Leadership Beyond Borders

B2C deals directly with the end consumer and the end consumer operate on emotions. B2B deals with companies, and they mostly use logic. There are apparent differences in how B2C and B2B companies engage, interact with, and serve their customer bases. Still, when consumer expectations rise in B2C companies, the B2B companies need to step up. End consumer expectations have risen over the past years, and since March 2020, they have exploded. The customer journey is no longer linear. It is 360-degree never-ending customer experience, that has changed how B2B companies need to deal with their customers. B2B companies need to apply the same customer experience and personal service that consumers expect from B2C companies. In this interview, we look at some market research that reflects how B2B companies must adapt their products and services to meet their customers' changing needs and, in turn, the end consumer.

If you walk into a room with ten people and two of them are entrepreneurs, how would you recognize the two on sight? You probably would not until you started a conversation with them. Once in a conversation, you may recognize certain traits or a certain mindset often associated with entrepreneurs, but this does not mean that those two entrepreneurs are alike. Not all entrepreneurs follow the same path to get to where they are. In part I of this series we discussed how innovation is a component of entrepreneurship, in this episode we discuss how not every entrepreneur approaches innovation in the same way. In Part II of this 2-Part series we discuss the Entrepreneurial Mindset and Journey, and the different ways entrepreneurs approach the journey. We explore the contribution of different entrepreneurial styles and how they can contribute to teams and to the different stages in the entrepreneurial journey.

In December 2019 at the onset of COVID-19, we saw a wide array of responses form businesses and entrepreneurs. Many businesses moved their activities online while entrepreneurs sought out new opportunities in the crisis. But the one thing we did see was innovation. German Breweries started making hand sanitizers and tech companies developed tracking and tracing apps. Essentially innovation blossomed in light of the crisis. This episode is Part I of a 2-Part series that explores innovation and entrepreneurship. In this episode, we discuss the routes of innovation, how we can foster innovation and its relationship to entrepreneurship. In Part II we explore the Entrepreneurial Mindset and Journey. Why is this so important? Because Innovation increases our chances to react to changes and discover new opportunities. Entrepreneurship propels us forward with new solutions, helping us embrace change. This series provides us with timely insight into both innovation and entrepreneurship.

History shows that crises can be startup incubators. Some of today's biggest companies were founded during and shortly after the 2008 economic crisis, including Uber, Credit Karma, Slack, WhatsApp and Groupon. But crisis or no crisis, launching a start-up is a challenge. From limited resources to just knowing what to do, many ideas are never realized and fall apart before the business gets off the ground. But there are lessons to learn from both start-up failures and from those start-ups that succeed. These lessons can be bundled into a formula for success. In this episode we look at the start-up formula for success. A formula that can help increase the success rate of start-ups, no matter what industry they are in, or what kind of product and service they want to bring to market. In this episode we reveal to you what the formula of success..

Time is the most precious resource we have because once it is gone you can't get it back and many times we only realize this when it is too late. Today we live in such a superficial world, where we often value money much more than time. Being busy is seen as being successful. Our jobs consume us, leaving us very little time to focus on our families and ourselves. When we talk about time management we often focus on how we manage our workflow in the office, but not how we manage our lives. We talk a lot about work-life balance but we very often do not practice what we preach. On top of all this the pandemic has not helped. We have brought our offices into our homes, making it very difficult for us to draw the lines between our private lives and work. In this episode we talk about time, money and time-management, not just from the prospective of time-management at work, but with a more global view, how we can better use the time we all have been gifted.

The recent announcement of a massive computer breach that allowed hackers to exploit numerous US government agencies left the US government and the world in shock. The hackers attached malware to a software update which gave them access to government networks and private company systems, putting infrastructures, data, operations and priority information at risk. But this is not the only attack we have seen since the beginning of the pandemic. Chris Versace estimates that in the first 100 days of the pandemic Covid-themed spam messages increased by 26%, and impersonation attacks jumped by 40%. This is worrying news as the world transitions into a virtual workforce, AI advances and healthcare systems and data are a priority. In this episode, we explore how and why we have become so vulnerable and how we can better protect ourselves.

Prominent business disasters such as the collapse of Enron and Northern Rock, to such devastating events as the BP Texas City oil refinery explosion, are very often blamed on Company Boards and Governance.

But many of these disasters happened in times that were not as turbulent as they are today.

A recent report done by Deloitte on the challenges of Boards, states that “The way in which Boards do their work at this time will be a critical factor in an organization’s ability to emerge from the current crisis and push forward into a new era of economic recovery and opportunity for the benefit of all stakeholders.”

In this episode, we pose the question: Are Boards up to governing in these challenging times and do they have the proper governance that can help guide them through rough times and onto recovery?

Leaders todays are asking everyone to make sacrifices and if there is one group of people whom you would expect to be provide great examples in a crisis, it would be a leader. , It does not matter if it is the shift manager at McDonald's or the President of a country, we all have certain expectations of leadership and how leaders meet our expectations is critical, especially right now. But to meet our expectations, leaders first need to understand what leadership is about and in confusing times that is hard. Leaders very often receive contradictory messages and in a crisis it is easy to forget leadership basics. In this episode we explore what good leadership is. We also explore how leaders can get support and why they do not need to make their journey's alone.

As we dive deeper into the virtual world and consumer behavior is more online than offline, digital marketing is becoming more and more important. At the same time, marketing expectations are placing new pressures on agencies and marketers who try to ensure their customers are found among the sea of digital advertising. Marketers are frequently expected to produce online miracles like getting customers ranked on the top search machines or making sure their pop-ups are enticing enough to earn a click. Companies today also want to know exactly what data agencies are using to track performance. They are measuring ROI more than in the past. In this episode we look at the digital agency landscape, different business models that support digital agencies and what the latest digital marketing trends are.

In ancient times the ability to memorize was a considered a magical skill --sometimes even thought of as mystical and it was essential to the passing down of stories, legends, history, and taboos and laws. It was used as a basis for social and economic development.

Today, the Internet seems to be making memorization irrelevant. What we don’t remember, we look up.

Many schools have also generally abandoned requiring students to memorize poems, famous speeches, math tables, and all sorts of academic material that used to be ingrained in the curriculum.

The question is -Is technology making us mentally lazy and if so how does that affect us in our business and private lives?’

Memorization is a discipline of the mind and our guest on this episode believes we should exercise our memory more than we do.

After 8 months of virtual working we are repeating this interview to exercise our brains.