Ask an Expert by Propelo

We’ve all heard it’s the thought that counts, but that’s only true if it’s a thoughtful thought, says our Ask an Expert guest. John Ruhlin was a humble farm kid from Ohio who became the biggest Cutco distributor in the company’s history. Today he helps companies with his Giftology approach which focuses on cutting through the noise, strengthening relationships, and increasing referrals through thoughtful and meaningful gift-giving.

There is a paradigm shift when it comes to selling within the automotive industry towards servicing and not selling, shares our Ask an Expert guest. Jose Morales, CP of Corporate Relationships at Applied Concepts, shares how they are coaching and training dealerships to deal with a much more informed consumer. He also shares, automotive sales & marketing trends, and clever ways dealerships are leveraging video today.

There are headhunters everywhere, but Pronexia Co-Founder Marina Byezhanova shares their unique human-to-human approach that produces better A-list matches. In this Ask an Expert interview Marina shares one of the best hiring practices to ensure you get the talent you want. She also discusses the importance of a personal brand and how she personally outperformed a professional PR firm by strategically growing her social media content reach.

85% of the most meaningful interactions between you and your child happen before the end of their 18th Summer. Jim Sheils, a successful real estate entrepreneur, started looking for ways to maximize his relationship with his kids more during this period. As these ideas and techniques came together, he soon founded 18 Summers, which has helped improve the relationship of thousands of individuals and families across the country.

Imagine joining 1-800-GOT-JUNK as employee #15 and scaling it up to over 3,100. Our Ask an Expert guest today Cameron Herold, Founder of the COO Alliance, talks about how COOs and CEOs should have a dynamic yin/yang relationship. Effectively filling in the deficiencies of the CEO, no matter what those are, to provide a better framework for companies to follow their vision and mission more efficiently.

Sasha Strauss shares his insights on several topics from brand strategies, meaningful customer communication through storytelling, corporate responsibility, the value of being empathetic, and how valuable video can be moving forward for companies. Sasha is a USC professor and the Founder and Managing Partner at Innovation Protocol, a branding and strategy firm working with companies from Google, Paypal, Nestle, and more. He’s also an incredibly genuine and insightful speaker, having spoken at hundreds of events worldwide.

Meals on Wheels Diablo Region has seen a 40% increase but has faced difficult challenges serving a senior community that is especially at risk for COVID-19. Caitlin Sly, newly named Executive Director, has talked about how they’ve strategically and operationally pivoted through these challenging times.

Geoff Smart, Chairman and Founder of ghSMART, a Leadership Advisory Firm that was just voted #1 firm to work for by Vault shares key leadership and hiring strategies. These ideas come from his book Who, which is the global top-selling book on hiring talented teams.

Why should you pay for marketing that’s 50/50 win or lose when you can be focused on performance-based marketing? Robert Glazer, the founder of Acceleration Partners, talks about how they help businesses build and scale performance-based marketing platforms. The backbone of his organization though is an award-winning culture that has helped them quickly become one of the biggest performance-based companies in the country.

“Successful people don’t get everything done, they get the most important things done” states today’s Ask an Expert guest, Christo Popov. Christo is the Founder and CEO of Fast Track, an organization that has studied hundreds of companies around the world in an effort to show companies the beauty and simplicity of the 80/20 rule. He outlines how successful businesses approach this, gives a brilliant strategy of how companies should be pivoting right now and talks about the importance of mind and body wellness.