Episode 106: Capitalizing on Great Ideas | David Frood from The Thinking Corporation

In Episode 106 of the Defining Success Podcast, David Frood discusses capitalizing on great ideas.  David is behind The Thinking Corporation which advocates creating a system whereby employees and others can bring ideas to corporations for the benefit of all involved.  Learn how you can start capitalizing on great ideas in your organization.

David Frood developed The Thinking Corporation corporate innovation program. He worked for sixteen years as a consultant to medium and large businesses, initially with an international sales consulting firm, then as a freelancer.

David Frood from The Thinking Corporation Capitalizing on Great Ideas

David Frood

His clients include organizations like Hewlett Packard, Qantas, Diageo, Reckitt Benckiser, Cerebos Foods, CommSec and Daikin Air-conditioning. He became a specialist in implementing new sales and marketing processes, changing management, and worker development.

His experience formed the basis for The Thinking Corporation book after observing many highly skilled and knowledgeable people who were frustrated by the boundaries and structure of their employer organizations. Employees would rarely tell their employers about ideas for new products, services or markets to improve existing processes.

It became clear to David, that there is a much better way to manage people and organizations through designing a company that is capable of harnessing the talent from within the ranks.

David Frood started out in accounting and eventually became a sales consultant.  In David’s experience, the biggest problem many corporation has is not talking and listening to employees enough.

Corporations will benefit from becoming a Thinking Corporation because they will increase their profits from the ideas of those connected with the corporation.  The individuals can benefit in a variety of different ways that they work out with their corporations when they sort out the program during the process. They will be capitalizing on great ideas.

Shout Outs:

  • Hewlett-Packard
  • Quantas
  • Diageo
  • Reckit Benckiser
  • Cerebos Foods
  • CommSec
  • Daikin Air-Conditioning

Success Quotes:

  • “Corporations need to recognize that they have genius within the ranks.”
  • “Become aware of the right environment.”
  • “Get to know the genius within the ranks.”
  • “Get the ideas from the genius within and the genius without.”
  • “Success is waking up every day and being happy with what you’re doing.”
The Thinking Corporation Capitalizing on Great Ideas

The Thinking Corporation

 

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Episode 105: Create Moments that Matter | Andy Hayes from Plum Deluxe

Andy Hayes from Plum Deluxe Create Moments that Matter

Andy Hayes

Andy Hayes is the founder of Plum Deluxe.  Plum Deluxe is the website that helps you create moments that matter. We believe that the key to living a life you love is all about making time every day for great moments. From a mindful minute with yourself to special occasions shared with friends and family, Plum Deluxe has fresh ideas for living the good life.

Andy’s mother passed away from cancer and once she was diagnosed she decided to “live the good life.”  And his website, Plum Deluxe is devoted to helping people live the good life.  Learn how Andy is helping others to create moments that matter.

When Plum Deluxe started, they focused on travel.  When he started he listened to what people were telling him about how to create revenue for his blog.  Eventually, he learned how to market and promote his blog by himself and did a great job doing it.

Plum Deluxe partners with sponsors, does some affiliate marketing, planning community events, and selling tea by creating a tea of the month club.

Events are a tough business to be in because people in different cities want different things.

People really appreciate that he gives them the opportunity to choose by learning about something new in a safe way.  The Plum Deluxe newsletter is also an award-winning newsletter.

Create Moments that Matter Andy Hayes from Plum Deluxe on the Defining Success Podcast with Zeb Welborn

Plum Deluxe

Shout Outs:

Success Quotes:

  • “There is a million ways for every business to thrive so you have to find yours.”
  • “Go try things and see what does work and what doesn’t work.”
  • “The thing that people crave the most … is connection.”
  • “You should never go cheap when you’re buying luggage and sheets.”
  • “Success is defining a goal that would make you feel good about where you are in achieving that.”

Learn More:

Visit Plum Deluxe for more information about Andy, Plum Deluxe or Creating Moments that Matter.

Plum Deluxe Create Moments that Matter

Plum Deluxe

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Episode 104: The Travelers Guide to Wisdom | Host of the Travel Wisdom Podcast Ladan Jiracek

Ladan Jiracek with the Mechanical Leech Team

Ladan Jiracek

Ladan Jiracek is the host of the Travel Wisdom Podcast where he interviews entrepreneurs and successful people about how travel has changed their outlook on life.  He’s currently living in Dresden, Germany going to school for Nanobiophysics and has traveled to more than 80 countries.  Ladan is trying to teach people that traveling can be much more than just having fun. That people can learn valuable life lessons from traveling and he’s working to show others how traveling can lead to a more fulfilling and successful life.

The show is essentially that travel speeds up the wisdom that you earn in your life. By going out and getting vastly different experiences than what you are normally used to, you grow as a person in ways such as social skills, stress management, dating, language learning, and many other skills that ultimately make you a better person.

At the end of new experiences in completely new places one comes back seemingly wiser than those they left behind. This can translate to improvements in business, career, personal relationships, problem solving, and generally empathy toward others viewpoints.

Ladan has interviewed many very interesting guests in the field of travel, working abroad, dating abroad, making passive income, how travel helps entrepreneurship, and many more topics. The guests have all talked about how their lives were very heavily influenced by having new experiences and doing new things such as those during travel. The world is vastly different if you reach outside of your immediate area and doing so can help you in innumerable ways in life.

He also talks about ways to be able to travel. Things like travel hacking and making the most of your money while you’re abroad are very important to make sure you do not come back in debt. Subjects such as paying for your trip, what to pack, where to stay, how to move, what to wear, learning languages, and many other things are covered. In this way you can learn from the mistakes of others to save yourself time and money. Their tips and wisdom can also help you save time, energy and money while planning your stay abroad.

The last thing he talks about is funny and interesting experiences that happened to him or his guests. There are many very amusing stories that are worth retelling. Some also serve as lessons as what to do or what not to do.

This podcast is aimed towards those that have or are thinking about backpacking, taking a year off, working abroad, studying abroad, or anybody else seeing new places. Although it mostly focuses on making the first step for beginners, even the most experienced travelers will have much to learn and share with this podcast.

Ladan has travelled to over 80 countries and they include such colorful areas such as Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cambodia, Rwanda, and former Soviet Georgia.

Ladan Jiracek from the Travel Wisdom Podcast

Travel Wisdom Podcast

You can subscribe to the podcast at:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/travel-wisdom-podcast/id911287989?mt=2

You can also visit the site under construction at
www.travelwisdompodcast.com

Ladan is the host of the Travel Wisdom Podcast.  He’s currently in school in Dresden, Germany studying Nanobiophysics.  He has won numerous entrepreneurial awards and is considering buying a hostel in Germany.

Shoutouts:

  • Spencer Shaw – Business Growth Podcast
  • Daniel Ryan Spaulding
  • John Corcoran
  • Mike Brown
  • Turner Barr – Around the World in 80 Jobs

Quotes:

  • “If you have a podcast, it changes everything.”
  • “You’re in the Mzungu tribe.  The white man tribe.”
  • “If you’re doing something that you talk peoples ears off with than you’re doing the right thing.”
  • “You have to do something that the market allows.”
Ladan Jiracek from the Travel Wisdom Podcast on the Defining Success Podcast

Ladan Jiracek

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Episode 103: Unstoppable Success | Dr. Antipas Harris

Dr. Antipas Harris Unstoppable Success

Dr. Antipas Harris

There are so many people who want to succeed but are often discouraged or are simply uninspired. As a university professor, Dr. Antipas Harris sees this problem, often, among his students. He wrote, Unstoppable Success, 7 Ways to Flourish in Your Boundless Potential to encourage young people to maximize their boundless potential to flourish and to achieve values-based success.

In this episode, Dr. Antipas and I talk about the seven traits successful people have and how important integrity is in everything you do.

According to Dr. Antipas Harris, there are seven values that lead to success:

  1. Faith – People who experience success are typically people who have some form of faith.  Faith in a worldly sense, but also faith in themselves and the future.
  2. Vision – Vision is the target to help you know what it is you want to achieve.
  3. Persistence – There are always going to be challenges, but those who are successful are able to overcome those challenges through persistence.
  4. Humility – Humble people can stop looking at the big picture and look at the simple things in life.
  5. Education – Education means to become wise with the information that we gain.  Education has to be holistic.  The gathering of information and the developing of skills and how to apply that learning in ones life.
  6. Making the Right Connections – Connecting with the right people makes a difference in helping successful people become successful.
  7. Integrity – It’s important that we ground our success in honesty.

Shout Outs

  • John Maxwell –
  • The Aquabats – Lobsters in a Bucket

Unstoppable Success by Dr. Antipas Harris

Quotes:

  • “If you don’t have a clear vision, you don’t know where you’re going.”
  • “You don’t just stumble upon success, it has to be intentional.”
  • “Challenges are inevitable, but defeat is optional.”
  • “There’s always more to learn.”
  • “Don’t be a know-it-all.”
  • “Read as much as you can, even outside of your expertise.”
  • “No one who is successful achieved that by themselves.”
  • “What is the legacy we leave behind once it’s all over.”
  • “I am where I’m supposed to be right now in my life.”
  • “Success is becoming who one is created to become.”
  • “Success has many paths.”
Unstoppable Success by Antipas Harris

Unstoppable Success

Dr. Antipas Harris is the author of Unstoppable Success.

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Episode 102: Passionate Blogging Leads to Success | Ricky Potts

Passionate blogging leads to success. Ricky Potts is an extremely busy guy who has a lot of passions.  He started his personal blog not too long ago and has been able to generate 40,000 – 60,000 unique views on his blog every month.  He’s also leveraged his blog writing to create multiple opportunities for himself and his career including becoming the Digital Communications Manager for Troon Golf, a contributor to DiscountTeeTimes.com, and Relentless Beats.  He’s passionate about craft beers, golf, electronic dance beats, and blogs about them all.  Learn how passionate blogging led to his success.

Ricky Potts is the Digital Communications Director at Troon Golf in Scottsdale, Arizona

Ricky Potts

Ricky Potts is the Digital Communications Manager for Troon, passionate blogger, total beer snob, music fanatic, weekend golfer, runner and an all around opinionated realist.

Troon Golf is the largest golf management company in the world and Ricky got
connected with Troon Golf through a company he previously worked at
called, Imavex.   Troon Golf reached out to him to ask him to become their Digital Communications Manager and he jumped on the opportunity.

Ricky writes for Discount Tee Times, a unique reservation system in its 20th year of business, catering to the needs of the golfing community. They offer discounts of 20-60% off the posted rate for play today, tomorrow and up to 60 days in advance at over 100 championship courses throughout Arizona and Nevada.

He also writes for Relentless Beats which is Arizona’s longest running and most influential global dance music force.

He also created 1,001 bottles of beer where he writes on numerous craft beers he’s tried.

And, he’s the owner of the Google+ golf community and host of the weekly Friday Foursome.

Zeb Welborn, Ricky Potts, John Hakim and The Social Golf Course

Shout Outs:

  • DJ Eric Prydz
  • Kris Strauss
  • DJ Tiesto
  • Paul Oakenfold

Success Quotes:

  • “If I got one person to read one blog post than that entire blog post was worth writing.”
  • “Success is what you make it.”
  • “Go figure out what it’s going to take to make you successful and do that.”
  • “I can’t imagine not being the happiest person on the planet.”
Ricky Potts discusses passionate blogging in Episode 102 of the Defining Success Podcast with Zeb Welborn

Ricky Potts

 

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Episode 101: Tribal Marketing | Daryl Urbanski

In Episode 101 of the Defining Success Podcast, Daryl Urbanski shares his entrepreneurial journey and discusses the importance of tribal marketing.  Tribal marketing is a marketing strategy that attempts to create social communities centered around a product or service.

Daryl Urbanski on Tribal Marketing on the Defining Success Podcast with Zeb Welborn

Daryl Urbanski

Daryl Urbanski is a #1 Bestselling Business Author, Business Coach, Martial Artist, Tribal/Database Marketer, Entrepreneur, & Student Of Life.

Daryl focuses heavily on direct response campaigns and has experienced a lot of success.  His first endeavor was an email marketing campaign designed to get a job in Canada while he was still in High School.

He had some early experience with alternative energy, traveled to Japan to teach English, worked as a freelancer and then started experimented with passive income.

Ancient Secrets of Lead Generation is Daryl Urbanski’s best selling book

Influencers:

  • Michael Gerber
  • Jim Rohn
  • James Michener

According to Daryl, the biggest mistake many entrepreneurs make is:

  • Not Getting a Mentor
  • Not Surrounding Yourself with the Right People
  • Poor Time Management

Tribal marketing focuses on creating small groups of people and creating specific products for them to become more successful.  Working constantly to continually create value for people.

Daryl also believes in surrounding yourself with wolves instead of gazelles.

Daryl Urbanski author of The Ancient Secrets of Lead Generation

Daryl Urbanski

Success Quotes:

  • “The ultimate reason for setting goals is to entice you to become the person it takes to achieve them.” — Jim Rohn
  • “Sometimes you need to make the mistake to learn the lesson.”
  • “Do more.”
  • “Success is being able to do what you want, where you want, with who you want, with the price and terms you want.”
  • “Success is whatever it means to you.”
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Episode 100: Success is a Lifestyle | Frank Ortiz from A Shot At Happiness Events

Frank Ortiz shares how Success is a LifestyleFrank Ortiz is a good friend of mine.  We’re both involved at the Chino Valley Chamber of Commerce so I see him regularly. One of the themes that came up several times in the interview today is that success is a lifestyle. It’s not something that you can turn on and off. In this episode, pay attention to that theme, and listen to the advice that Frank gives about how success is a lifestyle, it’s something that you need to maintain throughout your life and not something that you can turn on and off as you choose. It’s a great episode and I hope you all enjoy!

Frank Ortiz from A Shot of Happiness Events has spoken to thousands of people over his career. He has been extremely successful at motivating and mentoring Sales Force Teams in the Automotive Industry as well as women in the Beauty Industry for the last thirty years.

Zeb’s Take – Success is a Lifestyle

It was really good talking with Frank. YHim and I see each other all the time, but we don’t usually get to talk that much. I sat down with him yesterday for really the first time we had a nice talk, really got to know each other. I invited him to be on the show today. But, I’ve always known that he’s a smart guy, knows a lot about motivation, knows how to get people motivated.

One of the things he brought up consistently throughout this episode was that success is a lifestyle. He brought up the story about Tiger Woods and how when everything went south with his wife and it came out that he was cheating on his wife with these other people and how his performance suffered as a result. If you look at successful people, successful people live a well-balanced life because success is a lifestyle. They do everything the way they should. They are good people, for the most part. If you live your life that way, that’s really the way that leads to happiness, that leads to fulfillment, those are two things that I think make people successful as well. Not just that they are making a lot of money, not just that they are doing good at their job, but that they are good genuine people.

When you have that mindset and success is your lifestyle; when you are doing everything towards your goal, towards your mission, towards your purpose and everything that you do is facilitated toward the purpose then you are going to be much more successful as a result. For those of you out there if you are trying to find success, trying to be someone of influence, someone who makes a difference in the world, you have to live that lifestyle. You can’t just turn it on when you come into work and turn it off when you leave. It’s got to be something that you live with day in and day out. Success is a lifestyle.

Thank you for listening to the Defining Success Podcast. We have had a lot of recent signups to our newsletter lately and I’d love for you all to join. I have some cool things coming up in the future that I want to be able to share with all of you. We’re starting a Facebook course. An online Facebook for Business course, based on the work I do for other businesses. So you actually get a chance to see someone who posts on Facebook for a living how they do it and how you can apply it to your business. Please sign up for our newsletter (enter your email on our Contact Page), so you can hear all about that.

Now, go out there and find your success!

Find Out More about Frank Ortiz and A Shot at Happiness

Visit AShotAtHappiness.com
Email: Shot@happiness.com
Call Frank at (714) 392-4149
Or find Frank Ortiz and A Shot At Happiness on Facebook

A Shot at Happiness

A Shot at Happiness Events

Quotes

Coming Soon

More from the Interview

Coming Soon

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Episode 99: Going After Your Goals | Jake Bramante from Hike734.com and National Park Guide Creator

Jake Bramante talks about going after your goals.In the interview today Jake and I talk about going after your goals. Jake Bramante lives very close to Glacier National Park. Glacier National Park has 734 miles of hiking trails, and Jake traveled all of those in one year, 2011. He’s the only person to have done that. He shared the experience of going after his goals on his blog Hike734. What I’d like to elaborate on at the end of the interview is what it means when you cross the finish line; when you set out on a goal and you do something and what that means for you as an individual and a person and what happens when you don’t.

Glacier National Park, located in northwestern Montana, has 734 miles of hiking trail in it. Jake Bramante lives in Kalispell, MT which is located a few miles from the Park’s west entrance. In 2011, he hiked every trail taking 3 pairs of shoes, 5 months and 1,200 miles to accomplish this goal. He is now busy blogging about Glacier National Park, helping others have amazing trips and heading out on speaking engagements.

Zeb’s Take – Going After Your Goals

That was a fantastic interview with Jake. Definitely different from the past interviews we’ve had on the show. I think it was one of the coolest things to set out on something like that, going after your goals. Really, when I think of these projects that people get themselves into I think — why? Why would someone do something like that? To hike all 734 miles of Glacier National Park, it’s not like someone paid him along the way to do it. He just decided I’m going to go and do this. and I’m going to set this goal and I’m going to make it happen and figure it out from there. He and I chatted after the interview and he brought up some interesting points that I’d like to bring up as well.

In the interview he said he set this goal and set out to do it and sure enough he did. He finished it. But in life there are some times where, all of us like to think that we stick to our word and we’re going after our goals and doing things and finishing those things, and sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t. I shared my experience with Running Brothers. Several years ago my brother and I started a running program. We were going after our goals, He was going to become marathoner and I was going to do the Iron Man. It was a huge lofty goal and I trained really hard for it. I did it for about three months. I started to realize that I didn’t like biking, I didn’t like swimming, and I didn’t like running very much. That was a big deterrent, but I didn’t know that when I started. When I started I had never really biked before or swam before. So getting a chance to experience that, and experience it extensively. Then I knew that it was something that wasn’t for me.

After the interview Jake and I chatted. He brought up the story of him trying out for his basketball team when he was in high school. He tried out for the JV team. While he was out there the coach said, “We’ve got a lot of kids trying out this year, if you don’t think you’re good enough to make the team, it’s okay, now’s the time to leave.” Jake had practiced all summer trying to get better for this team, but while he was in tryouts he realized that he wasn’t good enough so he dropped out. That’s the case sometimes. Sometimes you have to know when there is something that other people are doing better than you and you’re not going to be able to get to that level and it’s time to drop out. When it comes to this hiking adventure Jake went on. He did the research and no one had ever done it before. He is the only person to do that. That was something where he could identify himself above and beyond what others have done and he’s been able to leverage that to do other cool things. I know he’s been giving speaking engagements as a result because that is how Adam came to know him and that is why he introduced me to Jake for the podcast. There’s a lot of different things he’s been able to do since then.

When you look back on your life what are the things you want to look back on? You want to look back on those cool things you did. “When I was young and crazy I hiked 734 miles one summer just for the heck of it. Why not? Then afterwards as a result I was able to make a living out of that whole experience. Because I was the only person to do it.” I think that is a cool story, very compelling. I admire him greatly for doing that.

In this business what I really like doing, is — I don’t like doing the same things all the time. I don’t like repetitiveness, I don’t like monotony. I like doing different things and experiencing different things. The podcast is awesome. I like the chance to interview different people, but this is a project it’s not something that it going to go on forever. My other business Welborn Media is something that I like doing. As the business has grown I start to see different patterns. Originally my sister Lacey was doing website design, she realized it wasn’t for her so now we have someone else to do websites. We’re not focused on marketing and selling website design as much any more. We found a niche in the golf industry, I wrote that book, The Social Golf Course. Now we’re selling social media to golf courses. Eventually, as technology changes it might not look the same way, that could shift down the road too.

In our current economy all of these things that we do, if you have these projects in line, then each project kind of builds upon another project. We’ve seen that time and time again with all these different entrepreneurs, business owners and successful people that have been on our show. Mark Sieverkropp even wrote a book about it called Project: Success.

Every project you do, build some notoriety, get some attention and then shift your focus to the next thing. I think that’s the way we’ve got to look at this current economy and how we look at going after your goals. That’s another thing successful people tend to do. I’m going to do this project for a certain amount of time. That will open up doors for other things that I want to do, I don’t know what I want to do, but that will open up doors for what I want to do two years from now.

I thought it was a great interview. We had a lot in common, we’ll stay in touch after this. I also want to ask all of you out there to check us out on Facebook, like our page and comment on our episodes and posts.

Now, go out there and find your success!

Find Out More About Jake Bramante or Hike734

Visit Hike734.com. From there you can get to all of Jake’s other channels.

Hike734_Logo_Web

Quotes

  • “I kind of saw my life turning into a Dilbert comic strip. And I knew that I didn’t want to be Dilbert or the pointy haired boss so I decided to kind of reboot my life.”
  • “I am finally getting to that point where I think, ‘wow this is actually going to be a really great career.’ But it’s taken a while.”
  • “What I really love about it is I’m actually going out there and helping people solve their problem and I’m making some money in the process.”
  • “A lot of it was getting over myself and getting that second and third wind.”
  • “So many people say, ‘Hey, I have this passion and I’m going to go ahead and turn it into a business.’ The problem is a lot of times you come out with something and it might be great but it also might be something that a lot of other people could come out with as well. I think really trying figure out if there is something that you know or do that can help other people and start from there.”
  • “Ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s about working hard and accomplishing stuff.”
  • “All these concepts in life most people aren’t interested in because the path then involves you working and being consistent all the time.”
  • “Properly defining a goal is the first part to success.”
  • “Trying to figure out the proper goals first, making sure that they are good goals and then actually accomplishing those goals.”

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More From the Interview

Jake spent about 9 years doing systems administration IT work for local government and then at a corporation. He says, “I kind of saw my life turning into a Dilbert comic strip. And I knew that I didn’t want to be Dilbert or the pointy haired boss. So I decided to kind of reboot my life.”

He had money saved up, sold his house, quit his job and started to work on a video production company that he had been playing around with. He knew he could make some money from it, but he wasn’t sure he could make a living. He gave himself two years where the first year he would work on trying to find out what he wanted to do, the second year he would just go for it and kill it. See if it worked out. During that first year he discovered that no one had hiked all the trails in one summer and I figured that would be a really great project and I could video blog on it. I thought by the end of it I would have assets like potentially a platform and a drive. I knew that I would have a lot of knowledge about the park and a cool story.

When coming up with the idea it was pretty organic. He says, as I was going through this process my friends and I had talked about creating tourism DVDs, I thought that sounded really cool. As I thought about being in the park and how great it would be I started to wonder how many hikes there were. When he researched it he came up with his goal.

Jake was trying to figure how he was going to make a living. He also knew he had the entrepreneur bug. I knew I wanted to do something where I could use my skills to create this website and talk into a camera and put the stuff together.

He says, “I am finally getting to that point where I think wow this is actually going to be a really great career. But it’s taken a while.”

To monetize his project he payed attention to the questions people were asking him about Glacier National Park. His first project that he came out with was a guide for driving up Going-to-the-sun Road, the main road that goes through the heart of Glacier National Park. His next project was a day hiking guide, an aggregate of a bunch of guides and maps and all kinds of things. He learned GIS software and learned about cartography. That is selling well. A great example of going after your goals.

“What I really love about it is I’m actually going out there and helping people solve their problem and I’m making some money in the process.”

When going after your goals there can be a lot of set backs. One of the problems Jake had was was record snowfall. He hadn’t planned for it, but often he just had to wait for snow to melt so that he could go on many of the hikes. He says that wasn’t the biggest obstacle of this project the mental aspect was. Many of the hikes weren’t as nice and manicured as he thought they would be. He told a lot of people he was going to do it, and that gave him added motivation. There were points when he was totally okay if something happened that allowed me to not have to do it, but he didn’t give up.

“A lot of it was getting over myself and getting that second and third wind.”

One of his big takeaways from going after your goals was each and every day working towards that goal. Breaking it down, he can’t hike the entire project in one day, but he can get to this lookout or that lake. As long as he focused on those tiny intermediate goals then it starts to snowball. Jake says, when you get towards the end of it and you just really don’t want anything bad to happen. You realize this whole project is really fragile if you’re not careful.

There was a lot of days he wanted to quit. His friend would invite him places and he couldn’t go. He met a girl he really liked, he couldn’t hang out with her as much as he wanted, she was really supportive. Now she’s his wife.

He also got to see some amazing things. Things that made him set about going after your goals in the first place. He got to see see a sunset, golden hour, a sow and two cub grizzlies digging up roots in a huge meadow. At Grenau Glacier seeing bull moose fighting. So many great cool things that he got to see and experience with other people that made the experience absolutely worth it.

His coolest sight was seeing three black wolves. It was a cool experience, at first he could just hear some noises and he looked and saw a couple flashes of black in the trees. Then they walked out onto the trail and looked at him for a few seconds and disappeared, but they came back. Usually animals ignore you or run away, but these guys were sticking around to check him out. One of them broke away from the bunch walked towards him. Then the wolves ran off and he could hear them howling. He says that was so cool because of the interaction with the animals.

Another cool moment was when he was with his girlfriend, she had never seen a moose, but always wanted to. When it finally happened they didn’t just see one moose, there were 5 and two of them were fighting. Obviously very cool to see. A special moment.

After finishing his goals and documenting on Hike734 he came home, went back and edited all his previous blog posts. He was asked to help non-profit partners of the park with their marketing and branding. After that he came out with his driving guide, worked on this marketing and distribution for that. This year he came out with his day hiking guide. Now he’s looking to see how he can duplicate some of this stuff at other national parks. He wants to hike Zion this fall.

It’s been a process of learning and trying to figure out how to leverage that project and build from it. To take a project and see it from inception to completion, and a project of this scale. Seeing what it’s like going after your goals: to plan it, start it, get through the muddy middle, and then come out on the other side and say I made this, or I’m doing this. Then you just take what you’ve done and what you’ve learned.

“I’m going to start chipping away at other national parks and really see how that goes.”

If you want to do something that seems a little out there Jake suggests figure out more or less the why. If you want to make it an entrepreneurial endeavor the big questions is, is there a market that needs to be served, as opposed to I have this product and I’m looking for a market.

“So many people say, ‘Hey, I have this passion and I’m going to go ahead and turn it into a business.’ The problem is a lot of times you come out with something and it might be great but it also might be something that a lot of other people could come out with as well. I think really trying figure out if there is something that you know or do that can help other people and start from there.”

“Ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s about working hard and accomplishing stuff.”

“All these concepts in life most people aren’t interested in because the path then involves you working and being consistent all the time.”

“Properly defining a goal is the first part to success.”

“Trying to figure out the proper goals first, making sure that they are good goals and then actually accomplishing those goals.”

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Episode 98: Try New Things | David Horne, Entrepreneur, Marketer, and Writer

David Horne talks about not being afraid to try new things.David Horne has his own marketing firm and he’s working on a new startup project called Fan Pack. They’re getting celebrities or people with a large internet following to join up with them and create packs of goods that are sent out to their fans. It sounds like a really cool product and service. He’s also going to talk about marketing in the interview. And the thing that we talk about that I want to focus on is don’t be afraid to try new things. Those who do experience success they try new things all the time they figure out what works and what doesn’t. Through that process they always learn things along the way.

David Horne is an entrepreneur, marketer and writer, living in NC. Most of his work over the last decade has been helping companies rethink and rework their marketing. I’ve been fortunate to learn from and work with a bunch of amazing and brilliant people. Currently, he’s running a modern marketing firm and recently launched a startup.

Zeb’s Take – Don’t Be Afraid of Try New Things

My friend Herby Fabius put David and me in touch because he knew we both like golf. David a professional golfer, and me who has always enjoyed the game and now I help market golf courses and I put together the book The Social Golf Course to try and help to promote the game of golf. I brought David on the show today so that he can share his marketing advice and also to talk about what it’s like to work on a startup and get that going. Especially with what he is doing now in Fan Pack.

During the interview he mentioned that he has began multiple startups and one of the things he still says is not being afraid to try new things because through that experience he learned so much.

For example, one of the things he did was they created that golf teaching card. What he figured out through that process was, he didn’t take into consideration the current customers. They had people that were paying for this product and service, but they spread themselves too thin trying to go after people who weren’t necessarily in that target market. That was the downfall of that startup of his.

They started this other one called Online Brand Camp. The big problem there was that they were treating it like a side project and it was something that needed to be the center of their business. He said they were treating it like a hobby and that’s the kind of results they got. They got hobby-like results. That’s another thing that he learned from that venture.

Now he’s working on this Fan Pack, I’m sure he’s learned a bunch and that he’s going to continue to learn. One of the things that successful people share all the time and that they talk about, many on this podcast is that they’ve experienced failures, but they don’t see them as failures. They see them as learning tools, or learning experiences. Where it didn’t work out and so now they are moving on to something else. David alluded to that in the interview: that he doesn’t look at these as failures, he learned a bunch from the process and it‘s only made him a better person. Smarter about business. Smarter about what he’s doing moving forward. I think that is the attitude you need to have if you are going to be successful down the road and obviously David has it and I think he gave some great insight today during the interview.

For those of you following us, sign up for the Defining Success Podcast Newsletter. We recently got a lot of people signing up, I’m excited about that. Thank you all for signing up. I want to thank Herby Fabius for introducing me to David. Herby is a great guy and a good friend. And thank you all for listening.

I want to encourage you all to go out there and find your success!

Find Out More About David Horne, His Marketing Firm or Fan Pack

Visit DavidHorne.me. It’s the best place to find out anything David has going on.

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 Quotes

  • “Everything you do is marketing in some manner. Because customers buy from people they know, like and trust. Every interaction you have with someone either deposits trust or withdrawals trust and that’s kind of the name of the game.”
  • “If this existed and there were people that offered this that I liked, I would be a customer. That’s kind of where it started.”
  • “Don’t be afraid to take risks and test things out. If you have an idea try it and see if it works.”
  • “Take action, get a result. Refine it until you get a result you want.”
  • He says, “They weren’t failures in the aspect of – we didn’t learn anything, we didn’t make progress – they just didn’t reach the levels or goals we were trying to hit.”
  • “Don’t be financially successful at the detriment to your relationships.”
  • “Success is being valuable to your family, your community, and anyone you interact with.”

More From the Interview

David played golf in college and was able to turn pro afterward. He played on the mini tours for a while until he ran out of talent and sponsors. That’s when he got back into the marketing world. He was introduced to the marketing world early by his Uncle. He had been interested in marketing for a long time. He started helping brands with marketing. He landed at a software technology firm which got him into the digital marketing world. It was the earlier days email marketing and the beginning of SEO marketing, now content marketing. In 2008 he went out on his own either freelancing or with his consulting copy writing shop, that matured into the agency that he is a partner in today.

He’s always had side projects, try new things, things he’s been working on. This year he got serious about one of them which is called Fan Pack, which is a subscription site which connects fans with their favorite icons while supporting charities.

He says his marketing firm focuses on strategy and specifically how digital marketing fits into that. They do anything that falls into the web category from design to front end development, content creation, paid and organic search marketing, and social marketing.

“Everything you do is marketing in some manner. Because customers buy from people they know, like and trust. Every interaction you have with someone either deposits trust or withdrawals trust and that’s kind of the name of the game.”

He says, today, there’s so much transparency and information to learn what it is your customers want and then you build stuff for them. That kind of has the marketing built in.

Fan Pack is a way for fans to connect with their favorite artists, athletes, entertainers, thought-leaders, ect. while supporting charities. His business partner was his best friend from college. When they did get together they would always discuss the different things they were fans of and how they were introduced to them by people who influenced them. They thought, what if we can create a premium experience where fans, because everyone is a fan of something, whether that’s a product, company or sports team, musician. I just wanted to create a platform to be able to do that so fans can have that experience with people they like.

He says, “If this existed and there were people that offered this that I liked, I would be a customer. That’s kind of where it started.”

He’s learning how to run a product business, in the past all his companies have been services that supported product businesses.

With Fan Pack he says they’re learning. There’s a lot of improvements and we’re working on version 2 right now that will go live in the fall. David is excited about it because it will have more flexibility and the potential for anyone that wants to be a contributor to be a contributor. Anyone that wants to have a subscription service to offer their fans will be able to do that.

Fan Pack is not David’s first startup venture. His previous three all failed. He says he learned a lot through out those experiences.

He encourages everyone to try new things without fear of failing, “Don’t be afraid to take risks and test things out. If you have an idea try it and see if it works.”
“Take action, get a result. Refine it until you get a result you want.”

He says, “They weren’t failures in the aspect of – we didn’t learn anything, we didn’t make progress – they just didn’t reach the levels or goals we were trying to hit.”

With the golf card, David says they didn’t focus enough on their core customer. They didn’t do a good job of honing in on the value they provided them and then finding the customers that wanted that. Instead they tried to reach all golfers everywhere.

David says, success is about continually getting better at bringing value to the community that you serve without sacrificing family or self.

“Don’t be financially successful at the detriment to your relationships.”

Spiritually, emotionally financially, those three things staying in progress as well as continually getting better at serving and bringing value to your community. Success is being valuable to your family, your community, and anyone you interact with.

He says success is a moving target. It’s not something that just happens once. It’s a moving thing that you try to be in step with.

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Episode 97: Giving Recognition | David Long, Founder of My Employees and Author of Built to Lead

David Long talks about the importance of giving recognition.David Long is the author of Built to Lead – 7 Management R.E.W.A.R.D.S. Principles for Becoming a Top 10% Manager. During this interview he talks about his R.E.W.A.R.D.S, an acronym, and how you can apply that to make your employees much more effective. The thing I want to point out in this interview is David’s idea about giving recognition to people you work with or who you work for and the advantages of doing so. David has a lot to say, he’s a really interesting guy and I think you’re going to enjoy the episode.

David Long is the author of Built to Lead – 7 Management R.E.W.A.R.D.S. Principles for Becoming a Top 10% Manager. In the book, he talks about what it takes to become a Top 10% manager in your company, and show YOU exactly what he did to accomplish that impressive feat in THREE DIFFERENT INDUSTRIES!

The “​​7 Management R.E.W.A.R.D.S. Principles” in Built to Lead are “get-in-the-trenches, no-holds-barred” ​lessons of how, ​specifically, to truly become an amazing manager. David tackles, head-on, the lies you’ve been told about how to reach the top in your career, and shows you what REALLY WORKS​!​ ​These are ​concrete​,​ ​foundational principles that will ​change your life, not only ​in your business career​…​ but ​in your ​personal life​ as well!

Zeb’s Take – Giving Recognition

It was a blast chatting with David today. He has so much information to give. You can tell that he’s lived an interesting and fulfilling life by helping his employees and really building them. Taking them through his process, how he cultivates, gets people excited about the work that they do. He said he has a treasure chest full of little goodies and things people have given him over the years that say what an impact he’s had on their lives. That has to be very rewarding.

One of the things that he brought up that I thought was extremely interesting was the idea of giving recognition, and recognizing people in a scenario. That’s one of the things I’ve found predominantly why people decide to get involved in particular organizations or groups that are doing things. It’s because of the recognition you give. As leaders and managers, giving recognition for a job well done is extremely important and critical for the success of a business, especially if your business relies on getting others involved.

From my experience, I have a small business I don’t have any employees per say, I have hired people from time to time, but from my experience from being a leader in my local chamber of commerce, I’m the head of the membership committee. Trying to get people to do things is not the easiest thing to do, especially when people are volunteering their time. What I’ve noticed, this is a recent revelation for me, is the more recognition I give to people the more likely they are to do things when I ask for things to be done. I think they genuinely want to do the things that I’m asking during the meetings, but I think when I give recognition for the stuff that they have been doing I get much more buy in to the work that I’m doing. It can be verbal, in my case it is. What David has created is a way to not just give verbal recognition but also to give monetary recognition, or in the form of plaques, or in the form of taking people out to lunch.

When you are trying to organize people, or trying to get people excited or involved in something whenever people do something above and beyond, or even sometimes within their work capacity, but they do a good job at it, is recognizing that is going to help you build your brand, build your business, build everything that you are trying to accomplish and you are going to have more people willing and eager to help you with that process.

If you do find yourself in that managerial role or that leadership position I think you’ll be able to take a lot away from this interview with David.

Reach out to me, send an email to Zeb@WelbornMedia.com. Ask me questions, let me know if there is anything I can help you out with, shoot me an email and I will be happy to answer them for you.

Lastly, go out there and find your success!

Find Out More About David and His Book

Find his book ‘Built to Lead’ on Amazon. You can download chapter 4 on education of his book, visit the website Top10Manager.com. Go to MyEmployees.com for his employee recognition programs. Reach David at DavidLong@Top10Manager.com.paperback

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Quotes

  • “I’ve been in management for over 35 years in my life. I know what I’m doing. Over three quarters of our employees are there because of other employees telling them how much they love working at our company. I can’t think of a better endorsement than that.”
  • “If the manager is not worthy of respect, they are not going to get it. If the manager doesn’t seem to care about their employees then they will not care back in return. There will be no loyalty, no bond between them.”
  • “You need to constantly read and learn new things and make yourself more valuable.”
  • “Focus on adding value to people’s lives. Focus on touching people’s lives where you help make them better. That’s where I get my satisfaction from.”
  • “It’s nothing big. It’s just the time. It’s the effort. It’s letting them realize that you totally care about them. That’s what matters.”
  • “People just telling me how much I meant to their lives, my goodness man, you can’t put a dollar on that. That’s success.”

More from the Interview

David lost a job he had in retail over a disagreement with management. That’s when his life went into a tailspin. He was successful at that job. He assumed he would be able to get another job making just as much money. He went through 7 jobs in 3 years. It was a dark time in his life and he’s grateful for having his wife and 3 kids to help him through.

After 2 and a half years of anguish his father called him and suggested he move back home with them. Davids response, a sarcastic “Yeah right Dad!”

One year after that, his father called asked if he was any better off now than he was the year before. David answered, “No.”

They had just sold their house, that they almost lost to foreclosure. They weren’t going to be able to pay rent the next month so they took his dad’s offer and moved in with the folks.

His best friend’s mother remembered that David had engraved jewelry while he was in college she wanted to help him out and gave him an opportunity. There was a jewelry store closing nearby, she told him to check it out to see if they had any equipment, and if he thought it was worthwhile, she would buy the equipment, they would go into business and split profits 50/50. He thought that was a good idea and went for it. At first it didn’t really pan out.

He was also working at Circuit City. He noticed the plaques they had on the wall, and asked his manager how much they cost and was surprised by the price. He asked if he could create some samples to replace the ones they were selling. The manager was impressed with them. David sold them to him and a to a few other Circuit City stores.

He was still interviewing for other jobs. A potential job fell through. He remembers being in his car on the way home. He had those sample plaques that he made in the trunk of his car. He saw a real estate company on the side of the road and he just pulled in. David was allowed to see the person in charge of employee recognition. He made a deal with the guy and got a check right there. He went to another real estate office and made another sale, got another check and he never looked back. He was in business.

His company is My Employees is in the top 1% of employee recognition and engagement companies in the US and Canada. He says, they’ve grown by an average of 20% every year for the past decade. He has 45 employees now, and they are hiring a few more. They work with Walmart, Target and many more.

He says, “I’ve been in management for over 35 years in my life. I know what I’m doing. Over three quarters of our employees are there because of other employees telling them how much they love working at our company. I can’t think of a better endorsement than that.”

“If the manager is not worthy of respect, they are not going to get it. If the manager doesn’t seem to care about their employees then they will not care back in return. There will be no loyalty, no bond between them.”

David uses the acronym R.E.W.A.R.D.S. in his book.

R – Reconnaissance: know who is on your bus
E – Education
W – Winners Emerge: people will take on leadership roles and responsibilites
A – Attitude: if you have a bad attitude you have a very bad foundation
R – Recognition: it is very important that people realize what you want to see more of
D – Duplication: training your second tier of employees to be ready for opportunities
S – Success: success is different for everyone, it shouldn’t be just about money

For recognition at his own company David gives out awards every month to top performers in every department. He takes them out to lunch. They do activities together, see movies, race go carts, while on the company clock. He will take them out to a nice brazilian steakhouse for dinner. Once a year he takes a select few on an all expenses paid Champions trip, sometimes they go on cruises, we go out west to the Grand Canyon & Zion, the Dominican Republic. In addition to that, they also do recognition on a daily basis to motivate their employees. When they hit a certain number they get a reward from the cookie jar.

“You need to constantly read and learn new things and make yourself more valuable.”

“Focus on adding value to people’s lives. Focus on touching people’s lives where you help make them better. That’s where I get my satisfaction from.”

He says all managers can give employees recognition. It doesn’t have to take a lot of money. You can go to their office and tell them they did a phenomenal job getting that report done early. That right there is more that most managers do. David also says it’s important to be specific. He warns, “Don’t insult someone’s intelligence either.” Put in some effort.

“It’s nothing big. It’s just the time. It’s the effort. It’s letting them realize that you totally care about them. That’s what matters.”

“People just telling me how much I meant to their lives, my goodness man, you can’t put a dollar on that. That’s success.”

David shares about one of his other passions. Him and his wife funded a documentary called Still in the Fight. It profiles 3 wounded warriors, one of which just received the congressional medal of honor. It can be bought on Amazon. All of the money (besides expenses) goes directly to 4 military charities.

David also plans to contribute some of the sales of his book to go to charity as well.

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Episode 96: Outside Your Comfort Zone | Niveen Salem, Multi-Level Marketing and former Chevron Executive

Niveen Salem talks about getting outside your comfort zone.Niveen Salem is in the MLM marketing business, so the multilevel marketing business. During the interview she talks about personal development and how important that is to success. You know improving yourself, making yourself better, and she’s going to talk about getting outside your comfort zone and more in the interview today.

Niveen Salem is a former Chevron Executive and a current business owner who is passionate about transforming people’s lifestyles and helping them have control over their destiny. She is now working globally with entrepreneurial business minded people who are motivated to create financial independence and time freedom. She coaches and trains people to create passive income which allows them to build their dream lifestyle and not being traded as a commodity in the corporate world anymore.

Zeb’s Take – Going Outside Your Comfort Zone

I had a great time chatting with Niveen today. I mentioned that I met Niveen at the Chino Valley Chamber of Commerce and her and I have become friends. We interact on a regular basis through social media even though we don’t see each other as much as we used to.

One of the things that Niveen really highlighted in the interview today, she talked about the importance of personal development and how that leads towards success. She mentioned that she overcame a lot of obstacles and a lot of self-doubt and she went outside of her comfort zone to accomplish and do things that she really didn’t feel comfortable with in the beginning. Now she is much more seasoned and it has led her down a path of greater prosperity and she feels much more comfortable in her skin. In doing so that has made her much more comfortable in offering value and services to others.

She really spent a strong focus of her skill set doing things that would, one push her out of her comfort zone, and two would also offer the ability to develop herself to become better at the skills she needed to acquire her new clients, her new businesses, her new customers, and then use that in future endeavors that she is going to be on to in the future.

Niveen had a lot of great points and I need to mention that she really did me a favor today. The appointment I had today cancelled and I knew she was doing cool amazing things, so I reached out to her on Facebook and asked her to interview right now. Within a matter of minutes she was with me on the phone and she did a fantastic job. If you haven’t met or connected with Niveen, definitely check her out.

Check our Facebook page let us know what you think of our podcast and let us know what you’d like to hear on The Defining Success Podcast.

Go out there and find your success!

Find out more about Niveen Salem and her Products

Visit NiveenSalem.com.
To connect with Niveen visit Facebook.com/NiveenSalem2

Quotes

  • “The main products that we’re always selling with networking marketing is lifestyle. We’re teaching people how to lead a better life, be healthier with the physical product itself, but live a different lifestyle.”
  • “What I did not anticipate was the stigma that is existing in this industry. Now after being in the industry for a while, after reaching success, and having a team and dealing with very professional people, I understand why. Because a lot of people deal with this business in a very unprofessional way. They are not being real. They are not being sincere about it.”
  • “Personal development is a huge milestone in reaching success in any business.”
  • “Any business that you run, you have to be professional about it otherwise you never succeed. I don’t care what you do.”
  • “In any business you need to look at 5 major key factors of success: the company, the products, the trends, the compensation plan, and the training. If the first 4 are there, but you lacking good training and leadership, you’re not going to do well.”
  • “This business is all about vision. You have to dream big and you have to see the really big vision behind this.”
  • “Hone your skills. Learn the skills, hone them, and be professional. if you are able to do these three things you are in the business for sure.”
  • “If you are thinking in terms of finances — wait, it will happen. But it’s not going to happen without a passion and without growing yourself first.”
  • “I always drive on a daily basis to be consistent, to learn the skills, and to be professional in all my dealings with people around me.”

More from the Interview

Niveen was a corporate executive at Chevron and she loved working there that it was a global company. She made good money, but it took up too much of her time. She wasn’t able to spend enough time with her girls. She had to quit. She decided to start her own eCommerce business in the wedding industry. It was another struggle and she lost a lot of money. After that her friend introduced her to a new business model. She works to transform people’s experiences/people’s lives, she works from home, and she works globally.

At Chevron she was able to work her way up the ranks. Working at a company like that can be a very demanding job. Many days she would go to work at 6 in the morning and get home just before her kids went to bed. She also did not have any luck finding a good nanny. She went through 13 nannies in one year and she says, “It was really hard.”

She couldn’t stay like that for too long, she had to do what she had to do. Family comes first.

Niveen can’t just stay home and not do anything, she’s a business person. When her kids started going to preschool she had more time, especially in the morning. She knew she wanted to work, but she knew she didn’t want a full time job, because she probably would leave it again. She was looking for from home work opportunities. A friend of a friend of her’s ran a baby shower website from home and she thought it was really interesting. She thought she could do the same thing and work in the wedding industry. It took her about 6 months to do all the research, find the wholesales, shippers, learned the ecommerce platform. She did a ton of work just to get the business going. She spent much of her money on her SEO efforts. She outsourced to handle the large workload.

At first she was very sad to close the business, but now she’s happy that she did because it wouldn’t have worked out for her very well. She can just imagine herself right now sitting and taking orders all day long. She struggled with that business very much, she did everything possible to make it work and she couldn’t even break even. After a while she entered the third stage of her life, her current business came into place and she decided to close her wedding business.

A friend of hers introduced her to the networking marketing industry. When she worked at Chevron she lacked time. When she was running her wedding business she had the time but she did not have the money. She spent some time wondering what do people do to leverage time and money. She considered real estate, but it really takes money to buy properties and be able rent them.

She says, “All my thinking was how in the world can I get some passive residual income. That thought kept lingering in my mind but I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t know about networking marketing at the beginning. When my friend introduced me I said no because I thought I’d be selling products and, guess what, I was already selling products.”

6 months later her friend told her to sit down and see how the business end of it works. She told her that she could develop it strategically in more 50 countries, it’s a global business. You can help people transform their lives and their experiences along the way. She learned how to do it, she learned about the steps. She saw the business end of it and she loved the compensation plan. She says, “It’s been a journey of it’s own.”

She works with anti-aging products. Including nutrition, things for energy, weight loss, cutting-edge technology when it comes to anti aging from the inside out. She says, “The main products that we’re always selling with networking marketing is lifestyle. We’re teaching people how to lead a better life, be healthier with the physical product itself, but live a different lifestyle. So this is, really when I look at this business part I would say it’s lifestyle, that’s the product. But the physical product is anti-aging and nutrition.”

There are really good people, incredible good people in this industry. She says, “What I did not anticipate was the stigma that is existing in this industry. Now after being in the industry for a while, after reaching success, and having a team and dealing with very professional people, I understand why. Because a lot of people deal with this business in a very unprofessional way. They are not being real. They are not being sincere about it.”

Her business allowed Niveen to make great relationships and friendships. She says, “Without this business I would not have stepped out of my comfort zone and be there.”

“Personal development is a huge milestone in reaching success in any business.”

“I look at myself years ago. I look at myself now. I was an extremely shy introverted person. I couldn’t really speak to anyone. Now, I go to meetings and chambers and I talk to people on social media and here I am doing a podcast with you. These are part of the personal development successes that I’m achieving on a daily basis.”

Niveen creates videos and puts them out online. She does this because she realizes social media is help people know, like and trust you. In person it’s easier to build that know, like and trust. Online it’s more difficult. Videos will help people get to the point where they know, like and trust you.

“Any business that you run, you have to be professional about it otherwise you never succeed. I don’t care what you do.”

“In any business you need to look at 5 major key factors of success: the company, the products, the trends, the compensation plan, and the training. If the first 4 are there, but you lacking good training and leadership, you’re not going to do well.”

“This business is all about vision. You have to dream big and you have to see the really big vision behind this.”

Niveen says, if you are thinking about your personal gain, then this business is not for you. Of course you are going to gain personally out of it, of course. It’s all about that time and financial freedom. But you have to think about other people this business is about transforming people’s lives and lifestyles and experiences and everything.”

“Hone your skills. Learn the skills, hone them, and be professional. if you are able to do these three things you are in the business for sure.”

She says, being consistent, seeing the vision, learning the skills and being professional to sum it up.

“Success for me is, number one, being very passionate about what you do and growing yourself to the level you want to be. As simple as that. If you are thinking in terms of finances — wait, it will happen. But it’s not going to happen without a passion and without growing yourself first.”

“I always drive on a daily basis to be consistent, to learn the skills, and to be professional in all my dealings with people around me.”

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Episode 95: Delivering the Wow | Corey Poirier, professional speaker, radio show host and author of the Conversations With book series

Corey Poirier Delivering the WowCorey has done so many cool things and he’s interviewed thousands of people. He used to be a professional comedian and now he’s a professional speaker giving speaking engagements to corporations and to people who are looking for a little bit of motivation and inspiration to go out and do cool amazing things. One of the things that Corey brought up in the interview, which I thought was super cool, was he called it ‘delivering the wow’. He made some comments about some organizations that are often delivering the wow and do some things that are super cool that get people talking about them. That’s what I want to focus on at the end of the episode today: working on delivering the wow. Enjoy!

A Canadian Professional Keynote Speaker, Entrepreneur and Corporate Customer Service & Sales Training Specialist, Corey Poirier is publisher of Island Business News, author of four acclaimed books in the Conversations With series, creator of three audio programs and the host of a new radio show entitled “Conversations with Passions,” a variety show that features interviews with world-wide leaders such as David Suzuki and Jack Canfield.

Zeb’s Take – Delivering the Wow

Corey had a lot of insights and he’s done a lot of really cool things. Being a stand up comedian in and of itself is probably a pretty difficult task. You have to overcome a lot of hurdles about getting in front of people and putting yourself out there like he did. I know for sure that has led him to do some things that are outside of the box and have pushed him outside of his comfort zone. It’s very cool that now he’s speaking to businesses and organizations about stepping outside of their comfort zones. I’m sure the his speaking engagements are always well received and that he does a great job with those.

One of the things he brought up in the interview today was, he was talking about delivering the wow. I think that’s a cool thing for any business to do. There’s a lot of ways that businesses could go about doing that. I just want to touch on it, because I think it’s so important for a business not just to do what you say you are going to do, but offer something that really offers that wow factor. Make people go Wow, that’s something that’s really nice to do. Businesses need to think about delivering the wow, and how they can do that within their business.

He shared one example from Disneyland. Anywhere in the park, if someone drops an ice cream cone, any employee can go and get them a fresh ice cream free of charge. That’s something that’s pretty cool. That’s delivering the wow. Where most organizations, they’re looking at the bottom line, they say that doesn’t make sense. But that’s something where they are delivering that wow factor which gets people to come back more and more often. Another example would be if a child was waiting to get an autograph from one of the characters but they ran out of time. An employee could go and get that signature for them and deliver it to their hotel or something cool like that. Those are the type of things that really leave a lasting impression with people.

I think in business sometimes people get caught up in, “What do the shareholders want? What is this going to be worth? What is the value of each little thing that we are doing.” But when you do those cool things, those are things that can’t be measured but can lead to amazing success for an organization.

I think about my tutoring business. One of the greatest decisions we ever made was offering our Share Your Passion Scholarship. We just did something that we thought was cool. We offered a scholarship for students who could write an essay that would talk about what they are passion about, why they are passionate about it and how they are using their passion to help others. By doing that we got a lot of word of mouth from people in our community, from counselors in high schools, that just really expanded our business greatly. The real reason why we wanted to do it, we just wanted to do something cool.

I think that if we leave those things for the world; we do cool things for the world, we leave those wows for the world; that one the world is going to be a better place, and two that we will be better served for it.

I had a great time talking to Corey, it looks like we’ll have strong collaboration moving forward. we talked a bit after the interview. I want to leave you with one more thing and that is to go out there and find your success!

Find out more about Corey and his Projects

Visit ConversationsWithPassion.com to find out about his show and hear the show.
Visit CoreyPoirier.com, his speaking related website.
Connect with Corey on social media using links from either of those websites.
Interestingly if you want to find out more about Corey, check out his first music video, Your Jacob on YouTube.

Quotes

  • “No matter where you are at in today’s global world you can be highly successful and you don’t have to leave the place that you love to do it.”
  • “We’re in an information heavy/wisdom light world, so it means ciphering through the information so you can get to the knowledge that matters.”
  • “Super achievers realize the importance of and know how to be absolutely all in.”
  • “These high achievers are living their purpose and living with passion.”
  • “They don’t necessarily love everything they do, but everything that they do is for a bigger purpose, and they are doing it passionately because they are passionate people and where that started is because they found their passion and that is how they are living their life.”
  • “I made my business fit into my life rather than the other way around. To me success is being able to know everyday that I made a difference, but at the same time, I made a difference doing what I love.”
  • “I believe that I’ve impacted a lot of lives and I believe what I am doing is worthy. And I actually really like me.”
  • “I’m trying to be awesome everyday.”

More from the Interview

Corey has kind of a neat starting point, different from the rest of our guests. He started his journey as a stand up comedian. It’s a strange entry point for entering the speaking world. He feels that stand up comedy prepared him well for his career. He really does a lot of storytelling, even the message he shares through the written word.

He spends most of his time as a professional speaker. He has companies bring him in to do motivation talks, educational talks, all that kind of stuff. They bring me in to share a powerful message with their attendees, or staff members, their association. Those messages can be anything from how to find your passion in life to what are the common traits of super achievers, to how do people define success and how can you make that work in your life. He also has a radio show, and a newspaper and other areas where he shares those messages.

One of his speaking engagement topics is Standing Ovations from Every Customer. He actually turned the speech into a book a couple years ago. It’s a fictional tale of a stand up comic teaching a business person how to get standing ovations in their customer service role or the customer service experience that they create.

There are 4 steps to get a standing ovation from every customer. They sound basic on the service, but they are not as basic as they sound to put them in play.
1. How do you make it about your customer?
2. Involving the customer.
3. Being in the moment.
4. Delivering the wow.

One of the little things that you could do that are worth their weight in gold that in some cases may not cost a thing, that make the person go, “Wow, I never saw that coming.” It’s the thing they didn’t even know they need yet and you’ve given it to them.

Companies that are delivering the wow regularly are companies like Apple and Disney. Apple, solving problems with your phone that you didn’t even know you had in the past. Disney, in their training they teach employees to recognize that if visitors are wearing jewelry brought from Disney to tell them, “Welcome back to Disney.” That’s something Corey heard from a trainer who does customer service and training sessions at Disney.

At Disney if a child drops an ice cream cone anywhere on the Disney grounds any employee is empowered to get them a new ice cream cone. Or if they waited for an autograph from Pluto but they were too late. An employee is empowered to get that autograph for them and leave it for them in their room if they are staying at a Disneyland Hotel. All those things are them delivering the wow.

Another one of his speeches is Atlantic Canada Matters (Inspirational). It’s a bit more geographically and comes from one of his projects called Conversations With. They put out 5 books in a series where they profiled high achievers in different regions of Atlantic Canada. It’s about how you don’t have to move away to be successful. These interviews prove that that’s not the case. They demonstrate that you don’t have to move away from this little place to actually make an impact.

It can be customized to any region or any company or any place, because really at the center of the talk itself is the idea that no matter where you are at in today’s global world you can be highly successful and you don’t have to leave the place that you love to do it.

“No matter where you are at in today’s global world you can be highly successful and you don’t have to leave the place that you love to do it.”

One of Corey’s most popular sessions these days is what he calls, Signs of Super Achievement. He’s interviewed over 2,500 people at a high achievement level. So he’s been able to do a sort of research project. He’s deciphered the things that they’re doing differently that allows them to stand out. The talk is revealing those strategies. One of those things is that they are willing to expand their comfort zone, so they can continue to step outside and grow their comfort zone over and over so they can become the best version of themselves.

Some of the other things that super achievers do is that they are lifelong learners, they realize the importance of and know how to be absolutely all in, and the number one trait is that they are living their purpose and living with passion.

“We’re in an information heavy wisdom light world, so it means ciphering through the information so you can get to the knowledge that matters.”

“Super achievers realize the importance of and know how to be absolutely all in.”

“These high achievers are living their purpose and living with passion.”

“They don’t necessarily love everything they do, but everything that they do is for a bigger purpose, and they are doing it passionately because they are passionate people and where that started is because they found their passion and that is how they are living their life.”

Corey says, for these three traits the person doesn’t have to be born in any certain area in the world, doesn’t have to come from any unique background, there’s no stigmas or anything associated with achieving these three. Anybody from any point in their life can start today and bring these three things in their life.

Corey shares a story that he likes to think of when he’s having a bad day. There was a girl who had seen him on tv when she was younger and she remembered him. Years later when she found out Corey would be speaking nearby she made sure to attend. A while afterwards she contacted him and told him that the talk he gave was the kick in the butt she needed. She decided to go back to school, from there she got a job and at the time she talked to him she was the manager of a few car rental locations. She told him that she never really thought a future like that was possible for her, but that kick in the butt was just what she needed to get her life going.

Corey has learned a lot from his failures, which make them worthwhile. One failure that really affected his life was from his very first stand up show. He was told that he would be performing on stage that night and he was not prepared. He decided to face fear head on so out of a few comics he stood up and went first. The first thing he did was tell the best joke he had ever told, it was met with dead silence. He told his second best joke and got the same response. The organizer of the show motioned him to the corner of stage and said, “You idiot, you have to wait until I turn the mic on.”

Corey took lessons away from that on so many levels. Including that sometimes in business we’re ready to share a message, but we haven’t turned our mic on yet.

Right now he is very excited about a compilation book project he’s working on. It’s called share your message with the world. It is Corey and 26 other authors, they are each sharing a story or message that in some ways changed their life. Corey’s chapter is about living YOUR bucket list. Rather than live society’s bucket list, do all the things that society wants you to do. Rip that bucket list apart and make sure you do all the things that you want to do. Dont try to live someone else’s bucket list. Corey is excited about the project and all the passionate people involved.

The most funny interview Corey had was with Robin Sharma, author of 11 books including The Leader Who Had No Title and the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. When the interview was scheduled he got a horrible toothache, but they had already rescheduled. In the interview he was trying to ask short questions and was sipping lots of water to soothe his toothache. Then he had to go to the bathroom pretty much the whole time. At the end it came out alright, but there was a lot of obstacles for him, looking back on it now he remembers how funny it was.

When he first started interviewing people he made a list of 100 people that he would want to interview. His friends who saw his list told him he’d be lucky to interview 10 of the people on the list. Now he’s interviewed 93 of those people. Including his interview with Jack Canfield. The day before his interview Jack was on Larry King Live and the day after he was on the Oprah Network. By sharing the benefits of his show he was able to get more interviews.

“I made my business fit into my life rather than the other way around. To me success is being able to know everyday that I made a difference, but at the same time, I made a difference doing what I love.”

“I believe that I’ve impacted a lot of lives and I believe what I am doing is worthy. And I actually really like me.”

“I’m trying to be awesome everyday.”

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Episode 94: Don’t Dwell on the Past | James Maioho, Author of Winners Give Up!

James Maioho Tells Us Successful People Don't Dwell on the PastJames Maioho is the author of Winners Give Up! which is a little play on words there. I think most people would stay that winners don’t give up, but in this case it’s giving up the baggage or things that you are holding on to that are holding you back from achieving the things you really want in life.

James Maioho is the author of Winners Give Up! Inspirational insights into the habits of accomplishing your personal goals. The book was a labor of hope and commitment to doing the things necessary to climb back from the abyss. It is the fulfillment of an inner need to inspire others who also want to be “the best possible version of themselves.”

Zeb’s Take – Don’t Dwell on the Past

It was great talking with James about his book and some of the philosophies that he has on life. Actually he and I share a similar path in that we both experienced this kind of traumatic period in our lives where we were in a really interesting place. I kinda described it as I was kind of lost I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do. I’m not sure if he described it in the same way but it was similar circumstances. So I can definitely relate to what he was going through and how he worked to overcome that. The way he worked to overcome that was by providing value and helping other people. That’s exactly what I try to do as well.

One of the things that he talked about in the interview and what he wrote his book on, Winners Give Up. Which is a little bit counterintuitive but I do understand exactly what he’s trying to get across there. Which is that the most successful people learn to let go of the past. They learn to let go of that baggage and look forward and take action in the present so they can go on to achieve things in the future. They don’t look forward to the future. They don’t spend time dwelling on the past. They live in the present, planning for the future, and taking action on things in the present so that it impacts the future. So that it can be the future they want.

Sports is a great analogy for anything in life. One of the things I’ve noticed in the sports world, is that failure is constant in sports. In baseball for example, even from one at bat to the next. You can hit a homerun in one at bat and strike out at the next one. But if you dwell on the strikeouts you’re not doing yourself any favors. You’re not planning for the future, you’re not getting better you’re just dwelling on what happened in the past and that’s a strategy designed for failure.

I would like to encourage all of you to take a moment to think of those things that are holding you back. Those things that you are dwelling on that aren’t serving you for your current and they’re not serving you for your future and let those things go. It really does no good for anyone.

I can remember specifically during that dark time in my life, literally, I would just sit there and I would kind of obsess over the fact of how I was wronged and things were going against me. Once I realized that that wasn’t doing me any good and I took steps towards something that was going to make a positive impact and have a difference my life opened up and became so much better. I’d encourage all of you if you are struggling, or it’s a tough time in your life, or you’re not sure where to go take some steps to do something that’s going to impact your future for the better by helping other people. I think that’s a great step to take and you can just start going from there.

Thanks for listening! Sign up for our newsletter! A monthly email that shares about our guests our interviews and also little tid bits or information about that stuff that I’m up to, and maybe even some things that you can take action on. Now I want to encourage all of you to go out there and find your success.

Find Out more about James Maioho and the book Winners Give Up

Visit WinnersGiveUp.com or to bouce business ideas or things off James go to MadkoGroup.com. He says he’ll answer any questions for the people that care to contact him. If he has time he’s happy to do it.

Winners Give Up! by James Maioho

Quotes

  • “I had to do something positive. I had to try to do one thing, take one step forward in a positive direction to make my time worthwhile instead of wallowing in a pool self pity.”
  • “If you want to be a writer you have to write in a manner that is about something, one that you have passion about, two that you have some sort of knowledge and believe that you can be of value to other people with really no expectation of any sort of fiscal return or anything. That’s the mindset I would have going into it.”
  • “My biggest mistake has occurred when I didn’t do the preparation and the work that I needed to do and had the wrong attitude in pursuing my goals.”
  • “One, find out what your heart of hearts desires, what your true passion is and whatever that is pursue that with relentless vigor regardless of what anybody else thinks about how you’re doing it and what you are doing. Do everything, every action that you take, every breath that you make, try to do it for the benefit of somebody else. Those are the two things.”
  • “My drive right now is just to try to share whatever or little experience that I have in a way that benefits somebody else, if they’re hurting, or if they want to get from point A to point B, or things aren’t working for them or whatever the case may be.”
  • “Everybody has to be brave enough to define their own success on their own terms.”
  • “You have to define success in some sort of way that incorporates the happiness of yourself and the happiness of others.”
  • “You can’t feel bad about dropping your bad baggage whether it be thought processes, guilt resentment, the way you think in business situations, putting other people first, negative people, negative family members, any of those things. All of that stuff has to go if you want to get to whatever your goal is. You really have to dig deep and be honest with yourself to define your own success.”

More from the Interview

James says his career path is not linear. He’s had several different careers or different components to my career. He first went to school in Michigan on a music scholarship he wanted to be a musician. He ended up getting his degree at a school in California. When he was sitting in a studio just about to get his degree. He had a conversation with a guy who was a pretty successful studio musician. That guy said that he didn’t make any money, so if you can do something else, you should do something else.

James took that, went back to Michigan and got his business degree. He was selling electronics, clothing, he ran a tire store while he was going through school, he sold chimney sweeps. He went to work selling only to high asset high value clients, bonds. He got all his SCC licenses and started learning the business. He says, “Except when you are 23 or 24 years old and green as can be. In that world, in that market, nobody is going to give you $100,000 because you don’t know what you are doing. Even if you know all the ratios, all the numbers, all the charts, and got those things memorized backwards and forwards, you don’t have any experience or real credibility.”

Eventually he learned local manufacture and at construction, he started working with Caterpillar and learned how to do territory management, client based selling, large asset value setting. Then he migrated out of that went into a family business, his ex wife’s family’s business. He got the opportunity to learn about fabric manufacturing, importing, direct marketing. This was a company with very large house file list management, a large call center, lots of fulfillment. He got all kinds of experience with direct marketing, a completely different type of selling than just territory management. All kinds of marketing to support it.

From there James went to work for a private consulting company out of Chicago and was a turnaround consultant. He would take troubled businesses and teach management skills, inventory skills, the business of running a business really. “You walk into a business and you have to shift the paradigm of thinking of an organization, because if it’s struggling, it’s struggling for a reason. Normally the reason that it’s struggling is because there’s bad decisions being made.”

With that job, he had young children, but for work he was on a plane 5 days a week. He said it was a fascinating job and he had a lot of success.

That brought him up to the point when he started writing, doing articles, and putting out the book and those things.

During his path there was a point in time when James’s decision making was poor in his personal life and professional life. He was unemployed. He was travelling back and forth to see his kids. For a time he says, “I could not do one thing right for a certain window of time in his life.”

His assets had evaporated, the separation from his ex-wife was unpleasant, it was a bad time personally — financially, professionally and emotionally. He moved back to his dad’s old family farm and in Michigan the job market was terrible. He couldn’t even get a job at McDonald’s. He’s convinced it was partly because of his attitude at the time. “My thinking and everything was so negative. Almost like an abysmal downward spiral. I had to do something positive. I had to try to do one thing, take one step forward in a positive direction to make my time worthwhile instead of wallowing in a pool self pity. So I started writing the book, and the first few chapters, the first little bit of it, th idea of it was just like pulling teeth. But once I started going I started to have a paradigm shift of my own. Once I started accepting some of the things that were attributable to me and getting a better healthier, more positive constructive attitude going and it just starting to come out. Things started eventually getting better little by little and then all of a sudden, some period of time later, the flood gates just opened. But it took more than just mechanical things, it took a lot of correcting in my personal thinking to get that accomplished.”
His book, Winners Give Up! is a play on words. When you think of winning generally what comes to mind is that winners do whatever it takes to win. You never give up. You never surrender. But Winners Give Up! is more about giving up the baggage and the negative thinking, the negative habits, the negative processes that you’ve burdened yourself with in order to get from point A to point B on your journey towards success.

It’s more about winning through shedding yourself of all these other things. It’s really an attempt to have a paradigm shift towards the positive. Everybody is not the same. There’s lots of different areas where we are hung up with a negative paradigm where we haven’t accepted responsibility for a certain situation. Where we’re blaming someone else in our life for some negative situation.

On writing the the book he says, “It really started my path towards getting my personal thinking and my energy and my habits corrected. I had a lot of personal baggage I carried around, a lot of resentmen,. I carried around a lot of bad paradigm in my business habits, I had a lot of unhealthy eating habits, unhealthy lifestyle habits, unhealthy substance habits. All of these things were able to finally be knocked off after I was serious and made the commitment to doing this. This first book was really a cathartic experience for me. It was really just about trying to reflect on making my personal situation better. Ever since everyday has been better than yesterday for me.”

James is coming out with another book called I am (Not) a Salesman. He says that book is trying to shift the paradigm of the sales process. He has a lot of experience with different ways to go about the sales process. “Absolutely a clients-based needs-base model. Nothing is more important than uncovering what the true needs of your client are.”

“If you want to be a writer you have to write in a manner that is about something, one that you have passion about, two that you have some sort of knowledge and believe that you can be of value to other people with really no expectation of any sort of fiscal return or anything. That’s the mindset I would have going into it.”

Writing is not how James makes a livin. He works at an environmental services firm, construction services, I get to act on it in a consulting business on that. That allows him to be involved in a lot of chamber groups, minority support groups, other things in the area and that gives him freedom to do his own consulting business. The bases are there for everything, once his family focus is shifted and his children grow older then he may migrate and do this other full time.

James say the biggest mistake he’s made is being unprepared. A sub to that is being overconfident and thinking that you are entitled to the business without putting in the work. “My biggest mistake has occurred when I didn’t do the preparation and the work that I needed to do and had the wrong attitude in pursuing my goals.”

“One, find out what your heart of hearts desires, what your true passion is and whatever that is pursue that with relentless vigor regardless of what anybody else thinks about how you’re doing it and what you are doing. Do everything, every action that you take, every breath that you make, try to do it for the benefit of somebody else. Those are the two things.”

“My drive right now is just to try to share whatever or little experience that I have in a way that benefits somebody else, if they’re hurting, or if they want to get from point A to point B, or things aren’t working for them or whatever the case may be.”

“Everybody has to be brave enough to define their own success on their own terms.”

“Right now my definition of being successful is just being happy and being peaceful.”

“You have to define success in some sort of way that incorporates the happiness of yourself and the happiness of others.”

“You can’t feel bad about dropping your bad baggage whether it be thought processes, guilt resentment, the way you think in business situations, putting other people first, negative people, negative family members, any of those things. All of that stuff has to go if you want to get to whatever your goal is. You really have to dig deep and be honest with yourself to define your own success.”

He says that right now every day is better than the day before.

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Episode 93: Networking and Follow Up | Mark Sieverkropp Co-Host of Happen To Your Career Podcast and Author of Project: Success

Networking and Follow Up with Mark SieverkroppMark Sieverkropp is a good friend of mine. We’ve been interacting on Twitter and social media. We’ve had a blast getting to know each other. One of the things I really like about Mark is his ability for networking and follow up with people, and being proactive about his follow up strategies. I think a lot of people miss the mark in their networking or when they are meeting other people because they don’t do appropriate follow up. Mark is going to talk to us through some good ways that we can put networking and follow up into our procedures and make sure we are building on those connections we’ve made either through social media, the people we meet at networking events, or out and about. It’s a great interview, enjoy!

Mark Sieverkropp is a Podcaster, blogger, author, entrepreneur, connector, leader, consultant and speaker. He is the author of Project: Success, which climbed to #3 in the Self-Help category in the Amazon Kindle Store. He is also co-host of the Happen To Your Career Podcast, which was a New & Noteworthy Podcast in the Career section of iTunes. Mark is passionate about connecting with others, finding ways to add value to them and helping other people do the same.

Zeb’s Take, Networking and Follow up

It was a blast today talking with Mark. He’s a super cool guy and he is someone that I feel I share a lot in common with. He’s out there doing cool good things, he’s excited about helping people find their careers and doing things that they love. He’s just doing good work networking with people and getting people involved with different projects. I really like the concept of his book, Project: Success, where we’re taking on projects that lead us down this path of success. I totally agree with and foresee the future being that way as well for a lot of us, especially for those you listening to the podcast today.

One of the things that Mark brought up that I wanted to touch on is his ability to follow up and the importance of following up with people. I think a lot of people who do networking and use social media don’t properly use follow up to achieve goals that they are trying to accomplish. Networking and follow up go together and they don’t follow up in the appropriate manner.

One of the cool things, Mark and I had a conversation via Skype. We chatted for about half an hour, just a get to know you — like having coffee, but it was over Skype because we live in different parts of the country. We were networking and follow up: Mark, he got my work mailing address from my website and sent me a nice little thank you card. That touch added familiarity between him and myself.

When I started my business I did that with every single person that I encountered through the business. I sent them thank you cards and as my business grew and I reached out to more people it’s become more and more difficult to send cards to everyone I interact with. To be honest, sometimes I’ve neglected that. But, I think that’s a really cool way to follow up and connect with people; send a handwritten thank you card that talks a little bit about the conversation, says thanks for whatever it is that you should be thankful for, and that’s a nice little touch.

There’s also other things you can do for successful networking and follow up that make sense. One of the things is setting up a procedure for networking and follow up and Mark talked about that. If you don’t have one, if you don’t have a way to follow up with people regularly and consistently. It’s something that you really need to do.

When I first started my business it was very easy to follow up with people because I didn’t have that large of a network. I didn’t have to reach out to that many people. Now, as my business has grown, I have found more and more that I’m neglecting that responsibility of following up with people that I meet in different scenarios. I know that it is hurting my business. If I were to set up these systems in place, like Mark mentioned that Boomerang App that allows you to send follow up emails at a later date — that sounds like a great tool to use. Or just setting up reminders, some way for you to set up reminders to yourself, that you need to contact these people, that’s also a great idea.

Now, go out there and find your success.

Find out more about Mark Sieverkropp and his Networking and Follow Up

Visit HappenToYourCareer.com. His blog is Sieverkropp.com. One of the greatest places to get a hold of Mark is on Twitter @Skropp2. He loves interacting and connecting with people. You can also email him at Mark@Sieverkropp.com.

Mark Sieverkropp

Quotes

  • “Being in an industry where I get to help people, encourage them, and provide them with direction has really been one of the most fun things I have ever done in my life and I don’t ever see it stopping.”
  • “The name of the game is really is just meeting people and building relationships and adding value. Once you do that people are willing to reciprocate and help you out.”
  • “Sitting in your PJs all day surfing careerbuilder.com just isn’t going to cut it any more as far as getting a job and doing the work you love. We really take that approach that you have to be proactive.”
  • “We all like to hear our own names, we all like to be mentioned and recognized. When you find a way to do that with people that uplifts them, encourages them and helps them with what they’re interested in; it’s one of the biggest compliments you can give.”
  • “Everybody wants to feel like they matter. When you give people the compliment of listening to them and talking about what they want to talk about, you’ve gone a long ways to build a great relationship with someone.”
  • “If you do nothing else in networking you need to find a way to follow up.”

More From the Interview

By day Mark is a commercial underwriter, not very exciting, but the stuff he is really excited about is his career coaching. Through a friend of a friend he met Scott Barlow the co-founder of Happen To Your Career. He says, we met for lunch one day talked about the things he was doing and one thing led to another… we started Happen to your career, we started our podcast, started all the things we’re doing now.

Happen To Your Career PodcastMark found that he really enjoys helping people. There’s nothing better than getting an email that show how you helped someone make a decision about where to go with their career, how they can get out of a job they don’t like, or how they aced an interview because we helped them with something. He says, “It’s something that you just never get over, hearing those types of stories.”
“Being in an industry where I get to help people, encourage them, and provide them with direction has really been one of the most fun things I have ever done in my life and I don’t ever see it stopping.”

At Happen To Your Career our goal is to take people from where they are at and move them to work that they love. He says, something like 70 – 90% of people don’t like the job they are in, that’s a really sad statistic. We believe you can like what you are doing. That’s something people are starting to realize more and more with the way our society is.

“Our goal is to help people to find what they like to do and then make a plan to move to that.”

That’s what we’re focusing on doing and focusing on the encouragement and building a community of people that can help each other and encourage each other to move to that goal.

Project: Success came about from an IndieGoGo campaign Mark started with Scott Barlow. One of the perks offered was a book by Scott. Mark mentioned that he had always wanted to write a book and Scott suggested he make it one of the perks. So he did, they basically pre-sold the book, once people donated to the campaign and chose that perk he had to write it.

The book comes from an idea Mark got from Richie Norton and his book The Power of Starting Something Stupid. It’s the idea of projects. Rather than starting something and planning on doing it forever you do a project with a beginning date and an end date, you do something for a certain amount of time and at the end you step back and look at it and decide if you want to continue working on it or not. It gets you over a lot of challenges and those roadblocks that you set up for yourself. He says, “It really helps you to get done things that you wouldn’t get done otherwise.”

“Everyone has something they’ve always wanted to do and they’ve never done it. Why don’t they do it? They don’t have the time, they don’t have the money, or they don’t know how to get started. Well, if you start a project you can either do the whole thing or you can learn skills.”

“The name of the game is really is just meeting people and building relationships and adding value. Once you do that people are willing to reciprocate and help you out.”

The idea behind the title Happen To Your Career is that you should happen to your career, your career shouldn’t happen to you: “Sitting in your PJs all day surfing careerbuilder.com just isn’t going to cut it any more as far as getting a job and doing the work you love. We really take that approach that you have to be proactive.”

The foolproof technique to complimenting others, that Mark has found, is name dropping. He’s not talking about mentioned that you work out at the same gym at The Rock. What he means is dropping their name, recommend them in a public way. He says, “We all like to hear our own names, we all like to be mentioned and recognized. When you find a way to do that with people that uplifts them, encourages them and helps them with what they’re interested in; it’s one of the biggest compliments you can give to people.”

The ‘Secret Sauce’ to starting a conversation (on the blog, written by Nico Johannson). The most important thing you can do when talking to somebody is to listen. The secret sauce isn’t that secret at all.

“Everybody wants to feel like they matter. When you give people the compliment of listening to them and talking about what they want to talk about, you’ve gone a long ways to build a great relationship with someone.”

Mark challenges all our listeners for one day to pay attention to the conversations you have and see how many times you are interrupted when you are talking. It’s so hard to get out of the habit, and Mark admits he does it too. Many people don’t realize that they do it.

“If you do nothing else in networking you need to find a way to follow up.”

Mark says, you have to take the initiative to make sure that your name stays in front of that person and once you do that for a while you’ve built that relationship. It really does take quite a bit of effort when you first start out.

Three tips for making your follow-ups flawless
1. Build the follow up in the initial conversation, say something like, I’ll email you later this week, or let’s stay in touch. It let’s them know your intention and it holds you accountable. It makes it easier, keeps the mental roadblocks out of the way.
2. There’s a tool called Boomerang that can help you follow up when you say you will follow up. It delays your sending of the email. If you wanted to make sure you followed up with someone on Monday, but think you might forget you can write the email now and schedule when it sends.
3. Have a process in place to do it. Have 5-10 minutes every single day that you do your follow-ups, or a certain time every week, whatever works for you. Make a plan to follow up.

“Success really revolves and resonates around choices and freedom.”

Freebies:

Because he enjoyed being on the Defining Success Podcast so much, Mark Sieverkropp is offering his book, “Start a Conversation with Anyone, Anywhere: 6 Techniques to Become a Better Conversationalist,” for free.

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Episode 92: Leadership and Trust | Wally Hauck, Author of The Art of Leading and Stop the Leadership Malpractice

Wally Hauck talks with us about leadership and trust.Wally Hauck is the author of two different books on leadership. One of the things Wally talks about extensively in this interview is leadership and trust. Trust between the manager and someone that person is managing. If you are interested in becoming a leader or you think you are in a leadership capacity in some different scenarios one of the things you really need to work on developing is trust. That is what I would like to highlight in this episode today: leadership and trust

Wally Hauck, PhD has a cure for the deadly disease known as the typical performance appraisal. He is also the author of two books, The Art of Leading: Principles for Predictable Performance Improvement and Stop the Leadership Malpractice: How to Replace the Typical Performance Appraisal.

Zeb’s Take – Leadership and Trust

Wally talked a lot about employees and how they engage with the workforce. One of the things in the interview that really struck me is the importance of building trust between managers and employees and the ways to do that. In a leadership position you are constantly making agreements with people and if you take on that leadership role you need to make sure that you are agreeable to those agreements; that you do the things that you say you are going to do. If you don’t it really erodes trust with the people that you are working with and it makes it much more difficult for them to accomplish the things that they want. If you don’t do what you say you are going to do, it makes it easier for them to not do the things they say they will do. Leadership and trust go hand in hand.

If you want your employees ,or the people that are working for you, or the people that you are leading to do something that you ask of them you need to be accountable to them just as much as they need to be accountable to you. I think that’s one of the biggest problems that leaders face is being able to overcome that.

Here’s a personal example. There’s a membership committee through my local chamber of commerce that I’m the head of. I have a plan in my head of these things I want to accomplish with each meeting. I want to send a follow up email after each meeting. I want to send an email before the event to let people know the event is taking place. Honestly, sometimes I forget. I’ll forget to send the email after the meeting or before the meeting or maybe I’m ill prepared when the event comes, maybe I don’t prepare as well as I usually do. I’ve realized that in those situations it erodes some trust. For me, it’s really important to develop procedures and processes so that I don’t forget to do those things, so that I’m someone who does the things they say they are going to do. So they can see my leadership and trust in me. The same thing in the mastermind group I’m in: I really want to come up with a structure for these mastermind sessions. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed or so busy that I forget to put those procedures in place.

Another great idea Wally talked about was developing a checklist. Not just a checklist for your employee or the person you are trying to lead, but for yourself as well. If you are accountable for everything that you are supposed to be accountable for it makes it much more likely that the people you are leading, if they see you are checking off all the things that you are responsible for, it’s much more likely they will be checking off all the things that they are responsible for.

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Now, go out there and find your success!

Find out more about Wally Hauck and his books

Visit WallyHauck.com and download his free research article about the process and the success that one of his clients has received.

Wally Hauck's book Stop Leadership Malpractice Wally Hauck's book The Art of Leading

Quotes

  • “This is how leaders still operate, and it drives me crazy. And I am here on this earth to change it. That’s why I’m passionate about it.”
  • “The leader has a huge impact on the environment which therefore has a big impact on the individual performance. Everything is a system. It’s all interconnected.”
  • “The root belief is people will not work if you don’t watch them and they won’t work if you don’t bribe them or threaten them, because they really don’t want to work — and that’s a bunch of bull.”
  • “Very often what leaders do is they look at the mistakes employees make and they blame the employee, and they’ve got to stop doing that.”
  • “We have an overabundance of bad leadership in the country. I’m sorry, I see it every single day. That’s why I’m passionate about looking for opportunities to stop it.”
  • “Always manage your agreements and help others to manage their agreements.”
  • “Make agreements with people and then keep it. That’s how you build trust. That’s a demonstration of integrity.”
  • “Success is optimization.”
  • “Optimization means you are doing the very best and there’s a balance. There’s a beautiful balance, where everything works beautifully together and you are optimizing the results that you are getting with the resources that are available to you.”
  • “I think I am providing a service with this replacement performance appraisal that could really change the world. I’m pretty excited about it.”

More from the Interview

Wally worked for a large company and after being promoted several times he began to wonder why he was so miserable there. One time he got a call for a large purchase order that he got excited about. He talked with his boss to work out some of the details, things were looking good. That week his company had an event and Wally got an award for his sales performance partially because of that large order, even though he hadn’t closed the deal yet. A few days later when the order was put on hold and didn’t go through he was berated by one of the high ups in his office and received a terrible performance review after that. He says, “ I went from a hero to a bum.”

“This is how leaders still operate, and it drives me crazy. And I am here on this earth to change it. That’s why I’m passionate about it.”

He began to do some research and reading. He read The Turning Point and it talked about systems thinking. It helped him answer why he was so upset. “Most organizations still today evaluate the individuals and they fail to take full account of how the environment impacts the performance and how the leader has a huge impact on the environment which therefore has a big impact on the individual performance. Everything is a system. It’s all interconnected.” He says, “It made so much sense to me.”

He did more reading and more research. Including learning from a couple people who studied from Dr. Deming, who taught about thinking in systems in Japan. Deming says that one of the deadly diseases for organizations is the performance appraisal.

Performance reviews can cause a lot of damage in areas that are needed for performance. It doesn’t accomplish what it is supposed to accomplish. Part of the reason that it doesn’t is because managers are not skilled at having open and honest conversations. But the main reason is that the employee gets a grade. When you get a grade in an organization that has dysfunctional departments that can impact your performance it just makes everyone hate the whole process.

“The root belief is people will not work if you don’t watch them and they won’t work if you don’t bribe them or threaten them, because they really don’t want to work — and that’s a bunch of bull.”

“The whole thing is based on flawed assumption and we’ve got to do away with it if we are really going to survive in the global economy now.”

Frederick Taylor designed the system that is commonly used today, scientific management. It worked great in the 1800s, but that’s 140 years ago. 140 years ago factory work was menial tasks. Frederick Taylor was going to go into a factory and teach the best way to do these simple tasks and if they don’t do it right they aren’t going to get paid, or get a bonus, and if they keep doing it they’ll get fired. The work was simple easy repeatable tasks for uneducated employees. That is rarely the case today.

Some unintended consequences of performance reviews are that they damage trust and engagement in the workplace. People start to hide things, they don’t tell the truth, or they hold information back.

He says, performance reviews are a tool used by 80-90% of organizations today and it closes down open and honest communication. I think that’s an outrage.

He designed a replacement for the typical performance review that he calls the complete performance improvement process, or CPIP. You have a meeting with an employee, but there is no grade, instead you create a partnership with the manager and the employee to improve the interpersonal communication between the two of them and others and the system interactions within the department and between the departments.

The manager is the judge and the employee is the judged, in the typical appraisal.

In the typical performance appraisal the manager is looking at the employee and saying here’s what you’re doing right and here’s what you’re doing wrong. And they are doing it with incomplete information and they are doing it with a bias, so it never comes out right. Instead, what if the two of you came together looked at the quality of the interactions between you and said, how can we make our interactions better? How can we make our communication better? How can we make our system better? How can we improve our processes between the two of us? So you are partnering to work on the interactions not trying to fix the people.

Wally Hauck on the performance appraisal“The first things leaders need to do is to realize that they impact the environment or the context in which people work. Very often what leaders do is they look at the mistakes employees make and they blame the employee, and they’ve got to stop doing that.”

Leaders should ask three questions:
1. What process is not working?
2. What is the first 15% of that process?
3. How can you improve the first 15% of the process?

By asking those three questions you change the process and the performance gets better.

“Leaders are doing stupid things, causing the bad behavior, and then blaming the employee for it.”

“We have an overabundance of bad leadership in the country. I’m sorry, I see it every single day. That’s why I’m passionate about looking for opportunities to stop it.”

What makes a great leader is a few things. One is, understand that they create an environment of performance or dysfunction, and if there is dysfunction it is probably something in the environment. Number two, they have to know how to build trust. Three, you have shared objectives. Four, you are confident in what needs to be done.

“What I want leaders to do is I want them to manage trust in every interaction they do with their staff, their employees, the people they want to lead. This is something everyone can do.”

There are values issues and systems issues. Values issues are behaviors, such as behaving with integrity and treating people with respect, that’s the foundation of performance. They must always look at themselves and ask, am I keeping my word with my employees and am I making agreements and keeping them; am I setting the right role model for the behavior that I’m looking for from employees?

“Always manage your agreements and help others to manage their agreements.”

“Make agreements with people and then keep it. That’s how you build trust. That’s a demonstration of integrity.”

An agreement is specific, it has 4 elements: it’s specific, it’s measurable, it’s time sensitive and there’s a predictable process.

Wally Hauck on the performance appraisal“Success is optimization.”

“Being fully engaged. You want profitability, you want passion, you want engagement, but it’s optimization — is really what success for me is about. it can’t just be one area that defines success.”

“Optimization means you are doing the very best and there’s a balance. There’s a beautiful balance, where everything works beautifully together and you are optimizing the results that you are getting with the resources that are available to you.”

“I think I am providing a service with this replacement performance appraisal that could really change the world. I’m pretty excited about it.”

 

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