biggs

Why is marketing automation so important?  Marketing automation is something I have been an advocate of for a long time and people often ask me why it is so important. Marketing automation is the future of marketing and it is already happening because everyone wants to create efficiencies within their marketing efforts. When you think about marketing automation, it allows you to do more with fewer resources. The trend in marketing and business, in general, is to create efficiency and you can improve your overall customer experience with automation. One statement I saw online that I liked was it streamlines your digital marketing efforts, which ultimately reduces human error and helps to achieve better results. Instead of performing these manual repetitive processes, you're able to focus more on strategic tasks, such as planning, design, goal development, conducting research, establishing your brand, and consistency. What is marketing automation?  I like the definition that Salesforce gives: Marketing automation is a technology that manages marketing processes, and multifunctional campaigns across multiple channels automatically. Let's dive into that a little bit. I want to break up some of these words and get clear on what exactly is the depth of this definition for you. So technology nowadays, this is typically a web-based solution that used to be more of a canned packaged solution from a CRM automation standpoint, but it's web-based and it could come in many shapes, sizes, price ranges, and offerings from its doing a little bit, to do the whole gamut of things. Marketing processes consist of many things and have unique definitions based on the goals and the objectives of an organization, but at its core, marketing processes are a mix of managing your contacts and your leads, your content marketing, measuring, and analysis. The next statement in that definition was multifunctional campaigns and a variety of these activities can take place at once. So for example, at this very moment, the marketing automation system that we have going on, we have our guided profits campaign, our manufacturing white paper campaign, webinar attendees campaign, the campaigns for this specific podcast as well as another podcast that we have in house, we have our monthly newsletter, and many more. So we have eight different campaigns happening simultaneously that are being tracked independently, and automatic functions are happening. The last component is the multiple channels. So marketing automation allows you to manage emails, social media, video calls, and ultimately, you can keep track of any traditional direct mail activities as well. The basics of marketing automation I want to cover a few high-level basics of marketing automation that will help you master any sort of automation within your CRM tool.  Quality information is key First and foremost, it all comes down to the quality of the information that you have going into the system, which will give you quality information out. You want to make sure that your leads and your contacts and all that information is really clean. So the basics of any system along these lines are collecting data and making sure that you're inputting quality data related to the name, the email, the company, phone number, mailing address, and whatnot. One of the things that the systems can do which is really powerful is going beyond just the type of activity that they're doing and providing you actionable insights so you can actually target your leads with more personalized information. For example, if you see a certain individual is engaging heavily with a certain type of content that you're sharing, then you can have targeted content that is going to continue to engage them as opposed to keeping them on a general list and sharing general information to them.  Creating lists and segmenting your contacts Another component that's important, and I see a lot of businesses not necessarily implementing this practice is creating different lists and segmenting your contacts. There are two different types of lists: manual lists and dynamic lists and what you want to do is make sure that you're grouping your contacts based on your interest or demographics, maybe how long we've been engaged with you. At the end of the day, this is an opportunity for you to continue to push the right types of information to the right audience. Manual lists are pretty straightforward as if I want to create a list with just my contacts from Wisconsin, I can add them to their own list while excluding contacts who are not from Wisconsin. A good practice that I recommend is creating manual lists of contacts who are your clients and then one with contacts who are not your clients so you can easily start messaging your established people versus those that have not. Dynamic lists, on the other hand, are one of the great features of marketing automation. You can automate that segmenting of your list based on several things such as how they're engaging with you on the website if they've been involved in a live chat with you on your site or automated chat, how they're engaging with the email that you're sending out if they filled out forms. There are many different ways that you can create automatic rules and start segmenting your contacts based on how they're acting at the end of the day.  Keep your lists clean For the longest time, I think people were focused on creating as large of a list as possible. Although I am an advocate of creating a big list, what's more important than the size of your list is the quality. If you don't clean your list regularly, just like anything else in life, you notice, there's going to be some toxic things that start happening. You want to make sure that you're scrubbing your list and that will help you to reduce your marketing costs because some platforms charge you based on the size of your list. It will also help you reduce the spam complaints that you have because you know that these individuals that you're sending to want to hear from you and it's actually going to help you increase your open and click-through rates.  How to scrub your lists First off, you want to check for either a hard bounce or a soft bounce. So basically, you sent an email and it came back saying this email doesn't exist. So there's a difference between the hard guns and the soft bounces are the hard bounces saying an email does not exist at all and it was a true invalid email address. The soft bounces are saying that maybe their inbox was full, or they put an out of office on there, or there was just a server glitch. So that means that this email was working previously, but it no longer is. I would start by first looking at your hard bounces, and just confirming that they're spelled correctly, and if they're legitimately no longer working, then just remove them from the list altogether. Another way to clean up your list is to send a re-engagement email. What you're doing with that is reaching out and asking if the contact is interested in continuing to hear from you and if they are please acknowledge by clicking or replying to something along those lines. But if no one's acknowledging at that point, then just remove them from the list or segment them into a different low response type of list as well. You want to review your most active lists first when you're cleaning up those lists and check for any duplicates. Also remove any role-related emails such as emails that begin with info, account, or support. Really focus on getting to a specific person that you're sending to and make sure to double-check for any typos. Another thing that you could consider is using a third-party service for mail cleaning. There are a number of them that are available and if you just go to Google and type in email scrubbing service, you're going to find a lot of options that are available to you. But again, the quality of your email is going to be extremely important to the long-term results that you have at the end of the day. The future of marketing automation: Artificial intelligence There is a lot of conversation around how AI is going to integrate with marketing automation tying into not only your CRM or automation tool but also going a little bit deeper into some of that conversation like a chatbot, for example. AI is going to tie in and you're going to learn about how to respond and how to anticipate how customers are going to react to the message by utilizing predictive analytics which at the end of the day will help improve customer satisfaction. The future of marketing automation Marketing automation will always continue to evolve and is here to stay for the long haul. There are powerful technologies like machine learning big data-enabled predictive analytics, and it's going to help marketers become more efficient in their job. At the end of the day, however, I really want to emphasize that human relationships are still at the heart of all marketing activities and no automation will ever bridge the gap between you and your clients. Marketing automation is here to help us create efficiencies to help us through that process! 

333: Mastering Marketing Automation

Meet Roger Roger is a motivational speaker who helps you create teams and companies people don't want to leave. You hire him for his expertise in emotional intelligence and appreciation. He doesn't give up on people, he believes they will find a way to move forward and improve. Roger lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and currently serves as the president of the National Speakers Association of Wisconsin Chapter. He loves to travel bike and read science fiction. He's a big fan of baseball, pinball, and all things Tesla. Can you just tell us what is emotional intelligence? You bet! It started with Daniel Goleman who has been called the father of emotional intelligence. Quite simply, it is your self-awareness and your social awareness. So following Goleman, there are two parts of self. There's the self-awareness part and the self-management part, right? How we're aware of ourselves and how we manage ourselves. Then the social part is how we're aware of others, how we respond to others, their emotions, their actions, their behaviors. Then the other component in there is relationship building, hmmm, Social Capital much? That's how emotional intelligence is defined and then Goldman and others also put components of empathy into emotional intelligence. Tell me a little bit about how you got into speaking because this is kind of the main offering that you provide, correct?  Right. I got into speaking and training and I got back into it actually. So way back early in my career, I was into training. I actually trained on all things Microsoft, I trained on operating systems, spreadsheets, Word, PowerPoint and then I also dabbled in a little bit of programming, and then I was also a resident expert on databases. So I love training and I love seeing the lights come on for people. So fast forward into a career in tech support and then while I was in tech support, I got recruited into project management and that's how I fell into project management. So I did that for a number of years and I got really good at both the science and the art of project management, I got into the soft skill and the tech part, but I found that I really had this passion for the soft skill part like facilitating and how we get people past barriers and how we get them to do work. So at my last job about six years ago, they were downsizing, and rather than playing the roulette wheel and figuring out where I wanted to go next in project management, I'm like, you know what? I want to get back into the speaking and the training! I decided that was a great time to start my business. I never knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but it was like this calling to get back up on stage. The more I got up on stage, the more I realized it was, I originally thought, you know, there was this big thing, like, you're going to be in lights, it's about you, and blah, blah, blah, and applause applause applause and I was totally wrong. It's about the audience and the people and creating that connection and that emotional spark and sharing knowledge with them, and seeing the lights come on for them that way. So it was about six years ago, that I decided to hang out my own shingle and get back into the world of professional speaking. Can you share the difference between emotional intelligence and communication? It's interesting to put them into both categories because I get that question a fair amount. So if we go back to what I was saying before, a couple of key components are of emotional intelligence are how you show up. One of the ways we show up is how we communicate. So we all have choices about how we communicate, the words we use, the expressions we use, the body language we consciously or subconsciously use. So just because we're communicating doesn't necessarily mean that we have emotional intelligence, and vice versa. I think the two are definitely intertwined. Don't get me wrong, they are intertwined. For example, one of the things that happen when I deliver emotional intelligence programs is I'll get somebody who comes up to me afterward probably about 40-50% of the time and they say, "Oh, this is great, Rojer, could you give this for my manager?" So I say, "Ok, that's wonderful that may be the case so tell me what's challenging you hear," and they say, "I think I'm a great communicator," and I say, "Fantastic, can you give me an example of how you communicate with your manager?" They think the manager might be the problem and they might be, but then a number of times, I've gotten this where they say, "I tell them everything that's on my mind," and I ask for an example. Then they say "Well my manager told me that we should manage up to them so I managed up and I really just gave them a ton of feedback." So I say, "I think we're talking about here might be candor versus communication and it might be the style in which you're delivering it." Come to find out, there's more to it than just the manager needs to come to this. What I say is I would love to give out these little mirrors, because a lot of the time if we look into ourselves, that's the first part of emotional intelligence and everything else can build from there. Can you share with our listeners your most successful or favorite networking experience that you've had? So as you mentioned in the intro, I'm a member of The National Speakers Association, and we get together every year at a big event called Influence. About 1000 people go to a huge event, and I love it. The first time I went I was overwhelmed. Now for introverts, 1000 people is a lot of people and it can be a daunting experience. That first day was my favorite because I went up and I just consumed as much as I could. At a good networking event, we don't just go and give everybody your business card, that's not networking. But I was going with the intent to listen and pick out one good thing that I could take away from every person that I met and I went with the intent of asking just one good question. My question was if you were starting out in this business, what would you do differently today? That was my question to everybody. So I had this pool of answers to the same question. I loved the event because everybody was so welcoming and receptive to whatever question we had. It was more than just going to the seminars, it was the hallway conversations where the magic happens. I really enjoyed the event because people would create, and I didn't make this up, they would create croissants instead of bagels. What that means is we think about the shape of a croissant, a croissant is what? It's a semi-circle, right? So people always inviting you in instead of the bagel or the donut which is closed. I didn't bring that up. I love that the event was set up that way and that the people going to the event in networking were allowed to participate if they wanted to. How do you stay in front of and best nurture this community that you've created? A couple of ways. LinkedIn is the place where I see my network. I try to comment on content as much as I can. I'm always trying to up my game by providing something new, and I will be my own critic and say, I don't do that as often as I should. It might help to have some marketing strategy and tactics behind that. The other strategy that I'm employing is networking, through email marketing, or email newsletters, and content, things like that. So again, always trying to up my game there. That's how I stay in front of my people as much as possible. What advice would you offer that business professional who is really looking to grow their network? Don't be afraid to talk to people. If you like going to events, go to an event intentionally, with at least three solid things that you want to get out of it, and think about three people that you want to meet, they can be intertwined. I would say be as visible as you can in the markets that you want to be seen in. I wasn't always good at this at the beginning because I was trying to be everything to everybody. As we know, that doesn't work. Once I started narrowing in on people who were receptive to my message, where companies that were getting taken over, or companies that were going through a lot of change, or leaders who were recently promoted or moved to a new area, that's where I could come in and help because when we're faced with change, that's where I can come in and help keep people from leaving. If you've just inherited a new team or something, that's where I come in. So it was putting myself in there, either in the social networks or just making initial conversations. I have a series of outreach that I do until I can get a conversation with them so that we can see if we're for each other. So my advice is to be persistent and be in front of the people who are for you and will buy you. If you could go back to your 20-year-old self, what would you tell yourself to do more or less of or differently with regards to your professional career? I would tell myself to talk less and listen more.  I'd also tell myself, don't be afraid to put yourself out there. Be your real, genuine, authentic self when you put yourself out there don't hide behind all kinds of stuff. When I went into my professional career, I would go into meetings, and I would try to say something no matter what, just for the sake of saying something to be seen to be visible. It wasn't until later on when somebody coached me in my mid-20s to listen more and talk less. I realized that I didn't have to say something to get noticed. That's when I first started learning about emotional intelligence and that's what I've been telling myself. Do you have any final word or advice to offer listeners with regards to growing and supporting your network? Be as open as you can and show up as you! The only way you're going to grow your network is to introduce yourself to people and just break down those walls and have good conversations with people be interested in them. Connect with Roger   Phone: 608-279-5160  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerwolkoff/ Website: https://rogerwolkoff.com/  Email: roger@rogerwolkoff.com 

332: Communicating with Emotional Intelligence - with Roger Wolkoff

Meet Katie Katie is the founder of Paper Lime Creative, a branding, and design agency in Edmonton. Her love of design and art took shape and a young age and since then she has been soaking in as much knowledge about art, business, and design as she can. She takes the time to listen to people's unique stories and goals to deliver stand-out work. It's one of many reasons why Paper Lime Creative is known as a collaborative design agency. What is branding and why is it important? I define branding as every interaction people have with your business. So there's often a misconception that your logo is your brand, but it's actually a lot more than that. So it's our job at Paper Lime Creative to make sure that those touchpoints that your clients have with your business are impactful and meaningful and get you the right customers to serve. How does a business owner start that branding process? We recommend that business owners start that process by figuring out who they want to work with and who that ideal customer is and what that ideal customer is buying so you can put the right time and effort into marketing the right product or service that you have and marketing it to the right people because that's where you'll get the biggest returns on your branding. How can branding help networking? Branding can help your networking because it helps you know where to go. I have a great client story for this. I was working with a good friend of mine on really defining her ideal customer. We realized all of her customers were the same type of person, they all dress the same and I joked that I realized that they all have really well-kept beards. So now when she goes to a networking event, she can go and physically find those people. She knows what they look like and chances are they'll be in an industry that she can work with.  So really understanding your customers is important, right? Absolutely because then she can know what networking events to go to or where to show up online for networking. Like you were talking about LinkedIn in your intro and then to know what people to introduce herself to in those events. It saves you so much time. Obviously building relationships and just growing your network is important, but if you're looking to convert someone to a client from a networking event, knowing who to walk up to and introduce yourself is really important. Can you share the story behind the name of your business? I say it's our fresh and fun approach to print design and branding. So my background started in print design and then it evolved into everything else because you can do quite a bit with print design, but you can help your client way more when you understand the brand strategy behind it. Can you share one of your favorite networking stories or experiences that you've had? I think my favorite networking experiences are when you realize how small it all is. The six degrees of separation, which I think they're saying is more like three or four. I had one actually where an old friend of mine that I hadn't seen or heard from in years had actually married someone that I was actively networking with. I found out after the fact, which and I was like, "I didn't realize you were married to her!" We worry so much about getting business or meeting people or having to be extroverted and put ourselves out there. But it's all about relationships at the end of the day and I think some of those fun coincidences make life so interesting. How do you stay in front of and best nurture your network and your community? On an ongoing basis, I track who I network with, and be sure to send follow-up emails or book follow-up coffee dates. I think it's just making a part of your regular schedule. I always have some sort of networking event or a one on one coffee booked with someone in my calendar. It's just a part of doing business and I can't imagine a week where there isn't something in there. What advice would you offer your business professionals who are really looking to grow their network? I would say try something new. I think we can get really comfortable with what our networking routine looks like and that's great, especially to build those long-term relationships. But to put yourself into a new market or into a new experience can be really valuable. Everyone moving to online meetings because of COVID has been super beneficial from a networking perspective because now you can visit a networking group wherever. I've been to networking groups in Europe while in Canada and it's really limitless now. So I think if you're wanting to grow just try something new. As for me, joining a charity board is something I've never done, but have thought about getting exposed to a new group of people. If you could go back to your 20-year-old self, what would you tell yourself to do more or less of or differently with regards to your professional career? I probably would have told my 20-year-old self to network. I didn't start out working till I was 25 or 26. So definitely more of that and I would also tell me to stop doubting myself. I think once you get into your business, you realize that nobody really knows what they're doing. Everyone's learning and growing as they go, and no one's 100% ready for the next step. You brought up the six degrees of separation. Who would be the one person that you would love to connect with and do you think you could do it within the sixth degree? I have always wanted to meet Paula Scher from Pentagram. She is most well known for designing the Citibank logo and the Boston More Than a Feeling album cover. She's a phenomenal graphic designer, and I totally think I could. I don't know what those six degrees are, but I have emailed her assistant and even though I got a no, it was still a good step. I think my next step would be going through a line of other industry designers because I probably know a designer who knows her and could maybe try that angle. You have an offer to share with our listeners, right? I do! On the Paper Lime Creative website piperlime.ca, we have a free brand audit that you can download and it goes through all the different parts of your brand. So it's a great tool to use and we recommend doing it every two or three years. Brands are always growing and changing and it's never a one and done with your brand. So if you want to take a look and review your brand, check out that free download. Do you have any final word or advice to offer our listeners with regards to growing and supporting your network? Be yourself and get curious about other people and it all falls into place after that.   Connect with Katie   Email: katie@paperlime.ca  Website: https://paperlime.ca/  Instagram: @paperlimecreative LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/paper-lime-creative/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaperLimeCreative/

331: More Than A Logo: Telling Your Story Through Branding - with Katie Dooley

Meet Claire Claire is a personal brand strategist and the CEO and Co-Founder of Claire Bahn Group. She has been helping high-achieving entrepreneurs, investors, founders, and executives create their best personal brand for over 10 years. As an entrepreneur and influencer with over 70,000 followers on social media, she has learned the importance of creating and maintaining your personal brand. Claire helps entrepreneurs leverage their personal brand to develop the authority, influence, and trust they need to exceed their business goals.  Can you share what personal branding is and why it matters to you so much? Basically, there are so many different nuances of personal branding. But really your basic personal brand is essentially what people think about you when they do a Google search on you or they meet you for the first time in person. It's literally someone's initial reaction to you, and how they feel about you whether they want to work with you and that sort of thing. So that's your baseline personal brand. How can entrepreneurs and SMBs boost revenue by showcasing their subject expertise and leveraging their authority? I always look at personal branding from an aspect like when we sign on a client, we take a strategic approach to personal branding. We look at social media as well as Google, SEO in blogs, and SEO in videos. Because Google and YouTube are search engines, you can find out what people are actively looking for and the type of questions that people are actively asking and wants to know answers for. They want to find experts to help them find a solution to the problem that they're currently having. So ultimately, one of the best possible ways that someone can build that know, like, and trust with an ideal client is to create content, whether it's a long-form blog or a video or both that specifically answers a question that somebody is looking for. So ideally, you want someone to do a Google search on a certain subject, and they find something that you created, and they're like, "Wow, I really liked this person." So many times people find me that exact way because they search a topic that I'm an expert in, and they find a piece of content that I created or video that I created and they're like, "Oh, wow, Claire really knows her stuff." So that's ultimately how you really build ROI, you get customers that are committed and trust you, and value your input. The goal is to hopefully work with them, but trust has to be one and it's not something that everyone gives for free. For small and medium-sized businesses, is it important to have the individual or the owner of the organization versus building up the brand of the company itself? People connect with people and people want a connection, especially when you have you know certain younger demographics. They want to know your values, what you stand for and that is done through people. If you think of some of the very well-known, multibillion-dollar corporations, those CEOs branded themselves. Think of Elan Musk! Tesla's cool, but Elon Musk is cooler, if you think about it, right? He has more followers on social media than Tesla does, because when Elon says things it has so much more weight. So if you just think about these real-world examples, you see exactly why it's more important that the person be branded and then they talk about their business because the people are going to have that know, like, and trust factor, not a business. Why does ignoring personal branding negatively affect your ROI? If you really think about everything that I've talked about like if someone does a Google search on you, specifically. They're like, okay, who's this person, should I work with them, and there's nothing there, they're definitely not going to want to work with you. You should have some information, especially if you are an expert, which most people that have their own businesses are an expert in something, right? So you kind of wonder why can't I find content about you? What's wrong with you? Then the next part of that is, what if I do find content about you, and it's bad? So this is how can negatively affect you, either not finding any information so people don't believe that you are actually the expert that you say you are or the second thing is that they do find information about you and it's not great information. Whether it's negative information, or you really did not do a good job of creating content that was very helpful, and it negatively impacted what people think about you. You want to put effort into really engaging and answering questions and things that people are actually searching for. It's not one of those things where you can just kind of like punt, and it'll work, you actually really have to put in the effort and answer people's questions. So that's the return is you can help people but it also helps build your business too. But it's a long-term game.  Can you share with our listeners one of the favorite networking experiences that you've had? I admit that sometimes networking is scary, and I actually did a blog talk giving some tips on how to make it not so scary. But I think ultimately, one of the biggest things is, if there's a group that you are being very strategic with your networking, I would kind of go on to LinkedIn, find who you want to really connect with, and have a way to connect with them. Say something like, "Hey, I read your article on this and I really just wanted to come over and say hi," and have you have your brand statement really quick write your little kind of like blurb about me. I think that's one of the biggest things in making networking easier, especially if there are people that you want to connect with is do your homework first. That's actually one thing that a friend of mine taught me and it's such a valuable thing. If you know there are strategic relationships that you want, go and do a little bit of homework.  How do you stay in front of and best nurture the relationships that you have? Connecting with people on social media, connecting with them on LinkedIn, which is obviously a very professional network. I think you can always nurture the relationship through whether it's inviting them on your podcast, inviting them onto a video podcast. Just staying connected by essentially asking for their input on something. Everyone again, loves a compliment and I think that is a really key thing. Don’t ask for favors, ask for advice on things. Connecting with people like that is really great. I think if you do have a platform, invite them to be on your platform. That is a really great way to stay connected with people and there could be an end game strategy with it, but it doesn't feel and come off as salesy. I definitely don't think it's a good thing to hard-sell people in the social sphere or when you are networking, it's so much better when you just really show up and are committed to sharing your expertise and giving value. The relationships that you create through that are so much stronger than immediately going straight for the sale. I think that would be one of the biggest things. Stay connected, ask for their advice and if you have a platform, bring them onto that platform, but don't sell. What advice would you offer that business professional is really looking to grow their network? There are so many networking groups. For me, I've asked friends, and I, you know, asked the group that I know for their advice. Find out from other people, other networking opportunities that they would suggest whether it's in your area in person or online. There are so many events that are online as well, that I have found and you can just ask your network. There are also so many Facebook groups and LinkedIn groups that you can join, you can find out about other networking opportunities in those groups as well. So there are just so many ways to do it, but I don't think it's a bad thing to ask. Just ask people because people want to give their advice. They want to be helped. just asked people to ask your network put out a post saying. So ask your network or you can also just put it out there on social media and a lot of times people will respond, and they'll have great information. If you could go back to your 20-year-old self, what would you tell yourself to do more or less of or differently with regards to your professional career? You talk about this a lot, but networking is so important. So I would say probably more networking, pushing myself to be uncomfortable rather than always staying safe, and not maybe doing that networking event because it's scary. So I think pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and doing more networking. We've all heard of the six degrees of separation. Who would be the one person that you'd love to connect with and do you think you could do it within the sixth degree? I've kind of liked the way that Rachel Hollis has navigated a lot of stuff. She's definitely gotten herself in some sticky situations over the years, but she's somebody that I what she's done with her personal brand and it's very much evolved. Neil Patel is another marketer who has done great things so I definitely think I could connect with those people through six degrees because I'm in that kind of marketing and influencer space, but those are people that I think are learning kind of more about their story would be really cool. Any final word of advice you'd like to offer our listeners with regards to growing and supporting your network? It kind of goes back to even your personal brand. There are so many people like you mentioned, that won't put themselves out there and won't commit to networking with people, they won't commit to doing their personal brand. When you actively do it, and you commit to it and you do it and you show up, you're really going to be in a smaller group of people. I think that's one of the most important things to think about. There are so many people that won't have the follow-through, that won't commit to going all the way with whatever it is whether it's building that personal brand, networking, and committing to so many networking events or opportunities. Just commit and do it! You don't have to bite off the biggest chunk, just find the events that you want and commit to going all-in because so many people don't. That's what's going to differentiate you from somebody else is that follow through and that commitment, and that's a lot of what you said earlier about networking and just being true and following through. It really will benefit you in so many ways.   Connect with Claire   Website: https://clairebahn.com/  Free Masterclass Course: https://clairebahn.com/personal-branding-masterclass

330: Taking Control of Your Personal Brand - with Claire Bahn

Meet Paul Paul is popularizing the concept C-com, the science of conversion, conversation, and automation. He founded Amplify C-Com, which helps grow businesses past seven figures through 80% human-like and 20% human experience. Amplify combines human psychology and automation to create more profits in their customers’ pockets. How do you apply the 80-20 rule to automation? So we find a lot of the time that people try and automate either 100% or not a bit. So they will go, "Let's automate everything, you know, I want to make everything evergreen so I can sit on a beach and drink pina coladas and not have to do anything." But when you do that you lose that human touch, and especially post-pandemic, people are looking so much more for that personal customer experience that I've been able to speak to a human, but in a way doesn't take up a lot of their time and they can do it in their own time so there's that instant gratification. What we look at is, how would you normally speak if you're having a conversation? So if you would just send in an email to me one on one, Lori, what kinds of things would you say? If you were sending an SMS or a text to someone, how would you usually phrase that? So we write that in the same way as we normally would and then we automate that. So then we automate the start of the conversation and then hand it over to the 20% of human-like experience to guide the people through a more personalized service. What are embedded commands and why are they so important in marketing? Embedded commands are all about, starting to plant the seed, so to speak with whatever kind of conversation you've gotten into. Lori, if I was to speak to you, right now, you may be thinking, as I started to say this, you may be thinking of a pink elephant in the corner of the room. Now, as you probably try harder and harder not to think about that pink elephant in the corner of the room, then that image is probably getting more vivid and vivid in your mind. You probably see that pink elephant right now we've got roller skates on as well, can you see that? Well, don't think about that. Whatever you do, Lori, don't think about that. You can't think about it, right?! We start starting to use some of these embedded commands in the way that we write copy. So if you want to guide someone towards a certain direction, then you use some of those language patterns throughout the copy. So for example, if you want to bring up an objection that someone's having, and to be able to handle that objection, rather than like, brisk over it and try and hide it, say you might be thinking right now this or maybe you're thinking this and then you go "Great, now we can crush that objection." So you bring the objection up and then crush it. You may already start seeing yourself achieving that goal. I don't know what it is for you, it might be you want a new car, you might want to move houses, you might just want to spend more time with the family and see yourself go into Disneyland. But whatever that is for you, then you probably know what that is in your mind right now. So you can see if we break down that sentence, for example, you create the future pace in the mind and then adding things like "right now" at the end of it, you're starting to see that in your mind right now. So it's like these hypnotic language patterns that are being used that guide people towards the sale, but you can also do it in a conversational way. For example, another way is not so much of an embedded command, but another language pattern that we use a lot is ask for a no instead of a yes. So I learned this from Chris Voss. Chris Voss is an FBI hostage negotiator and he wrote a book called Never Split The Difference and one of the things he wrote in there was about asking for no. Most people, like if I said, "Hey Lori, would you like to have me on your podcast?" And then you kind of like, they'll say yes, or say no. But if I say, "Hey, Laurie, would you be totally against having me on your podcast?" Then what are you gonna say then? It takes the pressure off when you ask for a no instead of a Yes. Would it be crazy to entertain the idea? Would it be unreasonable to consider? No, it wouldn't be unreasonable to consider. So we use that, "Would you be against?" For example, let's say you want to book a sales call. So you might send an SMS message and say something like, "Would you be against speaking with one of our application specialists?" "No, I wouldn't be against that." "Can you check if this link works?" Then they click the button, and then they go to the next stage, "Yeah, that works." "Great, can you see that on the page?" Then you notice what you do if you're on a sales call, you'd run the same kind of thing from the conversational perspective and you'll notice we're always creating these micro-commitments through the whole process. It's a different psychology behind the language patterns that you use to reduce the ask that you're looking for. Let's dive into that a little bit from the power of conversational commerce to sell really high ticket items. When it comes to selling high ticket items, we look at each stage of the customer journey. So when you look at each stage, you go, "Well, where are people dropping off." So a lot of the time people go, I'm not making enough sales. That's a symptom, not a cause. So you have to work backward and break down each stage of the process. So we'll use technology and automation to look at each stage of the pipeline. So we know every time someone pops into a certain stage, for example, let's say they opted in, or they started a challenge, or they watched a webinar or they submit a deposit. So we can see how many people are getting to each stage of the journey, and then work out what we need to do to get more people to that stage. Where are most people dropping off and what level of conversation do we need to have at that point? Can we automate all that? Or do we need to actually add a human element to that as well? So at the start of the journey, quite often, you'll automate more of it. But as you get higher and higher up the price point you might get the owner or a higher level person in the team more involved when it comes to let's say, submitting a 10,000 or $25,000 program. Let's say you've got a lot of people stuck on the pay to deposit, but they haven't paid the full amount. So what's happening at that point? What's happening in the buyer’s mind? Maybe they're having buyer's remorse, maybe they need to get funding together. We don't know without asking. So then you could have, for example, we will have some owners, they'll go and record a personal video message to those people who get to that stage, but don't get to the next stage. So it might take them 30 seconds of video, let's say 10 videos a day which takes five minutes. If that closes one more sale, that five minutes has made them $10,000. So that then becomes a really good return on investment. Looking at each stage of the customer journey, and then understanding how you can add conversation at every point to guide people to the next step of the journey. It's like Martin Luther King said, "You don't need to see the whole staircase, you just need to take the first step," and we kind of rephrase that a little bit is "You don't need to see the whole staircase, you just need to take someone to the next step." Can you share with our listeners one of your most favorite or successful networking experiences that you've had? So I always say this kind of catalysts that happen over time, right? So one of the things that we used to do was just doing Facebook Messenger, when there wasn't loads of compliance around it. So at that point, I'd get people on a Facebook Live Show and I build them a bot for free on Facebook Live. So we do that kind of thing where we go cool, what kind of thing you're looking for, and we build it live. And they go oh wow, you're building a bot great, you can take that away and use it in your business. Now what that led to is because we give so much value, people started introducing this to other people. So we had for example, oh John Lee Dumas on the podcast, and then ended up we did some work for him beforehand before the podcast so we'll talk about the results. We improved his webinar rate quite significantly and because we improved that then he introduced me to Pete Vargas and Ray Higdon. Then we just started to level up. So I always say is if you want to go and get paid by level eight, then go and work for level nines for free or level 10s for free. It improves your authority, credibility, and at the same time, it opens up your network to get even wider. So I always looked as well for any deals that would make with some of these high leverage people is how can we leverage that and then introduce it to other people at the same time. How do you stay in front of these people that you've created these relationships with? So the last couple of years have obviously been a little bit different in terms of going to events. But what's interesting is, for example, I had someone message me today and she said, "Hey, we spoke last year." Bear in mind, I haven't physically spoken to her in over a year, and before when I did speak with her we spoke for about five minutes. She said, "I'm looking to do this, is this the kind of thing that you do?" So staying at the top of people's minds, how do we do that? Well, I post on social media, like six times a week. I can't remember the person who I got this from but we do a connect authority. So we will make a small offer like a lead magnet and we'll ask who wants it and everyone will want to get it. So then we get to have back and forth conversations with those and then the other ones, it might be like a personal story about me. It could be a case study so when people see case study after case after case study of "Hey, look at all these six-figure seven-figure results that we're getting for people," then you naturally stay on top of mind and it's not so much with social media. Sometimes everyone's like, "Oh my god, no one's engaging with my post." If you want to work with seven and eight-figure entrepreneurs, most of those won't engage with your posts, but they're always watching. Always keep an eye on things. If you are at that seven-figure level, or even at a six-figure level, how many times you actually go, "Oh, I like that. I like that." No, you just scan every so often and just go, "Oh, that's interesting, I'll make a note to myself about that," rather than engaging with everything.  What advice would you offer the business professionals really looking to grow their network? So I'd say do what do I did, and find how you can give as much value as possible to the people that you really want to work with. Identify your dream clients, and give as much value to those people as possible, and then you will work either with them or someone very close to them based on that. So you'll find a lot of the high-level people, if you go up to them and say, "Hey, I'm really good at doing this thing, am I okay to do this for you for free?" I spoke to someone else who does the same similar thing with LinkedIn profiles. So he went to a lot of the bigger players in the industry and said, "Hey, would you mind if I create your LinkedIn profile based on what I know about you? I've been following you for a long time. If you think it's great, you can use it. If not, that's fine." They're like, "Yeah, sure do," and then afterward, they're like, "What can I do for you?" Then you've got testimonials from all these big players and suddenly, that becomes an authority overnight. Do you have any final words of advice for our listeners with regards to growing and supporting your network? Remember, every single person that comes into your world ash a human beating heart. They're not an automation, they're not a lead, they're a person. When you start to remember that, and start having those back and forth conversations with your customers or potential customers, and you start to find out what the pains are, their desires are in a lot more detail. It makes your marketing better, it reduces your cost to acquire a customer and increases your reputation in the marketplace. So have more conversations with more people and you'll make more money, have more impact on the world and be better for it.   Connect with Paul   Amplify To 7 Figures Podcast: https://amplifyto7figures.com/home  Website: https://lp.amplifyccom.com/ 

329: The Power of Conversational Commerce - with Paul Ace

Meet Ashley Ashley is an ex-corporate marketing executive for a $4 billion company turned to online marketing consultant who has helped hundreds of six, seven, and eight-figure online entrepreneurs create customer-centric marketing and sales strategies. As a certified NLP practitioner, Ashley believes the power of marketing is to teach your ideal clients how to think, not tell them what to do using a combination of psychographics and human behavior in your brand messaging. What is the number one mistake you see when it comes to messaging? It's kind of hard to narrow it down to one. But what I really see a lot specifically with clients that I've worked with is a lot of the time people will create content that doesn't really reflect their ideal client. What I mean by that, and one of the biggest things that I've found, especially through my NLP training and working with all these clients, the one thing that I've found that was so transformational was that your messaging and marketing is a reflection of your mindset. So a lot of the times I see when it comes to messaging, people will try to create messaging that attracts a certain type of client, but their mindset does not match the client they're trying to attract and I'll give you a quick example. A lot of the times when I read content, I can see where that person's mindset is coming from and what they were thinking in the moment they created that content, or they created that message, and why they were bringing in a certain type of person that they were bringing in. One of the examples I really like to use is one of my clients. She is a physical therapist that specializes in concussion recovery and she is phenomenal and amazing at what she does and when the pandemic hit, she turned into an online business. She created this membership program for patients who have had concussions. She is very out of the box, very different from the industry norms, which are the people I love to work with. So she created this webinar to promote this new membership that she had and she had almost 3,600 people sign up for this webinar and she had a very great ROI conversion. But when she got the clients into the program, she started to realize that a lot of them were in a victim mentality mode and they felt very defeated. They felt like they were helpless and when we started digging into her messaging, one of the things that she was saying in the webinar was I'm going to help you navigate your concussion symptoms. When I asked her why did you specifically choose, "I'm going to help you navigate your concussion symptoms?" And she said, "Well because when I created this, I was, I felt very helpless because my brick and mortar with the pandemic had to shut down so I went from making all this money to having to shut down my practice." So she was in this mentality of like, I'm helpless, I have to do something, it was this I don't know how to navigate my life now. So she used that word and what she found was the people who came into that program came in looking for her to solve their problem, they didn't take responsibility for their own recovery, they didn't take responsibility for their own actions, they were basically creating a codependent relationship on her. And because she felt helpless, she was turning around and bending over to their every need, and jumping in and doing more and doing all these things, because again, she set that container. So when we went in, and we restructured her messaging, we legit only changed the title of the webinar and the title of the webinar, the second time she launched was Regain Control of Your Life After A Concussion, and it was night and day. The reason why was using even the word regain on a psychological level, it makes you think that something was taken from you and it's your responsibility to take it back. When you have that, it changed the mindset to where she's gonna guide me and they took responsibility. So the second round, she had about 200 new members come in and she was saying that the atmosphere, the environment, the energy, everything was night and day, because all of these people who came in the second round, came in with a determined mindset and they were ready to go. That was a really long explanation, but that is one of the biggest mistakes I see is that when people are creating that messaging, it is a reflection of their mindset and their mindset needs to be in the correct place to be able to attract the ideal client that they want. What is something in your industry that you don't agree with? There are a lot. I have kind of built my entire brand around being disruptive in the industry. One of the biggest things which is very controversial, but I do not agree that people have to know, like, and trust you before they buy from you. That's one, another is you don't need to create how-to content. I think a lot of times we get stuck in that how-to content and we are only going to attract someone with a DIY mindset when we do that. I also don't really agree that serving is selling and I'll explain that one too, but we'll go back to the first one. I don't feel like people have to know, like, and trust you, before they buy from you. There has to be some type of trust there, but they don't have to fully know you. I love to use the example of let's say, you really want a new washer and dryer, and you're aware that you need a new washer dryer, you're aware of the problem. If you go to, let's say, Home Depot, and the salesperson who is going to sell you the washer-dryer, if they come up to you, and ask you if you need any help, you're not going to say, "Well, let me get to know this person I need to know about his family, and I need to know about all the stuff he's done in his life." I don't even really need to like him, I just need my problem solved. I just need to trust, I think trust is probably the biggest one, I need to trust that he is going to be capable of helping me solve the problem that I need to be solved. So I think a lot of the times we get stuck in that know, like, and trust so we end up creating content, creating messaging online, trying to get people to know us and like us, and to seek approval versus actually showing up to serve. I know it's a little controversial, because even on the flip side, I have known someone and I've liked them a lot, and I trusted them, but then I worked with them and they still didn't solve the problem that I needed. solved. Right. I only worked with them because I really liked them, but they weren't the best equipped to help me solve the problem that I needed. What do you think is one uncommon thing seven and eight-figure business owners have that others don't? One of the most uncommon things that seven and eight-figure business owners have or what I've even seen is they don't emphasize personal care. So what I mean by that is a lot of the entrepreneurs who are under the six-figure mark really try to build their life around their business and not the other way around. I know this is preached all the time, but when I really started to work with the seven and eight-figure business owners, what I realized is a lot of them had really strong containers. I don't mean boundaries, I just mean containers, they set expectations, and they never stepped out of those expectations. They also created expectations for their teams and their work relationships and they also spent a ton of time putting their life first and building their business around their life. That's one of the biggest things that I've seen is that mindset of I have to hustle, that's not there in the seven or eight-figure entrepreneurs and I think it is uncommon, especially in the online industry to see that because we're told you just have to work harder and you're one funnel away and this is your next step. When do you know when enough is enough? When are you actually gonna get to that next thing? That was one of the biggest things that I really started to see is that they really set these strong containers and they spent a lot more time on them. One thing I will say too, that I've started to implement myself is they actually spent a lot of time and stillness. Not meditation, but when I say stillness, they legit sat in stillness, no phone, no paper, no nothing. They just sat with their thoughts for 45 minutes to an hour, every single day in stillness, and just let their mind just be still. That brings so much clarity and I was like, "Oh, my gosh, there is no way that I could do that, there's no way I could just sit still for 45 minutes and not do anything," And that is something that I actually started to challenge myself on and I do that every day now. I go and sit for 40 minutes with no phone, no paper, no nothing, no meditation. I just sit in a chair, look at the wall and just sit for 40 minutes. It's amazing what happens, your brain just starts to go wild at first, and then it just starts to get really still and really calm and the best ideas come to you so much clarity comes to you. That's something I see a ton of the seven eight-figure business owners do that not a lot of the six or multi six-level ones do. Can you share with our listeners one of your most successful or favorite networking experiences that you've had? I'm going to tell a story about just being 100% yourself and not being there to prove anything. I was invited to speak at an event and there were very high-level entrepreneurs in this audience. I got on stage and I want to say this because yeah, it is about networking. But I think what hangs all of us up when it comes to networking are those thoughts about what people are going to think about you or about how you feel awkward in certain situations. So anyway, I got on stage and the first thing I said was "Guys, I'm just gonna be dead honest with you, I'm sweating like a pig. I don't even know if pigs sweat, but I'm sweating like a pig and I'm incredibly nervous to be on this stage. I just wanted to let you guys know, because it's very nervous to be up here and it's very vulnerable to be up here and to speak and have everyone staring at you." As soon as I did that the entire room relaxed and you could just kind of feel the tension, you could feel the relief across the room. I tell you that because I use that now in every single networking event that I've been to the first thing I say to someone is like, "Hey, I am incredibly intimidated to be here, because I know that there are so many successful people here, but it is really nice to meet you," and just immediately telling yourself and letting them know, it almost puts the pressure off of them too, because they're most likely feeling the same way. It just creates this bond and then what ends up happening now when I do this, they'll say, "Oh, my gosh, have you met Ashley may yet?" Because I immediately set that connection and also use a lot of humor. This is actually something I've learned with my child that to connect with your child is to never make them wrong. Like never make someone wrong for thinking something or doing something and always throw in a little bit of playfulness or silliness. Throwing that that playfulness and that silliness in there immediately draws this connection. One way I do that, in networking events that ties back to my brand is my whole brand is built around farts and I'm not even joking. My podcast is no farting around I talk about industry disruptors making a big stink in their industry. So a lot of times when I go to these networking events, I'll immediately say, "I'm Ashley Fernandez and one thing you should know about me is, I think farts are funny. Everyone thinks farts are funny and that's why I created my entire brand around farts." Even now, when I speak, I always tell a fart story. I'll tell a fart story at the very end, I'll say there was absolutely no reason why I told that story except to prove that it doesn't matter how much money you make, how old you are, we all think farts are funny. The tension is completely released and everyone feels so much more connected to me, because I've added in some type of humor, and I have just been 100% vulnerable and real. I think that's one of the most successful tips I have for networking. You immediately stand out in a room because you are building that playful connection. What advice would you offer that business professional who is looking to grow their network? I actually had a coach one time tell me that she went to a networking event and the speaker asked everyone to raise their hand in the room if they were here to sell something. She said everyone raised their hand in the room, right, and then she said to raise your hand if they were here to buy something and only two people raised their hand. Then she says, "I want you to take this moment to learn that when you approach a situation in a place of an agenda to sell, you're making it about you you're not making it about the person you're networking with, and do you want to be in a friendship where it's always take take take? No!" That's always stood out to me and so now even when I go to networking events, I never talk about my offer. Even if someone was like, "Oh my gosh, I'd love to work with you." I say, "You know what? Let's connect on Facebook, let's connect on LinkedIn, let me send you a link to my calendar, and let's just jump on a call because I truly want to make sure that you have a chance to meet everyone that you need to meet here." That is so different than everyone else when they network because they're thinking about how they can sell people. Don't ever approach a networking event that way. Have the mindset of who can I connect with and how can I bring value to them at this event without expecting anything in return? And that goes back to the whole I don't believe in serving and selling. I do go into it with a servant's heart and it eventually leads to sales sometimes or even just amazing relationships that lead to referrals, but I don't ever go into it without it. Do you have any final words of advice to offer listeners with regards to growing and supporting your network? I just would say just go out there when you're networking and truly make it about relationships, without an agenda, or relationships without anything in return. I think that is just the biggest part when it comes to networking and not really approaching it to make money or to grow your audience or your clients. It is truly about relationships at the end of the day. Again, your marketing your messaging, the way you do one thing, and the way you do all things. When you approach it with that mindset of I really truly am here to serve someone I think that just everything shifts, and it really shows because you can truly tell the people in the online space who are there to serve and who are the ones who are there with an agenda.   Connect with Ashley   Website: https://www.ashleymariecoaching.com/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleymaefernandez/ 

328: Crafting Messaging That Attracts Your Ideal Clients - with Ashley Mae Fernandez

Meet Tom Tom Andrews operates Andrews Media Ventures an independent PR communications consultancy based in Hartford, Wisconsin. Tom's background includes 35 years of major market broadcast news and public relations experience. Tom and his team have aligned professionals to help corporate and nonprofit clients raise their business and organizational profiles through services such as creative writing, PR console, media relations, spokesperson training, video production, voice talent, and special events support.  Besides using conventional online, print, broadcast, advertising, what other ways might a business or nonprofit organization consider to help raise public awareness about their products or services? Well, I'm not at all saying that conventional advertising and such are bad avenues to take. But in conjunction with that, I encourage my clients to think about earned media, grassroots type of methods of getting your message out. Earned media means coming up with angles that your company has that could be potentially newsworthy, and then pitching those to television, radio, print, whatever. Also, the advent of the digital world has given us social media. So there are opportunities now, as you never had before Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all these different methods that people have to get their word out. Another thing that I encourage them to do is to consider what I call side door advertising. You have an opportunity to be a part of community events, sponsorships, opportunities to get where you're not necessarily the focus, but by the side door, people have to know who you are, they have to be ident you have to be identified. Same thing if your company is featured in a news story of some sort. Maybe the story is not how great Keystone click is, but maybe the story involves Keystone click and they tell people who you are. So there's a variety of different ways to get your message out. All in addition to if you have an advertising budget, all the better. But sometimes I've worked with companies and entities that really didn't have much of a budget to do that. Particularly nonprofits maybe don't have the money to do that. So I look for other avenues to get the word out, get creative. As someone who came from the news business, how important is the use of video in telling my company story and doesn't have the impact it once did in the b2b world as well as reaching the general public? I spent quite a bit of time with video, and I still do I still am involved in video production. So I'm getting my biases out there for you right away. I still think that video when it's done well, has a tremendous impact as much today if not more than ever, because companies used to produce a video, and it has basically one use, they produce it, it'd be a DVD, they'd get it out, send it to their prospective clients or people that they wanted to work with and that was the end of it. Well today, when we shoot videos, we shoot them for repurposing, we shoot them so you can take some sound clips, video clips, and you can put them on Twitter, you can put them on Facebook. So you've got golden opportunities to reuse, if you will, the same material and augmented and refresh it all the time. I think video has a tremendous impact because I think it's the best mode of conveying human emotions. We talk about doing things in person, or the big thing is why is it so effective? Because you get to see the facial expressions of the person you're speaking with. There are silent little signals that don't come over in an email, they don't come over in a post on Facebook, or some social media, but you sit down with somebody and you get to know them, and you get to understand where they're coming from and I think that's a very effective way to get your messages across. When telling a company's or organization's story, can you address the importance of the people aspect in storytelling?  That's the in-person thing I've just mentioned. When you’re storytelling, for example, I'll pick on the news business for a moment, okay? The stories that I always found got the best response and the longest shelf life, I still hear about them. I've been on television for many, many years, but people remember the people whose lives were affected, or changed for the better, or impacted by whatever the story happened to be. So we build our stories, you build stories around people because that's the factor that everybody that either tugs at the heartstrings, or it or you find yourself saying, "I had that happened to me, I understand what he or she is feeling." Can you share with our listeners your most successful or favorite networking experience that you've had? I will say right up front that I'm a very lucky person because of the career I had before thrust me into all kinds of situations where I had to meet new people. I had to learn about their business, I had to learn something about their family or something like that. What are you doing in networking? You're introducing yourself, you're trying to find out about somebody else's business, you're trying to figure out if you can interface with this person? So when I started out I was on the radio, I covered the Bucks, the Brewers, Marquette Warriors, the Green Bay Packers, the Wisconsin Badgers, all those things. And I was networking, all the while gathering my contacts, but the best location was always the press box because I got to reunite. To this day, I still do some scattered features for the brewery for game day magazine and I get to go and reconnect with people that I used to work with or who were coming into the business. But the thing about it is that kind of an atmosphere has given me all kinds of opportunities. For instance, from doing things with the Green Bay Packers I got to edit rather and do some writing and do the marketing for the first biography ever done on Curly Lambeau. It was called Lambeau, The Man Behind The Mystique. Later on, I was approached because of my junky hood from going back to baseball cards when I was five years old, and getting introduced to the Milwaukee Braves. Today I'm also one of the directors of the Milwaukee Braves Historical Association and because of that, I got sought out by a guy who has written a chain of sportsbooks. The book was for Milwaukee Braves fans only and because of that, I had to split it up in terms of writing. We had contacts with people who are still Milwaukee Braves fans today, catch up with them, and get them to tell us their stories. Their personal stories of I remember the first time I met Warren Spahn, or I got picked up by Warren Spahn when I was hitchhiking, or I remember bugging players in the parking lot outside county stadium. Those are just precious memories. So I got to kind of relive my childhood with that.  How do you best stay in from of and nurture your network? Well, I've always considered my network like a garden, if you will. You are planting constantly you're planting and hoping that they're going to bear fruit. But what do you got to do? When you start planting things, do you just wait? No! You have to water it, you have to weed it, you got to do all these things. Also, here's a key one. Keeping in contact with people not only when you're trying to figure out if you can do something together, but it’s also learning about your contacts, learning about their family. Mark that stuff down and the old days, we have what was called a Rolodex. You would write down this on this rotating little miniature file system that you kept at your desk. Nowadays its this is called, your database so you have update and nourish your database every chance you get. If you read about something where maybe somebody even if you're not working with them anymore, but you knew them before, and they just did something of significance, call them up, congratulate them, or send them an email. You would be amazed at the number of things that come swimming back to you in a very positive light. If you stand at the edge of the garden with your arms crossed and waiting, it does not happen. You have to push it. Let's go back to your 20-year-old self. What would you tell yourself to do more or less of or differently with regards to your professional career? Wow, that is a loaded question because hindsight is always 20-20, and boy, if I knew then what I knew now, I'm certain that my attitudes on all the number of things would be completely different than they were. I never considered myself to be a know it all, but I would always listen to myself when I was certain that I was correct. I always dug my heels in and that was not very flexible on certain things. Looking back I would be more flexible, I would be more open to seeing other ways of doing things even if I was certain. Listen, I've done this before, I'm lock stock and barrel certain that this is going to work. I've done it before, but maybe not as well as the idea that somebody else just came up here. So I think that's probably what I would tell myself, be a little bit more open, be more flexible, and always be a better listener. Do you have any final words of advice to offer our listeners with regards to growing and supporting your network? Always be thinking about growing and supporting your network. Don't be afraid to reach out and tell your story to others and also be encouraging to get other people to tell you their story. What's the story about them as much as they want to share about them personally, or about their company, or how they got to where they are. People like to share that kind of information, but many times they're not drawn out? to do it. So I would encourage you to do that. Take notes, mental notes, and when you get back to your car, write them down, write something down, make up a little review. If somebody really interested you write down as much as you can remember right there when it’s fresh. Builds your network, grow your garden!   Connect with Tom   Email: andrewst53@gmail.com  Phone: 414-732-7371  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomandrews53/

327: Raising Your Organizations Profile Through Storytelling - with Tom Andrews

Meet Lindsey She is a principal and owner of McMillion Consulting. Lindsey believes in the power of influence and is a connector to the core as a national and international speaker, writer, and prospecting trainer. Her expertise is founded on equipping successful professionals and teams to profitably connect with purpose on LinkedIn. She has worked with 1000s of people to help them drive millions in revenue. Lindsey believes teaching should be practical as learning is actionable love that she loves helping her clients win. Building relationships is all about establishing trust. How do we go about building trust on LinkedIn? I always talk about how LinkedIn is this powerful online tool, but at the end of the day, business and networking and connecting have always been social, even before the internet existed. Shaking hands, kissing babies, following up to people knocking on doors. So I like to just remind people that and part of this is just to let down the anxiety and fear that comes with using a powerful tool like LinkedIn. So many things that I say and speak about this tool are similar to what you would do offline in many ways. So how do you build trust on LinkedIn? You do it just like you would offline so you have to think about your reputation. When you think about your reputation offline, and the credibility that you have, you want to make sure that that's mirrored online, specifically through your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn loves keywords, just like Google does so the more you can strategically and completely build out that LinkedIn profile with keywords, you're increasing your likelihood of coming up in a search result on the platform. If you were to Google somebody's name, LinkedIn and Google love each other so there's a high likelihood that it's not the first result, the second or third result on that first page is going to be that person's LinkedIn profile. Also, people do not have to have a LinkedIn account to see your profile because it's public. So I always like to emphasize that remembering the foundation of any success on LinkedIn is going back to your LinkedIn profile. The other thing I like to incorporate, here is authenticity. My motto for McMillion Consulting is connecting with purpose and when you're connecting with purpose, as it relates to LinkedIn, what does that mean? Well, it means personalizing your outreach, following up to start a conversation, getting offline. Sometimes parts of the conversation can be in LinkedIn, but you still want to meet them in person because at the end of the day, we're all in the human to human business so we want to think about just being authentic, connecting with purpose, personalizing our outreach, following up, asking people if they want to have a conversation offline to continue the discussion that was started. So I think of reputation, I think of authenticity, I think of generosity. We have to be servants of our knowledge, and our networks, and what I mean by that is you are Lori, an expert in marketing and many things in advertising. You and I were recently speaking about marketing automation and so many things that I have no idea about, but some that I do. So it's this idea that you are very intentional, as I was sharing our knowledge with our networks on LinkedIn. What I always say, when I think about generosity on LinkedIn is it's not just about being a good steward, and a good servant of your knowledge, but it's also about recognizing when others do the same. It's also about being generous with your network and introducing people. I loved your opening comment, "Hey, if you know anyone else who should be a part of this podcast in the conversation and let me know," and we have to tell people that so that they do think of us when they think of someone in their network who's a great speaker, who should be interviewed by you on their podcast. Then lastly, I would say is this consistency. So one client goes into LinkedIn, he's very consistent, every Sunday and Thursday. Now, I'm going to put a little disclaimer asterisk by this and that it's not that Sunday and Thursday are the right time for you or me, but this just so happened to be his cadence. So Sundays and Thursdays, he would go into LinkedIn and on average, this specific activity that he was doing in LinkedIn, would yield him six appointments per week, of which he would close three on average. So he's a really good sales guy as a 50% success rate is pretty darn good, I would say. But the cool thing about those six appointments is that that was on top of what he was already doing in his business to grow his business. So he was using LinkedIn as an additive as a supplement to enhance his already successful growing business. What he said to me when he shared that was, "Lindsey, it's because I'm consistent and disciplined," so another way to think about consistency is showing up so you're top of mind. Let's talk about ROI specific to the advertising that's available on LinkedIn. How can you go about getting that? This is a really fun question because I flip it on its head. I'm asked this pretty often throughout the year where people will say, "Lindsay, I'm interested in spending some of my ad dollars on LinkedIn." What I would say is that perhaps if you're a really large corporation or enterprise, you can get away with dropping some pretty big bucks on LinkedIn advertising. But generally, there is truly a laundry list of items to get done for that spending to have some ROI. Meaning, what you might think of as a quick fix, with LinkedIn advertising, doesn't work that way. So a few examples of those laundry list items can include brushing up and cleaning up those LinkedIn profiles of yourself and your team members, making sure you have a company page, making sure that the individuals in your organization have networks that include people that you want to do business with, making sure you're posting content consistently across your individual profiles and your company page. I think that was like four or five things just right off the bat, right? So how do you get an ROI from your LinkedIn advertising, it's making sure that you're set up well for success because LinkedIn is looking at all of those little pieces, and not just saying, "Hey, the biggest better wins the honeypot." Which LinkedIn feature is currently your favorite?  I'm not sure what year they released this, I want to say it was last summer. The feature that I absolutely love is setting an away message on LinkedIn. Many people have no idea that that's even a feature and it's a feature that you only get access to with LinkedIn premium. Now, when people hear LinkedIn premium, that's kind of the umbrella. But underneath that umbrella, you have multiple options. As of the release of this podcast, there are four LinkedIn, individual subscriptions that you can invest in for yourself. Even on the lowest-paid subscription, which is career and it's roughly $30 a month, you get access to set an away message. So few reasons I love this is one, I don't want to look like a jerk if you send me a message, and I don't respond to you within the blank amount of time that I'm out of the office. So you get a little ping back immediately, just like out of office on email works, that says I'm unavailable. Now the other reason I love it, which I do with my email as well is leveraging this as an opportunity for a little commercial or promotion. So I include a postscript on my LinkedIn away messages when I use them which includes one of my free guides. I mentioned a few moments ago that this is a feature you only get if you are paying for LinkedIn and so one of the things I want to share with your listeners is going back to what I mentioned at the beginning of our chat, which was the reputation. So I've got a free guide that anyone who's listening can get access to if they go to https://www.linkedintoit.com/freeprofileguide and it's about a seven or eight-page guide of how to prepare, build and launch your LinkedIn profile. Here's the thing, similar to advertising in many ways you could spend all the money in the world on LinkedIn, but it goes back to that key foundation where if you don't look reasonably intelligent, and you haven't intentionally built your LinkedIn profile the right way, nobody's going to respond to you, nobody's going to engage with you. So that free profile guide is a great place to get started. Can you share one of your favorite networking stories or experiences that you've had? It's actually when I was in college, and it's made such a really powerful impression on me that I believe it changed the trajectory of my career and how I was networking and meeting people in my business community and as a professional. So when I was in college, I don't think I even knew what a networking event was. But it just so happened that I was in the business school and they were hosting a networking event to teach us what it was and how to do it. So I show up to this event and you can imagine it was incredibly awkward and nothing was happening in this room of 20 or 30 students. Nothing was happening, we knew that it had a start time so we're looking at our watches and I'm like, "Why isn't this thing starting?" Well, I Look over and a gentleman is standing in the corner of the room. I'm sure many of the other students saw him and thought he was a professor observing the students and I just walked over to him, right, because I actually intended on asking him what was going on. So I walked over to him standing in the corner, I stuck out my hand to introduce myself, he put his hand out and handed me a $20 bill. He introduced himself as the event speaker and so the lesson of that impressionable story is the most important person in the room might be the person standing awkwardly and uncomfortably in a networking event. So as we brush off our in-person networking skills, be the person who speaks up first. If you're all there for a common goal to meet other people, to me, that just really lets down the guard and discomfort that sometimes comes with showing up at a networking event. But yeah, I got 20 bucks out of it and it turns out he was the most important person in the room! How do you stay in front of and best nurture your network or your community? I think it's important to meet them where they're at and stay in front of them in multiple ways. So yes, I'm a LinkedIn expert, but when I say this, I really mean it, I've got a 17 or 18 point checklist that I share with clients that I train on how to use LinkedIn more productively and profitably and you can imagine that those 17 to 18 points aren't all on LinkedIn. So that's kind of the irony is that we have to remember to use multiple communication channels when we are networking and staying in front of our networks and growing our networks. So picking up the phone, following up via email, attending a local event, seeing if they're on other platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and meeting them where they're at because that's generally going to be the place that they are most comfortable. I think, to me, that's the most important thing is not getting that tunnel vision of getting so stuck on a specific platform. It's using those other channels to connect with people. What advice would you offer to business professionals looking to grow their network? I came up with this little term. I've been talking about it for years, and finally coined it as "The Who Pie." I'm going to speak about LinkedIn specifically because it's a platform we both love and it's the sandbox I always say I play and stay and I don't touch any other social platform out there. When you think about your existing LinkedIn network, so that's your first-degree connections, I want you to think about your who pie. About 85% of your first-degree connections should be people who you authentically know, professionally. These people could be current colleagues of yours at the current company you work at, they could be people you previously worked together with, they could be people you've done business with, people you met at an event, people you went to college with, they're your clients, your vendors, your connections, and essentially, this portion of your network should be people who you can introduce to each other. Then I think there's this other 10% of your network that can be who you don't know yet. This is where that growth actually comes into play. So you're connected to about 10% or so of people who you don't know yet, but you're using LinkedIn as an entry point to get offline to schedule the phone call, or the zoom or the in-person meeting. So it is okay to be first-degree connections with people on LinkedIn who you don't know yet. But you're connecting with them intending to get to know them so that they essentially transfer over to that 85% of your who pie. So now, there's this other 5%. To me, those can be your friends and family. Here's the disclaimer: This 5% that can be friends and family need to represent themselves professionally. So both of my sisters are attorneys in the DC-Maryland area and while I don't do business with them directly, they're my sisters so I'm okay to be connected with them on LinkedIn, because they may know people who I need to meet. But of course, we have to be mindful of those family members who are not using LinkedIn professionally because if you engage with their activity, that activity is publicly visible. Similar to before I'll say it again, it's okay to be connected with your professional friends and family members, but to me, that 10% of the who pie is really where the opportunity is to grow. If you could go back to your 20-year-old self, what would you tell yourself to do more or less of or differently with regards to your professional career? This is so easy for me, not to take myself so damn seriously. I still struggle with this and I think I'm also just learning to embrace that I do tend to be a little more serious. Funny enough, I kind of blame it on my sisters. They're much closer than age so in some ways you could look at our family tree and think, "Oh, Lindsey is an only child," but here's the deal. I didn't have anyone to banter with, my two sisters are incredibly sarcastic and I was like this serious child that is black and white and life is not black and white. We have to take a deep breath and shrug our shoulders and just relax sometimes. So I would definitely say not taking myself so seriously.  I understand that you have a giveaway for our listeners? Yes! So my team and I have put together this incredible guide called the Ultimate LinkedIn Profile Examples Guide. In the years and years and years that I have interviewed clients, written their profiles, launched their profiles, time and time again, we're visual creatures as human beings, and they want to see the before and after the makeover. So finally, I got a brilliant idea of putting an Ultimate LinkedIn Profile Examples Guide together to help folks who get access to this boost and level up their LinkedIn profile the right way. This guide has more than 20 pages in it with inspiration because the idea is to inspire people who get it in their inbox, who get access to it, inspire them with other top-notch profiles that I've cherry-picked, and hand-selected. At the end of the day, you have a unique story, your career, where you're going, who you're doing business with, where you came from is all unique to you, but I think it's valuable to see other people who are doing it well. So I've handpicked tons and tons of examples and the idea with this is really so that you can get more time back on your watch when you're transforming your profile. I recently updated this guide and it now includes five bonus features to make sure you're using to implement in your profile to stand out even more. The offer is a 50% discount code on the guide. So when you go to https://www.linkedintoit.com/ultimate and apply the code "podcast50" you will receive 50% off your guide!   Connect with Lindsey   Claim your free profile guide: https://www.linkedintoit.com/freeprofileguide Claim your copy of The Ultimate LinkedIn Examples Guide by heading to https://www.linkedintoit.com/ultimate and typing in promo code “podcast50” LinkedIn: Lindsey McMillion Stemann | LinkedIn  Website: McMillion Consulting 

326: Connecting With Purpose On LinkedIn - with Lindsey McMillion Stemann

Meet Elizabeth Elizabeth started her career in technology after securing an MBA from Loyola University in Maryland back in the early 90s. She climbed the career ladder and an early-stage startup in the commercial construction technology industry to Director of Business Development and demonstrated success driving multimillion-dollar sales growth while providing award-winning sales leadership. After a personal challenge managing her home, Elizabeth decided to build the very solution she needed to save money, save time and reduce her stress. Now she is the Co-Founder of HomeZada, an online and mobile home management portal that helps homeowners manage their homes to save time and money and reduce stress. Specifically, HomeZada educates homeowners in the areas of home management, inventory, maintenance, remodeling projects, and finances. She recently won the 2019 Female Founders and FinTech Pitch Competition and appeared on the NASDAQ channel. What made you take the leap to start your own software company? Originally, I wasn't going to start a software company, because my husband had already started one and I worked for that company. Lo and behold, I ran into my own problems, as the bio indicated, I started running into problems at my home, and it was broken hot water heaters that broke earlier than they needed to only because I didn't understand that simply flushing them, which is basically how maintenance makes them operate properly. Not understanding how to manage all my maintenance, all these different areas, where was the money going in my house, I was really, really frustrated that I couldn't figure out all the little details of managing my home, and how to actually get this data to make it easier for me to manage my home. Then I started realizing if I'm having this experience is everyone else? And so I looked for 10 years for someone else to create a solution like HomeZada, and nobody did. We had sold our last company and my husband who I actually work with right now, said we've got another startup in us. Let's do it again, let's build the company that you want and the product that you want because we could help all these homeowners everywhere. At first, I thought it was crazy! But then I said, "No, you know what? I still have these problems, the solution to my problems are not solved, I need to solve them and they also need to help other people solve their problems as well," because if I'm going through this, other people must as well. Sure enough, we have customers all over the country, and in many countries outside the United States who experience the same things. They're running into problems managing all the details about their home in one place and this is what HomeZada allows them to do. What types of marketing are you doing to build your customer base? We target directly to the consumer so we target the homeowner. We use a lot of different marketing activities to reach them. The first set of activities that we target for our homeowner customers is a lot of digital marketing. We are a digital platform so making sure that we can give them access to our platform as easily. Anything that's social, pay per click, email marketing, and we also do a lot of other marketing as it relates to PR. PR is also a really good way for us to get our message out there because we do a lot of things because we are total home management in one system and not everybody needs complete home management all at once. They may need one portion of managing their home, for instance, I live maybe in Florida, meaning this homeowner, and it's getting ready to be hurricane season so I need to track a home inventory. So that's maybe where they start. Or maybe you're a first-time homeowner and what you need is to track your home maintenance, because you're not familiar with how to maintain your home. Or maybe like in the pandemic, everybody was doing projects and so how do I actually manage those projects as easily and efficiently as I can? So having PR communicate specifically how a particular area of HomeZada can help a specific homeowner during that area of their homeowner journey makes it really easy for us to really reach our customers and for them to understand more about how HomeZada can be valuable to them. One of the other things we do too is, when it comes to social, we do use a lot of videos to help people understand why it's valuable to manage your home digitally so that it's efficient for you, it does save you time and money and how you can actually do that using HomeZada as well. So videos are really popular with a lot of our users and they can reach our YouTube channel. The other thing that we do is also target our business to business customers. They range from real estate companies, mortgage companies, insurance companies, home builders, home maintenance contractors, and many more others that find HomeZada extremely valuable for them. So one of the things that we do there is it's a straightforward business development and partner management to reach those businesses and to help them understand how HomeZada can benefit their business as well as their customers. So it becomes a win-win for everyone. But there is a common thread that we see both with the homeowners and the businesses is that everybody needs to understand a little bit more about HomeZada. So engagement and interaction through education is the common thread that we see in both the audiences that we target and it makes it more effective for us to get our message out there in order for people to understand that we exist so they can get better at managing their homes. Can you share with me one of your most successful or favorite networking stories that you've had? Oh, I have a great one for here. So I'm an extrovert, I love to network and I go to events all the time. So for me, it's really easy to network and I love meeting people and I love learning what they do and who I can connect them with. But there was one time when I went to a networking event and not everyone is an extrovert like me, many people are introverts. There was this young lady who was kind of off to the corner and I'm like, "No, this is not going to happen so beware here I come." We became fast friends after that, by the way, but during this time, she was really nervous. So we just got to talk in and having an understanding of each other's business and then I invited her to another event that I was actually speaking at locally here in the Sacramento area. She was really nervous and she explained to me, she was an introvert and I said, I could tell just because you're standing over by the wall, and not engaging, and I said, but we can actually help with that! At the next event, I said, just meet two people. Two people! You don't have to meet everybody in the room, just meet two people. Walk out with two people and that's it, make it really simple! She was so excited that she was given a goal that forces her out of our comfort zone, that not only did she meet two people, but she met seven people by the end of the night, and she was so proud of her achievement. She didn't realize how easy it was until it started going. But she was so stressed out about just I don't even want to talk to anyone and that simple little goal, a low-risk goal helped her continue to build out her networking capabilities. So then she met a lot of other people I know in the industry, and the tech industry here, and she ended up meeting many, many more, and then doing business with a lot of these individuals. So one little thing, one little goal, meeting two people was super simple, and then here it is, she's now got a thriving business because of just one tiny little goal. How do you stay in front of and best nurture your relationships within your network? That's a hard thing for a lot of people, especially if your networks are large. One of the ways I do that is through LinkedIn. I'm a big fan of LinkedIn, I can periodically see what's going on in people's lives, but I can also correspond and send private messages just to reconnect with a lot of people. Another thing that I do and perform now granted it, the pandemic has put a slight change on things, but it's also making sure that you are going to the events in your area. We had a lot of virtual events during the pandemic, making sure you're still doing that and continuing to build those relationships. One of the other things that I also participate in is what we refer to as Masterminds. A Mastermind generally brings a group of people together, not giant, just a small group, where individuals can freely speak about their business, and how each other can help each other, and not only help each other in the business and answer questions and suggestions for a particular task or a strategy but also because when you have a group of individuals, where you have the freedom to speak, they have networks that they have as well, that they can also bring to the table which also helps all of us nurture our networks because now we've got more people to introduce to each other, to help each other grow each other's businesses. What advice would you offer that business professional really looking to grow their network? The biggest thing I would say is one, get out there. Two, don't be shy with LinkedIn, I just love LinkedIn. So don't be shy with that, hear what people have to say. Even if they ping you through in mail or some other connection, hear what they have to say before you actually write them off, because you never know where you can support each other. Then I do encourage people, especially for those introverts out there just to meet two people at an event. Do not give yourself some astronomical goal that you feel intimidated by and you may not want to go out there at all. So if you feel so intimidated, you're probably not going to go out and network at all, just tell yourself that you only need to meet two people at an event. That's it, and make it a quality two people meaning that you spend quality time with them to get to know them a little bit more. Then once you start meeting those people, they'll start introducing the other people, and then you've got a built-in buddy system at an event because people just start introducing you. If you could go back to your 20-year-old self, what would you tell yourself to do more or less of or differently with regards to your professional career? I don't have a whole lot of regrets looking back, but I will say take the job. So there was an opportunity that was provided to me and I thought at the time, I wasn't qualified enough for the job. I thought that the job needed someone else's skill set in it and I declined the position, which was surprising for someone like me because I'm pretty confident. But I just felt this was for the best of the company at the time and then as it turns out, I ended up having to do the job anyway, over years of doing it. So take the job, if it's offered to you take the job, you will figure it out and people within your company will help you figure it out. Do you have any final word or advice for our listeners about networking? I would say get out there. However, you do it virtually, online, in person. Also, keep it simple, don't stress yourself out, especially after the pandemic, a lot of people have been inside for a long time, and they haven't been in offices, and they may be nervous. So it's just a little bit at a time and you don't have to jump in the deep end right away. Just step your toe in the steps and go on the shallow end with just a couple of people every time you go out. Just meet two people.   Connect with Elizabeth   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edodson/  Website: https://www.homezada.com/

325: Claiming Financial Control Over Your Own Home - with Elizabeth Dodson

324: Effective Communication: The Key To Growing Your Network and Business - with Paul Edwards

Welcome to the Social Capital Podcast, where we dive into social relationships and how the investment you put into them establishes trust, reciprocity, and value within your network and community. Our host, Lori Highby, will connect with top professionals and dive into their best networking stories and techniques to share with you!

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