Influential Visions

Customer service and retention are so important and Jon Bostock Co Founder of Trumans shares his leadership insights from nearly a decade at General Electric and his time at Big Ass Fans before they sold for 500 Million USD. Trumans is disrupting the cleaning category with a innovative new range of cleaning products, reducing wastage and environmental damage. "Fast Company has honored Truman’s as part of its World Changing Ideas Awards, which were announced today. Launched just two months ago, Truman’s brings stark simplicity to the $30 billion home cleaning products industry. The company’s lineup of four cleaners, which are shipped directly to customers, tackle virtually all of a home’s hard surfaces. Beyond convenience and simplicity, Truman's boasts today’s greenest cleaners by offering patented refill cartridges that eliminate single-use plastic bottles. All you do is fill your bottle with water and pop in a cartridge. When the bottle’s empty, admire your cleanliness and simply refill the same bottle with water and a new cartridge. To compare carbon footprints, it takes 31 semi-trucks filled with ready-to-use cleaners to equal just one semi-truck of the equivalent of Truman’s refill cartridges." Also you may want to checkout this episode:- Revenue Blindspots with Bryan Eisenberg – Episode 12 To learn more about Jon Visit Trumans

Internal Communications and Teamwork are two really important topics and who better to discuss them with than the Microsoft Insiders: Jeremiah Marble and Dona Sarkar Jeremiah Marble and Dona Sarkar from Microsoft were such inspirational guests. This episode was really fun to record and we packed in so much information into this it is insane... Jeremiah is Director of Developer Marketing for Windows and was the founder of the windows insider program with well over 16 Million members. Dona Sarkar is Head of the Insider Program at Microsoft -You know how everyone calls you for tech help like "which laptop should I get" or "do I need anti-virus" The Windows Insiders are a community of 16M+ people who constantly get asked those questions. 

In this episode I have been joined by Sheri Hinish "Supply Chain Queen" and she shares with me :- The Latest in Reimagined Supply Chain, Sustainability, Talent Management, and Leading Transformations. For anyone in technology, purchasing and in particular business management it is important to understand the threats and opportunities around supply chain management. These are some of the questions she answered and the value she delivered here is huge! 

Recent media engagements include: highlight in Industrious Magazine (January 2019), featured Guest on Building Business Acumen Podcast with Nathaniel Schooler (March 2019), featured Guest Panelist on webinar discussing the Future of AI, Edge, and Analytics in Supply Chain Technology hosted by Frost & Sullivan (May 2019), Thought Leadership at Gartner's IT Expo (October 2018), and Guest on "Let's Talk Supply Chain" (Season 2, Episode 27). She has presented to Gartner's Special Interest Group on Sourcing & Procurement leading practice and was a guest speaker at the Chinese Association of Science & Technology (August 2018), where she discussed the future of blockchain and supply chain technology. Sheri holds two credentials from Rutgers Business School with highest distinction (Beta Gamma Sigma), a Master of Science in Supply Chain Management, and a Mini-MBA, with focus in Digital Supply Chain. She is a Masters Candidate at Harvard University in Sustainability with emphasis in Industrial Ecology (Circular Economy) and Product Life Cycle Management. She is certified in Organizational Behavior and Change Leadership from Cornell University. She also has a Bachelor of Science in Business, Supply Chain Management (Summa Cum Laude) from the University of Maryland. Additionally, Sheri is a licensed Project Management Professional (PMP), and Lean Six Sigma Greenbelt. Find more about Sheri here on her website :- https://www.supplychainqueen.com/Home

Gaby Juergens - CEO and founder of Homefront Girl, a lovely person and such a powerful story. Founder and CEO of “Homefront Girl”, an organization that has donated over $100,000 to military charities, Gaby Juergens sat down with Big League Politics to discuss her involvement with military families. Juergens has created close to 2,000 designs with inspirational quotes on merchandise like coffee mugs, pillows, candles, and the newly announced clothing line that are meant to encourage and show support for family members of the military. She seeks to inspire those who have relatives in the military that, “we are the other Half of the Brave.” Homefront Girl has been licensed with partnerships like Hallmark, Walmart, and Yankee Candle. Perhaps the most popular item available on the website is their Signature Teddy Bears which were donated to military children at the 2017 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and Juergens has hopes that the same will be accomplished this year. Homefront Girl donates to charities like “Operation Homefront” and “United Through Reading” which seek to encourage military families as they deal with the emotional rollercoaster of having a family member deployed. Her uplifting merchandise has not only significantly helped other charities, it also has proved to be a memorial for family members of fallen heroes. Gaby Juergens has worked tirelessly to ensure that deployed and fallen men and women of the military are given the acknowledgement and respect that they deserve. You can also catch Gaby Juergens interviewing Nat Schooler here: Learn more about Homefront Girl at homefrontgirl.com 

Product marketing, writing skills and copywriting are important to understand, getting your message across is a great skill to have. In this interesting interview Eric Moeller and I discuss product marketing and copywriting and creative writing. 

I have known Eric online for about 6 years and met up with him in Exeter a few times and discussed marketing and branding and all those exciting business topics that make us tick! He shares a lot of value in this episode and some great resources to help you improve your copywriting and writing skills in general! Find Eric Moeller here https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericmoeller/ 

Stacking your sales pipeline is a key topic for management teams and sales profs alike and Steve is no stranger to building pipeline... More often than not sales profs and management are too focused on what is already in the quarter to even think about the most important part of selling:- "Stacking Your Sales Pipeline". In this no holds barred interview Steven Dickens shares insight from 20+ years in Technology sales. He oversees a team of 50+ sales representatives for IBM. We discuss the all famous Glengarry Glen Ross movie which would probably be banned in most sales meetings these days. Steven helps people to understand where they should be spending their time to create the best results. His close link with the marketing department is very refreshing, we are all on the same team after all! *NB Steven Has since left IBM.

Vendor negotiation is very important, seeing the "vendor" as a partner is crucial to success in business. Being flexible and understanding how you can work together is key. Making sure your "vendor negotiation" is done ethically is also so important. As opposed to seeing the vendor negotiation as just another way to win and you lose. Fortunately now many vendor negotiation has become Win / Win scenarios, enabling both you the purchaser and the seller to make a strong long term working relationship. Trust takes many years to build and thankfully there are many ethical companies out there and many ethically driven procurement professionals driving the right kind of vendor negotiation. Renegade Rum and Waterford Distillery: from History to Terroir and Data with Mark Reynier CEO – Episode 31 Visit the Art Of Procurement Podcast 

Digital Transformation and digitization are two huge topics and Brian Gracely shares his insights here in this great interview! Brian Gracely (@bgracely) is Director of Product Strategy at Red Hat, the world's leading open source software company. He brings 20+ years of experience (Red Hat, Wikibon, EMC, Virtustream, NetApp, Cisco) in Strategy, Product Management, Systems Engineering, Marketing and M&A. He is recognized as an industry thought-leader in Cloud Computing and DevOps, as well as being co-host of the award-winning podcast, The Cloudcast. He has a BS/MBA from Wake Forest University. Brian Gracely On LinkedIn The Cloudcast Podcast The Cloudcast Video Channel.

We discuss Big Data and Gamification and how they work together. Nicolas Babin is an agile senior executive with over 30 years international multi lingual and multicultural experience. A strong leader with working and living experiences in North America, the UK, France Benelux Germany, Japan and China. He has a proven track record in marketing sales, communication and digital transformation, management experience of all European Eastern West countries set up and management of international teams and start-ups, Europe, US and Japan IPO experience on the NASDAQ and on NYSE next Paris digital transformation of companies and factories worldwide. AI and robotic experience since 1996, fundraising experience more than five m&a experience international keynote speaker on innovation, e health, digital and robotics. Find Nicolas on Twitter @NicoChan33 Or Nicolas Babin on LinkedIn Gamification: - what is gamification - why did you start using gamification? - what is the purpose of gamification - how can you use gamification - which area is best for gamification - what results can you see with gamification - could gamification be misused? - could you give us some examples of gamification you have used in the past? - pros and cons of gamification - could you find gamification in everyday online tools? Data and technology: - Are we talking on line or off line data? - What is open data? - what marketing techniques use data? - how can data and technology go together? - does AI use data? - what is predictive analytics? - what is big data and how can anyone use it? - what activities use big data? - should I be scared of data being available so widely? - could anyone access all data, is there any type of safety involved?