SIMPLE brand With Matt Lyles

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Joe Mull, author of Employalty: How to Ignite Commitment and Keep Top Talent in the New Age of Work.

Joe’s an international keynote speaker, he’s the founder of BossBetter Leadership Academy, and he’s the host of the BossBetter Now podcast. Employalty releases on May 9, but it’s quickly becoming one of the most talked about HR and workplace culture books.

Joe and I discuss his lessons from Employalty all around turning your organization into a destination workplace to attract and keep top talent. 

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• What’s REALLY driving record-setting job switching today
• There is no staffing shortage, there’s a great job shortage
• The desire of professionals to seek a higher quality of life without their job encroaching on that
• Why leaders want to move their team from a departure organization to a destination workplace
• Where commitment really comes from in the workplace
• What’s broken in the work environment and made it more dehumanized lately
• The MYTH that employees are just lazy today
• What too many leaders get wrong in offering flexibility to their employees
• Meaningful work isn’t only for nonprofit or purpose-driven brands
• The way employees are recognized is typically all wrong
• Great bosses are advocates for their employees

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Joe’s site
• Joe’s book - Employalty: How to Ignite Commitment and Keep Top Talent in the New Age of Work
• Joe’s podcast - Boss Better Now

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Adam Toporek, author of Be Your Customer's Hero: Real-World Tips & Techniques for the Service Front Lines.

Adam’s an internationally-recognized customer experience expert, keynote speaker, and customer service trainer who helps organizations transform their relationships with their customers through better strategy, training, and communication. He’s the founder of Customers That Stick®, and the former co-host of the Crack the Customer Code podcast.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• It doesn’t take grand, superhero actions to become your customer’s hero
• The need for focusing on peak emotions in the customer experience
• Consistently focusing on positive “brand deposits” buys you goodwill with your customers
• The service “triggers” that can set your customer off
• Get the biggest return on your customer experience efforts by identifying and removing your customer’s biggest hassles
• Why you should regularly assess your policies and procedures and cut the ones that hinder your employees
• How curating and sharing success stories is one of the best ways to train employees
• Empowering your employees can deliver hassle-free experiences
• Adam’s 3S process for employees to follow when resolving customer issues

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

Adam’s site

Adam’s book - Be Your Customer’s Hero

SIMPLE brand episode 38 with Lisa Bodell - we talk about killing stupid rules and policies

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Mark Miller, author of Culture Rules: The Leader’s Guide to Creating the Ultimate Competitive Advantage.

Mark’s the Vice President of High Performance Leadership with Chick-fil-A. And Mark’s the author of 11 best-selling books including his latest Wall Street Journal bestseller - Culture Rules: The Leader’s Guide to Creating the Ultimate Competitive Advantage.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• The three rules that go into creating a high-performance culture
• Why leaders shouldn’t worry too much about how they define their vision, mission, and purpose
• The simple test to know if you have defined your team’s aspiration well
• The value of recognizing reality and comparing that to your culture aspiration
• How to ensure your people can clearly articulate your culture values
• What Alexander the Great teaches us about modeling values to your people
• The right way to use storytelling with your people
• How to discern and remove toxins from your organization
• Be grateful that there’s no finish line to developing and adapting your culture

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

Mark’s site - leadeveryday.com

Mark’s book - Culture Rules: The Leader’s Guide to Creating the Ultimate Competitive Advantage

Mark’s book - Smart Leadership: Four Simple Choices to Scale Your Impact

Mark’s book - Win the Heart: How to Create a Culture of Full Engagement

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Sara Ross, author of Dear Work: Something Has to Change!

Sara’s an international keynote speaker and the founder of the leadership research firm BrainAMPED. She’s transforming the future of work by using the power of brain science to amplify organizational vitality, and by helping people work, lead, and succeed in healthy, high-performing, human-centric ways.

It’s no secret that too many leaders and too many professionals feel like they’re stuck in a complicated work environment. Overworked and under-living. Thankfully, Sara has the strategies to simplify that as you boost your work vitality, stand out, and bring your best, most energized self to your career and your other important life areas.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• How thinking of your work like a relationship is valuable for your career
• What’s causing so many professionals to have a “toxic relationship” with their work
• How you can raise your vitality in your work (and other life areas)
• Recognize that your energy will ebb and flow - and that’s natural and okay
• You can instill your purpose into interactions and aspects of your role instead of struggling to find that purpose-driven role
• The “success traps” that can actually confine you in your work
• Placing too much focus on one life area is detrimental to the other major life areas
• You need to be as intentional about resting as you are about working

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

Sara’s book - Dear Work: Something Has to Change

Sara’s site and newsletter - The Dear Work Letter

Sara on Linkedin

Sara on Instagram

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Jeff Toister, author of The Guaranteed Customer Experience: How to Win Customers by Keeping Your Promises!

The Guaranteed Customer Experience turns the concept of a guarantee on its head. An experience guarantee goes beyond merely providing a warranty against any product defects or failures. It actually encompasses the entire customer journey to promise an experience that never falls short of expectations.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• The elements needed to create an experience guarantee
• The common ways that drive brand promises and experience guarantees to break
• The need for ensuring your operations can feasibly deliver on your promise 
• How to define your promise is clear to all employees
• How to know what to promise based on what’s relevant to your customers
• Defining the problems you don’t solve is just as important as defining the ones you do solve
• How to restore trust from your customer by recovering from a service failure

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

Jeff’s book - The Guaranteed Customer Experience: How to win Customers by Keeping Your Promises

Jeff’s newsletter - Customer Service Tip of the Week

Jeff Toister on Twitter

Jeff Toister on LinkedIn

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Juliana Marulanda, founder of ScaleTime!

Juliana and ScaleTime have helped hundreds of agency owners and business leaders get their lives back by developing systems to save time, add employees, and streamline processes to create lean, mean, profitable machines.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• Why most leaders have a hard time creating and managing systems
• Having systems in place helps your people feel secure and view you as a better leader
• Having the right systems in place creates an engaged culture
• How to recognize that you don’t have the right systems in place
• How to assess the strength of your current systems (if any!)
• Templates for content your team creates repeatedly can actually help them be creative
• Training your people on processes is just as important as documentation of processes
• How to ensure your people actually follow your systems
• Perfection can kill your progress when building systems so iterate and evolve them

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

Juliana’s business - ScaleTime

Juliana on LinkedIn

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Nick Webb, author of One Step Ahead: How To Dominate Your Market With Innovation Leadership!  

Nick is a world-renowned Strategist, Futurist, Bestselling Author, and one of the top keynote speakers in the world.

Nick was on the SIMPLE brand podcast back in episode 74 talking about What Customers Hate.

This time he’s back to talk about lessons from his latest book - One Step Ahead: How To Dominate Your Market With Innovation Leadership.

In today’s hypercompetitive environment, the difference between winning and losing really isn’t that big of a gap. It’s actually pretty small. It’s like a race, where the fastest runner who crosses the finish line can be just One Step Ahead.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• How to stay one step ahead in your leadership
• Why your individual leadership is important in setting your team’s pace
• Why surveys and promoter scores are worth very little
• The correlation between a brand’s Glassdoor ratings and Yelp and Google ratings
• The three things your employees need from you and your organization
• Taking action from employee feedback builds your credibility 
• Any customer experience initiative must be tied with an employee experience initiative
• The four behaviors that help leaders stay one step ahead

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

SIMPLE brand  episode #74 - Nick Webb - What Customers Hate

Nick’s Consulting site - Leader Logic

Nick’s speaking site

Nick’s book - One Step Ahead: How To Dominate Your Market With Innovation Leadership

Nick’s book - What Customers Hate: Drive Fast and Scalable Growth by Eliminating the Things that Drive Away Business

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Stephen Houraghan, host of The Brand Master Podcast!  

Stephen’s a brand strategist, consultant, the CEO and Founder of Brand Master Academy, and the host of one of my favorite branding podcasts, The Brand Master Podcast.

Stephen and I discuss his lessons all around what branding and brand strategy truly are and how you can use his processes and framework to create a highly sought-after, stand-out brand.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• The true definition of a brand - [SPOILER ALERT] it’s not what you think
• The difference between branding and brand strategy
• How customers choose the brands they want to do business with
• The steps to defining and building your brand strategy
• The value of focusing on customer relationships vs customer transactions
• The need for understanding your audience and your competitors to create your positioning
• Your brand voice is as important, if not more, than your visual identity
• The habits and values that help brand strategists thrive in their career

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

Stephen’s website - Brand Master Academy

Pro Brand Strategy Blueprint

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Jay Baer, author of Talk Triggers: The Complete Guide to Creating Customers with Word of Mouth and Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers!

Jay’s one of the world’s top 30 Global Gurus in customer service AND online marketing and is a hall of fame keynote speaker. And Jay’s the author of six best-selling books.

Jay and I discuss insights from his latest research study - The Time to Win: The 2022 Consumer Patience Study. It’s all around brand speed and consumer patience. And it provides all the evidence you need to increase your speed and responsiveness in your customer experience.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• The importance of speed in customer experience
• How to know exactly how fast to be for your customers 
• Situations where being TOO fast can actually hurt your business
• The surprising data that shows which age demographics are less patient than others
• How to increase revenue by offering a “fast pass”
• How providing proactive content helps save time and decrease customer service expenses

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Time to Win: The 2022 Consumer Patience Study
• Jay’s website
• Jay’s book - Talk Triggers: The Complete Guide to Creating Customers with Word of Mouth
• Jay’s book - Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers
• Jay’s tequila review profile on Instagram

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Ann Handley, author ofEverybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content!

Ann’s the Chief Content Officer for MarketingProfs which educates more than 600,000 marketers around the world. 

Her book - Everybody Writes - has been considered the bible for marketing writing for close to a decade.  Ann recently expanded and revised the book to update it on how marketing, content, writing, and audience mindset have evolved since the first edition.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• How marketing and writing have evolved over the past nine years
• How to build a strong writing habit
• What prevents most people from writing “that big thing” they want to write
• Ann’s framework for consistently creating ridiculously good content
• Crafting and evolving your brand voice
• How we should approach AI in our writing

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Ann’s website
• Ann’s book - Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content
• Ann’s newsletter - Total ANNARCHY
• MarketingProfs
• MarketingProfs 2023 B2B Marketing Forum