Bold Leadership podcast

Do you feel like nobody you work with every listens to you?  We see it all of the time. Great ideas stifled because someone is afraid to offer their ideas to the team.  Company cultures managed by Dominant leaders inhibit the free flow of communication.

Don’t be held back because you are afraid to speak.  

Today we are going to discuss how to work with Dominant leaders and be heard.

How can you improve the culture in your organization?

1. How do you deal with a dominant leader?
2. What challenges and impact have you seen with communication in organizations?
3. Can you improve the culture in your organization by understanding the different personalities that you work with?

Great salesmen are great communicators.  Every good salesperson must be able to quickly assess the environment, understand their client's tendencies and adapt their personality in order for the client to listen.

If you don’t know how to effectively communicate you are never going to be a great leader.

Today we are going to look at the sales process and how your ability to communicate in another person’s type will improve sales and build lasting relationships.

1. Why is it so important to be a great communicator to sell?
   1. Office memorabilia
   2. Clutter in the office or lack thereof
   3. Questions the client asks
   4. How the client represents themselves
2. What signs help you understand your potential client’s personality type
3. How do you build a long term client relationship
4. What is your experience and how have these tools impacted your ability to close the deal.

Communication is the key to effective leadership.  Do you understand your personality tendencies and how they affect your interaction with others?  As I was once told you must know yourself to be yourself. More importantly, you must know how you are perceived by others and how they receive information to communicate effectively.

If you don’t know how to effectively communicate you are never going to be a great leader.

Over the next 4 episodes, we are going to help you understand your personality tendencies, how they impact your culture, your sales team, and your leadership.  In the final episode in this series, we are going to provide you with the Five Behaviors of a cohesive team.

There are multiple personality assessments you can utilize to understand your tendencies, but we have found that DiSC is the easiest to leverage with your team, customers and suppliers.

1. What is DiSC
2. 1. D - Dominance
   2. I - Influence
   3. S - Steadiness
   4. C - Conscientiousness
   1. Are they Fast and Outgoing or are they Deliberate and Reserved?
   2. Are they Details and Results or are they People and Process focused?
3. How can you quickly identify another person’s personality tendencies
4. How do personality tendencies impact relationships
5. How do different personalities respond to one another
6. Why does any of this matter

Today we have the privilege of discussing leadership with Gregory “Heady” Coleman.

Heady is extremely passionate about seeing people going further better in their personal and professional lives. In that, he loves growing communities that leads to wins for everyone. Over the last 13 years, He has managed to serve the Oklahoma City Metro area in several capacities while playing an intricate role in the awesome town he lives in Guthrie, Oklahoma; however, He is most proud of the relationships he has built with the great folks in Guthrie and the Oklahoma City Metro.

Heady currently serves as Pastor at NORTHCHURCH Guthrie, where he focuses on his passion of helping people and growing a better community.

He is happily married to the beautiful Bernadette Coleman. Heady and Bernadette have 3 dynamic children that they get the opportunity to raise in their favorite town Guthrie, Oklahoma.

Heady discusses his #gowin philosophy and the importance of understanding everyone's story

Be Bold

Dave

Once you think that you are irreplaceable its time to hang up the cleats and move on to retirement.

Arrogant leaders divide organizations, destroy sustainable growth and are a detriment to the overall mission of any organization.  The reality is that everyone is replaceable. Unfortunately, many leaders believe something different. Once you realize that you are only a temporary caretaker for the organization the sooner you can start having a truly positive impact on your team.  Today, we are going to discuss some hard truths about leaders and how to really serve your team.

Truth #1:  The mission did not stop when I retired from the Air Force.  Not only did it not stop, it didn’t even slow down. The great leaders that stepped in to fill my position did an exceptional job.  If you are doing your job as a servant leader then you are grooming your replacement. All of my number 2s became number 1s and many continued on too much higher leadership levels in the overall organization.  I hope that my leadership provided them some tools that they still use today. Your first tip: Always be grooming your replacement. Be a mentor and enjoy their success.

Truth #2:  We are never as good as we think we are.  Times change, personalities change and the organizational goals change.  We work with many older leaders who “throw shade” on the millennials that work for them.  I hate to break it too you, but we were the “millennials” at one point. Those pain in the butt young people who always thought our leaders were crazy.  In reality, our leadership or lack thereof creates the problem. Their ideas aren’t wrong, they are just different. The reason they are different is that times change, culture changes and priorities change.  Tip number 2: Challenge your younger teammates to fail. Let them try new ideas and be there to catch them when they fall. A leader’s job is not to squash innovation, it is to encourage it, guide the team and challenge old ideas.  None of us are as smart as we think we are!

Truth #3: You only deserve a styrofoam cup.  If you have not watched Simon Sinek's youtube video discussing leadership you need to watch it.  The link will be in the show notes. When you are a CEO, Senior Military Leader or even a Head Football Coach.  You get certain perks. I can remember the first time I walked into a room filled with my teammates as a commander.  Everyone snapped to attention. People fell over themselves to make sure I was taken care of...Some leaders think that they deserve this response...they do not.  The respect is for the position and when you move on it stops. I will never forget walking off of the stage when I relinquished command. I quietly reached for my wife’s hand and left the building.  We then headed to Chili’s for a quiet lunch. My son looked at me and smiled. We all knew what had just happened. No fanfare, no parade, I once again became just another officer serving our great nation.  I happily grabbed my styrofoam cup and got back to work. Tip #3 Remember you only deserve a styrofoam cup don’t get so caught up in your position that you ever think you are better than your team. You are not.

Being a great leader means you always put your people first.  Just because you are in charge you are not funnier, you are not smarter and you are certainly no better than anyone on your team.  Your team laughs at your jokes because of your position. You get certain perks because of your position. It has little to do with you.  Your job is to always serve your team and put the team first.

Arrogance breeds contempt.  Many leaders have learned this the hard way.  CEOs accused of insi

In today's episode we discuss tips to improve your growth potential and have some great advice from John Warrillow founder of Value Builder.

To all of you true blue red-blooded Americans out there and more importantly happy Fourth of July to those men and women sacrificing their time to defend our great nation overseas for all you and your family thank you for your service and thank you for your sacrifices have a happy and safe 4th of July.

Today we are discussing Financial Performance. But first, let’s talk about valuations.  If you have a business and you want to sell it you will go through a valuation process. A typical valuation process for financial types is the dreaded discounted cash flow...it is not your friend.  An accountant will look at your history and discount you value for each year you have been in business. It looks like this.

Now your forecasting 10 years at $1M per year, yet you are only worth $5M to potential buyers.  Our process helps you change that number and get the money you deserve for your great company.

Today we are going to focus on 3 areas to improve your financial performance:

1. Increase your Revenue
2. Increase your Profit Margin
3. Formalize you BOOKKEEPING

You must do #3...end of discussion.  

You can increase your revenue a number of ways, but the easiest way is to sell more of your stuff to different people.  Same stuff in a different market. Too many businesses get focused on building and selling different stuff, but this kills your profit margin because you become too specialized and every product is different.

Let me explain.  If you want to increase your profit margin, you find ways to simplify and reduce costs.  Your process needs to be teachable and easily repeatable for your employees. Your product must be valuable to your customers.  If you offer too many specialized products your manufacturing costs go up exponentially.

You can also increase revenue by packing products and services which make them more valuable to your consumers.  Find ways to differentiate your offering. By differentiating yourself you create a monopoly for your business, make your company more competitive and more valuable to future buyers.

Improve your financial performance by GETTING A BOOKKEEPER, increasing your revenue and increasing your profit margin.

Again, happy 4th of July, stay safe!

Be Bold

Dave

We are back for the new season I have been in the vault, we've been in training getting certified on other things to help you grow your business. We are now value builder certified. If you want to build a business, grow the value, have a great exit and make lots of money Value Builder is your ticket to success. So, in the next few episodes were going to discuss Value Builder in-depth. We're going to provide a webinar here shortly for you to download and learn more about how to create recurring Revenue but let's start by talking about what the heck is Value Builder.

The system developed in math and data now the geek in me loves math and I love data. If you're not making decisions based on data then you are going to fail. Most of the mergers and Acquisitions that we've worked with people have this huge number. There's a value based on discounted cash flow and then there's a value based on Blue Sky. It's hard to quantify your blue sky to others. Value Builder helps owners quantify the gap between cash flow and blue sky.

In today’s episode, we will discuss the eight drivers and provide a general overview of the Value Builder System.

BE BOLD
Dave

Do you have a BHAG?  If not, you should. I know that we all love to talk about SMART GOALS

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Time bound

They are the rage, but you can never do anything BOLD with just SMART goals.  

John F Kennedy set a goal to put a man on the moon...this is not a SMART Goal

ELON Musk set a goal to build a resuable rocket...at the time...not a SMART Goal

Elon Musk went so far as to fire over 400 employees who could not or would not meet the his expectation for development and production. He is focused on the impossible and he continues to surprise the world.

These Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) push you to innovate.  It pushes you to make BOLD decisions and forces you to set and maintain extremely high standards.  I mean just think of all of the great things that have been developed because of the space race in the 60’s or all the innovation that has been driven by Elon Musk.  

If you want to do great things, I mean spectacular things you have to dream big.  Most leaders inherently limit themselves with SMART goals. There is certainly a place for SMART goals, but don’t limit yourself.

So how do you set ridiculous, amazing BHAGs

• Imagine the impossible...dream big
• Surround yourself with people who believe anything is possible
• Go to the whiteboard and start dreaming

Once you have your BHAG, leverage SMART goals to set a path to reach your dream.  It's just that easy. Now if you don’t develop the path and periodically update you will never reach your goal.  So be persistent.

I worked with a team to develop the 1st underground Compressed Natural Gas Storage System.  Everyone told us it could not be done. Too many regulations, Too much red tape, everyone else who tried failed.  Well we didn’t. We set the Big Hairy Audacious Goal and got to work. We did not listen to the naysayers. I can’t was not in our vocabulary.  We found a way to yes. We developed a timeline and got to work. Now, I am not going to lie and say it was easy. It wasn’t. We made mistakes along the way and had to find innovative solutions to solve the challenges.  

Here is what I know in my heart.  If I can do this, then I know you can too.  Never limit yourself, never let naysayers drag you down and never quit.

Be Bold!

Dave