Our guest on this episode of Start With A Win is Ben Saunders, a polar explorer and motivational speaker who has excellent nuggets of wisdom for listeners on the show. Growing up in a rural area of the UK, Ben spent much of his childhood outside, learning about the world around him and struggling to sit still in school. After high school, Ben worked with John Ridgway, who had rowed across the Atlantic in a wooden boat in 93 days, and was inspired by Ridgway’s fortitude and accomplishments. Ben decided to stay beyond his gap year to teach at Ridgway’s adventure school, where he also spent a lot of time reading about adventurers.

In 2001, Ben and his friend spent 59 days skiing to the North Pole, but they were unprepared and didn’t complete their goal. A few weeks later, Ben got a bill in the mail for his portion of the trip expenses – close to $50,000 – and he decided to plan a second trip and fundraise for the trip and cover his debts. This trip was a success and his first solo venture. In 2004, he completed his solo trip from Russia to the North Pole, and then in 2014, Ben and his partner completed the 1800-mile journey to the South Pole, retracing the steps of Scott in 1912.

Through all of Ben’s experiences, he has learned that self-belief is essential to overcoming challenges. This human quality must essentially develop because confidence follows courage. Ben says that either you are winning or you are learning, and no experience is a waste. He also discusses the importance of being intentional. Be intentional about how you are focusing your time and energy, not dwelling on things that are outside of your control. To that end, Ben jumped into entrepreneurship in 2020, creating Scroll Bands that help people be aware of the time they are spending on their phones.

Connect with Ben:

https://scrollband.com/password 

https://bensaunders.com/

https://twitter.com/polarben?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

https://www.ted.com/speakers/ben_saunders 

Connect with Adam:

https://www.startwithawin.com/ 

https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContos

https://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos 

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Adam shares his insights on leadership and emotional mastery in this episode of Start With A Win. He says many people neglect emotional intelligence and emotional maturity, pursuing financial- or performance-based goals. However, pushing your people to reach those KPIs without establishing a foundation of emotional mastery is counterproductive. The two aspects of emotional mastery—the ability to control your emotions—are emotional intelligence and emotional maturity.

Emotional intelligence boils down to empathy, being aware of your own feelings, the feelings of others, and how they fit together. It is vital to understand that there are only two core emotions: fear and love. Fear is the default emotion and often accompanied by the word "but" or the phrase, "I’m busy." When you operate through fear, you can not master your emotions. Love, on the other hand, requires intentionality and leads to unconditional giving.

Emotional maturity is essentially choice management, Adam says. Your choices will determine your results, so it is best to create your own good choices to get the results you want. Love and fear come to play here, too, because the ego enters into the arena to fight back when you make a bad choice because it has an inherent fear of failure. Adam’s mantra, which fits in well here, is “stay hungry, stay humble.” It is essential to learn from others constantly and to own your choices. Leaders control their emotions while demonstrating an example to others.

Connect with Adam:

https://www.startwithawin.com/ 

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Connect with Adam:

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Whether you are fully aware that fonts are more than just options in your word processing software, or you had no idea that there is a company called Monotype that creates and distributes licenses for typefaces, this interview with Scott Landers, the company’s CEO, is just for you. In this episode of Start With a Win, Scott expands the understanding of how typefaces fuel creativity and help brands establish themselves in the market. 

Monotype is the world’s leading provider of typefaces, and their offerings and product reach are consistently expanding as technology continues to grow onward and upward. Scott provides a helpful illustration of everything you could have interacted with on a typical morning that contains a typeface created by Monotype. This example helps listeners recognize how influential Monotype is and all of the ways they have to adapt to innovations. When Monotype started, fonts were strictly for print. Eventually, they had to grow into typefaces for screens linked to printers, and in recent years they have grown to create fonts solely to be used and consumed on screens. This growth curve over the past several decades is quite steep. Despite this growth curve, they have excelled amidst the challenges. This success resulted due to close communication with their customers every step of the way. As a result, they remain ready to help individuals and brands express themselves through creativity centered around typefaces.

Scott’s sage advice to creators trying to choose the right fonts—if the font is executed right, you won’t notice it. The font provides the body language and the tone of voice for the words on the page, so regard this process as half art and half science. Monotype has consultants on staff available to help businesses choose the right typefaces for their brand.  They recognize how integral this part of the process is to the brand’s identity for years to come. When it comes to leading through change, Scott says that the most important thing is to keep the customer at the center and give your employees more authority because if they know that you trust them to do the right thing, they will do the right thing.

Connect with Scott:

https://monotype.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-landers-96b3614 

Connect with Adam:

https://www.startwithawin.com/ 

https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContos

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This episode is the conclusion of Adam’s interview with Jeremy Ryan Slate. We pick back up in the conversation on building trust and why brands aren’t able to establish their presence. Jeremy says that people forget about public relations until something goes wrong, and they suddenly want to make sure that everyone knows all of the good things about them to offset the bad. PR should be integrated into daily, weekly, and monthly rhythms within the business so that leaders always have open lines of communication with their customers. This approach allows brands to proactively answer objections and solve problems before customers even get to that point in the process.

This presence and communication is epitomized by overdelivering in every customer exchange, focusing on building relationships rather than closing transactions, and eventually creating brand evangelists that will be the best PR you can hope for. Many businesses strategize their communications months in advance and try to be on all of the social media platforms. However, over-planning can take the spontaneity out of interacting with customers in real-time on the platform(s) that best fits your niche. Jeremy encourages leaders and entrepreneurs to focus on doing one thing well and stay in their niche and then expand your footprint as your business grows and your team expands. 

To sum up this two-part conversation, Jeremy breaks down his recommended action items for those people looking to start something new, particularly a podcast:

• Find out what’s out there already
• Articulate how you are different
• Research the influencers in that space
• Curate your audience based on the audiences of those influencers
• Focus on one platform at a time
• Interview people in the niche
• Get interviewed by people in the niche

Connect with Jeremy: 

https://www.jeremyryanslate.com/

https://twitter.com/JeremyRyanSlate

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-ryan-slate-bb7b284a

https://www.instagram.com/jeremyryanslate/?hl=en 

Connect with Adam:

https://www.startwithawin.com/ 

https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContos

https://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos 

https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ 

Leave us a voicemail:

888-581-4430

Connect with Adam:

https://www.startwithawin.com/ 

https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContos

https://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos 

https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/

Our guest on this episode of the Start With A Win podcast is Jeremy Ryan Slate, host of the “Create Your Own Life” podcast, self-proclaimed nerd, and opinion leader who prides himself in building trust. Perhaps the most unique thing about Jeremy is that he and his wife have a pet pig who used to live indoors but was evicted to live an outdoor existence when their first (human) child was born.

Jeremy was introduced to podcasts by one of his college professors. When his initial attempts at teaching and sales after college didn’t pan out, he launched a podcast himself as a way of manifesting the life he wanted to have. The show had immediate success, so Jeremy decided to jump right in and utilize the opportunity in front of him and see where it would lead. Throughout his 850+ episodes since 2013, Jeremy has interviewed professional athletes, entrepreneurs, members of the military, and many other high-achievers, and he has noticed a few similarities between them. First, most of them experienced and overcame adversity, viewing it as an opportunity for growth. And second, they were committed to continued learning through training programs, mentorship, apprenticeship, and an internal curiosity.

While Jeremy was forming his personal brand through his podcast, he struggled to define how he wanted to be known. In hindsight, his advice to others going through this process is to let people know how you are different, have courage, and learn from your failures. From a tactical standpoint, Jeremy recommends extending the experience of the content you’re creating by implementing strategies to repurpose it for different channels. He also says that every landing page should have a Getemails.com code and a Facebook Pixel embedded into it so that you can collect email addresses and have the ability to retarget ads to website visitors. When it comes to developing new content ideas, one of his suggestions is to write down a list of all of the objections you receive and start producing content to address those objections. This approach provides value, answers the concerns, and builds trust.

Join us on the next episode for the conclusion of our conversation with Jeremy Ryan Slate!

 Links:

“Positioning” by Jack Trout and Al Ries: https://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Al-Ries/dp/0071373586 

Connect with Jeremy: 

https://www.jeremyryanslate.com/

https://twitter.com/JeremyRyanSlate

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-ryan-slate-bb7b284a

https://www.instagram.com/jeremyryanslate/?hl=en 

Connect with Adam:

https://www.startwithawin.com/ 

https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContos

https://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos 

https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ 

Leave us a voicemail:

888-581-4430

On this episode of the Start With A Win podcast, Adam talks to SWAW producer Mark with a hot round of interview questions. They include questions about friendship, relaxation, and how to deal with stress. 

Mark initiates the conversation with the question, "Who is your oldest friend, and how did you meet them?" Mark and Adam share a bit about their oldest and closest friendships, dating back to their early childhoods.

Adam and Mark also dig into how stress affects us. Mark says you can’t think clearly when stressed, which often results in making bad decisions. He has seen the most growth in pushing through stress as opposed to trying to avoid it. Avoiding stress can cause depression. Stop worrying and start doing, Adam says.

Stress, Planning, Action—the SPA acronym for how to deal with stress. Much like the word spa itself, this tool is designed to help people push through stressful situations instead of avoiding them altogether.

Action overcomes stress. Reviewing the stressful environment perpetuates stress. The best way to deal with stressful situations is to make a plan for what you’re going to do next. And it is in the action that real moments of growth and learning unfold. Adam and Mark reveal their own thoughts about how this strategy can help you reap more out of your life. Stress is a killer, so we need more chances to survive.

Connect with Adam:

https://www.startwithawin.com/

https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContos

https://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos

https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/

Leave us a voicemail:

888-581-4430

Connect with Adam:

https://www.startwithawin.com/ 

https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContos

https://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos 

https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/

On this episode of the Start With A Win podcast, Adam talks with Carl Bachmann, CEO of Smashburger. Carl has been in the restaurant business since he was 12 years old, so he knows a thing or two about listening to customer feedback and delivering a high-quality product. As a leader, Carl is a strong proponent for treating people right and empowering them to make informed decisions, and then supporting what they create. This ideology starts, he says, with having clearly defined and articulated goals as an organization and then getting your employees to buy into that vision and innovate within it. Carl embraces the fact that he is not the smartest guy in the room, and he wants to provide a space for employees to collaborate and harness their passion into something that will improve the customer experience.

When it comes to the customer experience, Carl believes that his job is to listen and learn rather than make decisions in a vacuum. He reviews every social media comment and other forms of feedback every day, so he is in touch with what people are saying and feeling about the business as a whole as well as specific products. Carl and the other Smashburger leaders spend time in individual restaurants listening to their employees because they often come up with the best new ideas. He feels that transparency and honesty are critical components of his business philosophy, so employees and customers alike understand what the company is doing and why. Smashburger has recently started a loyalty program to connect more directly with customers and reward them for their purchases. 

Connect with Carl:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carl-bachmann-80704110

https://twitter.com/carljbachmann?lang=en 

https://smashburger.com/ 

Connect with Adam:

https://www.startwithawin.com/ 

https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContos

https://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos 

https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ 

Leave us a voicemail:

888-581-4430