Influential Visions

Revenue Blindspots In this episode we discussed revenue blindspots and what they really could mean to your business. According to Bryan:- “Anywhere from 20-60% of the revenue is being left on the table!” Bryan calls these revenue blindspots and Bryan explains a lot of different problems businesses have and the biased view of the world that some business leaders have and has worked to help businesses for over two decades to understand what they are leaving on the table. 

They have helped companies and in some cases just from one small change to improve the bottom line by 5% after spotting their revenue blindspot. Daily deaths by a thousand cuts have caused a lot of businesses to fold and these little revenue blindspots have in some cases caused the loss of lots of jobs. 

The persuasive momentum framework that Buyer legends use is designed to seek out their revenue blindspots and help them to fix them. He explains about the persuasive momentum framework that he uses in his business. It has two main functions :- Reduce friction in the customer experience Increase motivation Friction can be internal or external, Bryan discusses Amazon and Walmart and the struggles they have in building a digital DNA. We discuss these “friction” points within physical retail and innovation and why Amazon have innovated so fast and the reason they have succeeded, they take data to be truly “customer centric.” Amazon Prime became so successful when the iPhone was launched, serving the customer what they need when they needed it. We spend time shopping when we are taking breaks or are running away from our other halves and use our phones in the toilet. Bryan tells me about why your bathroom stinks haha…he explains about Febreeze and why it was successful. Finding the real source of friction and eliminating it is the advantage, gaining you momentum and naturally spotting the revenue blindspot is key. If we go back to Steve Jobs and the launch of the iPhone and how all the new apps were launched to increase the motivation to get an iPhone. Now everything we see that Apple does is an incremental improvement, the key is to have a system where you are both reducing friction and increasing motivation. Customer led innovation and great operations and continuously improving those operations, like an octopus with loads of teams improving the business. Companies think they are customer-centric but in order for them to be really competing with Amazon they need to be like them. Bryan and I think so alike and we both agreed that not a lot has really changed in business, except that there is more data, faster analysis of data and decisions can be made faster based upon the data. Business principles are the same. The customer always wants products to be delivered faster and want them cheaper. Customer expectations have changed and Bryan explains that he was in a Jewellery store and how the company try to respond within 24 hours, so Bryan’s brother orders delivery within an hour and he mentions this in the meeting about this and how they can expect to succeed if these things are now possible. People expect more and with a smile, great product and fast, if you can produce this and build a great experience then you are going to hang on to those customers, you will hang on to them. But remembering customers are fickle they are like cats and not loyal like dogs. If you want to reach Bryan then visit Buyer Legends  Or his personal website Bryan Eisenberg Here Thanks for listening and please make sure you subscribe, share and review this podcast.

Subconscious Skills For Success Since it is a new year and all this hype is going on about new year's resolutions, I decided to record an episode with Jonathan Chase, he is "The King of Subconscious Skills for SUCCESS!" "Britain's Leading Hypnotist" Mail on Sunday "Master Hypnotist" Sunday Times Magazine "Your Mind In Safe Hands" CITV We discuss where I am at in my life and we go through a live exercise which outlines what I want from my life, he explains how the subconscious mind needs to be in line with the conscious mind to achieve real success and happiness. I just took the time to go through the episode myself and he outlines here the process you can use to put together your goals and you will be surprised that they are usually not that far away from where you are already... If you want to become even more successful I recommend you listen to this episode! Subconscious skills for success is a concept that for many is foreign but for others it is a fact, Jonathan explains the reasons you feel in a certain way and many other insights from someone who knows a lot about this, he has dedicated his life to studying the mind in all its facets and subconscious skills for success is now his focus from a huge career in hypnosis he is someone you should listen to, a very entertaining man. Want to be More Successful? Supercharge your Confidence, Influence, Presence, using your natural #SubSkills... Jonathan Chase, a Staffordshire Coal Miners son to Award Winning International Edutainer. Best selling Globally Renown Mind Expert, Observer, Podcaster. Wheelchair user. Consultant Hypnotist Author Speaker Edutainer. If you want to learn more about Jonathan here is his website and lookout for his new book which is coming out soon. https://jonathanchase.com/

Successful Brand Ex Rolls-Royce - Peter Lavers shared some amazing information with me on the legacy of Rolls-Royce and how to build a successful brand, he went to work there straight from school 35 years ago so shared some great insights with me. One of the things that still inspires Peter was the statement “Whatsoever is rightly done, however humble, is noble” which he heard from Henry Royce. Even when things don’t go too well in business and life you must stick to this principle. Especially in the customer service world when focusing on the figures. “Short-termism” financially motivated behaviours can damage long term business success.

Keeping on doing the right thing is vitally important for all of us going through our careers. If you keep on doing the right things then people will respect this noble behaviour. When times to improve people will come back to you and if you don’t compromise as they will remember how you behaved. Keeping your authenticity, however humble, is the right thing to do. A couple of Henry Royce quotes include: “Strive for perfection in everything you do!” “Take the best and make it better and if it doesn’t exist then design it” Improving quality as much as you can is certainly important for Rolls-Royce and Peter discovered their insistence on quality first-hand during the years he spent working with them. Many auto-industry leaders are saying that things are different and will change more in the next 10 years than they have in the last 100. Attention spans are at an all-time low and customer loyalty is not easy to hang on to. 

These are a couple of reasons why it is so important to keep the customer experience excellent and consistently high quality. Very interesting for Peter coming from his roots and it is crucial that he keeps learning continually and much like me building business acumen. Henry Royce said the quality will be remembered long after the price is remembered and much like what we do the quality of advice that we offer will linger long after we have moved on to another client. According to Peter the best consultants engineer themselves out of jobs as quickly as possible. You could say it is expensive to hire you or me, but the ethos we have means that we always leave companies in a better position than when they started, so it would be money well spent. The best customer centred businesses have recognised that if you want good outcomes you need to manage your business for those outcomes, optimise your customer experience, delight your profitable customers, manage your borderline customers and of course delight them all at different parts of their journey. Find Peter Lavers Here

Building Business Acumen with Nathaniel Schooler & Gunilla Shein Former Journalist 25+ Years, author of 23 Business books and Ex Media CEO Gunilla Shein and I discuss what people need to know in business. We both tell some funny stories about building business acumen and deliver lots of valuable information about business management and ongoing learning. Recently Gunilla has been asked about where to begin building business acumen and business skills and she said it boils down to the skills and the courage that you need and it is imperative you find the qualifications and the acumen. If you don’t have the courage and the skills then it will be much harder to create success and building business acumen is crucial! In Silicon valley they do not look at failure in the same way, they understand that without failure there is no success; much like when we were children learning how to walk! Building business acumen is the same in this way. 

How to build a successful podcast? Jimmy Star has been immersed in the entertainment industry, and after years of building his brand his show is now really rocking and rolling. In this episode Jimmy explains how to build a successful podcast and get to 4.5 Million listeners a week! Jimmy hosts a super successful web show with Ron Russell that has featured dozens of celebrities and makes the claim of being the #1 web show in the world. Jimmy also wrote a book on Charlie Chaplin which has been turned into a film and it will come out on Netflix later this year. The Jimmy Star show was nominated on the ballot for the Emmy awards, which is a really cool honour considering they are running out of their basement like Wayne’s world. Jimmy’s Twitter account @DrJimmyStar has over 440K followers and is verified by Twitter. Jimmy’s Twitter strategy includes randomly picking 20 people to say hello and have a happy day. Whether they have 20 followers of 20,000 followers Jimmy makes time to engage with them on Twitter and this is part of the reason why he averages over 8 Million Twitter impressions a month. 

Mind Set Game - James Roberts James is one of the people that many of us have admired over the last 10 years, he has faced many challenged in life and understands at such a young age how to control his mind. NB: Audio is a little poor at the beginning from my end read more to learn why... In this episode he shares so many insights around goal setting, productivity hacks and keeping ones brain in check as opposed to letting it run wild. He hosts his own podcast mind set game podcast and is well over the 100 episode mark... Many of us are running on autopilot and James and I discuss something that James is used to discussing regularly on Mind Set Games Podcast. Despite our internet connection dying and me having recorded the intro and outro on my computer microphone again as opposed to my normal professional grade mic...I am getting this episode live so that everyone can listen to it today! It is Saturday 22nd December and as it was such an amazing recording I decided to get it live today. Clearly I will modify this episode and add some show notes at some stage but today is time to go shop for presents and sing carols! If you want to learn more about James visit his website or listen to his podcast show Fit Amputee Mind Set Game Podcast

Building communities (Huff Post Secrets!) This was a super exciting interview on building communities (real-world stories) with Tim McDonald (Former Director of Community at the Huffington Post). He set strategy and oversaw a team of moderators, with over 300 million comments and 70,000 bloggers! We discussed building communities using social media and to build that so it impacts the real world and not just the virtual world. Tim and I explain the successes that we have had on social media, I explained how I got the largest chain of bars and restaurants in the UK to buy beer from me when I used social media to connect with the buyer of the bar. Here Tim explains how he built face to face networking events and used social media to do that, from what he says in this interview you could go ahead and build a huge community online or offline or in fact both. So don’t get caught up with the wrong attitude and be yourself. People thought he did it on his own, but in fact, he was the person who helped the others to make contact with each other. So building communities became an easy thing for Tim to do. We also discussed how to engage with people in the real world at networking events and what to do and not to do. 

Building communities and Tim's real-world stories is what this interview covered and some amazing success stories from Tim. I also explain about setting expectations on social media when you meet them and how to get your community to work with you and for you to spread the words to inform the world about what you do, why you do it and why you are different and or better than anyone else. Taking the time to create the right words for people to use to spread your message pays dividends, getting others to do your job for you as a community builder, if you build a healthy community without you being the centre of attention it will go on long after you have left or gone on holiday. I discussed Richard White’s analogy of feeding others with a huge pair of chopsticks. Take the time to listen to this interview as it is extremely powerful! If you want it is about what the community wants, we need to think about what we have that they want, they usually want to have a sense of belonging! Please like and share and review on Apple Podcasts and All Major platforms. This was originally posted on nat's personal website NatSchooler.com Building Communities - Real World Stories  https://www.natschooler.com/community-building-real-world-stories/

Return on relationship Ted Rubin has been involved with digital media since 1997 when he joined a company founded by Seth Godin called Yoyodyne. Return on relationship is a term that Ted and I discuss. He didn’t know who Seth was until he joined. Back then most people didn’t know who Seth was, he had made a name for himself as a product manager for Atari. The past seven years have seen new media grow into a force and these days more than ever before we all have a voice. Then we begin to get return on relationship! It takes commitment and time to build your brand, overnight success often takes several years. Usually it takes time to build up your audience and getting return on relationship is not immediate usually. Ted worked with Yahoo in the early days after they acquired Yoyodyne and it really helped Ted to build his knowledge and connections and brand. 

Commercial story telling in the age of big data Paul Thies, formerly Vice President of Thought Leadership at Thomson Reuters. The power of culture is amazing and C-suite execs ignore culture at their own peril. Culture allows leaders to reach into the hearts and minds of employees, giving their messaging an air of authenticity that builds trust. More and more companies seem to be taking an interest in thought leadership. 

Here are the show notes: https://legacymediahub.com/commercial-story-telling-in-the-age-of-big-data/

The future of the high street Eddie McAtominey and I discuss the future of the high street. An old client of mine from when I first started working for myself! I get his last name wrong and we have a good giggle about it at the beginning. Eddie is experienced in retail design, environments, entrepreneurship and as a creative director in his own right, when I first worked into marketing I learnt huge amounts from him and his team. He started off in retail design, with a company called Fitch who is now part of WPP, Eddie designed Ed's easy diner, but he has also designed a lot of bars, running his own businesses, his skillset was environments. As he developed his business he employed lots of different types of designers, architects and his responsibility over the years was to deliver all the creative, from shop design all the way through into designing the promotional material and in fact psychology of shopping and where you place items on the shelves etc. Quite a bit of science has been involved, knowledge around all areas to make sure the projects were delivered. Eddie has done a lot of identities and recently he has done a lot of network rail identities including the Leak street arches, the graffiti arches under Waterloo.