Orchestrating Success

Dealing with Workplace Conflict Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Workplace Conflict (with 17 years of nonprofit leadership experience, I can speak to how conflict is often not addressed well in NPO settings and how to do it well for more collaboration) Too often, team members don't have the meaningful, collaborative conflict that builds better results, creates innovation, and helps you serve your clients and communities. Often, people think of conflict as strictly destructive and avoid it altogether. But the right tools, you can easily help your teams move from destructive or avoided conflict to meaningful collaboration in pursuit of your mission. David Dye helps leaders and teams achieve transformational results without sacrificing their humanity. As a former nonprofit executive and elected official, he is known for practical leadership techniques you can use right away. He's President of Let's Grow Leaders, a global leadership development firm known for practical tools and techniques for human-centered leaders. David is also an award-winning author of six books including: Courageous Cultures – How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers and Customer Advocates and Powerful Phrases for Dealing With Workplace Conflict: What to Say Next to Destress the Workday, Build Collaboration and Calm Difficult Customers. He also hosts the popular podcast: Leadership without Losing Your Soul. Website - https://letsgrowleaders.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brainpower with Nina Sunday Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How to marry creativity and business acumen and turn them into superpowers We creatives often get in our own way because of the stories we tell ourselves So our creative juices sometimes can become our worst nightmares that lead to overwhelm, burnout, and jeopardize our well-being and relationships But it doesn't have to be that way. Let me show you how. Yiqing (yee-ching) is an award-winning actor/filmmaker and a creativity coach for artists and entrepreneurs.  She is the CEO of Fearless Cutie Pie Productions - an all-female production company dedicated to telling cathartic stories with strong Asian female leads. She found her calling in helping people with their minds and souls through storytelling, after a miserable failure in a depression study when she was a medical student in China.  She helps heart-driven multi-hyphenates get unstuck, overcome burnout, and create more balanced, meaningful, and fulfilling lives.  She can be found here https://linktr.ee/yiqingzhao Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

OS 122 Super Charge Your Profits with No Bid Federal Contracts! Federal Contracts are not just for the BIG COMPANIES, federal contracting is for small companies. Small Businesses are leaving SO MUCH money on the table. If you've never thought about federal contracting because there's too much red tape, no-bid contracts will open up this door of opportunity for you. Ron Imbach is the president of the Center for Business Innovation and the Executive Director of the International Association of US Government Contractors.  He and his partner, Chip Ellis, lead a talented team that provides coaching, consulting, and training to small businesses that want to thrive with federal contracts. Ron has spent the past 30+ years assisting small businesses, high-net-worth individuals, non-profits, and large companies.  With an undergraduate degree in accounting and economics and an MBA in marketing and public policy, Ron is very comfortable with the numbers, but thrives the most in relationship-building, including assisting his clients now in building relationships with federal government decision-makers. Since 2008, the IAUSGC has assisted over 2000 clients to secure federal no-bid contracts with the federal government, millions of dollars for their clients, without any of the mind-numbing red tape, complicated contracts, and expensive consultants.  CBI and IAUSGC serve clients in their Top 40 Industries.  Those industries are in the greatest demand for federal government contracts for goods and services.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

OS 121: Scale Your Business by Following Evan's C.A.S.T.LE. Methodology   Evan Tzivanakis is an Accredited Executive Coach (www.ExecutiveCoachAsia.com) and a Ph.D. candidate in Organizational Behaviour. Throughout his career, has managed more than 500 employees across 8 countries and led companies to expand across the Asia Pacific region by successfully crafting the right company culture and leading people from the front. With that experience, he helps executive leaders and organizations to enhance their leadership presence, have more engaged teams, increase profits, and live happier. He does that by offering some of the most educational, transformational, and impactful coaching & training solutions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

OS 120: Ed Krow on Leadership With a proven track record in HR, Ed Krow is a people expert who uses his unique talent transformation process to leverage existing talent and align employees with organizational strategy to create change, drive sustainable growth, and maintain overall happiness. “I help solve people's problems and I write books about solving people's problems, but I'm also a business owner. It's not only experience, it's living with the same problems my clients do and sharing how to overcome them that people value the most.”     Ed Krow. Ed Krow is ambitious, educated, and dedicated when it comes to getting everyone on the same page. He values people at the heart of everything, so he became a talent transformation expert. As a regular contributor to Forbes.com, Ed Krow is a sought-after, down-to-earth leader in his field. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

OS 119: Know, Like and Trust and Other Sales Lies with Sara Phillips Website: superiorperformancecoaching.biz Free Ebook for listeners:  https://www.hotsalestips.com/habitsofsuccessfulsalespeople Sign Up for a Free 30 Minute Consultation to get personal tips to up your sales game:  https://calendly.com/saraphillipssolutions/complimentary-30-minute-advisory-session Bio: Sara Phillips is a person who has sales running through her veins. She paid her way through college by buying candy and reselling it to other kids beginning in elementary school. She has spent a lifetime building a highly successful sales career. Now living in Clayton, NC, she is single and has one four-legged fur baby named Coby. From her home there she continues to grow her health insurance business but is now using her additional career as a school teacher to help others learn a different way to view sales. As a sales coach, she frames sales in a different light that allows the sales professional to build a predictable stream of high income while, at the same time, removing the stress from the process. In short, she helps sales professionals put the life back in their life.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

5 Leadership Myths That Kill Entrepreneurial Ventures Hugh Ballou The Law of the Lid Your leadership is like a lid or a ceiling on your organization. Your church or business will not rise beyond the level your leadership allows. That's why, when a corporation or team needs to be fixed, they fire the leader. - John Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership Starting and maintaining a profitable enterprise as an entrepreneur is very difficult, at best. However, research shows that 90% of businesses that fail do so because of a lack of leadership skills. Fortunately, leadership is a skill many people can learn. In my opinion, however, learning great leadership means that many of us must unlearn most of what we've previously been taught or observed. Best practice for building and sustaining a profitable business is often a reverse paradigm from the things business schools and prevailing leadership experts teach. Leadership best practice, from my perspective, requires the same skills a conductor uses to build the high-performance cultures we call “ensembles” in the musical world. “Ensembles,” in the non-music context, are high-synergy teams. These teams develop only with the intentionality of the leader. The entrepreneur who operates as a “solopreneur” might not perceive that synergistic teams are important. Wrong! If you are talking to at least one other person, such as a salesperson, consultant, alliance or venture partner, advisor or board member, then you have a team. It is important for entrepreneurs to surround themselves with capable people. It is also important to learn from other businesses you admire. Being an entrepreneur is a choice to stay out of corporate systems, so why do things in the same way as a company you don't want to work for? Team effectiveness starts with the leader and branches from there. First, you equip yourself, then you empower others. With this in mind, here are the 5 top leadership myths that kill entrepreneurial ventures: 1.     I Must Be in Command 2.     Always be Right 3.     Improper Language or Behavior 4.     Pretend to Know What You are Doing Even If You Don't Know 5.     Delegation is a Weakness of Leadership Are you ready to go to the next step? As you study these myths, I suggest you share your personal and organizational goals with at least three people you respect and with whom you have a valued connection. Check with them every 30 days to let them know how things are progressing. Being accountable to others is frightening at first until you realize that the people you are accountable to are the people who will bring the highest value to you because they understand where you're going. But most important of all, for your venture's success, when you hit the leadership lid, raise the ceiling! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Top Challenges for Today’s Leader Leadership is a general topic that people understand in different ways; in fact people have contrasting and conflicting perceptions of how leaders should behave and what leaders should do. Therefore, there are many gaps between theory and effective performance for leaders. Over the past 31 years in working with leadership in many types of organizations doing different kinds of work and leading different sizes of groups, I have observed these 5 things that are my vision of why many leaders don't make the progress that they are capable of and don't’ get into a stride of continuous improvement that propels them into the place they deserve. So, consequently leaders are over stressed with too many demands on their time, have lower performing teams than expected, and earn less income than possible. Here are my thoughts as to why these leadership gaps and ways to address each one: 1) Not Understanding True Leadership: We have had leadership bad models and have been taught things that aren’t working today, and may have never worked. The “Boss” or autocratic leader is a thing of the past. Many people in positions of authority use power of position as the leverage to get people to perform. If we truly have a team of competent people, then it’s crucial to let them perform, as they are capable. Telling people what to do isn’t the answer to getting the best results, unless the leader only wants to be around to boss people all the time and do nothing else. This doesn’t develop capacity for anyone and wastes the energy, time and talent of the leader. True leadership in my world is Transformational Leadership where the leader is the influencer, visionary, and empowering agent for others to perform. Leaders lead. Others do. Whoever taught us that we should be willing to do anything we ask others do to most likely didn’t mean that we had to actually do it. If so, why have others anyway? 2) Not Being Vulnerable: Fear of being wrong comes from the misconception that leaders must have all the right answers. It’s more important for leaders to ask good questions and empower others to have the right answers. Saying, “I don’t have the answer” is a true way of being vulnerable. One strength of leadership is being vulnerable by letting other know we don’t have the answers and that we don’t have all the skills. We lead by example and not by bluffing. When we bluff, then people intuitively know it, so we lose credibility. Being authentic is a top trait of the Transformational Leader. In face, we should have a team of people with contrasting skills to ours and people who fill in the gaps of our competencies. What a novel thought, eh? 3) Not Understanding the Value of Relationships: Leadership is based on relationship. Always work on relationships with those in your charge. This is misunderstood by many as having to be “friends” with employees. No, that not the only choice. And it does not mean that the leader must make decisions so that people will like them. The inverse is true. Make principle based decisions so people will respect you. Value and respect people over results, then they become more focused on results along with you. Leadership is relationships. Communication is also enhanced through good relationships. 4) Not Understanding How to Manage Self: Writer Richard Rohr says that, “Transformed people transform people.” He also says, “Wounded people wound people.” Not managing self is a start of building a dysfunctional team. If the leader is anxious, then the team is anxious. If the leader is dishonest, then the team is dishonest. You get the idea. Having a value driven, principle-based personal practice is key to high functioning as a leader of others. The team is a reflection of the leader. Not having a high level of self-awareness and self-control is going to drive results that are not desirable. Murray Bowen’s theory of leadership is based on “Differentiation of Self.”  It’s critical to manage self to be a high functioning leader. 5) Not Having a Plan:Chasing the “shiny object” is what entrepreneurs are accused of doing. That scenario is not limited to entrepreneurs, however. I’m surprised as to how many leaders are leading without a plan. This is a form of control due to insecurity. If others are dependent on the leader for action directions, then the leader is always in control. This is a system that greatly limits activity and is dependent on one person. With a written plan, everyone knows what to do and when to do it and can function at an optimum level. The leader then guides the process. Reversing these dysfunctions is moving from “Push” leadership to “Pull” leadership. The musical conductor pulls music out of the ensemble by letting others perform up to their highest standard. This is no different in the workplace.

Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler.- Albert Einstein There are at least 200 working days a year. If you commit to doing a simple marketing item just once each day, at the end of the year you've built a mountain.- Seth Godin* Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.- Steve Jobs Complexity to Simplicity: The Transformational Leader Creates Clarity Our world already has too many choices. I can remember when we only had the telephone to contact people. In fact, when we needed to call long distance, we needed to have the operator place the call. It was a big deal when we could dial 1 to make a long distance call. Then we got FAX machines. We could send documents over phone lines. This saved sending packages by special delivery mail. Then, the next big deal was email! This was an amazing breakthrough allowing us to communicate with people around the globe. Then came pagers. Then we got cell phones. Then came texting. We kept adding things and not taking away anything. More is not better. We are bombarded each day with so many messages that it's difficult to discern what's important. We live in a mostly over-stimulated world. In music masterworks, some of the most profound moments are those with complete silence or a passage that's pianissimo, following a loud, dramatic passage. There's unique power in the quiet times and the times of silence. It's in silent, quiet times that the presence of God is most felt, not in noisy praise sessions. It’s the leader’s duty and delight to pay attention to what’s happening and how it happens and separate the noise from the essential messages. It’s the leader's job to make the complex simple. This is not a simple task. Cutting through the noise and confusion takes focus, concentration, and a lot of effort. Like the Jobs quote above points out, it’s hard work making things simple. When I was a young piano student, I heard Van Cliburn play a solo concert in Atlanta, Georgia. I was so impressed that he made playing the piano seem easy. It appeared easy because he had practiced. He had done the hard work. He had prepared in order to release his creative energy in performance. Mozart’s music is seemly simple, however it’s so transparent that every note is exposed. It’s delicacy in motion. It’s difficult, not in playing lots of notes, but in precision. Paderewski was known to have said that playing Mozart was simple for the student and very difficult for the teacher. In other words, the simple is difficult. We want to hide behind complexity as leaders to protect our deficiencies, our insecurities, and our lack of knowledge. Leadership is identifying our gaps. Leadership is asking questions and not knowing all the answers. Leadership is about integrity, honesty, and open communications. We get things done and we know how things get done. If we don’t know, we find out how. When the musical conductor prepares for a rehearsal, they spend 2 to 3 hours preparing for each hour of rehearsal. There’s no substitute for preparation. To get to simple takes work. It takes lots of work. The complexity of leadership is in being able to make things simple so others can follow. We want stimulation. * http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/09/the-simple-power-of-one-a-day.html

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” ― Robert Frost Choices are very important in leadership. Making the wrong choice costs money and potentially damages the organization. The burden is on the leader for making effective and wise choices. Not making a decision is a choice. Sometimes, paralyzed by the gravity of the choice, leaders stall and can’t decide. Not making a choice is certainly a choice. What’s the impact of the decision on the organization? What’s the impact of the decision on relationships? What’s the impact of the decision on revenue…customer satisfaction…client engagement…stakeholder involvement…? Asking these questions before making a decision helps leaders recognize the consequences of the decision. Maybe asking those questions before not making a choice would be good, as well. Making wise, informed choices is the duty and delight of the leader. Making poor choices can cost a lot more and, certainly, waiting to make a decision increases the cost or impact of the problem to the culture or to profit as the situation gets worse. The most difficult of choices typically centers on people issues, such as when to terminate the employee, when to give a salary increase, when to correct their behavior, when to challenge a nonparticipating board member, etc. Each of these scenarios causes leaders to shy away from confronting controversial issues. Pay the upfront cost and deal with the situation as soon as practical. That might be before you get the chance to confront someone on an issue. Waiting only complicates things and provides an opportunity for the conflict, if that’s the issue, to get worse. A small matter becomes nuclear over time. Delegate action items so you can free up your schedule and your mind to think effectively about complex leadership decisions. To decide or not…that’s the question.

The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause. - Gustav Mahler   Thinking versus Feeling is Transformational Leadership Leaders lead. The question is…do we lead with our brains or with our hearts? In my studies in Bowen Family Systems, a profound paradigm for leadership by managing and differentiating self, I have discovered a better way to make difficult decisions. The way is to define guiding principles for self and for the organization we lead, and utilize those principles for making good decisions. This leadership perspective is crucial. Bowen defines “Basic Self” as following those principles. When the leader makes decisions for other reasons, like to please others, Bowen defines that as “Pseudo Self.” The bottom line for me is that when I make a decision to please someone else, I’m not serving myself or my vision. Ultimately, the person whom we attempt to please will lose respect for us and completely negate the reason we thought was good for making that decision in the first place. Many leaders lead with their heart and are considered compassionate and caring. Principled leaders who utilize rational thinking and think in systems, are sometimes regarded by feelers as uncaring and insensitive. The latter is not generally true. Making effective decisions in line with principles brings value to everyone and, ultimately, those critics will respect the leader once the results are self-evident. Leadership perspective is the key. To counter the feelings of being uncaring and insensitive and maybe inflexible, here are some tactics to consider that are Transformational Leadership basics: Define Your Ultimate Vision: Know exactly where you want to end up, and write it in compelling language expressed in present tense. Define it as having already happened. Share the vision with anyone in your space who cares about you or your organization, and with those who will benefit from accomplishing that vision. Check for alignment with the vision with key stakeholders and collaborators. Write Down Core Values: Yes, I have blogged about values being useless. That’s true if the values are the final product. Values are the first step in defining the cultural norms. Values are static statements. That’s fine. Just don’t think that these static statements are going to create value just because they have been created. Moving forward, use these values to create Guiding Principles, and build out the goals without violating those values. Create Guiding Principles: Guiding Principles are statements that provide guidelines for making effective decisions, both for the leader individually and for the organization as a culture. When you go to a Disney park, it’s very clear that each employee you come across is operating within the company principles…you are the guest and they entertain you. Write separate principles for yourself on how to manage self and how to make thinking decisions. Create a separate, but compatible, set of principles for the organization in collaboration with those in the organization who will support, protect, and teach them to others. Check my post on Guiding Principlesfor more information. Review and Update Principles Regularly: Once written, the principles must then be activated and applied in every decision. To ensure that this happens, develop a routine for evaluating the principles and revising them as necessary. If you hold weekly meetings, review one principle each week and evaluate how effectively the group is following that principle, and review if the principle still reflects the culture, values, and goals of the organization. Revise and recommit, if necessary, but not for convenience. Holding to principles might be difficult for a previously undisciplined culture. Keep the culture active by constantly keeping the principles in everybody’s mind. A high-performing culture is a culture of discipline led by a leader of discipline. The transformational leader models what they want reflected in the culture.

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected. - Steve Jobs As a musical conductor, I understand that concert goers want excellence every time we perform…every time. We are only as good as our last performance. Performance is a skill, as well as an art. It’s not striving for perfection. It’s maintaining excellence in standards. Musicians do what business teams don’t do. We rehearse for every performance. The best musical groups constantly rehearse creating what’s called “ensemble.” That’s a higher level of functioning that only the best performers can achieve. It can’t be directed. The conductor inspires excellence. The ensemble is a reflection of the skill and influence of the conductor. The leader of a business or social-benefit organization inspires excellence and creates a culture of high performance that reflects the passion and skill of the leader. It a synergy reflected and a new Architecture of Engagement TM. All of these strategies are based on the leader seeking excellence in all systems and outcomes and not accepting mediocrity. Unfortunately, the standard is not high in many organizations. The leader blames the existing system and the people, when, in fact, the leader is in a place to change those systems and influence how systems and people work. Excellence is a habit that needs cultivation and inspiration. If we want to change others in the culture we lead, then it’s important to change ourselves. When we change, others in the group adapt. If we don’t accept mediocrity, then we have set the new standard. Here are a few resources for you to explore how excellence is reflected through visionary leadership: Berny Dohrmann, Redemption: The Cooperation Revolution. Berny is the founder of CEO Space where Cooperative Capitalism is taught and practiced. It’s the new standard that will replace the Competitive Capitalism of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller era. Seth Godin, This is Seth’s Blog. Seth talks about why labor unions were formed and goes on to challenge unions to work for excellence in performance by not stressing the mediocre. Marva Dawn, Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down. This was written several years ago about how churches were dumbing down worship to attract the “Young.” After thirty years, those mainland denominations have lost many members due to this dumbing down. Her first chapter is about how education has also dumbed down over the decades. Alfie Kohn, The Schools Our Children Deserve. This is another challenge to the traditions of dumbing down education through standardized testing. Alfie classifies standardized testing as a form of ethnic cleansing of the culture. The U.S. leads the world in prisons and prisoners incarcerated. Could this be one result of our systems? Today, we are growing a new breed of leader with integrity in their DNA and excellence as their passion. I’m a Boomer and my generation has created this mess. I’m seeing that Millennials are changing the game. Is your passion excellence or do you settle for mediocrity? Hugh Ballou The Transformational Leadership Strategist TM Subscribe to The Transformational Leadership Strategist by Email (c) 2019 Hugh Ballou. All rights reserved.

“I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.” ― Mahatma Gandhi We hear lots of noise in conversations and in the media about striving for equality of gender, nationality, and race - equal opportunity - equal rights - equal pay, etc. Recently in Blacksburg, Virginia, in a session called “Dialogue on Race,” a young African-American presenter used the phrase “Diversity of Excellence” in his presentation. That phrase made so much sense to me. I have adopted the idea and reversed the words to get “Excellence of Diversity.” The media make up sound bites and promote phrases to get attention and ultimately to get ratings and make money. We all get sucked into this diatribe of mediocrity. We are driven to the bottom…the lowest common denominator…the drivel of sameness. I say to women leaders, “Why do you want to be equal with men when, in fact, you are better? You offer a different paradigm for leadership and a fresh perspective. You have a skill set that is different. Why not claim your excellence and move to the top rather than attempting to be equal?” Most agree and react as if they feel empowered. I repeat this question to minority groups and get the same response. In a society where we have dumbed down our educational system with standardized testing and set the bar to the lowest point in striving for equality, we are teaching each other that mediocrity is the norm. In an address to educators, I heard Alfie Kohn* describe standardized testing as an “Ethnic cleansing of the society.” In Marva Dawn’s book, Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down, the first chapter is the history of how education has been dumbed down over the years. She then describes how churches have dumbed down to attract new members when, in fact, the mainline denominations are now losing members at an alarming rate. We have clergy working as consultants, teaching pastors what to do as a simple formula for success, rather than reaching out of the broken paradigm and getting wisdom from a different source. We have no clearly written guiding principles for personal empowerment in leadership for our organizations. My guiding principle is to strive for excellence through diversity and let the best people do the best work. Do we get stuck because we are threatened by the excellence of someone who doesn’t look like us? What’s your opinion? * The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools, Alfie Kohn

Leaders, Set Your Standard of Excellence You must have control of the authorship of your own destiny. The pen that writes your life story must be held in your own hand. - Irene C. Kassorla One of the most common problems I encounter, when working with leaders to build results and create effective teams, is described in the statement, "My people just don't do what I need them to do." I suggest that this problem comes from the leader, not from the team. Leadership is defining the desired outcomes, and then making those outcomes become reality. Leadership is a skill and a system. When a leader defines the vision and then sets specific goals to achieve that vision, it's important to leave a place for team members to create their strategies for their work. It is limiting for team members when a leader not only defines the outcomes, but also defines all the steps to get there. You have a worthy vision and have created powerful goals that will drive processes toward achieving that vision. Create systems where team members can create the steps to success - the action plan. Once each team member can contribute a process step, they move from being interested in the vision to owning the vision. When developing the action plan, encourage the team to define the standards of excellence - the critical success factors. Define what success looks like and how it will be measured. If you create a sloppy procedure for this process, then you are creating a less-than-excellent organization. Inspire excellence. Define the goal, move forward by creating a process to define all the steps to achieve that goal, put the steps into a sequence, and then let the team members divide up the responsibility for managing those process steps. Be focused in your process. Allow each member to contribute. Assign responsibilities and deadlines. Shift the accountability from you, the leader, to the team, in a culture of peer-to-peer accountability. The biggest killer of excellence is the boring, unproductive meeting! Rehearse excellence by creating effective systems. Effective meetings empower and encourage high functioning in team performance. The finest musical ensembles rehearse for every performance. Change the misquoted phrase, "Practice makes perfect," to the correct quote, "Perfect practice makes perfect performance." Rehearse for success. Build the DNA of high performance into every system in the organization you lead. TIP: Plan the outcomes at the planning meeting. Plan the process to get to the outcomes. Define the process and outcomes at the beginning of the meeting. Keep the group on task. Excellence in planning leads to excellent results. Hugh BallouThe Transformational Leadership Strategist Subscribe to The Transformational Leadership Strategist by Email (c) 2018 Hugh Ballou. All rights reserved.

Hidden Goals Don't Work 5th of 5 Set your goal.   Share your goal.   Accountability is energy. We think that being accountable to someone might bring us criticism if we fail. We don't want to look bad. We don't want anyone to judge us poorly. When we set a goal and share that goal with someone, it might be frightening. What if the person laughs at our goal? This is a statement of our intentions. This is typically a bold statement of accomplishment. How will we feel if we get push-back from someone we respect and someone we want to see us in a favorable light? There are two sides to accountability: We commit to someone and become vulnerable to that person. If we fall short of our stated goal, then we risk criticism. This is the risk side of accountability that motivates us to succeed. We commit to someone and they become our partner in accomplishing our plan. We don't need to ask. We can't expect this cooperation. They know what we intend, so they know how to provide support. Accountability is a major component to leadership success. Accountability is a major component to running success. No person can help me reach my running goals. Everyone can help me reach my business and life goals. Write your goals. Share your goals. Start taking action immediately. Keep a journal. Share your success. Let the world bring you energy. Celebrate! (My running goal for this month is 40 miles - posted on my social sites.)

Focus on the Outcome 4th of 5 Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. - Thomas Edison     You want to quit. Focus on success. Do not quit. This simple concept is very difficult. Along the trail, there are many opportunities to quit - don't quit. On the pathway to success, there are many opportunities to quit - don't quit. Focus on the benefit, and not on the problem.  

If I miss a day of practice, I know it. If I miss two days, my manager knows it. If I miss three days, my audience knows it. - André Previn   Running to Be Fit 3rd of 5   The first rule is to set your goal. Then begin at once preparing for success. Rehearse for success in everything you do - you are forming good habits that will influence your success and your life. I set my goal on finishing a half marathon. My mind believes it. My body is not capable of achieving it, so I must train daily to be able to succeed. Goals are worthless without an plan of action. Actions are consistent activities moving toward your goal. Fitness happens one day at a time over time. Start now. Don't give up until you succeed. What you become on the way to achieving the goal is better than the goal itself. Start now.

Setting Goals is the Key to Success 2nd of 5 At the root of all success is a vision and intention. We must learn to set achievable goals. I lead teams. I lead meetings. I teach leaders to lead. I can see the end result, because I have defined it clearly. I set a goal to be in shape. I have expressed the goal in terms of running a certain distance in a certain amount of time. I can't accomplish that goal without the following: The belief that I will succeed... A description of what it looks like when I have succeeded... A long-term vision... Short-term goals... A weekly schedule... A daily plan of action... That works for my work, as well as for my running. What about your work? What about your life? Goals are SMART! S = Specific M = Measurable A = Accountable R = Realistic T = Timed Note to the frantic and weary: The "A" for accountable provides the traction that makes goals work. Check out my Podcast 32: Setting Powerful Goals That Work Hugh Ballou The Transformational Leadership Strategist TM Subscribe to The Transformational Leadership Strategist by Email (c) 2018 Hugh Ballou. All rights reserved.

Commitment is everything. I decided to begin training for a 5K road race when I was 48 years old. I had trouble running from one driveway to the next one. This was a major change in my life, however, I was committed to succeed. Two years later, I had finished over 50 5K races and was training for a half marathon. My commitment was to, #1 not finish last, and #2 to finish without stopping. I accomplished that goal with every race. I am really bad at this, however, running is a discipline in my life that is important. When I run, I feel better, have more energy, and get more accomplished each day. Running is also my quiet time when I can think and work out problems. Yesterday, while running, I decided to relaunch this series about the connection between running and leadership. For the next 5 days, I will post 5 blogs with ideas for leadership. First, you do not need to have a big team to feel that you are a leader. My simple qualifying points to be considered a leader are as follows: You are a leader if... ...you get things done ...you know how things get done ...you influence other people Here are some thoughts that work for running (or any type of exercise) and leadership. Commit to a goal, make a schedule and follow it Follow the plan, even on days when you don't want to Starting is the key to finishing, but not the whole answer - you have to finish Don't quit - you can make it You don't have to be first If you keep it up, eventually you will get a second wind and finish with a flare When you finish, the sense of accomplishment will empower your day Set your own pace and don't let others tell you that it's not good When I ran my last half marathon, I was almost 65, so I came up with the list below about being an older runner. Being older is no longer an excuse to not try. You can tell that you are an older runner when: In the first mile, your body tells you that you should be home in bed. Your excuse for not being in the lead of the race is that being behind the pace car will make you feel “exhausted.” In the second mile, your body tells you that you should be home in bed. You think you won the race, because you ran longer than anyone else. In the sixth mile, your body tells you that you should be home in bed. The race walkers pass you by, saying “Good job, sir.” (sir is the clue) A runner passes by, saying that he would be running faster, except for the knee transplants. In the eighth mile, your body tells you that you should be home in bed. Your running doesn’t really make you live longer – it just makes life seem longer. Everyone shouts your name, cheering you on, and you think it’s because you are famous in your old age – until you realize that your name is printed on your racing bib. It’s the cheapest form of entertainment you can think of. You run because it’s your only chance to hear heavy breathing again. In the last mile of the race, your body tells you that you should be home in bed. Many of the excuses I hear for not trying are dumber than the list above, but people tell them to me as if the reasons make good sense. What's your reason for not trying?

I have been traveling around the country presenting Nonprofit Leadership Excellence Workshops. In many instances, I’m asked what to do when a board, or members in general, are resistant to change. The phrase, “We’ve never done it that way before!” is often repeated. Change is a fearful thought if other changes in life are too stressful. Change is not an option when there is no understanding of the value of the change. Change for the sake of change is a generator of confusion. However, the only constant in life is that there is change. We are all getting older every day. We change without even trying. Having said those things about change, let me point out that understanding history and tradition are important to the continuity of work within any organization. When working with lay leaders in the church, I find that many of them are not aware of the denominational traditions and theology that have shaped our worship, our programs, and our work in the community. We are informed by learning about the past. We don’t, however, need to live in the past. It is the leader’s duty and delight to observe what’s happening and how it happens, and to respond in a thoughtful way by engaging members in conversation about desired results. Have we defined the desired outcomes from our work and programs, or are we just running on autopilot without thinking about what or why? In Seth Godin's blog post, “Because it has always been this way," he points out that making a change means that we are responsible for the results. I’d like to point out that if we don’t make a change, we are likewise responsible for the results as the leader. Not making a decision is a choice. Leaders ask good questions and listen carefully to the answers. Here are some to ask yourself and your team: Are we (Am I) bound by tradition? What are the consequences of staying with the status quo? What are the different results we desire and what changes will lead us in the appropriate direction? What are the risks on both sides - making a change and not making any change? Sleep on the answers. Hugh Ballou The Transformational Leadership Strategist TM Subscribe to The Transformational Leadership Strategist by Email (c) 2018 Hugh Ballou. All rights reserved.  

Reverse Paradigms - Script vs. Story   CEO Space SNAP: Super Networking Accelerated Potential The SNAP is a great networking tool created by Berny Dohrman and Bob Proctor 25 years ago to empower people to connect with more people in less time. It's basically a modified elevator speech, in that it's short, precise, to the point, and powerful. Within the highly refined and specific culture of CEO Space, it's a way for other participants to know how to help you, refer you, or respond in some other way to filling the gaps in your process of developing your enterprise. Presenting the SNAP is also rehearsal. It's an opportunity to rehearse a presentation over and over and test the response in real time. The desired response is for others to give you a "See Me" card with their contact information and a note on how they can help with your request. The system is good, although the skill of the participants is not always consistent. A SNAP is a presentation. Leaders are influencers. Presenting is influence. We influence others to respond to our call-to-action. We MUST define WHAT we want people to do with highly specific and compelling language. The basic flaw is that we recite a script rather than tell a story. People respond to a story if they see themselves as involved in the story or its emotion. Storytelling is an art as well as a skill. The skill improves with rehearsal. The story improves with the artistry of presentation. A leader is first and foremost a person of influence. We must first define the following in order to be a successful influencer: Who We Want to Influence: Define your target market or you risk not having any market. El Mondo is everybody which equates to nobody. Pick your niche and pitch that niche. What We Want Them To Do: The weakest part of the SNAPs that I hear is the call-to-action. We MUST tell the listener what we want them to do. It's that simple, however simple is complex to create. Have your coach help with this one. Why They Should Care: As Simon Sinek shares in his book, Start with Why, nobody will care about the what until they know why. This is a critical paradigm to master and, again, a complex one to create.Our Passion: Be in touch with your passion for what you are presenting. Keep the image of your passion in your spirit and it will be present in your story. Words don't fully influence without injection of your passion. The Relationship: Communication is facilitated by relationship. Be aware that you have and are in relationship with the person to whom you are presenting. If you don't care about them, then why should they care about you? If you aren't getting the desired response, then look at yourself. Are you reciting an ineffective script or are you skillfully presenting by using the artistry of storytelling? By the way, the best stories are short. Hugh Ballou The Transformational Leadership Strategist TM Subscribe to The Transformational Leadership Strategist by Email (c) 2018 Hugh Ballou. All rights reserved.

I constantly hear leaders complaining about others in the culture that they lead and focusing on how to change the behaviors of others in order to change the outcomes. The leadership methodologies that I support and champion are Transformational Leadership and Bowen Family Systems. The synergy in those two separate methodologies is about the leader changing self. In Bowen Systems, when the leader changes, others in the culture respond. In Transformational Leadership, the leader sets the bar and models what they want to see in others. When the musical conductor does not get the intended results, he or she looks into the mirror for the answer. If the orchestra or choir respects the conductor, then they perform as the conductor intends. If the conductor is not respected, the ensemble performs exactly as the conductor directs. In the military, if the platoon does not respect the platoon leader, that leader is likely to get shot in the back in combat. How many leaders in organizations get shot in the back on a regular basis…and they don’t even realize that it’s happened? The first priority for the Transformational Leader is to transform themselves. Organizational transformation then follows. By the way, it's time to start that transformation if it’s not already underway.

Leadership Skill of Discernment The culture of compromise is often accepted as the price of mass. But in fact, this is the crowded road to popular acceptance, and it works far less often than the compromisers believe it will. - Seth Godin* Ours is a world where we are saturated with information, which we are expected to absorb and respond to, often instantly. Not only must we respond, but the expectation is that we will make decisions with wisdom, with justice, with compassion and with a whole array of other values. - Loretto Gettemeier, D.C.** Making the Best Decisions A big part of leadership is decision making. I advocate for not making decisions in a vacuum. Leadership is establishing a culture of excellence. Leadership is building a team of leaders. Leadership is a collaboration building synergy. Despite all of those things I've said about leadership and collaboration, the leader is ultimately responsible for the decisions. Discernment is a key leadership skill. Having written guiding principles is essential for the leader to have discernment in making effective decisions. There should be guiding principles for the leader personally and guiding principles for the organization, the team, the board, for any group or person working and making decisions. These principles provide a lens for viewing the issues and for guiding the decisions. As the second quote above points out, we have lots of data coming at us rapidly. This only complicates our decision making process. Therefore, I have created these 3 principles for anchoring myself for making the best decisions: 1. Perspective: This is the most difficult of the three. We have so many things coming at us, it’s important to get away from the tyranny of the urgent to understand the consequences of each decision. One great tool is the 4 quadrants taught by Stephen Covey. The 4 quadrants are: Urgent and Critical; Urgent and Not Critical; Not Urgent and Critical; and Not Urgent and Not Critical. Planning our work helps to keep us in the Not Urgent and Critical quadrant. Unfortunately, we spend too much time in the Urgent and Critical quadrant wasting time and energy by losing the choice of the best timing to make the decision. There are sliding priorities that are not predictable, so careful planning allows us to accommodate those sliding priorities. Otherwise, we are so driven by the urgent that was left until the last minute, we compromise both the new priority and that which was left undone. This creates stress. 2. Emotion: Managing stress is so critical for leaders. Moving from principle #1 above to this one shows how connected our work is. When one element is out of balance, the entire body of work is influenced…usually in a negative way. Managing self is the principal leadership mandate. Managing self means managing anxiety. There are various ways to manage anxiety, so learn and apply the method that works for you. If the leader is anxious, then the team is anxious. Being anxious puts our thinking into feeling. Making emotional decisions typically blocks rational thinking. Have a process for making decisions that points to rational thinking by you and your team. 3. Process: Having perspective and being balanced emotionally means that you can follow the process you have created for growing the enterprise you lead. Thinking in systems means establishing a process for yourself and your team. Here are my process steps: o Create and Utilize Guiding Principles: We define core values and feel good about them, and then they are simply a memory. Take those values and create guiding principles for yourself and the organization you lead. Use them for every decision. o Define Group Process: Define the level of decision making for each team member. Learn to delegate and create follow-up methods for accountability. Don’t delegate and forget until the deadline. Set up check-in points for mentoring and course correcting. o Ask for Team Input for Decisions: You will discover that you might have missed some detail that will create a problem. You might find that someone has a useful suggestion that you had not considered. Getting input does not mean that the leader must do what others say. It’s a way for getting buy-in and clarity. Set boundaries for what you will and will not accept. Make decisions based on principles rather than wanting people to like you. It’s better to be respected than liked. o Be Flexible: Sometimes we choose a pathway that doesn’t work, even with all the work to be sure that it’s the best choice. Stop when it’s evident that the decision is not good and address it with your team. Being transparent is a good leadership trait. Being human is better than being perfect. Define a process and continually work on self. Leadership and communication are both based on relationship. * Seth Godin's blog post, The Difference Between Mass and Banality ** From “Vincentian Discernment and Decision making”

Good leadership consists of doing less and being more. - John Heider* I constantly hear from leaders that they are doing too much. I respond by asking how they contributed to the situation. The first response to that question is a puzzled look. It’s a revelation that we actually cause problems as leaders. It is a very sobering fact that we set up problems. Many of those problems are set up by the leader’s over-activity - talking too much, over functioning, defining all the solutions, and telling others what to do. We have learned from others that these are things leaders do. We have been taught the wrong things. I specialize in reverse paradigms. John Heider (quoted above) talks about reverse polarities in his book. Here are some reverse strategies to consider: Talk less and listen more - Over-talking is easy to do. After all, the leader owns the vision and knows more than anyone else, right? Wrong! Once a leader said to me that they were always right. I responded, suggesting that it was more important that the members of the team be right. Too much talking is a sign that the leader is anxious and blocks input from others who might have the right ideas. Observing and listening are primary leadership skills. Doing less and getting more done is empowered by not talking, and listening more. Ask good questions and listen to the answers - Many leaders perceive that they must have all the answers. I disagree. Leaders must ask good questions. That’s the first part. The second part is to listen carefully to the answers. It’s amazing what you can learn by listening if you take away the need to be right and the need to respond to those answers. Listen. Leave some silence. Then respond, if appropriate. Doing less and getting more done is empowered with good questions and intentional, active listening. Observe and respond - Leaders listen to the words from others. Watching how people respond is very informative. Research tells us that only 7% of a communication is in the words. Observe what’s happening and observe how things happen. The musical conductor guides the music making and does not make the music. Reacting is a negative energy. Responding comes with discernment. Watch, think, listen, and then respond. Many times a response is actually not necessary. Having good people and getting out of their way is a good leadership skill. Doing less and getting more done mostly happens when the leader observes. Function less and empower others to function more – Over functioning is a leadership disease. More leaders have it than not. The reciprocity to over functioning is under functioning. The musical conductor draws out the music from the ensemble. Leaders let others function. Doing things for others, making all the decisions, planning all the action steps, and telling others how to think, bring negative energy and animosity. Doing less and getting more done means doing less. Really! This is also a barrier to income. Coach others to solve problems - This is the same theme. Don’t solve the problems. Ask others what they would do to solve the problem. This is not giving up leadership authority. This is inviting others to think. This is giving team members the permission to participate. Micromanaging is telling others how to do things. Coaching is leading others in learning how to do things better. This includes learning to solve problems. If the leader solves all the problems, then the team is dependent on the leader. Effective leaders lead others into higher functioning. Doing less and getting more done is facilitated by coaching others to be better leaders. A good routine for leaders is the daily assessment. Schedule a time at the end of each day to reflect on the day’s activities. Take notes on what went well and what needs changing. Learn from yourself. If others are not producing up to expectations, then look in the mirror and see what to change about yourself. Organizational transformation begins with the leader’s transformation.

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. - Henry Ford So, it’s not going as you planned? You are doing too much and your team is accomplishing too little. The work is more intense and the income is down. It’s difficult to see anything but obstacles. It might be time to reframe those obstacles and attempt to define a way forward. Those obstacles can become opportunities if you can rethink strategy. It’s also time to rethink your own skill set, as well. To transform an organization or to transform a team, it’s important to begin that transformation with yourself. Basically, none of us can see our own blind spots - hence, that name. Let’s do a situation analysis... Analysis: Are the perceived obstacles really obstacles, or it is your mindset? Are you defining the problem accurately? Are you attempting to solve a problem before understanding what caused the problem? Is the market telling you that your concept needs to change? Are you too tied up with your own idea to admit that it’s flawed? Is the obstacle the idea or the strategy (the vision or the tactics)? Is the obstacle defining the limit to your ability? Is it time to work on your own self-awareness and team management? Let’s look at a basic problem-solving model. It works as follows: 1. Clearly define the problem (obstacle) and get feedback from your team - be very sure that you have defined the correct problem. Many times, leaders solve problems that are not problems. What is the obstacle keeping you from success, and is it clearly and accurately defined? 2. Identify ALL the parts of the problem setting up or causing the obstacle. Make a comprehensive list of everything that impacts the situation. This is the largest set of data. It’s important to do this activity with the team members - after everyone has agreed on #1 to ensure that everyone sees the problem the same way. If the group is not comfortable with the word “Problem,” consider using the topic header of “Pieces of the Puzzle.” 3. Group the items created in #2. (I use storyboards and half sheets of letter-sized paper to create separate idea cards to place on a board sprayed with repositionable spray mount.) If you can, group (cluster) the cards together by topic or subject to get an idea of what you are really dealing with. This sets up defining a way forward and helps to gain clarity of the accuracy of your perceptions. 4. List all potential solutions. Just list them without priority. Next, see if some of these ideas can be combined for strength or create a sequence of steps. In this process, you will gain perspective and be able to see opportunities emerge. 5. Create the final solution or sequence of steps to the solution. Get consensus from the group and set accountability mechanisms for the process going forward. What I have defined is a process for separating feelings/emotions and moving to thinking. Many times, our emotions color our decisions and we can’t make accurate judgments. Approach problems calmly and directly. Look at the facts and leave emotions aside. Anxiety spreads to everyone in any group. As identified in the quote from Henry Ford, we see obstacles when we take our eyes off our goals. However, ignoring problems creates obstacles that can be threatening to our success. As the leader, you set the standard…obstacles are really opportunities in disguise.

One of the biggest traps I experience with clients is that leadership is a term not universally understood and that leaders don’t know how to lead. We have been taught that leaders must have all the right answers and know what to do. That paradigm sets leaders up for problems. No one person knows every right answer or every right tactic. We have teams to fill in our gaps. The trick is to know how to create and sustain a collaborative culture. This defines Transformational Leadership. In order to define the culture, it’s important to define ourselves as leaders and note how we function. Below is a list comparing controlling leaders with collaborative leaders. Controlling Leader: Uses power of position Keeps control of information Top-down decision making Is “always right” Dictates Solves problems at executive level and informs others Creates “silos” of independent work Depends on a “rules”-based culture for limiting activities Attacks and blames people Uses the annual review to criticize Collaborating Leader: Uses power of influence Shares information openly with team Co-creation of decisions Ensures that others are right Listens to input Uses collective wisdom of team in problem-solving process Allows and promotes independent and interdependent work Promotes a principles-based culture for expanding effective cooperation Addresses the facts and issues directly Creates ongoing evaluations with opportunities for coaching and mentoring The principles and behaviors of the leader define the culture and set the standard for the team. Here are positive steps in creating a collaborative culture: 1. Claim Your Leadership Style: If you claim Transformational Leadership as your style of leadership, then your work is to create and empower leaders on teams and to create a culture of high performance. This means learning how the behavior of the leader impacts the behavior of the culture. 2. Create Collaborative Systems: Be good at defining the vision, goals, and specific outcomes in time. Be specific. Create the goal, and then create the action plan with the team. You still get to modify and approve it. If the team collaborates on creating the action plan, then they own it and they will create an accountability process within the team as peer-to-peer accountability. 3. Establish an Evaluation Process: Create the action plan with the team with tasks, responsible person, and the deadline. Set up weekly team sessions as “flash meetings” to check on the week’s deliverables and to define the next week’s deliverables. This is your opportunity to coach members of the team and to define where individuals need extra coaching from you. 4. Ask for Input: Effective leaders ask good questions and listen carefully to the responses. This does not give away the power of making decisions or define weakness in leadership. This defines strength in leadership. 5. Hire a Leadership Coach: I do this myself and I provide this service for others. In order to function on a high level, I have coaches who challenge me. I hold myself accountable by committing to others and creating collaborative action plans. I continue to work on myself and grow skills and my growing awareness of myself. Leaders change the behavior of others in any group emotional system by changing themselves. Organizational transformation begins with the leader.

Responding vs. Reacting We want to identify and solve problems instantly, when, in fact, we are not really sure what the problem really is. Our reaction is to solve problems and to move ahead, rather than creating a process to respond. Responding is a thinking state, while reacting is an emotional state. Making emotional decisions is the default of an ineffective leader. Making thoughtful decisions is the decision of an effective leader. As responsible leaders, we get to choose. What’s your choice?   Yes, there is a difference. Is been said that the difference in reacting and responding is about 10 seconds. Our normal animal behavior is to react to defend ourselves. The learned response is from our developed cortex brain. We must learn to override our instincts to react by thoughtful and intentional strategies for responding to whatever comment or situation that has prompted our attention. Reacting is following another person’s lead, it’s not leading. Taking charge of the situation is leading. The leader defines the culture, the terms of engagement and the anxiety level by their thinking. Reacting is typically not a thinking interaction. Leaders often make a situation worse by reacting. Here’s a short list of the reverse paradigms: Reacting Reptilian Brain Emotional Defensive Instinct Conditioned Immediate Irresponsible Walls Fear Based Victim Mentality Competitive Avoidance Wounded Responding Cortex Brain Thoughtful Engaging Conscious Choice Choice Delayed Responsible Boundaries Relationship Based Self Control Mentality Cooperative Encounter Healthy Being an enlightened and effective leader is not what we are born with. We learn leadership skills. Much of what we have learned is causing us problems and its time unlearn those things and replace them with what works.

Leadership Perspective: Reverse Paradigms, Intervening vs. Observing Podcast Transcript Your job is to facilitate and illuminate what is happening. Interfere as little as possible. Interference, however brilliant, creates a dependency on the leader. - John Heider*   Managing self is the leader’s first responsibility. Managing group process is next. Setting the example is a primary foundation for defining the transformational leader. In Bowen Systems, the leader changes the behavior of others in any group emotional system by changing self. Leading an ongoing business, ministry, or nonprofit requires a high functioning culture with leaders on teams aligned with the organization’s values and guiding principles. I facilitate meetings. That’s one of my primary skills and passions. I have rehearsed managing group process for 40+ years in a career as musical conductor. What I’ve learned is that the leader can’t make anybody do anything - if they can, it doesn’t last very long and the outcome is typically compromised. The relationships are also compromised and many times damaged beyond repair. Many leaders work in groups - teams, of various sorts, which are group emotional systems. We impact everyone else in that system with our actions, both good and bad. More often than not, when group members are not performing up to the expectations of the leader, it’s a direct result of the leaders actions or inactions. The first principle of Transformational Leadership in my world is being able to let go of things that someone else can do and in mastering the art of delegation. Micromanaging is deadly by taking power assigned to others. Coaching is empowering by enabling others. Leadership is a system in which the leader builds and equips leaders in teams. Sometimes the leader needs to intervene. Sometimes the leader should observe and comment later. Knowing the difference is the wisdom of leading. In their book, Facilitative Leadership in Social Work Practice, Breshears and Volker provide a helpful sequence of steps in managing group process. 1. Observing and diagnosing what is happening in the group. 2. Hypothesizing what you would like to have happen in light of the group’s task or development phase. 3. Do something that encourages change. Here's the routine - observe, think, and then act. We all learn from our mistakes if we pay attention and apply the principles to the next situation. It’s the leader’s duty and delight to assist others on the team to grow their skills. This can be accomplished in several ways: Affirming: Encourage boldness and the spirit of attempting to meet the challenge. Affirming is honest feedback and not trumped up artificial verbiage. Be sincere. Be direct. Be factual. Informing: Provide information needed to accomplish the assignment. Set a time-line for progress. Define “check-in” times for coaching and correcting. Provide information and check for understanding. Directing: The musical conductor directs and shapes the music. The musical score it similar to the strategy in that it provides directions for each person. The overall experience and the attention to details and the development of the culture depend on the direction of the leader. Don’t be AWOL when the team needs direction. Correcting: Speak to what’s working, what’s not working, and what needs to change. Thia is mentoring and not micromanaging. When the musical director stops the rehearsal and tells the trumpets that they are too loud, they are not upset. The culture expects the director to make corrections with specific details. The conductor continues with the information that the trumpets need to reduce the volume by one dynamic level. Not making corrections gives the impression that the leader is not capable. Don’t focus on pleasing people. Focus on doing the right thing and people will respect you. Rehearse for excellence by observing first and then acting. The reverse can be dangerous. *Heider, John (1986-04-19). Tao Leadership: Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age **Breshears, Elizabeth M. and Volker, Roger (2013) Facilitative Leadership in Social Work Practice

“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” ― Ernest Hemingway Recently, I created a post about listening. As a musician, I have learned to listen, however there is listening, and there is listening with intention. We often listen without really listening for intent. We listen to form our response, or prejudge the content, or prejudge the context, reason, or content of the person talking. For the musical conductor, there are many layers of listening. What we listen for includes the following: Balance Correct notes Intonation Blend (especially in choral music) Phrasing Articulation Emotion relevant to the score Dynamics Tempo consistency Tone quality And that’s not the full list. Conductors listen to multiple layers simultaneously. Some choral conductors sing along with the choir. I’m not sure what their logic is, but it’s not possible for me to sing and listen at the same time. My singing blocks my ability to listen. I remember talking to someone and thinking that they were not really listening. They were formulating their response while I was talking. Therefore, they could not fully respond to the content or context of what I was saying. I have also experienced the overtaking leader. Sometimes overtaking is a sign of anxiety, if the leader is afraid of the comments they anticipate will be critical, rather than listening for a perspective that they might not have considered. In this instance, and many others, the leader actually blocks receiving information that could be helpful. Gathering information, gaining perspective, and testing assumptions are all a part of an effective decision making process. Making good decisions requires having good information. Overtaking, not listening, multi-tasking, and cutting people off before they are finished, are all barriers to effective leadership. Listening is essential to being an effective leader. We are all guilty of underperforming by compromised listening. By the way, silence after listening to the other person indicates that you were listening with intention and gives you time to process the information. Leadership begins with changing self. Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound. - James Allen   Hugh Ballou The Transformational Leadership Strategist TM Subscribe to The Transformational Leadership Strategist by Email (c) 2015 Hugh Ballou. All rights reserved.

Reverse Paradigms,Mindset of BOSS versus Influencer The notion of being a boss as an effective leader is far gone. Once when I had a team, they gave me an official “BOSS" card. I was a card-carrying boss. The card pointed out that boss spelled backwards is “Double S O B.” Funny! But it’s not funny. Pressuring team members and dictating what to do is not effective in today’s work environment. Here are some polarities: Got the idea? The leader is first and foremost a person of influence. Hugh Ballou The Transformational Leadership Strategist TM Subscribe to The Transformational Leadership Strategist by Email (c) 2017 Hugh Ballou. All rights reserved.

Abe is a husband, father, business owner, business professor, and financial services provider.  He is the owner of The White Hart Cafe in Historic Downtown Lynchburg, Blackwater Coffee inside River Ridge Mall, City Place Food & Co. in Wyndhurst, and teaches Nonprofit Management at Liberty University.  He works full-time for Northwestern Mutual helping his clients plan for retirement and manage risk. Abe coaches his son's tee-ball team and plays in a recreational softball league.

Secret vs. Confidential “Don’t confuse “strict confidentiality” with “keeping employees in the dark.” Private is useful. Secretive is deceptive.” ― Stacy Feiner   The Difference in Secret and Confidential Secret is withholding information for power.   Confidential is privileged information.   Knowing the difference separates good leadership from bad.   In my ebook, Creatingg Healthy Teams: Preventing and Managing Conflict, I define the elements of conflict and provide descriptions, preventions, and prescriptions for conflict. It's really evident how much the element of keeping secrets impacts the culture. In human emotional systems, everyone is connected - formally or informally. How we interact defines the outcomes of our work together. Secrets are like gossip. The secret discussions get distorted and nobody in the group feels that they have the right or permission to intervene until the situation becomes toxic. And then, most likely it's too late and relationship have been damaged. There's a game that people play where a person whispers a secret to the next person who relays the secret to the next person in line. The others pass the secret down the line with the final person shares what they heard with the group. After hearing what the first person shared, the group is amazed at how the message got distorted in the process of relaying the message secretly. This shows how information is distorted when sharing secretly. Secrets are toxic and are about holding and using power. Confidential information is privileged information help closely to the leadership. There is an emphatic difference in the two. Knowing the difference is a leadership skill. Teaching the difference to those whom you lead impacts the health of the group and the organization. Develop a Standard for Excellence Here are 4 tips for dealing with secrets: Assumption - Do not assume or let others assume that the conversation is confidential unless there is an express agreement ahead of time. Many times those wielding power relay a message and then say that it is "confidential." To agree to those terms after the fact means that the person sharing the secret has just held you hostage by providing you with negative information with no way to deal with it or attempt to resolve it. Do not buy into assumptions. Be clear and have clear guiding principles about how to respond to this situation. Not being held hostage by insisting on accountability and transparency, is the best way to diffuse this toxic behavior. Buy-In - By listening to the entire message when it is clear that the person delivering the message is just complaining and spreading negative energy, you are, in fact and perception, buying in to their message. Listening is a form of loving and relationship building, but only when the message is appropriate and is not creating a negative triangle. Once you determine the negative nature of the message, declare that you will not keep it secret and attempt to connect this person to someone that is appropriate for the message. Undo this triangle by connecting the three people in the triangle so a meaningful conversation can take place. Model - People whom you lead will follow your example. If you spread secrets, then you are saying it's alright to do it. Model excellence. Model high functioning. Model transparency and honesty. Model directness. The leader impacts the behavior and functioning of everyone in the system with their functioning. If something is wrong with the culture, then look in the mirror to see if you can find the cause. Act - At the first indication of conflict because of the spreading of secrets, intervene with the process gently. Ask for transparency. Connect the parts of the triangle - or overlapping triangles. Stay calm and speak directly to the issues. Stay away from accusations. Use "I" language rather that what seems accusatory by using "you." Use information you have observed and do not interpret for others who are not present. This modeling impacts the functioning of others. Act at the first appropriate opportunity. If you wait, the situation gets worse. A minor problem can create a nuclear disturbance if left untended. Do it now - later might be too late. Transparency is a leadership skill. Create transparency in your culture by being transparent.

You do not lead by hitting people over the head — that’s assault, not leadership. - Dwight D. Eisenhower The Musical Conductor as Leader The musical conductor is my example of an effective leader, especially when it comes to this topic of push vs. pull leadership. The conductor is perceived by some as a dictator. That’s not true. It’s not possible to make anyone do anything with a little white stick. The conductor is a person of influence who brings the music out of the participants. As musicians develop a higher functioning, they attain what’s called “ensemble.” Instead of giving up individual skills, the musicians attain an extra level of excellence in becoming an ensemble. This is an example of “pull” leadership. Push Leadership Here are some examples of push leadership: Ordering people to do things Using the power of position Leveraging compensation Criticizing through performance reviews Micromanaging Push leaders make people do things and create negative feelings, damaging the culture of collaboration. They manage by fear, creating relationships that are not amicable. Pull Leadership By contrast, here are some examples of pull leadership: Creating mutually shared values and guiding principles together Appreciating the work and the individual Mentoring Cheerleading Modeling Pull leaders create a culture of cooperation, inspiring individual initiative and collaboration, and creating an “ensemble of excellence” in a higher-functioning team. We have been taught that the leader is the expert and knows what to do, and that delegation is a weakness in leadership rather than recognizing that it’s a strength in leadership. We don’t need to have all the right answers; we need to have good questions that inspire and motive the team to think, solve problems, and grow. Facilitating meetings is somewhat like conducting a musical rehearsal. The leader guides the process, makes adjustments in the process and performance, and drives to previously defined outcomes. The leader creates the space for others to function upward. Rather than striving to always be right, it’s important for the leader to ensure that others are always right. Creating the space and the process for others to grow is a primary goal of pull leadership. Mentor, teach, encourage, and inspire others, and everyone wins. Leadership is influence!

Creating Balance with Time In previous posts, I have encouraged you to plan your day by planning your work. In order to accomplish the most, it is important to put everything into logical order; however, do not get so focused on the order of your day that you don't notice the big experiences that come into your life. There are two Greek words for time that apply here: Chronos (Χρόνος) - Chronological or sequential time; and Kairos (καιρός) - The right or opportune moment. Imagine that a good friend has come to visit you. Your friend says that he or she would like to fix you a gourmet meal but, before preparing the dinner, a trip to the grocery store is in order. So, you get in the car and go to the store. Once you arrive at the store, you go to the produce area to get a bell pepper. Next, you go to the dairy section for some heavy cream. Then, you realize that there are some additional vegetables that are needed, so you go back to the produce area - at the far side of the store! Next, you remember that you need orange juice for the next morning. The next item is beef for the dinner - a totally new section of the store. Finally, you go to the center of the store to get rice and spices. In this process, you have visited every section of the store multiple times! Since there was no order to your shopping, you have spent far too much time and energy shopping for the necessary items. If you had taken a few minutes to make a list and group the items by sections of the store, you could have saved a lot of time and possibly a lot of frustration. Does this remind you of an unorganized day at work? Do you know people who live like this every day and plan each workday this way? How much more effective could you be if you just spent a small amount of time planning your schedule and grouping similar activities? A small investment in planning nets big results in effectiveness! This is an example of chronos - chronological time: planning activities in sequence and in chronological order. Very important. However, you can focus so much on being efficient in your use of time and other resources, that you are not aware of how God brings opportunities into your day. This reminds me of the old saying about a person in the church: "He (she) is so heavenly minded that he (she) is no earthly good!" This means that an idealistic view of life sometimes interferes with the spontaneous. Balance as a Paradigm Shift God brings us unmerited favor with opportunities and options that we least expect. Be open to these surprises in your life. If we are so busy in God's work, we sometimes are not aware of God's working in our life. Be efficient in planning the best use of your time. Be attentive to God's work in your day.  

Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present, to live better in the future. - William Wordsworth Here's what I found online when I asked for a definition of "profit": Simple Definition of Profit : to get an advantage or benefit from something : to be an advantage to (someone) : to help (someone) : to earn or get money by or from something Are You Focused on Money or Results? Traditionally, leaders, especially social entrepreneurs running a business, charity, or religious institution, are driven by passion and purpose. Many want to "save the dolphins" without building an infrastructure to accomplish their worthy mission…that's focusing on passion. Many entrepreneurs are in business to achieve financial gain…that's focusing on money. Successful leaders have a balanced approach to success. They provide value to others and receive income as a result of the value given. Looking through this lens of balance allows a leader to review the classics, such as Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" and learn something very different...it's not about money. Even Hill stated that financial wealth is at the bottom of his list of the attributes of wealth, because it was the least important of the traits. In James Allen's classic, "As a Man Thinketh," he noted that we don't attract what we need, we attract what we are. How do you define success? Does your team reflect your philosophy? Your culture is a reflection of your leadership.

Kurt Francom currently lives in Woods Cross, Utah with his lovely wife Alanna. They are blessed to have two children (girl and boy). He enjoys drawing caricatures and editorial cartoons, basketball, reading, and college football. Kurt has served as a full-time missionary (California Sacramento), an elders quorum president, executive secretary, bishopric counselor, high priest group leader, bishop and 1st counselor in a stake presidency. More Information at https://leadinglds.org Interview Transcript Hugh Ballou: This is another version of Orchestrating Success. I have Kurt Francom on here. Kurt and I are passionate about leadership, and we discovered each other on LinkedIn. We went back and forth and had a conversation, and we decided we wanted to share information with our mutual audiences. Kurt, welcome to Orchestrating Success. Kurt Francom: Hey Hugh, it’s a pleasure to be here. I love talking with other podcasters because people just don’t understand the struggle. I celebrate your success with the podcast. Hugh: People find me, and I don’t know how they find me but they do. You and I come from a similar background. I served mainline Protestant churches for 40 years and rallied people in music ministry, creating ensembles. In my church in Atlanta, Georgia, I was a staff person. You do leadership in the LDS church. In big Presbyterian Methodist churches, it’s a paid position. I discovered that 90% of my job as music director was music, and the rest of it made music possible. I learned to create systems and influence people. I’d love to swap stories with you, but before we go on to the questions and digging into your knowledge base, tell our listeners about yourself. I prefer for my guests to speak about themselves rather than me trying to read a boring bio. Talk a little bit about your background and why you’re doing this. Kurt: Sure. At the end of the day, I’m just a typical Mormon boy from Salt Lake City. I grew up in a city just outside Salt Lake City called West Valley City. Born and raised in the LDS church. Jumped through the typical Mormon hoops. Served a mission in Sacramento, California. I had the opportunity of learning Spanish because it feels like Northern Mexico there some days. I had the great pleasure of serving among the Spanish-speaking population there and sharing our message. After my mission of two years, I came home and a few years later got married. I was dumped in church leadership. I don’t mean that in a negative sense. In the LDS church, in the Mormon faith, it’s all lay ministry. Whether you are a Ph.D., plumber, or mechanic, anybody in the local congregation or ward can be called as the bishop or the presiding priest of that area. I moved into an area that was in the inner city of Salt Lake and had no inclination or desire to necessarily lead the congregation. But a few years into that, I was called in at the age of 28, which most bishops serve when they are in their late 30’s, early 40’s. They asked me to be the bishop at 28 years old and to preside over about 500 people in the Salt Lake area in our ward. I knew nothing about leadership. I had served with other bishops. I had been an elder’s quorum president over a smaller group of some of the priesthood men. There I was expected to stand and be a dynamic leader and meet with individuals and counsel with them and recommend professional therapy or counsel them on maybe a difficult marriage they are in, the typical things maybe a clergy is found doing. That is when I realized that maybe there could be some more resources out there that could help LDS leaders. I would go into a Barnes and Noble and see bookshelves filled with incredible, dynamic books that would help people in the business world who were striving to lead. I wanted to take some of those principles like Stephen Covey, another famous Mormon leader. Stephen Covey, Liz Wiseman, a lot of these who have written great books, take these principles and apply them to LDS church leadership. That spurred on a podcast I produce around leadership in the context of the Mormon faith. Then we turned it into a nonprofit called Leading LDS, where we are striving to help lay leaders in the church enhance their ability and capacity as they face these difficult situations. Hugh: That’s pretty profound. I understand that from my many years serving in church. You call it a ward. It’s like a parish for a Catholic or an Episcopal church. And it is run by volunteers basically, right? Kurt: Yeah, absolutely. The neat thing is wherever you move, you are assigned to a ward. I can’t just shop and find a pastor or bishop that resonates with me or likes me. If you are in a geographical area, the church determines what parish or ward you will attend. You go there and everybody takes their turn. I served as bishop for about five years, and then somebody else served. After him, somebody else will serve for about five to six years, which is the average. It creates this unique leadership dynamic. Nobody is paid. Nobody really wants to serve. But if they are asked, we believe these callings and assignments come from inspiration and revelation. We feel as we are called by God and step up and serve as we are asked to do. It is interesting to see that responsibility passed around. We are all volunteers that work a 40-50 hour week in our day job, and in the weekends and evenings, we are acting as clergy and doing our best at it. Hugh: That’s amazing. You got called into a leadership position. Did I hear you say you didn’t know leadership? Kurt: Well, I had just graduated college with a marketing degree. I had served as a bishop counselor, as an assistant to the bishop before that and on different smaller auxiliaries within the local ward. This was a whole new experience of being the go-to guy when it comes to life problems or collecting tithing funds and standing and delivering sermons that are going to impact individuals in a positive way and help them progress through the gospel. Hugh: When people ask the famous question, “Are you a born leader, or did you learn leadership?” what is your answer to that? Kurt: I definitely learned leadership. There are certain experiences that were put in my life that helped me develop and catch on to some of these skills. After being bishop, I then served in what is called a stake presidency. A stake is a group of wards. I was over a handful of about seven or eight bishops and their wards, helping mentor those bishops and helping them serve. It is remarkable to see those new bishops come in. The vast majority would claim they were definitely not born leaders, and they are really looking for help in developing that. In my experience, it was something through experience. I made a lot of mistakes. I don’t claim to be the Mormon leadership guru by any means. There are people much more fit for that title. I am grateful for these experiences, that other leaders took a chance on me when I had very little experience. But it has helped me develop personally in a way that is remarkable and has really blessed my life. Hugh: We are talking to business leaders on this particular podcast. When I talk to business leaders, I tell them I developed my methodology in a mega-church. They say, “Hey, why is that relevant to business?” My response is, “If you can do it in a church, you can certainly do it in business because it’s harder when you are working with volunteers.” You can respond to that paradigm, but what can business leaders learn from your LDS model? Kurt: I would encourage people, regardless if you have a connection to the LDS or Mormon faith, to maybe go visit a church and just admire what is happening there. We are a leadership laboratory. Imagine that you’re in your position as a manager, as a CEO, or an executive, but imagine you are limited to a certain geographical area or neighborhood. You can only hire people within that area. As a bishop, if I need a new organist or relief society president, who is the female leader over the women’s organization, I couldn’t send out a plea for resumes. I could only go to a handful of selected streets in an area and say, “What do I got? Who can step up to this and really lead?” Oftentimes, there isn’t obvious choices for a lot of these positions. As a secular leader, these are interesting paradigms to put yourself in and say, “If I couldn’t fire anybody,” because we can’t fire anybody. We can change their calling maybe, but we can’t say, “Hey, listen, this isn’t working out. Go away.” We have to put them somewhere else in our organization to serve. Of course, people get offended, but we want them to love attending church, not feel like, “Oh man, they fired me from this calling.” Imagine in your leadership if you could not only fire anybody, if you could only select from a very small demographic, how would you lead differently? Pondering that and visiting an LDS church and seeing how that works and trading those responsibilities around. I was a leader for five years. Now it’s your turn. Now I sit in the pews and look at this person who was maybe my assistant, and now I consider him my leader. Just these small leadership dynamics in the LDS faith and the lay ministry that will really cause a leader to pause and reevaluate maybe how they lead and how they can excel with these limitations and even outside that, recognize the limitations you have in your organization and see them as strengths and how you can apply them as better strengths. Hugh: We do have a lot of listeners that run small businesses. They are economically limited as well as geographically limited many, many times. That paradigm works really well. Your business is outside of the Mormon Church. You do this as a volunteer. But Leading LDS is your nonprofit that you teach leadership with? Kurt: Exactly. Leading LDS is a separate third-party organization that is supplementing the resources of leadership development for the LDS church. When I was called as a bishop, I was given a handbook and a pat on the back and was told good luck, and away I went. We are trying to connect some of these resources to those lay leaders that are treading water and just need some ideas and thoughts. A bishop in Maine may be doing something different than a bishop in Texas, and I help share those ideas by interviewing them on the podcast or sharing resources and tools they are using within those local wards. Hugh: I will put a link in, but tell us what your podcast is called. Kurt: It’s called Leading LDS. Hugh: It’s the same. I do have lots of Mormon friends. I would say they all are high performers. They are very serious about what they are doing. I also find that my Mormon friends are very astute businesspeople. There are attributes of the Mormon culture that are kind, focused, and serious about what I’m doing. It’s important work. Is that all tied to your spiritual calling? Kurt: You know, I would hate to take away their grit and hard work of going through schooling and developing that. But in the LDS faith, when I was 19 years old, it’s cultural norm for these young men and women to go on missions. I was dropped in Sacramento, and I had never experienced homesickness like I did at that time. I really had to step up and look at myself and say, I can either flourish or shrink in this situation. There is a great book called The Mormon Way of Doing Business, which came out 10 years ago. It talks about David Neeleman, who started JetBlue, and David Checketts, who was the president of the New York Knicks, and some of these other LDS Mormon individuals who have had great business success. A lot of that is attributed to not only their Mormon mission as young men and women when they really had to step up and define themselves as an individual. Also, when you return, you are still asked to lead in various capacities. If you are a manager, CEO, or other executive and you happen to know that somebody is LDS, you should ask them, “Have you ever been an elder president? What sort of leadership have you held in your local ward? How has that developed you?” You may find out characteristics about that individual that can maybe help you better utilize them in the capacities in their secular job. Hugh: Fascinating. I was remembering my work at a 12,000-member church in Atlanta, Georgia. I worked with 750 people in music ministry, all of whom were volunteers. Multiple events to plug into every week. We were on national TV and local TV, etc. The pressure was pretty high to motivate people to show up. When I got there, somebody told me they had lost 200 members in the adult choir. That was like your Mormon Tabernacle Choir losing your core singers and having a handful left. Your choir is bigger, but still. The critical mass, and having 35 people to build from. You have this big cavernous place to make sound. It was an uphill battle. I worked with executives, CEOs from major companies, who were in the choirs, who were in the committees, who were in the leadership of the church. I earned their respect because I could motivate people to follow a track and get things done. I’m curious when I hear people in the MLM industry, whether they have contract labor, people who aren’t really in their employ, say, “Oh, I can’t tell them what to do because it’s their own business.” I had a whole bunch of people that weren’t in business that did the directive we inspired. We created the compelling reason for what we’re doing. So I got a lot of respect from CEOs because I could motivate people by influence, not by power of position, which, to me, is one of the attributes of transformational leadership. You might be familiar with the works of Burns and Bass who in the ‘80s developed this concept of transformational leadership, which is like an orchestra or choir. It’s building a culture and influencing that culture to function at a higher level. I say back to you that I influence business leaders because of methodology and influence. From your side, business leaders coming into the laboratory that you suggested, is that kind of a learning experience that business leaders could expect? Kurt: As I was preparing for this interview with you, Hugh, I put down four principles that maybe a secular leader or a manager in their everyday life can learn from LDS leaders and the challenges that we face. One of those is your limitations and strengths. Another one I would say is what would you do if you didn’t have classic leveraging tools of motivation? You couldn’t demote someone, you couldn’t take their salary away, and you couldn’t fire them. They are all volunteers. How do you approach that? We have a fantastic scripture in our doctrine of covenance, which is a fantastic scripture just like the Bible. It says, “No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the leadership, only by persuasion, long suffering, by gentleness, meekness, and by love unfeigned.” It gives you a whole new approach to motivating individuals when you can’t just yank their salary away or give them these harsh consequences that will impact their family life. It’s through this meekness and long suffering, really connecting and getting to know these individuals. Just like servant leadership or transformational leadership, these are all different ways of saying this, but really leading in a way that connects with the individual so they do want to have influence and realize they are a leader themselves. They can have remarkable impact on their local ward or even at work where they have important responsibilities. Hugh: I’ll tell you a funny story. I had a volunteer who was in one of my programs at one of my churches, and it just wasn’t working. I asked them to come in and have an interview. I said, “Let me get somebody else to do this for a while so you can regain control of your life, and then we’ll come back and find another place for you to show your talents.” It was a painful conversation. It was like they were relieved. They said, “Okay.” We had a hug and a parting, and they left. I said, “Now I gotta put my new leaders in place.” I looked at my window, and the first person they met, they were skipping, jumping, and smiling saying, “I got fired from our job!” Kurt: Yep, we have the same dynamic. Hugh: If it ain’t workin’, either in a business context or a volunteer context, everybody knows it. We don’t address it. One of the conflict management pieces I encourage people to embrace is you move toward conflict as soon as it’s there because it doesn’t get better if you don’t address it. Remain calm and address the facts. What is your advice when you have somebody either in business or a volunteer in a charity that it just isn’t working out? From your perspective, what’s your advice on how to deal with changing their job or moving them out of the space? Kurt: Obviously, every leader wants to establish a really healthy culture in their organization. There is nothing more damaging to that organization than a passive-aggressive attitude of, “We appreciate your time serving in this position, but man, do we need you over here passing out the hymn books as people enter. There is nobody else that can do it; you must do it.” This is one thing I preach a lot on Leading LDS. There is nothing more valuable to a leader in my opinion than this ability to effectively communicate on a one-to-one basis. I get questions and situations emailed to me all the time, “I have this difficult person that is in my ward or my primary relief society. What should I do with them?” 90% of the time, you need to have a conversation with them. And if you don’t know how to do that, you need to develop those skills to have that conversation. That is one thing in our culture, a very religious culture, where we feel like, “I am called of God; therefore, I should have these abilities given to me in the moment that I need them to handle these leadership positions.” But it really is up to that leader to take the time to listen to podcasts like Orchestrating Success to develop these skills so that you are an effective leader. It’s not just going to come because they call you a leader. Hugh: Absolutely. What you just described is a triangle relationship. You have that local leader calling you about a third person. There are three people in a relationship, which is neutral. There are triangles that are the basic blocks of human relationships. What that person may have wanted to do is triangle the other person, which is another way of looking at passive aggressive. They want to dump all their energy on you and have you do something about it, which happens in the life of the church. That is the culture that people sometimes unload on a third person about that other person, which doesn’t solve the problem. What you did was undo the triangle and say, “Go face to face. Address the situation. Develop the skills to do that. No, God didn’t download these skills to your hard drive. You need to think about it and faith, God is giving you certain abilities, but He is also giving you the ability to think and speak the truth. Hall said, “Speak the truth in love.” We dodge around it. We hint around it instead of saying, “This isn’t working out. How can we remedy it?” Sometimes, a person will want to upgrade their skills, and we can mentor them in that. Sometimes they are going to say, “This isn’t working for me either.” They know it, and they may not know how to tell you that they want out of it. I think a direct one-to-one conversation. You want to respond to that paradigm? Kurt: That’s the beauty of it. When you learn how to have these conversations, it’s not like this person is struggling in this calling or assignment and is oblivious to their lack of ability. By having that conversation with love, again, going back to meekness and connecting with that person, they are more likely to say, “I hate failing at this thing, too. Do you have any suggestions of a way I can be better? Or maybe there is a better place for me to be.” Then you don’t have this weird passive-aggressive relationship of, “Remember that time you fired me but we never talked about it?” They move onto the next position where they can maybe flourish, and they still love you as their leader because you took the time to have that interaction and express love to them in a way that will help them flourish elsewhere. Hugh: We’re talking to a business audience in this podcast. There is a lot to learn from being able to manage self and speak clearly in this culture. That question I asked you a while ago, how can business leaders learn, all of this, leadership is leadership. Good leadership is good leadership, no matter where you are. In the context you’re working, it’s more difficult. By the way, in my methodology, when I was inside the church, I developed this paradigm of we’re called to ministry, so why are we calling people volunteers? I don’t know if you call them volunteers or not. I started this initiative in the last church I served where we outlawed the word “volunteer” because we are teaching everybody in our theology that God calls you to Christian service. It’s in conflict to say, “I want to volunteer stuff” rather than saying, “I was called to leadership.” You mentioned servant leadership; that is certainly a title. We adopted the title of “members in ministry,” which worked for the church. It was us in a leadership position. It changed the paradigm of performance. People saw themselves as leaders. We had lots of people doing lots of stuff joyfully because they had a leadership track. It wasn’t the volunteer mentality of showing up and doing the least I can because I am a volunteer. It was a paradigm shift. My bias is we have to let go of some words to be able to let go of the old paradigm and shift to a new one. What is your response to that methodology? Kurt: In the Mormon faith, the nomenclature of these volunteer assignments is it’s my calling. What is your calling? I was just called to this position. I think we have gone too far with it to where we have used it for so long for so many years that it has the same connotation as if we just said volunteer. This goes to when I started Leading LDS; our slogan that I say at the end of each episode is, “Be a leader, not a calling.” Insert whatever word there. “Be a leader, not a volunteer, manager, executive” because in my opinion, leadership is something that you step up to. You’re not always dragged there and told to wear your crown, enjoy it, and be effective. Leadership is something we need to find in each one of our selves and say, “I can have some influence somewhere in the world. Where is it going to be?” For me as a young 28-year-old, I was asked to be a bishop and I thought, Well, I can either flounder or flourish. Not that I was the most successful bishop and there are statues of me anywhere by any means. Nonetheless, I saw it as a calling that is a great opportunity to lead. Leadership is no better than when it’s self-called. Hugh: What is the biggest challenge you see in leadership anywhere? Inside the church, inside a business. What is the biggest challenge in today’s convoluted toxic world today? Kurt: That’s a great question. Many books have been written on that. I would probably change my answer month to month, but most recently, I have been very struck with this topic of the role of shame in organizations, especially more highlighted in religious situations because we go to our chapel every Sunday. There is always this undertone of, You’re not doing enough. You need to be better. Keep the commandments. Be more. Be more. Of course, I want to be part of an organization that is constantly encouraging me to be better. It’s so easy for the adversary we would have in our doctrine to twist that and say, “You know what? You’re just not good enough. Because you’re just not good enough, you’re broken. If you’re broken, you don’t belong here.” That person internalizes that message of, “This system broke me. This church broke me. This organization broke me. I don’t want to work there because they shame me and make me feel less than myself.” There is this subtle balance for a leader to be encouraging and motivating without being shaming. I have been doing lots of research and interviews around this topic of how we can better lead without shaming. It’s valuable. Brene Brown has done some remarkable research on it. Her TED Talk, which is one of the most listened-to, about this concept of vulnerability and shame and recognizing it and getting it out of your life. Nothing that comes from God is laced in shame, and there is no place for it in the church nor is there any place for it in any organization. Hugh: When we are demeaning ourselves, we are demeaning God, because we are a creation of God. In this series of podcasts, #42 is my colleague Dr. David Gruder, who is an organizational psychologist. He talks about the shadow. That is part of what you’re talking about: the negative scripts that we have that limit our ability. Sometimes we’re our own worst enemy, no matter where we are leading. Kurt: Yeah, it’s too bad. Hugh: I’m glad you referred to that. It’s a hidden liability for leaders. It’s really a problem. This podcast is called Orchestrating Success obviously. I picked up when you said you prepared for this podcast. Thank you. That honors what I’m doing. You checked me out, and you obviously know I am a musical conductor. Orchestrating is how you define the instruments that play, but it’s also adding energy to that idea that is notes on paper become sounds, glorious sounds. The subtitle is “Converting Passion to Profit.” I am a champion for profit in all of its forms. The scripture says, “What does a man profit if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?” That is a different element of profit. We can be a prophet, for profit, and profit from the synergy of the community. What I want people to do is to profit in their leadership methodology, their vision for empowering themselves and their teams through this series of interviews. Speaking to that paradigm, what’s the most important takeaway that you’ve had? You were a bishop at 28. You don’t look a whole lot older than that. Kurt: I’m 35, so it’s been a few years. Hugh: I’m 71. You’re not a whole lot older than that. Kurt: I still got a lot to learn, for sure. Hugh: I can remember 35. It’s kind of fuzzy. What would you like people to take away? I think we’ve covered our topics really well. If there is something else you want to cover here, I’m happy to do that. Back to my question. What are the takeaways you would like to emphasize for leaders who need to up their game in any space, in an entrepreneurial space, charity space, church space, wherever? What are some empowerment pieces that you’d like to leave people with? Kurt: Pleasure to do so. Again, I thank you, Hugh, for giving me a stage here to talk about what I have learned as a developing leader. My overall message that I would love for people to take away is be a leader and not a calling. Wherever it is that you lead, are you leading because you are called to that or asked to lead or hired as a leader, or are you leading because you find it a passion in your life to step up and have an influence for good in your world and surroundings? You mentioned my age of 35. One of the principles I wanted to mention is for leaders out there, even in the secular world that maybe are managers or executives, somebody took a chance on the 28-year-old young kid to be a bishop. It impacted me as a person and hopefully I had positive influence in that role. Don’t underestimate. Speaking as one of the older Millennials in the world, don’t underestimate the power of those Millennials. Don’t wait on them to lead. That doesn’t mean you have to fire your older executive staff and put a bunch of young guys in Levi’s in there. Look for opportunities for them to lead and to flourish so that by the time that you do need them to step up, they are ready to go and to be a leader, not a calling. Hugh: That’s huge. We’re not engaging Millennials as a sector. I’m a boomer, you’re a millennial—we have similar values. We value core principles, and we value a lot of things that we see in common, but we have a different way of approaching it. Neither one is bad or good; it’s just understanding and celebrating the difference and creating a diverse board, a diverse cadre of people who are servant leaders in any organization. That’s a great final thought. Kurt, I see why you’ve been called into leadership positions. You’re on top of your game, sir. Kurt: Thank you. I appreciate that. It means a lot. Hugh: Thank you for being on this podcast, and thank you for sharing your message with so many people that tune in.

Todd Tresidder’s background includes: B.A. in Economics from University of California at Davis Member of Economics Honors Society and Deans List A serial entrepreneur since childhood building many businesses and retiring at age 35 from his position as a Hedge Fund Investment Manager responsible for a 20+ million dollar portfolio. Todd’s portfolio management for the Hedge Fund produced 100% winning years except one which was less than a 5% loss. Raised net worth from less than zero at age 23 to self-made millionaire 12 years later by “walking the talk” using the same personal finance and investment strategies taught on this web site. An early pioneer and expert in statistical and mathematical risk management systems for investing. Financially independent from age 35 through investing – not marketing – unlike many other financial gurus who made their money through marketing courses and books. Still an active investor who earns consistent investment returns in both up and down markets. The point of these factoids is to demonstrate that I teach personal finance and investing based on real experience. I walk the talk and have the results to prove it. I do not teach ivory tower theories or inaccurate conventional wisdom: instead, I show you what works, what doesn’t, and why – all based on actual, provable, experience. With that said, there is a serious limitation to the financial and professional data cited above. It tells you about my financial and investment expertise, but it doesn’t tell you anything about me as a person. In other words, there are many self-proclaimed financial experts with impressive resumes so what is different about Todd?   The most obvious difference is I made my money investing in publicly traded markets just like you can do; whereas, many financial experts made their money through becoming best-selling authors and marketing financial advice to you. Unless you plan on writing a best-selling book and building a marketing empire you may find difficulty duplicating their success. More at https://financialmentor.com   Here's the Transcript Hugh: Hey, this is Hugh Ballou. Welcome to this episode of Orchestrating Success. I got a guy today that I’m going to interview that knows how to convert passion to profit. Todd, tell us a little bit about you. How do you say your last name? Todd: Tresidder. Hugh: I have a Southern focus on pronunciation, so I want to make sure I got it right. Todd, I’ve read a little bit about you and I’m really impressed. We’re talking about how to get more clients than you really need today. Talk about your background and what brought you to being able to do this for yourself and for others. Todd: My background is in hedge fund investing. That’s where I learned the investment skills that ultimately I market through my coaching services and books and courses and things like that. That’s where I learned it: practical school hard knocks. I spent about 12 years doing research in computerized trading algorithms and risk management systems, things like that. I ran the fund for all those years. We had only one losing year for the investors. The portfolio actually won money, even in that losing year, but it was such a small win that with the net of expenses and fees, investors lost a little bit. We now have 100% winning years. I went on to build this financial education company. I sold the hedge fund back when I was 35, which anybody looking at this feed can see that was a long time ago. I’ve been building out a financial education business, trying to give back the knowledge I created. It’s different; my viewpoints are sometimes unorthodox, but they are always supported by math and research and proof. They violate a lot of commonly held ideas in the financial planning area. Hugh: Love it. I like to violate all the standard leadership rules because they don’t work. Todd: Make hamburger out of sacred cows. Hugh: That’s right. One of the people I interviewed was Gary Gunderson, who wrote the book Killing Sacred Cows. For your business, who’s your ideal client? Todd: Depends on what part of the business you’re talking about. There is various parts of the business: online advertising, the books, the courses, and the coaching services. I think what you’re referring to is the coaching services. When you look at the ideal target client, there is several. The reason for that is there is several problems that the coaching service solves. One of the keys in getting more clients than you can handle is you have to be clear on what problem you solve. People pay for solutions to problems. You have to look at what the high value solution you have that other people will gladly pay for. That’s your starting point. It’s not so much like, women over 35 with a net worth of blah blah blah. It doesn’t work that way. It’s a psychographic, not a demographic. Hugh: Say a little more about that. That’s fascinating. What problem do you solve? Let’s go after it that way. Todd: One of the problems that I solve is people who achieve very-near financial independence. A lot of people don’t understand this, but as you approach financial independence, it’s a very unleveling experience, if you will. It typically takes people by surprise. The reason for that is as you approach financial independence, what happens is your life up to that point was very well prescribed. It’s standard stuff. You go to work five days a week. You have your job. Your focus is making more money. Your focus is spending less, saving money, trying to achieve some modicum of financial security. Everything is pretty well set. Once you achieve financial independence, all that grounding is removed because you no longer have to report to the man, you no longer have a daily routine that is required of you. Everything is up to you. You can choose. You no longer have any excuses for your unhappiness. Before when you were unhappy, you could always blame it on your crappy boss or your lousy job or the fact that you work all day when you really want to be doing X or Y. Once you’re financially independent, you have no excuses. Your happiness is entirely up to you. Your day is entirely up to you. That is what I call a burden of responsibility. Most people sitting on the other side of this will be like, “Yeah, Todd, gee, big burden. I’ll take it any day.” It’s true. For most people, it’s a privilege to get to that position in life. But don’t kid yourself. It’s very disconcerting. When people experience it, they’re thrown off. They seek out guidance, and I’m one of the only people who has been through it and is willing to mentor others through it. I have been through it a lot, both with myself and clients. That’s one target profile client. They have a lot of money, they are very concerned, they are right at the edge of financial independence but don’t know if they are financially independent or not. They’re not sure. The numbers are marginal. Right when you hit that point, your whole life changes. Before that, everything was pre-prescribed. After that, you’re going according to what your values are. All kinds of stuff that you could tolerate before, like going to work and putting up with people’s crap and all kinds of things like that, you won’t tolerate it anymore. It’s very unsettling. It’s a huge change in a person’s life. That’s one target client. Another target client is somebody who wants to build wealth. For example, an entrepreneur who has success, but he is not converting it into wealth. He is building a successful business. It’s not translating over into wealth into his personal balance sheet. He’s not sure what he’s doing wrong. He needs help. That’s another target client where I help them solve a problem. There is a variety of target clients. Hugh: Those are the people listening to this podcast. That’s how we position ourselves. There are people- 31 years working with solopreneurs and early-stage businesses. People are stuck. They are on a treadmill, and they are too busy. They don’t have a life. They haven’t done this kind of planning or reframing. Let’s go back to the expertise. Todd: Most people I see are too busy making a living to develop wealth. Hugh: Absolutely. Sometimes they’re too busy making a living to make a living. Todd: To live. Hugh: Amen. To the bottom line. We’re talking about how to have more clients than you can handle. I’m at a place in my career where, like you are, I screen clients and I don’t want to work with everybody. I only take a certain number. I try to automate the others or put them into groups. What are the problems? I’m in a service business. A lot of people I work with are in a service business. We are selling what might be called invisible at some point. Leadership is invisible until you’re bad at it. Financial planning is invisible until you’re bad at it. Service businesses - Todd: I call it selling pink fog. Hugh: Pink fog. I love that. What are some of the problems in approaching marketing for this kind of business? Todd: First of all, as I said, you have to be clear on what problem you solve that people will pay for. A lot of people have a lot of problems. For example, early on in the business, I used to help people get out of debt. I don’t do that anymore. That’s a problem people won’t pay for a solution for; they don’t have the money. They may really need help. They have a huge problem. But they don’t have money and they can’t really pay for a solution. You have to find problems that you are the single best solution to that people will gladly pay for that solution. Then you have to position yourself in their buying process. You have to understand where they look and what they’re looking for in order to solve that problem. It’s got to be a burning enough problem that they wake up in the morning and it bothers them. They care about it enough to research it. Those I call money key words. You’re looking for those money key words, or finding a buying process. The buying process might exist somewhere else other than the Internet, but you have to identify their buying process. Then you have to map yourself right into that buying process. You have to show up at the point they’re looking for that solution. As an example, on my site, if you look up terms like “money coach,” “financial coach,” “investment coach,” all those terms with coaching and finance, I will rank pretty highly. The way a buying process works for a coaching service is people will look for those money terms like “money coach” or “financial coach” or “financial coaching.” It’s a trust relationship. The buying process is you don’t have to be number one. It’s like a retirement calculator where somebody comes in, they will use the top result, they have their answer, and they’re out. With coaching, it’s a personal service, it’s a trusted relationship. People will go through the first couple pages of results, at least the first page. They will try to find somebody that they resonate with. They are trying to find somebody they can trust and connect with, somebody whose message they resonate with. They will go through the first couple pages of coaches in search of a coach. If you are looking for a financial coach, you have a financial problem you are trying to solve. You don’t want a traditional financial advisor; otherwise you would search for those terms. The site then has to position itself as a trusted authority in that field to where they feel compelled to connect with you. You also want to write your message in a way that it’s unique and stands for what you provide and only you can provide. For example, my message connects a lot of personal growth issues with wealth-building. In other words, the way I like to say it is that building wealth is the ultimate path to personal growth because of everything you have to go through in order to get there. The real gold is in who you become on the journey, not in the destination itself. That’s a very different positioning statement, but it’s true. It’s been true in my life and in my clients’ lives. It’s not some cutesy thing; it’s what I truly believe. But that’s unique in my message. Everybody else is about the money. They will all position themselves next to a Lamborghini or a fancy mansion. I’m sitting by a stream and talking about how life is about experiences, not stuff. Nobody wants more money; they want what they think money will get them. For the most part, people don’t want more stuff; they want a more fulfilling life. People connect with that. My target client does. That’s the point. Your message won’t relate to everybody, but it will relate to your target client, who you will want to attract. It will stand out from the crowd. If you go through the first couple pages of search results for things like “money coach” or “financial coaching” and look at those, I’m clearly a trusted authority in the field. That’s where I rank. People then contact you because that’s the buying process for a coach. Nearly every coach gives away a free strategy session. That’s where you get to know the client. You talk over stuff with them. All you have to do, the whole purpose of that content marketing is to get you to the strategy session. The strategy session is where the close takes place. Again, it’s just positioning yourself in the buying process. You have to have enough flow in clients in that buying process to have a full practice or a full business. In my case, back when I did it, I have grown since then. I don’t know what the numbers are now, but there was something like 25,000 searches for “money coach” if I am recalling right. You apply the 1% rule to it on the Internet. Of 25,000 searches, 1% of those click through, that is 250. 1% of that is 2.5 clients that will actually contact you and possibly convert. That’s 2.5 clients. That is only one term, right? There are a whole bunch of these terms I would rank for. If you take 2.5 clients for the one term and you say, “Okay, my average retention on a client is two years,” that would mean you could carry a constant practice of roughly 50 people, which is way more than I could ever fulfill. Just that one strategy alone right there more than filled my practice. One other thing we want to go through is one more step that I want to make sure we get in before we move. That is the actual conversion process. It’s traffic times conversion equals profit. That’s the formula. Hugh: Traffic x conversion = profit. Really good formula. Thank you. Todd: Very straightforward. That’s the way business works. So far, I have been showing the traffic, and I have been showing the first step to conversion. The actual conversion to a coaching relationship is a trust relationship. It’s going to be different for your business. You have to relate what I am saying to your business. The key is understanding the buying process of a client. I am relating the buying process of a coaching client to illustrate the point. You’re going to have to figure out the buying process for your clients. In my case, they all get a free strategy session. You have two conversions that have to take place. You have to convert them from cold traffic to somebody who wants a strategy session. You then have to convert the strategy session to a paying client. In the strategy session, I had a system set up where the person would have to first prequalify themselves. A prequalification is genuine, yet it also creates the bit of exclusivity. What I found in doing coaching was that it’s really a selection process. It’s not a marketing or sales process. For the right client, coaching was a no-brainer thing. It would definitely put more money in their pocket than it costs them. The key was finding the right client. So I gave away an article that everybody had to pre-read to qualify themselves. They had to say where they fit into the process when they applied for a strategy session. They would have to read the article to tell me where they fit in as a target client who is going to get more value than they paid for. In that essay, if you will, or article, it would go through and explain everybody that shouldn’t do coaching; they should instead learn the stuff over here and over here because it has a higher value relative to their need. It’s a more efficient way to get the information. The coaching is properly used in a very specific way for a very specific client, and either they qualify or they don’t. I just laid it out right up front, right? Those are the clients that are going to be great clients for me. Then they would write in and say, “I qualified under blah blah blah,” and they would pre-qualify themselves. That sorts out the strategy session. Very high percentages of the strategy sessions would close. It would be like 70-80% of the strategy sessions would actually result in a paying client. What it is is a prequalification system that keeps me from wasting my time on my phone. It sorts people. The key to that is the top of the funnel. We are explaining a funnel here. The top of the funnel has to be large enough that you can afford to be picky like that. You have to get that traffic coming in, and then you have to have the conversion process. By the time they come to me, they are definitely pre-sold. They have read my material. Most of my coaching clients would come to me and say, “Todd, I listened to all your podcasts.” One guy told me that he and his wife listened to each one of my podcasts three times before they called me. Three times. He and his wife. This guy made $600,000 a year. His time is very valuable. That is how much time he put into researching me: he researched my name, my business. He read a bunch of my articles, and then he contacted me. By the time he contacted me, he was pre-sold. That is the beauty. Once you go into a strategy session with this much pre-qual, the only thing you have to do is help him. Hugh: You have given us a whole lot of data here. It is a brilliant process. There is a couple of places I want to go back and clarify. I sound like I cut you off. This guy made $600,000 because he has the due diligence to do research before he jumps into something, like before he talked to you. Todd: Very high-quality clients. You are not dealing with college kids kicking the tires or people who can’t pay your bills or wannabes. You are only paying for people who are serious. Hugh: Your website is financialmentor.com. You got at least five books. How Much Money Do I Need to Retire? Those can be found on financialmentor.com? Todd: Yeah, and also on Amazon. Look up my name, or look up Financial Mentor on Amazon or Todd Tresidder. Go to my website, and you will see the books in the sidebar. Hugh: How long have you been doing this particular program? Todd: I got the website back in 1998 after I sold the hedge fund. I really didn’t do anything with it. I made tons of mistakes. It was a brochureware website. It was good enough back then because there wasn’t much competition on the Internet. It was good enough back then to bring clients into the coaching practice. But it was basically brochureware. It had tons of mistakes in it. We went into the top of the real estate market, so around 2006 or 2007, I got really uncomfortable. I was mostly focused on my real estate business back then. By real estate business, I mean personal ownership of a bunch of apartment buildings. I got uncomfortable with the financial leverage in real estate as the credit bubble bloomed. I sold everything, and I finished selling by 2007. At that point, all I had left was the house I live in. Once the downturn had really developed in full force and I saw how the government was going with it, I really wasn’t comfortable bringing financial leverage back in, and I am still not comfortable with it. I think things are too unstable. I decided to pursue time leverage, knowledge leverage, and technology leverage to build out this business finally. Also, along that time, I was introduced to Wordpress around 2008/2009. To make a short story long, I got the URL back in 1998, developed a junkie site that sat there for about ten years, got ahold of Wordpress, and the site has been through about three evolutions since then to the form you see now. I have only really taken it seriously since about 2009 or so. Hugh: You spoke early on in this interview about you not looking at a demographic, but a psychographic. There may be people listening to this that aren’t really familiar with that term. How do you sort out your psychographic? What does that mean? Todd: Let’s use my course as an example. What I’m doing in the business right now, we’ll get to it or not, is I am moving from coaching services. as you directly alluded to, those more than sold out. Couldn’t take new clients. I have been sold out for years. If you go on my website now, you will see I am not accepting new clients. I am moving the whole business to putting Todd in a box through courses. I coached for fifteen years. More than that now because I am still coaching, just the old clients that are still with me. I guess it’s 20 years I have been coaching now. I am dating myself here. I have been coaching 20 years. What I learned is what people go through to achieve financial freedom. The big solution I provide is financial freedom, like serious education for financial freedom, not get-rich-quick garbage, like serious education. How do you engineer your life to develop financial freedom with reliability and security? That is the solution I provide on the website. The moniker is Financial Freedom for Smart People. I am moving everything to courses because what I learned through coaching over those years is my clients slowly showed me it’s a step-by-step math they follow. Everybody comes to me at a different step in the process, but they all follow the same seven steps. I am formulating Seven Steps to Seven Figures. All the courses are already formulated. They are in drawers; I am just making them manifest if you will by formally putting them in courses. The first one available now is Step 3. That is how to design your life to result in wealth. It’s a wealth-planning course, but it is totally different from traditional financial planning or investment planning. We can go into that if you want. The point being, there is a psychographic for that course. It took me a while to figure that out. I was very confused. At first, I was like, It’s going to be people over 50, and thy are trying to retire. This, that, and the other thing. I was wrong. People who were college kids who were just getting out of school and getting started with a career. I had stay-at-home moms. I had men at 70 who were multi-millionaires. I couldn’t figure it out. It took me forever. I was interviewing my clients in the course trying to find out a commonality. It was obvious, but I didn’t get it at first. It was anybody who was serious enough about their financial freedom to study the subject and do something about it. That was the common psychographic. It was people who were serious about it. They weren’t just wannabes. They weren’t thinking it would be nice to have it. They were actively doing something about it. That’s why they were willing to pay some money for a course that gave them a complete soup-to-nuts solution. My target client is hanging out on other financial independence blogs. They are reading this stuff. Most of what you find on the subject is somewhat limited; it’s mostly about extreme frugality and how you achieve financial independence at an early age. My target client is studying it, and they say, “I want more.” They run across my course and buy it. Does that make sense to you, Hugh? Hugh: It makes a huge amount of sense. Todd, it’s probably 3% of the population that has been able to figure that out for their own benefit. Todd: I am just following standard business practices. When a course is new and the size of the people coming in is small enough that you can have personal interaction, I am having it. I am calling them up. I am getting on the phone with them. I am talking about the course. I am asking them how it’s working for them. What are their interests? What are their dreams? Where do they come from? How did they find me? How did they buy the course? How often do you get to talk to the course creator? Who cares enough to do that? You go in there and start seeing it. They will hand it to you if you ask the right questions. Hugh: Thank you for that. That is so helpful. It is so helpful. You did a lot of trial and error. I don’t call those mistakes; I call them learning opportunities. Todd: The way I approach it is everything is figure-out-able. You have to apply good business practices and step forward and apply risk management every step of the way. Eventually you will get there. I never knew courses when I started, and the course came out great. I didn’t know Internet marketing when I started. I was the first financial coach on the Internet when I started. Didn’t even exist as a business model. I had this harebrained crazy idea that I wanted to separate financial advice and financial education from investment product sales. Back in the 1990s, where did you get your financial information? It was from a broker, which is inherent conflict of interest. Now it doesn’t sound so revolutionary, but it is 20 years later. Hugh: I had a broker once. I kept getting broker and broker. We won’t go there. You figured out who needs you. You talk about getting the funnel. Here is the funnel. You need enough people in the funnel to be able to sort out those numbers you were talking about. How do you get people into that funnel? Todd: That’s what I was explaining earlier. I gave that content marketing example. I’m sorry, I didn’t explain in detail though. If you go on my site, you will see an entire area under Financial Coaching. There is a library of articles in there that are all connected into a silo of content. Hugh: Back up from that. How do you get them to come there? How do you drive traffic there? Todd: I am not driving traffic. They are searching for a solution, and I am becoming the authority in it. The key is you have to find out their buying process. It goes back to the beginning of the conversation. It’s about their buying process; it’s not about me. This is the thing that almost everybody misses in marketing. Nobody gives a damn about you. All they care about is themselves and their problems and what solution you can provide. The only thing they want from you is the solution. That may sound harsh, but isn’t it real? You’re laughing because it’s real. Hugh: I’m laughing because so few people have been able to figure that out. Here I am. Just being on social media, people hit me all the time, “Here I am, I’m great, buy my stuff.” Wait a minute. We haven’t had a conversation. I don’t know you. How do you know what I need? Todd: People think it’s about building up- You need to be authoritative, but you need to be authoritative in the way you give. When you’re giving to your customer, you have to come from the customer’s viewpoint. What are they looking for? What will convert them? They will convert when you give them so much value for free. The beauty of the Internet and content marketing is you can give unbelievable amounts of value for free, and it still makes good business sense because you can deliver videos and e-books and audio downloads and podcasts. You can deliver unbelievable solutions at almost no cost to yourself, just the cost of time of producing the media. When you do an authoritative body of work, Google will figure it out. If you structure it properly, Google will see that you’re an authority. But you have to build that authoritative body of work. I built an authoritative body of work in financial coaching quite a few years ago. It’s been top-ranked in Google ever since. Hugh: That’s the secret there. When I work with clients that are solopreneurs, we work on creating their position of influence. That is precisely what you are describing. Why do people need you? Who do you want to influence first? How do you want to influence them? What do you want them to do about it? There is figuring that dynamic out. You have given us a whole lot of data. I am just trying to go back and capture some of the significant sound bites here and some of the steps in the process because you figured out a very good process. People can go to your website and learn some things or buy some of your books. In the front end, creating that position of influence, you’re an expert at things. That is so key. You created the body of information. Go back to that part again. How did you start creating this expert position? Todd: For the terms “financial coaching,” all that, I did curated research around those terms. I saw all the searches people were using. How do you become a money coach? What is a money coach? How is financial coaching different from financial advice? Then what I did was I turned it into- I am very much about the consumer. I am a consumer advocate. That is how I got into this business. I got tired of all the- Where there is money, there is power. If you are in the money business, there are a lot of corrupt people who are trying to exploit people. If you read my book Don’t Hire a Financial Coach… Until After You Read This Book, that book was directly targeted at all the clients who were coming to me from the back-end coaching programs off of New York Times best-selling authors. What they were doing was they were getting a book that establishes them as an authority. Most people don’t know this, but there are floors of coaches off in Utah in high-rise buildings with headsets on in cubicles. They market these back-end coaching services to New York Times bestsellers. They create this curriculum. But it’s not real coaching. It’s not how coaching is best applied. It is very expensive content delivery, and it’s overpriced. But because it’s labeled as coaching, people can upsell it as a back-end sell off of their NYT bestselling books. So I’m not going to name names, but you can probably guess the people in my business who did this. I wrote a book as a consumer protection device so that consumers could recognize a genuine financial coach who is genuinely providing coaching in the way that it works and adds value versus somebody who is using it as a renaming metaphor for content delivery done in a very expensive, lazy way. That is an example of a consumer advocate book. The books are another thing, though. What they do is establish authority. They are another source of what you call high-relationship conversions. After people read my books or listen to my podcasts, they have an experience of me. There is trust involved. When they come over to the site, they are a different class of client than somebody who just did a Google search. I should say prospect, not client, a whole different class of prospect because you have to convert people from prospect to client. There is a consistent conversion process. Hugh: Absolutely. A lot of people that I know and that I talk to and that I see some dialogue on social media have a lot of traffic. A lot of people come to their website. They are not really converting. Is part of it that they haven’t really established the value and relationship with the client? Or is there some other secret for conversion? Todd: Let me put it this way. Hugh, do you like to be converted? Hugh: No. Todd: No, of course not. None of us do. That is why “Subscribe to my newsletter” is a losing proposition. Nobody wants another newsletter. Nobody needs more information. As I said before, they need solutions. They need value. You have to figure out how you can deliver value as part of the conversion. What is it that you can give that people will want enough to convert? I.e. become a subscriber on your list. It’s always about giving. That is the beauty of content marketing. That is what makes it fun. It’s a giving business. I don’t like to pitch, but I am more than happy to give and in the process have a smart business model behind it. Then my profits become a measure of how many people I’ve helped as opposed to how much I extracted from people or something. As long as you are always giving more value than you take, it’s a fun business. It’s hard work, but it’s fun. Hugh: Well, I do detect a bit of passion in your voice. You have excitement when you talk about what you do and a passion for it. That is underlying. You really have to want to do what you’re doing. What did you say about this is a giving business? Would you go back to that? You slipped that one in there. Todd: Think about it. If you go on my website, what do you get when you subscribe? You can get a free e-book and a free course called 52 Weeks to Financial Freedom. I am changing that up by the way, but the course as it exists right now as we record this is 52 Weeks to Financial Freedom. It maps up the entire financial freedom process step by step. You can see all the steps. It gives you the overview framework. If that is your goal, which is my target client again, if that is your goal, then that is a high value proposition. The free book I give away is 18 Essential Lessons of a Self-Made Millionaire. That goes through and shares all kinds of valuable ideas I learned along the journey. I give away transcripts to podcasts for opting in. I give away a free PDF of any article. I am known for extremely long-body content. I write articles that are almost as long as e-books. I did a whole expose on Whole Life insurance and how it is sold incorrectly and how it should be sold correctly and who is in it for and who gets ripped off by it. I give common business sense principles around Whole Life. 12,000 words. It’s almost an e-book length article. A lot of people don’t want to read that much online so I give away a free PDF of every article. There is no ads on it. It’s all beautifully formatted. All you have to do is opt in. You can get a free PDF of any article on the site. Also, my calculators. I have one of the largest collections of financial calculators on the Internet. I give them away for free. You can use them all you want, no opt-in required. However, if you would like a screen print of all your calculated results with all the tables and charts and everything cool with it, then when you opt in, I will send it to you. What I am pointing out is there is giving at every step. I will give you the article, and if you want the PDF, just opt in. I will give you the calculator for free, and if you want the printed results sent to you in a nice format, opt in and I will send it to you for free. I will give you the free book and the free course. I give, give, give. Always a value. Something that is relevant and valuable to where you are anywhere on my site at that point. The giveaways are so consistent throughout the site that I actually tested what most marketers do, which is pop-up boxes, or interstitials in the business. In the old advertising business, it was called interruption marketing, where you just interrupt them personally over their screen until you irritate them so much they opt in, or some crazy idea. I actually tried them one time. I did an experiment for a month, and my opt-in rate dropped. My time on my site dropped. All the quality standards of the site dropped. Like time on site, page views per visitor, all those numbers dropped, and my opt-in dropped. That stuff only works when your site doesn’t have proper opt-in bonuses. If you have proper incentives for people to opt in, they will opt in. If you chase them around with all these interstitials, you will chase them away. Let people choose to opt in. That’s your quality subscriber. Give them something worth subscribing for. Hugh: If you have a big list, it’s actually meaningless. The free e-book that they get, would you give us that title again? Todd: 18 Essential Lessons of a Self-Made Millionaire. Hugh: That is worth going right there. Wow. Todd: It’s free, and it’s a short read that is packed with value. If you delivered a junk e-book on the back end of it, what did you accomplish? It’s got to be good. If they come in and trusted you enough to give you their name, and you deliver a piece of junk e-book that is two pages long and says nothing or is a bullet point list, that didn’t build trust or relationship. The whole point of this is to build trust and relationship for the high-value conversion. In a dating analogy, it’s the equivalent of saying, “Do you want to go for a cup of coffee?” That is the opt-in. If you immediately say, “Come home with me. Let’s have sex,” it’s not going to be a conversion. There has to be trust and relationship built. The desire has to exist before the conversion takes place. Hugh: Such wise words. We’ve had a lot of information in the last 30-40 minutes here. This will be transcribed, and it will be on the podcast and on my website. Your links will be there. I would encourage people- What is the name of your podcast by the way? Todd: Financial Mentor. Very original. Everything is Financial Mentor. Facebook, Twitter. It’s Financial Mentor everywhere. I have the branding across the board. Hugh: That explains itself. It explains itself. Todd: Yeah. Again, I was lucky. I got it back in ’98. I started the business early on that you could get a decent URL that matches the business. It’s a financial education business. I am mentoring people on how to build wealth. Hugh: You make it sound easy, but you have worked hard to make it sound easy. Todd: Very much so. That is the mark of- You know somebody understands it when they can explain it in a way that simplifies it and makes it actionable. You only get to that point by walking the talk. If you had asked me ten years ago, I would have fumbled this thing left and right. It’s only because I have now done it. Once you really know it at a deep level, it’s pretty simple stuff. It’s not complex. But it’s a lot of work to do. To do well, it takes some effort. You don’t just throw it up there. Hugh: I find a lot of people make it harder than it already is. It’s already hard. When I try to simplify it, I liked- Todd: Let’s clarify. I want to clarify something. It’s not hard; it’s a lot of work. It’s relatively simple to do. You just have to be committed to do the work to create all the value for people. If you’re willing to do the work to create value because you care enough to give that value, it’s not hard. It’s just a lot of work. Hugh: If people are tired of their subsistence, getting along with what they’re making, they can go to http://FinancialMentor.com or listen to your podcast. It’s on iTunes, I’m sure. Financial Mentor. And your Facebook page is Financial Mentor. Going to your website, there is a lot of free stuff. Todd, you’ve given us a huge amount. Todd: I guess I wasn’t lying, huh? Hugh: That doesn’t do any good, does it? It’s the antithesis of those people saying, “Come to my webinar, and you will make a lot of money.” They give you a couple of tips and they tell you you should buy something to get the rest. What you are doing is giving people a large body of information and saying, “If you like that, there’s more.” You have really given people something of value. That is so key today because there are so many people trying to trick us. You’re giving people really solid information. We found each other on LinkedIn, and I was looking for credible people to do an interview for my podcast and vice versa to exchange with credible people and grow my network and help you grow your network. I am really glad that you and your team responded. You have a high-functioning team that responded on your behalf. My area is leadership and organizational development. Our work is very similar. Somewhere in here, you had a quote that was very similar to what Jim Rohn used to teach. It’s not making your goal that is the most important thing; it’s what happens to you and your business in achieving the goal. I wanted to highlight that. Todd: Think about it. Business is just one of the stages on which you play out your stuff in life. You have various stages you play out on. You have relationship, money, business, spirituality. There are all these different stages on which you are playing out your stuff. This is just one of them. Ultimately, what is life? I like to think of life as becoming the best version of yourself. Treading a path of personal growth. You are growing and moving into whatever you can become. It’s a never-ending journey, and that’s what makes it fun and exciting. Hugh: It is. We have had some interesting people. I like to record these live on Facebook and see who shows up. It is totally unannounced. We randomly picked up some interesting people. As we do the wrap here, Todd, this is incredibly important information. People will get to track it by looking at the transcript. What would you leave us with? What closing thought or challenge would you like to leave the listener with today? Todd: Just do the work. To quote Steven Pressfield, Do the work. Overcome your resistance, and move your life forward.” Guess what? This isn’t a trial run. You can look at Hugh and me here. We are older dudes now. We’ve been down the road. You’re going to get to our spot really fast. Surprisingly fast. It’s not a trial run. Don’t waste your days. Get out there and make it happen. Just do it, to quote Nike. Why else would you live? What else is the point of your day? Don’t waste time. Get out and make it happen. Hugh: Todd Tresidder, you made my day. This was certainly not a waste of time. It was very important. Thank you for giving such value to me and my listeners. Todd: Thanks, Hugh for having me on your show.

Tina Erwin is a retired US Navy commander, who worked 20 years for the Submarine Force, serving in a variety of leadership positions, including first female instructor in the history of the US submarine school, one of the fist female exec officers for a submarine training facility and she served as assistant Chief of Staff for Force Physical Security, anti-terrororism and law enforcement for Commander Submarine Force US Atlantic fleet, responsible for the safety of over 100 billion dollars in submarine assets. More at https://TheKarmicPath.com Interview Transcript Hugh Ballou: Greetings, welcome to Orchestrating Success: Converting Your Passion to Profit. I have a special guest today. She is one of the team of leaders in an organization called The Karmic Path. Tina, tell us who you are and a little bit about you, and then a little bit about The Karmic Path. Tina Erwin: Thank you, Hugh. Thank you for having me on your show. I am absolutely delighted to be here. I spent 20 years in the military. I am a retired naval officer. I retired at the Commander level, and I worked for the submarine force for 20 years. When you discuss conducting, I play seven different instruments, none of them particularly brilliantly, but I really love music and I wanted to see what I can learn. I was in a band, so I understand conducting. If you don’t have a strong leadership, then everybody stays out of tune or out of sorts. The metaphor of conducting is really quite brilliant. I did work for the submarine force. I retired in 1992, and I started on a very different path. That is where The Karmic Path comes from. I learned that I have certain, for lack of a better word, psychic abilities. I had to learn how to use them for the greatest good, how to help other people, and what was the karma attached to that. I took what I learned in the military and translated it into metaphysics. Now what we’re doing with The Karmic Path is teaching the physics of metaphysics. That is a nutshell. Hugh: That is brilliant. I have experienced- Dogs are a lot more psychic than we give them credit for. And children. We knock it out of children as they grow up. The smart ones like you stay attuned. We are born with a lot more sense in this area than we realize. As we get older, as we learn to trust that, that we can be more in tune. It’s more of a spiritual realm than a physical realm. Tina Erwin, I didn’t say it before. Spell “karmic.” Tina: K-a-r-m-i-c. Karmic. Hugh: Tell us what karmic means. Tina: If you drop a pebble in a pool, the action of dropping the pebble is an action, and the ripples that come out of that pool are the reaction. Karma is the law of action and reaction. It doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t have a bad day. It always is. If you drop a rock in a pool, depending on the size of the rock, it will immediately and forever determine the exact size of what the ripples would be in perfect balance. If you take an action, whether you are an employee or you are the CEO, you are going to create a reaction in proportion to the action you took. If you summarily fire someone, there will be a reaction. As a leader, you have to determine what kind of reaction you want. You are creating karma with everything you do. Was firing that person a good thing or a bad thing? It’s what you did. You have to look at what is now going to be the karmic repercussions, the reaction for your action. It’s not good or bad or right or wrong; it’s simply the reality you’re facing. But a really fine leader anticipates that if X happens, this is what is going to happen in the future. It doesn’t mean you’re some psychic and now you’re having premonitions and are seeing the future. It doesn’t take a psychic to see that if you do this action, you can anticipate certain level of results, not 100%. We can’t possibly see 100%. But you should be able to anticipate a large percentage of what will happen. Hugh: That is so key. We as leaders don’t always think of the consequences of our actions. We think this has to be done without thinking about the consequences. Once you’ve squeezed that toothpaste out of the tube, you’re not putting it back in. It’s out. It’s out. That’s one of the biggest things that I deal with, is leaders that slash and burn and then get mad at other people for their reaction when in fact we are the ones that set up the problem. It’s not bad or good, but we set it up and call it a problem because we are getting unintended results because we didn’t think it through. This is a big-deal topic. It’s something that is invisible for a lot of leaders. Do you find that to be true? Tina: I do find that to be true. I have dozens of military stories. It doesn’t matter whether you are military or civilian. It’s irrelevant. We have the case of the commanding officer who expected you to do what he said no matter what. And you have individuals who can see that he is thinking clearly. I can share a very interesting example if that would be all right. Hugh: All right, go for it. Tina: I was attached to a commander of a submarine force in an Atlantic fleet in Norfolk. I had an amazing job, but that is a different element. While I was attached there, we had several squadrons that left out of Norfolk. Every so often, they had what’s called an ORSE team, which is the Operational Reactal Safeguard Evaluation team. They always made sure that the nuclear reactor on a submarine is safe. The ship handling is safe. Everything is working correctly. It’s not just an engineering test; it’s a whole ship-wide test. An ORSE team on board is a big deal. The ship gets under way out of Norfolk. They are in the Thames River. It is a river full of other craft. The captain says to the navigator, “All ahead flank,” which means as fast as you can go. The navigator says, “But, Captain, we have all this traffic. I would recommend respectfully, sir, all ahead slow until we get into open water and we hit the hundred fathom curve.” We are a submarine. A submarine is low profile. When you look at the tankers- I knew what this guy was thinking. Oh my God, the tankers that are all around us. But the captain says, “By God, I am the captain. All ahead flank.” The navigator says, “Captain, I say again, this is ill-advised.” The ORSE team is just standing there watching this. The captain says, “I am giving you a direct order. All ahead flank.” The navigator says, “Sir, I hereby refuse this direct order,” and he tells the watch to load it in the log and refusing the direct order because it is an illegal, wrong order. I stand relieved. The captain says, “All ahead flank.” When the sail planes of the submarine opened up the tanker like a frickin’ can opener to open ocean, the navigator was the only one who was not court marshalled. Because he could see- He knew that since they were oh by the way also operating in fog, who in their right mind takes any ship to sea in fog? The navigator karmically did the right thing. And he pushed the CO so that the ORSE team could see what frankly a jackass he was. And he was relieved on the spot by the ORSE team and the XO and the chief of the boat. They had to immediately turn around, and there was a massive investigation. They had to push for the tanker that was damaged. Of course, the submarine didn’t even show a mark because it is so exceptionally well-built, usually by the Electric Boat Division. Here is an example of a CO who is abusing his power. His ego has gone to his head. Common sense has fled. It wouldn’t take a nuclear engineer to see that he is going to hit something. When it does, it’s going to be bad. He’s just lucky that it happened that soon before he was able to do more damage. This is an example of you can see what’s coming. It’s not rocket science. But the CO got his ego in the way. When that happens, whether it’s a corporation or a submarine, it’s going to be bad. Get yourself out of the way if you can. Hugh: As you and I discussed briefly before we started this interview, I champion transformational leadership, which is a style of leadership about a high-performing culture. A very qualified leader, and the culture is a reflection of the leader. The leader elevates leaders on teams. You just described a high-functioning team, and the leader was not listening to the input. We have in any field- Corporations lose a lot of money because leaders do that kind of thing. Conductors have bad concerts because they don’t listen to what’s coming to them from the players. We do barge into areas where we think we have the divine right, but we have not really looked at the data and received the data. The best leaders don’t have all the right answers. The best leaders take in the data from the highly skilled people we have trained around us. That is a good example where you have a very skilled reader who had a very clear opinion, and the top leader didn’t listen to that person with expertise. Therefore, he created disastrous results, which could have been far worse, couldn’t they? Tina: It could’ve been. I do have an example of a leader who took a different track and actually changed a lot of things. Hugh: Let me set the context. We have a lot of different kinds of leaders listening to this podcast. There are leaders in social benefit work that are in small companies. We also have leaders in mid-cap companies. As somebody starting out, we even have people who are solopreneurs who are working by themselves looking to build out a big team. These are fundamental principles you can change if you already have a large team. As you are building your organization, you want to keep these in mind and keep yourself in tune as a leader. As you build a culture, you are able to lead that culture of fine performing individuals that you bring in. Go ahead. Let’s have that other example. This is fascinating. Tina: I love the submarine force. I married a submariner 44 years ago. These are some of the smartest men I’ve ever met. Brilliant, brilliant men. They are 99% men. For some reason, I was honored to get to work with them. When I was sent to command a submarine force at the U.S. Atlantic fleet, I was given a job that I had no idea how to do. I was the assistant chief of staff for forced physical security, anti-terrorism, and law enforcement. My territory was the entire Atlantic fleet, the Caribbean, and all of Europe to protect 86 submarines, nine submarine tenders, and three submarine bases, and the senior Jewish admiral in the Navy. I had two mentally retired people to help me. I was told that’s your job and don’t screw up. I went home and cried for three days. I am not going to lie. I would love to tell you that I rose to this great occasion, but I felt like I’d been set up to fail. Then I had a transformation myself, which was I had no place to go but up. Since they have nothing, and everybody was worried about massive terrorist attacks in the ‘80s as they are blowing up airplanes and cars and hijackings and assassination attempts, anything I do could potentially be helpful. I decided that I needed real help because I didn’t know what I was doing. I contacted Seal Team 6. If there are people who know about terrorism, it’s Seal Team 6. I developed through finding some of the finest people I could find and sitting down and saying, “Please teach me. I don’t know anything about how to do this. Will you help me?” And then working with the security officers at the bases, I was able to gather what do we really need, hunt it down, and develop a program. On the way, because it’s military, the boss changed. My three-star admiral changed. I ended up with Admiral Cooper who I did not know. When I spoke to him, I had to brief him, and we were given 30 seconds. How can I brief a three-star admiral on the security of this massive fleet in 30 seconds flat? They said, “You only have 30 seconds. The admiral is in front of you. Don’t screw up. Tell him what you need to tell him.” I said, “Admiral, there is no way I could give you a valid demonstration of the security of your fleet in 30 seconds. I am requesting a private meeting with you.” No one else did that. They crammed crap into 30 seconds. He looked at me like this one’s ballsy and turned to his chief of staff, “Set it up and give her a half hour.” I could do a lot in a half hour, but 30 seconds was ridiculous. I sat down and said, “This is what’s going on. This is how I’m supposed to take care of you and protect you from being murdered.” He said, “I don’t want to do what you’re telling me to do.” I said, “I don’t really give a damn, Admiral, because you are going to die if you don’t do what I tell you.” He said, “Okay.” I said, “Your aid can’t call you Admiral. You can’t wear your great scrambled egg hat. Wear jeans and a T-shirt when you fly. Sanitize your wallet. This is what we’re doing for the fleet.” And I gave him this list, project by project by project. He was so impressed when I said, “I need money. I need to be able to do these things,” which the process is classified still to this day because it had never been done before. This man listened. He listened. He gave me the time because my husband was out there, my brother-in-law is out there, my friends’ husbands are out there. It’s personal. It was personal to him. He listened, appropriated the money, and made sure that he not only listened and gave me the money to put it fleet-wide, but he also invited in the type commanders for the surface fleet, the air fleet, and other areas and shared it so that the entire fleet—surface, air, submarine—could all be working together. This man is one of my heroes. To this day, I think the world of him. I was given a lot more authority and a lot more money. Those things are still in the fleet to this day. Here is a person who took an unknown and listened and then went forward with it. The man was absolutely adored throughout the fleet because he listens. Hugh: Those are all exceptional leadership qualities that 3% of the leaders possess. A rare number are leaders anyway, but you get 3% that possess those qualities. That is even rarer. I’m sure you found that to be true. You were 20 years in the military, were you? Tina: 20, yes. Hugh: Yeah. You keep using the word “man.” Let’s jump into this gender thing. I would guess that you were playing in a man’s world there. Tina: I was. I had to learn how to speak their language. I didn’t expect them to learn to speak mine. Hugh: I want to throw a bomb into your midst. I have a write-up on the myth of equality. Women say, “I want equality.” When you influenced this person, and we have this old white male paradigm that we have set up, why should women who have a fresh perspective, a whole lot better quality, a whole lot more creative, a whole lot more as you used the word ballsy, why should you dumb down the quality? You want equity. You want your own space. That is what I perceive that you just did. I am betting that because you weren’t aggressive but assertive. I am hearing that as assertive. You said, “I don’t care what you say.” If you were aggressive, you would have sat him down and tied him up. Assertive was you said, “This is what you need to do for me to do my job.” I think that was a brilliant response. Speak to the fact of the gender there. You are a woman in a man’s world that may in that situation work in your benefit because you stepped up to your excellence as a woman leader. Tell me more about what that paradigm was. Tina: My hero is Captain Kirk from Star Trek because I didn’t see any leaders who grew up. But he solved problems. He employed the best of the people around him. He was my role model of what a commander should be doing with and for his people and how hard the decisions are to be made. When I went to work for the submarine force and they didn’t know what to do with women, I was one of the first three ever to work for them—I had to explain to them in their vernacular. They didn’t know what to do with us, so I needed to tell them in a way that would be beneficial to them. Demanding and doing things that were out of their range of understanding wouldn’t win me anything. When I was a lieutenant junior grade assigned to submarine school and they stuck me in a job and the executive officer said, “What would you like to do at sub school?” I said, “I’d like to teach class, sir.” He said, “Well, women don’t teach class.” I said, “Sir, how hard can it possibly be? Men do it.” I really did think he would laugh. He didn’t even crack a smile. I said, “Sir, I really want to teach class.” He said, “What could you possibly teach anyone here?” I said, “I am an expert at the classified material system because I receipted for all the cryptogear for all new construction submarines at Electric Boat Division, which was my last duty station.” He said, “Women will never teach class here.” I thought, Oh my gosh, you laid down the gauntlet here. Let me try. Thy gave me a job of opening mail for a lieutenant commander. It was mind-numbingly boring. I said, “Oh please, you can just get me out of your hair if you just let me go to instructor school.” They said, “Fine, anything to shut you up.” I graduated just fine from instructor school. I said, “Now I’d like to teach class. Oh please. I can teach CMS, and I can teach admin. These are all the things I can teach.” They said, “If the CO of the school says so, maybe we’ll consider it.” I said, “Let’s set up an appointment.” I said to Captain Balson who- This is a big man. I am 5’1”, and I weighed 105 pounds. I looked like this little tiny thing. I said, “Captain Balson, you are a man of vision and wisdom. Can you imagine how it’s going to look in all hands when your name is mentioned as being the most progressive man in the submarine force by opening a door for men and women to work together by allowing me to teach this particular class?” He said, “Really?” I said, “Yes, sir, I can teach this. I’ll do all the CMS inspections on the river. I’ll do them on the waterfront.” I know we know people at all hands, so he said, “Okay.” I became the first female instructor in the history of submarine school. All hands, I still have the article that Captain Balson is mentioned in, and they give him high praise. I was incidental. I didn’t care. I could teach class. It worked out beautifully. I opened up five other jobs for women. We developed a lot of friends. I built friendships with all of the men who took my classes. I was locked in a vault with 25 of the coolest guys you’ve ever seen all day long teaching all those classified materials. I made amazing friends. I grew to have a deep and abiding respect for these men. Over time, they would take me aside and say, “Look, kid, listen. If you want your career to progress, do this, this, this, and this.” I listened to them. They became my mentors. Your reputation in the submarine force is always going to precede you because it is a small community. I made sure that I worked really, really hard, that I was extremely respectful, and that I learned the language that men understood and expected to hear, not what I was used to other women saying. I had a blast. Doesn’t mean I didn’t have some bad days, but I have to tell you I had a great career. Hugh: There is some very significant leadership nuggets in what you just shared. You want to position your message so that the other person can hear it. There is a certain dynamic there, a woman in a man’s world, but there are other dynamics: analytics, talking to creatives. I am an extrovert. Duh. Talking to an introvert. For us to be able to think about the receiving. I’ve seen a sign that says, “What you thought you heard was not what I thought I said.” Part of the leadership dysfunction is we cause with our karma negative results, and we are not aware of it. Part of it is how we approach the situation. What you did there is what a lot of leaders don’t understand. They want to tell, and- We are selling a product or service. We are trying to connect in a big deal or collaboration or convince somebody of something. We talk about the what, and we never talk about the why. The brilliance of how you positioned with him, “This is going to make you stand out as a leader. This is what’s going to happen.” It stroked his ego. Male ego is a thing you have to understand, and you do. But you also talked about the benefits of this. The demonstrated value. Here is why it’s good for you. Here are the results you’re going to have. The way you approached that, you could have talked about it in a lot of ways. You could have whined and said you had to give women a chance. You could have done lots of whiny things. But you approached it from a very analytical, logical, fact-based position. I am really seeing a whole lot of good that you brought in to the non-military world from the military and back to transformational leadership. There are lots of similarities. I have modified it a little bit as you know from the conductor standpoint. There are lots of similarities. You have a leader that directs a very highly skilled, highly trained, fine-tuned culture. You’re in concert. You can’t micro-manage. You’re in combat, and you can’t micro-manage. The team has to be high-performing, and they have to have rehearsed and the synergy. That is why I call my company SynerVision. It’s the synergy of the common vision. This is really good stuff, Tina. You and I met on LinkedIn. Took note to me. You said, “Let’s share a podcast.” I’ll be on your show some time later. You don’t know it, but you’re tracking my philosophy of leadership that I’ve created and developed and gleaned out of my 71 years of living and my multiple years studying transformational leadership. This is really awesome stuff. On our podcast, we have a lot of high-functioning female leaders in charities, small business, mid-cap companies that are doing really good work. Any advice for those women who want to step up to their highest level? I don’t use this go to the next level thing; let’s just go to the top sequentially. For ladies, for women out there who are really on it, what’s your best advice to them to step to the top of their game? Tina: I have several pieces because I spoke to many female midshipmen classes. First of all, I want to address the male ego. If you are on a submarine and you have a billion-dollar asset and the lives of between 125-150 men depending on whether it’s a fess attack or a ballistic missile submarine, by God, the captain better have a decent ego. He better have enough confidence in himself to deliberately submerge that ship and bring it back, to be in trail of a Russian submarine for months. I have a deep and abiding respect for an ego for those men. Deep and abiding. I wanted my own submarine. I really did. But Congress hadn’t changed the law. I do respect the ego of men because if you have that level of responsibility or if it’s an aircraft carrier, you have to have enough ego and believe in yourself enough to make it happen. You have to have an inner strength. Those were the lessons that these men taught me, and I value that every day. For women, I have two children and we actually adopted a third. I have grandchildren. When I was in the navy, my children were little. I had a lot of women say, “Oh my gosh, I feel so guilty I am not spending time with my kids.” I said, “I’m going to give that first class ticket on the guilt train back to you. I’m not guilty.” I’m a significantly better mother wearing oak leaves than I would be standing as a soccer mom. I think soccer moms are awesome. That’s not my personality. That works for you. I’m happy for you. I’m not here to judge. But I am an aggressive personality on certain levels. I wanted to make commander. I wanted to be able to pave the way and open doors for other women, including my own daughter. When I was with my kids, by God, I was with my kids. We are extremely close to this day. I didn’t have to be with them 24/7. I had dinner with my engineer because I was executive officer for a submarine training facility in Point Loma in San Diego for a while. Somebody said, “Commander, you are going to retire soon. How is it going to be to be a full-time mom?” The engineer stepped away and said, “Man, it’s going to be messy.” I said, “Are you a part-time dad?” He said, “Well of course not.” He said, “I’m a full-time mom whether I’m here or I’m in front of my kids.” My kids are independent. They are individual thinkers. I am growing to the next crop of naval officers whether they are in business or they are in the military. I don’t care where they are. If you are organized, if you are focused, you can arise to the height of your game. You can still be a mom, and you can still be a good wife. You have to set your priorities. You can’t let anybody tell you that you can’t. Don’t let somebody else make you feel guilty for what you can’t do. It isn’t about having it all. It’s about understanding what your mission is. I have a mission as a mother. That’s not going to stop. I have a mission as a wife. I’m a pretty good wife. I had a mission as a naval officer, and now I have a mission with the Karmic Path. We have five websites that we are working with now. It’s a mission of enormous service to other people. Those missions don’t change. My family respects those missions, and they help where they can. If you don’t respect what you’re here to do, what your mission is long-term, then don’t do it. Don’t think that you’re sacrificing your children or their childhood just because you can’t make every soccer game or band concert. You’re going to miss some of them. It’s not the end of the world. Be there for the important things. When you’re present with them, be emotionally present. Get off your cell phone. Get off your computer. Leave your work at work. Those would be the things that I would say. Be clear in who you are and what you want. If you’re not, nobody else is going to know it either. Hugh: Absolutely. Those are very profound words. If a leader has a very clear pathway- I approach strategy like it’s military objectives and tactics. You have a real clear objective, and here are your tactics. We do it sometimes for our business, which is really important, but we rarely do it for ourselves. There is a parallel path. We have to manage self to be a good mother or father, to be a good work person in the workforce. Part of one of the leadership methodologies that I teach came from a psychiatrist, Murray Bowen. He talks about us learning about ourselves by studying our family of origin. I learn a whole lot of stuff that way about self. The only person we can mange is ourselves. We can bark at other people, but we can’t make them do anything, like that first story you told about the submarine officer who his navigator would not do something unsafe or illegal. He just said no, I’m not going to do that. There is a piece in all of this leadership methodology. It’s a very common piece that I see where leaders cause themselves problems. It’s called overfunctioning. I want to bounce a little bit off you and let you come back from that paradigm of balancing work and home life. You have personal and work. Sometimes people overfunction so much in work that they give up unnecessarily too much of personal life. Or the other way around. It’s about setting some good principles. This is what I’m going to do. Then not overfunctioning. Usually, in the military, in a corporate setting, in nonprofits, in a church or synagogue, there are other people who want to do things. As we overfunction for them, we actually irritate them, and they underfunction. We end up burned out. Part of the paradigm that you didn’t talk about that I heard in your narrative was that you were able to balance your life by saying, “Here is the essential things on both sides. I am going to balance those and be there.” Speak to this dynamic. You have probably seen people who overfunction in this world and cause themselves some heartburn, and are completely unaware of it. Speak to that dynamic about managing self if you will. Tina: That is a really critical point. My belief and what I do is delegate. I cannot possibly do it all. Why would I want to do it all? If someone else does it, it’s a learning opportunity for them. Why would I deprive them of a learning opportunity? I didn’t have to make the lunches for my kids. Here is how you make lunch. I’m teaching you. Now you are responsible for making your lunch. I’m not going to do it. If you want to do this, this is what it’s going to take. I’m not going to do that for you. This was true with my crew. No matter where I was or what I was doing, I was emotionally available to discuss a specific problem. But then I would give the problem back to the individual. You can problem-solve to a point because part of leadership is teaching. If you leave out the teaching portion of it, you’re not the best leader you could be. If your ego is such that no one else can do it as well as you can, then how will anyone ever replace you? One of the classic examples over time back through the history is I have studied the life of Queen Elizabeth I. The amount of change she brought to England and how she took it from a bankrupt country to the most powerful country in the world. She controlled it all. She was brilliant. But she had no successor. England took a dramatic leap backwards because she didn’t plan ahead. Her glory may have been great, but her legacy was flawed because she didn’t set herself up. She didn’t- When I was the XO out here, I had a stable of officers. Whenever I took leave, I would rotate the acting XO position among each of them so that when they got to be an XO, they would be able to face all of the problems. I am not the only person who can be an XO. Lots of people can be an executive officer. It doesn’t have to be just me. If we had problems, we’d go around the room and look at who had the best problem and create a solution everyone could buy into. If you buy into it, you have an emotional commitment that means that you will see it all the way through. If I direct dictate an order, you are just following orders. You are not thinking through it. When somebody’s life depends on your decisions, you ned that buy-in more than anything else. I looked at the leaders who gave me an opportunity to grow and to learn and to make mistakes. We don’t come into mortal life to lead a perfect life. We come into mortal life for the experience. If you are a leader not anticipating your people will make mistakes and you are not taking those mistakes and transforming them into powerful learning opportunities, you’re missing one of your greatest opportunities as a leader: to teach and to grow and to train your replacements. It keeps your ego in check. Hugh: Wow. That is an often overlooked area, especially in the nonprofit world. We tend to create all these great things, and then it goes south after we go on, retire, or die. Tina, this has been really good stuff today. I have a whole series of interviews with leaders that have great wisdom to share. You are right there at the top of that list, of both men and women. I have a good mix of different kinds of individuals from different walks of life. Never had somebody with this extensive leadership background from the military. I find this to be very helpful. I’d like you to tell people about where they can find Karmic Path and then for you to have a parting shot. What would you like people to remember most, and what do they find when they get to The Karmic Path? Tina, tell people where they can find The Karmic Path. Tina: You can find The Karmic Path on iTunes, iHeartRadio. You can go to the App Store and download The Karmic Path. We put out a podcast every single week. Once a month, we have a one-hour podcast. Each podcast is anywhere from 10-20 minutes. We discuss all kinds of different topics, from parenting to business to leadership to spiritual elements, things that can offer you a different point of view on how action and reactions are reflected throughout your life. We are all walking a karmic path. The more each of us can be aware of it, the more thoughtfully and the more creatively we can make those decisions that affect not just our lives, but the lives of others. So that is what The Karmic Path is. It’s a podcast, and I think that it could be of great help. We actually have teachers in classrooms listening to some of our episodes. Hugh: Really? K-a-r-m-i-c. Tina: K-a-r-m-i-c, from Karma. Karma is a Sanskrit word that means “action and reaction.” That’s really all karma is. It’s no mystery. We want to take the mystery out of it. We want it to be ordinary, common, which causes you to pause if ever so briefly to think about your action and the potential reactions that will occur. Hugh: Well, as we wind up this really inspirational and wisdom-packed podcast, what final thought would you like to leave with people? Tina: The final thought that I would like to leave with your listeners is that leadership starts from parenting. Your very first leadership example are your parents. If your parents weren’t the leaders you wanted, it doesn’t mean that you can’t be the leader that you would like to be. If you don’t have children, look back at the leaders that you thought were terrible, and look at the lessons you learned. Look at the leaders you thought were brilliant, and look at the lessons they offered. Everything is a lesson. Ignore the lessons at your peril, but when you embrace them, you take a giant leap forward on your karmic path. Thank you so much for having me. Hugh: Tina Erwin, The Karmic Path, thank you for sharing with our audience today.

Transcript of the Interview with Jackie Lapin Hugh Ballou: Welcome to Orchestrating Success. This is Hugh Ballou. This episode is about getting in front of people. If you speak or if you want to speak, that is how you build your position of influence. On stages, large or small, in front of people, this is where leaders get themselves known. Build your sphere of influence. A lot of people think they want to speak. Very few people know how to make it happen. My guest on this podcast is a new friend who is really dynamic, and she’s got ten secrets to getting booked. If you want to get out there, this is the way to do it. My guest today is Jackie Lapin. Jackie, welcome. Jackie Lapin: I am so happy to be here, Hugh, and excited to be able to impart something that I hope will help folks. Hugh: It will help them if they do something. Jackie: That’s one of the first things we’re going to talk about. Hugh: Before we get into your content here, say a little bit about yourself. How did you develop this expertise that you share with so many people? Jackie: Believe it or not, I started as one of the first women’s sports writers in America. I segued into having one of the largest sports special events and cable TV PR agencies in the country. You would know my client base. I had Toyota Motor Sports and the National Hockey League and the Los Angeles Marathon and Avon and cable networks. It goes on and on and on like that. The last thing that I did, and what everybody remembers me for, is I launched the worldwide poker phenomenon with the Worldwide Poker Tour. That might be on my epitaph. From there, I wrote two books on personal growth and started to really decide that my heart was more in serving the consciousness of the world, the transformational leaders who were really making the world a better place through helping people individually and businesses grow and helping the planet be a better place. I completely switched my agency over to serving that community, and it really was what called my heart. I ended up working with such leaders as Don Miguel Ruiz, James Twyman, the Peace Troubadour, Joe Vitale, Denise Lynne, Arielle Ford, Hay House, etc. I was doing radio/media tours where I introduced them to 3,000 personal growth radios, 400 health and wellness radio shows, and 500 podcasts. I still do those actually all the time. Excuse me. Hugh: It chokes me up, too. Those are really big names. Jackie: Yeah, thank you. But I also work with first-time authors, people all over the map. Many of the folks came to me and said, “Can you book us for speaking engagements?” I thought about it for a little while and decided that we were better served by giving people direct contacts where they could book themselves. I started to develop a process to give people the information that would enable them to book themselves in speaking engagements, radio shows, podcasts, and virtual summits. And so was born SpeakerTunity. I am the founder of SpeakerTunity. I will talk more about that later today. But one of the things that I noticed is that people really need to know a little bit more about what it is that a speaker booker is looking for. If you are trying to get on other people’s stages, you really want to be able to know what those opportunities are and what it is that is going to tune into their wavelength. That is what I set out to do: not only give them the opportunities, but tell them a little bit about what they are going to need to know in order to get booked. That is what we’re going to do today. I have been speaking myself. We were just talking about how I was on several stages in the past couple weeks. Women’s Prosperity Network and a number of others. I practice what I preach. I reach out to people to propose that I present to their communities, and that is what I am going to offer here. Hugh: Ah. You and I, that’s really great. You and I connected on LinkedIn. I was out there finding people that had a sphere of influence, looking for podcasters. You said, I don’t have a podcast, but I have this. What got your attention about me? Jackie: I’m looking for podcasters to tell my community about leading podcasters. You were a perfect match. We each had something that the other one was looking for. I believe that someone who has a message is holding back from the world if they are not delivering their message. You’re cheating the world of what you can offer. The more people that I can find like yourself so that people can deliver those messages, the more I can empower others to help make this world a better place. You were a beautiful grace and opportunity for people. Hugh: Well, I do have a following, and I’m happy to share this really good information. I can’t wait. Let’s get into the content. We’ve tempted people with it; let’s give them the hard content now. I’m going to take notes, so if you hear clicking, I’m taking notes. Jackie: These are the ten secrets successful speakers use to keep their calendar booked year-round. I am going to do them in order. We are going to do a countdown. We are going to do number ten first. Number ten is you have to actually commit time to booking. I recommend that you spend three hours every week on your booking process. If you can’t do the time, you can’t earn the dime. Hugh: Ooh, good. Jackie: Part of that is you also have to be smart with your selection. You don’t want to go for mega speaking engagements when you are in the beginning of your journey. You want to go for the low-hanging fruit, the kinds of opportunities you know you can get. You want to go for local opportunities initially or within your industry, things where you know that people are actually likely to put you on the stage. Another reason that you want to do that is because you want to start developing your signature speech and you want to test it. If you’re not really yet to the point when it’s doing what it should, you don’t want to do that on a big stage. You want to do that on smaller stages, so you can see what works and what doesn’t work; then you can work on it. The best thing- Most speakers know that you have to focus on the market where you can actually start getting opportunities. That is secret number one. Secret number two is that you don’t want to turn your nose up at speaking engagements that are considered unpaid rather than paid. Most people want to think, Oh, I want to go out and speak and get paid. There are a lot of issues with that. They are few and far between. Those are much tougher to get. You want to take advantage of the opportunities of what people would call unpaid, but you can actually look at them as speak-to-enroll, where you are speaking in front of a group and trying to enroll them in something you are doing. You want their opt-in to your list. You want to sell them something. You want to get them to come to another workshop. I call it speak-to-enroll. You could also call them fee-waived speaking engagements because you say, Okay, this is my normal fee, but I am going to waive it for you because I want to speak to your organization. You establish that you are a professional speaker and that you earn money, but you are willing to speak to them because you really want this audience. That is an important definition. What you will really find is that people who are using speaking to fill their clientele or to grow their business or to change more lives, you can actually make more money doing speak-to-enroll than you can on a paid engagement. If you do the numbers, and most professional speakers will tell you this, even people that get paid, they would actually prefer to be on a speak-to-enroll stage because the number they can make is much greater in the outcome. If you know how to sell, and there are lots of wonderful speaker-teachers, in fact, on SpeakerTunity, we have a great resource page where we provide speaker trainers and people like yourself can have colleagues that you would recommend. You can speak to sell, if you are good at it, if you are matched to the right audience, if you have a price point that is matched to that audience. The upside is unlimited. But when you talk about a paid engagement, you are looking at a set amount of money, and a lot of times, they will not let you engage with the audience after the fact so you lose all the benefit of having all of those people there and getting them to follow you. They also limit your ability to sell from the stage most of the time. It’s your one and done. There are other factors involved, one of which is getting those paid engagements is a very high barrier. You really have to be very good. You have to have had a track record. When they are evaluating who they are putting on their paid stages, they want to see who you have spoken to before, they want to know you have had good success, and they are going to expect a high level of performance out of you. If you are not yet at that stage, a couple things can happen. If you keep trying for the high-paid events and you don’t get them, it will discourage you. Frankly, you don’t want to get out when you are starting to speak and feel you are getting a lot of rejections. My goal here is for you to get a lot of acceptances early on, build your confidence, and then go on from there. If you are getting deflated each time, you are just going to walk away. Another factor is you would rather be on somebody’s stage who you can wow instead of getting on a big stage where they have lots of people and not be at the top of your game yet. That isn’t going to serve you well going forward. Hugh: This is really good stuff. Part of what I bring to people who are developing their business is my skill as a musical conductor, as you know. One of the things that musicians do generally is we rehearse. Speakers need to do the same thing. What’s coming to mind is Zig Ziglar said he had to give a speech a thousand times before it was any good. He is the best of the best. That is very telling. I find that as I do more of these, I get into rhythm, I get better, I fine-tune, and my confidence is up. I did four presentations in ten days a week ago, and I just felt like I was in a rhythm there. There is a whole piece of this rehearsal that is part of my leadership principles. The third one is rehearse for success. That is so key, Jackie. You get better, and then you move up to higher engagements. I just want to punctuate that is a key piece for me. Jackie: I agree with you. When I did my last book, which was the best spiritual book of the year at the International New Age Trade Show, it’s called Practical Conscious Creation. I did 100 interviews by phone on that, and I went out to do my first live in-person interview. I was so much better because I had done it so many times on the telephone that when I presented in person, it just flowed. Yes, rehearsal is absolutely a key factor in the performance. No question. Good point. Thank you. So, we are on to secret number three. That is having killer assets. One of the first things that happens when a speaker booker goes to book you is they will look at your website. If you have a ten-year-old website, you are going to shoot yourself in the foot. You need to have a contemporary website in the horizontal design with large photos and limited text in the current contemporary style. Of course, you can send people onto your back pages for more information. But it has to look sexy. You should also have a speaker page on your website as well with great video where they see you presenting. Maybe your speaker one-sheet will talk about that in a second. You really need to have a powerful website. That is number one. Number two, you have to have a speaker one-sheet, which is a one-page or back-to-front document that defines who you are and why you’re so fabulous and what you’re saying that is going to serve the audience. What problem are you solving for the audience? In fact, I think we will talk about that in a minute. You need to have a great speaker one-sheet. Related to that is you need contemporary photos. I know we are all a little vain. We don’t want to see all this gray hair or wrinkles on our face, but truth be told, if you walk into that room and you don’t look like your website or your speaker one-sheet, you have just told the audience that you are inauthentic. You really need to walk in authentically as to who you really are right now. This is not to say that you can’t touch up those photos a little bit, but they need to reflect who you are now. That is a really important factor. Video, we just talked about video. It’s important that you have video of you engaging and speaking with the audience, not just you talking to your community on your computer. They need to see how you present. It could be a sizzle reel, but three to five minutes of actual video of you presenting is good. It should be good quality video. It should not be something that is taken on your cell phone with bad sound and bad lighting. There are lots of ways to get that video. But you really need to look at spending the money or getting somebody to do it for you that you know. Another thing is when we are talking about this, you need to have a great opt-in lure, something that is going to get people to opt into your website. There are lots of ways to get them to do that. We will talk about that. One of the ways you can do it is the contemporary things that you’re using like getting people to text. Once they text in, you respond back with whatever it is that you’re giving them. Now you have them on your list. You can also do contests on site. You can hand out forms on-site for them to enter a contest. There are lots of different ways. You want to have something that is a great opt-in before you ever walk into your speaking engagements. Another thing is if you happen to have a book and you are promoting it, you want to make sure that you have enough copies because a lot of times, I see people who all of a sudden the host will say, “You know, we have this audience of 50 people. Do you have enough books?” The person says, “I didn’t order enough!” With print on demand these days, you don’t have to have them in hand. If you are going to do a speaking engagement and you have a pretty sure idea of what the audience is going to be, make sure that you also have enough books on hand. Don’t get caught without any of these things and then have the speaker booker say to you, “Well, you mean you don’t have those things?” Be ready. You want to engender trust by having the right assets and being well prepared before you ever get on their stages. That was secret number three. Hugh: The problem with common sense is it’s not very common. This is the checklist. I speak to a lot of people building businesses who want to be speakers, but they haven’t defined stuff yet. They don’t have this stuff. We show up, and people that book you are going to put you aside and go to the next person. This is essential information. Thank you. Let’s move on. I don’t want to interrupt you. Jackie: Number seven are testimonials. It’s all well and good if you have client testimonials. But what a speaker booker is going to look for is testimonials from other bookers. They want to see other people who you have spoken for who are raving about you. It’s great if you have a number of them, but it’s even better if you have them in their genre. If you are speaking at Unity churches and you want more Unities, make sure that you have testimonials from Unity ministers because they listen to each other. They look to see who else liked you. If you’re in the corporate world, then you want to do corporate. If you’re doing associations, you want to have association meeting planners. Any of those kinds of things. If you don’t have those yet, don’t go without them. Use some of the ones that you might happen to have from your clientele. But as soon as you can replace them with the ones from speaker bookers, that is really something that you should do. The risk there is that if somebody thinks they are the first one booking you, they may not take a chance on you. Good testimonials really make a big difference for you. Hugh: I never thought of that, Jackie. Never occurred to me. I do this all the time. Go on. I’m writing notes here fast and furious. Jackie: The next one I’m sure you’re familiar with. That is present yourself as an authority. You want to trade on your authority. I know most of us have been told all our lives don’t talk about yourself. It’s not nice to promote yourself and boast. But this isn’t the time to be humble. When you are booking yourself, you need to really present yourself as an authority, as an expert even if you may not feel like one. It’s kind of act as if. Position yourself as if you are the ultimate expert in whatever it is that you’re doing. When you’re doing that booking, you want to use really powerful words. Adjectives like powerful, acclaimed, insightful, highly regarded, a breakthrough. Those kinds of words. When I write speaker one-sheets or media kits for people, I am always injecting adjectives that elevate them, and that is what you need to do with yourself. Hugh: Absolutely. When I work with clients, I help people build their position of influence. We attract people to us because we are an expert in something. I learned a long time ago people that hire speakers don’t hire speakers—they hire experts who speak. Is that true? Jackie: Absolutely. You bet. Most of the people that I think may be listening to this are people who are trying to fill a clientele to attract more business to change more lives. You are not necessarily a keynote professional speaker. You’re somebody who is imparting information from your position of expertise to make people want to come to you because they want more of what you’re offering. You need to give them a taste. Really what speaking is all about is giving so much value in your presentation rather than holding back that they want to come to you. That doesn’t mean you give everything away because you want to make sure they do come to you, but it is the value that is going to bring them to you in the first place. I am not one of those believers who believe in webinars and presentations where they give you two little tidbits filled with a lot of fluff and then think you are going to come running after them. That is not the way to build the trust and a clientele that really is going to follow you, want what you have, buy from you. You really need to show them up front that the investment is worth it. Hugh: Sure. You are really demonstrating competency. If you demonstrate competency, you don’t have to sell yourself. People will say they want more of it. Jackie: Exactly. Yep. Absolutely right. One of the other ways that you can position yourself as an expert is if you do have a book, all you have to do when you are writing your speaker one-sheet or talking in your letter to the speaker booker is say, “I am the author of,” and that in itself makes you an expert. Whatever your book is about, if it’s clear what the book is, or you might have to add, “I am an author on the book of such and such,” or “My body of knowledge in this book.” Being an author also helps position you as an authority. Secret number five: Dare to be different. Speaker bookers get so many solicitations and half of them look the same. I can’t tell you how many times I listen to wellness people say, “I help people remove their blocks,” or “I help people get out of pain,” or whatever it is. It has got to be far more defined than that. What is the specific unique selling proposition, your specific positioning that you are bringing to the table that is different than everybody else’s? There is some ways to do that. Obviously, content is one of them. What is the content that is different? Another is how you appear. For example, when I do speaking engagements, I always dress in what you would call goddesswear. Long dresses to the floor, beaded and fun, beautiful jackets. People remember me because I work in the transformational space, in miracles. It’s my signature look. But there is also Patch Adams, the fellow who Robin Williams made the movie about, the brilliant iconoclastic doctor who works with children all across the world, but he really comes across as a medical iconoclast. He dresses in Hawaiian shirts and wacky things with all kinds of funky art on them. I saw him on an airplane at one point. He looked just like he does in his speaking engagements. That sets him apart. I have seen people dress in all kinds of unusual garb. Doctors come in with their scrubs. There are lots of different ways to make yourself distinctive on stage. Hugh: If you are the goddess, you want to show up as the goddess. Jackie is. I guess you have seen my pictures. I show up with my tails. That is my differentiator. Jackie: There you go. Absolutely. Perfect example. You can also find a unique approach to a familiar topic. When I wrote my Practical Conscious Creation book, there are tons of books on manifesting out there. Because I wrote a book about practical strategies to actually raise your personal frequency, and I didn’t say, “I am going to teach you how to manifest. I am going to teach you how to be a better manifester by doing this,” people were willing to book me like crazy. It was a time that The Secret was out. Everybody was talking about manifesting. But because I took a very different approach, everybody was interested. Another is to have a great human interest story. Some of the ones that I can think of right off the top of my head: There is a gal named Jen Bricker who was born without any legs. She had a passion. Her parents gave her up for adoption because they couldn’t provide for her. She was adopted in a wonderful family. But she had this passion for gymnastics. This remarkable woman became a significant gymnast in her state with no legs. But she had this affinity, this passion for Dominique Moceanu, the great Olympic gymnast. She was her idol. When Jen actually went looking for her birth parents, she discovered that they were the parents of Dominique Moceanu. Is that a remarkable story? It was actually her sister. They both had a passion for gymnastics. Anyway, she is a brilliant speaker. Another one that I can think of is my friend Rhonda Briton, who you might have seen on television. Hugh: I know Rhonda. Jackie: Rhonda watched her father murder her mother. That is how her story began. She basically became homeless as a teenager and lived on people’s couches and in her car and scraped to survive that. Her tremendous story of survival and thrival is an amazing one that she tells in front of the stage. Then there is Neil Donna Walsh, Conversations with God, who was homeless in his car until he started talking to God. These are all great personal human interest stories. Most of us who are doing something in the personal growth space have one of those. I myself had one. Wanting to be a sports writer as a child, people were saying, “You’re not going to be a sports writer. Girls aren’t sports writers.” I am happy to say that I was at the Detroit Free Press, on the front pages of the LA Times by 21, and the Washington Post at 22. Everybody has their story in this space of coming from a place of oppression, adversity, etc., and coming forward and being able to help others. You want to tell that story. That is also a memorable way to get a booker to want to have you on stage. Hugh: Love it. I had to learn to include stories. It was content, content, content. I find that when I include stories, I can see a difference in the audience. Then I go from the story into why did I tell that and move into my point. The right stories in the right place told with the right rhythm and interest, that is great. One of my trainers that I hired to coach me was a drama professor where I lived. We talked about where to come in, where to stand, and where to pause. There is an art to presenting. Around the story piece, don’t just tell a story. Tell the story. That is a big deal for me. I had to work on that. A lot of speakers don’t think of that. Thank you. That is great. Jackie: Certainly when I am on stage that is the first story I tell. I want people to really want to identify with me because once they know my heart, then they will want my information because they know I care about them. That is a key to a speaker’s presentation. Being able to somewhere weed your story in as you said. Absolutely. Hugh: When you talked about starting, this is another big death I see over and over, even with accomplished speakers. Your first 30 seconds, how you show up, and how you grab the audience. I hate when people have notes and they shuffle them around and mess with the projector. Thanks for having me here today. I prepared this. By then, I am going to sleep. I’ll send you one of my keynote clips, but at the very beginning, I come out and engage the audience with no words. I have them sing or tap rhythm. I do things and they respond. Then I say, “You knew exactly what to do, and I never told you. That is leadership.” People talk about that forever. “You know what he did? He had us come out and sing, and he never said a word.” That is another version of what you’re talking about. It’s not a story, but how do we reach out and make an impression on our audience? Ever since I have been speaking, that is how I engage people. That is another piece where you start with a story and I start with an interactive piece. That is so key. Where you place the story, people are going to say, “You got to hire this guy because he grabs an audience.” Your points are good, Jackie. Jackie: The best way to get started for somebody who is looking for a way in is to ask the audience a question and get them to raise their hands. If you say, “Have you experienced…” or “Would you like more…” get them engaged, and that is a great way to start and get into your speech. Hugh: Absolutely. Jackie: We are onto secret number four: It’s not about you! When you are pitching a speaker booker, it’s all about the audience, what you are doing for the audience, how they are going to change, how they are going to be motivated. How are they going to take action? What is it that you are doing that is going to shift them from where they are to where they need to be? What you need to establish when you are pitching yourself to a speaker booker is that WIIFM, What’s In It for Me? The radio station WIIfM. If you can establish what’s in it for the audience, that‘s really the key trick to getting them to say yes to you. You have to show in your materials that this is going to solve a problem that the audience is experiencing. That is critical. Secret number three. It’s relevance, relevance, relevance: how your topic is relevant to that specific audience, what they need, what they want, and what you’re offering that helps them advance, learn, or heal. If you can’t show that very quickly, you risk getting immediate rejection. It’s really important to that. I am now going to give you five questions that are going to help you tell them how relevant you are. The first question is: Is it the right demographic, age, or gender match? If you are talking to a group of seniors and your topic really has an appeal for millennials, you won’t resonate. They won’t book you. Same thing goes for ethnicity and gender differences. If your audience topic skews to women and it is a strong male audience, it won’t work. You have to make sure the booker you are pitching has the right demographic match. The next thing is: Is your story their story? If you can establish that what you have been through and your experience and your expertise matches what they’ve been through and what they’re experiencing, such as PTSD or violence and abuse or all of those kinds of things, or business failure, if you are telling a dramatic story, they have experienced it, that is a good match. The next thing: Is it the right skill level and match for the audience, what they need to know and learn at this point? If your topic is an elementary topic but your audience is more advanced, you will lose them. It’s exactly the same if your topic is too advanced for an elementary audience. They will be off in La La Land. That has to be a good consideration. The next: Do you fill a gap or match a theme that this booker is looking for? A lot of times, a booker will have a series of different topics over a course, and you can look and say, “They haven’t touched on my topic.” That is a good time to go in and say, “I noticed that you haven’t gotten to this yet. Would this be a good match?” Podcasts and speaking engagements and conferences often have a theme. If your theme is right for what they are looking for, then that is going to get you a lot closer to getting yes for a booking. Another thing is: Is it hot? Is it a topic everybody is looking to learn about? For example, Facebook Live. Many people are trying to figure out how to master Facebook Live. It’s a hot topic. If you have something that is hot and trendy and everybody wants it, that is also going to put you in really good steed. When you are looking to get yourself booked, you need to see if in fact you can really take advantage of these kinds of matching factors that are going to get you on those stages. Hugh: Never thought about that. Usually a booker discusses they want something. Delving into what do you want them to walk away having learned or experienced, what are the objectives, that is great. Good stuff, Jackie. Jackie: Thank you. Secret number two is pretty simple. Sparkling writing. If you are going to be presenting submission materials, everything has to be really powerfully written. Poorly written, badly constructed, boring, indistinguishable prose will lose the booker’s interest in under 30 seconds. You really have to have- There are seven real key factors for strong writing when you are presenting your materials. It has to have a great subject line when you are sending that initial pitch. It needs to have a great headline that points to what it is that you are going to be offering and how it solves that problem. It needs a great lead paragraph, great storytelling, which we were just talking about, if you are going to tell your story in your document. Hugh: What was that last one? Jackie: Great storytelling. How you tell your story in a few words. The next thing is great relatability, those things we were just talking about. Is their story your story? The simple one is correct grammar. Hugh: Oh my. Jackie: Yeah, that one is a tougher one. And conciseness. It needs to be really put together tight in a selling manner. It needs to be well-written, exciting, enticing, informative, validating, and captivating. It doesn’t have to be award-winning. It just needs to be good. So you really want to rewrite, spellcheck, and give it to other people to look at to see if it’s something that makes sense for them. Hugh: On the correctness piece, if you are submitting stuff in a cover letter, make sure you got the person’s name spelled correctly. Jackie: Here is a little hint. In that subject line, you also want to put the person’s name in the subject line. Hugh: Really? Jackie: Yeah. Hugh: Give us an example. Jackie: “Susan, please consider me for such and such.” “Susan, how would you like a speaker on whatever?” Hugh: This is your subject line of your email. Jackie: Yes. So they know it’s not an e-blast. Hugh: Oh. Got it. Jackie: And I actually have a training program called The Get Booked Training Program, where I teach you all the materials you need to write to get you booked: your speaker one-sheet, your radio/TV pitch letter. The correspondence and the speaker one-sheet to the speaker booker that we are talking about here. Your media kit, and how to get virtual summit ready so that you can slay those virtual summit hosts. In that process, that is one of the secrets I teach: putting the speaker booker’s name in the subject line. There is a ton of valuable information in that program. It’s called the Get Booked Training program. If anybody is interested, we can talk about that later. Hugh: I want to capture those leads before we quit. I heard you say on the sparkling writing, there were eight tips. I got seven. Jackie: Seven. Hugh: Thank you. Jackie: We got ‘em all. Secret number one is an elevated attitude that builds relationships. The first thing you should know is that bookers really do talk amongst themselves. I think you’d probably rather be the subject of great buzz than a bad rap. Make sure that you use gentle persistence. You don’t want to harangue a speaker booker to get on their stages because you’re just going to create ill will. The proper amount of contact is three. The rule of three. It’s either two emails and a phone call, or one email and two phone calls. If they have not responded back by that time, let it go, and leave the door open for future opportunities where you might have something that is more suitable for what they want. Don’t burn that bridge by getting irritated or trying to get them to give you that time. Hugh: It’s hard. I temper that. There are people that never tell you whether you got it or not and they won’t respond. Jackie: Exactly. You just have to let go and move on to somebody else at that point. One of the things is you need to be flexible, too. Let’s say you get somebody to say yes. They want you, but they’re going to put you at the last person of the conference or on a stage that you’re not thrilled about. Build that relationship. Do it. Don’t complain. Make it work. Accommodate their needs, whatever it might be. Make that first engagement a win for both of you, and then you can start working your way up the ladder and encouraging them to give you better opportunities in the future. Hugh: Jackie, I spoke for a professional association last week on Friday. I was the closing speaker of the conference. I thought that was great positioning. In that case, it worked to my benefit. Their way to go was the last gig. My interpretation, my humble interpretation, is they save the best for last. Jackie: Absolutely. Especially if you have a strong close. But some of the reasons that some people don’t want to be on last is a lot of times people have left the conference. Another factor is that if everybody is selling something, they have already had buying fatigue. That impacts some people, and they think it’s not the best place to be. But if you are a strong closer and you have something nobody else is offering and it absolutely suits the situation, then closing is good, especially if it’s not on a Sunday afternoon, if it’s somewhere during the weekdays. That’s really a good way to go. Those are the ten speaker secrets, but now you have all this information. Now you know what you’re doing when you’re going in there to try to pitch yourself. The question is: Where do you pitch yourself? What happens with most people is they don’t do this because they don’t have the time, it’s too much work, they don’t know where to look for speaking engagements, they get tied up in their daily work, and they don’t have the opportunity to go out and look. We tried to create something to make it easy, inexpensive, and time-saving for transformational leaders, anybody with a message of empowerment, of heart-based business building skills, spirituality, personal growth, anything in that whole spectrum. We set out to create SpeakerTunity as a resource that saves folks the opportunity and the time to spend the time doing what they’re good at, which is getting booked, getting in front of audiences, and building their clientele, and changing more lives. We have three different subscription products. The one that really applies here to what we have been talking about is SpeakerTunity Speaker Leads, which gives people direct contacts where they can book themselves for speaking engagements all over North America. These are a wide variety of speaking opportunities where we give you names, phone numbers, emails, and submission links. These are everything from local meetings at all kinds of organizations—women’s, networking, chambers of commerce, holistic chambers of commerce, civic organizations, health and wellness organizations, human resource organizations, job search organizations, things like the Near-Death Experience Group, or the Institute of Noetic Sciences. These are great for people that are authors. Anybody that is a coach and looking for entrepreneur organizations. We have tons of them in every issue. Then we have conferences and conventions and lifestyle events and multi-speaker events where there are lots of people on stage over the course of a day or a weekend, and the coordinator is offering people an opportunity to be on that stage. Or stage swaps, you be on my stage and I’ll be on yours. We put those in as well. Then we have associations. Then we also have centers for spiritual living and Unities. If you have a message that appeals to that group, there are four of those in every issue. If you have a book, we have presentation-friendly bookstores. We have retreats, resort centers, and a holistic center and lifestyle places that welcome speakers. We bundled all of this up. We always feature an organization in every issue. We say, “Here’s what this organization does. It could be seniors. One of my favorites is a group in the South called Women on a Mission to Earn a Commission. I love that name. Whatever the organization is, we feature it. In every issue, we try to cover stuff in every region of the US and Canada. Hugh: I want to give people links. Speakertunity.com. It’s a really smart-looking site. This is a gold mine. Go ahead, Jackie. I want to make sure we capture that. Jackie: People who actually subscribe to SpeakerTunity also get a private Facebook group where I am putting in hot current calls for speakers. Whenever I am learning about something, I am putting it in there. That’s the timely stuff. This is coming up right away. Jump on it. Here is the good part about that. All of this is only $35 a month. That’s it. What would your time cost you to go looking for this kind of stuff? Certainly a lot more than $35 a month. Hugh: If people come from this podcast, do you have any free stuff to offer them? Can you talk about a resource you wanted to share with people? Jackie: Absolutely. If they actually sign up immediately and then email me, and you have to email me as well at Jackie@speakertunity.com, I will give them a list of all the Ted Xs in North America in the first half of 2018. Hugh: As you know, we are recording this in 2017, but it might be 2018 when people are listening to this. I want to make it ongoing so people can still email you. The website is speakertunity.com. It’s Jackie@speakertunity.com. By the way, you are a lot more lovely in person than the picture on your website. When you update your picture, you look better in person. That was the whole point there. As a conductor, I work with lots of concert artists. They would have pictures 10-20-30 years old, and they’d show up and I’d say, “There is a picture of somebody impersonating you.” People show up and there is a picture that looks really sharp, and you show up as an old guy. It’s that moment where they are glad to see you, and it’s a better impression than what they expected. All of these things, Jackie, people ought to know this, but we don’t, and we don’t do it. Jackie: That’s true. Hugh, I even have a couple of other things people should know about. SpeakerTunity has two other subscriptions. One is where we will give you direct contacts for radio shows and podcasts. There are at least four business podcasts in every single issue and one health podcast, and 10 or 12 radio shows. You get 25 new contacts every month. That also is $35 a month. Then we have SpeakerTunity Summits. You know those virtual summits that always show up on your desk? Gee, I should have been a part of this, but it’s too late. I’m already booked. We tell you in advance summits that actually have open guest presenter seats so that you can get on them. Nobody is doing that. That is also $35 a month. If anybody is interested in the whole bundle, all three of them, you get a nice $20 savings a month at $85. Hugh: Is it Speakertunitysummits.com? Jackie: Yes. SpeakerTunity has them all. If you go to the main website, you can see each one of them. Hugh: Got it. SpeakerTunity, Speaker Opportunity. It’s a play on words like SynerVision. Jackie, this is priceless material. I hope people know why I wanted you here. We certainly let people send to the websites for the people I interviewed because we don’t interview anybody that doesn’t have really good stuff to offer. While our main purpose is not to sell people things, I think that’s really selling. It’s a no-brainer. I am going to go on there now. I just need to know all of these places to be and get in front of people. No matter what kind of business we have, we need to be in front of people, we need to be doing our shtick, and we need to be doing it really well. As we wrap up here at the end, any closing thoughts you want to leave in people’s minds? Jackie: Don’t hide under a bushel. Go out and shine your light. Go out and deliver the message that is in your heart. The more visibility you have, the better you’ll feel and the better those people who are receiving it and acting on it will experience life. Hugh: Thank you, Jackie. This is Orchestrating Success. This is how you do it. You want to convert your passion, which is all that gift you have, to profit that will feed you and let you do more of it. Jackie, thank you so much for sharing today.

Brandon Allen is coach, speaker, strategist and founder of New Work Revolution. Allen's mission is to bring the human element to every work environment. He has coached hundreds of small business owners, the federal government and done corporate training to assist leaders to come to new levels of understanding around how to connect and impact people around them. Brandon is the host of the New Work Revolution podcast and the creator of the Strategic Business Forum workshop series. When not transforming lives, Brandon spends time in Salt Lake City with his wife and four daughters. More about Brandon at http://www.newworkrevolution.com Interview Transcript Hugh Ballou: Greetings. Welcome to this version of Orchestrating Success. My guest today is long-time friend and a very capable individual, Brandon Allen. Brandon lives in Salt Lake City. He has worked with very high-level thought leaders who have been mutual friends. Brandon, I guess we met eight to ten years ago. We haven’t really spoken for a few years. I’m really glad to be reconnected. I am going to throw it to you to tell people a little bit about you, why you are doing this current business, and what brought you to want to do this. Brandon Allen: Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Hugh. It’s always great to talk. When I think about the genesis of my career, I spent a decade in the corporate world. I was the COO of an Inc. 500 company. After working with a large company but also smaller companies, I got a real big insight into what does it take for a small business to scale and get to the next level? How do they get out of their way so they can really grow and get to that next level? I started a consulting company at the worst time you could start a consulting company, in 2008. Right in the midst of a financial crisis, I decide that’s the time I’m going to start a business. But since then, I’ve worked with hundreds of small business owners, thought leaders, and brick and mortar businesses, helping them get to the next level, grow, feel more confident in what they’re doing, have more freedom in their lives. I do some federal government work and consulting. I’ve done it in Utah and New Mexico for the federal government. I still do a lot of corporate training and government training. People ask me what I do. I say I’m a coach, speaker, and strategist. Ultimately, I am a person of deep curiosity. I love to connect people with people and people with ideas. I’m always curious about the world around me, and I use that curiosity to help other people get more curious about what they’re doing as well. Hugh: Wow. Since you and I last talked, you launched this business. We’ve talked incrementally but not about your business. The title that I see is New Work Revolution. Talk about that. What does that mean, and why did you choose that title? Brandon: The idea behind New Work Revolution is about humanizing work, putting the human element into work. We could talk about systems. We could talk about processes. We could talk about an ideal customer. We can talk about all these different strategies and plans on paper. All those things are meaningful. All those things matter. But if we get the human piece wrong, none of it works. There is an African proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” New Work Revolution is about breaking the bonds that really tie people down. There are two facets to this. 1) I have been an employee who has worked with a less-than-desirable boss. There is nothing worse than working for someone that a piece of you dies inside every time you interact with them or see them. Everyone who has ever been an employee knows what I’m talking about. That’s tough. 2) On the flip side, there are a lot of business owners—as an example, I had a business owner who wanted to shut their business down because they couldn’t wrap their heads around the people-management part of their business. Through our work together, they realized that a lot of what was getting in their way was their own thought processes and limiting beliefs about team management. When they did it right, they experienced great growth and tremendous enjoyment within the business. I want to teach leaders how to be the best boss they can and still create accountability, connect with team members, and build strong cultures within their business so that when people work for an organization, they enjoy what they do. We spend 40 hours a week at least at work. In fact, the majority of our waking time is at work. We might as well enjoy the work that we do as well as the people that we work with. That is what New Work Revolution is about. How do we start a revolution to work differently, work better, lead better, and connect better as a group? Hugh: Enjoy your time at work. What a novel concept. Brandon: It’s crazy. So crazy. Hugh: The problem with common sense is that it’s not very common. Brandon: Yes, that is true. Hugh: So Brandon, I’ve interviewed a whole lot of leaders on this show. People have a different nuance. I learn from everybody, and I get inspired by everybody. I learn things from people that have very different approaches than I do. I don’t know that yours and mine are any different. We are unique individuals though. Let’s back up. This word “leadership.” My whole podcast is about leadership. I choose not to use that word because I feel like people don’t understand that word. Do you find that to be true? Brandon: Absolutely. Look, we use these words with no intention behind what we’re saying. Hugh: Say more. That was good. Brandon: One of the things that I do for myself personally and for leaders that I work with is I define what this means to you. Here’s the thing with leadership, Hugh. I use the example of college football. Nick Saban is the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide. By all accounts, Nick Saban is not a pleasant individual to play for, but he gets results. On the flip side, Dabo Swinney from Clemson, he’s a player’s coach, a guy that you’ll see dancing in the locker room, havin’ fun, a complete opposite in a lot of ways from what Nick Saban is. They win the national championship last year over Nick Saban’s team. My point in saying that is not because one style is better than another. There are many different ways to lead and many different paths to leadership. You have to define what that looks like for you. I have a leadership philosophy that I created for myself that helps me define how I want to lead. What does being a leader look like to me? How do I communicate that in a meaningful way to people that I do lead so they understand where I’m coming from and how I want to impact their lives for the best? Hugh: Wow. That is pretty profound. Defining your philosophy. Do you model leadership for people you work with? Brandon: Do I model it for them or from them? Hugh: Do they learn by what you do or what you say? Brandon: Both. The problem is what I say needs to be congruent with what I do. Here is why I say this. When I was a very young leader, 25 years old, I thought I knew everything about leadership. Oh my gosh, I am going to be the CEO of this company within five years. What I realized was the great business philosopher Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face.” That’s what happened to me when I got my first leadership assignment. I had a plan, I got punched in the face, and I realized through that experience that I didn’t know nearly as much about leading people that I thought I did. I transcended my own failure into success, but how I did it was I got educated and trained on where are my blind spots, what am I doing wrong. Before I changed those blind spots, I needed to set context with my team about what I’m doing. Hugh, if you are my employee, and we work together, and I start to create a thought about you that says, “Hugh is a no-good rotten piece of junk. I can’t work with him. He’s just impossible,” everything that you do starts to be seen through that lens. You could be out there feeding homeless people, right? I could look at you and say, “I told you he’s no good. He’s not working. H’s out there doing God knows what with this and that.” Now I have taken something that’s pure that you’re doing and I have ruined it through my own faulty filters. I have to go to my team and humble myself and say, “Guys, I recognize that I am not an effective leader in these areas. These are things I am going to change. I want you to hold me accountable to making that change, and I want you to recognize why I’m doing it so that you don’t misrepresent or misinterpret what I’m trying to do as something that is not for you when in fact it is something that’s for you.” I think it’s important to use our words to paint the picture, but then to go out and execute those words ruthlessly. As a leader, my only currency is my credibility. If I am a credible leader, I have a lot of currency with people. But if I’m not a credible leader, it’s really hard for me to move people when they don’t believe in what I have to say. Hugh: There is an awful lot in that. That was a whole lot of really good stuff, Brandon. I’m trying to track the questions that that prompted. The transparency piece. Early in my podcast series, somewhere in the teens, I interviewed a group of really profound leaders. One was Cal Turner, who went to his leadership team at Dollar General and said to his team, “I got this job because my dad founded the company. I have the vision to take this public. You have the skills; I don’t. I got the job because of my genes, not because of my skill. You got the skill.” Because he was transparent, they stepped up. They said, “Oh yeah.” Cal said to me, “Hugh, leadership is about defining your gaps and finding good people to fill them.” There was another part. He is a very faithful Methodist, and in his office, there are statues of the two Wesley brothers who founded the Methodist church. His dialogue, he said, “Yes, I am the boss, which spelled backwards is double SOB.” I am the son of the boss. There is a whole dynamic with families and leadership. The dynamic you hit on was people think that identifying those gaps is a weakness in leadership. You just positioned it as an essential strength in leadership. Did I hear you right? Brandon: Absolutely. I’ll add to that. Here is the thing about our flaws: Everyone else knows we have them, right? It’s hard to read the label when you are inside the bottle, but everyone can read the label except for you. We all have blind spots as leaders. We have things we know we’re weak at, and we have things we don’t know we are weak at that other people can see. What my team wants to know is am I aware of my own imperfections? We all have them. I remember I think it was Glenn Morshower. He was speaking at an event and said, “You know, ignoring your flaws or ignoring,” he talked about ignoring your sins or flaws, “is like getting in a pool and then saying you didn’t get wet. You are walking around and dripping water everywhere, and the whole time you are thinking, No one knows that I got wet. No one can see my flaws. That’s our flaws.” Our flaws are the water that is dripping off of us, everywhere we can go, that people can see. If my team is going to follow me, they will follow me more. They will be open to recognizing their own flaws when I am more transparent about what I have to learn and where I have to grow. Think about how ridiculous of a philosophy this is for leaders who say, “Don’t show weakness.” But then what they want their team to do is show weakness and invite them for training, development, where they need to grow. If I sit there and pretend I have it all put together, all I am doing is inviting my team to do the same. If everyone has got it put together, we’re screwed. Hugh: Absolutely. He said exactly the same thing. He pretended to know, they are going to say, I am going to show him. I am going to get him. It’s disingenuous. It’s not authentic. You have just portrayed as being open and transparent. Brene Brown talks about vulnerability. What I learned from the great teacher of conductors James Jordan who has written books on lots of topics of conducting, “In order to make really good music, the conductor needs to be vulnerable on the podium. Then we can invite good music-making.” That’s probably the same principle we have in corporate leadership. Brandon: Absolutely. Hugh: You said a lot of profound things there. I think part of it is that we have been taught leadership a certain way, and it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work now if it ever worked. We have to be the boss. We have to have all the answers. We have to be in control of everything. If we are able to clearly paint the vision and empower other people, which is what you just talked about and say, “Here’s my piece of it. I’m really good at this,” my position is, and Cal taught me this, skills and gaps, rather than strengths and weaknesses. I think we all don’t do some things better doesn’t mean I’m weak there. I like to say my skills are here, and my gaps are here, and that’s where I find really good people and elevate them to higher levels of functioning. Brandon: I like that. Hugh: I learn a little bit from everybody. I am learning stuff from you today that is great. I think if somebody that I am interviewing says, “No, I got that leadership stuff done,” I can’t help them, and they’re dangerous. Their mind is like a parachute. If it ain’t open, it ain’t going to work for this. What is the biggest challenge you see? Let’s talk about the business sector because it’s different than the nonprofit or church sector. In the business sector, what is the challenge? Is it the same or different for leaders in mid-cap or big companies versus entrepreneurs? Brandon: For leaders in smaller organizations, the challenge they have is time and resources. They know they need to train; they know they need to have intentional processes. They know they need those things, but they don’t always have the resources. Or they are not concentrating on putting those resources toward those areas. You have a lot of people who work in the organization who aren’t qualified or trained or anything else. Let’s take someone who is a dentist. You have a dental office, you have people who are in there. Pretty soon someone rises to the level of office manager. The reason why they are the office manager is because they have proven themselves to be capable, responsible, and effective in their role before that. Now we have put them in a leadership responsibility, but what got them here won’t get them to the next level. They need a whole different set of skills. A lot of business owners are ill-prepared to train and develop a leader underneath them because they don’t know what that looks like for themselves. In a larger organization, you see more of that. They start to invest in training and get people support at certain levels. There is still a gap there of a lack of investment in people and growth across the board. This is happening in larger companies as much as it is in smaller companies. When I do corporate training and consulting in a corporation, there are a lot of the same frustrations and pain points that exist in a smaller organization. It looks a little bit different. Hugh: Is that like the Peter principle of people getting promoted to a level of ineffectiveness? Brandon: Absolutely. Hugh: It’s different skillsets as you go up the ladder. However, if you go up the ladder, you know what‘s below that and how the organization works. Where I see death in corporate America is someone comes in a horizontal position for management, but it’s really leadership. With a Harvard MBA, they come in at a leadership level and they have no clue what goes on below them. Brandon: Absolutely. Think about this. One of my favorite leadership books is a book called Derailed by I think it’s Tim Erwin [it’s by James Siegel]. It’s five classic examples of disastrous leadership. One of them ran for president here recently: Carly Fiorina was featured in this book. That is the kind of book you want to be featured in. They talk about Bob Nardelli. Bob Nardelli was the CEO of Home Depot. He took over for Arthur Blank. He came in at a CEO level and did not understand what made Home Depot successful. They had a family environment. It was very down home. What he did was build an elevator that went straight from a private parking garage right to his office so he didn’t have to interact or engage with any employees. He created all these standardized processes and systems that were very cold and antiseptic because he wanted to be commanding and in control as the CEO. Coincidentally, he failed in that leadership assignment, not because he is not a smart guy or not capable, but because he didn’t understand the culture he was coming into and how it operated. He tried to completely change the culture, and the culture won. The culture won out. He lost, and he was fired. It was a colossal failure. Hugh: That’s a huge story. The story you just told of Home Depot is they hired somebody without regard to the culture. They were not a fit for the culture. That, to me, is one of the biggest deficits in hiring. I work with companies on hiring; there is competency, of course, and role and responsibility. The third component is the culture fit. What you just said is huge. It made me think of good leadership. Southwest Airlines, they say they are in the hospitality business even though they are an airline, so they hire for attitude. They hire for the culture. I’m sure they hire pilots just for attitude; that’s probably the number one factor. Everyone you talk to in the organization understands that paradigm. Brandon: Absolutely. I think that’s so important. Hugh: Yeah. Give me a story, for instance, of the impact that you’ve had with a client. You don’t have to use names or initials or locations unless you want to. What kind of results have you seen? I always like the consultant that says, “I’m a turnaround specialist. I turn companies around. I went into a company that was angry and depressed, and when I left, I turned them around. They were depressed and angry.” I haven’t told that in a long time. I am known for telling the same jokes over and over, but that one, there are people like that though. I know you, and I know you have valuable work. You told me I could ask you anything. Unless you would rather not, is there an example of here is where they were, here is how you Brandonized them, you went in and helped them gain the confidence and skills and systems to elevate to wherever they wanted to do. I prefer to say go to the top than go to the next level. You can do it sequentially. Give us a case study. What impact have you seen with your work with a company? Brandon: I will tell you one of my favorite examples. A dental client that I worked with in the Midwest got on the phone with me, and this was the first call. He said, “Brandon, I hate dentistry. I hate my partner. I hate my team. Can you help me?” And I said, “Okay. Let’s take a step back here. What is it about these things you don’t like?” We identified some core things. He said he was dissatisfied with his partnership. My next question for this person is: What conversations or communications have you had with this person about this issue up to this point? It got really quiet on the phone because he said, “You know what? I don’t know if I have ever talked to them about this.” Okay. That is step one. Step two: What kind of a culture do you want? What does the organization look like? What would the ideal organization for you look like, that celebrated the best of what you do, how you do it, and serve your patients at a high level? What does that look like? He had no idea. How do we decide who is a good fit for your organization and who isn’t? Doesn’t know. We started working on those aspects. How do we communicate and connect? Here’s the funny thing about the partner. Totally interested in doing everything he wanted him to do. He was just waiting for someone to ask him and talk to him about it. That was the easy fix. The culture, we identified it and put it together. We identified there were probably two to three team members that were not a cultural fit. Through starting to communicate about what kind of culture we wanted, those people self-selected themselves out of the organization. We brought in new people. Now we have a team fine-tuned and humming along. Their growth through this process, we didn’t come up with any fancy marketing strategies, we didn’t introduce some strategy that no one knows about that is a secret. We were more intentional about our communication. The culture that we wanted and identified where we want to take things. Through that process, they grew 30% in that year. Loved his team. Loved his partnership. Loved his business. It was a huge success. It starts with, as you said, I change leaders so that they can change cultures in their organization. If we change the leadership, we can change a lot of things about the culture and what shows up around that. But it starts at the top. When I was failing as a leader, my boss asked me one time, “Brandon, why are you guys doing so poorly?” I looked at him and did the most leadership thing I could do and said, “My team sucks. If I just had better players, I would win.” And he did a very leadership thing and said, “We’re probably not going to fire your entire team. What else can we do?” That’s where I thought about the skills I’m missing, the feedback I need. I went to one of my team members and sat down with them. They’d been at the company longer than I’d been alive. I said, “Hey, I want some candid feedback. What am I doing wrong?” They said, “Do you really want to know?” I immediately regretted asking as soon as they said that. Do you really want to know? I said, “You know what? I’m committed now. Get it out.” They said, “We don’t like you.” Hugh: Whoa. Brandon: Really hard to hear. I waited until I got to the car before I started crying, mind you. As I went home and thought about that, I thought, What about that feedback is true? How could that be true for me? I can take that feedback and say, “You’re just a bitter old lady,” or I could look at it and say, “What about that is really true? What is it about what I do and lead that needs to change?” I started investing in my own leadership journey and development in a way that I hadn’t before. I stopped assuming that I knew every darn thing about leadership as a young person. Through that transformation process, all I changed was myself. We went from being a mediocre office to one of the top-rated offices in my area. Then I was offered a bigger office as a result of that. I didn’t change anything else but how I showed up in the office and the interactions. That is what I did for the dental client that I just told you about. I did that for myself. That kind of process works. Hugh: You know what? You and I resonate on a lot of stuff. My whole perspective is the orchestra or the choir is a reflection of the leader. What they see is what you get. We want to blame them for poor performance when they are trying to follow us. The old saying is: If the orchestra respects a conductor, they play as the conductor intends. If they don’t respect the conductor, they play exactly as they direct. We are flawed as individuals. That is a very interesting story because we don’t change other people—we change ourselves and people change as a reflection of that. That was exactly what you said. Did I hear it right? Brandon: Yeah, that’s exactly right. Hugh: Leaders want to change everybody else. What you did was change yourself. That was tough feedback. We don’t like you. Brandon: It was devastating. It was devastating to hear it. I was at such a low point because here’s the thing. I had just gotten married. I moved my wife to a city neither of us had ever lived in before. I thought that I was going to get fired, and my wife is going to find out what a loser I am. I am going to be stuck in this city I had never lived in that I really wasn’t sure I wanted to live in. What do I even do? First time I get a leadership assignment, I run it right into the ground and blow it up. It was tough. But that was the exact feedback I needed to hear. I had to subordinate my ego so that I could internalize that and say, “You know what? How do we change this? How do I go from basically killing people’s morale to inspiring and empowering them?” That started that journey. Hugh: That is why you’re doing what you’re doing. Some people would call those failures, but I call them learning opportunities. Brandon: You hope they are. If we have the right mentality about it. Hugh: Right. If we have an open mind to it. Brandon, this is good stuff. It reminds me of the guy who goes to one of his colleagues and says, “What do you think?” He says, “You’re ugly.” He says, “Whoa, I need a second opinion.” “Okay, you’re stupid, too.” Good thing you didn’t ask for a second opinion. Brandon: I had to stop here. Oh my God, that was enough. I’d heard enough. We’re good. Hugh: That’s pretty profound that you were able to take that input and turn it around. I’ll bet when you showed up differently, that person became part of your fan club, part of your support system in a profound way because they felt heard. Brandon: She said that when I left, she would retire. That’s how we ended it. That person who said they hated me said, “When you leave, I’m retiring. I don’t want to work for another boss.” Hugh: You took lemons and made lemonade out of it. You saw that as an opportunity to move past that barrier. Wow. I knew you had a lot of smarts, Brandon, but you are giving me a lot of good stuff today. Brandon: Let me tell you this. I don’t know that all of that transformation came from a good place always. I was very committed to achievement and looking my best. Any feedback was information that I could take to perform at an elite level. I placed a lot of value on performing at an elite level. It didn’t always come from a healthy or good place. That’s why I did it. I’d love to tell you that I just really had this great heart that really wanted to do the right thing. But really what it came down to was my own selfish reasons, which I had to tackle later in my career. Hugh: That’s proof of transparency and self-awareness. You talk about the blind spots. I was speaking after one of your colleagues in Salt Lake City one day. He was out in the crowd and said, “How many people know your blind spots?” There were about three or four hands that go up. He said, “No, you don’t. They are called blind spots!” That was Brett. I thought that was brilliant. People are totally unaware of some of those things and unaware that they are not aware. What challenges do we have for lack of self-awareness with leaders? Is that something you have dialogue on with people? Brandon: Absolutely. You have all sorts of people that get into where they shut themselves off is self-awareness. You have that high achiever who gets their ego wrapped up in their results. I used to be that kind of a person. I am still this kind of a person on some level. This is ongoing work. But because of that, we shut ourselves off to the things around us, and we get so focused on winning. We think because we are winning that we are doing everything the right way or we don’t have anything to learn. Who is going to teach me something? Look how great I’m doing. You have that achiever. Then you have the person on the other end of the spectrum who is really beat down and then adopts the fixed mindset that says, “I don’t want to look bad. I only play in my lane. I only try things I know I’m already good at. I play it safe. I play not to lose, I don’t play to win, but because I have such a scarcity mentality, I’m just going to do the bare minimum here. I don’t want to stick my neck out because I don’t want to see what’s out there.” That person is also shut out of growth and development but for completely different reasons. It’s about identifying how we get into that spot of recognizing, “Hey, there are always opportunities to learn. What is the next lesson for me? How do I tap into that self-awareness for myself? How do I pull outside information to help me uncover blind spots?” That will come from someone else. Recognizing that. Or maybe we have an epiphany where we have a failure that maybe enlightens us to our blind spots. That is such a big part of really winning the inner game of leadership by understanding that self-awareness piece. Hugh: It is huge. I can’t work with anybody who is not willing to talk about that and willing to open up that dialogue and say, “Okay, I don’t know what I don’t know.” I find that the better they are, the more they want to learn. When Jim Rohn used to do speeches he said, “The people driving the expensive cars are right here in the front row. The people driving the Chevrolets and beat-up cars are in the back row. Or they are not here. The people who are high performers want to be better. They are in the front row.” He was a profound influencer. What are the reasons people give you for not wanting to grow their skillset? You work with people who say they want this type of result. Like you, you didn’t know where you had gaps. To me, there are reasons, and there are excuses. What are some of the common fallacies people have about leadership and therefore their own lack of ability to grow? What are some of the lies we tell ourselves or the fallacies that we have? Does that make sense? Brandon: It makes perfect sense. 1) I didn’t learn this in school. 2) I am not predisposed to be this type of a person. Therefore, I can’t be a leader. I need someone else to do it for me. 3) I’m just someone who likes to put my head down and work. I just expect other people to do that around me. I don’t need to build these skills or this leadership. 4) I don’t have time. 5) I can’t afford it. There are tons of reasons and excuses that people give for why they don’t learn more about leadership or invest in it. One of my favorites: I can’t invest in those people because if I do, what if they quit? Then I have just wasted all this time and effort in investing in them, and then they leave. I always remind them of a meme I saw between a CEO and a CFO. The CEO says, “We need to invest more into our people.” The CFO says, “What if we invest more and they leave?” The CEO says, “What if we don’t, and they stay?” It’s getting leaders out of that mentality of: Look, if I invest in these people, then they’ll leave. It’s almost like an abusive relationship. I don’t want this person to know that they can do better, so I am going to make sure that I manage their expectations of themselves to let them know that no one is going to love you like I love you. You will never be good enough for someone else; you’re only good for what we do and what I provide for you. It’s a weird type of thing that leaders sometimes do to keep people from branching out and breaking free of the organization to do other things. It’s very bizarre. Hugh: Wow. Wow. That is bordering on dysfunctional, isn’t it? Brandon: It is. But leaders do this all the time. Hugh: Wow. That’s pretty amazing. Brandon, tell us your website; it’s your company name. It’s newworkrevolution.com? Brandon: New Work Revolution because we are starting a revolution for leadership in organizations. My intention is to continue a revolution of powerful, great leadership in any organization that we touch. Hugh: And you have four daughters. Brandon: Yeah. Hugh: You are a proud father. I have seen pictures of you on social media with your daughters. You appear to be a loving father. Brandon: I try. Hugh: Your podcast is on iTunes. New Work Revolution. Same name. Brandon: Yep. Hugh: I certainly want people to find you. What do they find when they go to newworkrevolution.com? Brandon: A couple things that you’ll notice: there is an assessment you can take if you are a leader, and you want to go through an assessment and you can see how you’re doing. It gets them access to—I know some people don’t like this and don’t do it—but we do a call around that and talk about the assessment. It’s a free call just to assess where someone is at and how they’re doing. We take them through that process. There is an Events tab. You can check out what events we have coming up. We do very intimate workshops here in Salt Lake City, Utah around different areas of leadership. We are doing CEO Business Habits in November. You’ll find information about what we do, how we do it, that kind of stuff. Hugh: I want to encourage people to go visit. We’re coming up to the final part of this interview. Is there a topic I haven’t asked you about that you want to introduce here and say something about? Brandon: I think we covered some really great things as it pertains to leaders. What great leadership looks like. Self-awareness. Those kinds of things. I really feel like we have covered a lot of the good things that I think is pertinent to great leadership. Hugh: You had extremely good answers to my questions, which were not the hardest ones I can think of, but they were the hardest ones I could think of today. I’d like you to ponder on a closing thought, tip, or recommendation for people. Brandon, leadership is fundamentally based on relationships. Communication is also based on relationships. People don’t engage us with money unless they know the value they’re getting, and we have created that trusted relationship. I want to throw that in the arena if you want to comment. After you comment, what is a parting thought you’d like to leave with people? Brandon: Give me your question around trust again just to make sure I understood it. Hugh: Leadership is fundamentally around a relationship, in my world. Respond to that. What’s a closing thought you’d like to leave with people? Brandon: I think the people element is so huge. If we have good people in our world to really help us and support us, we’ve got a lot of great powerful things. I think about times where I have struggled, where I have needed help. Systems and processes didn’t jump in and provide the support I was looking for; it was people who did that. If you want to scale a business or grow an organization, the best way you can do that is have smart, capable people that you invest in that will help you further that. To piggyback off that, you asked for a final thought. My favorite leadership quote is by Lao Tze, who is credited with writing the Dao Dejing: “A leader is best when people barely knew he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, ‘We did it ourselves.’” We can’t get there without intention, without a philosophy on how we want to lead, on communicating, subordinating our ego, and then stepping back and letting smart, capable people do the work that we hired them to do and that we know they are capable of doing. Hugh: Awesome. I look really good because I hang around smart people like you, Brandon. You’re a gift to your clients and a lot of people I have seen you interact with. Your reputation with people I know is certainly very high. Thank you for sharing the wisdom on this podcast today. Brandon: Thank you for having me, Hugh. It was an absolute pleasure.

Feed Your Spirit, Feed Your Body Music did not reveal all of its secrets to just one person. - Ralph Vaughan Williams   Learning from the Best Change the word "music" to leadership...to nutrition...to anything you choose. It's still true. I have learned about nutrition from many people. Many people spend their time learning about nutrition and health. On Saturday mornings, I listen to The People's Pharmacy on my local NPR radio station. I learn a massive amount of stuff every week. Here's the link to their site: http://www.peoplespharmacy.com You can get podcasts of their programs for free. Why wouldn't you want to listen to a program where experts share the latest knowledge about nutrition and health? Leaders are healthy and eat with care because they know that their diet will impact their ability to perform sooner or later. Dr. Kulreet Chaudhary, M.D. has had a massive influence on the thinking and dietary discipline for me and for my wife. Here's her profile on her site at http://drkulreetchaudhary.com - Integrative neurologist Dr. Kulreet Chaudhary discovered a beautiful side effect to the eating and lifestyle tools she gave her brain patients–spontaneously shedding excess pounds. Excess weight is a result of the body being in a toxic, inflammatory state. If your body is not prepared or ‘primed’ for weight loss, you will fight an uphill biochemical battle. Our bodies tell us what we need for nutrition, if we know how to listen to the messages. An article in Psychology Today discusses how food affects our brain. Almost everything you choose to consume will directly or indirectly affect your brain. Obviously, some things we consume affect us more than others. Read the article HERE. If we know that a healthy diet helps us function at a higher level, then why do we eat things that compromise our functioning? Transformational Leadership is moving our functioning to the highest level. Why don't we do it?   Comments, please...

Effective Leadership and Physical Fitness Resonate Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live. - Jim Rohn   We eat to care for our body nutritionally. Bread is feeding our body. Exercise is like bread in that it sustains health. Care for your body - exercise. Research has proven how sitting most of the day is detrimental to the body. We must move in order to remain healthy. Effective leaders are fit. That's it. We must be fit in order to be at our best. When I blogged about running and leadership, I was influenced by my own writing. I was now accountable to my readers for what I had committed to do - to be fit and to run daily. I then began sharing my running times and distances on social media. Since I have over 275,000 people who follow me on social media, I am motivated by the accountability of what I have committed to do. Recently, I discovered this infographic about how dangerous sitting is to our health: How much more effective can we all be if we just commit to exercise?

“Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them.” - W. Clement Stone Hang with the Best! Surround yourself with people who will inspire and equip you to do more than you can accomplish alone. The buzzword in some cultures is "team." Team implies a connection as a group - like "choir" or "orchestra." The group is not just a number of people, it's a number of people with something in common. There are formal teams and informal teams - each has a place in your life. Be aware of the formal and informal power structure in organizations so you are not blindsided. Build and maintain healthy relationships internally and externally. Both kinds of relationships will impact your leadership. Share your goals. Share your challenges. Share your victories. Share your time. Invest in relationships, for they are the basis for effective leadership. Healthy relationships feed us, empower us, create synergy, and are the basis of transformational leadership. Relationships build high performance teams. (See my book Building High Performance Teams.) Thoughts about leadership and relationships: Listen: Ask good questions and listen carefully to the answers. Gather appropriate data and then make your best decision based on the data. Focus: Be clear on your vision and make the final decision based on your vision, and not based on the relationship. Establish a culture of collaborative thinking and consensus building. You influence others based on your personal influence. At times, your decision will be contrary to other opinions. This is damaging to the relationship. You are the leader who makes the right decision. That will earn you respect in relationships. Observe: Do not think that silence is acceptance. Only 7% of a message is communicated through words. Look for other messages in body language, tone, facial expressions, and eye movements. Ask for clarification for what you observe in the behavior of others. Affirm individual opinions. Consider the facts. Be true to your vision. Do not let apprehension become opposition. Engage: Involve others in decision-making as appropriate. Some decisions are yours alone. Many decisions that leaders make could be shared. When you invite others to brainstorm options and prioritize solutions, then there is a broad base of support for the decision. You are still in charge. Your team is engaged. Care: Show others that you care about them personally, as well as professionally. Do not confuse caring about the person with making a decision that is best for your vision. You might agree. You might not agree. The relationship remains strong. Earn the right to influence others because you have invested in relationship.  

Leaders care for the whole person "Body, mind, spirit, voice - it takes the whole person to sing and rejoice." - Helen Kemp   We are complex. We are spiritual beings in a physical body. We are multi-dimensional. Begin today to recognize the wholeness of human being, instead of human doing.   Here's my list of what's important in my day: Prioritize and schedule action items Eat a healthy diet Exercise Rest Study Reflect and evaluate Play Think Journal Set apart time for what's important. Put these activities on the calendar. Create a plan and work the plan. Here's my plan for today: Talk less and listen more Observe what's happening Respond to what's happening, instead of reacting Be quiet emotionally, physically, and spiritually Be aware of my influence on others Be aware of God's presence in my being Celebrate God's blessing of my life Pray without ceasing Wholeness is a lot more than making lists. Making lists is awareness. Making lists opens up the  journey to let things happen. Transformational Leadership is wholeness in leadership. It's less about technique. It's less about ourselves. It's less about making things happen and more about letting things happen. The musical conductor allows the orchestra and choir make music by getting out of the way. Wholeness begins with awareness.

The Leader's Journey is a Spiritual Journey Philippians 4:8  Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Henri Nouwen has influenced my thinking.   Transformational Leadership is about self transformation as well as self development.   What you put in your mind... What feeds your thoughts... What music (etc.) you listen to... Forms who you are. We eat daily to sustain our bodies... What other daily routines are important?   I trained for a half-marathon. I needed a daily routine. It was important to train my body every day. I committed to a minimum daily requirement so I could meet my goals. If I didn't feel like it, I did it anyway. The discipline of the daily routine is essential to success. There is value in a daily spiritual discipline, as well. Transformational Leadership begins with self transformation. I read short articles, chapters, blog posts, and email messages from thought leaders whom I respect. It helps me stay focused on my personal discipline and personal growth. Here are some of my daily readings: Richard Rohr: https://cac.org Seth Godin: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ Henri Nouwen: Bread for the Journey John Heider: The Tao of Leadership Roberta Gilbert: Extraordinary Relationships (and several others) The Daily Lectionary (different from the Common Lectionary for Sundays and Holy days) Random selection from my other resource list This seems like I'm spending a lot of time on unproductive activity every day, however, I find the time spent provides me with focus and inspiration for my day. The result is that I am much more productive. I still run weekly and spend time reading and writing. Writing this blog and making it in a podcast helps me clarify my thoughts and develop new programs. This week's blog series is called Bread for the Journey, inspired by Henri Nouwen's book by the same name. This book, one of many he wrote, is short articles for each day in the calendar year. I partner the reading with The Tao of Leadership, by John Heider. Both journals are a spiritual journey from a Christian perspective. As the Philippians selection tells us, we must feed our spiritual selves with spiritual thoughts. What we think - we are. This blog series includes the following posts on Bread for the Journey: Spiritual Nutritional Physical Relational Wholeness What is your spiritual journey? Enjoy!

“Perhaps we shall learn, as we pass through this age, that the 'other self" is more powerful than the physical self we see when we look into a mirror.” ― Napoleon Hill   Bread for the Journey of Personal Growth The next series of sessions is about balance for leaders in the area of personal growth. Today, I'm launching a series of episodes on personal growth and personal development. Once might call this "capacity building." When leaders stop working self, skills get stale and leadership becomes less effective. I will share my own routines and personal disciplines in as transparent a manner as I can hoping that sharing my journey, along with the successes and struggles will help others in their own journey. I work on self as a personal passion by reading, listening to other podcasts, attending seminars and developing collaborative programs and events with others with complimenting and contrasting skills and different experiences. I also grow with each client engagement. I find that there's an opportunity to learn from many people, if I only pay attention. The struggle that many (me included) have is in judging the value of what others are doing as a self-proclaimed "expert." Taking off the "expert" or "teacher" or "mentor" hat and putting on the "student" hat make a huge difference for me. There are many areas needing development, and I can only focus on a few, therefore it's important to let go of the many to fully embrace the learning of the few. Prioritization is critical. One of the many books worth reviewing over and over, is the classic by Napoleon Hill, "Think and Grow Rich." It's valuable with the wisdom of great leadership. It's valuable for the stories. It's valuable because of the information that's available if the reader will dig for the secrets not reveled to the causal reader. This category is my fourth leadership principle, "Balance." Or in musical terms, "Value the Rests." The journey starts with the next episode and continues for each day a week. Enjoy the journey inspired by the book, "Bread for the Journey," by Henri Howen.   * Nouwen, Henri J. M. (2009-03-17). Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith (p. 44). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.  

Here's the Transcript of the Interview Hugh Ballou: Hey, it’s Hugh Ballou. Welcome to Orchestrating Success. I have a new friend, and man, we’ve connected on lots of different levels. I want to introduce my new friend, Dave Anderson. Dave, welcome to my podcast. Dave Anderson: Hugh, thank you for having me. I definitely appreciate it. Thank you so much for taking the time. Hugh: Oh yeah, you have been fighting traffic in Philly. I’m not far away. I am down in the middle part of Virginia, just moved from southwest up a little bit. Dave, I’m quite impressed with some of the things you have done in your life. Give my listeners a little glimpse into what is your secret sauce, your superpower, your special wisdom that you bring to leaders in your coaching and your work. Tell us where you got to where you are, a little bit about your background, and what it is that you do to help people be successful. Dave: I started my career at the age of nine, making me one of the youngest people ever to have a radio contract. I retired from the radio industry after working with Les Brown, Rickey Smiley, George Wallace, and a bunch of folks. I realized that there was only so much that I could do. It was time for me to get to that next level. That is when I decided to retire because through the course of my career, I found that people kept coming to me for advice. Salespeople would come and have me go close their sales calls for them. I’m like, I’m not getting a percentage of your commission. There is something wrong with this. I realized that I was making companies a whole lot of money, like millions upon millions of dollars, but I wasn’t getting 10% of this. I knew there was a better way. I decided to strike out on my own. I have written several bestselling books. My most successful book is called Pitch, Close, Upsell, Repeat. It breaks down my entire sales process. I would say my superpower is getting people out of their own way and into success using a combination of tough love and actionable information. That is what I do. I believe that the best way to make this country great is to focus on entrepreneurship, get back to growth, getting back to creating our own economies and building things that allow us to thrive, to spend time with our kids, to be with our families again as opposed to saying, “Oh, I hate my boss. My boss is a little 20-year-old snot who doesn’t know anything about anything. I know I could run this company, but I won’t ever have the opportunity.” I am pulling people out of their cubicle matrix into the reality of their greatness. That is what I do. Hugh: Whoa. That is a power-packed bunch of words. You let a few things slip in there. Your book, give us that title again so I can capture it on the notes. Dave: It’s called Pitch, Close, Upsell, Repeat. It’s my four-step process to sales success. If you want to dominate anything when it comes to your business, you need a great sales process. I think if you focus on those four things, you can do anything. When I write books, I write books to make sure that people can actually digest them. You can get it anywhere major books are sold. Any bookstore, Amazon, all that good stuff. It’s still on the bestseller list. It’s a great book. I am very proud of it because it makes the idea of sales not this scary thing, and it allows anyone, even shy people, to find techniques that are going to work for them in order to increase their revenue. Hugh: I love Garrison Keeler’s definition of shy people. He says shy people are people who are radically polite. Dave: I love that. Hugh: The book is Pitch, Close, Upsell, Repeat. Is it David Anderson or Dave Anderson? Dave: It says David. I decided to go by Dave a little bit later on after I wrote the book because there were a bunch of David Andersons as well as Dave Andersons, but still. There is only one Business Bully, and that’s me. It works for me. I’m not really caught up on names. I am caught up on the experience people have when they reach me. Hugh: Great. You’re an inspiration. It’s interesting. You and I are in different generations. I am an old boomer. What generation are you in? Dave: I am at the end of Gen X. I am a Gen Xer. Hugh: A Gen Xer? Dave: Yes, sir. Hugh: It’s amazing that we have so much in common as far as our vision of leadership and empowerment. You and I have had a few conversations, but I am smarter than I look. I figured that you got some real superpowers. That is why I invited you on this podcast today. I don’t know about you, but I got a lot of people who want to be on my show. Just yesterday I turned down 27 invitations of people who want to be on. You have cut through the noise. The Business Bully? Is that what you said? Dave: Yes, indeed. Hugh: That is the name of your podcast. Dave: Yes, it is. Hugh: What is that about? Dave: What it’s about is two things. I am a big believer in having a distinct message or what people like to call a unique selling proposition. I also believe that we are very polite and very politically correct, and I don’t believe in those things. I believe that people get really emotionally attached to their businesses, and they treat their businesses like their babies. I gave a talk in Baltimore a couple years back, and this one woman said, “My business is my baby.” I said, “Ma’am, do you have children?” She said, “Yes, I do.” I said, “Imagine that I’m a genie, and I can take your business and turn it into a child who has the same familial resemblance as the rest of your children.” She said, “Okay.” I said, “Now, I am going to ask you to choose which one of these children has to die: your daughter, your son, or your business? One of them has to go.” She said, “Shoot the business all day.” I said, “That’s why your business is not your baby. Get your feelings out of it, and let’s talk about what’s really ugly in your business so we can fix it. How can I heal you as a doctor if you don’t let me examine you or diagnose the problem, let alone get to the point where I can treat it? We have to get over this emotional attachment to a thing that can be built and destroyed like that.” I think that that is what it is. Someone on Facebook famously said, “I don’t like Dave Anderson because Dave Anderson is a business bully.” I went to the trademark office, and here we are. Hugh: Here you are. That is like turning it around, man. Dave: Absolutely. Hugh: That is fascinating. I want to alert our viewers to the fact that you are getting over being bashful. Dave: It’s a process. I’m struggling. Hugh: That’s another thing we have in common. You dropped another phrase in there, being politically correct. Oh my word, is that toxic or what, being politically correct? Speak more about that. Dave: It’s very toxic because you eliminate the ability to be honest. The reason that I cut through above most people is that you know where you stand with me. I told my wife, “Honey, if I unfortunately die before you, two things will happen. 1) You will have a great insurance check. 2) I am going to need you to put at the base of my urn—because I want to be cremated, I don’t want to waste money on a casket—‘Here are the remains of Dave Anderson. You always knew where you stood with him.’” There is no guessing. I am very black and white. I am very this or that. I am very yes or no. My favorite book says, “Let your yes mean yes and your no mean no.” There is no mistaking how I feel about something. But we don’t do that. We like to dance around and then go talk behind somebody’s back about how horrible their business is. No, I am going to tell you because that is going to free you. You might not like it. I don’t like tetnus shots. I don’t like rectal exams for prostates. I am sure you can relate to that. I just had my first; it wasn’t a pleasant experience, Hugh. You could have given somebody some insight, but I would rather know that I have a really bad PSA count. I would rather know that I have prostate cancer. I would rather not have the flu than walk around feeling good and living a beautiful lie. I think that’s what’s happening. We all are a bunch of beautiful liars instead of telling people the ugly truth in love. Hugh: I love it. You heard it right here on the Orchestrating Success podcast. Right here. We resonate on that as well. Your podcast is on iTunes and many other platforms. Where can people find more about you? Where is your website? Dave: My website is businessbullyshow.com. Just like it sounds. I have a T-shirt that says it. That is where you can find my podcast. That is where you can talk about advertising and see where my next events are, things of that nature. I also do discovery calls, and people can sign up for those by going to bit.ly/bullycall. I am all about being as transparent as possible. If you are on YouTube there is 2.4 million viewers who watch what I do. If you are on iTunes or Spotify or iHeartRadio, you can find me. I am just about being there. One thing I have realized, and I am sure way before the Internet happens because I was probably the first generation who had access to the Internet, you had to get out here and shake hands and kiss babies and campaign for business. A big part of it is that the tool has changed. That is what we need to do. Just get out here and be as present as we possibly can to help as many people as we possibly can. Hugh: You are passionate. It’s really hard to come back to what you said earlier, to be politically correct and honest. Be direct, be passionate. This podcast is called Orchestrating Success: Converting Your Passion to Profit. There is some substance underneath your passion. You got a direction. You have products. You’ve got value that you give people. I think it’s really important to move past the polite talk and to challenge people. You know what? You and I have talked about this before, but you’ve carefully screened people before you are willing to give them your time. Just because people give you money does not mean you have to engage with them. You are very careful in screening people and making sure it’s a good fit, which is very refreshing. You’re online and see so many people out there going, “Hire me, hire me, hire me, I’ll change your life.” Well, I’m sorry. That doesn’t work. We have to find people who are going to excel, who are really going to take value from what we have to offer. We are going to die someday. What are they going to say about us? What are we going to put on our tombstones or our little urn there? I want something profound. As we write, when I start working with people, I got this from my colleague Ed Bogle, he says, “What will they say at your funeral? What is your epitaph?” Dave, why do people need you? Dave: I think people need me because they are spending too much time listening to people who love them to death. Your mom is not going to tell you the truth because you come from her, and if she tells you that you fail, she is basically admitting to her failure. Your daddy just wants you to be happy and get out of his face so he can watch football. Your siblings don’t care one way or the other; they have their own problems and their own families. Your friends don’t mind you being well, but they don’t want you to do better than they are. So you have all these people around you who love you to death and don’t want to see you succeed, or they want you to succeed but they don’t know anyone in their family who has done that. My parents both were entrepreneurs to a certain extent. My father had a corner store with his brothers. My mom had a hair salon in Philadelphia. But my father was in law enforcement by trade, and my mother was a teacher by trade. I am one of the first full-time entrepreneurs of my generation in my family. I am the weirdo; I am the oddball. But if you go back three generations, my great-great-grandfather migrated here from India, and he opened himself up a barber shop. You have all of these different experiences, but people need me because I’m not going to lie to them. I don’t need your money. I don’t care about you emotionally. I’m married to a gorgeous woman. I have beautiful children. My mother loves me, and my father sits in an urn at my brother’s house. I’m good. I don’t need any more friends. I have the greatest friends anybody could ever imagine. So why am I doing this? Because I actually care. Sometimes, love does not show up with saying, “You know what? Here is a participation trophy just because you decided to suit up.” That’s not how this works. I am here to create champions. There is a champion inside of you that needs to be developed. I am not going to give you a trophy because you said, “Hey, I have a business. Come buy my stuff.” For what? Why should I part with my hard-earned money? Give me some reasons. That is why people need me. I am going to give you reasons to give your consumer base and your audience that you are so busy searching for and doing all the wrong things for, listening to these gurus. I am going to give you the tips to go get the audience that needs your service, that needs to see you, that needs for you to show up. I think passion needs to make a comeback. Passion is the new sexy. Hugh: Oh man. How do I call you every morning and get a shot in the arm? Wooo. Dave: You are going to have a sore arm after a while, brother. Hugh: A whole host of people who have checked in on Facebook, including our friend Joe who connected us. We record this podcast live for people listening on Orchestrating Success. We record it live at random, and people join us on Facebook. I’m blessed to be in this conversation with you, man. You have a manner about you that you connect with the listener with very specific points in very tangible information. Very tangible results face thinking. Let’s cut out the BS. Let’s get to the point. I like that. That is awesome. That is awesome. Who needs you? Why do they need you? Who is the best person to work with you? Dave: The best person to work with me is somebody who really is in one of two places. Either they are entrepreneurs currently but they’re struggling. Or they are at a certain level and can’t get past that. When I say entrepreneurs who are struggling, some of them have businesses that are doing well, or they have a little side hustle or hobby, but they haven’t figured out how to do that and break the chains of the cubicle matrix they are stuck in. I am here to show you how to realistically do this. I am not going to sit up here and do what most radical rebel coaches do and say, “Oh, go burn the boats. Go in there and quit today.” No, that’s stupid. You still have to eat. But if we have a six-month exit strategy where I am showing you, “This is where you ramp up your advertising. This is the message you need to convey. These are the types of videos you need to do. This is why, even though I don’t like Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, any of these social media platforms, you need to be on them because you want to be where the people are.” I am here to show you these things that are my gifts. Listen, I don’t tell you how to be a fitness trainer. I am not a fitness trainer. Look at me, Hugh. I don’t know if you know this or not, but I like a sandwich. I live in cheesesteak land for a reason. It’s convenient to go grab one. I can pull one outside of my door and eat it right now. But what I am good at is identifying when you are making excuses and identifying how your unique selling proposition is going to change the lives of the people who hear it. That’s important. We need to understand that until we begin to get inside of ourselves, and what my good friend Les Brown calls our power voice, and have that resonate with people, people are going to lose. I’ll give you this. I get maybe a good 50 emails each week from people in South Africa, Amsterdam, Switzerland, Wisconsin, Philadelphia, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina saying, “I saw a video you did,” or “I heard a podcast you were on,” or “I saw this article about you, and I want to let you know that when I started doing some digging, you made me look at myself. Because of you, you helped me change my life.” But if I was arrogant, Hugh? What if I just sat back and said, “I am going to do the same thing I’ve been doing since I was nine years old. I am going to spin records and interview rappers. That is what I want to do.” If I did that, there would be a bunch of people who would not be living in their purpose. That would be selfish. It’s not about Hugh Ballou. It’s not about Dave Anderson, the Business Bully. It’s about who we are here to serve. Jesus wasn’t here for Jesus. Jesus was here for the people, for God to love the world. Moses was here to free slaves. David was here to kill Goliath and be king. You can’t do these things if you don’t show up. Martin Luther King, it wasn’t about the dream, it was about moving forward civil rights and debunking systemic white supremacy for black people and people of color and oppressed people in America. It’s not about the man; it’s about the message. It’s about making sure all the messengers who resonate with those particular messages can get out there. That’s why I’m here. Hugh: Wow. You know, you have this unique ability to focus on the essential messages. There is no noise in what you’re saying. It’s very strategic. I think people who qualify to work with you are quite blessed because you can impact their lives and then they can impact lots of other lives. It must be really satisfying to you to know that you impact a whole lot of people through the people that you empower. Am I right? Dave: Absolutely. My favorite client story is a woman named Kelly. I met Kelly at a business meeting. There were a bunch of entrepreneurs sitting around a round table, and I was asked to give some advice to these people. This woman says, “I have this business, but I am spending this money on this, that, and the other thing.” I don’t know what it is for you, Hugh, but my process, because I am working in my gifts, I black out. I will go on a stage and speak, and I will ask the presenter. Our friend Joe will tell you. I ask, “Was that good?” He’ll go, “Are you kidding me? Look at them. They’re happy.” I’m like, “What did I say?” He’s like, “What do you mean what did you say? You said this that and the other thing.” I’ll go back and watch the tape. Wow. It’s not me; it’s something inside of me that comes through me. I blacked out on this girl, and when I came to, my buddy tapped me on the shoulder and I broke out of whatever it was I was spitting at her. Her tears were just falling down her face; I felt so bad that I handed her a tissue. I said, “Look, I’m not here to hurt you, but I guarantee you that if you listen to me, you will make more money than you will ever make.” Sure enough, she went from having a business that was doing $800-900 a month to $10-20,000 a month selling lingerie for plus-size women. She did not realize her power. While that may seem like a very slow sub-niche of a niche market, there is a whole lot more women who are qualified as plus-size than there are who can fit in the Victoria’s Secret line. You have to have somebody come along and show you that. I did not come out of my mother’s womb knowing how to speak and tie my shoes. I learn those things. I am the son of a teacher, so I want to teach. I think that that’s impactful. When people get satisfied, when people are able to tell their bosses to jump off a bridge, they feel empowered. They are in control of themselves. They are not subject to all the many things that are out here in the world. They are able to really be free and breathe and spend time with their kids. I do what I do so I can take my kid to daycare and pick her up every day because I’ll be damned if either of my children don’t know that their daddy was there for them. That’s why I do this. I am not the only daddy or parent, I am not the only husband or wife out here who wants that for themselves. I am there to get those people, and those people will reach other people, and then at the end of the day, people will truly live in their purpose. That’s all I want out of life. I can die happy knowing that people have lived in their purpose because of some small thing I said or did. Hugh: Wow. I’ve clarified- I work with so many people who cannot articulate why people need them. You are very clear on your target market. You are very clear on the impact of your work. Those are what I find missing in a lot of thought leaders like you, people who are authors, coaches, consultants, speakers. There are a lot of people doing those things. Very few of those people can cut through to the chase like you’re doing right now. Do you realize how rare these gifts are? Dave: You know, I’m coming to that the longer I do this, the more I realize how rare it is. I am going to say this really quickly because this is your interview, not mine. There are a bunch of people out here who are frauds. There are a bunch of people who are snake salesmen or saleswomen. There are a bunch of people out here who are as fake as a $3 bill covered in honey mustard. I don’t know why people don’t do the research, but if you Google the Business Bully or Dave Anderson, you will find things. You will find that everything I am saying is true. I don’t have to lie because I don’t have good memory. I don’t. I know what it is that I do. The problem with this industry—Hugh, I am going to say it because you are too polite and kind, and maybe one day in a couple of years, I will be like you. But right now, I am full of fire and vinegar. The great thing about the Internet is that anybody can get on here and express themselves. The problem with the Internet is that anybody can come on here and express themselves. Any chucklehead can write a book and any dumb schmuck can build a website. Anybody can call themselves a coach. What happens is you and I, who are legitimate individuals, who actually give geometric and definitive results for our clients day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, get lumped in with the rest of these charlatans. Nobody wants to call them out. Hello, that day is over. I am calling you out when I see you. I don’t care. Most of you are not worth the paper you were printed on, and most of you ought to be ashamed of yourselves and should jump off a bridge immediately, with zero bungee cord, so that you can make room for those of us who are actually out here trying to impact people. I’m sorry. It’s not nice, but it’s the truth. Hugh: No, no. You don’t want to be polite. I’m sorry you think I’m polite because I’m not. I’m an equal opportunity offender. I’m just trying to be a good, faithful interviewer. But thank you. That’s a compliment. I do respect people. However, my favorite quote is by a Christian theologian, “Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.” Dave: Amen. Hugh: I commonly do that in my keynotes. I like for people to be uncomfortable. That is where we are going to grow. That is where we’re going to grow. Tell us another story of somebody you worked with that really touched you, and they took your wisdom and did something significant. Give us another story. Dave: There was a kid I knew. Let’s call him Chuck. Chuck was a personal trainer. Chuck had amazing skills. He was handsome. He was smart. He was very talented in helping people achieve results with their bodies and nutrition, the whole nine. He was working for a company, and that company had him as a trainer, but he could only work so many hours. He couldn’t get into the gym after hours. He couldn’t work with clients. I built out a structure for him, and within 90 days, he quit his job and is making six figures, going on seven, helping high-end clients with their businesses. The reason we’re not working together right now is that there were certain things that took time. Because there were certain things that happened very quickly, he thought everything should happen very quickly. I said, “If you just hang in there, you will see something great.” He wouldn’t hang in there; he thought he could go off on his own. He is doing very well, don’t get me wrong. Once you feel like you’ve got what you need, cool. But be prepared to deal with that. He got what he needed, he left, and the next day, I was on national television. He hit me up and said, “I didn’t know.” I said, “You should have listened.” I believe in helping people do what they do. I’m not out to create an army of Dave Andersons. I wouldn’t want that. My wife would beg you to kill me if I did that. I’m a big believer in, like Les Brown said, if you have somebody that is fighting for their limitations, you let them keep them. Yes, he is making money. Yes, he is doing well. Could he be bigger? Yes. Could he have several bestselling books? Yes. Could he have had a growth in his online fitness program? Yes. But he chose not to. Even in success, sometimes a taste of success overpowers the hunger for a global domination perspective. I think that that’s important. I could sit up here and tell you success stories all day in that it is a success story. But I am also going to have to temper the success stories with the reality of what happens when people get a little too gung-ho. Hugh: Amen. Les Brown is a dear friend of mine as well. There is an interview I did with him on thenonprofitexchange.org. You might be interested in checking out thenonprofitexchange.org. I had to follow Les on stage twice in my career. We talked about that. He chuckles about it, Okay, yeah, Hugh Ballou, you’re on stage, and Les Brown was your opening act. He’s a brilliant man. We’re doing the Les Brown Foundation. He is going to have programs to prevent people from going back to prison over and over again. This is intense stuff, and I have learned that people listen to shorter podcasts more, so we’re going to taper it off here. You and I have a lot more conversations to have. Dave: Absolutely. Hugh: We will schedule things we can do together in tandem. It’s just inspiring to be in your presence. I’d like you to think about a closing tip or thought or challenge for people. So Dave, what do you want to leave with people? Dave: I would say this. Most people are not honest, especially with themselves. So I challenge you to be honest as to why it is that you’re not showing up in all the places you want to. Mostly, it’s not because you’re scared of the camera. It’s not because you’re worried about the way that you look. What you’re really worried about is there are a bunch of people who are going to show you, hear you, get that message, and you won’t be able to control the narrative on how they talk about you. We have to get over that. On the other side of people’s opinions is your destiny, is your passion, is your freedom, is your money. So I challenge you if you’re ready to make something happen. You can feel free to reach out at bit.ly/bullycall. I am very easy to find. Bit.ly/bullycall. Or you can text “business bully” to 31996. That is “Business bully” to 31996. Hugh: 31996. The word is business bully. Dave Anderson, you are brilliant. I am pleased to know you. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with my audience today. Dave: Thank you for allowing me to share. This has been very therapeutic. Now I am going to go murder a sandwich.

Tom Poland is a Marketing Mentor who started his first business at age 24 and has gone on to start and sell four others, taking two of them international. In that time he’s managed teams of over 100 people and annual revenue of more than 20 million. These days Tom’s thing is “Leadsology: The Science of Being in Demand” which is a blended learning program that gives professional advisors a model for generating a flow of high-quality, inbound, new client enquiries into their businesses almost every week of the year. Over 2000 business owners across 193 different industries and 4 continents have been through his programs and many have gone on to add millions to their earnings and their testimonials are available on his website. Tom’s work has been published in 27 countries and he’s also shared international speaking platforms with the likes of Michael Gerber of E-Myth fame, Richard Koch from the 80-20 Principle, Brian Tracy and many others. Find Tom at http://www.leadsology.guru   Here's the transcript from the interview Hugh Ballou: Greetings, welcome back to Orchestrating Success: Converting Your Passion to Profit. Today, this session, we are going to focus on your message. How do you really let people know what your superpower is? I am recording this in the evening in Virginia, and my guest for the interview is drinking his morning coffee in Australia. Tom Poland, welcome to the podcast. Tom Poland: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on where the heck everyone is. It’s morning here tomorrow. Hugh: It’s always interesting making appointments with people. I’ll call you at 2:00. Okay, what time zone? Tom: Which 2:00? Hugh: In your case, it’s Thursday here, but it’s Friday where you are. Tom: Correct, yeah. Coming up on 20 past 8 in the morning. Hugh: It’s 6:18 pm here in Virginia. Tom, you and I connected somewhere. You graciously invited me to this small group encounter that we had a week ago, a video session where you taught us some things about marketing. You taught us about our message. You taught us about quite a few things. I took a whole bunch of notes, and then you gave us one of your books. Tell us who you are, what is your superpower, and how did you develop this? How did you get where you are today? Tom: Great questions. Tom Poland. I call myself the chief leadsologist at Leadsology. Presently, I live near the beach in Castaways Beach in a place called the Sunshine Coast in a place called Queensland, Australia. It’s about nineteen hours’ drive north of Sydney. A pretty long way up the coast. Australia is like the US. It’s quite a big country. The difference is 80% of it is desert here. Back to what I am doing. My superpower is lead generation. I work with people who are marketing the invisible, people who have an idea, a service. Most of what we’re going to talk about will apply to people who have physical products as well, whether you are making sandals or you are a New Yorker acquisition consultant. The principles are the same. How you apply them is a little different depending on whether you have something that’s invisible or something that’s physical. The magic is around setting up four separate lead generation systems. There is a weekly flow of high-quality inbound new client inquiries. We don’t do cold-calling or anything dumb like sending out 10,000 letters to anyone. We don’t do trade shows. All those things deposition the person providing the service or advice. That is the superpower. It’s creating these four different lead systems so the leads are coming in systematically, automatically into the person’s business. How I came across that—good question. When I was 16, my father suggested I leave home because he said I knew everything and I could start forgetting things soon if I didn’t leave home. So I did that. I left home. A few years later, in 1995, I found myself in a very similar mindset. I had come out of a senior executive role in a multi-national corporate, and I started my own business again. I thought I knew something about sales and marketing since I had spent 20 years in corporate. So I set up the new business and put all this marketing in place, and nothing happened. So I literally flew and sat at the seat of great marketing masters and read every book and went to every workshop I could. I am a pretty good implementer; I put everything in place, and the best I could do was break even on my marketing efforts. I sat down and thought, I gotta figure this thing out myself. I put all the books away and put all the workshop notes away and started what is now known as Leadsology. I discovered, Hugh, there is a whole bunch of people out there that are really good marketers, but when you actually buy their stuff, it turns out their marketing is a 10 and their product is a 2. Most of your audience and my clients, when I start working with them, they have a 10 service. If they could get in front of the right people, then the conversions happen, and the clients love them. Most people have a 10 service trapped in a 2 marketing. That is what Leadsology is all about. Sorry, I knocked over my microphone in my excitement. That’s how my Leadsology journey started: trying to figure this thing out as a coach, consultant, and trainer. How do you get the leads coming in without having to stay awake all night stressed about it and without having to engage in these random acts of marketing? Hugh: Random acts of marketing. You used a word there I tried to capture. Cold-calls and what I call push marketing, you used the word… What is the word you used? Tom: Deposition. Hugh: Deposition? Tom: One of the most powerful psychologies known to mankind is reverse psychology. If I had kids at home and it was raining outside and I said to the kids, “Don’t go outside and play because it’s raining,” then the first thing they are going to want to do is what? Hugh: Go outside and play. Tom: Yep. I said to my teenage daughter, “I’m going out with your mom. We’re going to a nice restaurant. We’re leaving the second car here, and the car keys are over there. Do not touch the car keys. Do not drive that car.” A more subtle degree is this. There is a spectrum. The moment we know we can have something, our desire for it decreases. People get blasé. They get apathetic. I can have that anytime I want. What else is there? Somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, can have it, don’t want it, is the sweet spot called reverse psychology where people will want more of what you’ve got if they think they need it more than you need their money. Hugh: Say that again. That is a key piece of information. Tom: Let me say I’m a prospective client of Hugh’s, and I’m thinking if I should work with Hugh or not. If Hugh is sending out mail drops and offers every day of the week and I’m getting bombarded with “Pick me” from Hugh, I get apathetic about that. I can work with Hugh anytime I want; he obviously needs more clients because he is sending all these offers out, and every time I go to a trade show, he’s there and he is always handing out brochures. I’m getting letters and emails. Maybe not on Hugh. But if I perceive my belief is that I need what Hugh’s got more than Hugh needs my money, I get much more interested. Hugh: Wow. Tom: Cold-calling depositions that. Can I work with you? Going onto LinkedIn and going, “Hey, we do SEO. Do you need help?” depositions that. Sending out 10,000 letters or direct mail pieces depositions that. What we want is to invoke that sweet spot psychology where your audience perceives they need you more than you need their money. Hugh: Wow. That is just the opposite of what the marketing people are trying to tell us to do, isn’t it? Tom: Hugh, it’s so different if you are selling a product. Particularly, if it is a commodity, then it will come down to price. There is a massive gulf of difference between marketing a thing and marketing a service because a service is actually a relationship. It’s like going into a marriage. If I am buying a house off of a realtor, and I don’t like the realtor, then if the house is okay, I will still make the buy because I don’t have to live with the realtor. But if I am looking for a wife, which I kind of was 12 years ago, that prospective bride whom I fell in love with instantly and could have married her on the spot, within 90 seconds I was gone. If I had gone up to her and said, “Look, I’ve just fallen in love with you. My name’s Tom by the way. Could we get married, or at least could I come home with you tonight?” When you are offering a service or advice—I didn’t do that honestly, we had some dates first, anyway—but when you are offering a service or advice and are popping the question to people and going, “Work with me,” it’s like going, “Marry me.” With a thing, when we buy it, that relationship is over. We are left with the golf clubs or the boat or the house or whatever. But with an advisory service, consultancy, training, coaching, architecture, CPA, even a lawyer, we’ve gotta enter into a relationship of trust with this person. That means we are probably going to have to have a few dates first before we pop the question of engagement. Hugh: That is so good. You and I had talked before we went live about coffee, and we both have this love of freshly ground, brewed espresso. I talked about doing the beans, and sitting over here on the couch, my bride of we’re starting 12 years next month, she’s a conductor and I’m a conductor. We met at a church music conference in the same room, and we crossed paths. I was smart enough to pay attention. It took a year to build a relationship and have conversations. It was a year before we talked again. I understand that dynamic really well. You know what? I got it right. It’s not about pushing. There is a synergy here with what I teach my clients. Leadership is a position of influence. We influence people, and we don’t do it by telling people what to do if you are responsible for a team. You create the space for people to raise a functioning around the common purpose. There is synergy with what I teach. I have the invisible, which is my coaching, my facilitation, my culture creation for corporate clients. But I have something in the middle. It’s not a product; it’s an online program. Where does that fall? Is that the invisible? Is that a product? Tom: That’s the invisible. So is software by the way. There are a few exceptions. Software, is that a thing? Software development fits in with the invisible as well. I developed and had a software business quite a number of years ago. It’s selling the invisible. Online courses and programs, there is a duration, whether it’s eight weeks, six weeks, six months. I have to be able to trust three things when I buy into that program. I have to be able to validate Hugh and say, “I trust Hugh. He cares. He has integrity. He’s going to be reliable.” I have to validate the service or program. This is true with an architect, consultant, coach, whatever. I have to validate the service. Does this service have integrity? Is it a fit for my needs? The third thing that most people trip up on is: am I going to implement when it comes to a program? I bought these programs before. I have done these workshops before. I got excited, took all the notes, and came back to my business, and then the emails came in or the meetings happened, sitting in this nice little folder in a pile somewhere. There are three points of validation. The first one is: Do I know, like, and trust Hugh? The second point is: Does the program have integrity? Is it going to fit my needs? The third point is: Will I actually use this thing? Hugh: Do they use it? Is it so hard I can’t do it? That’s a big deal. Tom: Implement. We have all bought those $197 downloadable workshop training things and gotten excited. Where are they now? I don’t even know where they are. They are sitting in a digital file somewhere. I have a password to that membership site somewhere, but I don’t know where it is. When it comes to programs, and it’s a bit of a red herring I guess, but whatever we do, whatever service we deliver, if people don’t implement it and get value. Even though it might be money in my bank account, I want people to implement because I want them to get value because I want the good karma. Hugh: How do you define red herring? Tom: Implementation is off the subject of marketing. There is an indirect link in that if people implement it, then they get value and refer. There is an indirect link. Hugh: Your site, we are going to give them a special link before we’re done here. Your link is leadsology.guru. You are in fact the guru. You’ve written some books. Tom: I am a little embarrassed every time I hear that .guru, but .com was taken. We tried to buy it. So it’s kind of like these people who write their own bio and say, “I am the world’s expert on XYZ.” Who said? Hugh: Well, it was there. Tom: Leadsology.guru, yeah. Hugh: It was predestined. You were pulled into that. I have one of your books. It’s in my digital folder queued up to read over the holiday here. We have a holiday in America. Read that to me. Tom: Is that Leadsology: The Science of Being in Demand? Hugh: Yes, that’s it. Leadsology: The Science of Being in Demand. Oops, I am making a note. It’s a science. Tom: Yeah, it is. Hugh: Can people find that on Amazon? Tom: Yes indeed. Kindle, paperback. Hugh: Who needs that? Who needs your methodology? I assume the book gives people an overview and gives them what you didn’t find in the seminars and the courses you took before. It gives them a snapshot or maybe some courseware. Tell me what’s in the book and who needs it. Tom: The book is for anyone who is marketing the invisible and who wants the security and pleasure and enjoyment, satisfaction if you like, of having a regular flow of new clients coming into their business. It’s a systemized approach to lead generation. The book is quite extensive. Some books you buy and end up disappointed because they tell you what you need to do, but they are very light on how to do that. I get into all sorts of things there. There are ten parts to the model. We start with what did you call it? Your superpower? I call it your magic. One thing for example I say to people is you can’t have seven types of magic. A Canadian client of mine who is a consultant/trainer/coach, Susan, who is a genius at what she does, but she had like nine different things on her website you can pick from. It’s 360 degrees, leadership training, productivity, engagement, human dynamics, whatever that is, organizational change, and Susan was very good at all of these things. I have no doubt about that. The first thing I said to her was, “Pick one.” She said, “What do you mean?” I said, “You can’t market nine things. You can market one thing. Everything else needs to go off your website, off your LinkedIn profile, off your business card. You are going to market one thing. Why don’t you get clients happily engaged in that one thing, getting great value, so they can ask, ‘Susan, what else have you got?’ Then you can show them the other stuff.” The book goes in a step-by-step model with ten parts to it. It starts with your magic/superpower. Pick one. The first four parts are about your magic, pick one; the market, which is all about focusing your niche; the message, which is the session we had last week on the marketing message and the three characteristics that create an effective marketing message that cuts through and motivates someone to want to know more; and finally the mediums. The mediums are quite important. For example, the medium could be a webinar, a book, an online session, a lunch-and-learn, a guide of some sort, a challenge. A lot of different ways you can attract people into your list and give them great value. But the mediums are interesting because the mediums have to fit. They have to fit first of all your style, your personality. For some people, running webinars makes them feel like they want to be physically ill. My wife calls herself an e-tard. When we met, she barely knew how to do email. But you know, she is getting better and better. For someone like my wife, running a webinar would cause her sleepless nights for weeks. Don’t do that because it’s not part of your personality style. Pick a medium that fits your personality. I love writing. I could just lock myself up in a cave with a keyboard, and I could write 24/7, just about. Pick a medium that you’re inclined to want to engage in because then you will actually do the frickin’ thing instead of saying it should be done. Pick a medium that works with the market as well. If I was marketing to tradespeople, say plumbers, I wouldn’t pick webinars as a medium because it’s not a medium they are naturally instinctively drawn to. If I was talking to consultants, I would certainly pick webinars because they are in front of computers all day. You have to match the medium to the market. I got Monty the Marketing Wonderdog here. He is a Border Collie, and he has a dinner bowl out back. I have a beehive as well. If I get a bunch of flowers and put them in Monty’s dinner bowl, that is going to be a hard sell. But if I put it in the beehive, then they are all over it. Vice versa with a nice steak. Put it in front of the bees, and they’re not too interested. Put it in front of the dog? There is no selling required when you match the message to the market and the medium. Zero selling required. It’s like bees onto flowers. Hugh: There are certain trends in what people are doing online. I think it changes from time to time. What worked last year doesn’t work this year. Sometimes what worked last week doesn’t work this week. You’re honing on some fundamental principles that probably supersedes the fad of the day. Is that making sense? Tom: Yeah, it makes perfect sense. If you want to go to the highest helicopter view, the strategic view of lead generation, there are two things that intersect when the lead is generated. That has been the case for the history of mankind for thousands of years, and it will always be the case. Whatever changes with online funnels or Facebook advertising or social media, whatever else changes, this never changes. A lead is generated when an ideal client is intersected with an effective marketing message. An ideal client is someone who is aware of their need, so my ideal client is not waking up in the middle of the night, they are waking up in the middle of the morning and saying, “I have to get some systems in place to get leads.” They are aware of their need. They have the money and the timing is perfect. Those are the three characteristics of my ideal client. When that person sees my marketing message in almost any form, and there is about 12 different forms they can see it in, they get interested. That is how inbound inquiries are generated. Hugh: That is how we connected. Somehow, I was interested in meeting you. We have talked twice now and emailed. I am fascinated by what you do. What do you think it was that got my interest? Do you remember how we connected? Tom: Yes, we connected through LinkedIn. I invited you to a marketing message maker session. I made a bit of a song and dance about the fact that I was a bestselling international author blah blah blah. There was some credibility in there. Don’t get offended at this, but you were metaphorically speaking a bear in the woods. My message via LinkedIn, we established a 1st-level connection first. I had given you something. I think it was a little bit of a guide like this PDF. We had a couple of little mini dates. Then I invited you to this marketing message maker, which was essentially a 75-minute session where I was showing you how to create a marketing message that cuts through and motivates an ideal client to want to know more about what you do. I said leave your credit card at home because there is nothing to buy. We minimized the sense of risk or just another sales trap. When I talk about a bear in the woods, the metaphor is this. This describes how Leadsology works pretty well and how you don’t need any sales or manipulative sales techniques. Imagine there is a big forest and there are a bunch of grizzly bears all asleep. I have some honey in a honeypot. I want the bears to eat my honey. The bears are a metaphor for potential clients, and the honey is a metaphor for what it is I do. I think, How am I going to get the bears to eat my honey? I go to a bear-eating-honey seminar. The guy stands up on stage and is holding this big, long, stick with a sharp point at the end, a lance. He says, “Look, I’ve done this. If you want the bears to eat your honey, this is how you do it. You grab the stick, go running through the forest, find a grizzly bear, poke it really hard on the bum to wake it up, and then you wave the pot in front of the bear’s nose. If it is hungry, it will eat the honey. If it is not hungry, it will eat you.” That is selling. That is going out with your marketing message, annoying people, poking them with a sharp stick going, “Pick me, pick me, pick me.” With Leadsology, what we do is put the honeypot outside the forest, and the bears that are hungry will start dreaming of swimming in honey. Then they will wake up and go, “Darn, just a dream. But hang on. I can still smell the honey,” and they come out of the forest. That’s what Leadsology does. Leadsology is a series of four honeypots, each systemized, different mediums, going to the same market with the same marketing message, and the bear is coming out of the forest. People are making inquiries. Hugh: So it’s imperative that your message is very clear. You have one product, and you are targeting a specific person. Tom: The message is what I call the first domino. You see those Guinness Book of Records. You line up one thousand dominos, and you only have to push over one domino and the others go on their own. The marketing message is not what people think it is. It’s not a USP, it’s not an elevated pitch, it’s not a slogan, and it often even won’t mention your service or product. But it’s got to be benefit-rich and differentiated, so it’s got to sound like nothing anyone else is saying. It’s got to contain some specifics. That is where the magic lies in those specifics. Hugh: What are the top things that people do wrong? Tom: Number one they do wrong with their marketing message is they tell people what they do for a living. I am an accountant, and I help with your taxes. I am a marketer, and I will help you get your leads in. I am a Facebook Messenger bot guru, and I help you get a better open rate. Hugh: Why is that a mistake? Tom: Because people don’t want Facebook Messenger bot gurus, and they don’t actually want bigger open rates. They want the thing the bigger open rates give them, which in this particular example we are talking about, a very exciting product. You can get a 100% open rate with them. But people don’t want 100% open rates. They want the thing the 100% open rate gives them. In this marketplace, this particular marketer is an online marketer, whose marketplace are beauty salons. Beauty salon owners don’t want Messenger bots, and they don’t want 100% open rates. They want more bums in their seats every single day, please and thank you very much. His marketing message should not be, “I am an expert on Facebook bots,” and it should not be, “I can get you 100% open rates on messengers.” It should be, “I can get you another two customers walking through your door every single day without any print media, advertising, or cold-calling.” That’s it, period. If you are a beauty salon owner, you want two more extra customers every single day. That’s where your profit is. I don’t know if it’s two or five, where the sweet spot is. The sweet spot in the message, if you are talking about specifics, has to be big enough to generate desirability, but it has to be small enough to generate believability. If he goes out and says, “I can get you 50 new customers every single day,” even if that is true, people aren’t going to believe it. It’s not going to work. If he comes out and says, “I can get you a new customer every single month,” no matter how excited he says it, people are not going to get turned on by that. I don’t know what the number is for the sweet spot, but something like another 2-5 customers every single day. When that beauty salon owner hears that, then they will want to know more, and that is when the lead is generated and the inquiry is made. The question at that point is: How do you do that? That is when messenger bots come in, not before. Hugh: Okay. Boy this is really helpful. It’s unique. I just changed my LinkedIn messaging from what I do to what my results are like two weeks ago. I am amazed. Between Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, I have like 250,000 followers. Tom: Wow. Hugh: I am amazed that 249,500 of them are just pushing out, “Buy my thing. Buy my thing.” They haven’t done any dating. They haven’t built any trust or credibility. Tom: There is no validation. Hugh: It is just amazing. There is a whole bunch of noise. Somehow, you got my attention, and you cut through the noise on LinkedIn. I don’t know how that happened, but you got very skilled at that. You have a way of getting right to it and attracting the right person. When I say, “Who needs you?” people like a consultant, people like a speaker, people like a coach, is that the space of invisible? Tom: I have done a lot of work with architects, accountants. Right now, I have a merger acquisition consultant, an American guy who is operating out of London, works a lot in Europe. His specialty is matching big companies up with smaller tech companies so they maintain a competitive difference. An architect operating out of Oregon who designs luxury apartments in China. A foreclosure lawyer in Philadelphia. It’s pretty diverse. Merger acquisition consultant in Germany. A lot of clients in Australia and New Zealand. A lot of trainers, coaches, consultants. Wealth planners. A new client who is—forgive me, Kevin, I can’t remember where you are, but he is somewhere in your country—he has developed a business where he operates a brokerage for real estate agents. He gets the listings, which is the hardest thing to do, and he brokers them out to real estate agents. So it’s a service. The physical product is there, of course, but he is not directly selling the physical product. So it’s anyone who has a service or advice or develops software; that is the exception—who wants to quit stressing about where the leads are coming from and have predictability. A lot of good consultants- The classic is they are really good at what they do, so they get a lot of word-of-mouth referrals, which is great and can go on for a few years, but one day it will dry up. Who knows. Something weird happens, like a dictator fires a missile over Japan. That would never happen, right? Hugh: That would never happen. Tom: Or someone drives a tank into a desert in Kuwait from Iraq. I don’t know. Stuff happens. Or there is an election. And everything slows down. For some reason, word-of-mouth marketing dries up. Then they go, “Oh wow, I don’t control this thing. There are no buttons I can push or levers I can pull. I need some predictability around lead generation.” Those are the people who need Leadsology, the people who want to set up four different systems so the leads are coming in from four different sources. Hugh: For instance, you said that before, and I meant to ask you. Give us an example. Tom: Sure, okay. Let’s just put social media to the side at a moment because it’s not a lead generator. It’s great to keep people’s brand in your brain until they are ready to buy. So you should be doing social media. A blog, a podcast, Facebook, something to keep your brand on the brain until people are ready to buy. But the direct lead generators: a book when it’s well-written will bring in leads. One of the things I do, when you open the book up, you will see this page here. Leadsology Resources. And there is a bunch of free stuff. We drive people from the book back to the website. We have a few dates with them, as many as they need until they start to validate that Tom is an okay guy and the services are effective. A book is one of those mediums. A webinar can be a medium. You attended what I call a makeover session, a group of people, the bears who come out of the forest interested in a marketing message makeover. Those small sessions. Breakfast meetings or lunch-and-learns, they are all mediums with which you can get your message out to the marketplace. There is a lot of them: surveys, diagnostic tools, interactive models. What I was saying before just to refresh people’s memory is that choosing the mediums, and there are a lot of different ways you can get your message to the market about your magic through the mediums, is it has to fit your personality. You have to look at it and go, “Yeah, I can do that. I quite like that actually,” whether it’s a webinar, book, whatever. It has to fit the marketplace, meaning it has to fit the market. Flowers in Monty’s bowl is not going to work. And finally, it has to fit your budget, be it your time or financial budget. Most people have one medium. Most people do one thing to get leads. I don’t know if they go to a business networking medium, which depositions them. Or they do webinars, or they have a book. It’s like a one-legged stool. Eventually, a one-legged stool tips over. I want my clients to have four legs on their stools. Four different ways that the leads are coming in. Each of those ways is systemized, whether it’s a LinkedIn strategy, whether it’s a webinar strategy, whether it’s a Facebook or Google Adwords funnel taking you through a series of steps, they are all systemized. We have security because we have a diversification of leads. I see this lady in the States with something like $800 million in the lottery. She is not going to put it all in one place, I hope. The uncle needs to invest in his business—don’t give it all to the uncle. Here’s $800 million; make me some money. The security comes in the diversification of the lead generation. Hugh: So you said earlier that social media is not for lead generation, but that is how you got me interested. Tom: Social media- LinkedIn, is it social media? Probably. LinkedIn is good to keep the brand on the brain until people are ready to buy. Most of the posts you get on LinkedIn have the wrong reasons. They have a message that is like putting the flowers in Monty’s dinner bowl. People post articles on LinkedIn, and they get traction. It doesn’t matter if you have 500 reads if you got no more connections or followers or subscribers. Then you haven’t really done a lot. Put aside the fact that the messages are not often aligned to the marketplace. Social media is best for keeping the brand on the brain until people are ready to buy. By all means, have a LinkedIn strategy. Post on LinkedIn some good quality stuff. But understand that you are not going to get a lot of people going, “I want to work with you please.” This is a great example of a terrific added value social media thing, a podcast in this case, that is going to help keep Hugh’s brand in people’s brains until they are ready to buy. Hugh: You associate with people who are competent, and it raises the value of your brand. Social proof. You have a photo of me with Tom Poland, and it raises the value of me because of your credibility. Tom: Some people would debate whether it raises your brand, Hugh, but I’ll accept it. I’ll drink to that. It’s water by the way. Hugh: People can decide for themselves when they hear it. There is a lot of really rich content here. I really resonate with this because I show up in groups and I am starting- I just moved to a new city, so I am starting a series of lunch-and-learns. I am targeting people who run charities, nonprofits. Some of the programs I offer are specifically tailored for them. I have 31 years of experience in that market segment. I am also doing other places. I show up where my clients are. The other segment is mid-cap corporations, $5-50 million in revenue. That is a sweet spot, so I am showing up where those people hang out. I think one of the mistakes people make is they attract the wrong people. This came up in the session I was on. I asked you point blank, “What happens when you keep attracting broke people?” You had a really good answer. Do you want to have a go at that again? Tom: Yeah. Unfortunately, I only have a couple minutes left so let’s touch on that. There are a series of filters you can set up depending on which part of the process people are in. Typically, what happens in my sort of business is say I am an international law firm, book a free consult, and then I am in danger of talking to a lot of people I can’t actually help significantly because they can’t afford to do anything with me. It’s actually worse than not speaking with them because I can tell them what to do, but if they go and try to do it, they will probably mess it up because there are so many subtleties to it. They are wasting time and effort and will end up disappointed. It’s not good for them if I speak with them for free, and it’s not good for me if I speak with them for free. It doesn’t really make sense. But if I charge $1,000 an hour regularly, then I will say, “I will give you an hour but just charge you $100.” That’s a filter. That cuts all those people out I can’t help. I am doing a disservice to them by meeting with them because it gives them false hope. If I am doing an event, charging $20 will kick a lot of tire-kickers out. Or you can set up an enrollment page where you actually have to click some buttons and say, “Yes, I understand that in order to implement what I hear at this lunch-and-learn, I will probably be required to make an investment. I’m okay with that.” You can put in filters depending on where they are and how much you want to fill them out. If I was going to a new city and doing lunch-and-learns, I wouldn’t put in any filters. I would get my ass out there and build the list and accept the fact that not everyone is going to be perfect. Hugh: I love it. Tom: The type of honey you put out will attract certain bears. Hugh: We’re going to give people a link to leadsology.guru/five-day-challenge. That is a gift you are giving people. It’s a five-day challenge. They have to do a little work, but they will learn something, right? Tom: More than that, they are going to get more leads in. They are going to get a new client. If people do what I tell them to do in this challenge, it’s like 15 minutes a day over five days. It’s not hard. I get so much positive feedback for this because you will actually put into place your first marketing system potentially, you will generate five fresh, inbound inquiries, and convert at least one of them into a feedback client. Hugh: Tom Poland, you have offered great value to the listeners of Orchestrating Success. I am going to ask you- I know you have no minutes left. Just give us a closing thought or tip for this interview. Tom: Okay. The closing thought is, just be smart enough to know how dumb you are. That is the secret to success. The enemy of growing is knowing. I wouldn’t represent myself in court because I’m not a lawyer. Don’t try to do this at home. Find someone who can teach you how to do lead gen because it is a science, and it doesn’t have to be me. Just be smart enough to know how dumb you are with marketing. Hugh: Tom, thank you for the gift of your time. I thank you, and my listeners thank you. This was so great. Tom: Thank you. What a pleasure. I look forward to continuing the conversation. Cheers.  

Words, words, words. Our society is full of words: on billboards, on television screens, in newspapers and books.... With so many words around us, we quickly say: “Well, they’re just words.” Thus, words have lost much of their power. * - Henri Nouwen Transformational leaders choose words carefully. In a column that I wrote to choral conductors about words, "5 Dumb Things Directors Say to Their Choirs," I pointed out the some of the customary things directors say to choirs are not only unnecessary, but those words might be damaging. Here's a summary of that article and my suggested change in language to make a difference: "Circle the Note" - Usually when a choir misses a note or nuance in the music. Well, there's already stress about missing that note or cue, so why add more by telling singers to make a mark in the music with no meaning. Remedy: if they are singing too loud, or missed in interval, or too high, etc. make a mark that informs them about what to do. "Watch the Director!” - This is really dumb! They already know to watch the director, so give them a reason to watch. Remedy: record yourself and watch the video to see if you want to look at yourself. Remember that nonverbal communications can be stronger that words alone. "Speak the Text" - This can be difficult when speaking text is different that singing vowels separated by consonants. We ask people to internalize bad habits, and then criticize them for doing what we asked them to do. Remedy: Create a process of awareness for getting a desired result that doesn't create a bad habit. "You are Singing Too Loud" - How loud is it and how much too load is it? There's no point of reference. Remedy: Try saying you are singing one dynamic level too loud, take it down a notch. We need to give the facts and then the desired action to fix it. "Why Did You Sing the Wrong Note?” - This is toxic! People are not intending to sing the wrong note and using the word "you" sets up a defensive response. Remedy: Point out the error and give specific corrective actions. Stick to the facts and don't defame or criticize. Err on the side of giving grace in that there was no malice of intent. Words build up... Words tear down... Carefully-chosen words facilitate effective communication. Although communication is fundamentally based on relationship and is not really about talking, words are important. Choosing words is a primary leadership skill. The right words cut through the noise of the busy world of media, networking events, sermons, and children. Poorly-chosen and badly-placed words can produce the opposite of the intended result. Critical, thoughtless words can destroy or damage relationships. Too many words negate any message and close communications with the receiver (not called a listener because the person has tuned out the noise). Words without action expose a fake. Words without follow-through expose a lack of integrity. One negative expletive displaces over 37 affirmations. Carefully- and thoughtfully-chosen words build effective relationships and fortify healthy teams. A leader's words can: Show caring Provide affirmation and support Give support when refinement is needed Show kindness, rather than criticism Define a mentoring relationship Invite creative thinking Energize and empower teams Build respect Create pathways for communication Build a culture of collaboration Allow for individual thinking Create a consensus culture, promoting individual best thinking Allow for individual best practices and discourage "Group Think" Promote a culture of best practices Allow for a spirit of continuous improvement Before you open your mouth - think. Oh, by the way, silence, as punctuation, can be a very, very effective communication tool. * Nouwen, Henri J. M. (2009-03-17). Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith (p. 44). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.  

Interview Transcription Hugh Ballou: Greetings, it’s Hugh Ballou. My guest today is a long-time friend and colleague, Linda Ruhland. Linda has a lot of superpowers. She’s got some unique gifts. Not alone from those gifts is her wonderful, pleasing personality and her wisdom for things that aren’t common in life. I have enjoyed working with Linda over the years and have enjoyed her insights into things that challenge other leaders. Linda, welcome to the podcast today. Linda Ruhland: Thank you, Hugh. I am very honored to be here. It is a privilege to be among the people you have interviewed because I have been following your podcast for a while. There are some pretty impressive folks who have shared this stage. My company, Spirit of Success, is something you are familiar with. We have worked together for a long time now. Hugh: Yeah, yeah. I prefer not to do these dry introductions for people, so I’m going to let you go ahead with that track. Tell us about Spirit of Success, and tell us about Linda Ruhland and how you’ve developed this skill and got you to where you are now. Linda: Okay. Spirit of Success was an inspiration a few years ago. Basically, we’re coming out of a tough economy back in 2010, and that continued. We slowly came out of what people are often now lovingly referring to as the new norm. From that, I wanted to see what could happen to really jumpstart us in terms of business and inspiration and, with all the change we have going on in society and in the workplace, what doesn’t change. From my point of view, the idea was that the spiritual drive, the commitment that we have, the energy we have within us, is the one unchanging factor. That is where the name came from. Since that period of time, I and a group of colleagues, friends, and associates have put together ideas on a website or two, one of them being spiritofbusinesssuccess.com, where we discuss success stories, and solve or at least share ideas on solving problems of common issues with regards to business and workplace issues that advance business, based on where we go with those in the shoe tips. Hugh: You have a new book out. I know something about this book. Linda: You are in it. Hugh: Yeah, I’m in it. What prompted you to want to put a book out? There are lots of books out. What’s the specific niche? What’s the title of the book? What’s it all about? Linda: The title of the book is Amazing Workplace. And the workplace of course with business is where everything comes from. It’s where success is really evolving from. It’s no big secret. If you look at some of the Gallup findings, 70% of people are disengaged at work. You couple that with the fact that 51% of the people who are at work are looking for other jobs and contrast that with the fact that we are in a declining job market and new business start-ups are declining. We have horses going in the wrong direction. Hugh: Wow. That’s not one problem; that’s a series of problems. Let me recap that. The Gallup poll, and they have been doing it for years, and they consistently come back to around 70% of the work force is disengaged or actively disengaged. They equate to the $500 billion in lost profits. You throw out another number. How many people are looking for another job? Linda: 51% of everybody at work today right now is looking for a different job. Hugh: Wow. And that’s primarily the business, the corporate sector, correct? Linda: That’s business across. That’s another Gallup finding in the same report. Hugh: Because the numbers are even higher in the nonprofit sector, but the business sector, that is pretty alarming. I don’t know if leaders really fully grasp the importance of that. We got this thing turned around, where we as leaders, CEOs, COOs, whatever, we think all those people depend on us. But really, we depend on them. Linda: Yes. Hugh: We need to preserve our work force. You’re in business to help people solve problems, right? Linda: Yes. I am in business to really create more of a positive- If it comes right down to it, I want to see people happy and healthy and really experiencing rewarding work lives because it relates to everything in life. We spend too much time at work not to be happy with it. Hugh: Oh my word. A third of your life. Eight hours a day. Linda: Yeah. Hugh: Wow. So what is it that you have that helps people improve? What are they working on? What are they improving? Linda: If we are talking about Amazing Workplace, which has been a focus right now with Spirit of Success, Amazing Workplace delves into what your colleague Dr. David Gruder had pointed out some of the less talked about nuances that really make a difference with workplace success. When you think about it, the things that happen at workplaces, the workplace is a canvas. That canvas is painted by what comes into the room, so the people, the mindsets, the attitudes that come into the room; the structure, the framework within which the business is created; the communication, so how is the focus, how is the rest of that business communicated; and then the ability, or lack thereof, of people to work together. When I started interviewing friends, colleagues, professionals in this arena, I found there is so much that can be done, that should be done, to make a difference. In fact, you can just pick one that works for you. I interviewed 12 thought leaders or gurus on different subjects pertaining to work. As a result of those interviews, I divided the areas of concentration in the book into three separate sections or chapter leads. One section has to do with personal care and self-esteem. The second section has to do with culture and communication. The third has to do with collaboration and team-building. Within each of these is an overview of areas that you as a leader or as an individual, an employee can do. The employee, the person who comes to work, has so much more influence than I think any individual gives him/herself credit. That’s really what the first section of the book is all about. We have Jean Bernet talking about nourishment. We deal with a lot of nutritional issues in this society. We talk about what are the right calorie amounts, avoiding that. But are we talking about nourishment? Her perspective is that the individual chemistry is a little bit different, and each of our bodies, if we start to learn to listen to them and pay attention to them, has a different set of chemistry that works in favor or against. The other thing that she mentions is that we are doing things to harm ourselves in the workplace. We are working so hard that we skip meals. We skip the opportunity to drink enough water. We are so focused on how we look that we forget about how we feel. That is the first avenue: What are you doing for your body? It doesn’t involve so much as complicated or physically athletic things, but just good self-care. Another perspective that my friends have inspired my thinking about- Julie Hill, who used to work for Horst Rechelbacher, the founder of Aveda Institute, says that with all the supermodels she worked with over the years, she found one thing in common: They lacked personal self-esteem. They were always paranoid about how they looked and how they were received. She said it goes a long way to just have that feeling of accepting yourself. She goes into some details and examples about how that can work for you in the workforce. You get to what our friend Jane Sanders talks about in regard to handing outs. Handing outs may be woo-woo, but when you consider the fact that a thumbprint or fingerprint contains a lot of data and information that is very commonly used to identify a person, now multiply that by all the fingers in the palm of the hand, and you realize there is a mapping system to the neural network of every individual’s brain. What she uses that information for is to ascertain, to tell people, what it is their strengths are, give them some positive feedback or affirmations of things they might know about themselves, or sever some details that may not have come to the forefront yet for them. That is a very quick skimming of what the first section of this book is all about: self-care and self-esteem. The next section is about communication and culture. My friend, are you there? Hugh: I’m here. I’m just trying to tell people that we also record the podcast in video on YouTube. I put a cover of the book up for people to look at. It’s stunning. I don’t know what you call that image on the front, but it pulls you into the vortex there to get your interest. I’m really fascinated by how you have divided up the different sections in this book. Sorry to interrupt you. This is great. I want to give people a visual. You can find the video on the Hugh Ballou YouTube channel. Go ahead, Linda. Linda: You bring up the cover. The cover is something that my designer and I worked on from the perspective of all the different things that go into making a workplace. We were looking for an image that represented that infusion or vortex where all these different ideas, colors, and personalities and factors combine into something that is utterly creative. As a result of those combinations, when you think about it, there is so much that can be changed or manipulated or made better. That is what we are looking for. That is what we are seeking in regard to Amazing Workplace. We talk a little bit about the culture with regards to communication. There are so many entrepreneurs in particular who have a strong vision of where they want to be or where they want to go. Those who really laser focus on what they want to do, do it and have great success with it. But sometimes they miss their people in the process. They have to bring them with. That is what this section is all about. What are you communicating? How are you framing what you do as a company? This pertains to little companies and great big corporate entities. How do you frame what you do as an organization so as to empower the individuals to take part in that, to help that along? If they have to wing it, what are the chances of them getting it right? What are the chances of you organizing this into something that is really moving in a very specific direction? It’s not good. Secondly, if you have those pieces in place, and somebody provides you with some contrast, we call it sometimes conflict resolution. Kit Welschland talks about the fact that you should look at it not necessarily as conflict confrontation, but an opportunity to create a new perspective, a new way, like the cover shows, to mix things up again and come up with different positive results. Hugh: Give me the three sections again of the book. The first section is about…? Linda: The first section is about self-care and confidence. Hugh: The second one? Linda: The second one is communication and culture. And the third section is team-building and collaboration. Hugh: Now I know that you have formal education and extensive expertise and background in marketing. Linda: I do. Hugh: It would occur to me that there is some internal marketing that needs to happen from the visionary leader to market to the people so we really understand we don’t have a culture because people haven’t been tied into the vision. Marketing is acquainting people with the value that you have, letting them be aware of where you are going and the pieces that you offer. It just came to me in the middle of what you were saying. Reframing marketing internally. Am I off track yet, or is that part of your thing here? Linda: Not at all. A couple of things on that topic. There is a section in the book by Ed Bogle about, as he puts it, writing for the brand. Getting people engaged in the idea with what this entity is and having some pride and ownership over it. Connected to that with what Spirit of Success is doing, we are making some observations here about what marketing looks like in our current scenario. We talked about the success platform. Success platforms, we are looking at the fact that marketing is no longer ready, aim, shoot. Target marketing and the scientific demographics and putting that value proposition out there is all well and good, but with the Internet having become the mainstay of people’s social communication and entertainment and everything else it seems, we have increased people’s decision-making capabilities exponentially. Those decisions are no longer just focused on the utility of an item or product; it’s more focused on how that makes them feel. The emotional value has gone way up in the scale of importance in terms of a decision. They want to know who you are, what you produce, why you produce it, why they should like you, and why they should buy from you; they want to feel connected to you. We just want to be connected. This is so much again almost a copy of what is happening in the workplace. You are selling that whole system, that success platform within the organization to the people who work with you so they can communicate it and amplify it out to the public, to their friends and family and beyond. You as a company do the same thing. We are becoming more of the same really. That is what a business is after all. We call it all sorts of different things. It’s got that different kind of patience and movies and the news, but ultimately, business is and always has been an entity. It’s a brief reflection of our humanity. Hugh: Ah, very well put. When we wrote this book, who were we writing it for? Linda: We were writing it for mainly anybody who was in a leadership position to influence a team of people. That is where you came in, with regard to teamwork. Hugh: You mentioned Ed Bogle. Ed is a master strategist and understands strategy. Ed and I work together in the integration of strategy and performance. People want to write a plan, and as Ed puts it, it becomes credenzaware until we make it come alive. There is an interaction there that must take place. Building the team around the strategic framework that Ed creates. You mentioned Dr. David Gruder. Both of them have been on my podcast. David and I are colleagues. I work with David as well on culture. We understand this. I think you are bringing points up that most people I experience don’t recognize. They might give it some superficial thought here and there. They don’t bring it into, It’s real for me, and it’s really impacting my bottom line. As you know, this Orchestrating Success podcast, its subtitle is “Converting Passion to Profit.” Leadership as a pathway to profit. Profit may not be our main focus, but profit is our main product that we need to feed ourselves. We feed ourselves by helping people solve problems by bringing value to others. We really need to focus on how we are going to drive that value, and the reciprocal of that is bringing the value back to us, which is revenue that helps us create the lives that we want. Everybody in the system contributes to the system, whether it’s good or bad. You mentioned David Gruder. We deal with situations where there is conflict. What I have learned from him and from life and my studies of the work of Murray Bowen and Bowen leadership principles is that everybody in a culture contributes. If there is conflict, everybody contributes. If there is a wholesome culture, everybody contributes. Part of my journey is helping leaders reframe leadership because they have learned it wrong. You have a goldmine of resources in this book and in programs that all of those authors offer, I’m sure. I know I have programs, and you probably have others. You not only have your programs, but you have the aggregate of all the value that all of your authors and all of the people you represent with Spirit of Success offer. What is your biggest challenge when you are talking to leaders in helping them be self-aware, helping them recognize there is something missing? What do you think is the biggest barrier for them understanding? Linda: There is so much noise out there. As I mentioned earlier, as a lot of the authors, which is really an interesting phenomenon, because each of these authors has a different focus, there is definitely a correlation that happens as you read the book and see that it all strings together. The noise out there as far as what the solution is gets confusing. I believe particularly after composing this book, which I couldn’t have done without all the insights of all the authors, is that it really is unique the organization. Pick one. Pick the area of focus that you think could really make a difference for you, that you feel could make a difference for you, and then go there. Do that. Don’t worry about what everybody else is telling you to do. Don’t run after other people’s advice. You always miss because they don’t know you and your organization as well as you know your organization. But go out there, be selective, and you be the decision-maker as to where you are going to work. With all of these different things mixed into the pot that creates your workplace, there is a lot that can be done. If you try to take on too much, it is not going to do well for you. Hugh: The book is sort of in my mind the tip of the iceberg. You have a lot of resources that are connected to the book, but the book is sort of your business card for each of us that are in there. It’s the tip of awareness. What do you hope people will gain by reading this book? Linda: My hope is that people will wake up to all the opportunities that they have before them to make a difference. They feel and know that they have the power to do something. Like I mentioned earlier, you could be an individual on a team, or you could be leading the team. In either case, you have a great deal of influence over the success of what is happening for you. Furthermore, if you go back to those Gallup findings, realize that in looking elsewhere, if you spent a little bit of that time looking at yourself perhaps and realizing that there is something I can do here for myself now, that is empowering. A lot of people do realize there is so much they have available to them that they won’t need to feel overwhelmed. They will feel good in the organization they are already in and all of a sudden find themselves to be more highly valued. Sometimes that is hard to believe at first, but if you open your mind to the opportunity, you’d be surprised sometimes. Hugh: That to me is the biggest barrier: an open mind. I do find that leaders that think they know it all are dangerous. They not only limit their own success, but they also limit the success of the organization. John Maxwell has in his 17 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership the law of the lid, which is your organization cannot develop any further than your own ability. My work as you know is around helping leaders develop the ability to lead the team. If you have a great time and can’t lead them, then they will get tired and leave, get frustrated and leave, turn against you and be angry. Reading the book is a way to gain some self-awareness, would it not be? Linda: Absolutely. Becoming aware of yourself and the details that happen, the wonderful things that can happen on your team if you pay attention. Hugh: They can find the book on Amazon. Amazing Workplace. The subtitle is: Creating the Conditions that Inspire Success. I wanted to have you on this podcast because we resonate so much in the philosophies of how things work. You said there is a lot of noise out there, and there are a lot of quick-fix solutions. Do this and you will make money. It hadn’t really done anything to create sustainable revenue or create a sustainable enterprise or create more skill in the leader to create a sustainable team. We want to look for something now. I don’t have time to learn. Well, you ought to spend some time because you could do a major transformation of yourself and your organization if you plug into some of these themes. I am fascinated with the nutrition piece because that is a hot button for me: to make sure I am doing my best. In order to do my best, I have to be on top of my game. If I eat crappy food, I am not on my game. I have eaten good food so long that when I have eaten a bad meal, my body tells me. No, no, Ballou, what are you doing to me? Ed talks about strategy, and I talk about teamwork. It’s been such a long time that I forgot. You have been good at pre-doing the book way before launch and getting the content in. Mine is about creating the team. Is that what it was about? Linda: Yours is about orchestrating the team. The whole section on teamwork is an interesting thing because a lot of it circles back. Within this section on teamwork, for example, Dan Nelson, who was a Heisman trophy nominee, he is now the athletic director at the University of California Irvine and was at Stanford for a number of years. He talks about three seminal concepts that the team section is all about. Be in good shape, steady, and learn. Your section on teamwork has to do with being that leader, orchestrating that success, making sure that people are paying attention and listening to one another and are ready to act and respond in a very specific way. Billy McLachlan brings in the fact that you have to be in tune first before you can listen to others. He brings another flavor to that if you will, but being in the set and listening to one another, or as you put it, being in the conductor seat and being sure that the people who are on your team are ready to perform. It is all fascinating combinations. Again, amazing correlation from different thought leaders from different perspectives. Hugh: Very different areas. Billy and I are both musicians. He is a crazy dude, too. He is very gifted. He has a whole different schtick, but leadership shows up nevertheless in what we do. Music by the way is a right and left brain function. It is very structured, and we have to be creative in the structure. What you are helping me realize is that creating the amazing workplace is understanding the elements of culture. How do we create the system that people can be creative in? A lot of leaders feel like if you create too much of a strategy and a system, then it stifles creativity. I say to them the antithesis of that is true. The system is a container for creativity. If you have this container, then you can put all the focus on your creativity. What Billy and I understand intuitively is you have this structure for music, which is very rigid and unforgiving, very mathematical and precise, then once you have that in place, you can make the magic happen and the creative part happen. I really admire the work of Ed Bogle, who has a chapter in here, and the gift of strategy. It’s really a gift if you have spent the time to clarify where you are going and how you are going to get there. My piece of putting the team together. I was pleased when you asked me to do the book. I didn’t really get it, and you were very patient with me to help me to figure it out. You had it in your mind and got me on the path. I am grateful to be in the book. I am also grateful to be a collaborator with Spirit of Success. I have heard lots of nuggets in this podcast that have given me a reason to upgrade my thinking. My whole perspective on this podcast is yes, leadership is converting your passion to profit, leadership is that pathway to success. Profit has more meaning than money. Money is the commodity we must have when we are in business. We must have that quantifiable financial result. You have given me some nuggets to think about. I really want to give you a final piece to give people a challenge, a tip, a closing thought as we close out this podcast. I’d like people to look at the book not only because I’m in there, but also because there are a lot of things I think are missing in the marketplace for leadership development. There are a lot of books on leadership out there, but there is not a book just like this one with the amount of resources. Linda, as we end this podcast, you have given us some valuable nuggets today. What do you want to leave people with, as we are ending this podcast? What is your wish for people? What impression do you want to give people as you leave this? Linda: You mentioned a couple times throughout our time here this morning that profit is an important thing, but these are important, too. I reflect back to some of the words that Ed had said in the strategic planning portion or human element of strategy portion of this book. That is: If you focus on these areas, if you get your people playing together correctly, if you have your vision in hand and people are writing for the brand, the profits will come. So we are not separate from profits. This is the foundation of surge in profits. It’s just another way of looking at it. Hugh: Linda Ruhland, Spirit of Success. The book is Amazing Workplace: Creating the Conditions that Inspire Success. It’s on Amazon. You can pick up a paper version. What about Kindle? Linda: Kindle is to come in the next week or so. Hugh: By the time this podcast hits the street, it will be live. I love Kindle. Linda Ruhland, thank you for making time to share your wisdom with the world. Linda: Thank you, Hugh.