My Quest for the Best with Bill Ringle - the podcast for ambitious business owners.

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth.

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• The importance of taking inventory of your company culture.
• How to recognize and overcome “diversity fatigue.”
• The role of diversity metrics in business.
• The key ingredient of shared objectives.
• What Jeff Bezos missed with his “empty chair” technique

David Livermore is a thought leader in cultural intelligence (CQ) and global leadership and the author of ten books on cultural intelligence and global leadership. His book,  Leading with Cultural Intelligence, was named a best-seller in business by The Washington Post. He’s president and partner at the Cultural Intelligence Center in East Lansing, Michigan and a visiting research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Prior to leading the Cultural Intelligence Center, Dave spent 20 years in leadership positions with a variety of non-profit organizations around the world and taught in universities. He’s a frequent speaker and adviser to leaders in Fortune 500’s, non-profits, and governments and has worked in more than 100 countries across the Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Europe.

Dave has authored several other books, including the award-winning titles, Serving With Eyes Wide Open and Cultural Intelligence: Improving your CQ to Engage our Multicultural World (Baker Publ.).

Dave loves to take research and make it accessible to practitioners. He has been interviewed and referenced by major news sources such as Atlantic Monthly, CBS News, The Christian Post, Christian Science Monitor, The Economist, Forbes, NBC, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

For more information, visit David’s website.

Web address: http://www.davidlivermore.com

Travels from: Holt, MI

Phone: (512) 519-9875

Contact:

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth.

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Melinda Blau talks with Bill Ringle about learning confidence, diversifying your network, and starting up conversations with strangers.

• The advantages of striking up conversations with strangers in business.
• How having consequential strangers in your life adds both variety to your perspective and dollars to your bottom line.
• What to do to add consequential strangers in your life when you relocate or visit a new city.
• How to overcome your shyness and other factors that have held you back from reaching out.

Melinda Blau is a journalist who has been researching and reporting about relationships and social trends since the seventies. Her most recent book is Consequential Strangers: The Power of People Who Don’t Seem to Matter…But Really Do, which explores the vast and unsung array of everyday people, on and off the Internet, who have a profound impact on our business success, happiness, and health.

Melinda is the voice of the Consequential Strangers blog and has written more than ninety magazine pieces and a dozen other books, including the best-selling Baby Whisperer series. She also blogs for Psychology Today and More magazines and writes a bi-monthly column for Shareable. Melinda is a mother and grandmother, and the co-founder of Mother U, a website for contemporary women of both generations.

For more information, visit Melinda’s website.

Web address: ConsequentialStrangers.com

Travels From: New York, NY

Follow Melinda:

Jay Sullivan talks with Bill Ringle about listening, connection, what it means to be an effective communicator.

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth. My Quest for the Best is a top-rated small business podcast with over 300 episodes of thought-provoking and insightful interviews with today’s top thought leaders and business experts. Host Bill Ringle’s mission with this show is to provide the strategies, insights, and resources that will unlock the growth potential of your business through these powerful conversations.

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• What it means to have Executive Presence
• How to address large audiences in a way that connects with each audience member
• What factors raise or lower your standing on the scale of effectiveness
• How to communicate in a way that’s listener directed.
• How to diffuse situations of anger in the workplace.

• 1:26 “People automatically think we’re going to teach them how to talk better and share information, and in fact we spend most of our time teaching them how to listen.”
• 1:38 Sullivan recounts his experiences working in a convent in Jamaica, and the leadership examples he saw put in place there.
• 3:20 [Working with Covenant] – “Again I had to listen really carefully to what their concerns were.”
• 3:51 “I had to explain concepts to them in a way that they could grasp the idea, the basics of the idea, and understand what to do in terms of next steps.”
• 4:37 “I didn’t make assumptions. You couldn’t. You couldn’t assume any background knowledge. You couldn’t assume any background problem solving skills.
• 6:19 [On addressing large groups vs. being one on one] – “The challenge there tends to be that if you’re in front of a very large group, chances are you’re not having a conversation. You can create the illusion of a conversation, but chances are you’re just talking at the audience.”
• 6:47 “People who are less comfortable asking questions, being open to whoever they’re talking to might change course, might change the agenda, might end up trying to control the conversation, very often those people have a larger challenge with smaller groups.”
• 7:05 “But even when you’re speaking to a group, you shouldn’t be talking to everybody in the room, you talk to one person at a time.”
• 7:59 [On his ideal ExecComm client] – “I don’t think of it terms of my ideal client. I think of it in terms of, who can I be helpful to?
• 9:09 The scale of effectiveness, and how ExecComm helps its clients go from good to great.
• 10:36 Why recording a person’s speech patterns and behaviors can help them overcome small issues with communication and presentation.
• 11:35 “People tend to think that the value of the videotaping is the physical, watching the physical stuff, but it also gives you an undeniable recording of what was said.”
• 12:15 “When you’re talking to someone you can talk about one of three things: 1 – you can talk about yourself, 2 – you can talk about your content, or 3 – you can talk to the audience about the audience.”
• 12:36 “Nobody cares about your content either. They only care about how your content affects them.”
• 13:02 “If they simply get away from that language of what I want, and instead use language such as, what I thought would be helpful to you today.”
• 14:37 The impetus for writing the book, Simply Said
• 15:20 “You’re more effective as a communicator when you’re less focused on yourself.”
• 17:27 “And that’s the thing you want people to do: build simple habits that make them more effective communicators.”
• 18:58 “The most important thing about communicating effectively is to be true to who you are. You’ve got to be you.”
• 19:48 “Nobody is paying you to be a comedian. They’re paying you to deliver a clear, coherent message.”
• 20:04 “The thing about working on your communication skills is that you can bring the better part of who you are to the room.”
• 21:00 “When someone is emotional in a professional setting, you have to acknowledge the emotion that’s being expressed, otherwise it becomes this undercurrent.”
• 21:38 The problems that arise when anger is acknowledged in the workplace
• 22:14 “So with anger you simply reframe the anger as concern.”
• 23:48 “Giving feedback is a touchy subject for a lot of people because they don’t feel entitled to give the feedback.”
• 24:02 “Your job is to grow the future talent of your organization.”
• 24:25 How emotions get in the way of feedback.
• 25:14 “When feedback is done entirely by looking backwards, it’s not helpful.”
• 25:46 What it means to have a performance review and goal setting meeting
• 27:31 “People need to take ownership of their own professional development.”
• 28:23 Why it’s essential for you to carry yourself the way that you want to be perceived.

My Quest for the Best is the podcast where ambitious small business leaders discover strategies and tactics to unlock their growth potential.

Give us a 5-star rating and positive review to make it easier for other small business owners to find and benefit from our work!

See all listening options (Overcast, Pocket Casts, TuneIn, and more)

A writer for Forbes.com, Jay brings relevant and timely advice on enhancing one’s communication skills to the business community.

Whether working with groups or in one-on-one coaching arrangements Jay helps professionals have a greater impact by teaching them to focus on the needs of their audiences. Jay works closely with the learning and development professionals at many global law firms and financial services firms to customize communication skills solutions.

Jay joined Exec|Comm after nine years as a practicing attorney. He received his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law in 1989. That year, Jay was named among the first class of Skadden Fellows by the Skadden Foundation. As a Skadden Fellow, Jay acted as in-house legal counsel at Covenant House, a crisis shelter for runaway and homeless teenagers. Following his Fellowship, Jay spent seven years practicing insurance law on behalf of Lloyds of London.

After graduating from Boston College in 1984, Jay spent two years in the Jesuit International Volunteer Corps, teaching English. His book about that experience, Raising Gentle Men: Lives at the Orphanage Edge, was named the 2014 Best Book by a Small Publisher by the Catholic Press Association. Jay was a featured columnist on communication skills for the New York Law Journal and has been published in Readers Digest, Catholic Digest, Parents Magazine, The Golfer, and The New York Times.

• Primary Website
• Travels from: New York, NY
• Phone:(212) 252-5855
• Connect on LinkedIn | Twitter

Below are key people, places, books, quotes, websites, and other resources that we discussed so you can explore further.

• Jay Sullivan’s Forbes Author Page 

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth.

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Adam Witty talks with Bill Ringle about how to build your business through book publishing.

• The advantages you gain by being a published author.
• What steps Adam took to land his first group of clients.
• Insights into how the book publishing industry has changed and what’s really necessary to succeed in building a platform.

Adam Witty is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Advantage Media Group, heading up strategic business development and growth opportunities for the company. What began in the spare bedroom of his home is now an international media company with leading businesses in book publishing, magazine publishing, and television and video.

Adam is the Publisher of Advantage Magazine, is the author of 21 Ways to Build Your Business with a Book and 21 Ways to Build Your Business with a Magazine, and is co-author of How To Build Your Dental Practice With a Book, How to Build Your Law Practice with a Book and Click: The Ultimate Guide to Internet Marketing for Authors. His weekly television shows Author Advantage TV and Entrepreneurs Library TV can be seen on the internet television station Advantage.tv.

Adam is an in-demand speaker, teacher, and consultant on marketing and business development techniques for entrepreneurs and authors and is a frequent guest on the acclaimed Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour. Adam has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, Young Money Magazine, and on ABC and Fox and was named to the 2011 INC. Magazine 30 Under 30 “list of America’s most cool entrepreneurs.”

For more information, visit Adam’s website.

Business Phone: 843-414-5600

Web address: AdvantageFamily.com

Travels From: Charleston, SC

Follow Adam:

Courtney Lynch talks with Bill Ringle about how each of us can become better leaders and create a better world on My Quest for the Best.

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth. My Quest for the Best is a top-rated small business podcast with over 300 episodes of thought-provoking and insightful interviews with today’s top thought leaders and business experts. Host Bill Ringle’s mission with this show is to provide the strategies, insights, and resources that will unlock the growth potential of your business through these powerful conversations.

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• How integrating leadership development for women allowed Walmart to solve problems at the store level
• The common challenges that arise from people working together: conflicts or power struggles that need to be resolved; miscommunication around expectations, scheduling, and style; and much more
• Tips for achieving human connection even when you’re working remotely
• How to use feedback to be an inspiring leader instead of an alienating leader
• What it means when high performance teams have the courage for candor

• 1:02 Lynch tells about how her experiences with the United States Marine Corps shaped her abilities as a leader.
• 2:48 “I’m not someone who would’ve been able to afford going to graduated school, but thanks to my military service – the GI Bill is a fantastic vehicle – and so I went to law school after my time in uniform, and through the opportunity was able to enter the profession as a full-fledged attorney.”
• 3:26 Lynch describes how working in the law firm wasn’t the kind of work that she found fulfilling.
• 4:05 [On creating the startup with Angie Morgan] – “Our firm’s 14 years old, but I still remember the startup days like they were yesterday…there’s a lot of vision, a lot of ambition and that phase of a business. You’re motivated to work hard, and you know you want to add value and you want to have a positive impact.”
• 4:35 [On having Walmart as a first customer] – “When you’re a tiny little startup and Fortune1 becomes your first customer, you learn a lot quickly.”
• 5:02 “We didn’t have a strong platform to stand on, but we were incredibly passionate about what we had to offer.”
• 5:54 [On getting Walmart as a client] – “Walmart was a cold call, but it was an informed cold call.”
• 6:21 “I realized that the problems Walmart had, the challenges Walmart had…when you’re such a big organization, you’re a cross section of society, just like the Marine Corps…so my thinking was, if they had leadership development experiences, especially for their female employees, problems could be caught at the store level.”
• 7:06 “We just happened to connect with someone inside their diversity department whose father had served in the Marine Corps and really understood the practical value of leadership development for making any work force better.”
• 7:54 “I say it’s kudos to Walmart rather than kudos to us for investing in a small, women-owned business.”
• 8:16 [On why clients contact them] – “It’s people right? Anytime there’s 2, 3, of or more people working together, there’s bound to be friction.”
• 8:28 “We hear consistent challenges. How do we adopt a better strategy? How do we empower employees? How do we work in a virtual environment? How do we hold people accountable?”
• 8:41 “The joy of our work is that we get to work across all industries, all verticles, because people are people everywhere they go.”
• 8:50 [On why organizations contact them] – “Organizations are typically having a pain point, and people not working together as efficiently or as effectively as they could, is what seems to be at the root of it, or, the opposite side is the client or companies experiencing a tremendous amount of success, and they’re having to scale very quickly.”
• 9:18 “We usually come in when things are going really tough, or when things are just going gangbusters.”
• 9:47 “Training and development is necessary and definitely a part of what we do, yet our clients bring us in and we integrate very deeply into their business. So everything that we do is about helping the client achieve their business goals.”
• 10:40 [On working with Facebook as things were moving quickly] – “It was the true pleasure of my career to see that company grow up on the inside and work with their most amazing talented professionals.”
• 11:30 “We work a lot in the energy industry, with a lot of engineers. “I sent the e-mail I asked for it to be done!” But really it’s about human connection.
• 11:47 “There’s lots of different ways to connect, and we like to help our clients see the practical ways even in a virtual environment, a fast-paced environment, or an environment of mathematicians, computer scientists, and engineers, greater human connection can happen.”
• 12:10 Lynch discusses the importance of maintaining spontaneous contact and agenda-less conversation.
• 12:34 “What can happen when we’re in a virtual world is we can get very task focused.”
• 13:19 Lynch describes her son’s “the practice after the practice,” noting how connection and bonding occurs in between the places where work and tasks are accomplished.
• 13:46 [On the inspiration for writing Spark] – “Spark is like our greatest hits album because it was really hard fought in the trenches…[Angie, Sean, and I spent thousands of hours inside the company, and it was such an exciting opportunity to be a student of the best leaders in the world.”
• 14:24 “Spark was written over a 5-6 year period, even though actually sitting down and writing the book only took about a year, it was those 5-6 years of learning and taking notes and working with so many different talented leaders that really led to “Hey, we learned a lot, and we want to share this so that everyone has an opportunity, everyone who picks up the book, to be a better leader.”
• 14:59 “Better leaders really do equal a better world, and that’s leaders at all levels.”
• 15:05 “Anyone has the potential to lead, and if we all just spent a little time practicing it, great things happen within our communities, and our greater world.”
• 15:50 “I think that our world is becoming more flat. Organizations are starting to trim the hierarchy, people have matrix relationships. So I would encourage someone who’s focused on what they don’t have, when it comes to authority or title, to shift their focus to what they do have.
• 16:15 Lynch explains how the best leaders guide while the worst leaders mandate and control.
• 16:51 Leadership is to influence and inspire other people.
• 17:00 “Some of the most front-line roles that we have in organizations: a front-line sales representative, a receptionist, a new account manager, a front-line invoice processor – these are the people that are making the company run, and if they demonstrate leadership behaviors, they’ll be able to influence their teams and the greater organization.”
• 17:55 “[Feedback] has to be delivered in a way that doesn’t disrupt ego and stability. There are ways to give feedback well. I think that all feedback that is delivered effectively begins with a lot of accountability.
• 18:19 “Feedback isn’t well-received if someone is placing blame while they’re giving it.”
• 19:00 “There’s a fine line between feedback and complaining.”
• 19:24 Lynch illustrates the creative leadership model for feedback: giving feedback from a situation, behavior, and impact perspective.
• 21:17 “A lot of time feedback gets into a really tough place because it becomes accusatory or unduly emotional, and we need to talk about behaviors that people can change, and we need to do it in a way that sets the stage for grace and dignity.”
• 22:21 “I think that’s the mark of a high-performing team: when you can talk about accountability.”
• 23:00 The four keys to being credible.
• 23:53 “Self-awareness is the accelerant to our leadership development. If we can anticipate our blind spots and work to take action, that’s growth and that’s where growth happens.”
• 24:55 The Say/Do Gap concept.
• 25:05 Lynch explains why leadership doesn’t only happen in heroic moments.
• 25:38 “If you’ve made a commitment, are you doing everything it takes to meet those standards that you’ve set?”
• 26:52 Why you shouldn’t “hide the ball.”
• 27:23 How people who have been athletes or in athletics often make excellent leaders.
• 28:05 “When anyone enrolls in any professional development or any academic experience they’re saying, ‘Hey, I want to learn. I want to grow.’ And that growth mindset is highly relevant to us as professionals.”
• 29:07 Lynch describes a major bump in the road LeadStart faced, and the path they took to overcoming it as a team.
• 29:55 “Stress has a way of bringing up a lot of unproductive emotions.”
• 30:28 “People want to buy consulting services from the consultants, they don’t necessarily want to buy that from a third party sales professional.”
• 32:09 “In those earlier years we really had to ask for those referrals to get them.”
• 32:27 “Hope is not a strategy. We really needed to be explicit with our clients about what we needed.”
• 34:24 Lynch describes the differences between the company 14 years ago and the company today.
• 34:57 “I’m a multi-dimensional thinker. I think broadly, I like to think from a lot of different vantage points. Yet, when it comes to doing, I’m very linear.”
• 35:29 [On tools and tips for productivity.] – “I jot down the things I must do the next time I’m at work.”

My Quest for the Best is the podcast where ambitious small business leaders discover strategies and tactics to unlock their growth potential.

Give us a 5-star rating and positive review to make it easier for other small business owners to find and benefit from our work!

See all listening options (Overcast, Pocket Casts, TuneIn, and more)

As a founding partner of Lead Star, Courtney works closely with all levels of leaders as she designs and delivers development programs designed to drive immediate results. Courtney is the New York Times and the USA Today bestselling co-author of SPARK: How to Lead Yourself and Others to Greater Success and Leading from the Front and has written numerous articles on behavior-based leadership and organizational excellence.
She’s been a guest on CNBC, FOX News, and CNN. Courtney’s efforts with Lead Star have been cited in business publications ranging from Fast Company and Inc. to The New York Times. In addition to her work with consulting clients, Courtney served as the Director of the Center for Creative Leadership’s Partner Network, convening and connecting leading consultancies with the Center’s innovative thought leadership, research, and development solutions. Prior to starting Lead Star, Courtney’s professional experiences included service as a Captain in the United States Marine Corps, an attorney at a large law firm, and a sales manager for Rational Software. She holds a law degree from William & Mary, an undergraduate degree from North Carolina State University, and completed intensive studies at Cambridge University. Courtney lives with her husband and three children in Glen Allen, Virginia.

• Primary Website
• Travels from: Fairfax, VA
• Phone: (703) 273-7280
• Connect on LinkedIn | Twitter

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth.

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Stefan Swanpoel talks with Bill Ringle on My Quest for the Best about embracing who you you are and reveals some industry secrets about how to become a bestselling author.

• Marketing secrets from a prolific, bestselling author.
• How he designed his book to have wide appeal through social media and traditional channels.
• Lessons about becoming comfortable with who you are and making the most of your strengths in business and in life.

Stefan Swanepoel is an international best-selling author of 20 books on business trends, real estate, and social media, as well as a motivational keynote speaker with over 700 presentations to 500,000 people.

His most popular real estate books include the Amazon.com bestseller Real Estate confronts Reality and the annual Swanepoel TRENDS Report. His most recent book, Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Master Business and Life, is a New York Times bestseller, and his other titles have been featured on the bestseller lists of the Wall Street Journal, Inc. Magazine, Publishers Weekly, and many others.

Stefan has held offices as President, CEO and Chairman of a technology company, an education company, a non-profit association, a movie studio and a 2,000 office international franchise. He has also received numerous awards, including: “Businessman of the Year” (Jaycees), one of the “Top 20 Most Influential People in the Real Estate Industry” (Today’s REALTOR®), and “One of the Top 50 People Who You Should Follow on Twitter” (Roost).

For more information, visit Stefan’s website.

Web address for Real Estate Trends: RETrends.com

Web address for Serengeti Book: SerengetiBook.com

Travels From: Los Angeles, CA

Connect with Stefan:

Jonathan Raymond talks with Bill Ringle on My Quest for the Best about the culture of accountability, the proper way to give feedback, and developing an organization that puts people first.

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth. My Quest for the Best is a top-rated small business podcast with over 300 episodes of thought-provoking and insightful interviews with today’s top thought leaders and business experts. Host Bill Ringle’s mission with this show is to provide the strategies, insights, and resources that will unlock the growth potential of your business through these powerful conversations.

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• Why organizations are putting so much thought into a “people first” culture
• How to give feedback without micromanaging
• How a software company gave their senior management the room to play at the level of their title
• The one mistake organizations make over and over again
• The importance of embracing uncertainty

• 1:10 Raymond recounts his first real experience in entrepreneurship, telling about the “driveway car wash’ he owned with his friends.
• 1:33 [On lessons learned from this early venture] – “One of the lessons was the operating costs are always higher than you think they are.”
• 1:50 “Any industry worth being in is crowded.”
• 2:15 How law school taught Raymond to show up in the world in a professional way.
• 2:53 “My education in law school really helped me write with some structure, rather than just stream of consciousness, but to actually put one idea after the next in a way where something builds.”
• 3:05 “A lawyer is able to string a series of good ideas together and build an argument, right? Which is what a good book or a good blog post is: it’s a good argument for advocating a a piece of change.”
• 3:45 Raymond describes what it was like working 3 jobs out of law school, and still barely being able to cover rent. 
• 4:04 [Paraphrasing Andy Warhol] – “You know you’re on track in your life when you’re using the best and the worst of what’s happened to you over the course of your journey.”
• 4:26 “If I want to have an impact in the world, I’m going to have to take some steps, and there’s going to be some painful moments along the way.”
• 4:52 [On Raymond’s Clients at Refound] – “I think the biggest problem we help people with, I would say, is overwhelm and ambiguity.”
• 4:55 “In most modern organizations, there’s a lot of thought being put into ‘How do we create a people first culture? How do we engage with employees? How do we create the conditions where people feel like they’re coming to work not just to create profit for owners and shareholders, but a sense of personal meaning.”
• 5:27 “What we’ve been able to do is offer a real tactical approach for how to do, in particular, feedback and accountability in an organization that really grounds the way people operate on a day to day basis.”
• 5:53 “Where organizations go sideways, and where things start to degrade, is in the actual conversations between managers and employees, between managers and one another, and, very importantly, between managers and senior executives.”
• 7:39 [Case Study Software Company in south bay, CA] – “There was this big aha moment, which is fairly common, where all of the managers in the organization [realized] how they were sort of playing a level down or two levels down from their title.”
• 8:26 “It’s incremental. Nothing changes overnight. Nothing worth doing changes overnight.”
• 9:09 “And that’s really the best part of this work for me. I get to see people take these tools and apply them in ways that I never would’ve thought, and have conversations that are meaningful to them.”
• 9:44 [On Raymond’s inspiration for writing the book] – “I bumped up against my own capacity as a leader, and I realized that I didn’t know what I was doing.”
• 10:23 How Raymond’s experience with cold, unfeeling training programs led him to create a work that was truly human.
• 10:26 “It’s not about being authentic, because “being authentic,” well, what does that mean? But, you know, how do you show up in a way that’s both professional and personal, that’s warm and kind and compassionate, but that also drives results?”
• 11:15  The type of feedback that makes people uncomfortable, and the scourge of the “Millennials boogeyman.”
• 11:57 [On the reluctance to new processes and change] – “People have been burned before.”
• 12:31 “This points to the tragedy of what’s happening right now in otherwise really interesting space in time, is that we’re radically over investing in technology to solve this problem, and radically underinvesting in training.”
• 12:59 [The mistake organizations make again and again] – “Buying tools and technology to solve human problems.”
• 13:39 Why managers are so hesitant to give feedback.
• 14:24 “To be able to embrace a communications methodology that says, ‘Actually, you know what, uncertainty is your best friend.’”
• 14:40 “If your feedback provides a solution, it’s not feedback, it’s micromanagement.”
• 15:12 “When we get a solution, when we get a ‘Here’s what you should do next,’ it’s quite disempowering.”
• 16:15 Raymond reveals some tips for managers.
• 16:25 “There are very few things we can do that will give us more value than not going into feedback situations cold.”
• 17:26 [On Accountability] – “We have to reframe what we think of when we say accountability. We can use the word, but if we don’t understand the meaning behind the word, we’re on the wrong track.”
• 18:07 “Accountability, all it means is responsible for one’s actions.”
• 18:35 Why accountability without consequences is ineffective.
• 19:14 “Accountability is a gift.”
• 19:50 Raymond shares the layers of developing accountability in an organization.
• 20:25 [The key to accountability] – “The key is communication where people say, ‘You know what? I’m holding myself accountable for this, and you, Sir or Ms. Manager, I want your help.”
• 21:13 “We’re not very mindful as a species, we tend to be kind of reactive.”
• 21:35 How to “name what we feel” when giving constructive feedback.
• 21:58 “We can’t change behavior if we don’t know what the behavior is.”
• 22:33 “People will surprise you.”
• 22:47 “Oftentimes that’s what we need, we need boundaries. We need a structure for what does excellent work looks like.”
• 23:25 “If you get to do whatever you want, whenever you want with no consequences and no structure, you’re not really helping your teammates, you’re not really helping the organization in any directed, vision-oriented way.”
• 23:44 “A good sales conversation has structure, it has flow – you have pieces that you want to cover, but it also has substance – it’s how you show up, and how you relate, and how you listen.”
• 24:49 How structure, communication, and substance go hand in hand.
• 25:37 “What unifies the organizations that are doing this well is participation from executives in a very specific way.”
• 26:10 [On the importance of recognizing where we are.] – “We’re very good at making big pronouncements of how it’s going to be in the future.”
• 27:14 “You actually have a lot more latitude, a lot more leeway with the people in your organization than you think.”
• 27:25 “You don’t have to fix the organization this afternoon. You just have to own that there are problems.”
• 27:49 “The frustration comes from when management and leadership try to whitewash [problems].”
• 28:26 “I think it’s interesting that organizations have found themselves in this position of having to apologize for holding people accountable for being jerks.”
• 29:49 The problem with taking half measures.
• 31:12 “Don’t boast about what you’re going to do, let actions speak for themselves.”
• 32:05 What Raymond reads is to stay on top of current trends.
• 33:02 The tools Raymond uses to stay productive.

My Quest for the Best is the podcast where ambitious small business leaders discover strategies and tactics to unlock their growth potential.

Give us a 5-star rating and positive review to make it easier for other small business owners to find and benefit from our work!

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After twenty years of not being able to decide whether he was a business development guy or a personal growth teacher, Jonathan stopped trying to figure it out. He’s the owner of Refound, an online training startup that offers Good Authority training programs for owners, executives, and managers. He’s madly in love with his wife, tries not to spoil his daughter, and will never give up on the New York Knicks. Jonathan is the former CEO and Chief Brand Officer of eMyth, where he led the transformation of a global coaching brand and has worked in tech, cleantech, and the nonprofit world after graduating from law school in 1998. He lives in Ashland, Oregon, a lovely town that’s too far away from a warm ocean.

• Primary Website
• Travels from: Ashland, OR
• Phone: (541) 690-5212
• Connect on LinkedIn | Twitter

Adrian Ott talks to Bill Ringle about how to make customers happy, compete, and her book The 24-Hour Customer. 

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth. My Quest for the Best is a top-rated small business podcast with over 300 episodes of thought-provoking and insightful interviews with today’s top thought leaders and business experts. Host Bill Ringle’s mission with this show is to provide the strategies, insights, and resources that will unlock the growth potential of your business through these powerful conversations.

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• The five triggers that influence to what a customer will give his or her time and attention.
• What led her to write The 24-Hour Customer.
• How companies of all sizes can capitalize on mistakes or disruptions of service made by competition.

• 1:11- “After [running the HP Garage Innovation Program] for a while, I realized I wanted to learn new things, learn about new companies, and so decided about 10 years ago that I wanted to quit HP and start my own company.”
• 2:22 [On what Ott’s business does] – “Trying to improve the customer experience and making things more sticky with customers.”
• 2:52 Ott discusses the 5 Triggers, as she talked about in her book The 24 Hour Customer
• 3:33 How status determines what people will pay time and attention to.
• 4:00 [The Software Renewal Case Study] – “We worked with one client who was really having trouble with getting customers to pay attention to them, and this had to do with the renewal of software. What we ended up doing is mapping end to end their customer experience.”
• 4:41 [The questions her company asks when working with companies] – “Can we somehow make this more engaging from a 5P perspective?” and “Can we design a process to make this more engaging?”
• 6:05 [How optimization of peer engagement impacts customer engagement.] – “You’re not going to turn down your friends.”
• 7:37 Ott describes an example of how implementing gamification into the workplace can create better behaviors internally.
• 8:14 “Personal Pursuits is the next P, and that is intrinsic motivation. We may spend time on a mystery because we want to know, we’re curious.”
• 9:16 “If you can start to think in terms of these triggers, and your interactions and communications with them, [your customers and employees] are going to be more engaged.”
• 9:39 [Inspiration for writing the 24 Hour Customer] – “One of the things that struck me was that there was a lot of information out there about personal time management, but I wanted to help my clients understand what was happening with their customers and their employees. I looked around and couldn’t find anything, couldn’t find any frameworks.”
• 11:10 “I spent about 3.5 years in the preparation of this book.”
• 11:47 “It took me a long time to get to these very simple notions of these very complex ideas.”
• 12:00 [On the types of clients Ott has been working with recently.] – “It’s been very interesting to learn about new businesses.”
• 12:45 “When I wrote the book I never dreamed it would apply to financial services as well as it did.”
• 13:09 “I’ve been surprised by how timeless and cross-industry available the concepts are. I had primarily designed it with the idea of large companies in the tech industry.”
• 14:25 “Time and attention are universal. These are universal problems that everyone is struggling with today.”
• 15:45 [The 5P Triggers] – “We have Peers and Power, which is a socially-oriented trigger; Personal Pursuits, which is an intrinsic or personal kind of trigger. We have Price, we have Productivity – so things that help us save time will grab our attention, so that has a lot to do with convenience. The last is something I call Prairie Dog Events, and this is a term that I use to describe what happens to customers and employees when they’re suddenly woken up.”
• 16:39 [On Prairie Dog Events] – “It’s during those times that we’re going to be most receptive to change and so that’s when we start saying so that’s when we need a new piece of software, etc.”
• 18:03 “Prairie Dog Events are opportunities if you’re in the kind of service that has these kinds of attributes. “
• 19:34 “Almost half of our day is routine and habitual, so there’s a tendency for us to want to make things automatic.”
• 21:01 [On what allowed her company to evolve to include new industries, and write her book] – “Partially out of my own wanting to do new things, but also that I was recognizing that technology was becoming much broader than the tech industry itself…other industries are pulling us in to see how business consumers are using tech products.”

My Quest for the Best is the podcast where ambitious small business leaders discover strategies and tactics to unlock their growth potential.

Give us a 5-star rating and positive review to make it easier for other small business owners to find and benefit from our work!

See all listening options (Overcast, Pocket Casts, TuneIn, and more)

Adrian C. Ott is the CEO and founder of Exponential Edge® Consulting. She was named Silicon Valley Enterprising Woman of the Year 2011 by the National Association of Women Business Owners – Silicon Valley and called “one of Silicon Valley’s most respected (if not the most respected) strategists” by Consulting Magazine.

Adrian works with some of the most innovative Fortune 500 and start-up companies in the world to gain a market edge in today’s exponential economy. In addition to assisting clients, she writes a popular column at FastCompany.com, and Chairs the Strategy & Growth Roundtable for the Harvard Business School Association of Northern California, the largest HBS alumni club in the world.

She is also the author of The 24-Hour Customer, a Library Journal “Best Business Book 2010”.

• Primary Website
• Travels From: San Francisco, CA
• Business Phone: 650-331-7378
• Connect on LinkedIn | Twitter

In this episode of My Quest for the Best, Thomas Barta talks with Bill Ringle about the difference between doing marketing and leading marketing, and the challenges faced by both CMOs and customer-facing employees alike.

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth. My Quest for the Best is a top-rated small business podcast with over 300 episodes of thought-provoking and insightful interviews with today’s top thought leaders and business experts. Host Bill Ringle’s mission with this show is to provide the strategies, insights, and resources that will unlock the growth potential of your business through these powerful conversations.

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• What it means to “Walk the Halls” in Marketing
• Popular Myths still held by senior managers
• How a CMO overcame his problems with both agenda and budget.
• The question every marketer should ask themselves
• What it means to be in the value creation zone

• 1:35 Barta discusses how his Mother was an early inspiration for his young life.
• 1:40 “She had one principle, and that is, ‘You can always advance.’ Whenever I had a new idea, her best advice was, ‘Go try it.’”
• 2:00 How growing up in Germany and driving ambulances for civil service prepared Barta for his career.
• 2:36 [On speaking to people in the fields of marketing and customer relations] – “The main challenge – everybody who does marketing and everybody who worries about customers is facing – is how do be relevant, how to get things done, how to really help customers.”
• 3:12 “I believe everybody who works with customers or for customers deserves a stronger voice in their organization.”
• 3:39 “Over 50% of C-suite executives, just surveyed by The Economist, just said they do not believe that marketing drives revenue, which is a problem, because, as a marketer, if you’re not revenue, you may end up being costly.”
• 4:16 “It’s super important that every marketer who listens asks themselves, “Am I cost or revenue?”
• 4:49 The story of the CMO and his problems with agenda and budget, and what Barta’s team did to help him overcome these roadblocks.
• 5:48 [On the importance of removing buzzwords from marketing speech] – “We really stopped the buzzword: “Bingo!”
• 6:32 “When he started to use the language of the rest of the c-suite…he changed so much [about] what the discussion was.”
• 6:53 “We need to get marketers into the flow because that’s where the customer always belongs.”
• 7:20 Barta describes his inspiration for developing a course and writing his book while working at McKinsey, and how he ultimately decided to do it on his own.
• 7:34 “What you do when you want to do something at McKinsey like this, you’ve gotta get your act together and find the best practices, tools, research, and what have you.”
• 8:23 “My reason for writing this book was really that there wasn’t one, plus, I felt probably it was a good way to get the word out.”
• 8:44 How long the writing, editing, publishing, and promotion process for the book was, and why feedback from industry leaders made it worth the wait.
• 9:22 Barta describes the 3 surprises he uncovered while distilling down acquired data into 12 central ideas.
• 9:21 “The first surprise was that doing marketing is very different from leading marketing, and in fact, you can be a very good technical marketer – you can be very good at branding, segmentation, and what have you – but have absolutely no impact in the market.”
• 9:45 “What found is that the skill of marketing inside a company, of leading marketing, are very different from the skills of branding, segmentation, pricing, and all the things you would technically do in marketing. It’s a whole new set of skills.”
• 10:25 “So few marketers are actually equipped with the skills to lead.”
• 11:15 [On the biggest myth held by senior managers] – “It’s the company’s fault.”
• 11:18 “A lot of marketers will tell you that they would be so much more successful if they only were working in another company, if they only had another boss if they only had another industry.”
• 11:55 “About 55% of the success is driven by the leadership skills of the marketers. Another 15% by the skills.”
• 12:51 Barta lists two pieces of advice to offer marketers listening to the program.
• 13:10 “Make sure the issues you’re tackling as a marketer are big.”
• 13:45 [The Value Creation Zone] “Where company goals and company needs and customer needs are overlapping.”
• 14:52 “Tip #2 – Make sure you are in the revenue camp.”
• 15:18 “Get in the revenue camp, figure out how much your work is worth, do it together with finance if you need to.”
• 16:10 “What’s the opposite of a delighted customer?”
• 16:15 “In marketing, even if we have the greatest idea about customer service, there will always be a lot of people that we need to convince and have play and play, so we can actually make great customer service happen.”
• 16:40 “As marketers, we are in the business of change.”
• 17:12 “As leaders, we are dealers in hope.
• 17:28 How the Marketing director of Ford used company pride to launch a brilliant marketing campaign.
• 17:53 [How to market effectively] – “When you think about your work, think about the story you can tell that will give people hope.” 
• 17:59 What it means to “walk the halls” in marketing.
• 18:30 “You have to go out and talk to people [about] where you want to see change, sharing your ideas. It also means shutting up and listening, and not making decisions straightaway.”
• 19:25 Why it’s important for people to be involved, even if they don’t agree.
• 19:35 “As a marketer, we have to go out, we have to walk the halls.”
• 20:10 “If you talk to very successful senior marketers, in fact, very successful leaders, you’re typically touched by their passion, their conviction, their strong beliefs in what they’re doing.”
• 21:41 What “fire in the eyes” looks like, and how to test for it.
• 22:48 Some of Barta’s tips and tricks for staying productive.

My Quest for the Best is the podcast where ambitious small business leaders discover strategies and tactics to unlock their growth potential.

Give us a 5-star rating and positive review to make it easier for other small business owners to find and benefit from our work!

See all listening options (Overcast, Pocket Casts, TuneIn, and more)

Thomas Barta is the world’s premier expert, speaker, and author on marketing leadership.

Thomas is a former McKinsey partner. He speaks to Fortune 500 leaders worldwide on marketing from a CEO’s perspective—and on why to make customer focus and innovation actually happen in organizations, leadership is the key.

His latest research is the world’s largest-ever study, with over 68,000 assessments, on what makes for an influential Chief Marketing Officer.

A professional keynote speaker and conference host, Thomas inspires attendees at more than 30 annual events for companies, industry associations, and conferences—including Advertising Week New York, Financial Times Innovators Summit, Adobe Summit, and Ad: Tech Asia.

Thomas is the co-author of the path-breaking new leadership book: The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader.

Thomas is a former senior marketer and an organizational psychologist. He has consulted and marketed for over 20 years, in 14 industries, in 45 countries. Thomas has addressed leaders from the world’s most prominent companies, including over two dozen from the Fortune 500.

As a dean of the firm’s highest-rated internal program, Thomas has trained over a thousand McKinsey leaders on making change happen without authority. He is also the leadership dean for the CMO Fellowship Programme (a joint venture between McKinsey and the Marketing Academy to prepare CMOS for a CEO role).

Thomas’s leadership columns appear in publications from Forbes to Marketing Week.

• Primary Website
• Travels from: Koln, Germany
• Phone: (512) 904-9253
• Connect on LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth.

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• How the mind shift from marketer to media exec helps you stay open and develop new opportunities
• The key differences between owned media, rented media, and earned media, and why that matters to your business
• That traction can be measured with new media: with the interactions on your blog posts and subscribers to your audience list
• The #1 factor to focus on to be successful with new media: creating content that your audience wants to share
• How Tom Rath used a quiz in Strengths Finder 2.0 to gain more than 160,000 subscribers, and what 2 techniques new authors (who aren’t already famous) can use to build a subscriber list quickly

Barbara Cave Henricks is president of Cave Henricks Communications. She has spearheaded campaigns for some of the biggest names in business today, including Jack Welch, Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, John Bogle, Tom Rath, Marcus Buckingham, Maria Bartiromo, and Clay Christensen.

Rusty Shelton is the founder and CEO of Shelton Interactive, an award-winning digital marketing and PR agency that helps clients, from bestselling authors to the world’s biggest brands, start conversations that matter. He has led digital strategy for more than twenty-five New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers.

For more information, visit Barbara’s website and Rusty’s website.

Web address: http://www.cavehenricks.com

Travels from: Austin, TX

Phone: (512)-301-8936

Contact:

Web address: http://www.rustyshelton.com

Travels from: Austin, TX

Phone: (512)-206-0720

Contact:

• Website: Mastering the New Media Landscape
• Website: Tom Rath’s Strengths Finder 2.0
• Website: The Confidence Code by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman
• Website: David Livermore, expert on cultural intelligence and author of Driven by Difference
• Website: Annie’s book planning technique of using poster boards and post-it notes