Podcasts about greg you

In this episode, Greg and Nick review some of the hotel and flight awards that stood out for each of them in 2024 so they can determine the best of the best for their 2024 award travels. (01:06) - Bilt buy house benefit correction See the previous episode where Greg talked about the Bilt buy house benefit here. Read more about the Bilt Buy House benefit here. (02:42) - Greg's latest experience booking Preferred hotels with Choice points See the previous episode here. (10:17) - Greg: "You're a SAS EuroBonus Millionaire!” (11:56) - Nick: Yikes! (19:24) - Stephen: 1 more needs to be credited (21:32) - Business Platinum gains $200 Hilton credit! (29:48) - IRS temporarily displayed lower fees for paying taxes by credit card (32:04) - Should Greg mattress run 1 Marriott night? (37:24) - Alaska news Read more about Alaska Airlines launching premium card here. (41:48) - Waldorf Astoria New York now bookable with points and free night certificates. (44:22) - Greg's candidates for top awards in 2024 - flights (52:20) - Nick's candidates for top awards in 2024 - flights (56:59) - Best flight pick overall (1:00:32) - Greg's candidates for top awards in 2024 - hotels (1:11:07) - Nick's candidates for top awards in 2024 - hotels (1:21:05) - Beat hotel pick overall (1:22:54) - Other top experiences in 2024 (1:30:07) - Which airline would you prioritize to fly and earn miles with: American, United, or Southwest? 

Join Greg and Jacquie Francis as they dive into a family discussion about the importance of voting and educating the next generation on political participation. With the whole family present, including their children and even their dog, Molly, they explore how they started their journey into voting and the significance of aligning family values. Discover how they teach their kids to be independent thinkers, engage in meaningful conversations, and navigate societal influences. Learn practical tips on how to talk to your children about politics, faith, and the importance of making informed decisions. #FamilyValues #VotingEducation #IndependentThinking #VotingMatters #CivicEngagement

Join the best movies in space podcast around in this incredibly special Muppet episode! Wocka Wocka! You can find more of our podcast as well as the rest of our content on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GalaxyOfFilm.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠ You can follow us on Instagram, X, and TikTok @GalaxyOfFilm and subscribe to our YouTube channel, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Galaxy Of Film Productions⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.  Trailer for Goonies in Agony - ⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCFFSPy4I5A&t=6s⁠ You can watch our newest short film, The Artist.1996 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠right here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠-⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFsCn5UASQ4&t=59s⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The new show reel for "The Autograph King"⁠⁠⁠ -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1Yv7GPfY8Q&lc=UgxPu9jeiM9CiWUh8mt4AaABAg⁠ Follow our guest stars! Greg - You can find him on Facebook! Guy - His website - https://www.aguygilchristproduction.com/ Music made by Dakari Holder & Tyler Jansen Graphic design by MC Media --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/galaxyoffilm/support

Imagine captivating an audience, using words to inspire action and entertain. This week, seasoned speaker Greg Williams, with 25+ years of expertise, shares insights from transforming a nervous novice to a charismatic orator. As a congressional liaison for the U.S. Space Force, he emphasizes the importance of clear communication in bridging decision-makers and operators.Our personal struggles reveal that public speaking goes beyond delivering lines—it's about listening, thinking on your feet, and managing anxiety. Greg's illuminating insights connect public speaking to everyday communication, focusing on knowing your audience, asking the right questions, and recovering from speech hiccups. We explore the overlap between great leadership and effective communication, drawing examples from history and personal experiences. Learn to handle jitters, recover from mistakes, and gain techniques for focused delivery. Tune in and let's conquer the stage together with Greg's wisdom!NOTABLE QUOTES"It really helps out as we educate [members of Congregss], they see what the needs are and then they're able to make some decisions based upon those needs and budget." – Greg"There's an understanding element in communicating that closes that gap with regards to not only the person who's transmitting the information but, more importantly, the person who's receiving it." – Greg"The power behind being a great speaker is when people recognize that you can speak well, they want to be around you." – Philip"The more you can speak, the better you can speak, the more opportunities are going to come and the more impact that you can make by just speaking." – Philip"A lot of good leaders are good speakers where they want to motivate individuals, where they want to inspire individuals." – Greg“You should be communicating the way that they need to be communicated to." – Philip"The most critical skill to learn is that of the conversational piece and it's a two-way street—to ask questions in such a way that will carry on that conversation and be able to give a response to those questions." – Greg"I started making sure that I tried to be a lot more intentional in not just asking questions but also answering my own question for their behalf, and that way a conversation occurs." – Greg"That ability to be able to think on your feet is probably a lot more critical for most of us than just having a prepared speech." – Greg“A lot of times we tend to use our mouths a lot more than we do our ears, but I don't think it's an accident God gave us two ears. He wants us to listen more than he wants us to speak.” – Greg“I tell people, “Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.” Know your material back and front.” – Greg“The people who could give both good and constructive feedback to hold you accountable help you realize how to make that change.” – Greg“A lot of times we don't listen to ourselves. We hear ourselves but we don't listen.”  – Greg“Just pausing, allowing the audience to catch up with you, or, if you're making a strong point or a quote, stopping after that so that they can think through it and absorb it.”  – Greg“Having that pause allows the audience's brain to catch up. It allows your brain to catch up.” – Philip“The power of silence is key.” – Greg“Go out there and embrace that fear [of public speaking] and get some practice.“  – GregRESOURCESGregWebsite: https://www.gregvonwilliams.com/LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-von-williams-07ba974PhilipInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamphilipsessions/?hl=enTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@philipsessionsLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-sessions-b2986563/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealphilipsessions Support the Show.

DoorGrow recently partnered with Rocket Station VAs, a company that goes above and beyond finding the right virtual assistant for your property management business. Property management growth expert Jason Hull brings back Greg Brooks to talk about the new relationship between DoorGrow and Rocket Station and what's next for hiring in the property management industry. You'll Learn... [01:45] Why an Operator is the Most Important Hire [05:02] Rocket Station's Unique Process Mapping and Training [12:56] Why You Should Hire Virtual Assistants [15:11] Vetting and Filtering Hiring Candidates [21:25] The Kinds of Team Members PMs Need Tweetables “One of the big challenges that our clients have is they need operators. Like, this is the most important hire I think that any business will ever make.” “Most businesses don't even have a decent operator.” “A lot of the property managers out there, like if you wanted to map out your processes and systems and you were real operations-driven, you would've done it.” “If you're listening to this and you are still doing a bunch of stuff and wearing a bunch of hats and you already have a team, you have probably built the wrong team.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: The challenge with operators is in the us, they're expensive. These operators are usually probably minimum, like maybe 80 grand, and sometimes they want equity, you know, like they're not affordable to a lot of these property managers that hit that wall at maybe about 150, maybe 200 doors. And so we were like, how can we solve this challenge? And then it was like, well, maybe one of these companies could take VAs and we could find the cream of the crop and find those that could be operators. [00:00:29] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:01:06] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the bs, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:28] So returning to the show, I'm hanging out here with Greg Brooks of Rocket Station. Welcome back Greg.  [00:01:35] Greg: Yeah. Thanks so much for having us. I'll just look and say the last invite to this was almost two months ago to the day, so we're becoming like a monthly regular. I like it. [00:01:43] Jason: Cool. We'll just keep it going. So, we've been chatting and one of the big challenges that our clients have is they need operators. Like, this is the most important hire I think that any business will ever make in their business is to get some sort of person that can help them really get the operations going because a visionary CEO does not like dealing with operations. They're bad at it, and they try to do it, and they're always telling themselves, I need more processes and I need to do more stuff, and, and they're just not doing it. And so what we wanted to do is we had this crazy idea, maybe there'd be a company that could do operators, but do it in an affordable way. And the challenge with operators is in the us, they're expensive. These are people that are beyond the level of what you would normally pay for just a va or even an executive assistant, even if you hired them in the US. These operators are usually probably minimum, like maybe 80 grand, and sometimes they want equity, you know, like they're not affordable to a lot of these property managers that hit that wall at maybe about 150, maybe 200 doors. Maybe they're in 300 to 400 doors, somewhere in there. But they need this operator and they don't have it, and they are in the least profitable stage of their business they will probably ever be in some instances. Because they've maxed out on staff, they've got all these team members, they built the team incorrectly, and so they have a lot of people that are costing a bunch of money. And so we were like, how can we solve this challenge? And then it was like, well, maybe one of these companies could take VAs and we could find the cream of the crop and find those that could be operators. So that's, that's kind of the conversation I think we started to have. Does that sound right? [00:03:31] Yeah, sounds, sounds accurate.  [00:03:33] So what, what did we come up with? I don't want to do all the talking so.  [00:03:37] Greg: You're good. No. So I think the part where we kind of bonded, if you will, between our companies is that that whole process implementation. A. Having someone that can kind of run point on that for you and streamline those processes systems, like that's a huge gap as you're trying to hire that operator, right? You got to find someone, find someone who's affordable and they got to come in and help with the process and systems. So it kind of blended perfectly with how we deliver our services. Because we have a whole team of professionals from the operational standpoint who, you know, help our clients, help our our property management clients go through that thought process and create those documents and create those processes and point out, Hey, why do you do it like this? Did you know your software can automate that? So it blended nicely in terms of that level of expertise. And then when you talk about the cream of the crop, I mean, Obviously, I'm very biased here, but I feel like our, our virtual assistants are the best in the business from the training and the experience and, yeah, really the comprehensive onboarding that we put them through to where DoorGrow members can help leverage our eight years of experience in this space to help with the systems, the processes, the refinement, and then we can put a rockstar VA in there who can jump right into the seat and really be that operator that they need at a much more affordable rate. So it just seemed like how you guys delivered and what you were teaching and the hires and kind of the steps that you, you know, teach to your students, regardless of what level they're at, really aligned with kind of our philosophy in terms of how to hire VAs and find great talent. And so I think we're going to knock it out of the park.  [00:05:02] Jason: Yeah, there's a lot of synergy there. And you kind of breezed over it, but I want listeners, I want people listening to really recognize this, what's really unique that I found about Rocket Station-- and we actually just gave you a client as a Guinea pig. And he just commented in my group coaching call today, he was like, " they've been awesome already so far." Like he's really appreciating the process. I think what's really innovative or unique about what you do is your team will come in and actually start to map out processes in a flowchart, like you'll start to help them map out their processes. This is something that's so painful for them to do on their own. I hear it all the time. Like, "oh, well, I need to work on my processes." Cool, but why are you doing it? And they really, if they were the guy or gal to do it, they would've done it by now. Yeah, there's a reason why they have not done that. And so when you come in and start to do this with them, that's a game changer for them. And so I love that you do that. Not only that, but we have DoorGrow flow that we launched recently, which is a visual flow chart based software, so similar to like Lucidchart or Vizio or some of these tools. And so, on our last call that you did with our team where we were like sharing with our team what we were going to be doing, we're like, oh yeah, that's some other synergy, right? [00:06:14] So, we are excited to start to get some of your VAs trained in to learn some of our systems, some of our software tools that we have for clients that I think are really new and innovative to the industry. There's, I don't know of any other visual flow chart software for processes in the industry like DoorGrow flow, and then your team members can help them to start to get these processes mapped out, documented, but even more so, we want to get this person supported in our program for those that are in our mastermind, in our super system and train this VA that is going to handle operations and be an operations assistant, help them figure out how to run the planning meetings, how to run the cadence for the team communication that meeting structure we call DoorGrow os how to handle some of the hiring pieces. And this allows a very affordable solution and it can all be done through Zoom calls, you know, as a team, which is how I run my company. [00:07:12] And I think that it'll be a game changer for the industry because, One, there aren't operators out there that are really well trained. There aren't operators out there that already know some of these systems and different property management systems. Most businesses don't even have a decent operator. And so, one, to get these systems installed and two, to have somebody to do it, that it actually, the right personality fit, culture fit, and skill fit for that role, I think will be a game changer. So now you have your own vetting process. I think we talked about that a little bit on the previous call. Maybe you can share just a little bit for those that weren't on that or didn't listen to that podcast interview, like, what's kind of your process? How does that unique, and then I'd love to share how we're going to add to that with DoorGrow, another layer to that.  [00:08:00] Greg: Yeah, definitely. And I know from our side, our team, when we announced this partnership, they were like literally salivating, right? They love the process. They see it as like a triple win. It's like you guys have very structured systems and very, you know, structured teaching, which is great because then when you take that and turn it into processes and act as that resource for the client it makes that synergy where we're, you know, we're speaking DoorGrow, right? And we can really be there you know, in line with their journey, regardless of if they're at, like I said, 20 doors, a hundred doors, 500 doors, wherever they're at. But then also like the software, like you said, our, I know our team has already started to mess around with flow and, and like they love it. So just being able to speak the same language. Every part of the journey is huge. And then, yeah, our vetting process it's basically six weeks of comprehensive screening. I know something that I think we talked about in the last podcast, or maybe it was in the conversation with some of your team members, we're big on, on kind of the three checkpoints, right? [00:08:52] You got to have the experience, you got to be tested and vetted and evaluated based on your knowledge, based on your tactical and practical skills within property management, and then you've also got to be the right culture fit, right? You got to have the right personality to, you know, want to be that operator. Because like you said, a lot of the property managers out there, like if you wanted to map out your processes and systems and you were real operations driven, you would've done it. Like most property managers are visionaries and they've got big plans, and the day-to-day operations just isn't what they enjoy, and it isn't what, you know, gets them up out of bed every morning. So what we've done prior to any operator or really any position, right? We staff kind of across the board-- is it's six weeks of comprehensive screening, evaluation and property management specific training. And part of what our team's really excited about, that we're literally building as we speak is more DoorGrow specialized training so that, you know, we've got eight years of experience in the property management industry working with operators that are 25 doors. [00:09:52] Two of our largest clients are over 40,000 doors. So like all the scale and the bottlenecks and the little learning points, like we've seen it, we've done it, we've staffed to it. But what we're excited about is to now really dive in to the DoorGrow platform, whether it's on the software side, whether it's on the process side, and really customize that training even further. So from day one that that VA gets into the seat, they're right there in the thick of it with the property manager to be able to really help and be that operator that assistant, that the business actually needs so they can start taking advantage and scaling quicker than their competitors. [00:10:25] Jason: So we didn't talk about this on the previous interview, but our team got to see this. One of the things that really resonated positively about Rocket Station is you guys really are contribution focused and you really have a positive impact with the talent that you have in the Philippines and you're impacting, you know, things there in the Philippines. Can you just touch on some of the stuff that you do with schools and some of that kind of stuff just real quick?  [00:10:49] Greg: Oh yeah, definitely. And cut me off. I get too long winded here. Usually we're talking business and talk and shop, and I don't get to brag on our people and what they do in country. It kind of comes down to how we even deliver the service to. There's a reason we go through the process mapping, right? Talent is everywhere. It's global. We now live in a global workforce. Most of the time, property managers aren't able to really leverage VAs the way we feel like they can. Mm-hmm. Simply cause like there's no process, there's no training, there's no onboarding, there's no ramp up, there's no screening process. So that same commitment to set a VA up for success in their business life. We do the same thing with kind of our-- we have a program called Rocket Station Cares, where we're very intentional about monthly doing events in local neighborhoods, in local communities, in the local islands. All of our people are in the Philippines, so a country of 7,000 islands where we give back. [00:11:35] So I know you guys, what we kind of showed you a little video that that we had done where we had gone to a a school of 2200 students and we had donated not only our time, we did a whole day you know, volunteer effort where we played games with the kids and we we sang songs, but we also donated computers, printers. We donated over 500 tables and chairs to their classrooms because this school was a state funded school that was only supposed to ever house 800 kids. But the need there in that specific area, The population was almost 1500 that were at this school. So we're very intentional. We're like you guys. You know, we're a little bit bigger. We're about 2200 people all across the Philippines, but we're fully virtual as well. So like being intentional and realizing like, yeah, all of our people, they want great opportunity. They want a professional atmosphere, they want to work for a great client just like anybody does in their business journey, professional lives, but also being like, Hey, There's a huge sense of community, a huge sense of camaraderie, and we're very intentional with getting out into the community and volunteering our time and giving back to their local neighborhoods, their, you know, their local areas. And like I said, the team does it monthly. We go over there, the US side of the business goes over there about four times a year, and we really try to make it a big spectacle. You know, donating money, donating resources, but more importantly, donating our time and getting out there to really give back. [00:12:56] Jason: So I imagine that's a bit of a challenge is that a lot of people go get VAs thinking, one, they're like, I don't know what the VA could do, but I think we need some help and I want some cheap labor. And then they sometimes treat those people as like second class members of their team and stuff like that. And so I'm sure you run into that, I'm sure. Like you get some clients and you're like, man, I don't know if they're really treating our people right. One of the things I'm really excited about, I hopefully, you know, rocket Station's excited about this too, is we coach and train all of our clients on creating good culture. Like it's wired into what we do because I think it's one of the greatest secrets to us being able to scale businesses. We can get three times the output in a business from staff if there's good culture. And so we get this stuff really well dialed in with them. And so I would imagine, like, I'm biased probably, but I would imagine that doorGrow will provide some of the best opportunities for, you know, for your VAs to work at through our clients because they're going to have good culture, they're going to have strong values and it will allow you to match people that share those similar values. So it'll be great culture fits. Culture is not something you can create in a person. It's hardwired, like it comes from their parents, their religion, their experiences, whatever. And so we need to figure out with our clients, we figure out what are their top three or four company core values? We map out a client-centric mission statement. We map out their personal why. We map out their business, why we want the business owner to have strong clarity so we can start to build the team around the business owner. Because we see a lot of businesses come to us and they've built a team around the business, and the business owner is doing all the wrong stuff, and you can't build the right team around the wrong person. And so these business owners that are holding onto and doing a lot of stuff, That they don't enjoy doing. They are the wrong person. And then they built a team around that wrong person. And so that's why they have the wrong team. If you're listening to this and you are still doing a bunch of stuff and wearing a bunch of hats and you already have a team, you have probably built the wrong team. And so, reach out to DoorGrow, we'll help you clean that up, and then we can get you connected to our collaborative situation here with Rocket Station.  [00:15:11] So you have this six week of you know, taking them through training, making sure you have a process to vet and find the right people. I'm sure figuring out people that their language level of ability in English and all these kind of things, what we want to bring to the table DoorGrow. We have DoorGrow hiring and we have a process for matching people culturally, personality, and skill wise to a particular role. And then we also have this AI assessments platform that we've partnered with so that we can vet candidates to see if they have the cognitive ability or the intelligence and the personality traits through this AI assessment to be a really great operator. And so there's less guessing, and so this will allow us to identify from the candidates that you send over, which ones will be the cream of the crop that will really do a great job as an operator. So we're super excited about this. And you have plenty of people that we could feed through, I would imagine, and find who's going to be this great fit for this particular business. And it'll be far more affordable than 80 grand a year.  [00:16:17] Greg: So yeah, and the DoorGrow students are almost getting double due diligence. Cause like I said, we're big on that three-point system in terms of how we evaluate, because most say most clients outside of DoorGrow, they don't really have, it's like, Hey, let's go grab a coffee and see if you're good and I'll read your resume. Awesome. Hired so they're getting the typical due diligence that we do already from a personality profiling experience from practical assessments. And then we're putting the candidates through the DoorGrow hiring platform as well to really niche it down. So, like I said, we definitely have tons of people ready to get going. But we're, we're excited to really see it. because I think when you compare what the AI does and the data you guys already collect through your vetting, mixing that with what Rocket Station has, it's going to be really special in terms of really getting the right, like I said, get the right butts in the right seats. I think we're really going to be able to do that at super high level. For your team for your, you know members that are really looking for that operator to help springboard the company to the next level.  [00:17:09] Jason: Yeah, and you know, transparently, Rocket Station was not the only VA company we re reached out to. We reached out to several in the industry and we've talked to some about this. And you know, there may be some additional ones that we do in the future, but nobody had something as comprehensive that we've seen so far as to how you onboard clients. And this makes us feel safe giving our clients over to you. And we've actually, like Sarah's, like I want to do a hire through Rocket Station, so she's our operator and so she's been going through it and she thinks it's a really cool process and she likes that you guys are mapping out processes and asking really good questions. And so there's a level of depth there rather than just, Hey, do you like this person? And do you like how they sound on this audio recording and like here, like you can pay right now and get them started to work for you. Yeah. As if they're just some tool that you can throw into your business.  [00:18:01] Greg: Exactly. Unfortunately, a lot of providers in the industry, they're just placements. It's just you need someone? I got someone. Here, figure it out, right? Mm-hmm. And I think that's where we bonded right when we did the podcast and we first kind of connected and started to have kind of exploratory conversations. It was just like, oh, it is more comprehensive from how you guys deliver your services to your clients. It kind of very well meshed with kind of how we just genuinely feel. It's about setting people up for success. Yeah. And there has to be more that goes into it than just here, here's someone, let us know how it goes. Call us if it doesn't work. You know, it's, it's someone's livelihood and we really take that serious and we know the team at DoorGrow does and with your culture so excited to really kind of build that, build that partnership and add to it.  [00:18:41] Jason: Yeah, we're really excited. So, so for those that are listening people can get VAs through this partnership with Rocket Station and DoorGrow, we will have some landing pages set up. We have our DoorGrow hiring process. If you want to hear more about DoorGrow hiring. Which can be used for, you know, VAs or can be used for getting team members locally and getting the right three fits for your business. Check us out. You can reach out to us at doorgrow.com. Those of our clients that are in the Mastermind, or if you're interested in joining our mastermind, if you're in our super system, you get access to this. It's part of just what we do. It's included and you get access to DoorGrow flow, our process software. You get access to DoorGrow crm, our sales CRM software that's next level. You get access to DoorGrow os the planning, cadence and operating system that your operator's going to help you run the business through. And what else? There's some other things, but with this, you're going to have an operator that has the tools and the training because we do a weekly call supporting operators and helping them get these systems installed, helping them get the business moving forward. And so as part of our mastermind, you'll have this ongoing support to move your business forward and get the operations really well dialed in. And if you have a really good people system, a really good process system, which is, you need something more than just process documentation. You need a system that they are able to use and leverage consistently, and that's better than just checklists. And then you have a planning system. These three systems will make your business infinitely scalable. You can add doors as fast as you want to. You can do acquisitions, you can you know, go crazy, you can get BDMs and like stack doors like crazy, and your business will not break and your life will actually get easier and better by adding more doors because you have more resources, more support, and you know how to get good people, and you have good processes, and you have good planning system to keep everybody rowing in the right direction and organized. Without those three systems, adding more doors for a lot of y'all will probably just make your life worse. And so we're really excited to have this partnership with Rocket Station to be able to take our mastermind clients to that next level. So, anything else we should say about this? Greg. [00:21:00] Greg: Oh, I hope everyone's as excited as we are. I know we matched today for the announcement as well, so we're really coordinated. I mean, DoorGrow is on the same page right now, so no, we're, we're excited. Like I said, anyone, I know you'll have landing pages and I'm sure you'll have links to make sure all your people get routed correctly, kind of into, into the pipeline so that we can kind of get them going and get them set up with operators. But no, we're excited and if anybody has any questions, I mean, feel free to reach out to us as well.  [00:21:25] Jason: I think the last thing, just to be clear, This is not just for operators though. So, why don't you just touch on briefly, like what are some of the other roles that some of the property management businesses are getting VAs for? Yeah, definitely. And operators is typically not, historically, I've haven't seen anybody doing that, so this, that might be a little bit innovative and new, but I'm sure there's, you know, getting a personal executive assistant for the ceo. Which I usually recommend is like the first hire most people should be doing, and I've seen people that have no assistant, that have a bunch of team members. So there's that. And what else?  [00:21:58] Greg: I would say depending on your size and your scale, like an assistant property manager, right? Someone who can kind of field the maintenance, coordinate with vendors, coordinate with your own guys, the billing, the paperwork. Yeah. The one that we've seen a lot of our clientele, regardless of size jumping into is the leasing kind of administrative assistant where, I mean, maybe you still are the person that gets out there and is showing the property, but like all the paperwork, the follow up, even just prepping the listing, I mean, those are two really big ones. Yeah. In terms of property management is, has just been incredible the last three years, seeing the evolution kind of through covid and being more virtual. So yeah, if anyone's out there, obviously the operator position is something very specific to the DoorGrow community that we're really excited about and we're going to have a nice, a nice through line to get you the best people quickly. But if you're just needing staff, whether it's say on the maintenance, whether it is an executive assistant to give you some more time back in your day, whether it's on the leasing side, listing management, social media management, reach out because that's the bread and butter of what almost 2200 of our VAs are staffed out to our clients doing each and every day. And even if you don't have the process piece fully knocked out your maintenance process, your billing process, Don't worry, like we are there for you. You're running a business, you're running a successful business. What we find is for most people, the processes get stuck in the six inches between our ears. So our team is incredible at flushing that out. We'll build it all for you and then hire a rockstar to, to jump into the seed and, and take on whatever role, whatever role you need.  [00:23:26] Jason: Cool. Awesome. Well, I'm excited Greg. Thanks for coming on the podcast again, hanging out with me here and for matching my clothing. I appreciate that. Oh, same page. And we'll be talking soon. So until next time, everybody to our mutual growth, go to DoorGrow.com. Check us out and be sure to check out Rocket Station. Bye everyone. [00:23:47] Jason Hull: You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:24:13] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

How Meditation Helps People with ADHD with Greg Anderson Imagine being in the jungle for three years practicing meditation. You are not supposed to cut your hair, drink alcohol, or have sex. Would you be okay with that? Our guest today, Greg Anderson, went through meditation in the jungle for three years. He adhered to all the terms and conditions set by the spiritual healer. When he returned, he was a completely new person from how he looked and viewed the world. Grey believes that he got a new set of eyes that have helped him become a better person. In this episode, Grey will share his meditation journey, the different modalities of meditation, and how it has impacted his life. Also, he will share the businesses side of his life and help us understand how meditation can influence our decision making and  grow our businesses. Listen in and learn. Key Talking Points of the Episode: [00:38] Greg's three years of meditation in the jungle [03:35] How meditation has changed the way Greg looks at the world [07:44] The different modalities of meditation [12:25] Greg's experience with plant medicine [18:17] How three years in the jungle changed  Greg [21:11] What inspired Greg to start a software company? [39:01] How meditation helps people with ADHD Magical Quotes from the Episode: "When you're doing certain kinds of meditations, you're creating a strong mental muscle, so that when you need to focus."- Greg "It's great to be the idea person, but if you can't, as an owner, latch to an idea and see it through, you will give your team 15 new things to work on. None of them are going to get complete because you're less focused on something."- Greg "You need to go out and try to find the person that's already built what you want, even if it's only 95%."-Greg "Once you get super committed, you have a lot of opportunities to do less than what you're committed for."-Greg Relevant Links: Objection Crusher Cheat Sheet  https://www.coreythesalesceo.com/occsheet     https://www.coreythesalesceo.com/ocbookingpage  Please join my free Facebook group  https://www.facebook.com/groups/saleslegends/ Follow me at:  https://www.instagram.com/coreyberrier/  www.linkedin.com/in/coreysalescoach Connect with Greg Anderson: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrPl4lUyKV7hZxoTksQDsyg https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregwanderson/          

Summary: For the 10th and final episode of Propcast season 8, Louisa is joined by Greg Smithies, Partner and Co-Head of Climate Tech at Fifth Wall and Jonathan Schulhof, co-founder and CEO of FootPrint Coalition Ventures. They talk through their roles and what their funds are doing within the climate and sustainable technology space. They explain the growth and trends that they have seen in the market at the macro and micro level. Finally, they speak about what the future looks like and what we can personally do to reduce our carbon footprint. The key insight from this episode is the simplest thing you can do for the planet is to switch your thermostat down.  Resources: LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy LMRE YouTube Interviews Companies Mentioned:   Battery Ventures Coldwatt, acquired by Flextronics  Kleiner Perkins GE Conoco Turntide Motors Carbon Cure  Sidewalk Labs  Zero Acre Sealed     Shout Outs: Rob Soni, Executive Chairman, Founder, CEO & Investor Krishna Srinivasan, Founding Partner at LiveOak Venture Partners, Chairman of the Board at DISCO, Chairman of the Board at The Miracle Foundation Stephen M. Ross, Owner of The Related Companies Jeff Blau, CEO at Related Companies  Harvey Spievak, Executive Chairman and Managing Partner, Equinox Group Robert Downey Jr. Key Insights From This Episode:    Looking at climate tech today, the vast majority of them require some level of industrial tech. - Greg     The technologies we're investing in on the climate side are good for the planet, cheaper for the consumer and have higher returns. - Greg We might be in the golden age of climate and impact investing. - Greg We've had a washout of cleantech, 1.0 companies that weren't sustainable without subsidy. - John It is a travesty for the planet that for the last 20 years, the world's best and brightest went through, and spent all of their time doing ad click-through optimization. - Greg When you look at a problem that no one's looked at in the last 200 years, you can come up with some solutions that are cheaper, better and faster. - Greg  People are really looking and examining the food supply and thinking about how we can scale in a way that's compatible with the planet. - John 70% of the world's natural gas is burnt inside buildings for either powering them or heating them. - Greg Keywords: Climate Tech, Sustainable Tech, Future, Climate Change, Sustainability  About Our Guests: Greg Smithies, Partner and Co-Head of Climate Tech at Fifth Wall. Greg is a Partner at Fifth Wall, where he co-leads the Climate Technology Investment team. Prior to joining Fifth Wall, Greg was a Partner at BMW i Ventures where he led the Sustainability investing practice, investing in companies such as Prometheus Fuels, and PureCycle (NASDAQ: ROCH). Before joining BMW i Ventures, Greg led Finance & Operations for both The Boring Company and Neuralink simultaneously. Greg started his investment career at Battery Ventures where he covered early-stage enterprise technology startups, as well as industrial technology buyouts. Successful exits from his work there include Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), AppDynamics (acquired by Cisco Systems, Inc.), and IST (acquired by Scott Brand). Greg was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and currently lives in Oakland, CA. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School where he received a BS in Economics and a BS in Computer Science. Founded in 2016, Fifth Wall, a Certified B Corporation, is the largest venture capital firm focused on technology-driven innovation for the global real estate industry. With approximately $3.0 billion in commitments and capital under management, Fifth Wall connects many of the world's largest owners and operators of real estate with the entrepreneurs who are redefining the future of the Built World. Fifth Wall is backed by a global mix of more than 90 strategic investors from more than 15 countries. Jonathan Schulhof is co-founder and CEO of FootPrint Coalition Ventures, a digital publishing and venture firm he started in partnership with Robert Downey Jr., to back environmentally focused sustainable technologies. FootPrint is a cross-platform digital publisher that features sustainable technology in news and short form video content for social media, and long-form series for streaming networks. FootPrint uses its publishing activity to originate and add value to investments in high growth companies. FootPrint then makes these investments accessible to investors that want to join in our movement through funds and through co-investment syndicates. We invest in areas such as alternative proteins, biodegradable plastics, electric vehicle motors, and energy storage.   Jon has over 20 years of experience investing in clean technology startups.  He was a founder and lead investor in Motivate, which owned and operated Citibike and the other leading North American bike sharing systems (sold to Lyft).  He started Loom Media to finance the rollout of free public electric vehicle charging systems, and other smart city amenities sponsored by corporate media (now part of WPP).  Earlier in his career, Jon created ColdWatt, a high efficiency power 81 Piccadilly, Mayfair, London W1J 8HY electronics company (sold to Flextronics); and Glori Energy, a microbially enhanced oil recovery business (IPO).  In addition to his cleantech work, Jon serves as non-executive chairman of GTI Capital Group, a permanent capital investor in India.  Jon started this company while living in New Delhi from 2010 through 2012.  GTI's holdings include Air Works (aviation maintenance), Samhi (hotels), and WebEngage (B2B SaaS tools for ecommerce).  GTI has several prior exits including Brattle Foods (refrigerated logistics, sold to Future Group), National Stock Exchange (sold through secondary trades), Sandhar (autoparts, IPO), and Nova Medical Centers (healthcare services, sold to Apollo).  Jon was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and served on the Board of Northside Center for Early Childhood Development for 10 years.  He is now a mentor at iMentor.  Jon holds a law degree from Stanford, and attended Dartmouth College. About Our Host Louisa Dickins https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisa-dickins-ab065392/ Louisa started her career in property working at a well-known estate agency in London. Realising her people skills, she moved over to Lloyd May to pursue a career in recruitment. She now is a Director at LMRE, who are a specialist recruitment firm driven by PropTech and recruitment professionals, and Louisa oversees their 5 core areas. Louisa co-founded LMRE and provides a constructive recruitment platform to the new disruptors in real estate. Louisa is also on the board of Directors at UK PropTech Association (UKPA). About LMRE www.lmre.tech LMRE believe there is a better way to recruit. LMRE focus on a more comprehensive, client led focus delivering exceptional talent to the place at the time. They are passionate about the industry and passionate about people's careers. LMRE spend time with each client to become and an extension of the business, and their transparency and core values help them grow with the sector. LMRE simplify recruitment and innovate with our clients and evolve the people driven, PropTech community. Timestamps: [02:05] Greg, can you talk us through your journey?  Currently, I co-head the climate investment team at Fifth Wall.  I set up and founded the climate investing team for BMW.  Prior to BMW, I was an Elon Musk world for a number of years. I was head of finance and operations at two of his companies.  I started my investing career at a fund called Battery Ventures. [06:10] John, can you talk us through your journey?  I didn't set out to be a climate tech investor. I have a law degree from Stanford.  I started several companies that were venture-backed, the first was Coldwatt.  I started my first asset management company as an investor in India and set up a permanent capital vehicle for investing.  I partnered with Stephen M. Ross, Jeff Blau and Harvey Spievak and we turned around Citi Bike.   Finally, I set up Footprint Coalition with Robert Downey Jr.  [14:20] Greg, can you talk us through impact investing and how it's going affect our built environment?  Impact investing has historically gotten little bit of a negative connotation to it because in the capital markets people have always said there's real investing and then there is impact investing. A lot of these technologies that people used to think were expensive are now incredibly cheap. [16:50] John, in your 20 years, what major changes have you seen?  We've had a wash out of clean tech, 1.0 companies that weren't sustainable without subsidy. Technology is accelerating, the world looks nothing today, like it did 15 years ago. The talent that has followed the capital that is flooding into this market is truly amazing. [22:30] With technologies such as Carbon Cure and cross-laminated timber, it is expensive for buildings to put into practice and will the cost of these building be higher?  This technology is safer because these things are lighter and they're easier to transport. You need smaller foundations for the buildings and they naturally are able to band with the wind and high-rise buildings.  It's cheaper, it's better for the planets, your buildings go up faster and they weigh less.  We've got to climb up a little bit of a mountain when it comes to training engineers and getting permitting done. [24:50] John, you have experience in alternative proteins, can you expand on that and give an example of a technology in that space?  People are really looking and examining the food supply and thinking about how we can scale in a way that's compatible with the planet. We look for investments in areas where through alternative methods of production, we can create more denser sources of the very things that we need to eat and that are healthier and just better alternatives. Zero Acre Farms ferment in this case, vegetable oil and if you're able to do that you have a much more energy dense way of producing that food without having to go and cut palm forest.  [28:00] Is there something our audience could be looking in to play their part in the future of the built environment?  The simplest thing you can do, inside buildings is turning your thermostat down. What we need is to allow people to voice their opinions and give CEOs and the people who make policy decisions, the power and the space to change how they do business. [30:55] The ‘LMRE' part, Louisa asks the guests to talk about;  Lessons learned in your career Greg:  Catch me if you Can and Inventing Anna, these people were to do outstanding things because they had the moxie and the guts to try.  Greg: You fail at a 100% of the things, you don't try. John:  Never underestimate the power of human incentives. Mention a person, product or service Greg: Sealed.com John: My wife Rewarding parts of working in the space: Greg: When you work on anything in climate tech it is quite rewarding inherently because the, technologies you're working on are here to try and save the world. John: I love the community feedback.    What are you most Excited about for the future of the space?: John: I drove a 1968 Volkswagen bus and this one was kitted with a salvaged Tesla engine. Sponsors  Launch Your Own Podcast Kopus.com is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, and guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch jason@kopus.com

We are joined this week by Aon CEO Greg Case, who shares his thoughts on how Aon is heading into 2022 with more momentum than ever before. Greg discusses how the firm has expanded its ability to help clients and innovate at scale to address their emerging needs in an increasingly complex and interconnected world. Greg dives into the importance of inclusive people leadership and how creating an environment that fosters accountability and transparency is crucial to the success of Aon. He shares why he is inspired by Aon colleagues coming together to support each other during the COVID-19 pandemic and notes how this only proves the concept of Aon United – working together as one firm to shape decisions for the better and drive sustainable growth.[2:01] Greg shares a few of his biggest takeaways as the CEO of Aon. [4:08] What is Aon United, and why can it help us tackle the idea of “momentum never sleeps”? [7:00] With such an uncertain 2020 and 2021, why is Greg excited for what 2022 will bring? What does he look forward to in 2022 and beyond? [10:05] Greg shares how Aon is well positioned to help clients in 2022 and beyond, with greater opportunity, momentum and passion . [10:42] Why is inclusive people leadership so vital to the success of the firm? [14:02] What are the most important things our firm should be focused on to better serve our clients in 2022, as clients face more volatility and risk than ever before? [20:28] Greg discusses how distributed problems require integrated solutions. [22:07] What are some of the personal and professional takeaways Greg has come upon throughout the pandemic? Additional Resources:The One BriefAon United BlueprintOverview of Aon client needsAon's websiteTweetables:“Momentum never sleeps.” - Greg“You've got to be actively leading, working together and supporting each other to strengthen the firm, or your firm doesn't grow.” - Greg “Leading organizations foster and nurture individual development and excellence, but they also celebrate collective achievement in so many ways.” - Greg “Aon is in the business of better decisions. We're literally helping clients address a very complex world and make better decisions because we can provide insight and guidance that no one else can to support their businesses.” - Greg“We see the power of inclusion; we see what it can mean for us.” - Greg 

Lessons on managing stress and anxiety in high-pressure jobs, illnesses and transitions; on how to go after what you really want, not away from what you don't want; on how to back yourself to make a successful transition; and much more! Greg talks to Gareth Fryer, the co-Founder and co-CEO of Fika, the up-and-coming mental fitness app and start-up.Gareth' burn-out led him to quit his job as a partner in a consultancy and give up an earn-out. He learnt to manage stress and anxiety by building emotional literacy. He followed his purpose by building a startup that focuses on solving the root-causes of mental health issues. While growing a family and his young startup, he fought back stage 3C Melanoma cancer. Key LearningsHow to manage the stress of cancer, high-pressure jobs and transitions before it manages you“The inevitable challenges of life happened to me through my career and struggling with anxiety and fear, making myself feel all the time like, "why are you stressed? Why are you anxious? You're under so much pressure, but just don't be stressed, just don't be anxious!" And taking on more and more as we built the company and getting to the point where I just had to walk away from it all, to be honest, I didn't recognize it as burnout at the time. I just knew I was done and I had to leave and do something else. I was just at a point where I felt like I just didn't want to do that anymore. Irrespective of the financial benefit or the great things we were doing as a team. It just got to a point for me where my own state of my mental well-being was something that I'd never really paid attention to. As a typical bloke, I'd always just been, oh, I'm fine. Feeling anxious and stress wasn't the problem. It was not being able to understand how to classify those emotions and not having the right toolkit to manage them and being a bit illiterate in my own understanding of mental fitness to be honest. That led me to need to leave and seek different avenues and do something more meaningful.”“The stress comes from how you take those challenges and then are able to either prioritize them or put them into opportunities. And for me, it obviously sounds really easy to say now, but that's been a long period of reflection and to recognize that.”“"Fear is a waste of a perfectly good imagination." You could put the fear on what if it doesn't work, the reality is, I backed myself. If it didn't work, I'd do something else. So much that you train your mind to not focus on that output and put your energies instead into “How are we going to make it work?”“My job was literally thinking about what could happen, what might happen from what could go wrong. What if with multiple spinning plates? How do they all connect? So I always felt really anxious because I always saw all of the things that could be done and all of the things that could happen, what I now know. And what I've learned is that anxiety is nothing bad. That anxiety was, I was manifesting it badly, but anxiety is part of your limbic nervous system. It's how you think about consequences and plan for the future. So actually I've recognized that perceived weakness has a direct line to what actually is one of my biggest strengths. I'm no more or less anxious. The framing of it, the volume of it is completely turned down because it doesn't, it isn't a negative emotion for me anymore. It's an acceptance of, an emotion that I've flipped into a positive because it is a key driver that helps me do what I do, but that's the journey that, the Fika journey that I've been on. And it sounds again, easy to say now, but it's been five years from the point of leaving to now to really go on that emotional journey to learn these things for myself.”Greg: ”What advice would you give to people who want to make a change, but are afraid of making the steps to change?” Gareth: “When we're facing any period of challenge or transition, we feel anxious. We're supposed to, it's an evolutionary response, thinking about the consequences of what might happen, that's normal. And that's actually nothing bad. Worrying about what might happen is a completely normal evolutionary response. It doesn't mean anyone is ill. It just means we're planning for what might happen. We feel a bit stressed because that's our performance mechanism kicking in, helping us get ready to face the challenge. And it's that difference between positive and negative stress, and chronic and acute anxiety. And actually when we are in a state of positive stress, it's as if we have the tools and resources to overcome or to do the things that we think are facing us. And that's positive stress, it's the motivator. And one of the best ways to focus on those positive stress is by looking back on previous situations. So we, we typically we are tuned to focus on the negative, to think about the worst that could possibly happen. That's our brains. And actually most of the time, things turn out better than we expect. That's what the science shows us. So we are tuned to be negative, even though generally things turn out better than we expect them to generally. In those periods of transition, you cannot predict what's going to happen. It's physically impossible, or you can do is look at the things that. Where have you experienced this situation or similar situations before? Where have you faced at the unknown? Where, how, and actually, how did you react in those situations? Because the chances are, that's how you'll react again.”“We all think we have to be confident before we do. The science is the exact opposite. You only get confident as a result of going through those transition periods and the more you do it, the more your self efficacy builds, the more confident you feel, and the more then you push on from that. But so this whole thing of confidence before action. Is not the way that we work. We have to go through the challenge. We do the challenge, and then we feel more confident. So drawing back on previous experiences where you've gone through those challenges probably ended up better than you expected, because most of the time they do and use that as your motivator to go through those challenges.”Greg: “transforming stress from an inhibitor to a motivator. How do you do this?” Gareth: “I'm not a psychologist. We work with psychologists and our platform is the place where you get this training. I think part of it is a it's about awareness of what stress is and where stress comes from and how we are so attuned in our society that we are told so regularly that stress is bad and it can be as simple as, starting to think that actually, if you're understand what stress is: your mind trying to get you ready to perform effectively. That's what stress is. So if you then think about that, it is energy. It is momentum and energy that your mind is creating to point you in a direction to perform. You can point that stress any way you like. And the other thing that is the was one of the key drivers for me, again, I'm not the scientist. So I, I tend to use quite simple frameworks because I'm a simple person. But my biggest problem was I used to feel like all of these things were like blaming the things for happening to me. So I'm stressed because I've got too much work. I'm stressed because these people said something at X point, which did Y which may, there's just so much in it. I'm stressed because of all of these things that are happening. Yet if you compare that to the physical space, we tune our feelings of poor fitness onto ourselves. We don't blame the Mars bar for as eating it. We blame ourselves for eating the Mars bar. Yet in the physical space, we blame the external driver for impacting our stress. Both of those things are our own responses to external stimuli. So when it comes to stress it's, the, these factors are happening. Your body has become aware of them. Your mind is thinking and getting you ready, anxiety kicking in thinking of all the consequences, stress is there to help you like attack them. It takes work. And there are exercises and practices that you can do to just work on channeling that stress. Really simple tasks like don't do lists. Like we're always so focused on our to-do list. Here's the list of all the things, million things I've got to do. And my God, the list is getting longer and longer and longer. Really simple flip on that is just focused on the things you're not going to do, because if you really focus your mind on the things I'm not going to do, you can then start to clear some of that prioritization and workload. And none of these things are complicated. Solution-focused therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, sports psychology, positive psychology, they're all rooted in generally basic or simple constructs that if we practice those constructs regularly, we have positive outcomes. The problem is we assume it's time to expect quick fixes it's like saying I'm going to go to the gym once and lose three stone. Then we're like, mental fitness is as hard as physical fitness. You have to work on it all the time. So yeah, I think the answer to your question is there reason to quick way to do that. It is a way of framing your mindset over a period of time and continual reinforcement and continual reflection to remind yourself because we're also fighting nature. We have to remember, we're fighting our own evolutionary nature that evolved for a situation that humans are not now in. So that obviously isn't something, a switch you can just flick because you have to tune it.”“If you take founding a startup, COVID stage 3C melanoma diagnosis halfway just before the pandemic started. So a year into getting a startup off the ground, my cancer diagnosis. I was doing okay before that, but ironically that diagnosis, which has been the most difficult period for me in my entire life. When you Google it and the stats are like 25% chance of seeing your daughter turn 10. Like being alive in 10 years time, pre lots of fantastic new treatments that exist. You can't help, but take an even deeper reflective state on how you manage, and what's important to you because I've had that a bit before, but then that was a real different mindset shift that only happens in that kind of unique situation. Actually what I practice is now as a result of what is the biggest predictor of our long-term mental health status, according to the WHO. According to the world health organization, if you are literate in your mental health, if you have literacy, you are healthier in the longterm, just because you practice healthier habits and you understand how it works. So you know how I live it myself. I make sure I take the time to reflect. I know the tools that work for me for my area. So I know that like meditation, mindfulness has never been a thing that works for me. It's just not, it's not something that I find useful. That's okay. But to manage my anxiety, like gratitude. I'll give you the real simple articulation of that: the fear of that diagnosis. The fear of not seeing my daughter grow up, the fear of not being there for my wife, not being there for my family is the worst fear. I hope - touch wood - I hope that is the worst fear I ever experienced because God forbid anything to my wife or my daughter, et cetera. That is the most negative thing. But if we understand the root cause of fear being a driver of anxiety to protect the things that we have, that we care about. And then having that much fear, not seeing my daughter grow up, not being around for my life, not my family, my friends, et cetera. Those are all amazing things. Those are things that I have that I'm afraid of losing. So again, it's just that mindset shift that you can flip that fear into a positive emotion, by understanding that fear is a manifestation of what we have to lose. So the being afraid of losing it, isn't going to change whether you're going to lose it or not. So possibly focusing and practicing and being grateful on the ability to have those things while you have them is huge. And that, again, sounds so, so easy to do, but it's really hard. I'm a stoic northerner. The first time people talked to me about gratitude practices, like whatever. And the first time we try and do it, it's really hard. It's a practice. Like everything. Once you get into it, it takes time, but it has real benefits if those are the sorts of exercises that work for you as an individual, because everyone's different.”“That [the stage 3C Melanoma diagnosis] was like a sledgehammer through my entire life. It was like the biggest bomb you could ever drop. That was such a moment. Something that seismic in your life just causes a series of chain reactions that just keep going and going. That just drove me to be really focused on why we're doing what we were doing and practicing what we preach. Cause my whole, our whole thing, is around training for life before it happens. So almost proving a bit of a use case through myself that while you've been doing this for a year and a half, what things have you got in your armory to help you deal with this thing? That really actually, if anything, sharpened my ability, because I had to, with COVID, with the diagnosis, with the business I had to yeah, had to keep going because we have people that work for us. I care about those people greatly, we've got an amazing team, family, et cetera, but it was just a factor of necessity. It was no, there's no like great kind of philosophical moment or anything. It was just like, I'm an action orientated person. So we could sit, I could sit and still, or I could just keep going. And my approaches is keep going and use what tools I've got around me to keep going as best as I can. But yeah, it was, yeah, it's impossible to describe how much of a change that was. But at the same time, I've always, I always feel after these things, like there is always someone worse off than me as well. There are plenty of stories that were a lot worse than mine, and I don't share these stories for sympathy. They're just, I think measures of, life has its ways of getting into all of those positive and negatively throughout all this journey that we're all on. And we can help people prepare for it better so that they can cope with it when it happens.”“We talk about it as the startup roller coaster, because it's highs and lows and highs and lows, and you've just got to take the highs and bank them while they're there.”“"The only run you regret is the one you don't do." I'm training for the London marathon and I'm running it for cancer research. If you're maintaining that optimistic mindset, if you have the right mindset, you can't really make a wrong choice. You've got to back yourself to make the most. It's like back to that acceptance and commitment. It's once you've made a decision, you've made the decision and then you have to make the most out of that decision. I definitely don't think it's right to say to someone: "you should definitely leave and set up something and do it all by yourself!" because that is definitely the individual's call to make. I think what we do and what I was definitely really guilty of was letting that desire to want to do something impact what I did every single day as a negative driver, like being unhappy because I want to work for myself. Carrying that sort of negative harboring through your life, isn't healthy for anyone. If anyone did anything: "don't waste time thinking about what decision you're going to make, make a decision commit to that decision, and then say, I'm going to review that decision in a month's time, but then don't let yourself be beaten up by that decision for the next month."Go after what you want, not away from what you don't want! “I am inherently competitive as a person. I'm an only child. So the worst thing is I've only ever competed with myself, which is horrendous because you can't win. And so I've always felt this burning desire that I wanted to do something for myself. But I lacked the confidence, but I then found myself always frustrated. I felt like quite naively, I just needed to be my own boss because I felt like I just, that was what I wanted to do for myself now with some reflection and hindsight, and actually my ability to manage my emotions better, actually the thing that I have always wanted isn't to be my own boss. It's about being in control of the problems. I like having that ultimate accountability and responsibility for the problems, because then I can decide how we treat those problems or pass on those problems. I'm not, so it's actually not about the glory and the success and all of those things.”“When Nick's best friend Ben died by suicide, that was a real driving force for Nick to start thinking about this space. I'd always been passionate about this space, but I didn't have that trigger at that time because this was a couple of years before. So Nick had been thinking about ideas, approaches things that could happen. And we both then decided to leave and ended up, available. What we actually did first was we set up a design consultancy business. So the two of us set up a design consultancy. We had clients, we had friends, we had contacts and actually in six months, that was going really well. We, we'd got some contracts, we were doing some work, but Nick had this thing on the side that was the real passion. We talked about it a lot. It was something that I was really passionate about doing as well, because it's a meaningful goal. And so as a result, what we decided to do was slowly wind down the consultancy business. I kept working in the consultancy business with some of our clients to enter the end of those contracts whilst putting that money from that into Fika to help us get Fika off the ground, to help us create our investment case, to get our first seed funding. So what we did was create a new business, but very quickly decided that we were just doing the same thing that we'd both always done and that wasn't thing that we wanted to do, even though it was going well and then decided to wind that down, but use the proceeds from it to invest it into bringing Fika up to the same level so that we could kick on and raise seed.”“When I was deciding what it was that I wanted to do next, there was obviously the driving thing of, I want to do something that we get well renumerated for, because I have a family and I want to provide for the family like everyone does, but then it wasn't taking me of the boxes of the Ikigai around doing something that the world needs, et cetera. And actually to be honest, the problem is it's probably not going to tick the financial one for a long time. And that's going to be difficult for myself, for the family, but do I believe that the long-term investment will catch up.”“I wanted to feel like I was in control. I wanted to be in control of the surroundings that we were in. As a strategist, it's about controlling the controllables, planning for them. So anything that therefore was outside of my control, I had a real problem. With the left-field things, because I just didn't have that frame of reference of how to manage that anxiety mechanisms. So the real driver was more that I'm never going to be happy unless I'm in control of all the controllables. That isn't true. That was nonsense. If I was back in that role now with what I know now, I wouldn't feel like that because I have a better way of managing those emotions. It was the right outcome, but driven from completely the wrong place. It sounds so arrogant to say it now. I can do it differently. I've got a plan. I want to do it like this. I think every person who starts from business will say they have a drive of how they think they want things to be. It was really manifesting for me as a desire to get away from things that I thought I didn't like. Whereas now, I understand this. There's nothing to do with getting away from things that I thought I didn't like. It was actually about the things that I, how I want to work and how I wanted to work. I thought I had to be in “control” inverted commas to feel like that. That's just not true. I have the benefit of hindsight of learning that now.”Greg: “You said earlier you stepped out of a business where you were a partner because it was just too much and it was a burnout that you would not have recognized then. How did you take that decision to step out? Can you just share a little more about this because that's stressful as well to just step out and you missed on an earn-out you mentioned earlier.” Gareth: “I left partway through that, which was a big thing. I was the only person that left partway through that. I'm not going to say that was planned. It wasn't, the intention was always to try to stay through the earn-out, see where it went. There were lots of opportunities there. None of this is a reflection on the organization. It was more reflection on me and my management of myself which I now know. And it wasn't a conscious decision of right now is the right time. It was, it's gotta be now. It was a, it just reached a point with workload and things happening and how I felt and what was going on in life. And it was just one day where I just went home and said to my wife "I'm not doing this anymore." And I resigned the next day. There's a series of things that happened. It's easy to say the straw that broke the camel's back. it was just one of those things where there was just a collection of things that happened over a period of time. That got to a point where I just made the decision that I was unhappy. I was unhappy in my own mind, more so than anything else. And whilst I could have carried on being fine in inverted commerce and doing well. I wasn't feeling well. I was just tired and I just didn't want to do it anymore. And so there was no great strategy or plan. I'd always wanted to do something different and do something for myself, but I'd never felt brave enough to take the leap. And then one day it was just time. And I just decided that that was time.”“I look back on it from a position now with hindsight and think that actually, that was just emotionally immature in terms of the understanding of those drivers and the emotions, the reasons why everything is the way that they are. Yeah, it drove me to a decision, but the decision wasn't driven from a healthy place or the right reasons at the time. And if I was the person that I am now, I probably wouldn't have left to be honest. You can say whether that's a positive thing or a negative thing, I don't know.”As you prepare for a transition, back yourself! That will give you the peace of mind to see and seize more opportunities! “I didn't leave knowing what I was going to do. I left because I've always backed myself in any situation that if something comes up, I'll make the best of it. And I left, didn't know what I wanted to do and decided I would see what opportunities came my way. And, Fika presented itself as an opportunity between Nick and I. It ticked a lot of boxes. Something that I'm really passionate about and, the rest is history.”“So at the time I just got married and obviously my wife and I were talking about starting a family, et cetera, but I knew I wanted to leave. So we actually said, let's not start a family yet, because that was me about unlocking my own motivation that I knew that if we then did decide to start a family, it would make leaving so much harder because the idea of walking away from the income and the salary, all of the safety that comes from that, I probably wouldn't have done it, if that had been something that we were doing at the time. The planning to get there had been something that I was always going to do. It was just a figure of when I did it.”“We'd sold the company I was in previously. I made some money out of that, but I walked away from the remainder of the earn out, but my discussion with my wife and with my friends was that modest amount of money I could put into savings and ISAs. Or I could invest that money in paying my salary for 18 months. So as an investment in a future where I backed myself to turn that money into something more meaningful and more valuable. So it's a bit of an easy thing to say, but I didn't have the risk associated with necessarily with the financials side of it. Cause I had a bit of a cushion to give me that confidence to, to take that leap, which is always a massive motivator for people. So we shouldn't take that lightly. But it was a very conscious decision that was an investment. So it was that money that had been made from lots of years of effort before was invested in paying ourselves to get this off the ground. That's what I mean by a decision not taken lightly because you can look at years of effort to get some money through business sale to then turn it around and put it straight back into doing something else.”Other bits of wisdomInnovation and setting up a startup: “If you look at who really owns ideas and where ideas come from. I co-founded Fika with Nick. Fika is a concept for something that Nick had been thinking about for some time. And we talked about it as friends, and that became something that we decided to found together. Anyone who's worked in innovation and product creation, you can have all the ideas in the world, the ideas, aren't the thing that make it work. Because actually the idea you think is the right answer usually isn't the right answer. Anyway, it's the how, your approach to the learning and the innovation.”How to have a successful career: “There's some great research from Shawn Achor, which looks at the three things that predict 75% of our career successes. Only 25% predicted by our IQ. Those three things are your ability to use stress as a motivator rather than inhibitor. In those periods of transition, can you channel that stress into a positive motivator, the ability to maintain an optimistic mindset. So use that anxiety, but harness it positively as actually, I'm going to turn this challenge into a positive driver for me. And then the third one is the ability to build a strong support network around you? Who can you call on? Who can you draw on? Who has expertise? What are the positive influences that you can put around you to give yourself that buffer through the transition period? And if you do that naturally, and this is all scientifically evidenced stuff, that is how you can build your self efficacy, your self confidence, your self belief through that transition.”On the positive impact of purpose, meaning and positivity on one's self-efficacy: “Meaning can be quite an abstract term. People when you say meaning, think "what's the meaning of life?". That's not what we mean by meaningful. Meaning is really about finding the value in everything that you're trying to do that relates to what your values are, how you want to act, where you want to see yourself, where you want to be. Meaning is linked into positivity because, if you're able to maintain your optimism, your positivity, you find more meaning in the things that you're doing. You're able to maintain that optimistic mindset. Ultimately our evidence base is around building self-efficacy. If you're able to find the meaning in the things that you're doing, it then does help towards those measures of self-efficacy because you're reinforcing to yourself that you're layering on additional bills towards the values, the goals, the things that you want to achieve with your life. It's really just the way of thinking about decisions and actions.”

Max: Hello and welcome back to the Recruitment hackers podcast. I'm your host Max Armbruster and today I have the honor and privilege of hosting the legendary Greg Savage, who is a principal at the savage truth, a great source of industry commentary on the recruitment and staffing world. Welcome to the show, Greg.  Greg: Thank you Max. It is a pleasure to be here and I think you may have gone a bit big with the word legendary but fine let's all say it then why not. Max: I was told it was legendary when I came down under. I don't know if your brand recognition is as powerful and in all timezones but certainly, in my timezone, it applies. Greg: Well I mean I don't know about brand recognition or anything like that but prior to COVID I used to go to a lot of speaking tours around the world and if you watch the calendar of those speaking to us it always seems to coincide very fortunately with international rugby matches and football matches. But, I can turn up in Manchester or Singapore or Cape Town and we will get three or four hundred recruiters turning up and it's actually a story I tell about brands, because at the end of the day. I'm actually just an aging unemployed extra crud art, and yet I can go to most cities in the world, people will turn up the list, and pay money, still astonishing. Max: Amazing. Well done. I must say. I read your bio you come from Cape Town, right? Greg: Obviously yes. Max: Yes, I made my way to Cape Town or Joburg three years ago to the future of talent event, and it was on my bio I had San Francisco on it, and that opened the doors to the front stage for me and there was an international cache to bring in CEO from an international destination and I was too happy to latch on that. But, yeah, I guess today, the borders are down, the frontiers are down. Everybody can build their brands at the global level because even the advantage of being able to afford a plane ticket isn't an advantage anymore, so there's no more barriers to entry. Greg: That's true. The only barrier to entry into building a brand is that it's very very hard work. And you've got to have a few things in your kit bag including something useful to say, an ability to say in an interesting way and I think then. And if you're consistent and long term. People often say to me, "Well, you're lucky Greg you've got this brand". Well, I've been blogging every week for 15 years mate, 15 years, and videos and Twitter and LinkedIn. So, it is hard work. But the rewards. I've tried to teach my recruitment companies that I advise them there are, and recruiters, that there are devilish rewards to amplify your brand. As long as your inr real life brand is good, you can amplify it online, you can't finish it, long term anyway because people will blame you and call you out. If you're not if you're not authentic. Max: So authenticity, okay prerequisite. How about having something interesting to say, some people will, maybe, of course, most people don't have your experience or humbly I may say, my experience. I'm on the wrong side of that equation right and I've got 20 plus years of work experience myself, so for those in their 20s and 30s, the imposter syndrome must feel so overwhelming. How do you have the balls to pardon my expression. Well it's my show, so I'll pardon, to go out and start to brand yourself as a thought leader. Was there a special moment in your career where you thought okay now I can start to take the front stage, or how did this moment of revelation come to you? Greg: Well, I'm not a great example but I've got some good, I mean that's a great question you asked about authenticity and imposter syndrome, and have I got something to say. Prior to building an online brand I've been in this so long I spent many many years standing on stages at conferences and I really had a bit of kudos around having something to say or maybe that kudos was in my mind, but I thought it had something to say and I had a lot of experience, even when the internet started, so it was a little bit easier for me, but let's come to your point, two little anecdotes. I often find myself walking down the street and a recruiter will stop me, someone I don't even know, and say, 'Hey, I like your blog' and then I go, 'Oh, that's great. And then they say, 'I don't actually agree with you. But what I like about it is, I know what's your point of view, and I love the fact that you tell it the way you see it and that gets me thinking, so you don't have to always try and be I'm not suggesting you be controversial or rude or anything like that. But people value authenticity, they value a point of view. That's the first thing. The second story is about having that same conversation that you raised about. Do you have the balls to do it, etc. With a young recruiter, well she's an experienced woman with a couple of years experience as a recruiter and I was talking to her about her brand and she said, Greg, I've got nothing to say, who would want to listen to me? And I say, well tell me this, what's the biggest frustration you've got with your clients right now and she said, they're taking too long to make decisions. They say they are desperate for talent and then they drag. Max: Sorry Greg, your mic is off. Greg: Oh! I don't know why. Max: You're back now. Greg: Just when I'm telling a great story. I don't know if you're going to cut this or whether you want me, where should I start again with that one? Max: Yeah, we can cut this off, for sure. So Greg you were saying this lady was giving you an anecdote, you had an anecdote about a lady who is saying. Greg: The short version was that she believed she had nothing to say. And I asked her what her biggest bugbear was with a client she said was taking too slow to make decisions and I said, that is an insult. That's the story, just write two paragraphs, it was a LinkedIn post she wanted to write. She wrote a couple of paragraphs about how while she encourages her clients to be fairer, we've got to move the process, otherwise, we lose the best candidates which is true. And it got traction and people commented and I said that's what we did, you do have insights, and my message to a lot of recruiters is you think you don't, but actually you're in the market 365 days of the year, you're talking to candidates, every day. You've got a view. You've got a narrative, you've got a point of view that's valuable. And that's what I comment about. I think too many people on social media are trying to be funny, trying to be provocative. I don't think that's the way to go. I think you've got to be adding value, which reflects on your expertise so that I think is how we got to build a brand in a professional field. Max: There is something about a great family name Mr. Savage and you wrote that one for a long time. I'm just reading the Elton John biography right now. He came up with that name because he thought he had a name that didn't work well to be a rock star. But I guess, for me, that's your brand, your brand is savage, your blog is the savage truth, and it just is very punchy, it's very direct.  Greg: I didn't create my name like Elton John. My name was Reggie Duag, my name was Greg Savage from the very beginning. And I don't think my personality was formed around my name. I think it's just good. If you've got a name like that people are going to ask questions about it and make jokes about it. As I've encouraged my children to do is to embrace it because it's memorable. And in the case of the blog it just seems like the obvious thing right to the savage Andrews I like to speak directly and that's what people like so. Max: I was thinking about what you said for these recruiters who tried to be funny, and instead of trying to be truthful sometimes or direct. I suppose the industry would tend to attract people who are pleasers, who want to be popular, who don't want to make enemies, as opposed to, maybe truth-tellers or people who embrace a more ideological kind of debate, who are willing to take one side of the debate that naturally the industry we kind of attract people who are matchmakers, if you will. So maybe that's why the industry sometimes lacks a little bit of honesty because people are just too afraid to accept their clients. Greg: Well I think it's a good point and I don't believe that we want recruiters as I mentioned, to try and be provocative, or try and be controversial, or to be profane, or to push the boundaries in that way I don't think that's what I'm saying and I don't even advise. I started blogging when I was running my recruitment company. I was actually working for Quint at the time, which was American digital marketing as an international CEO, and then out of that we started, we did a management buyout and I was running my own company fiber and we had to build that brand, this was in about 2010. We had to build that brand without any money because it was a startup and we went to eight countries. So we didn't use what was at that stage the beginnings of social media almost and was very successful and at that point, I was much more careful about the things that I would say because I was trying to build a recruitment business. I am still very careful about the things that I say, but I'm not that concerned if someone doesn't agree with it. I think that a recruiter doesn't have to be provocative. What that secret is that most people go on social media Max, with the mindset, what can I get from it, which I understand, what can I get jobs, fame. You actually want to go on with the mindset, what can I give. Generosity is the fundamental plank upon which a social media brand is built. And I spent hours preparing once every week, hours with videos, hours answering questions. And yes, there is something in it for me, as I've explained, but you give to get and give insights, connecting people, sharing information with people. That's how you build a brand, and I don't think you are in fact still being a people pleaser by doing that is the avenue you want to look at it from. I'm really referring to people posting pictures of cats and trying to compare them to a recruiter's license. I mean, for Christ's sake I am not interested in it. This is bullshit. Max: Yeah gimmicky stuff. On LinkedIn, if anytime I see something with more than 5000 likes. You know, alarm bells go off. This is clickbait stuff and it pisses me off personally. There's a lot of that going on. Great. Well, I hope it's not like that. There are a lot of thought leaders quote-unquote thought leaders in the industry, and we don't want to encourage every single recruiter out there to do that either. Of course, you can be a listener you don't all have to grab a mic, like I did, but for me I get great joy out of talking to people like you Greg and everybody else who comes on my show, and it's an opportunity for me to travel without traveling in a year when I've been locked in. This year has been a transition in the recruitment industry, which used to be a lot of in person meetings and a lot of building relationships, whether you're doing executive level hiring or you're talking to your customers, most of that is gone now. So, I've read an article in the Harvard Business Review and then said that the new leaders of the post COVID world are more introspective are more introverts are better at writing and more analytical. So, kind of, not the traditional qualities we would imagine from your prototypical recruiter. Would you agree with that assessment and what do you think are some of the qualities that are necessary in 2021 for recruits to thrive? Greg: I think there's a natural tendency to view leadership through the prism of where we are right now. And you got to understand that we all have to understand that we're on a journey when COVID started. People were saying to me after a month or two, how far are we through it, and well a blog on it actually and I'd say like I don't know but I reckon we're on a marathon and a marathon is 42 kilometers and if you want me to tell you my feeling is we're on a kilometer five, everyone was shocked. In this country, we have a state New South Wales 10 million people, we've had zero cases of COVID for 23 days straight, there is no one in the state with COVID but one human being. There might be one locked in quarantine when coming from overseas. So we're having meetings I'm in my client's office today. I've had a meeting all morning where we can go see people.  Max: Right.  Greg: So, my point is precisely that Harvard Business Review that said that no I don't agree with that. I actually think that a good leader right now in my city, for example, is actually coaching and mentoring people to get back out in front of people. Here's the irony. The differentiated recruitment down now is those people who do go and engage, because it can be on zoom, can be on the telephone, can hardly be by email but it's better face to face, not everybody but we can do that. And so leadership, to my mind, is, if you want me to sum it up, leadership coming out of post-COVID is a cocktail, a blend of empathy mixed with accountability. I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about in the middle of COVID one of my clients said to his staff. They're all at home, they're all working from home was difficult. He just said my message to you all is to do your best. And I took him to the task, I said what kind of leadership is that it's like saying to someone who's about to run out in the Rugby World Cup final a plan, they might bite you and do your best. I mean, for god sake he's gonna do his best, we are all doing their best. What we needed was greater clarity around what in this environment, what does this look like, what should I achieve by tonight. And that may mean different things from pre COVID where we'd like you to make two placements now we just like you to be engaged in candidates of conversation with 10 clients or whatever was right, empathy for the situation, definitely and we need more of that. But outcomes, leaderships about outcomes. So people actually the irony is instead of saying just do your best, you actually need more measurements now, helping people to understand what a good day week or month looks like, and giving them the nurturing mentoring and understanding that they're going through different stages of stress to do that. So I think that's what leadership looks like and I think it will evolve. You know the big thing and I'm conscious of is that we've had to use the word good and COVID in the same sentence Max, but if anything good came out of COVID is the opportunity for us to reinvent our business. I'm encouraging my clients to look at every step in their business and I think I said this to you on the intro 'let's slow these sacred cows'. People are scared of the word, the word to reinvent the business so to disrupt the word that's overused. What disruption means to me is small steps of incremental change. So let's look at why do we pre to COVID before we filled one job out of four. Why is that, what could we do differently? What changes can we make to improve the outcome? So that's what leadership is about to reinvent and some recruitment companies will thrive post COVID with flounder. And it's all about reinvention and changing the way we operate on, that's leadership. Let's take the insight, just empathy and introspection and being analytical trust me, those are good skills but that's not leadership completely. I may have misunderstood this. And who am I to disagree with the Harvard review? I'm sure they're very well but on the other hand, I doubt they've read very many recruitment companies and I've done a lot. Max: Now, they were talking about a style of management, I would say, rather than specific to what recruiters need but it was a style of management that worked best when you're in the office and you've got a team of people listening to you to have a loud voice and a big presence can help, but those attributes are no longer as powerful in a world where people don't need face to face.  Greg: Yeah. Max: New attributes come to the fore. That's all it says, just as slightly tilting towards a different type of communication style seems like.  Greg: You asked me my opinion Max, that was it? Actually looking at leadership to me is action, what you do that counts. And that has to change because you can't be in the same room and we have to understand. Of Course, introspection is important, of course, analytics, we need data we need to understand. But does that impact the guy sitting at home with no clients and no candidate? Leadership is how I impact that person, the conversations I have, the guidance I give, the goals, and the feedback, that is where the value is. And it might stem from introspection. It might stem from analytics, but to that individual, it's how I impact him or her that will decide whether I'm going to get value from the leadership. So I think a lot of leaders, sort of focus on themselves like, how am I behaving. We really got to focus on the impact on the other person because that after all is leadership is how it impacts the other person for the greater good. As we should think more about that. Max: I cannot disagree with you on this 100%. Very easier said than done. But yeah, absolutely. What are some of the other sacred cows we want to slaughter in 2021? Greg: By the way, it is easier said than done, but if it was easy Max, all the older stupid and lazy people would be rich, wouldn't that? It's fucking hard running a recruitment business, it's very hard being a leader, and responding by saying it's difficult is not really. I had a conversation with people the other day. They say in this country we've gone from a job market to a candidate for market we've got shortages of candidates. Recruiters are complaining. I'm saying that is Nevada, having a shortage of candidates, should be dancing in the streets because that is where we can show our value. It's not complaining about having a shortage of candidates. What you gotta do is become the world champion in finding candidates because that's what clients will pay for. A shortage of jobs is the beginning of the end, it will starve and die but a shortage of candidates if you're good you'll thrive. But you asked about disruption. I think we should be looking at the way we pay recruiters bonuses. I think we should be looking at measurements and KPIs. KPIs and micromanaging have got these awful connotations to them, mostly because they're badly delivered; it's a leadership issue. The concept of measuring, there is no one who's good at anything they do doesn't measure their performance, do you think footballers and all the other top performers around the world don't measure what they do and then try to improve those things. We should have that in recruitment but the problem is old-style delivery by management is everyone has the same KPI, the KPIs haven't changed that often not reflecting the market needs. So that's a leadership issue, we should be reinventing the way we market our businesses, we should be much stronger social branding and talk about it for years but people don't do it, you should be looking at reviews, and how do we manage those reviews, we should be looking at connecting with people and creating opportunities, the whole point of marketing is sales, sometimes you just slap people figuratively Max and say. Marketing isn't about a nice brand or a pretty logo, marketing is about whether it opens doors for recruiters to engineer sales and so we need to think of it from that point of view. Excuse me. Other areas that we could look at disrupting is how we train and coach people to work from home needs examination and so does what structure should have consultants doing a 360, everything or should I have sales and delivery or should I have candidates and clients. We should reinvent how we tackle the temporary contract as it is. Yes, it is massive. I've just done a five and a half an hour webinar on this which is actually a commercial enterprise and that later watch a series of it, and that's on this topic.  Max: So, I think people who don't know you by now, have a good idea of the depth of your expertise in the recruiting industry and if they want to get more they can go to gregsavage.com.au and is there another place for them to connect with you? Greg: Thanks, gregsavage.com.au is a good start, and of course I'm on Twitter and LinkedIn. I always accept invites from recruiters. And so thanks for mentioning that but I'm not really trying to sell any of our products or anything at all. I kind of actually prefer not to do so much work. I just would love to see us grab this opportunity to make the recruitment agency more functional, it's deeply dysfunctional in many ways, people working in recruitment companies where they fill one job out of five. You think about that Max, they fill one job out of five that means, they are not filling four out of five which means they're failing 80% of the time. Who wants to work in a profession, imagine if I went to a brain surgeon and he told me, 80% of his operations were a failure or an accountant, said 80% of his tax returns were wrong, they wouldn't last in business but we seem to, and the negative is bad service, speed over quality, candidates getting the road end of the deal, so many dysfunction. I mean I love recruitment being in it for 40 years thank you to you all. Don't get me wrong, but I hope we can use this COVID, I said this in the board meeting this very morning. If we go back as the markets pick up, and we go back and do everything they've ever done before the same way, it'll be such a wasted opportunity, now is the time.  Max: Yeah and we can all learn from the power of building a brand in this day and age. I think it's amplified compared to two or three years ago, and it can deliver a lot more business value for an agency, for an individual recruiter. Before we part ways, Greg. One question I love to ask people is to take us back to a time when you hired somebody who you thought was gonna be a total rainmaker and broke your heart. And you don't have to give us names, but tell us the origin of your hiring mistake. Greg: Well, you're talking about a guy who's made more hiring mistakes than anyone that you know. Here is almost 40 years of hiring people and I still get involved in hiring decisions and it's a very difficult thing to do, there are hundreds of those cases but fortunately. I will tell you a story. They're pushing their cases the other way around as well but I've got a story about a woman called, I will mention her name and her name is Julia Ross.  Max: Oh no! Julia.  Greg: Yeah so Julia Ross. I started recruitment solutions in the early 80s-mid 80s-late 80s, and was three years in, we were flying with the $13 million with a revenue of five offices and we're doing accounting recruitment. And Julia Ross lost her job wherever she was, I think it was Upward Mark, this is going to be over 20 to know any of these names anyway, over 20 years in the industry. So she came to see me and she said, I am looking for a job, and I will build a business support clerical, secretarial we call it those days. Secretarial business support recruitment business, leveraging off your clients. I'm good at it and I got well with it, and I thought she was impressive and then I got my two colleagues to see her, my two partners started the business with me and they said, 'Greg, she's good' we should hire. And I wisely said no. I don't think Julia Ross can build a business support recruitment company. And I didn't tell her that but I turned it down and she went out and started her own business and built the company about 10 times bigger than mine and listed it on the stock, and became a zillionaire. So, good old Greg and what an expert he is. You get those situations, but plenty of times I remember hiring somebody to run up and go to carefully because I want to identify anyone who's running one of my overseas offices when I had offices around the world and I was convinced it was the right guy, I've got on with him well. He was a rugby player and a rugby fan and that just endeared him to me because I love the game. And when I look back I was more stuck on that than anything else, and it was a disaster. It wasn't any good and I hadn't done my due diligence and I'd ignored the warning signs that were niggling at me every time Max I've hired someone with something niggling in my belly about it being wrong it's turned out to be wrong. And in this industry we often say, let's give it a go. He'll be right. Max: What are the odds you would have made that mistake if this person was not a rugby player? Greg: I think I would not have made the mistake. I would have been, you know, this is a long time ago, and I can look back at it as charity but I think I would have seen the flaws. I convinced myself he was the right guy, we got all well, so he is a nice guy.  Max: Of Course. Greg: He had done some good things but he couldn't do that size of that job. I convinced myself that he was what, you know and I think it actually leads on to a much more serious topic and leads on to the topic about diversity hiring and I had a conversation with my brother, 10 or 15 years ago which changed my view. He said we were talking about promoting women into jobs. And I said at that time, I have never discriminated against a woman for a promotion in my life and I was convinced that was right, he said well maybe that's true but Greg, how many times have you and other men did about a young man that he's a good lad let's give him a chance, he's not ready but let's give him a chance you've said that right, I said yeah. Tell how many times you've said that about a woman and this was 10 or 15 years ago and since then, I've consciously said yeah she's not ready but she's got potential and with help, she'll do it, and I put them in those roles and I've actually back three recruitment companies run by women like that that have all gone on to be greatly successful I can tell you who they are, consult recruitment in New Zealand. We just sold it to a Japanese company, both from three people to 50 women owners. People to People in Melbourne we started with Aaron Devlin and she put it, and they were women in exactly that state. I wasn't hiring them or did hire them. I was backing them, investing in them, or hiring them, and it was consciously saying, hold on, if this was a guy, you'd say he is a good person with potential let's back him. And that is getting on the dangerous garbage. That's what I think men can play a huge role in getting this thing equalized. You've got to not only say I don't discriminate. You've actually happily weirdly almost, amongst I won't say reverse discriminate but you've got to look for opportunities to promote people who otherwise wouldn't get them and I think that is where we can make a difference, but it's also self-serving because you end up with the best people doing the best thing, that's what we want. Max: You identify your own biases Greg: work against them whether that's against Max: Yeah you work against your biases, whether it's the love of rugby, or your faith in young male talent that you got to go look for the opposite of that and great opportunities will unfold, will arise for you. And maybe next time, a rugby player applies for a job, maybe Greg shouldn't be the one interviewing him at all. Greg: I've lost you can you hear me.  Max: Yes, I think, yes yes you're back. you're back. You're back to back Greg Greg: Can you hear me? I've lost your last couple of sentences sorry.  Max: Well, no worries I was wrapping up to say, yeah, absolutely. You said this work against our biases, make the next time Greg you're interviewing somebody who's a rugby player, maybe let your colleagues take the lead, of course, you've learned that lesson 15 years ago. And thanks for coming to the show sharing your insights and I'm sure you've won a few new followers, with this episode. Greg: Thanks, Max. I want to end by just reminding you that if you've got two equal people, equal in every respect, go with the one who likes rugby, that will be the right one. I'm kidding.Max: Who better to advise us on how to build our personal brand than Greg Savage really enjoyed what he had to share on the topic and the encouragement. I hope that you all got to as well as I did to be bought, to be honest and to be consistent over a long period of time, the best way to build your personal brand and a wonderful tool for anyone in recruitments to start using now.Do you enjoy this content, it's more like it's on the recruitment hackers podcast. Please subscribe and share with friends.

I have read somewhere that when the why is clear, the how is easy. When I listened to our new episode with Greg McLardie, the founder of Two Hands, I realized this man's why is clear as day. But I'll let you hear his experience for yourself. Let me tell you something about his company before you start listening to the episode. Two Hands is a digital marketplace that connects the fishers and farmers directly with the restaurants, eliminating the middleman, and most importantly, food fraud. Advice from Greg: You don't realize it because it's inside you, but you've got the vision and you've got the beauty of where it's going to go. You need to have so much strong belief, self-belief and resilience, and persistence to pursue that dream. Books: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey and Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux contact Greg via Linkedin: @gregmclardie more about the company: 2hs.info Keep in touch with us! Linkedin: Innovation Friday Podcast Instagram: @innovationfridaypodcast --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/innovationfriday/message

Greg Lehman…On Becoming a Movement OptimistJoin the conversation on Movement Optimism as Physiotherapist and strength and conditioning expert, Greg Lehman chats to Raphael Bender about Movement Optimism and the idea that everything is biomedically driven. We discuss why he prefers a comprehensive capacity approach in addition to looking to specific evidence-based research when helping clients prevent pain and injury. Greg also dives into the idea of muscle ‘dysfunction' as a cause of pain, and why he never vilifies an activity or movement. What You Will Learn:The philosophy of Movement Optimism and Greg Lehman's framework for working within a biopsychosocial model Why biomechanics research invalidates the idea of dysfunction in muscles Why we shouldn't worry about scapula dyskinesias despite what a recent study suggests Greg's thoughts on the relationship between knee valgus and ACL injury The dichotomy of loading muscles and why it's a misapplication of research Explaining PainThe fact that pilates clients are often looking for a definitive diagnosis for their pain is often a barrier to movement specialists using a biopsychosocial approach. Greg Lehman and Raph discuss why it is so critical to give clients a comprehensive explanation for their pain, in clear vocabulary that takes into account their life holistically, and how the Movement Optimism approach helps practitioners do that. Whole-Person WellbeingWe unpack the idea of reframing pain under an emergent approach rather than a linear one, how we can take a client's lifestyle into account when discussing their concerns. As Pilates teachers, it is important to understand that we should not only be looking at research specific to their rotator cuff, or their hamstring or other areas of pain, but we also need to get the low-down on their stress levels, their sleep, and their all-round wellbeing to effectively support them. Why ‘Vulnerable' Muscles are a MythGreg also discusses the misapprehension perpetuated by some fitness influencers that certain muscles are ‘vulnerable' in some way. Just because you see something happen once or twice in practice doesn't make it a truth — jumping to faulty conclusions is dangerous for us and our clients. We explore why unvalidated theories get accepted as truth and how to bust baseless myths with good quality evidence-based research. About Greg Lehman:Greg is a Canadian physiotherapist, chiropractor, and strength and conditioning specialist treating musculoskeletal disorders within a biopsychosocial model. He is incredibly well-read, a highly skilled educator. And he's funny. Before his clinical career, Greg received a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council MSc graduate scholarship and became one of only two students each year to train with Professor Stuart McGill in his Occupational Biomechanics Laboratory, subsequently published more than 20 peer-reviewed papers in the manual therapy and exercise biomechanics field. He was an assistant professor at the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College teaching a graduate-level course in Spine Biomechanics and Instrumentation as well as conducting more than 20 research experiments while supervising more than 50 students. Greg has lectured on several topics on reconciling treatment biomechanics with pain science, running injuries, golf biomechanics, occupational low back injuries, and therapeutic neuroscience. His courses http://www.greglehman.ca/blog/2015/02/02/physiofundamentals-reconciling-biomechanics-with-pain-science (Reconciling Biomechanics with Pain Science) and http://www.greglehman.ca/running-resiliency-courses (Running Resiliency) have been taught more than 60 times in more than 40 locations worldwide. How to Connect with Greg: You can find http://www.greglehman.ca/new-page-1 (Greg Lehman online here) You can find https://twitter.com/GregLehman (Greg Lehman on Twitter) You can find...

Max: Hello and welcome back to the Recruitment hackers podcast. I'm your host Max Armbruster and today I have the honor and privilege of hosting the legendary Greg Savage, who is a principal at the savage truth, a great source of industry commentary on the recruitment and staffing world. Welcome to the show, Greg.  Greg: Thank you Max. It is a pleasure to be here and I think you may have gone a bit big with the word legendary but fine let's all say it then why not. Max: I was told it was legendary when I came down under. I don't know if your brand recognition is as powerful and in all timezones but certainly, in my timezone, it applies. Greg: Well I mean I don't know about brand recognition or anything like that but prior to COVID I used to go to a lot of speaking tours around the world and if you watch the calendar of those speaking to us it always seems to coincide very fortunately with international rugby matches and football matches. But, I can turn up in Manchester or Singapore or Cape Town and we will get three or four hundred recruiters turning up and it's actually a story I tell about brands, because at the end of the day. I'm actually just an aging unemployed extra crud art, and yet I can go to most cities in the world, people will turn up the list, and pay money, still astonishing. Max: Amazing. Well done. I must say. I read your bio you come from Cape Town, right? Greg: Obviously yes. Max: Yes, I made my way to Cape Town or Joburg three years ago to the future of talent event, and it was on my bio I had San Francisco on it, and that opened the doors to the front stage for me and there was an international cache to bring in CEO from an international destination and I was too happy to latch on that. But, yeah, I guess today, the borders are down, the frontiers are down. Everybody can build their brands at the global level because even the advantage of being able to afford a plane ticket isn't an advantage anymore, so there's no more barriers to entry. Greg: That's true. The only barrier to entry into building a brand is that it's very very hard work. And you've got to have a few things in your kit bag including something useful to say, an ability to say in an interesting way and I think then. And if you're consistent and long term. People often say to me, "Well, you're lucky Greg you've got this brand". Well, I've been blogging every week for 15 years mate, 15 years, and videos and Twitter and LinkedIn. So, it is hard work. But the rewards. I've tried to teach my recruitment companies that I advise them there are, and recruiters, that there are devilish rewards to amplify your brand. As long as your inr real life brand is good, you can amplify it online, you can't finish it, long term anyway because people will blame you and call you out. If you're not if you're not authentic. Max: So authenticity, okay prerequisite. How about having something interesting to say, some people will, maybe, of course, most people don't have your experience or humbly I may say, my experience. I'm on the wrong side of that equation right and I've got 20 plus years of work experience myself, so for those in their 20s and 30s, the imposter syndrome must feel so overwhelming. How do you have the balls to pardon my expression. Well it's my show, so I'll pardon, to go out and start to brand yourself as a thought leader. Was there a special moment in your career where you thought okay now I can start to take the front stage, or how did this moment of revelation come to you? Greg: Well, I'm not a great example but I've got some good, I mean that's a great question you asked about authenticity and imposter syndrome, and have I got something to say. Prior to building an online brand I've been in this so long I spent many many years standing on stages at conferences and I really had a bit of kudos around having something to say or maybe that kudos was in my mind, but I thought it had something to say and I had a lot of experience, even when the internet started, so it was a little bit easier for me, but let's come to your point, two little anecdotes. I often find myself walking down the street and a recruiter will stop me, someone I don't even know, and say, 'Hey, I like your blog' and then I go, 'Oh, that's great. And then they say, 'I don't actually agree with you. But what I like about it is, I know what's your point of view, and I love the fact that you tell it the way you see it and that gets me thinking, so you don't have to always try and be I'm not suggesting you be controversial or rude or anything like that. But people value authenticity, they value a point of view. That's the first thing. The second story is about having that same conversation that you raised about. Do you have the balls to do it, etc. With a young recruiter, well she's an experienced woman with a couple of years experience as a recruiter and I was talking to her about her brand and she said, Greg, I've got nothing to say, who would want to listen to me? And I say, well tell me this, what's the biggest frustration you've got with your clients right now and she said, they're taking too long to make decisions. They say they are desperate for talent and then they drag. Max: Sorry Greg, your mic is off. Greg: Oh! I don't know why. Max: You're back now. Greg: Just when I'm telling a great story. I don't know if you're going to cut this or whether you want me, where should I start again with that one? Max: Yeah, we can cut this off, for sure. So Greg you were saying this lady was giving you an anecdote, you had an anecdote about a lady who is saying. Greg: The short version was that she believed she had nothing to say. And I asked her what her biggest bugbear was with a client she said was taking too slow to make decisions and I said, that is an insult. That's the story, just write two paragraphs, it was a LinkedIn post she wanted to write. She wrote a couple of paragraphs about how while she encourages her clients to be fairer, we've got to move the process, otherwise, we lose the best candidates which is true. And it got traction and people commented and I said that's what we did, you do have insights, and my message to a lot of recruiters is you think you don't, but actually you're in the market 365 days of the year, you're talking to candidates, every day. You've got a view. You've got a narrative, you've got a point of view that's valuable. And that's what I comment about. I think too many people on social media are trying to be funny, trying to be provocative. I don't think that's the way to go. I think you've got to be adding value, which reflects on your expertise so that I think is how we got to build a brand in a professional field. Max: There is something about a great family name Mr. Savage and you wrote that one for a long time. I'm just reading the Elton John biography right now. He came up with that name because he thought he had a name that didn't work well to be a rock star. But I guess, for me, that's your brand, your brand is savage, your blog is the savage truth, and it just is very punchy, it's very direct.  Greg: I didn't create my name like Elton John. My name was Reggie Duag, my name was Greg Savage from the very beginning. And I don't think my personality was formed around my name. I think it's just good. If you've got a name like that people are going to ask questions about it and make jokes about it. As I've encouraged my children to do is to embrace it because it's memorable. And in the case of the blog it just seems like the obvious thing right to the savage Andrews I like to speak directly and that's what people like so. Max: I was thinking about what you said for these recruiters who tried to be funny, and instead of trying to be truthful sometimes or direct. I suppose the industry would tend to attract people who are pleasers, who want to be popular, who don't want to make enemies, as opposed to, maybe truth-tellers or people who embrace a more ideological kind of debate, who are willing to take one side of the debate that naturally the industry we kind of attract people who are matchmakers, if you will. So maybe that's why the industry sometimes lacks a little bit of honesty because people are just too afraid to accept their clients. Greg: Well I think it's a good point and I don't believe that we want recruiters as I mentioned, to try and be provocative, or try and be controversial, or to be profane, or to push the boundaries in that way I don't think that's what I'm saying and I don't even advise. I started blogging when I was running my recruitment company. I was actually working for Quint at the time, which was American digital marketing as an international CEO, and then out of that we started, we did a management buyout and I was running my own company fiber and we had to build that brand, this was in about 2010. We had to build that brand without any money because it was a startup and we went to eight countries. So we didn't use what was at that stage the beginnings of social media almost and was very successful and at that point, I was much more careful about the things that I would say because I was trying to build a recruitment business. I am still very careful about the things that I say, but I'm not that concerned if someone doesn't agree with it. I think that a recruiter doesn't have to be provocative. What that secret is that most people go on social media Max, with the mindset, what can I get from it, which I understand, what can I get jobs, fame. You actually want to go on with the mindset, what can I give. Generosity is the fundamental plank upon which a social media brand is built. And I spent hours preparing once every week, hours with videos, hours answering questions. And yes, there is something in it for me, as I've explained, but you give to get and give insights, connecting people, sharing information with people. That's how you build a brand, and I don't think you are in fact still being a people pleaser by doing that is the avenue you want to look at it from. I'm really referring to people posting pictures of cats and trying to compare them to a recruiter's license. I mean, for Christ's sake I am not interested in it. This is bullshit. Max: Yeah gimmicky stuff. On LinkedIn, if anytime I see something with more than 5000 likes. You know, alarm bells go off. This is clickbait stuff and it pisses me off personally. There's a lot of that going on. Great. Well, I hope it's not like that. There are a lot of thought leaders quote-unquote thought leaders in the industry, and we don't want to encourage every single recruiter out there to do that either. Of course, you can be a listener you don't all have to grab a mic, like I did, but for me I get great joy out of talking to people like you Greg and everybody else who comes on my show, and it's an opportunity for me to travel without traveling in a year when I've been locked in. This year has been a transition in the recruitment industry, which used to be a lot of in person meetings and a lot of building relationships, whether you're doing executive level hiring or you're talking to your customers, most of that is gone now. So, I've read an article in the Harvard Business Review and then said that the new leaders of the post COVID world are more introspective are more introverts are better at writing and more analytical. So, kind of, not the traditional qualities we would imagine from your prototypical recruiter. Would you agree with that assessment and what do you think are some of the qualities that are necessary in 2021 for recruits to thrive? Greg: I think there's a natural tendency to view leadership through the prism of where we are right now. And you got to understand that we all have to understand that we're on a journey when COVID started. People were saying to me after a month or two, how far are we through it, and well a blog on it actually and I'd say like I don't know but I reckon we're on a marathon and a marathon is 42 kilometers and if you want me to tell you my feeling is we're on a kilometer five, everyone was shocked. In this country, we have a state New South Wales 10 million people, we've had zero cases of COVID for 23 days straight, there is no one in the state with COVID but one human being. There might be one locked in quarantine when coming from overseas. So we're having meetings I'm in my client's office today. I've had a meeting all morning where we can go see people.  Max: Right.  Greg: So, my point is precisely that Harvard Business Review that said that no I don't agree with that. I actually think that a good leader right now in my city, for example, is actually coaching and mentoring people to get back out in front of people. Here's the irony. The differentiated recruitment down now is those people who do go and engage, because it can be on zoom, can be on the telephone, can hardly be by email but it's better face to face, not everybody but we can do that. And so leadership, to my mind, is, if you want me to sum it up, leadership coming out of post-COVID is a cocktail, a blend of empathy mixed with accountability. I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about in the middle of COVID one of my clients said to his staff. They're all at home, they're all working from home was difficult. He just said my message to you all is to do your best. And I took him to the task, I said what kind of leadership is that it's like saying to someone who's about to run out in the Rugby World Cup final a plan, they might bite you and do your best. I mean, for god sake he's gonna do his best, we are all doing their best. What we needed was greater clarity around what in this environment, what does this look like, what should I achieve by tonight. And that may mean different things from pre COVID where we'd like you to make two placements now we just like you to be engaged in candidates of conversation with 10 clients or whatever was right, empathy for the situation, definitely and we need more of that. But outcomes, leaderships about outcomes. So people actually the irony is instead of saying just do your best, you actually need more measurements now, helping people to understand what a good day week or month looks like, and giving them the nurturing mentoring and understanding that they're going through different stages of stress to do that. So I think that's what leadership looks like and I think it will evolve. You know the big thing and I'm conscious of is that we've had to use the word good and COVID in the same sentence Max, but if anything good came out of COVID is the opportunity for us to reinvent our business. I'm encouraging my clients to look at every step in their business and I think I said this to you on the intro 'let's slow these sacred cows'. People are scared of the word, the word to reinvent the business so to disrupt the word that's overused. What disruption means to me is small steps of incremental change. So let's look at why do we pre to COVID before we filled one job out of four. Why is that, what could we do differently? What changes can we make to improve the outcome? So that's what leadership is about to reinvent and some recruitment companies will thrive post COVID with flounder. And it's all about reinvention and changing the way we operate on, that's leadership. Let's take the insight, just empathy and introspection and being analytical trust me, those are good skills but that's not leadership completely. I may have misunderstood this. And who am I to disagree with the Harvard review? I'm sure they're very well but on the other hand, I doubt they've read very many recruitment companies and I've done a lot. Max: Now, they were talking about a style of management, I would say, rather than specific to what recruiters need but it was a style of management that worked best when you're in the office and you've got a team of people listening to you to have a loud voice and a big presence can help, but those attributes are no longer as powerful in a world where people don't need face to face.  Greg: Yeah. Max: New attributes come to the fore. That's all it says, just as slightly tilting towards a different type of communication style seems like.  Greg: You asked me my opinion Max, that was it? Actually looking at leadership to me is action, what you do that counts. And that has to change because you can't be in the same room and we have to understand. Of Course, introspection is important, of course, analytics, we need data we need to understand. But does that impact the guy sitting at home with no clients and no candidate? Leadership is how I impact that person, the conversations I have, the guidance I give, the goals, and the feedback, that is where the value is. And it might stem from introspection. It might stem from analytics, but to that individual, it's how I impact him or her that will decide whether I'm going to get value from the leadership. So I think a lot of leaders, sort of focus on themselves like, how am I behaving. We really got to focus on the impact on the other person because that after all is leadership is how it impacts the other person for the greater good. As we should think more about that. Max: I cannot disagree with you on this 100%. Very easier said than done. But yeah, absolutely. What are some of the other sacred cows we want to slaughter in 2021? Greg: By the way, it is easier said than done, but if it was easy Max, all the older stupid and lazy people would be rich, wouldn't that? It's fucking hard running a recruitment business, it's very hard being a leader, and responding by saying it's difficult is not really. I had a conversation with people the other day. They say in this country we've gone from a job market to a candidate for market we've got shortages of candidates. Recruiters are complaining. I'm saying that is Nevada, having a shortage of candidates, should be dancing in the streets because that is where we can show our value. It's not complaining about having a shortage of candidates. What you gotta do is become the world champion in finding candidates because that's what clients will pay for. A shortage of jobs is the beginning of the end, it will starve and die but a shortage of candidates if you're good you'll thrive. But you asked about disruption. I think we should be looking at the way we pay recruiters bonuses. I think we should be looking at measurements and KPIs. KPIs and micromanaging have got these awful connotations to them, mostly because they're badly delivered; it's a leadership issue. The concept of measuring, there is no one who's good at anything they do doesn't measure their performance, do you think footballers and all the other top performers around the world don't measure what they do and then try to improve those things. We should have that in recruitment but the problem is old-style delivery by management is everyone has the same KPI, the KPIs haven't changed that often not reflecting the market needs. So that's a leadership issue, we should be reinventing the way we market our businesses, we should be much stronger social branding and talk about it for years but people don't do it, you should be looking at reviews, and how do we manage those reviews, we should be looking at connecting with people and creating opportunities, the whole point of marketing is sales, sometimes you just slap people figuratively Max and say. Marketing isn't about a nice brand or a pretty logo, marketing is about whether it opens doors for recruiters to engineer sales and so we need to think of it from that point of view. Excuse me. Other areas that we could look at disrupting is how we train and coach people to work from home needs examination and so does what structure should have consultants doing a 360, everything or should I have sales and delivery or should I have candidates and clients. We should reinvent how we tackle the temporary contract as it is. Yes, it is massive. I've just done a five and a half an hour webinar on this which is actually a commercial enterprise and that later watch a series of it, and that's on this topic.  Max: So, I think people who don't know you by now, have a good idea of the depth of your expertise in the recruiting industry and if they want to get more they can go to gregsavage.com.au and is there another place for them to connect with you? Greg: Thanks, gregsavage.com.au is a good start, and of course I'm on Twitter and LinkedIn. I always accept invites from recruiters. And so thanks for mentioning that but I'm not really trying to sell any of our products or anything at all. I kind of actually prefer not to do so much work. I just would love to see us grab this opportunity to make the recruitment agency more functional, it's deeply dysfunctional in many ways, people working in recruitment companies where they fill one job out of five. You think about that Max, they fill one job out of five that means, they are not filling four out of five which means they're failing 80% of the time. Who wants to work in a profession, imagine if I went to a brain surgeon and he told me, 80% of his operations were a failure or an accountant, said 80% of his tax returns were wrong, they wouldn't last in business but we seem to, and the negative is bad service, speed over quality, candidates getting the road end of the deal, so many dysfunction. I mean I love recruitment being in it for 40 years thank you to you all. Don't get me wrong, but I hope we can use this COVID, I said this in the board meeting this very morning. If we go back as the markets pick up, and we go back and do everything they've ever done before the same way, it'll be such a wasted opportunity, now is the time.  Max: Yeah and we can all learn from the power of building a brand in this day and age. I think it's amplified compared to two or three years ago, and it can deliver a lot more business value for an agency, for an individual recruiter. Before we part ways, Greg. One question I love to ask people is to take us back to a time when you hired somebody who you thought was gonna be a total rainmaker and broke your heart. And you don't have to give us names, but tell us the origin of your hiring mistake. Greg: Well, you're talking about a guy who's made more hiring mistakes than anyone that you know. Here is almost 40 years of hiring people and I still get involved in hiring decisions and it's a very difficult thing to do, there are hundreds of those cases but fortunately. I will tell you a story. They're pushing their cases the other way around as well but I've got a story about a woman called, I will mention her name and her name is Julia Ross.  Max: Oh no! Julia.  Greg: Yeah so Julia Ross. I started recruitment solutions in the early 80s-mid 80s-late 80s, and was three years in, we were flying with the $13 million with a revenue of five offices and we're doing accounting recruitment. And Julia Ross lost her job wherever she was, I think it was Upward Mark, this is going to be over 20 to know any of these names anyway, over 20 years in the industry. So she came to see me and she said, I am looking for a job, and I will build a business support clerical, secretarial we call it those days. Secretarial business support recruitment business, leveraging off your clients. I'm good at it and I got well with it, and I thought she was impressive and then I got my two colleagues to see her, my two partners started the business with me and they said, 'Greg, she's good' we should hire. And I wisely said no. I don't think Julia Ross can build a business support recruitment company. And I didn't tell her that but I turned it down and she went out and started her own business and built the company about 10 times bigger than mine and listed it on the stock, and became a zillionaire. So, good old Greg and what an expert he is. You get those situations, but plenty of times I remember hiring somebody to run up and go to carefully because I want to identify anyone who's running one of my overseas offices when I had offices around the world and I was convinced it was the right guy, I've got on with him well. He was a rugby player and a rugby fan and that just endeared him to me because I love the game. And when I look back I was more stuck on that than anything else, and it was a disaster. It wasn't any good and I hadn't done my due diligence and I'd ignored the warning signs that were niggling at me every time Max I've hired someone with something niggling in my belly about it being wrong it's turned out to be wrong. And in this industry we often say, let's give it a go. He'll be right. Max: What are the odds you would have made that mistake if this person was not a rugby player? Greg: I think I would not have made the mistake. I would have been, you know, this is a long time ago, and I can look back at it as charity but I think I would have seen the flaws. I convinced myself he was the right guy, we got all well, so he is a nice guy.  Max: Of Course. Greg: He had done some good things but he couldn't do that size of that job. I convinced myself that he was what, you know and I think it actually leads on to a much more serious topic and leads on to the topic about diversity hiring and I had a conversation with my brother, 10 or 15 years ago which changed my view. He said we were talking about promoting women into jobs. And I said at that time, I have never discriminated against a woman for a promotion in my life and I was convinced that was right, he said well maybe that's true but Greg, how many times have you and other men did about a young man that he's a good lad let's give him a chance, he's not ready but let's give him a chance you've said that right, I said yeah. Tell how many times you've said that about a woman and this was 10 or 15 years ago and since then, I've consciously said yeah she's not ready but she's got potential and with help, she'll do it, and I put them in those roles and I've actually back three recruitment companies run by women like that that have all gone on to be greatly successful I can tell you who they are, consult recruitment in New Zealand. We just sold it to a Japanese company, both from three people to 50 women owners. People to People in Melbourne we started with Aaron Devlin and she put it, and they were women in exactly that state. I wasn't hiring them or did hire them. I was backing them, investing in them, or hiring them, and it was consciously saying, hold on, if this was a guy, you'd say he is a good person with potential let's back him. And that is getting on the dangerous garbage. That's what I think men can play a huge role in getting this thing equalized. You've got to not only say I don't discriminate. You've actually happily weirdly almost, amongst I won't say reverse discriminate but you've got to look for opportunities to promote people who otherwise wouldn't get them and I think that is where we can make a difference, but it's also self-serving because you end up with the best people doing the best thing, that's what we want. Max: You identify your own biases Greg: work against them whether that's against Max: Yeah you work against your biases, whether it's the love of rugby, or your faith in young male talent that you got to go look for the opposite of that and great opportunities will unfold, will arise for you. And maybe next time, a rugby player applies for a job, maybe Greg shouldn't be the one interviewing him at all. Greg: I've lost you can you hear me.  Max: Yes, I think, yes yes you're back. you're back. You're back to back Greg Greg: Can you hear me? I've lost your last couple of sentences sorry.  Max: Well, no worries I was wrapping up to say, yeah, absolutely. You said this work against our biases, make the next time Greg you're interviewing somebody who's a rugby player, maybe let your colleagues take the lead, of course, you've learned that lesson 15 years ago. And thanks for coming to the show sharing your insights and I'm sure you've won a few new followers, with this episode. Greg: Thanks, Max. I want to end by just reminding you that if you've got two equal people, equal in every respect, go with the one who likes rugby, that will be the right one. I'm kidding.Max: Who better to advise us on how to build our personal brand than Greg Savage really enjoyed what he had to share on the topic and the encouragement. I hope that you all got to as well as I did to be bought, to be honest and to be consistent over a long period of time, the best way to build your personal brand and a wonderful tool for anyone in recruitments to start using now.Do you enjoy this content, it's more like it's on the recruitment hackers podcast. Please subscribe and share with friends.

Join the @momixpod family circle of trust and listen to this week’s episode on 2000’s "Meet the Parents." Pat and Marissa are joined by special guest, Ashley Thomsen, as they enjoy gin-based Tom Collins cocktails. Cat catastrophes, lost luggage, and woodworking wonders take center stage in this week’s discussion. Sit back, relax, and get ready for a hilarious time!     INT. BYRNES HOUSE - A FEW MINUTES LATER Greg enters the room wearing a turtleneck sweater that is clearly Jack's. JACK: "Shirt fit okay Greg?" GREG: "Oh, fantastic. Thanks Jack." JACK: "Good. Tom Collins coming up." Greg ignores this and begins exasperatedly whispering to Pam. GREG: "You know, I wish you hadn't told your parents that I hate cats!"      Tom Collins Recipe 2oz gin 1oz lemon juice 0.5oz simple syrup (OR replace syrup and lemon juice with 1.5oz Sweet & Sour mix)  Add ingredients to a Collins glass. Top with ice and club soda, then stir. Optionally garnish with lemon slice and maraschino cherry

Connect with Instanda on the Azure Marketplace: https://bit.ly/2AKxo9W Greg Murphy is the Executive Vice President, North America of Instanda, a company that provides core insurance capabilities through a SAAS based digital platform that focuses on ease of product creation and dynamic distribution to multiple channels. As part of this discussion, we shared how their partnership with Microsoft, their use of Azure, and the Azure Marketplace has empowered them to scale and grow their business. Contact Greg: Web: https://instanda.com/us/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/instanda/ Twitter: @instandaF2X Contact Avrohom: Web: https://asktheceo.biz Facebook: AvrohomGottheil Twitter: @avrohomg Instagram: @avrohomg INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS: [00:43] Over the past several years, businesses have gone through a process that we call digital transformation. For those that have been slow to adopt new technology, the crisis of Covid19 forced their hand, so to speak, in terms of this digital transformation. Your company, Instanda, serves the insurance industry, which is extremely complex and highly regulated. What are some of the challenges that insurance carriers struggle with as part of their digital transformation experience? Greg: Well, there are, I would say four things that come to mind on this topic. The first one is really, challenging companies to really, truly be transformative. I can't tell you the number of times that I've worked with companies that will say they're trying to be transformative, and the executives are very passionate about this, and have really, really, great ideas. But when you get right down to exactly what are we going to do, a lot of times we're repaving the cow path, so to speak. We're doing the same things we've done before, but with just different technologies. Right? So, really that truly being transformative, I would say, is the number one piece of that. And you have to figure out exactly how do you get into a transformative mindset? How do you think differently? How do you think outside the box? [04:35] What can businesses do to overcome some of these challenges? Greg: Businesses should re-envision the way products and technology are used in the company's value chain. [06:00] Build a solid business strategy first before throwing technology in to fix problems. [07:14] Instanda recently launched a new offering on the Microsoft Azure marketplace, called Instanda. Tell us about it and how it addresses some of the challenges we just discussed. Greg: Instanda delivers immediate product design solutions with the ability to distribute digitally on multiple channels simultaneously. [10:19] How would a company use your solution with Azure? [11:40] How can customers find out more about Instanda, and procure it through the Azure Marketplace? Greg: You can access it via this link: https://bit.ly/2AKxo9W. [12:18] How has partnering with Microsoft helped Instanda scale and grow your business? Greg: Because Instanda is a Microsoft partner, the delivery of complementary capabilities through logic apps and power BI is seamless. [13:49] How do people connect with you? Greg: You can always connect with us via our website, https://instanda.com/us/. We are also very active on social media. A great way to interact with us is via our LinkedIn page, which is https://www.linkedin.com/company/instanda/. You can also connect with us via Twitter at @instandaF2X. [14:25] Do you have any parting words of wisdom that you’d like to share with the audience? #AskTheCEO With Greg Murphy

Aviation itself is one of humankind’s great technological marvels – something that can be easy to forget when we’re wedged between passengers in coach on some redeye flight. Neutral Digital’s Greg Caterer is using another one of our technological revelations – XR – to reinvent the airline industry, everything from designing aircraft, marketing at trade shows, and making the flight more comfortable for the passenger. Alan: Today’s guest is Greg Caterer. Greg is the chief operating officer at Neutral Digital, an end-to-end immersive content creator, focusing on the luxury travel sector. Neutral Digital is an aviation-focused content creation house at the cutting edge of immersive interaction solutions; they deliver augmented reality, virtual reality, digital design, architectural visualization, in-flight entertainment solutions, and apps and websites for the aviation industry. In a nutshell, they deliver technology for clients’ campaigns. The Neutral Digital team consists of professionals with a wide-ranging expertise in VR digital experience, design, software development, and CGI production. Neutral Digital can be found at neutral.digital. Welcome to the show, Greg. Greg: Thank you very much, Alan. Thanks for having me on the show. Alan: My absolute pleasure. I’m really excited to learn about the stuff you’re doing. I’ve seen some of the videos, I’ve seen what you guys are doing; holy crap. It’s really, really awesome, the stuff you’re doing. Greg: Thank you. Yeah, it is. We’re certainly very proud of all the work that we’ve been doing, particularly since specializing in the aviation sector, and then obviously more broadly, the travel sector as well. We feel as though we get the chance to educate an industry, as well as creating and selling a product, and really helping to define exactly how this niche can use extended reality, and in particular, virtual reality technology. So, yeah, we’re very proud of what we do. Alan: So, okay — let’s get right into this. One of the things that blew me away was the photorealism that you guys have created of 3D models and virtual environments, of being in an airplane. Maybe explain — if you can, speak to brands that are using this; if you can’t, that’s fine — but speak to what it is you’re building, and why that’s important. And let’s unpack this, because if you’re somebody who’s in the aviation world, this is a technology that can be used right across your enterprise; from previsualization, marketing, sales, training, remote assistance, remote collaboration — it can be used everywhere. So, what is the focus of what you guys have been doing, and what are the results that people are seeing? Greg: You’re absolutely right with your observation, Alan, about it. Especially the breadth of use cases that this technology has. So, there’s a lot in this. I’m going to try and condense this down to a relatively concise answer. But broadly speaking, because of the replicability and the repeatability of everything that’s created in CG, we would build experiences that focus on marketing, training, and design for airlines, the component manufacturers, the training bodies, et cetera. Anybody who’s got anything to do with aviation, whether it’s the high cost of acquisition for the product itself, or whether something intensely physical that needs to be shown off. So, a really good use case — and one of the main workstreams and strands that we tend to focus on — is marketing. There’s a very, very big cost benefit to this, and also, it calls out, perhaps, the benchmark technology that existed bef

Aviation itself is one of humankind’s great technological marvels – something that can be easy to forget when we’re wedged between passengers in coach on some redeye flight. Neutral Digital’s Greg Caterer is using another one of our technological revelations – XR – to reinvent the airline industry, everything from designing aircraft, marketing at trade shows, and making the flight more comfortable for the passenger. Alan: Today’s guest is Greg Caterer. Greg is the chief operating officer at Neutral Digital, an end-to-end immersive content creator, focusing on the luxury travel sector. Neutral Digital is an aviation-focused content creation house at the cutting edge of immersive interaction solutions; they deliver augmented reality, virtual reality, digital design, architectural visualization, in-flight entertainment solutions, and apps and websites for the aviation industry. In a nutshell, they deliver technology for clients’ campaigns. The Neutral Digital team consists of professionals with a wide-ranging expertise in VR digital experience, design, software development, and CGI production. Neutral Digital can be found at neutral.digital. Welcome to the show, Greg. Greg: Thank you very much, Alan. Thanks for having me on the show. Alan: My absolute pleasure. I’m really excited to learn about the stuff you’re doing. I’ve seen some of the videos, I’ve seen what you guys are doing; holy crap. It’s really, really awesome, the stuff you’re doing. Greg: Thank you. Yeah, it is. We’re certainly very proud of all the work that we’ve been doing, particularly since specializing in the aviation sector, and then obviously more broadly, the travel sector as well. We feel as though we get the chance to educate an industry, as well as creating and selling a product, and really helping to define exactly how this niche can use extended reality, and in particular, virtual reality technology. So, yeah, we’re very proud of what we do. Alan: So, okay — let’s get right into this. One of the things that blew me away was the photorealism that you guys have created of 3D models and virtual environments, of being in an airplane. Maybe explain — if you can, speak to brands that are using this; if you can’t, that’s fine — but speak to what it is you’re building, and why that’s important. And let’s unpack this, because if you’re somebody who’s in the aviation world, this is a technology that can be used right across your enterprise; from previsualization, marketing, sales, training, remote assistance, remote collaboration — it can be used everywhere. So, what is the focus of what you guys have been doing, and what are the results that people are seeing? Greg: You’re absolutely right with your observation, Alan, about it. Especially the breadth of use cases that this technology has. So, there’s a lot in this. I’m going to try and condense this down to a relatively concise answer. But broadly speaking, because of the replicability and the repeatability of everything that’s created in CG, we would build experiences that focus on marketing, training, and design for airlines, the component manufacturers, the training bodies, et cetera. Anybody who’s got anything to do with aviation, whether it’s the high cost of acquisition for the product itself, or whether something intensely physical that needs to be shown off. So, a really good use case — and one of the main workstreams and strands that we tend to focus on — is marketing. There’s a very, very big cost benefit to this, and also, it calls out, perhaps, the benchmark technology that existed bef

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: So, then we go back to the airport. I don't know what to do because I'll be back where I started and I see a hotel. A big hotel, right next to the airport and I tell the cab driver to go there, and so he goes and there's a bellman, you know, waiting for the cab. I go up and I get out of the cab and I'm really sick and I just wasted three hours. I'm back where I started.Greg: And you paid the man, like forty dollars and you didn't get where you wanted to go.Todd: Right, and this is an interesting point. So we come back and the sweet old cab driver is there and he's trying to explain to the guy about how he couldn't find the place I guess, and he looks really flustered.So then, I'm thinking he wants more money so I pull out my wallet and I give him another thousand Baht. I put it in the cab driver's hand and he looks at it like it's a dead fish, like doesn't want it. And he's just looking at it and looking at me and he has this really puzzled look like he doesn't get it.So finally the bellman kind of snaps at him in Thai, as you know, something and then the Thai cab driver takes the money and he walks back to the cab and he's looking back at me like he feels guilty or he feels bad and he gets in the cab and he drives away.And then it dawned on me that the cab driver didn't want to take the money. Like he felt bad. He had been trying to find this place for three hours. He couldn't find it and he didn't even want the extra money, but I was just the foolish foreigner and didn't know what to do and the bellman said, just come on, you silly cab driver, take the money and go away.But I think it was a good story because I think that is so indicative of my time in Thailand, you know, like the people are so sweet and bad things can happen to you when you travel but in this story, it was just a sweet old guy and he actually didn't want to take any more money from me. He didn't want to take advantage of me. He was just disappointed that he couldn't get me to where I wanted to go.Greg: Did you actually get to the place you wanted to go?Todd: Well, yeah, eventually I called my friend and they came and picked me up.Greg: Was there a phone number on the card?Todd: Yeah, there was.Greg: Why didn't you stop with the cab driver and call them?Todd: Well, because I was given the card and they said to use this card to go to this place and it was a factory and then so when I called the place they realized what was happening. Before the cab driver was calling the place and so he couldn't find it but once there was a foreigner they put me with somebody who speaks English and it was all worked out, and I should have thought of that in the first place.Greg: You learn from experience.

It's a jungle out there. Today we invite you to reflect on the state of the internet world we live in as entrepreneurs and the impact e-commerce can have on hundreds of thousands of people. One of the most interesting trends we are seeing in the arena is the service companies popping up to support the thousands of Amazon merchants out there. Today's guest, who quickly turned his back on a career in engineering in his twenties, started dabbling in Amazon sales until he came up with the idea for Jungle Scout just before taking off on a three-year world tour. He talks to us about how he spent those years living the true entrepreneur experience while actually building his now 100 person company. Jungle Scout searches, captures, analyzes and refines billions of data points from Amazon to deliver the most accurate data in the industry. His 200,000 plus customers were all clearly in need of his merchant scaling tools. Jungle Scout also offers numerous free educational resources to give young entrepreneurs everything they need to succeed. Episode Highlights: How Greg convinced his wife to give everything up to travel the world. The hesitation, the results, and the payoff of that path. The employee structure of Jungle Scout. The company's original design and what it has evolved to today. Stories that stand out as models of success for Jungle Scout. The Five Minute Pitch – what it is and how it's helping entrepreneurs succeed. How the Jungle Scout scholarship program is motivating young entrepreneurs. What's coming up for Jungle Scout. The company's new initiatives for bringing ease into scouting suppliers and merchandise. How his products have created friction with people in the business but also brought them in as clients. Transcription: Mark: Alright allow me to relax philosophically here for just a minute and I invite you to reflect on just how impactful our current era is with the Internet. Back at Traffic & Conversion in February, I actually hear Richard Branson talk about what they would do to get attention and PR; crazy stunts, parachuting into places and doing these incredible things just to be able to impact large volumes of people. Well as online entrepreneurs we have that at our fingertips and can do that often from our bedrooms just by putting up a good marketing campaign online. But we have the ability to impact thousands of lives and have this network effect as well of these thousands of lives impacting other people's lives. And I looked at where we're at with the Internet today and I think one of the most influential areas are all the service companies that are popping up and SaaS companies popping up to service the Amazon merchants that are out there. And I'd say by far one of the leaders of the pack is Jungle Scout. They—most of everybody that is in the Amazon world, you know who Jungle Scout is. They're kind of ubiquitous with this idea of product research. Joe, you got to talk to Jungle Scout in this week's podcast. Joe: Yeah. Greg Mercer founded Jungle Scout just a few years ago; 4 ½, 5 years ago, an interesting story. Look we talked all about how he came up with a concept, even where he met his wife Lisa, how we started the business, travelled with his wife Lisa for 3 years overseas while growing Jungle Scout. He has only settled back in Austin for the last year and a half, and the size of the company. And then really it was about his entrepreneurial journey. And then we touched on some of the key features in Jungle Scout and some of the other things that Greg has done with his good fortune like scholarships that you can find on the Jungle Scout website and in the show notes here. You know being entrepreneurs and having an easier time impacting people one on one or directly is something that we know here at Quiet Light because we're fortunate enough to be in a situation where we do work one on one with most people. And we know what it means when they sell their business or buy a business and get to stay home and see their kids more. We talked about that a little bit with Greg and like most entrepreneurs he started Jungle Scout to make money. But now that he makes great money that relieves the stress, right? We all want to have money in our bank account to relieve the financial stress but the big thing that fills his cup is the impact that he's having on individual lives. And he gets to hear about that impact when he goes out to conferences and they have a booth like out at Prosper and people come up to him and say listen this is my story, this is how Jungle Scout changed my life. And Greg says quite honestly look it wasn't Jungle Scout; it was you, it was your effort, it was your risk, your reward. Jungle Scout was just a tool that you used. So he's very humble about that but a great guy. Just a good human and I think that there are 2 or 3 things that come out of this podcast. First and foremost you get to hear a great entrepreneur story. He didn't go to school for business yet here he is running a business with 100 the least. What it's like to travel all over the world with your wife? It's right for some people, it's wrong for others. And then just the good things that he's doing with Jungle Scout Scholars and then all the features that Jungle Scout has, and the scariest one. And folks you've got to listen all the way through because we talk more about it at the very end. This is not a pitch for Jungle Scout. It's more of a story of entrepreneurial success. But you can literally find—can I give this away Mark? Can we give it out, too much information; what do you think? Mark: Oh no it's a great tease so get to the end. Joe: You can find your favorite product on Amazon and then use the Jungle Scout tool to find out who the manufacturer is in China. It is scary. But like Greg said it doesn't mean you're going to be successful. We know that all great ideas don't achieve success. There's lots of motes around these great listings on Amazon so it's no guarantee of success even though you find them in [inaudible 00:05:10.9]. But, great podcast, great guy, looking for to get to know him over the years as well. Mark: So he's down in Austin, right? Joe: Yes he is. Mark: Is he going to come to our meet-up coming up at the end of May? Joe: Yes he is. Mark: And when and where is that meet-up? For anyone in the Austin area or who has always wanted to go to Austin area, this might be an awesome opportunity to meet Joe. I probably won't be there. Amanda will be there as well and some really, really good people are showing up to this as well. Joe: Yeah everybody that we've worked with over the years that's down in Austin are getting an invite and hopefully [inaudible 00:05:44.1] groups is going to go. Actually, one person replied today and said thanks for inviting all my friends. It's like you're throwing a party for my friends. I appreciate it. It was pretty funny. And that was RJ at 101. It's going to be May 29th at Oasis at Lake Travis from 6 to 9 pm and it's just drinks nor dares and coming out with friends. Mark: Awesome, and we're going to have a page up on the Quiet Light Brokerage website. We're going to make sure it's included in the e-mails that get sent out. And also on the show notes for this podcast so that you can RSVP if you do want to attend. We would love to see, we'd love to host it for the night; bring a friend, bring lots of friends. It should be a few hours of just really good networking and getting to know some really key players in the space. So please do show up. But now let's get to the good stuff [inaudible 00:06:27.7] Joe: Let's do it. Joe: Hey folks it's Joe here at Quiet Light Brokerage and today we've got another great guest on the Quiet Light Podcast. His name is Greg Mercer. Greg, how are you doing today? Greg: Joe I'm doing fantastic. Thank you very much for having me on and it's going to be fun to talk to you. Joe: Founder of Jungle Scout and many other things; a very impressive guy at a very young age. I just looked at your LinkedIn profile, listened to a couple of things on YouTube, and I saw your wife talking about you as well which was all positive by the way. Greg: Oh, that's good to hear. Joe: Well you know the drill, we don't have a whole lot of fancy introductions. So for those that don't know you and don't know the Jungle Scouts can you give a little bit of background on yourself and the business itself? Greg: I'd be happy to. So it's probably most relevant to rewind back to my college days real quick. I went to school to be a civil engineer and graduated. I got a job working as a civil engineer and I just didn't like it at all. I want to become an entrepreneur so I tried a number of different things. But the 1st thing I had a little bit of success with was selling physical products on Amazon. And that's ultimately what led me to quit my job. I was able to kind of replace my income by doing that. My wife and I actually at that point sold all our belongings and started traveling around the world and living out at Air B&B's and running our business from there. And one thing led to another and I—the biggest problem that I had with scaling my Amazon business was finding new products to sell. So I had a number of products up, some of them are doing really well, some weren't doing really well. I didn't really know why some were doing well and some weren't. And what it came down to was the amount of demand there was on Amazon for these products. So being kind of an engineer by background and a very data driven person, I was able to create some algorithms to estimate how well all products on Amazon sell. And that was ultimately how Jungle Scout got started. So I'd never started a software company before but I 1st built a simple extension. I was like no one will probably ever buy this thing but if nothing else I can just use it for myself. And it turns out we were able to get people to buy it because if you fast forward all the way today there's about roughly 100 people that work in Jungle Scout. We have over 200,000 customers so it's grown quite a bit since the 1st day when I didn't think anyone would buy it. Joe: That is absolutely crazy; 100 employees and did you say, 200,000 customers? Greg: Yup over 200,000. Joe: That's amazing. So I want to talk about a few things, I want to talk about you travelled the world with your wife while starting Jungle Scout so that's probably the most important thing. I love the fact that you went to school for civil engineering and then took a completely different path in the sense as an entrepreneur. But then you were able to start it as an entrepreneur while traveling the world and with your wife of all things. And then I want to talk a little bit about what Jungle Scout does and a couple of the other things that you're doing because of the good fortune you've had in the business through Jungle Scout. But let's get personal for a minute. I mean you are what 30, 31 years old I'm guessing? It looks like— Greg: 31. Joe: Right. So you've been at this for a long time. Did you meet your wife in college? Greg: I did actually so yeah we both went to school at Auburn and that's how we met. Joe: Amazing. And she actually was willing to sell everything and travel the world with you or was it her idea to do that? Greg: I think it was my idea. I had read Tim Ferris' book 4-Hour Workweek and I was like well this is pretty cool. Instead of living here we could go live in all these cool exotic places in much less money. And so I was like Elizabeth we should go and try this. And she was like yeah you're an idiot. We're not doing that. But I kept on bringing it up over the months and she's always really enjoyed travel. I think her biggest hesitation at the time was she was working for Target and was on a pretty fast crew path. And I think that's where she envisioned her career moving forward. So I think that was her biggest hesitation. It was like man I'm kind of going to give up my career a little bit, or at least put it on hold if we're going to do this for a year or 2 or 3 years or whatever. So I think that was her biggest hesitation but she's like you only live once let's go for it. And yeah we both ended up loving it. We did it for 3 whole years so we both ended up loving it a lot. Joe: And you launched Scott but just before you took off for a while you were over in Southeast Asia? Greg: Yeah it was actually just before I took off. I like the week before we took off. Joe: And how many years ago was that? Greg: That was is January of 2015, so 4 ½ years ago. Joe: So really you've run the business for the 1st 3 years of its existence by traveling. Greg: Yeah. Joe: That's incredible. Now the 100 employees that you have are they mostly remote, mostly they're in Austin, whereabouts in the world are they? Greg: When we started the company it was fully remote. I was traveling around so I didn't have an office to hire this people in. So we are fully remote. In January of 2018 is when I moved to Austin. That's where I live now. Since then we've been doing a lot of our hiring in Austin. So I think about maybe 40 of the people are in Austin now and the rest of the team is either remote. And then we also have an office in Vancouver. And then we opened up an office in Shenzhen in China about 6 months ago. So some of the team is there now. Joe: Amazing. So we'll talk about what some of those offices do for Jungle Scout and the subscribers in a bit. Now that you've gone through college, marriage, travelled the world, entrepreneur, you worked with directly and indirectly and inspire a lot of young entrepreneurs all over the world. Is selling everything, packing up, and traveling the world something you would say you got to do to that young man or woman that has the opportunity and is not tied down to things of this nature? Greg: You know I'd say it's not for everyone. And for me, it'll probably be like one of the most fond memories of my whole life. I kind of go in through a period. I think I learned a ton about myself. I met a lot of really interesting people. I learned a lot about different cultures. I think we visited roughly 30 different countries. We would spend about a month sometimes 2 months in each country. So when you spend like a month or 2 somewhere sometimes a little longer but you get like a pretty good sense of just kind of like what day to day life is and what the culture is really about much more than like on a weeklong vacation. So during that, I got to just learn a ton about all these different countries, fascinating things that a lot of countries do like very well. I was able to bring back individual things. I think certain countries do very well so that was really cool. So I'd say it's definitely not for everyone. I think to a lot of people it's very stressful. You're moving all around the world and you don't have any kind of—or we didn't have any kind of a home base. So with all that being said it's definitely for everyone. But if you're interested in it and that seems like something that you'd enjoy I would definitely recommend for you to try. Joe: Is there a particular book that you would have and go to? Is it Tim Ferris' 4-Hour Workweek or is there a great travel one? Greg: Probably. Joe: Probably; okay. Greg: Yeah I'll probably just do the Tim Ferris' 4-Hour Workweek. It's a little bit outdated now. I think it was written over a decade ago now but the spirit is still the same. Joe: I'm reading one of his books now and I'm looking around like my office here. I don't see it but it's the tools to tighten switches. It is one giant book. The great stuff all from the podcast off from those he's taken over the years and a lot of the 4-Hour Workweek stuff as well. It's funny we've had Bill D'Alessandro on the podcast. Do you know who Bill is? Greg: The name rings a bell. Joe: He's from South Charlotte and he runs a consumer products group down at Charlotte. He does a lot of speaking, very close friends with Andrew Youderian from eCommerceFuel and Bill had that same 4-Hour Workweek life at one point and do the same thing working from a beach in Southeast Asia or somewhere. And we talked about this on the podcast now he has staff, an office, a warehouse; in many ways just like you. And he finds that he actually has more freedom now than before because he's got people that can actually do everything for him instead of having virtual assistants that he has to check in with every day. Greg: Right. Joe: So it is not for everyone like you say but certainly something to explore. It's not for me and my wife. I was in your shoes once upon a time when I was living in the frigid cold of Portland Maine for those folks that are listening out from Portland Maine. And this is back in the day when I heard a commercial for GoToMeeting.com I'm like what? What is that? And I went across the hall—I signed up for a free trial. I went across the hall to my other office and log in get the free thing and then go to my PC is what it was. It was a derivative of that. And I log into my PC from across the hall, this is 2nd nature now but I was amazed. I was like this is incredible. I went home and I told Christiana and said hey we're going to Florida for the winter. And she said we are not, you're an idiot. [inaudible 00:15:35.1] we did it for 5 years and then we got the hell out of Maine because it was too cold. Sorry for those folks that are still there. Were in North Carolina now and do love it. But this isn't about me it's about Greg Mercer and Jungle Scout. So let's talk about Jungle Scout and what it does. I know what it does. I've used it a little bit in the past. I know a lot of clients that bought and sold business with Quiet Light have used it. So can you just touch on what it does—let's talk about the progression of it; what it originally did and what it's evolved to today. Greg: Yeah. That's a good way to frame it. So it started out as just a Chrome extension. So most of the listeners are probably familiar with Chrome extensions which is a little add on that you install into your Chrome browser. And what it did is when you were visiting Amazon and you were on the listing or on a search page, you'd click this little Chrome extension and you'd see a little pop up. And on that pop up there was a number of different pieces of data. But the one that people care about the most is the estimated sales data. So that's what I was talking earlier; developing these algorithms that can estimate how well any product on Amazon is selling. Back then it was pretty poor accuracy, today a pretty high degree of accuracy. So that's how it started. Shortly thereafter we launched a web application and the primary functionality in there was again to find good opportunities on Amazon or find out how well things were selling. And that's kind of been transitioning over the years. We now have keyword research functionality. We now have functionality to help you find high quality suppliers or factories. Actually launching in 2 weeks is functionality to help you launch your product on Amazon. And then by the end of the year, it's going to be everything to help you kind of like manage and optimize your Amazon business as well. So the way we like or our mission here at Jungle Scout is to really empower and inspire Amazon entrepreneurs with the tools and resources they need to be successful. So we're building all that into our software but then we also have just tons of free resources in education and a whole bunch of other stuff just to help people be more successful on Amazon. Joe: Yeah I've looked at some of that both on your website on LinkedIn on YouTube. You are all over the place. It's pretty impressive the reach that you've got and the folks that saying you are praising Scott Voelker is somebody we know in common does that well and does it all the time. I love the empower people approach and to fulfill their dreams not only the staff that you have but the people that used to program, the 200,000 or so subscribers that you have. A lot of people in your—let's call your world, I want to call you an influencer because I think that's what you are Greg. So in your world, a lot of folks say I've made X many millionaires. You've heard a lot of stories over the years of the way that the tools that Jungle Scout has and provides to people how it's changed their lives, can you think of anything or anyone that stands out and what an impact it had in terms of with their Amazon business and how it changed their lives? Greg: I can think of a whole bunch of stories. And actually, I was—I think the last time we saw each other was at Prosper Show. And going to conferences and stuff like that it's always a great chance that I talk to all these customers in real life. So like probably a dozen times throughout that 2 or 3 day conference whatever it is like someone came up to me very emotional a few different times in tears but like just telling me this life story about how they found Jungle Scout and how it helped them create this business. And that's like a really, really special thing to be a part of. I never would've thought that in a million years like starting this business that people would come up to me in tears being like—just telling a story about how they were at a really low spot or they hated their job or whatever else and especially starting the business is what changed their life. A lot of them kind of attribute or say like Jungle Scout is kind of what caused that or encouraged them to do so or empowered them with the tools to have the confidence to do so. So yeah I mean there are tons of stories but I think most of them have like a ton of things in common, at least the ones that are most memorable are impactful to me. Joe: And it's the impactfulness I think that is most interesting. I think that with success and some of the things that we do, and you do, and Scott does and Mike Jackness another friend in common it's A. being a good human and helping people. There's peace of mind that you get with money in your bank account but there's pure joy, satisfaction, and other things that are so intangible by helping others and having people come up to you like that and say what you've created has changed my life, what you did changed my life, what you said, the way you helped me change my life and very impactful stuff. Greg: Yeah very much so and if you would have kind of—if I would really listen to this podcast not that long ago, just like 4 or 5 years ago, I would've been able to really like understand that at all. I don't think—at the time this seems like super shallow. But if I'm just being honest with myself, my only goal was just to make money. And the reason that was my goal at the time is like that's how I kind of like saw freedom. It's like okay I can quit my job or I have the security so I don't have to worry about it or I was always like—my 1st few years being an entrepreneur I was always so scared. [inaudible 00:20:59.8] like go back and get a job. Now it's like the most terrifying thing to me. So honestly—when I'm being honest with myself all I cared about was like the money at the time. And then kind of like as I felt like I was financially secure and kind of like no longer have those worries. That's when you're going to start asking yourself those questions like man what really does bring me the most happiness or like the most joy? And for me helping entrepreneurs is like very, very high on the list if not the top thing. So I would do these different case studies or free educational piece of content or whatever else. And people often say to me why are you giving all this away for free or why are you doing this it's only creating more competition for you or whatever else. And when I hear that it would just remind me of like yeah okay 5 years ago I would have said the same thing. I wouldn't have understood it but then I talk to these other people who are like successful entrepreneurs or whoever else and they're the ones who kind of like can understand that a lot better. It's like okay once you get to a certain point it's about okay what really brings you a lot of joy in your life, a lot of happiness and you want to optimize for doing those things. Joe: Yeah and that free content and everything you're giving it away for free but you're helping people and if you're in this for the long term it's going to come back around. And I think you're in this for a long term. Absolutely, yeah. Some of the things that you've done over the past are overflowing into other things that you have ventured into. And I want to talk about a couple of them. You and a group of friends have started something called the 5 Minute Pitch. I took a look at an episode or 2 of that. I've talked to Mike about it. I saw the one with Andrew from ECF on it. Do you want to talk about what 5 Minute Pitch is and how you're helping entrepreneurs? Greg: Yeah. So this kind of goes back to what brings me joy. And helping entrepreneurs is definitely one of them. It's also fun to hang out with other people I enjoy being around. So this was like a nice mixture of the 2. 5 Minute Pitch is shark tank style pitch competition where anyone with a small internet business who hasn't raised institutional money is eligible to pitch; so different people with all different types of businesses. Everything from a small software business to an e-commerce store to just developing a product and selling it through Instagram ads or whatever else. They pitch their business to myself and 4 other judges. And at the end of the season, the season actually ends in just a few weeks; we're giving the winner a $50,000 prize. They don't have to give up any equity in their business or anything. It's just prize money to help grow. So yeah it was a—we've only done one season of it. It was really fun and we'll probably do a few more seasons in the future. Joe: That's great now everybody that listens to the podcast knows that we don't pitch products and services. But I think that they all should look closely at Jungle Scout and 5 Minute Pitch. Take a look at it if you've got a product that's just taking off and you want to get more into the e-commerce world. Take a look maybe you could be on season 2. Who is Kevin O'Leary in the 5 Minute Pitch? Who's—and have you said you're dead to me to anybody? Greg: You know I've been watching some Shark Tank before thinking about these different lines and me and most of the other judges I think most of us are all just a little too nice to be Kevin O'Leary; which in results probably makes it a bit worse for television. But we're kind of just ourselves on the show. Joe: We had the founder of Happy Feet on the podcast a few weeks ago and he said that—and he did a deal with Robert on Shark Tank. Greg: Okay. Joe: He said that when you're on shark—and I've talked to 5 or 6 people over the years that have been on, when you're on Shark Tank when you finish up they make you go sit with a psychiatrist for an hour. You can't leave 10 minutes n. It's at least for an hour because they want to make sure that you're not going to kill yourself because of some of the things that some people have said about your business; so pretty rough. Alright so let's talk about something else I looked at before we jumped on the podcast here and that is the Jungle Scout scholar; JS scholar. What are you doing there man? Greg: Yeah. So it's just a scholarship program that we started just over the years I'm thinking of different ways and kind of like give back to the communities especially things I'm kind of passionate about. So that's one that we're doing. Each semester we're giving a scholarship to someone who's kind of like in business school or maybe computer sciences or something in that area who also has kind of like an entrepreneurial spirit. So it's pretty easy. Just create a little short video and submit it. Each semester we choose someone to give the scholarship to. And then with that also comes some mentorship for me to help them get their business off the ground. Joe: That's awesome. I mean it really is. A lot of people talk about giving back and helping others, young entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs themselves but you're actually doing it. How long have you been doing that program? Greg: I think we've given away 5 scholarships now so that would be about 2 ½ years I've been doing it. So it's cool. Joe: That's impressive. Now I'm going to talk to my 17 year old when we're off. He's applying to college next year and— Greg: Tell him to apply. Joe: He is not going to business school. He'll probably be an engineer or maybe an art student, who knows we're still working that stuff out. They change their minds a lot. They really do. Greg: Yeah I do too. Joe: I did as well. And we've actually had people that have put their kids through college and then bought them a business when they graduated which is very interesting. It's almost like they shouldn't have spent that's $200,000 on college [inaudible 00:26:30.4] part of the business but kids get to grow up a little bit. What's down the road, what's in the future for Jungle Scout? What things are you going to add that are going to help those 200,000 plus subscribers and fend off some of the competition down the road? Greg: Yeah we have quite a few product initiatives going on right now. We've really grown our product team a lot over the past 6, 12 months. We're going to really build out a lot of this stuff but most of it is around kind of what I spoke about earlier about right now the Jungle has got a tool at least that gets you up to until you launched your product on Amazon. We have a few other businesses that we have acquired or built over the years but we're kind of combining those into a singular tool. So by the end of the year, the additional functionality you can expect is like the stuff from those other tools. So helping you manage your business in our PPC and optimize it; all these different areas is kind of like what we're building in this year in 2019. Joe: That's great I know that finding a great PPC company is often hard for folks, managing products we've got folks that buy businesses and just—I am looking for a great company that managed the entire thing for me so that's fantastic. One of the biggest issues people have Greg as you probably know is sourcing great products. Is that down the road or is that part of Jungle Scout at all now? Greg: Yeah so we actually just released—so our newest feature is actually probably the one I'm most proud of called supplier database. And we actually just released this like a month ago. So it's pretty cool Joe. So we—I guess you've seen this too that a lot of people have a lot of problems finding high quality suppliers. And I did too. And I also found like this was one of the biggest pain points of our audience. And when I really started to get into this, it's like okay what's the problem here because there are tons of factories on Alibaba. That's how I used to find all my factories, just on Alibaba. There's tons of them and what it really comes down to is it wasn't like a shortage of factories or finding the factories or being able to communicate with them what it really came down to was finding a quality factory and vetting the factory before you did a production run. So like most of the horror stories that you hear are that the quality didn't come out as expected or every once in a while you hear a horror story about someone who a factory just ran off with someone's money or whatever else. And so there's a few ways I used to try to combat this; one was ordering a sample at a time. However, the problem is that when you're only ordering one unit, of course, they're going to give you the nicest one. They're going to like polish that one up extra but it's like oh can I do that on a production run of a 1,000 or 2,000 units and that's oftentimes not the case. So that was one way I tried to combat it. The other way was to get an inspection once the production run was finished. The problem there is when it didn't meet the quality sometimes you weren't able to get them to really fix what you wanted or is like sometimes a little bit too late at that point. So anyway the ways to try to combat it, the list was long but [inaudible 00:29:30.6] that effective. So what we did is we collected all of the US import trade data. So when you import something in the US you file some paperwork, yo give it to the government, and through this law called the Freedom of Information Act in the US, we're able to get access to that data. We put it into a database. We made it easy to filter and search through. And the way that it's able to solve this quality problem is you're able to find factories on there, you're able to see who their customers are, how often they import into the US, and how long they've been importing to US, the quantities; a number of different factors like that. So that's really cool but we kind of took it one step further by being able to essentially search for any Amazon product or any brand on Amazon in here and you could find out who are their factories. Joe: Holy cow, that's amazing and almost offensive in some ways. I would think if you're an Amazon seller and you're able to scrape through their manufacturers. That's pretty incredible. Greg: Yeah it's really incredible. It's like the old way for me of finding factories was when I found product idea I went to Alibaba, order a bunch of samples, whatever else. My new way of finding factories is like when I find something that I want to sell, and like sitting next to me right here is a little espresso. So if I want to sell espresso cups, I would just go to Amazon, I would search for espresso cups, I would see who gets the highest ratings. So who has like 5 out of 5 stars with a whole bunch of reviews and I just find their factory. Because then like right away then you know that there's a high quality factory. Joe: And you did that through sheer tenacity and hard work. What you're doing at the Jungle Scout is you're giving a tool to do it for them. Greg: Yeah. That what— Greg: And that's what I do now; I just who the factory is of the highest quality product on Amazon and I just contact them and I buy from them. So it's a much easier way to do it. Joe: Wow that's amazing; that's scary and amazing. Still, though I think for those that are going oh my God I'm never going to sell on Amazon because of that; it's that moat that you build around with thousands of reviews. I did a valuation today for something that is a fairly competitive it's in a very competitive niche but they've guy 17,000 reviews and the closest one has maybe like 1,100. That's an enormous gap in reviews. So there's a pretty big moat there. Greg: Right, and you know this Joe it's—when we launched this there was definitely—we probably got a dozen emails of like really pissed off people because now everyone can find out who their factory is. But you realize this because you deal with people who are buying business all the time but it takes a lot more than just knowing a factory to create a successful business, right? [inaudible 00:32:09.4] like a lot of other steps. Joe: A ton of a lot. Greg: So just because people can find out who your factory is that doesn't mean that they can just copy your whole business. There's a lot more steps to it than that so I wouldn't be too worried about it. We actually saw this exact same thing when I originally launched Jungle Scout because prior to Jungle Scout no one knew how well products on Amazon were selling. And now all of a sudden you could see how well every product on Amazon sold. So same thing I got like dozens of people emailing me pissed off because I was telling the whole world about how well their products were selling on Amazon. Joe: That was—they were pissed off shortly before they subscribed probably though, right? Greg: Right. So we've kind of seen a little bit of a similar thing with the supplier database. And then to your exact most people are like wow, well I'd rather have all this data and the whole world be able to know who my factory was than this type of thing not exist out there. Joe: Yeah I hate you but I'm going to give you my money every month because you created a great product. That's awesome; fantastic. I didn't know that it went to that depth and level where you can find the products manufacturer. That's incredible. Alright, Greg, we're running out of time, obviously, Jungle Scout is how do they find it? JungleScout.com? Greg: Yeah JungleScout.com if you're not familiar with it you can read up all about it on the website. If you're interested in just selling on Amazon too, I might be a little bit biased but I think we have like the best educational content out there and it's all for free. You can find all of it under the free resources section of the website. So any format you like learning in whether that's on audio or video or written it's all on there. There's a lot of—a bunch of end up guides. We do this thing called the Million Dollar Case Study where we launched 4 products from start to finish. You get to see the products and everything along the journey. So yeah that's tons of stuff on there if you just [inaudible 00:33:52.5] on Amazon too. Joe: Fantastic; a great educational tool and a great product. And for those out there with kids that are going to college in the next couple of years how do they get to the JS Scholarship or scholar site? Greg: JungleScout.com/jungle-scholar and you can find in the footer of the website too. Joe: I got it. I found it on LinkedIn. And then there's the 5 Minute Pitches well we'll put all this in the show notes as well. Greg Mercer, thank you very much for spending time with us. I know you're a very busy guy. I appreciate it. Greg: Thanks again. I'm glad I'm here. Take care. Links and Resources: Jungle Scout Jungle Scholar The 5 Minute Pitch

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: So, Greg, you are quite the world traveler I hear.Greg: Um, yeah, I love traveling. I've been to probably around, I don't know, 20 different countries. I've lived in Thailand and South Korea and the United Arab Emirates, and four different parts of JapanTodd: Oh, that's a lot.Greg: And of course several different places in the U.S.Todd: Well, for somebody who's going to travel for the first time, what type of advice would you give them, so you know, in case they never get lost.Greg: Ah, getting lost. (Right) Yeah, that happens all the time. You have to prepare for that. Some of them, one of the first things I do, whenever I get to an airport, is I see if I can get a map from the information center. I go to a hotel. I ask if they have a map of the area. When I want to go somewhere, I ask them to write the destination in the local language, and also I practice my pronunciation with them, and sometimes I'll, almost always actually, I get a business card or a matchbook from the hotel to where I'll be returning (right, right) and then I go off on my merry way.Todd: OK, well, let's say that um, you're on business in a foreign country, and it's really busy and you forget to get the business card, you don't have the map, you're trying to find someplace and you're completely lost, what should you do?Greg: Well, of course, you've got to ask people. (Right, right) and it's a good idea to ask a lot of different people because in some countries people don't want to say no, but they don't want to say I don't know, right. They give you some directions, or maybe they don't understand you, and they give you the wrong directions, so even if you think you got good directions the first time constantly check with other people along your way.Todd: Well, so when you're going down the street, and say you are lost, is there a certain type of person you look for like let's say an old lady or children. Is there a certain person who is better at giving directions?Greg: Um, well, if it's a child, and you want to get to a business section or something, probably they don't know. (Right) It's a good idea to ask somebody who looks as if they live in the area, and not just another, sorry, tourist passing through or something.Todd: Right, right, right. So you're talking about people who work in shops and things like that?Greg: Yes, and also though, delivery men are usually very good, cause they have to go all over the city, so they know it well.Todd: Right. So have you actually ever been lost?Greg: Oh, I've been lost all the time. Once I got lost for a couple of hours in Bangkok and it was terrible.Todd: Well, that's pretty, that's a pretty intense city.Greg: Yeah, so after that, it gave me the idea that I should always check for landmarks, you know landmarks are really tall buildings, or a river, something I could always know, I could see easily, and try to remember, "oh the river's on my right side. Ah, there's a hill over there." Keep looking for it. Remember itTodd: Well, it sounds like good advice. Thanks, Greg.Greg: You're welcome.

[paypal-donation] We're continuing our conversation about revelation in the LDS Church.  One of Mormonism's most important and well-known revelations deals with the Word of Wisdom, Mormonism's health code.  Dr. Greg Prince talks about a naturalistic view of how that revelation was received.  I think it's pretty surprising. Greg:  You will hear people still who say the Word of Wisdom proves Joseph was a prophet because it was a hundred years ahead of its time.  It wasn't even a day ahead of its time.  It reflected what everybody already knew.  This was the air that they breathed. The Temperance Movement kicked in in 1826 because there was an epidemic of drunkenness in the United States.  The consumption of distilled liquor over a 30 year period had tripled on a per capita basis.  Drunkenness became a national security issue.  That's why the American Temperance Society was formed in 1826. ... When they said “hot drinks,” it mean drinks that were hot.  It wasn't what was in them. GT:  Including hot chocolate? Greg:  People didn't drink hot chocolate.  They only drank two hot drinks:  coffee and tea.  But it wasn't the content, it was the temperature.  It moved you out of that zone of moderation, out of temperance. ... If there had been iced drinks, probably the Word of Wisdom would have said no hot drinks and no iced drinks because the whole notion was temperance, moderation. ... GT:  Some would say, is that really revelation then, or is that just the thinking of the day? Greg:  Well you get into the circular argument on that.  Is something revelation because we call it revelation, or is the nature of the something what later qualifies it as being revelation?  If you're looking for the splitting the ceiling and the voice of the Lord dropping through-type revelation, how many instances of that do we have within the LDS Church tradition? Hear what he has to say about meat and grains!  We'll also tell some stories about President McKay. Greg:  President McKay looked up at him and said, “What's on the cup doesn't matter so long as what's in the cup is a Coke.” ...I was chatting with one of the secretaries who had worked in President McKay's office...She read that and she said, “That's not correct.” I said, “What do you mean it's not correct?  You know the guy who gave me that story!” Then she said, “Well let me tell you..." It's going to be a very fun conversation.  I hope you join us….. https://youtu.be/LFiDUzhVdjs   [paypal-donation]

What a truly exceptional man we have on the show this week – you will never hear a more salient and inspiring business commentator. His story actually speaks for itself, but there’s a whole lot more on offer in this conversation. Greg has set up his own business and successfully sold the franchise; he’s worked in residential lending and structured funding, and now he spends his time being the go-to man for CEOs who are looking to raise substantial investment to grow their business. Greg is particularly revered for somehow raising $120m for an animated film, The Legends Of Oz: Dorothy’s Return. Not only was this the first time anyone in Hollywood had pulled this off, but Greg managed to do this despite telling each investor that they’d stand to lose money! See below for some of Greg’s unbelievable insight: **  Raising money is a good way of building teams. If you’re going to grow something you can’t do it alone. **  If you’re going to grow, you have to be prepared to keep changing your mindset. **  Embrace chaos. If you don’t, you won’t grow. **  It isn’t all about the money. Most people invest for the primary reason that the investment would have a meaningful impact on their life. **  Are you more interested in what you’re doing, or who you’re doing it with? If it’s the latter, then you’re set up to achieve the ‘impossible’ like Greg.   In this episode of Business Brain Food you will learn: **  Bootstrapping V funding a business **  Greg’s amazing story **  How Greg was involved in the digital projection of Michael Jackson **  What prevents businesses from scaling **  How Greg raised an ‘impossible’ amount of money **  The secret to good leadership Resources mentioned in this episode: **  Ben’s Business Advice: http://www.maxmyprofit.com.au **  Find Greg on his website: http://www.gregcentineo.com **  Greg’s must-read books with Amazon buy links: Howard Schultz - Pour your heart into it; Walter Isaacson - Einstein: His life and the universe; Walter Isaacson - Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography **  The Business Brain Food Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/businessbrainfood **  All previous BBF episodes & show notes can be found at http://www.businessbrainfood.com.au **  Twitter: https://twitter.com/bfewtrell   Call to action: It’s so difficult to pick one bit of wisdom above all the others to end with, but we’ll go with this from Greg: “You can do good things by yourself, but you’ll never accomplish anything great alone". Also, if you are enjoying these Business Brain Food podcasts, then make sure to share them via social media sites or email the links to family and friends. A lot of time and effort goes into producing each of these podcasts with the goal in mind of the more people we can inspire about business the better. You can help us do just that! Until next time, have a profitable day! Cheers, Ben Fewtrell (02) 9111 5000  

We add new content daily! Listen on iTunes: iTunes.ExitcoachRadio.com. See the Index for more on this Topic or by this Guest. Transcript:  Steve: What are some of the tips and strategies and precautions that you give business owners if they're starting to look at business insurance? Greg: You go for a second opinion. And I wouldn't get that second opinion from some person that sold through the policy. That, to me, would not be a second opinion. And I'd also have the work done from a firm that's not a captive firm, inside a single life insurance company. So, captive agents are, shall we say, encouraged by their parent companies to keep coverages on the books. And, I'd also ask the auditor what they're gonna do for you if you have someone offer to do a policy audit. Make sure they're just not going to try to find you a replacing carrier under the disguise of a policy review.  To hear more tips from over 750 Advisors, visit exitcoachradio.com Listeners: You asked, so we found FREE solutions for 5 of your top problem areas. Text “TOOLBELT” to 44222 or click here

Greg Goldstein, Senior Director of Global Channel Sales and Development for ON24, joins Jen Spencer to discuss mid-market and enterprise consulting partners, business planning for channel managers, partner exit interviews, and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. Jen: I'm excited to have you with us, and I wanna share a little bit about ON24 before we dig into channel questions. You guys are the global leader in webinar marketing solutions that drive demand generation and customer engagement, which sounds exciting. I know you've recently joined the ON24 team, but you've spent the last 12 plus years developing channel programs for software companies. Can you tell us a little bit about ON24, about your value proposition, and what brought you to this new team? Greg: Absolutely, for sure. ON24, as you mentioned, is a leader in webcasting technologies. Our overarching goal is to help marketers generate more leads and pipeline, as well as keeping existing customers up to speed on an organization's current deliverables, services and other offerings. Our platform is really about interactivity. It helps companies drive better engagement through that interactivity, and although interactivity and relationships are crucial, it's really how the platform can gather the data from those events, whether they're live events, on-demand events, or even semi-live events. And it's really crucial that as organizations spend time and effort to create these webcasts, that that data is pulled back into their organization and shared with their CRM and marketing automation platforms to really help the sales team just get more actionable activities and information about prospects and customers that they're engaged with. Jen: Well, being a revenue-driven marketer myself, I can definitely see the value there. So let's talk about channel. When you look at those overarching goals that the ON24 team has for the year, that you have, that the executive team has, what role do you think your channel is going to play in helping achieve those goals, both in the next 12 months, but then, looking ahead to even the next five years? Greg: That's a great question. As a channel person who's been in channel for 12 plus years, what's really crucial is, when an organization gets to that inflection point where they realize that channel is really that lever that's gonna help them extend their revenue stream, that they look at where they currently are with their channel. I think that like ON24, they realize that the channel is going to play that pivotal role. So how do you develop a channel in an organization that maybe not necessarily had a consulting partner channel but are looking to do that? And so, ON24 has several different channels, but specifically to this question, the consulting partner channel that I was brought in to develop is something that's going to help open up the market in the short-term and long-term. In the short term, it's building out a channel program that will provide our new partners with a webcasting solution that they can include into their marketing stack. And that's something that we'll talk about a little bit later. But there's this new stack, there's a CRM component, there's a marketing automation component, and then there's the webcasting component that really all tie together to create a unified vision of people, customers and prospects that are engaging these organizations. So my goal in coming to ON24 was to create a channel and create channel partners' success programs that will help these partners develop the tools that they need to be successful. I think in the short-term, the ON24 new partner program, which we've titled SuccessOne, will give these new partners the tools to be successful by also providing ON24 the leverage of having a new and unique devoted channel that will help expand the brand that ON24 brings to the webcasting space. So for short-term, we're gonna be very focused on the partners, but in the long-term, the goal for the SuccessOne program is to really provide ON24 as an organization a larger route to the consumer market than they ever could before with the direct model. Jen: So right now, I'm going to assume that you've got revenue goals that are associated with your partner program. Is that an accurate assumption? Greg: Yeah, of course. All channels will have revenue goals. With the new SuccessOne partner program, this is really a buildout of a brand-new type of partner that ON24 really hasn't engaged in the past. These are mid-market enterprise consulting partners, and of course there are revenue targets. But when you're building a brand-new channel from scratch and you're coming in with a unique new line of business, the most important thing for a channel is that you have the enablement training and go-to market strategies encapsulated into a concept that partners can digest and execute, which is something that overrides the short-term revenue goals. It's really the enabling goals which are playing a more pivotal role. Jen: Got it. So these new consulting partners, how do they differ from, or do they differ from a more traditional value-added reseller? Do you still have those VAR type of partners at ON24 or are you pivoting a traditional VAR program into more of a consultancy type of partner program? Greg: That's another great question. So ON24 has a series of different types of channels, as do a lot of publishers. There's ISVs, OEMs, VARs. In the software world more, I like to call them consulting partners since not a lot of consulting firms like to be called value added resellers. They're truly consulting partners. And so, we do have ISVs, we do some OEM, we do have SIs, and those programs have been with ON24 for quite a while. Those programs will remain as they are. I'm working with the teams that are supporting those partners to look at their strategies, their go-to market strategies, their enablement strategies, their onboarding strategies. And there will be some enhancements to those programs. My goal is to come in and bring in those mid-market, like I mentioned, mid-market and enterprise consulting partners. These are the partners that their predominate core practices revolve around CRM, marketing automation, and ERP. This is a new type of partner, consulting partner that ON24 hasn't truly engaged in the past. But in my history and in my experiences working with either publishers from GoldMine to Sage to SugarCRM to Act-On, these mid-market and enterprise consulting partners are truly the trusted advisors of the target audience that ON24 is going after. Jen: So I wanted to ask you about that, about, some of your past experience. Some of those past experiences that you've mentioned, I mean, you've helped build some pretty phenomenal channel programs over the years, like you mentioned Sage, Sugar, Act-On. So when you first join a software company with that goal of either creating or further developing a channel program, where do you start? Greg: Well, there's a lot of ways to approach this, and I think everybody who's been in channel will look at it from a different perspective. I think, most importantly, if you're channel person, you're looking at an opportunity based on how a partner would approach it. I think there's probably five pillars or five major buckets that you wanna look at. First is, what's the market for that opportunity? What's the market for that platform? Is it a market that is on a growth curve, is it in a maintenance curve, or is it kind of on a downswing? Now, that's a really crucial point when you look at, can a channel be built successfully around the product or services that the publisher is going to market with? That's number one. Number two, fit for the partners. Is it a technology or a solution that the partners in your ecosystem aren't easily adaptable to? The market that I specifically fit into are more those partners that fit around the business applications, the CRM, the ERPs, marketing automation, those consulting firms that are out there to solve the problem for their consumers. So that's the second thing. Is there a fit for a partner channel for that service? Third is what's the current ecosystem of that channel? So if you're talking about webcasting or marketing automation or CRM, what's the channel like? Is there a robust channel? Is it a product that's in demand, that partners realize that they wanna go out and they wanna exploit those needs in the marketplace? So is there a fit in the ecosystem for that product? Fourth is partner profitability. Does that product or service provide the partner with a revenue stream with not only product sales but also in consultative services? These are businesses like all other organizations that have to profit, and they have to be able to utilize their staff to be profitable. So some products have a very low cost point but a high services rate. Other products have a really high price point but very little services. So you have to kind of weigh where you're at with margins and consultative services to really determine, is this a good fit for a partner? And fifth, which to me is one of the most important ones, is partner commitment and organizational commitment. Does the publisher, or is the publisher committed to the success of a channel? If you have an organization, and ON24 has absolutely opened its arms to this new concept of building out a new partner channel, are they committed to doing this? Building a channel is not a one-quarter or two-quarter event, it's a marathon. And a marathon has many steps, right, as you know. It's enablement, it's recruitment, it's onboarding, it's building a strategy that helps partners be effective. But also, are partners committed to this? Do the partners realize or understand or need to be educated that their consumers need that product or service? Do they need it, do they want it? If they don't need it, do they need to be educated as to why they need it? There are a lot of partners, Jen, that look at products and go, "You know what, that's too far ahead of the adoption curve from my install in customer base." That's another component that you also have to consider. Where in the adoption curve is that product or service? So those are pretty much the big five. Jen: These are all great questions to ask before you start digging and building out a program. I mean, you started a company, how do you go about getting answers to all of those questions? Do you have any tips for folks who might be in a similar situation? Greg: I'd been doing this for a long time and that question has come up before. How do you find these questions out? How do you find out if it's an opportunity for a channel lead or a channel sales vendor? My best response is, go talk to partners that you have a great relationship with, find out what their customer base, the spectrum of applications that their customers are using, find out what they're asking their prospects. A lot of the times, partners don't do the due diligence in their own business development. One of the things that I've done in the past, and this is how I gather a lot of this information as to, "Is this a viable product," is when I coach partners or when I build channels, when I work with channels, I require partners to do exit interviews with companies that they've won deals and lost deals. I don't think enough partners in this industry do exit surveys. Why did we not win this deal? Was it based on price? It should never be based on price why you lose a deal. I think exit surveys should ask do you feel that our organization provided you with the information to make an educated response to whether this application fitted your needs? When you start having partners that are at that level of competency of their own organization, go ask them, "Does webcasting fit your profile of applications that your prospects or your customers are asking for?" You really got to out and ask the questions to determine if it's the right fit or not. Jen: That's a really great point, and some of those activities that you're bringing up are good activities, I think, for even direct sales teams to be doing as well. I think, having that open communication with your partners, and when you're saying talking to them, I'm assuming you mean actually either face-to-face or on the phone and not just sending out a survey. Am I correct in that assumption? Greg: Absolutely. As much as I love technology, I am all about that personal touch. In the 15 years that I've been in this business, I have a Rolodex of, gosh, 300 to 500 partners that I know personally. It's been a long time in this industry, and I have another 500 that I can communicate with via electronic means. Communication is key. You really need to be able to understand what makes a partner tick. For all of us that do channels, channel partners are unique individuals, just like they're unique organizations. They all have specific needs that they need to satisfy, whether it's an application that they need to provide to their customers, or how they go to business and how they go to market, how do they engage their customers and prospects. Knowing your partners is not just sending out a survey or assuming that you know what they want, it's asking those questions. I'm a big, big fan of beta testing, and I've been doing that since I started in channels. I will come up with a channel strategy and I will bring in two or three of my closest channel allies, channel partner allies, and ask them, "What do you think of this strategy and can we pilot it with your firm?" Whether it's a marketing strategy, a sales strategy, whatever it may be, being in channel is a great opportunity, because you can test things, you can do A/B split testing on channel strategies. Never assume you know the answer, never assume, always ask the question and get a better response. Jen: I think that's great. I think even from a consumer perspective, when I think about some of the technologies that I use, whenever I'm asked to try something, to be a beta to provide feedback, honestly, I feel special. I feel like, "Wow, my opinion really matters." I feel like I'm truly a trusted partner in that relationship. So it's a win-win, I think, for both parties. Greg: Absolutely. I can tell you, there's dozens of partners that I've worked with that have followed me from even my days at GoldMine to Sage to SugarCRM to Act-On and now to ON24, that have followed me from publisher to publisher because I've made them money. When you make a partner money and make them successful, they trust you. In this industry, being in channel, being a channel leader, trust, integrity, there is nothing more important than that. If you go down that straight path with a channel partner and you tell them the good, the bad, and the ugly, then you're gonna be successful. Remember, these partners that are selling applications, especially when they go from the old-school on-prem perpetual licensing model to a new cloud deployment with software as a service pricing model, their models have changed. That paradigm shift for them, a lot of them had a little trouble with that shift. And now that they've adopted to the new model and the new modern channel partners that are more assertive and aggressive with building out their practices, looking for those new platforms that fill their customers' and prospects' gaps in their solution stack, those are the ones that will be the most forthright with the channel leader to tell you, "You guys need to think about going to market this way, because my customers and prospects are looking at it from a different perspective than maybe the publisher's looking at it." And that's where that relationship and that conversation, Jen, is crucial in building out a successful channel. Jen: So Greg, I have one more question for you, but it's actually two questions in one, I'm totally cheating. So, okay, so the first part of the question is, what do you think is the biggest challenge for sales professionals overseeing a channel program? And then my second, tying it to this question, question is, what do you see is the greatest opportunity for those same leaders? Sometimes those challenges and opportunities can be one and the same. Greg: Yeah. The challenges and opportunities are the same, it's the same coin, opposite sides, where with partners, I always do, I try to do personal business development with my top partners and those partners that raise their hands. And I'm a big fan of old-school SWOT: strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat. And I really think not enough channel sales people, channel managers, channel leadership really understand where the partners are in their specific lifespan of their consulting firm. So when you say challenges, I'd probably say understanding what the partners are actually looking to achieve from their own perspective. As a channel leader, I know what my company's looking to do. I know exactly what I am trying to do, build an effective selling machine that is self-sufficient and competent. Okay, so challenges, there's a lot of lackadaisical attitude in channel today and I don't personally understand it. I've been around for a long time and I've seen the most effective channels flutter when the day-to-day business development requirements are taken away from channel sales people. The channel needs to be understood, listened to, and when they have an issue or there's a gap in their go-to-market strategy, they need to be addressed. So I would say, the education from a channel sales perspective as to what each individual partner needs to be successful is probably, in my opinion from a business development standpoint, Jen, a big challenge today, a very big challenge. Jen: Why do you think there's inertia in the channel? You know, because you touched on it, and I see it too. There's a lot of, I don't know if it's inertia, apathy, or if it's just this thing that exists in a company that folks maybe don't seem to wanna dig into. Do you have any thoughts on why that is? Greg: Well, I'll use a phrase I use when I'm bringing on partners, and I mentioned a thing called channel self-sufficiency, which is something that I strive for, for partners to be self-sufficient. I really think there's this phrase, and I use it in a lot of my marketing and a lot of my recruitment, is competency breeds confidence. And I think today there's been a move from, in some areas, from publishers to not bring in people that have strong business backgrounds to manage partners. I think that is where the latency in success is happening, is you have channel sales people that don't take their role seriously. They don't understand the fact that they need to know business, they need to know business development, they need to know marketing, but on top of it all, they need to know the product that they sell. That, right, I can tell you numerous experiences where I've been at publishers where the channel person did not know their platform. I'm sorry, you can be a business development person, you can be a channel marketing person, you can have the best business strategy concepts in the world. But if you can't sit there and have at least an advanced sales rep's skillset around the platform you're selling, you're gonna show weakness to the channel partner. Jen: Or because you... Greg: You need to...go ahead. Jen: No, sorry. I'm stepping...I'm trying to finish your sentence. I just let you finish your sentence. You're making, you're a business adviser in a way, you have to be able to communicate the value of your product or platform and show that channel partner what value that's gonna add to his or her own business. I mean, I agree 100%, you have to know how these systems work and you have to have that business acumen. I haven't had anybody kind of put their finger on that before. So I'm just kind of like bouncing in my chair a little bit. Like, this is it. Yes, Greg. Like, I agree 100%. Greg: A couple of years ago, I did a dramatic change in direction on how I did business development and business planning with partners. And again, lots of publishers, lots of experiences. Business planning with partners is something that is overlooked. And I did an absolute 180 in my strategies. I actually tore up all the 20-page business plans that I had used in the past and I moved to something that I call the a la carte strategy where I actually have between 20 and 25 topics that a partner can actually choose from for their coaching. Of course, there are some mandatory things that I require, and I do a triage level of 1 to 4, right, 1 means we're working on it now, 2 means we're working on it in 60 to 90 days, 3 and 4, putting them in the parking lot. But for partners that get my business planner with my team, they look at us and go, "My gosh, you guys really wanna understand what we are as an organization and where are the gaps." When you bring that type of channel leadership and channel management to the partner ecosystem, they're gonna pay attention to you. They're gonna give you that mindshare, Jen, that you need to be successful. Remember, and this is where channel managers and channel leaders kind of drift off. The top consulting partners, partners at the top 1%, Microsoft partners, Salesforce consulting partners, NetSuite partners, Sage partners, you name the publisher, their top partners, aside from those core applications that they sell, are selling another 20 to 50 other applications. How do you make yourself front-of-mind and get mindshare so that they represent your product before they think about another application that ties into Great Plains or Dynamics or Salesforce? It is showing them that you're absolutely professional and that you're there to help them make money. You're there to help them be successful. You show that with your documentation, with your tools that you provide, your business planning tools, you're gonna get their mindshare. You're gonna get 25% of their marketing time. You're gonna get 25% of their sales time. You're gonna get 25% of their operational and organizational mindshare. You get those components, you get that type of mindshare, you're gonna have a successful channel. But you need to be hiring channel managers that are more business related than they are trying to sell software or sell services. I know that's kind of a shift in thinking, but in my experience, the best channel managers that I've ever had on teams of mine were those that were able to sit down and do business planning and understand what it takes for a partner to be successful. Jen: I think it's really great advice, and I'm excited to see, the growth of the ON24 partner program, this whole ecosystem, as you dig in further. But before I let you go, I know I kind of riddled you with channel questions, I do have a couple of more personal questions for our listeners to get to know you a little bit better. Are you open to answering a couple of easy questions? Greg: Absolutely, absolutely. Jen: Alright, okay. So first question, what is your favorite city? Greg: Favorite city, well, I'm a little biased. I'm gonna say the city that I live in, which is Newport Beach, California. Jen: Well, you just happen to live in paradise. We can't all be so lucky. Question number two, are you an animal lover? Greg: I am. I'm a huge animal lover. I have two crazy dogs that, love to sit in my home office and love to voice their opinions when they don't like what I hear. I also love horses. My little daughter is all about ponies right now. So we spend a lot of time up at a local ranch and she can pretend that she's a cowgirl and really enjoy that. Jen: Lovely. Question number three, Mac or PC? Greg: Oh, that's the big question. I am currently six years on Mac, spent my first 10 years in the industry on PC, and I can go either way. Jen: Really, there's not like one thing you just love more than the other? I mean, if I stuck you on a plane for five hours and I had one in one hand and one in the other, which one would you take? Greg: I'm going Mac. You got me on that one. Jen: Awesome. And last question, let's say I was able to offer you an all-expenses-paid trip, where would it be to? Greg: Wow, all-expenses-paid trip. Gosh, that is a great question. I would probably have to say, given that I have a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, a Disney cruise. Jen: I hear those are really great. Greg: If it was just my wife and I, I'd probably say Montreal. One of my favorite towns is Montreal. Jen: Nice, nice. Well, I hear Disney cruises are pretty great for adults too, and they've got some daycare too. So that might not be such a bad trip. Greg: Exactly. Jen: Well, Greg, thank you so much for sharing your time, your insights with us today. If listeners would like to reach out to you directly, what's the best way for them to do so? Greg: I recommend that you connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn, Greg Goldstein, and I respond quickly to messages. And if you have questions about channel, questions about anything, in the industry, I'm always open to giving advice, having dialogue, conversation, love chatting. So if you wanna reach out, LinkedIn. Jen: Perfect. And we'll go ahead and include some social media links to that when we publish this podcast as well. Again, Greg, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure. And we look forward to delivering another episode of the Allbound podcast next week. Have a great day, everyone. Thanks for tuning to the Allbound podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com. And remember, never sell alone.