Are you tapping into the full value that social media can provide your business? As the largest focus group, social media allows brands to get a pulse on how their product or service is doing and what audiences are saying about it. Used by over 25,000+ brands globally to improve engagement, increase customer satisfaction and optimize content strategies, Sprout Social is at the forefront of all things social media and we have an exclusive interview with their Solutions Engineer Collin Johnson! In the latest episode of The 19: Entrepreneur Edition podcast, Collin discusses the most important social data to capture, the power of connecting with audiences across platforms and more in under 20 minutes.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:05] This is The 19! In 19 minutes or less, game-changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:23] Hello and welcome to The 19: Entrepreneur Edition! I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. In today’s day and age, social media is used for more than just connecting with friends and family. Reports find that at least 25% of individuals use it to discover or learn more about products, services or brands. And 89% of businesses say their company’s success depends on how effectively it can use social data to inform marketing strategy. Ranked as the best social media management platform by Investopedia, Sprout Social helps organizations build connections with their audience through real-time reporting, social listening and more. Here to tell us about how to use social data to enhance your marketing strategy is Sprout’s Social Solutions Engineer Collin Johnson. Collin, welcome to The 19th, it’s great to have you here today!

Collin Johnson: [00:01:12] Thank you so much for having me. Excited to talk about social.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:01:20] So, Collin, tell me about your role at Sprout Social.

Collin Johnson: [00:01:23] Sure, so I’m a Solutions Engineer and I exclusively support our agency sales team. My team, the solutions engineering team. We actually sit between sales and product, which means we have the unique opportunity to get a pulse for what the product is capable of doing, what features are coming down the line. And also we get to work with customers every single day. So learning from agencies, learning from brands, seeing how they’re using Sprout Social and using that learning to help other customers achieve that same level of success.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:02:01] Awesome. So what value does Social bring to brands?

Collin Johnson: [00:02:05] Sure. Yeah. Tough to summarize. It’s such, such a comprehensive answer. Really, at Sprout we think realizing the overall power of social starts with looking beyond the traditional marketing function that social is occupied for the last decade or so. Social is valuable as a communications channel, but there’s so much more than just the conversations brands are having with customers. Sprout’s role is that we unlock that potential and intuitive, elegantly designed social media management platform and in addition, we focus on the success of our customers in terms of providing them whatever’s necessary to help grow their business. And that means thought leadership, training, hands on support to help agencies and brands achieve those goals with our help.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:03:03] Awesome. So you talked about beyond social. What are some of the metrics that are able to be translated from social to general marketing?

Collin Johnson: [00:03:13] Something that we talk to, to brands about every day and really we see social marketers as being on the front lines of social feeds and having the data to understand better than anyone what content is resonatin...

How can we better connect with our audience and make their lives easier? The transition to multi-channel buying options has accelerated five to ten years the past twelve months and presented an opportunity to enhance the customer journey. In the new episode of The 19: Retail, Evolv Technologies CEO Michael Scharff explains how artificial intelligence (AI) can help brands understand customers’ pain pain points and develop strategies to meet customers where they are in the buying cycle.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:06] This is The 19. In 19 minutes or less game changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established retail brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:24] Hello and welcome to The 19: Retail! I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. Today, we’re going to be talking about the buyer’s journey. Whether you’re in B2B or B2C, this topic is likely part of your day to day. It sure is for Michael Scharff, CEO of Evolv Technologies. Evolv is a company that solves growth challenges and businesses by utilizing artificial intelligence, or A.I., to create better customer experiences. With over two decades of digital commerce and retail expertise, Michael has built and managed highly successful omnichannel and e-commerce businesses across the globe. Michael, welcome to The 19. It’s great to have you here today!

Michael Scharff: [00:01:02] Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:01:08] Well, tell me a little about your background in retail?

Michael Scharff: [00:01:11] Well, I got my start selling stereos out of my first apartment in college, so I’ve been in retail pretty much my entire life. I actually left when I left college. I decided to go into retail and started in consumer electronics out on the West Coast and then ultimately ended up working for several large national brands like Best Buy and Toys R US and Sears (Canada) and Staples and I had a great career in retail. I spent the first part of my career as a merchant now working my way up through the buying organization. And then in 1999, when I joined Best Buy, pivoted over to the digital side of the business and have really been steeped in e-commerce and digital ever since, and have really learned a lot along the way and learned to love retail really just as a practice kind of end to end. So it’s been fantastic. And for the last several years prior to joining Evolv, I was serving as an advisor to a bunch of technology companies, primarily servicing retailers, and then launched Evolv two years ago to help continue that journey.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:02:11] That’s awesome. So you’ve seen it in the brick and mortar state and the e-commerce state?

Michael Scharff: [00:02:16] Yes, very early on, long before e-commerce was a twinkle in anybody’s eye and all way up to today where it’s driving everything we do as consumers.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:02:25] That’s fantastic. It’s great to have you here today. So what are the biggest shifts you’ve seen in the retail industry over the past year?

Michael Scharff: [00:02:33] Well, obviously, the last year, I think, had some external factors that have significantly influenced retail. Obviously, Covid really caused a sea change in terms of how brands were thinking about engaging with consumers, primarily based on me. The trends, though, are trends that have been going on for a long time. There’s been an ongoing shift from brick and mortar to multichannel, omnichannel, seamless channel, whatever you want to call it. But really to using a whole variety of channels for consumers to engage. And I think what happened is Covid really accelerated that transition probably 5, maybe as much as 10 years for almost every industry. And it also helped industries that were really laggards in digital commerce,

What photographers see through their viewfinder is different from what most people see. With an eye that’s attuned to capture a spontaneous moment on a shoot, like a model that can do a backflip, and scout the perfect location, like finding triangles in nature that mirror a brand’s logo, Erik Isakson shares his personal experiences as a top brand photographer. Having worked with leading brands, including Nike, Chevrolet, UCLA and more, Erik provides insights on how to effectively work with a professional photographer to bring your brand story to life, visually, in this new episode of The 19: Entrepreneur Edition.

Rochelle Reiter : [00:00:06] This is the 19. In 19 minutes or less game changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset.

Rochelle Reiter : [00:00:23] Hello and welcome to The 19 Entrepreneur Edition. I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. In our digital world, image focused platforms such as Instagram, YouTube and Facebook are continuing to grow and have over one billion global users. We all know the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” and today we’ll be putting that to the test. With over 20 years of experience and an impressive client list, including Nike, Samsung, Chevrolet, UCLA and more. Commercial photographer Erik Isakson is here to share tips, tricks and insights on how to take your custom brand photography to the next level. Erik, welcome to The 19, we’re thrilled to have you!

Erik Isakson: [00:01:02] Good to be here. Thank you.

Rochelle Reiter : [00:01:09] Let’s start off with talking a little bit about your background.

Erik Isakson: [00:01:13] All right. So I’ve always had an interest in photography growing up, studied in high school and studied it in college. I went to Brigham Young University and got a BFA in photography and always had a passion and an interest in photography. And while I was at BYU, I was trying to decide on my final project for my BFA final show. And at that time, the Winter Olympics were coming soon to Utah and there was a posting from an Olympic fencer who is training and for a couple hundred dollars paid me to do some portraits of her. I had so much fun getting creative with these portraits of this athlete that I thought, wow, I could do Olympic portraits because there were so many athletes that were training in the area to.

Rochelle Reiter : [00:02:01] Right.

Erik Isakson: [00:02:01] So I ended up doing 10 final portraits, half of them summer athletes, half winter athletes, and traveled some to photograph them and also locally there and it ended up being an amazing experience. That kind of spring boarded me into knowing, you know, getting into photographing athletes and sports lifestyle. I moved to Los Angeles in 2000 and was a studio manager for a photographer and really learned a lot of the ins and outs of budgets and working with clients and producing shoots and all of that. So and then I gradually got into doing my own work after a few years and to where I was working on my own as a photographer within a few years after that, so.

Rochelle Reiter : [00:02:50] Awesome. What are some of the brands that you’ve worked on?

Erik Isakson: [00:02:53] I’ve done work with Nike, Chevrolet, GMC, Budweiser, Modelo, quite a few ongoing shoots with Samsung as well. So a lot of focus on people, lifestyle, active sports, lifestyle imagery.

Rochelle Reiter : [00:03:11] What are some of the benefits that you see when brands use custom photography?

Erik Isakson: [00:03:18] Well, I had an experience even just this past week. I was in Salt Lake photographing for a tech company and up until this point, they’ve been using stock photography. And there’s a lot of great stock photography out there, but they knew that they needed to really customize it ...

We shared pragmatic tips on the lights, camera and sound quality behind video communication in part one of The 19: Entrepreneur Edition. Now it’s time for the action! In just 19 minutes, the always entertaining Michael Allosso (Communications Expert and Professional Actor/Director) explains how to form emotional connections with the people on the other side of the screen and become an even better leader. Learn how to identify and focus on your objective to guide you through obstacles, practice empathy to convey authenticity and “put a ding in the universe” with each daily interaction.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:05] This is The 19. In 19 minutes or less game-changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:23] Hello and welcome to The 19 Entrepreneur Edition. I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. Today, we’re going to dive into part two of our series with Michael Allosso, master communications expert, self-awareness, specialist and professional theater and film director and actor. In part one, we talked about the pragmatic tips of being an effective communicator in the virtual world. Today, we’re going to shift to the softer side of things. The emotional connections created during virtual meetings and find out if this is even possible. Michael, welcome back to The 19, part two in our series.

Michael Allosso: [00:00:57] Thanks Rochelle!

Michael Allosso: [00:01:03] Steve Jobs, 66th birthday today. “I want to put a ding in the universe.” That’s what he said and so do I and so do you. That’s why we’re here today. So let’s begin dinging.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:01:18] Awesome, so in our previous episode, we talked about the pragmatic tips of communicating virtually. This time, let’s talk about the emotional connection during meetings and where do you see people missing that mark right now?

Michael Allosso: [00:01:32] I’m a huge Brené Brown fan, as so many people are. I know you are and Dr. Brown says if you don’t own your own feelings, they’ll eat you alive. She said, you may be afraid, but you do it anyway. One of my favorite things, she says, Rochelle, is there are many cheap seats in the arena. Leaders are people who step into the ring and so what I think happens is that this medium virtual, virtually makes us falsely think we can be passive. That we’re sitting in our home, the small of our back get’s comfortable in the chair, and we forget that we have to jump in the ring. Whether we’re the leader of the meeting or are not the leader. It’s our job to jump into the ring and so, so much of this is about energy. You know, I have my thirty five nuclear weapons helping you, be you and your best day. Number one is energy. I think it’s so important. I wrote it first. I wrote it three times and put an exclamation point after it. And right now people are whining about the low energy. And the problem with that is it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You have got to bring it.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:02:43] Yeah.

Michael Allosso: [00:02:43] We call it in theater, playing the obstacle instead of playing the objective. You follow what that means Rochelle?

Rochelle Reiter: [00:02:49] No explain that to me.

Michael Allosso: [00:02:49] Well, former military and military people get this the best. So secret weapon, 16, 17, 18, objective tactic obstacle. So Navy SEALs will tell me. Objective kill the enemy. Tactics, land, sea, air. Obstacle find war in the desert, the enemy lives in the desert, but it’s theater 101. If I were to coach you in the scene, those would be the questions I’d be asking. What is your objective? What is your desired result? How are you going to get it? Those are your tactics and what’s preventing you from getti...

Video meetings don’t have to be boring. Communications Expert and Professional Actor/Director Michael Allosso shares tips on how to transform your daily video calls from a drab to fab production, avoid Zoom fatigue and make the most out of each virtual interaction in the latest episode of The 19: Entrepreneur Edition. From introductions to mic-drop closures and the micro-messages in between, learn how to transform the obstacles that come with video conferencing into opportunity in Part One of our podcast.

Rochelle Reiter : [00:00:05] This is The 19. In 19 minutes or less game-changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset.

Rochelle Reiter : [00:00:22] Hello and welcome to The 19 Entrepreneur Edition. I’m Rochelle Reiter, president of Orange Label. In the past few episodes, we talked with experts who had to transform their business models in 2020 and today is no different. Michael Allosso, master communications expert, self-awareness, specialist, professional theater and film director and actor is going to be chatting with me today. He has led award winning You On Your Best Day® workshops for leaders and sales teams all over the world and is a much sought-after personal coach. His current You On Your Best Zoom Day trainings provide communications and awareness skills to maximize virtual presence and impact. He’s a dynamic presenter and entertainer who brings results and life to any in-person or virtual event. Michael, welcome back to The 19.

Michael Allosso: [00:01:12] It’s great to be with you to do the podcast scene! Today is my lucky day with Orange Label The 19! Whoa-ho Rochelle. I hope your listeners can inspire us! How we can get through this darn coronavirus. mm-hm.

Rochelle Reiter : [00:01:38] Oh, wow, I have never had that sort of a welcome. That’s fantastic. Thank you, Michael. So it’s been about two years since you were the guest on The 19 edition of the podcast. And we’ve seen our world completely change in how we communicate. What do you see as the biggest shift in the way we effectively communicate in business?

Michael Allosso: [00:02:02] Today is Steve Job’s 66th birthday. Can you imagine he would have been 66?

Rochelle Reiter : [00:02:07] Wow

Michael Allosso: [00:02:07] He said this cool thing where he says innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. And what I’ve noticed is people who stay the same, who are trying to crank out the same, they always did. Most of them have failed. And anyone who’s thought about being creative and using that overused word, pivot, have been successful. Obstacles are put in our way so that we create opportunities from them. So to me, the single biggest magic is learning how to turn obstacles into opportunities. And I think that’s what we’re going to be discussing for 19 minutes.

Rochelle Reiter : [00:02:46] Absolutely. Absolutely. And with the shift from in-person to virtual, how has that changed the environment?

Michael Allosso: [00:02:55] Any deficiencies we have in-person, Rochelle, only get magnified when we translate that to the screen. So we’re going from being theater actors to TV actors. And think about Rochelle when you go to the theater, the first act, what, an hour-fifteen minutes, hour-ten minutes, hour-twenty minutes. You have time to grow into things. TV Oh man, I’m going to the bathroom after six or seven minutes. I’m grabbing for popcorn after eight. So the immediacy of the screen is a major change. Now, if you’re sloppy coming out of the gate, you don’t get away with it. If your ending isn’t a mic drop ending, you don’t get away with it. If you’re vocally homogenize, you lose your audience in seconds. If you’re static physically and don’t envelop the camera,

Product videos. Brand videos. Animations. Social media videos. These consumed our feeds in 2020 and it wasn’t uncommon for these to be filmed or watched in our comfy pants. While the landscapes of how video was produced (and consumed) changed slightly, 85% of businesses used it as a marketing tool and this year is following in stride. Having spent the last 15-plus years helping brands grow by producing videos that impress, astonish and outperform, Torrey Tayenaka, CEO of national video agency Sparkhouse, shares tips on video creation and how to do it right in The 19: Entrepreneur Edition.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:05] This is The 19. In 19 minutes or less, game-changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:23] Hello and welcome to The 19 Entrepreneur Edition. I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. For the first episode of The 19 in 2021, we’re focusing on video. Why? Well, 85 percent of businesses used video as a marketing tool in 2020 and the results are in: research shows that people watch an average of 16 hours of online video per week, and 84 percent of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. So, how has video production been transformed over the past 10 months and what’s in store for 2021? Here today with me is Torrey Tayenaka, CEO and Founder of Sparkhouse. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Torrey over the past decade on various brand projects, and he comes with a wealth of expertise and insight on video. Torrey, welcome to The 19. We’re so excited to have you.

Torrey Tayenaka: [00:01:15] Thanks for having me out.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:01:21] So, tell our listeners about Sparkhouse and what you provide for clients.

Torrey Tayenaka: [00:01:25] Yeah, so Sparkhouse is a video production company. We like to lean towards having a little bit more of a marketing side. We’re definitely not a marketing agency. That’s why we work with companies like yours. But we want to create video content that accomplishes our clients’ goals. So anything from TV commercials, YouTube videos, Amazon videos and animations, we like to help our clients basically just get things done using video.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:01:51] As a video marketing company, how have you had to adjust your business model over the past 10 months, especially internally with your team?

Torrey Tayenaka: [00:01:57] With social distancing, with everything, we moved out of our offices. Really no one has been doing like day-to-day office work in our office since early March after kind of an initial lockdown. We definitely went right back into production. I think L.A. has considered filmmaking an essential worker, which I’m not really sure how or why. But, you know, we’re taking the precautions to do everything right on the film side. And then on the post-production and editing side, we’ve invested heavily into what’s called a proxy workflow, but basically taking some of our massive large video files and making them much more digestible so that our editors can work remotely. We can edit files with clients without having to have them come into our office and work in what used to be like the traditional way of doing the post-production.

Rochelle Reiter: [00:02:43] Sure. Do you think that you were headed there anyways and this just sped up the process?

Torrey Tayenaka: [00:02:48] It probably should have been on my radar as something that we could have invested if we were really pushing to lead in that technology. It was a very expensive investment for us to make. I’m glad that we have it now and it allows us to spread out our network of who we can work with moving forward.

The figurative faucet for lead generation and networking at in-person events was in danger of running dry this year. With the events space far from returning to “normal” in the foreseeable future, Clarity Experiences CEO Brian Lagestee and his leadership team asked two questions many entrepreneurs are facing: How can we avoid layoffs? And, what can we do for our industry, right now? Listen to our latest podcast to find out how a people-first mentality can help you ask the right questions and allow your clients to take the (virtual) center stage.

Rochelle Reiter : [00:00:04] This is the 19. In 19 minutes or less game-changing insights from Orange Level, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset.

Rochelle Reiter : [00:00:23] Hello and welcome to the 19 Entrepreneur Edition. I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. We’ve seen a lot of changes this year, to say the least.

Rochelle Reiter : [00:00:32] Brands and marketers have had to adapt and pivot to remain relevant to their audiences. One industry that has been hit really hard is the world of live events. Any brand that relied on attending trade shows for leads and networking was immediately faced with the figurative faucet running dry. If you know people in the live event industry, many have been laid off or furloughed. However, 60 percent of people in the event planning industry have actually transitioned to virtual events. One of these companies that has not only weathered the storm but has also thrived in this environment is clarity experiences. Today we have Brian Lagestee, CEO of Clarity Experiences. Welcome to The 19. We’re so excited to have you here.

Brian Lagestee: [00:01:14] Thanks, Rochelle! So great to be with you today and we’re looking forward to really talking about the business and how everything’s been going for us. So, thanks for having me.

Rochelle Reiter : [00:01:25] Well, tell me a little bit about Clarity Experiences and what you do.

Brian Lagestee: [00:01:29] Yeah so Clarity Experiences is a live event production company, and we’ve been doing events for many, many years all over North America, some overseas as well. Our primary customer is really live events where we do events and convention centers, hotels and different venues across all the major cities in the U.S. and Canada.

Rochelle Reiter : [00:01:47] As a leader in your organization, describe how Clarity Experiences has tangibly and emotionally adjusted to your business model in 2020.

Brian Lagestee: [00:01:55] Well, that’s an amazing situation that happened across the world in a lot of ways. You know, very difficult to get through. However, we had an amazing beginning of the year. January and February were just record months for us and our teams were doing such a fantastic job. And everything literally stopped for us on one day where we shut everything down.

Rochelle Reiter : Sure.

Brian Lagestee: And we had teams in all different cities doing all different kinds of work. And we just stopped. And it was it was a big challenge for us emotionally and everyone was like, “What’s going on?”

Rochelle Reiter : Right.

Brian Lagestee: Most of our, you know, executives and our team members felt like, OK, this is you know, we can do this a couple of weeks, couple months and no problem. We’re going to be good.

Rochelle Reiter : Right.

Brian Lagestee: So that was our general attitude in the beginning. And then when we realized it was going to be a more of a major hit to our industry and to our company, you know, we really had to go through some emotional changes and actually structural changes and we had to change our entire business model pretty much overnight. And it was a big struggle for us. But we learned a lot about ourselves, you know,

Company culture, brand story, brand experience, brand loyalty. Find out how emotional intelligence, or the ability to manage your emotions to better interact with others, is interconnected to all four and why it must be maintained over time in Part Two of The 19: Entrepreneur Edition with Lindon Crow.

 

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Recorded Intro:

This is The 19. In 19 minutes or less, game-changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset.

 

Hello and welcome back to The 19: Entrepreneur Edition! I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. In Part Two of our interview with Productive Learning President Lindon Crow, we’re discussing the connection between emotional intelligence, company culture and brand loyalty. Let’s pick back up where we left off!

 

HOST: Let’s talk about culture, you mentioned it a couple times, how can emotional intelligence affect culture?

LC: Well, like I said before, if – the culture is going to be defined by the mission of the organization, the purpose or the why behind the organization and the values of the organization, how we conduct ourselves. So that’s going to be the guiding principles and in order to achieve that we have to figure out how you and I work together and policies and procedures may not cover that, because we’re not going to talk about, “Yes, you need to turn this in to me by four, you can’t turn it in to me by five because I can’t get my job done,” that’s a policy and procedure. But how I interact with you. How I engage you to get the best out of you when I turn that thing in at four. That is going to be developing the culture because that has to do with the relationship dynamic that you and I have – the trust and the vulnerability that you and I share, and if we can do that and I can communicate that in a way that is clear and articulate to influence you to get the best out of you, that’s that intangible feeling you get when you walk into an organization and it feels good to be there. Versus you walk into some organization and it just feels dead inside.

HOST: Yeah.

LC: And that’s all the company’s culture, that the experience of dealing with the organization – whether from the outside in as a client or as somebody that’s contracted to them or as the employees when they walk into the organization, how they feel about themselves when they walk in. How they feel about their direct reports or the people that they work with – their peers or their subordinates. All of that is going to be the development of their culture and emotional intelligence is going to say, “Well if you can understand yourself then you can understand how to align with that company culture so that we are all rowing in that same direction.

HOST: In that same direction. Yes, that’s fascinating! So, do you believe organizations with high emotional intelligence have stronger brand loyalty?

LC:  Without a doubt, so go back to this feeling of culture. And if we can see the Domino effect of if you have high EQ within an organization – the individuals – therefore their culture is strong and if their culture is strong, they’re creating an experience that has healthy, engaging, interesting, happy…

HOST: Motivated.

LC: It’s motivating. It’s juicy, it feels good. So that’s the experience that the employees are having, but also those that are buying whatever product or service from that organization. So, they feel good about working with that company or dealing with that company. Like take Apple, right? They have a Genius Bar. Like how cool is that? They don’t have customer service; they have a Genius Bar. So, I feel cool walking in and going to a Genius bar and talking with a Genius about my iPhone.

HOST: Yeah.

LC: And then I feel even cooler because I walk into a sleek, sexy storeroom that everything is just really ...

Good leaders know how to manage a team. Great leaders know how to manage themselves – their own thoughts and emotions, to better manage others. In today’s episode of The 19: Entrepreneur Edition, we sit down with Productive Learning President Lindon Crow to discuss the value that this skill, known as emotional intelligence, can have on a team’s productivity, morale, conflict-resolution and communication. You can find part 2 of this podcast here.

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Recorded Intro:

This is The 19. In 19 minutes or less, game-changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset.

Hello and welcome back to The 19: Entrepreneur Edition! I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. We’re kicking off our first podcast of the new year with a two-part series on emotional intelligence. Listed by the World Economic Forum as a top job skill to have in 2020, emotional intelligence is about recognizing your own emotions to better manage interpersonal relationships. When used in business, this concept can create a better brand experience for companies and their customers. For over 20 years, personal development company Productive Learning has taught business leaders how to utilize emotional intelligence to create powerful cultures and brands. Here to tell us more about the relationship between emotional intelligence and the modern workplace is Productive Learning President, Lindon Crow. Lindon, welcome to The 19. We’re so excited to have you here today!

LC: Thank you, I’m excited to be here!

HOST: Awesome! Well, tell me a little about your career path and background.

LC: Sure, so if we go all the way back, I grew up I have two sisters and I have all female cousins. So growing up I started taking on a bit of the characteristic of an inquisitive person, a skeptical person wanting to understand why. And really, it was quite natural, right? I wanted to understand why all of these girls wanted to play house and tea, and didn’t want to play Frisbee and tag. I just didn’t get it.

Fast forward 20 years in college and I go into a psychology class and I realize, “Oh, that’s the mechanics of how the mind/body work. So that must be dictating how we make choices and decisions.” Now, I don’t think that I was thinking in college back to when I was young, but that kind of inquisitive nature as to why do people do what they do, I think that’s been with me for a long time. So, then I studied psychology, wanting to understand how the mechanics of the mind and body and emotions work. Also walked into a religious studies course, which I found fascinating because essentially that’s like the fuel that you put into the person – all the doctrines and dogma that they believe. So, now you’ve got the mechanics of the mind and the system, and you have the fuel that you put into the system and I found that kind of combination fascinating.

Fast forward a handful of years later, I walk into my first workshop and the workshop was with Productive Learning. Instead of talking about the world out there and how they function and what they believe about what’s going on in their system, they said, why don’t you look at yourself and try to figure you out? And that’s where I said, “Oh, woah, I don’t know that world at all.” So, that had me hooked. That was about 2010. So I started with Productive Learning in 2010.

HOST: Explain the value that Productive Learning provides to the corporate environment.

LC: Sure, so all of our work has a foundation in emotional intelligence. So, we’ll do workshops and seminars, or coaching, with executives. It could be departmental; it could be with the entire company and really what we’re doing is helping the individual understand themselves better as a system.

Author, speaker and business coach Patty Vogan dove into her dreams, quite literally, when she moved to the Kingdom of Tonga to open her own scuba diving business. An experience she wouldn’t trade for the world, Patty returned to the United States after seven successful years with lessons on business, culture and personal resilience that she shares with us on this episode of The 19: Entrepreneur Edition.

 

MUSIC Intro

Recorded Intro:

This is The 19. In 19 minutes or less, game-changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset.

Host Intro:

Hi, I’m Rochelle Reiter, president of Orange Label. After three inspirational installments in The 19: Entrepreneur series, we’re excited to discuss expert leadership insights with author, speaker and Victory Coaching International founder Patty Vogan. As chair of Vistage International’s CEO advisory board, Patty specializes in out of the box thinking to help CEOs, executives, and teams accelerate their growth and effectiveness. With strong beliefs in the power of possibility thinking and serving the community, Patty’s desire to help leaders reach their goals started with accomplishing her own childhood dream of opening a scuba diving and whale watching business in Tonga. Here to share her life experiences and leadership knowledge with us today is Patty Vogan.

Rochelle: Patty, welcome to The 19, we’re so happy to have you.

Patty: Thanks, Rochelle. I’m happy to be here.

Rochelle: So Patty, tell us a little bit about your background and please don’t leave out anything about your adventure in Tonga.

Patty: Well, I’ve been a business coach for about 17 years, and a Vistage Chair and speaker for 14. And I’ve actually been speaking since I was 14 years old. It was Mrs. Stathis, it was her fault. She was my speech teacher.

Rochelle: Oh my gosh.

Patty: She made me compete at 14 and I said, “I don’t do that, that’s what the nerdy kids do.” And she said “you’re doing it.” So somehow or another I’ve been speaking, I think, my whole life.

Rochelle: So did you feel like you were a natural when you were little?

Patty: No, I didn’t at all. But she seemed to have seen something in me, and kinda kicked me, and put me out there.

Rochelle: It’s cool to have people see things in you and challenge you.

Patty: Yeah. I think I’ve learned the most, though, from my adventures in Tonga. I didn’t want to be 90 years old and doing the, “I wish I woulda, shoulda, coulda dance.” And it was a dream of mine to have a scuba diving business in the tropics since I was about 14. So I left my fast-paced Orange County life. I put my life in a 20×20 container, and I moved to the South Pacific Islands, the Kingdom of Tonga. I started a business in a third-world country. And, you know, when people who live on Hawaii say that they get island fever, I must tell you I laugh. They don’t know what rock fever is until you go out into the middle of the South Pacific where there are only a few people.

Rochelle: How long were you there?

Patty: I lived there for seven years, and I started the business ground-floor up. I laid the cement slabs myself.

Rochelle: Wow.

Patty: And I started the scuba diving business, then went to whale watching, and then sport fishing. And it was, I tell you, just so incredible. If you offered me, Rochelle, five million dollars right now and said, “You cannot have that experience, but I’ll give you $5 million,” I wouldn’t take it.

Rochelle: Why?

Patty: I wouldn’t take it because the things I learned about culture, you can’t learn anywhere else. The things I learned about business and personal resilience I learned because of the experiences I had there. I’ve been in the water with baby humpback whales, I’ve been the first person to go into some of these underwater caves,