The Business of Business Podcast

Rock Your Presentation! Develop Unique Slide Decks That Support Your Message Featuring Michael Gibson

Does speaking in public make you nervous? If so, you certainly aren't alone. We all have a little be of trepidation prior to the presentation. One theory is that if you are prepared and know your material you can mitigate some of that anxiety. Part of that preparation is developing an awesome slide deck to support your story, not tell it.

About Michael 

Hello! My name is Mike. I am a husband, father, friend, author, trainer, facilitator and presenter.

It is an honor to help people deliver Big Presentations in Small Rooms.  When these presentations are given, it is a breath of fresh air!

Workplace presentations can be a beat down for everyone involved.  Unwanted work for the presenter.  Unwanted time loss for the audience.  Unwanted stress and frustration for everyone. 

You don’t want this!

Thankfully, there is hope.  Presenters can deliver helpful and time-efficient information.  They can overcome the fear of speaking and become comfortable being up front.  Audience members benefit from the informative presentations and don’t feel like they are wasting time!

You can become the person whom people are relieved to see.  Because you developed the skill of giving big presentations in small rooms, people trust you and can hear what you have to say.  They will see you walk in and think, “Oh good.  I was hoping it would be you!”

This public speaking ability is within reach.  You can do it!  I can help!

More about Michael

Mike Gibson is a facilitator and instructional designer. He develops and presents materials for live classes and online classes.  Mike has been writing and teaching for twenty-five years. Mike has facilitated training across multiple organizational levels in corporations, municipalities, and non-profits.  He has led over 800 live classes, and his online classes have reached thousands of employees.  Mike has trained trainers and speakers for municipalities across Texas. Mike lives with his wife in Fort Worth, TX.  The four kids are now adults!  Mike’s free time is invested in family adventures and volunteer opportunities. Mike is the author of the book Big Presentations in Small Rooms. He wrote this book out of a desire to help others develop the ability to give awesome presentations that are beneficial to both the presenter and the audience. In addition to his book, Mike is also available to provide speeches and live classes for your organization. Contact me for more information.

SPEECHES FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION:

3 Tips For Delivering Online Presentations

3 Tips For Speaking Without Fear

3 Tips For Developing Just-In-Time Presentations

3 Ways To Make Meetings More Effective

CLASSES FOR YOU AND YOUR ORGANIZATION:

How To Deliver Big Presentations In Small Rooms

How To Deliver Big Presentations In Virtual Rooms (Online Presentations)

How To Make Meetings More Effective

Mike Gibson’s experience spans multiple fields connected by a few common threads.  He spent years in ministry, public school teaching, non-profit programming, professional development training, and instructional design.  The common threads are encouragement, communication, and development.

Mike’s work guides thousands of people across multiple settings.  He helps organizations improve workplace culture and then improve the performance within that culture.  Mike’s curriculum and teaching is used by a variety of live trainers and is featured in online learning libraries.

Mike’s book Big Presentation in Small Rooms will be available in 2021.

www.bigpresentations.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

 

Full Transcript Below

Rock Your Presentation! Develop Unique Slide Decks That Support Your Message Featuring Michael Gibson

Sat, 7/10 10:06AM • 1:12:41

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

presentation, image, people, audience, question, slide, creates, presenter, slide deck, read, handout, message, screen, information, talk, visuals, big, picture, font, presenting

SPEAKERS

Mike, Roy Barker

 

Roy Barker  00:00

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. I'm your host, Roy, of course, we are the podcast that brings you a wide variety of guests that speak to a diverse set of topics, trying to help, maybe shine the light on some things that we may not know, that can help our business. But then also maybe trying to bring some help to build things that keep us up at night where we can, you know, be a little bit more successful, have a little bit more time for ourselves. Today, we're lucky to have Mike Gibson, he is a facilitator and instruction instructional designer. He develops and presents materials for live classes and online classes. He has been writing and teaching for 25 years and has facilitated training across multiple organizational levels, in corporations, municipalities and not for profits. And that is probably I will speak I'm not going to speak for him. But say that's probably the impetus for writing his latest book, Big Presentations In Small Rooms, Know Your Audience, Know Your Message and Make the Connection. And just Just so you know, I do have a copy for myself. I've been looking through this. My first off, welcome to the show.

 

Mike  01:18

Oh, thanks, man. It is so good to be here. It's great to connect with you. And also to connect with your audience. I look forward to being able to share some helpful information today.

 

Roy Barker  01:27

Yeah. And the other cool thing is, Mike is just across town, we actually both live in Fort Worth, Texas. So that's pretty cool. You don't i don't run into. I've got guests from all over the world. But I think you may be the first from from Fort Worth here. So that's awesome. Yes. Well, that's probably a little bit of your story. But I'm just I'm telling you, we had a little pre show discussion. And we've had a couple of talks before. And, you know, I'm really excited about this. There's a lot of things to talk about. But before we do that, you know, talk a little bit about how you got into this, you know, the instructional design and focusing on presentations, and then also a little bit, you know, really, what spurred you to write the book. Okay, good, good. Yes. Well,

 

Mike  02:13

I have been teaching all of my adult life. And part of the way that I am wired, leads me to look at whatever I'm given in terms of materials, and immediately ask, how could this be better. And of course, you know, I'm wired to present in a specific way. And I want to stay true to my personality and my approach, and not all curricula is created to suit me. So I got into instructional design simply because I wanted to present material that matched my priorities, but also match the way that I like to teach. So I have never been one just to be a plug and play type person, life might be easier for me if I were more. Right. But I love to take things and make them better. Well, thankfully, that became a recognized as a talent. And so organizations I would work with would say, would you do for other curriculum sets? What you did for this one? So that was the beginning of my experience with instructional design was just doing what I would naturally do to prepare for a presentation, and then do that really, for other facilitators and teachers, as well. Okay. Well,

 

Roy Barker  03:44

you know, it's, I think it's been highlighted the last year, of course, with zoom meetings, it's like, everything's been on a deck. And you know, we've just, it's like presentation after presentation, which I, personally, I like it, I'm, I don't I'm not zoom fatigue, or I like being on it, I think, because I can have more concise meetings, get the points across with some, you know, with some in times, whereas sometimes when you meet in person, things linger, get out of control. But so anyway, but I think it's really shed a light on, you know, the presentation and process. So I think, a timely guest to have you on because I feel like we're going to continue to do more and more of this. It's not, I don't think we'll ever go back to where we were, we may not be doing as much but I still think the need for it. And just that even if you're in person that Chris. Clear, decisive messaging. Yes, I

 

Mike  04:43

think that's good. And it will be interesting to see in years to come, how this experience shapes the live experience and makes it even better specifically regarding what the audience is seeing on a screen. So I think you're onto something good. Yeah, it's Good to take a a learner's mindset to be always thinking, what is this teaching me that I could use another settings as well. And I think you're right, I think presentations will hopefully become better because of this need to make them better for this virtual zoom meeting type, type environment. So I'm excited today to talk about that to talk about slide development and things that we can do that will make that visual element of our presentation even better.

 

Roy Barker  05:32

Yeah, and I think the, you know, the three caveats that you have on on the cover of the book that know your audience, know your message, and make the connection. And don't think you really could have been much more concise about that. Because those are the, you know, those are the three keys, I mean, we have to know what we're presenting, and there's nothing worse than being in a presentation where the, you know, the speakers fumbling through because, you know, they just didn't know what you know, or they didn't do research to get to where they need to be. And then also the audience is important, and then make that connection. I mean, it's so important to connect with the audience, because, you know, you look around a lot of times, and it's, I don't notice it as much on zoom. But you know, and when you're in live meetings, like people be that can see if they Polish their shoes this morning, or if they got same colored shoes on or, you know, the is this, your mind can wander if you don't enjoy or if you're not engaged. So let's start at the beginning, if you don't mind, we're gonna go way back. Because this morning, as I was drinking my coffee, thinking about this interview, I got taken back to not that long ago, in my lifetime, where we had transparencies, and you actually, for those that don't know, it's like a piece of it's a hard piece of plastic, kind of like almost a piece of paper, but you wrote on it, put it on this overhead projector that were illuminated on the wall. And, you know, it's like, it was difficult, because he had if you decide if you had 10, transparencies, and you decided to reshift some information, guess what, you got to start all over again. And so then we you know, I guess I feel like we kind of came into the, the PowerPoint world. And then it was about the G Wiz and all the gimmicks that you could make text fly in and blind away. And just, I mean, you could spend hours and hours, just the trickery of it all. And then, you know, and then we kind of moved into this, oh, my gosh, you know, I'm tired of all that. Let's just get to the black and white of, you know, words in black, white background, get your message across. And I know that the reality is, there's somewhere in the middle there to be engaging, you know, and to get your message. So let's, where I'm gonna let you pick a point where you want to start with all that. Okay,

 

Mike  08:00

well, let's, let's start at this foundational level that that you've already alluded to, that the purpose of the presentation, is to reflect the fact that you know, your stuff, right, I know your audience, and you're determined to make that connection. So your presentation should support those goals that should support your message. The and when I say presentation, you know, I'm thinking in terms of your message. So your slide deck, maybe we should make sure we have our terminology clear, your slide deck should be to support your message, your slide deck should not be your message. So if someone could read through your slide deck and know everything that you're going to say, you've created a redundancy,

 

Roy Barker  08:53

right? So do you need to be there our days are slide deck need to be working. We could have just emailed that to you. And you could read that in your spare time.

 

Mike  09:01

Yes. And that is that is a common source of frustration in in the business world is I had to come to this meeting, and sit and listen to the presenter read their slide deck to me, right? I could have read it a lot faster on my own, and got on about my business. So it's, it's not to be your presentation. Another way we could say that is your slide deck is not to be your script, right? You should not be reading your presentation to the audience. Your slide deck should not be your handout. If you have a handout containing a lot of detailed information, let it be just that right PDF that you send out or print out on paper that you have to give to them. But protect, protect that slide deck so that it can function truly as a support for your message. So it makes perfect sense given what you're going to say. But it should not be To stand alone, without you even being there, right?

 

Roy Barker  10:04

Yeah, nothing. I was just thinking. So, you know, what are some of our messages, I mean, most of the time where you're trying to, we're trying to sell somebody on something, it's like, we're either trying to sell our product or our service to you as my prospect. We're trying to sell an idea to maybe upper management or to our team. You know, I guess there are times that we, you know, maybe we report on the state of affairs, where it's more just like, you know, here's what's happening. And then we also think about like, results, if we, if we did sell you, if I did sell you a project, as the worker then is like, now I'm reporting on, you know, how this is going. So, you know, I guess we kind of have to start with, you know, what is our message that we really want? You know, I guess not the actual words or context of the message, but what is the overall thing I need to get you to start buying into what I'm telling you,

 

Mike  10:59

right, that's good, have that goal in mind, what is the what's the purpose of my message, and then make sure that your slide deck is supporting that purpose. So if it is informational, then it's going to make more sense that there will be more data involved in that presentation. However, that does not mean that all the data needs to be on the same slide, right? Or all the data 100% of it has to be on screen, there might be some of it that can be given in a different format, format, digitally or on on paper. So we're making sure that what we provide for the audience is going to best meet their need, where they have the information that they need to understand the current situation or to make a decision regarding what will be the future situation. So I think you're you're wise and pointing out there are these different reasons for presentations. Yeah. So this isn't a one size fits all approach, and need to make sure that what you're doing meets the audience needs. Yeah. However, there are a few guidelines that we can follow, that will that will help us meet a wide variety of needs. Right? Right. So for example, the size of the text on the screen. That's an important thing. in, in, in my world, I, in the big presentations and small rooms, that I have delivered and trainings that I've delivered, I've discovered that a general rule is to not have a font size smaller than 28. And usually, the upper end was around 44. But that could the upper end can expand depending on what the need is, right. So if you really want to emphasize something you could have larger than he could have a 76 size font, if it helps you meet the needs of the audience, right. But I would say that that same thing is not going to hold true on the other end of the spectrum, if you get much below 28, then you're losing effectiveness probably in two ways. One way you're losing effectiveness is that people are distracted because they're having to squint. Or you see them pulling out their glasses, or you know, they're just having trouble physically reading the information that's there. That's one way. Another thing you may be running into is if you're getting much below 28. You have to ask yourself why? Why am I tempted to use such a small font size? It might be that you have too much text on your screen, and

 

Roy Barker  13:37

very much on the page I've done. Know that yeah.

 

Mike  13:42

So general rules like that can help you also, another general rule is to think like if you're if you are creating your slide deck on a laptop, think about how big your screen is, is it a 717 inch screen a 21 eight inch screen, create your slide, put it up full screen and step back from your laptop, the number of feet that your laptop is wide or big. So for example, you got a 17 inch screen, step back 17 feet from your screen, see if you can read it. Okay, so then you're probably going to be okay, that probably what you'll find is that 28 to 44 size font will come into play with that. Now that that tip about stepping away from the screen, the number of feet that your screen is in inches is from a a resource by Nancy Duarte called slide ology, which is I mean, this is like my Bible first slide design. She has another book more about visual storytelling called resonate, and then came out with a third book that's kind of a combination of the two. So if you want both, and I'd look for that because hvR produced that It's a combination of the two. Okay, great, great resource. So Nancy Duarte, if you search her maze, she's got tons of material out there. That's her. That's her specialty is visuals for presentations. And she's the one who talked about backup from the screen, see if you can still read it. So you want your text, that's a big general rule you want your text to be readable from wherever the audience is going to be. Yeah, there have been times when, if it were a larger room than where I was used to, as soon as I got the projection up, I would go to the very back of the room, make sure that I could read it. Yeah,

 

Roy Barker  15:37

that's a good point that I don't hear it as much as I used to. But I would always go check out the room, if possible. Because, you know, to me, it matters if you're presenting in a broom closet, versus an auditorium with 100 people. And not only, I think, not only for the size and the visuals, but you know, it also kind of got me prepared because there's nothing worse than, well, it works both ways. You show up for presentation and you're thinking 100 people in there's three or you show up thinking there's three and there's 100 right. So it to me, it's uh, you know, I guess it's just part of my getting ready for it. It's always good.

 

Mike  16:17

Yeah, that's good. And most of the time, those things are fairly easy to check out. Now. You know, what, what's the room going to be? Like? Do I have access to the room ahead of time? How many people do we think are going to be there? And even if it's, even if there is a sense of continuity, like you've done this kind of, you've done a presentation here for this company, or maybe it's your own workplace, you know, we're presentation, they happen in the meeting room, right? Being able to confirm that that's where it's going to happen this time might be helpful, because it might be that that meeting room was booked. And they have to move you to a much bigger or a much smaller room. Just because scheduling.

 

Roy Barker  16:49

Yeah, we'll say not only we won't, we'll take presentations off the table and just say that it will help to show up in the right place. Don't be standing outside the wrong conference during DOJ. Get in and find out. Oh, yeah. When we move that three floors.

 

Mike  17:05

Right. Well, I've had that happen. Because the the organization that I was doing training for, sent me to the wrong room.

 

Roy Barker  17:15

Oh my god.

 

Mike  17:16

So I'm in there, I have my stuff set up and wondering why no one's showing up, and then make a few quick phone calls and realize there's 20 people waiting for me, three floors up?

 

Roy Barker  17:29

I don't know for me, that's just the very worst, because now you kind of get all you know, you get all nervous, not nervous, but you just you know, you're in a hurry. You rush like things just in the go bad from there.

 

Mike  17:40

Wow. Yeah, you have to take such a humble approach to things like that, because Because for me, it was the people who hired me that sent me to the wrong place, right. So I, I'm not gonna throw them under my bus, under the bus, they hired me, I want to honor them. Which means I kind of have to take the blame for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Right? Even though that's where I was sent. And try to be as humble and positive and move forward as quickly as possible in situations like that. So listeners made if you have something like that happen, make sure you're protecting those, even those who may have sent you to the wrong place, because you want to guard that relationship. Because you're gonna have to work with them. Or maybe they are maybe they are your true customer in that situation.

 

Roy Barker  18:26

Exactly. Yeah. So no, I didn't mean to get off topic and interrupt if you want if you had some more, you know, General points that you wanted to cover after the screen and stepping back. Sorry, didn't

 

18:37

mean Yeah, no, no, that was that

 

Mike  18:39

was a fun. That was a fun tangent with a good story behind it. So we've got text is something to keep in mind, make sure that text is visible. Of course, many times images can be helpful, yes. But we want to be careful with those images. It's good if you can have a simple and powerful image that helps support your idea. So whatever's on the screen behind you should make perfect sense, given what you're saying. They shouldn't be wondering why it doesn't seem to match what he's saying and what's on the screen. It should flow together. easily. Yeah. So if if you're talking about taking on a challenge, and you have a mountain climber on the scene behind you, that makes sense, because we're talking about taking on a challenge. So you want to make sure that those things work together. There was a time we're getting away from the sun, but there was a time when we would make the image smaller than it needed to be. Because then we would make the point of the image and text instead of just relying on the image to communicate on its own, which it should be able to do, right. And if it's supporting your message, you should be the one making the connection verbally. Right? Not having them read that connection off of the screen. You know,

 

Roy Barker  19:57

and I was gonna ask you, I've seen some press tations more geared towards, you know, we'll talk probably a little bit more about this in depth in a minute. But, you know, the old rule, I guess was, you know, about five bullet points that you could read, no write sentences out, but they should be more captions. And then I've seen where some are, like you said, it's just a slide with a picture. And then you just wrap words around the picture. You know, I guess that's easier if you're telling the story or trying to sell but if, you know, if it's data Laden, where you have to have numbers, there's not much way you can get around that. But the other thing is, so about personalizing images, if you can, I don't know, man, I'll put this as a question. But like, when I talk about blogging, you know, we always say I always say, it's always better if you can personalize it with the picture of you make it, it helps the your people, audience prospects, who ever connect with you. If if you're a dog lover, and you like to go out in the trails, and you know, a cool picture of you and your dog in the trails, if it matches the story is good. And so how is that like if I'm pitching a new product? And, you know, maybe I've got Joe, Mike's that product, and I got a picture of him holding the prototype versus some stock image off of you know, wherever?

 

Mike  21:25

Yes, yes. Good. Good observation there. Good question. Yeah. It goes back to knowing your message, knowing your audience and making the connection, does that image help those things happen? And it might be that having you know, the person who designed the product, in the image with the product, especially if it's something that's in house, look what we did, right. And it also shines a spotlight on the person, the developer of this product, kind of setting him up to be able to be like the hero of this part of the story. That's a good thing. images that involve ourselves, I think, I think we need to be careful with because we don't want the audience to think that we're trying to make this message about us. Right? Right, we want the message to the goal of the message to stay forefront in our minds, right. And so all images should help lead toward that. So if an image that involves us helps to lead toward that, that's fine. But make sure you are in no way creating an impression, even if it's a false impression that you're trying to make this all about you. Right, good people will become cynical, pretty quickly. And not want to listen to listen to you as much. Yeah.

 

Roy Barker  22:47

Right. So when we're on images, what about videos, they, you know, when YouTube came up, that became a big thing, but then all of a sudden, it was like, turn to make them work. It became, you know, even though the best laid plans, I tested this at home, and then he got up in front of everybody and an internet connection is bad, or the video doesn't play or, you know, still, what about Yes, yes.

 

Mike  23:11

So two, two observations about video usage. One is, anytime a new form of of communication becomes easily accessible, it's easy for it to be abused. Kinda like we were talking about earlier, when, when PowerPoint first came into being and there's all these different bells and whistles attached to it, people felt the need to use them all even though they weren't, they were more of a distraction than a help. A similar thing can happen with with video. So we want to keep that high standard, does the video support the message? The second thing is that if you're going to use a video, download it to your hard drive, do not do not rely on any kind of internet connection to be able to share it with your audience. Because you're I mean, that's something you don't have total control up.

 

Roy Barker  24:07

Right,

 

Mike  24:08

right. So whenever I'm using a video, I always figure out a way to have it on my hard drive and figure out a way to have it. So all I have to do is click Next on my clicker or you know, a presentation remote, and it plays so we want it to be as seamless as possible. Unfortunately, some presenters distract from their message because they get to the video and they're like, Oh, I got to go walk around behind my laptop and, you know, move the mouse around the screen to hit play. When it's not that much effort to just make it the next animation. You click it, it plays. Yeah, you're good to go.

 

Roy Barker  24:45

And you bring up a good point. It's like everything numbers. Every time you talk about something you bring up another good point. We're gonna we'll get back to the overview here in a little bit, I promise but you bring up a clicker, and you know, I've got one that's no good. probably cost 1015 bucks years ago, it's reasonably priced. But I like to, to walk around depending on the, you know, if you're in front of like a, what, like more of a theater where people are setting and looking at you, it's loose, you can move side to side a little bit more. But if it's a conference room, you know, I kind of like to walk around as I'm talking and click, because in I guess there's a happy medium, because sometimes you see people standing up at the front, and it's, you know, down pushing buttons, and I don't, to me, it's not engaging, even though their message, it's distracting. And I don't feel like they're, they're engaging with me. So what's the, you know, what do you think about that about the roving around the clickers versus standing at the front of the room? You know, head down, punching some buttons?

 

Mike  25:51

Yes, yes. I think the, the key of what you're talking about here is, is engagement, you want to be connecting with the audience, right? And anything that comes between you and the audience can function as a barrier, whether that's your laptop on a stand, or you know, in some places, they may even have a big old podium, right, where all the audience can see is, is from your shoulders up, right? It's a massive visual barrier. So I, I like to my preference, is to move away from those barriers as much as possible, okay. And if I need to reference my screen, then I try to have it set in a way where I don't have to be behind it to see it, right. Like, I may have it set, setting at an angle, where all I have to do is look to my diagonally to my left, to glance at it, and then keep presenting. And, you know, for some people, the business presentations they are having to deliver, were by necessity, created in a short amount of time, simply because the flow of the business things are moving so fast, we need this information. And some of it may be data heavy. So they are having to refer to information, right, it's just the reality that they're dealing with, I would encourage them to make the most of the presenter notes, part of their program, and have their information there, and then have that their laptop set up in a way that it can function as a monitor. So all they have to do is glance over at it, to see the next section of information that they need to share with their audience. And try try to avoid standing behind it and just reading from those from those notes as much as possible. As much as possible, you want to do that, given the reality that you have to deal with. Try to be as engaging as possible, given the information and how much you have to visually access it in order to stay accurate, because something some things that are number heavy, you do not want to say the wrong numbers, right? You're having to be very careful with that. So it might be that you're even telling the audience, I want to make sure that that every number I tell you is accurate. So you'll see me referring to this information, because I want to make sure that it is presented accurately. And and they'll they'll understand that.

 

Roy Barker  28:23

Yeah, and I think that's another good point you bring up about, you know, the open and honesty with the audience, things like that. It doesn't hurt. It's, there's no, there's no magic behind this. Everybody knows how to do it and just saying, hey, look, maybe some fresh numbers are coming in, you know, came in last night or this morning that I'm gonna have to refer to this and you know, it. I think it just lets people know, the reason why not that you're not prepared. But there's just some other stuff going on. And, you know, it's kind of like myself, I'd take notes as we go through this. And, you know, I always tell guests, I don't think we talked about but I usually tell guests Look, I'm not texted in my lunch order. You know, while I'm doing this, I'm actually taking notes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, cuz I, you know, I definitely learned a lot off of this. So anyway, a lot of great information. You want to go back to your to your overview point, I didn't mean to interrupt you. He just talked about a couple of things I thought were very pertinent there.

 

Mike  29:23

One more thing to add there. If you're having to access information to share with the audience, another way that you can create an engagement with them is to be accessing things from a different source. So if you have some information that you're accessing on the screen and your presenter notes, you may have other information in print. So you can say, hey, I want to share this with you. And just your act of picking this thing up and accessing the information in a different way. Yeah, it's something that helps hold the audience interest because oh, okay, so he's going to it's just a simple thing. But it's it's movement and action and you accessing information in a different way. And there's something about reading something from paper, that is a different vibe than reading something from a screen, right? So you can take advantage of that difference as you as you connect with, with your audience.

 

Roy Barker  30:17

Well, that leads then leads to another thing is handouts are no handouts.

 

Mike  30:22

It depends on the situation, if you need to share a lot of data, but you want to be providing them an overview of that data first, then have the data and have that information in a handout. Okay, and let them know, hey, I've got all the details that I'm referring to that I'm given an overview of, I've got this in a handout, I'll be given that to you here in a second. The way I would prefer to do it, you can't always get away with this. But the way I would prefer to do it is to have their attention on me for the overview, because you know what's going to happen if you give them the handout? Exactly. And I would tend to do the same thing, you give me a handout, I'm in it, you know, I'm reading it, especially if it's if it's a, you know, a high risk situation, or high potential situate, I'm excited about it, I'm going to access that handout, and I'm not going to hear a word, they're saying,

 

Roy Barker  31:10

anxiety, I'm

 

Mike  31:10

reading this stuff. So if you want the best focus, then keep their focus on you in a way that's not obnoxious. Because if you hand them the handout, and then say, Hey, don't look at that handout that doesn't come across too well. When you say, hey, I want to give you some information. And I'll be providing more details for you. That's a very natural thing, you're not handing them something and then kind of taking it away from him again, by saying Don't, don't read this stuff. So there are things that you could do that help keep the audience focus where you need it to be while also making sure they have the information that they need. Okay.

 

Roy Barker  31:45

Which also, I'm going to wear you out with all these questions before we get back to the the overview, but it's like, you know, a lot of good stuff, I have to admit, I would be in present presentation, jail for life sentence with all the mistakes that I've made over the years, you know, doing this. That's why I have so many questions, because I've done all this that we know.

 

Mike  32:07

We're not making the same mistakes over and over again, we're continually making progress. Right, exactly. And a lot of this stuff is lessons, I've had to learn the hard way, and then discover that people had written about it. Afterwards, I wish I'd have done more research on the beginning in myself to avoid some of the mistakes that I've made over over the years.

 

Roy Barker  32:25

So let's talk about questions on both sides. Number one, we can all talk about injecting questions to the audience. But then the other part of this is do we feel questions? I guess a lot of it depends on the size, the length and all of that, but the intimacy, but is it better to feel questions as we go? Or is it better to say, Hey, why don't you get a piece of paper, write down all your questions, we'll talk about them at the end.

 

Mike  32:55

Some of that is a function of size, the smaller the group, the more naturally conversational something can be. What what I like to do is to present in a way that allows for questions along the way, but not at any at any time. Okay. And I don't state that. So occasionally, I will have someone who raises their hand and ask a question. And most the time, I'll just answer it right, then because that's the easiest way to get back on track is provide that information then and then move on. Every once in a while. There'll be a question. That's a good it's a good question. But it's concerning content that's coming in about five minutes, right? Even then use some wisdom. Yeah, because you don't want to create a sense of frustration. But you also don't want to steal too much of the thunder of what's coming in, in five minutes. So you kind of have to make a judgment call there. Some of it can be guided simply by the type of presence that you bring into the situation. So I usually don't have a lot of questions midstream. But I usually do at intervals, say, Alright, so we talked about this, this and this Any questions about that content before we move forward? And then allow 1015 seconds of silence or so which seems like forever, right? But it's really not that long. And sometimes, well, quite often, I have to count it off slowly in my mind, when that was one of those to make sure I'm providing that space for them to think about whether they have a question, and then to ask it if they do. Because what you'll see happen a lot with presenters is because time passes differently in their mind. What happens to the audience is the presenter says,

 

Roy Barker  34:43

Hey, anybody got any questions? Good.

 

Mike  34:45

Okay, let's keep moving. What in their mind, they allowed 10 seconds, but in reality, it was more like a second and a half read. And that creates a sense of frustration from the audience because they're like, I didn't even get to think about whether I had a question or not. Yeah. So hopefully that's that's how

 

Roy Barker  35:00

Yeah, no, no, I think that's pretty much kind of my general guidelines. If I'm doing like four or five people, I usually say in the beginning, you know, stop me, and let's have questions as we go. So we don't, you know, don't want you to forget, I don't want you to get frustrated. But you know, if we got 2025 people, you know, my instructions at the beginning are usually, Hey, get a piece of paper, you're gonna have questions, probably write them down. If I don't answer them, you know, in the, as this presentation goes further than, you know, we can talk about them at the end. So I just think it's nice to kind of set that set that up from the beginning, especially if you're going to ask them to take notes and hold them to the end, at least they're prepared and they're not, they don't get frustrated, like, hey, this guy, we're gonna be quiet long enough to get this question in here.

 

Mike  35:48

Yeah, that's true. And, you know, so much does depend on the purpose of your message. So some of what you're talking about, would, would tend to be more applicable, if we're in a teaching type, right? Setting a lot of business presentations, they're providing an update, or they're asking for permission to go in a certain direction, which is kind of a sales type of approach to presenting information, or they may be directly selling a product to an organization. And in those cases, the audience has a lot more power. Yeah. And so it'd be more natural for someone to maybe even interrupt and say, Hey, what about this, I need to clarify this before we move on. It's a different dynamic, right. And of course, in some high pressure, very time pressured situations, a presenter may realize pretty quickly that they're going to go into this presentation, realizing that what was supposed to have been allowed allowed seven minutes, is cut off at two, because someone in the audience who has the authority says, That's enough. We need to move on our God, we got what we need, and then your other five minutes is just gone. Right. And as soon as you know that, that might be the situation, then you realize you need to Front Load your presentation with the most important information there, right, just in case you end up getting cut off. So a lot of this thought about questions and when they happen is going to be somewhat determined by the nature of the presentation, and therefore the nature of the audience and how much they feel empowered, which if they're all your bosses, they feel pretty empowered to jump in and ask a question or or interrupt the process entirely.

 

Roy Barker  37:47

Right. Right. So on the flip side of that, what about asking audience questions? And you know, again, I'm sure it's situational. But is that opening up? That opening up the place? We don't want to go? Is it good practice to try to keep that engagement? What are your feelings on that? Oh,

 

Mike  38:08

careful and be willing to learn from your experience? careful what you ask for. I mean, there are times when you can see in a presenters eyes, they asked a question, people started answering it, and then they're wishing they would have never asked that question. But they did. And now they have to deal with all the all of the emotions or frustrations or even just the sheer amount of information that's coming at them because of the question that they that they answered. So some of that is going to be determined by how well you know, your audience. And what the purpose of that question is. In a training setting. It's a whole different world to ask a question that gets them thinking along a certain lines, or maybe even having them with two or three people around them discuss the answer to a question, and then see how all the different groups are addressing that question, which gives you a trainer an idea of, of where they're coming from, and can guide your approach to that to that topic. So yeah, be Be careful questions can be powerful, but questions can also get you in trouble pretty pretty quickly. Yeah,

 

Roy Barker  39:17

I think that's a good distinction in the training or instructional environment, probably not as detrimental as if you're doing a sales presentation. And have you ever seen anything like this? Like, yeah, we got one and we got a lot cheaper than this. Oh, okay. Yep. Right. And that's when you go from seven minutes. Thank you. We've heard enough.

 

Mike  39:40

Yes, right. Yeah. Be careful. Be careful with the questions that that you that you ask. That's good. Yeah, like that.

 

Roy Barker  39:49

Like that. Alright, I'm sorry, I interrupted you 25 times and now we were talking about stepping back from the screen. What are some other good overview tips?

 

Mike  40:00

So let's talk about transitions. Okay, between slides. That's another area where early on people would just go crazy. Oh my god with the transitions just because they could like, Oh, look at this man, I can make the whole thing swirl and ripple and explode. And, and we did a different one between every slide just tell you that I saw that button on there. Right? Ah, it what's what's good about a lot of the content that we're talking about today is that the guidelines we're sharing make life easier for you. Right? So we're gonna say, How big is a? How big is a font? Well, if you stay between the 28 and 44 size font, you're probably going to be okay. Right? And with transitions, if you use either a simple crossfade or, or no transition at all, right? It Be consistent with the transitions that you use, then that makes life easier for you. Because you can, most presentation software, you can go over into your thumbnails of the slides, hit Ctrl A and apply no transition to everything. And you're done. Right? You're not having to worry about well, you know, how many times have I used the swirl transition as a time?

 

41:18

No, you don't have to use it at all right? Right general

 

41:21

rule you get, you'll

 

Mike  41:22

be okay, using either a simple crossfade or no transition at all, that makes life easier for you. And it's actually more effective because people aren't distracted by the transition.

 

Roy Barker  41:34

Right. And it's just one more thing, in my opinion to while you know, it can be cool and useful. It's just one more thing that can go wrong. Right. And that kind of leads into my next question is, what about transition between bullet points? Because at one time, there was a thank you and I got five bullet points. We put up number one we discussed, then we you know, do the hit the button and what it does, it makes number two kind of fall in some way. Good. Is that good bad is that that's good.

 

Mike  42:09

I would say that's good. I would say that the same rule applies here. You want it to be simple. You don't want all the letters tumbling in one at a time. If they just if the whole whatever the next line is next bullet is appears all at once. Okay, or fades in quickly?

 

Roy Barker  42:22

Yeah,

 

Mike  42:24

that's because that's not a distraction to the message, you want to keep the focus on the message itself. And there is value in revealing what the next point is, as you say it? Yeah. Because like providing the handout to everybody. Yeah, if you put the entire however much information you have on the screen up there all at once. They're gonna read it a lot faster than you can address it. Yeah. Uh, two things happen there. One is, while they're reading it, they're not listening to you. Because they have to choose Am I going to read what's on the slide? Or am I gonna listen to you? Well, if it's, if it's, if it's just a simple concept with not many words, they can glance at that and get back to you no problem at all. Yeah. But if you put multiple bullets up there all at once, they're going to read through it. And not only do they know where you're at right now they know where you're supposed to be. And then there may be even a sense of impatient like, when are you going to get to that red bullet there? You've been on this first bullet for 10 minutes. Now what? And so it creates a distraction.

 

Roy Barker  43:33

For the for the audience. Yeah. And I've even seen, where the fourth, the fourth point, really hit somebody hard. And so instead of listening to one, two, and three, they're frothing at the mouth, they're, they're waiting for you to get to four, because they're gonna jump, you know, they're gonna jump in there and say something. So they've totally missed anything that you said prior to that,

 

Mike  43:56

Oh, that's good. That's a great point. Or that fourth bullet may have reminded them of a story, or reminded them of something that's on their to do list that they forgot to record. So they're breaking out their phone. And yeah, you got to we got to be careful. So it's best to keep the audience with you as much as possible. Now, don't be showing them the whole, you know, where are you going for the whole next five minutes? Where are we at right now let's keep the focus on where we're at right now. And you can do that with the way that you reveal different bullets. But once again, remember, you don't want you don't want a lot of bullets on screen. Like I try to not have more than three, okay? up on the screen at the at the same time. That also gives me the freedom to use larger fonts. Yeah. Because I'm trying to keep a bullet to, I don't know, three to seven words or something like that and not have more than three on the screen. If I need any bullets at all. A picture does the work better? Perfect. Yeah. You know, it's all about Connect. Getting your audience to the message.

 

Roy Barker  45:01

what works best? Yeah. And, again, I know a lot of this stuff is dictated by the message, what we're doing, where we're doing it and all that. But is there a good link? Like, you know, if we start getting into 30 4050, you know, 60 slides, you know, at some point is like, Oh my gosh, you know, can somebody just put me out of my misery? So,

 

Mike  45:25

is there a good target that we want to try to shoot for? We know when possible? Wow, that I know, this is a frustrating answer. But it's so much depends on the purpose of your message. Some people try to put way too much content on a single slide, and it's frustrating for the audience. The good news for them is there's an infinite number of slides available. Right? It can be as long as you need for it to be but then the question becomes, what do you really need? Right for it to be. If you're moving too quickly through slides, that creates a sense of frustration for your audience. Now, especially if there's more content on the slide, then you're even addressing because you're trying to move too fast. And you've probably seen this happen with presentations, I know I have, where someone was trying to cram too much information into a presentation. So the last 10 minutes, they're talking 90 to nothing, because they're trying to end on time, but they feel like they have to get through every slide, right, which sometimes you do, sometimes you don't know, if the audience doesn't have the slide deck in front of them. And there are pieces of content that you can live without, it might be better for you to skip those pieces of content. And there's ways to do that, that the audience never knows that you skip that piece of content, you could do that fluidly. It's just a matter of learning how to use their stock, use your software. So the number of slides, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish and how much time you have within to accomplish it. I would say that, if you're staying on us a slide, wow, if you're staying on a slide for less than a minute, that he should probably question whether or not you have paced your presentation appropriately now, especially if there's multiple points on a slide that you're having to discuss. But once again, that's a general rule. It depends on the situation that you're in, and the kind of information that you're having to share with them. But yeah, it is it is easy for people to get carried away, where I have way too many slides. And and they create frustration for their audiences they

 

Roy Barker  47:39

do so yeah. And what about the mentioned? You know, that silence? What about a silence as punctuation you know, as when sometimes when we speak? Now there's some people are scared, they're like, Oh, I can't have any silence. But you know, you read a lot about that. Sometimes, taking a breath is a good point of emphasis. So, you know, as we put up a picture is an okay, you know, just a moment of silence to let people take in what they're saying without feeling like we've got to feel all this space with words all the time.

 

Mike  48:13

You are You are right, you're right on the money there. That is that is good. And that would apply not only to an image that would challenge people to think it could also reply to a perhaps a quote that you've put on the screen now. And maybe you put it up there, and maybe you maybe you verbalize that quote, maybe you don't maybe you just let it sink in now, and let them read it and think about what it's saying and how it applies to them. And those times of silence, will they create a variation that helps maintain engagement, if things are too predictable. And if the speaker keeps using the same intonation through people check it out, the people check out, mentally check out. But when there are differences, pauses or increases in volume or decreases in volume that are not a part of a just overall predictable pattern that helps people stay engaged in the presentation overall. So yeah, that moment of silence can be a part of what creates a sense of interest in engagement in the audience. Yeah, cuz

 

Roy Barker  49:27

what I've seen before is, you know, if you're talking too long, talking too long, and somebody maybe they're downright notes or, you know, thinking about, you know, like you said what they need from the grocery store on their way home, sometimes that pause, it gets hurt, because they're like, Oh, this thing just and yeah, you know, so that you kind of get them to look back up and nothing kind of reengaged sometimes. Yes,

 

Mike  49:50

I've done that many times, especially when I was having to facilitate a training that was longer than ideal, right. So If you've got an all day training, after the first two hours, you've got to struggle, the next six hours of that training. And, and it's it's a struggle for the presenter to keep their energy up. It's a struggle for the audience to stay engaged. So anything you can do that creates that moment of Oh, what's going on? is like a mental reset. Yeah. Because there's a little bit of energy that comes along with Wait, what's going on? Yeah, they can maybe hold, you know,

 

Roy Barker  50:28

they can just ask me a question. And I was like, Yeah, yes. Well, he mentioned a quote. So that's something cites references, you know, back in the old days. At the end, you know, if we had to cite a lot of date, cite a lot of other works, put the references at the end on a slide. Sometimes I've seen him on that slide with any, any hard and fast rules on that, or just as long as I get, give the credit where credit's due, I like to put it on the slide. Okay.

 

Mike  51:07

And, and it doesn't have to be big. You know, it may be where you have to look to see it, but Oh, there it is, there's a reference. And that creates more respect for you as a presenter, that you are citing your sources, that's good. That means you're doing your homework. Similar thing would be true for images that you use video clips that you use. First of all, I need to make sure you have permission to use those. Right, exactly. When you do you cite that source. So even in in my, in my blogs, ones that I that aren't my images, you'll see in the bottom right hand corner of the image itself, in a kind of contrast, in color font, where that image came from. Now, this is a way of honoring those who created that, that image. So that's the way I like to do it, I like to do it right there on the slide. If you do it at the end, then there may be people who are wondering the whole time. So where did this come from? Do they have permission, but you put it right there, then it alleviates that distraction immediately.

 

Roy Barker  52:08

Yeah, it's a little, little different situation. But if your presentation, it may eventually end up living online, the that the image issue is a lot bigger than people think. And I'll just quick story that, you know, had a person I knew that she managed a website for her company. And, you know, she just pulled pictures off the internet and pop them up there. And you know, for years and years, not really thinking much about it. And then, you know, one day the company gets a bill in the mail in the mail from Getty Images for about $800. Thanks for using our images. Now, here's the bill for that. So the point is that sometimes we think, oh, we'll just slide this image in, it's gonna be on presentation, nobody's gonna see it, but my audience and then this thing ends up living online somewhere, and then the person who owns that image finds it. So like you said, it's better just to, you know, make sure you have the permission to use that,

 

Mike  53:09

right. And there are easily accessible sources of free images that are good images, right? So doing this does not have to cost you a lot of money, it's more of an ethical credibility issue, to make sure that that you have permission to use the images that you use, realizing that there are people who put great images out there for free. Sometimes I you know, I just end up having to pay for an image because there's nothing that matches, it has nothing that accomplishes what I want to accomplish that's found on those resources, right? Most of the time, I can find what I need there.

 

Roy Barker  53:45

Yeah, yeah, and there, we don't want to get off in the weeds on that too much. But there are a lot of reasonable sites, I can remember when they were acquired by Adobe, but I mean, I used to pay like $15 a month, and it was a great, you know, a great selection of all kinds of images, some cartoonish but some real people. And then also we kind of can mention, you know, again, this is one of my things is, you know, that's where if you can fit an image that you take that fits with the subject matter much better, because I like to see, you know, especially if I'm in a presentation for a product, I want to see your equipment, you know, your stuff. I don't want to see a stock picture of, you know, here's a really cool delivery truck. But yeah, I don't know who that belongs to your browser. You know, it's not your zone anyway, that's like that.

 

Mike  54:37

Yeah. And another thing to keep in mind there is making sure that those images are high quality.

 

Roy Barker  54:45

Yes. All right.

 

Mike  54:47

And, and that they are being saved and used in ways that protect that that quality, because you could lose some credibility if an image is what I call bitmap. You know, you can see the pixels in it and stuff. So you want to avoid that. But I mean, Nowadays most the time, even the pictures we take with our phone are great resolution. Right? So then it's just a matter of did we frame it? Well, does it? Does it look good? Now that leads into another interesting topic that has to do with with our visuals. And that is, how up to date, do our visuals. Look? How up to date does our slide deck look now, because I bet you at a glance could look at a slide deck and think I bet that was made in 2003. Because of the types of graphics that were used, because it was more boxy than widescreen, you could just glance at it and and see. And I've seen presentations where people are, they are promoting a modern product. And they're talking in terms of technology, but the layout of their presentation and the types of images that they're using.

 

56:14

look old.

 

Mike  56:16

Yeah. We're gonna discount that this this isn't a new technology, because it can't be it looks like 2003

 

Roy Barker  56:23

Yeah, I mean, you can see the digital dust on the slides as they're going through the lag. Like, it's like in 2000, we came out with the G, you know, the G 3000. And so, you know, over time now we're on the G 8000. But all we've done is gone back and change the, you know, the 1000 to the 2000. But everything else is basically still right. Yeah, they got the, the image that we use was black and white with the Edsel in the background. Yeah, that's not helpful. Yeah. Right.

 

Mike  57:01

So make sure that your, your slide design matches, right? The the image that you want to portray to the customer? And if you want it to be modern, make sure that the the What am I thinking of? There's a word for it. I just, I just lost it. You know, whether it's more boxy or widescreen, yeah, is appropriate. The types of fonts that you're using are appropriate, right? Whether you're using something that looks more clipart, or more image based, is appropriate. Right? For your goal, aspect ratio, that's what I was trying to think of, is the aspect ratio of your design, is it is it appropriate for the message you're wanting to send,

 

Roy Barker  57:49

you know, I just had this last night I was messing around with an image that I created, it wasn't a picture, but just something that I put together on Canva. And it was in a certain aspect ratio, and I needed it in a different one. And so I just, you know, put pull the corner and drag it out. But when it did, it became very blurry. You know, and we talked a little bit about that earlier about the image quality and not messing that up. But it's easy to do, and not all images, you know, stretch or move equally, and they can get if it's a square and you try to make it a rectangle, it can get very distorted. So those are, you know, things that we just need to pay attention to, even though they've got the box and it is rearranged. But that doesn't always mean that it works out when we get to the point we needed that.

 

Mike  58:38

Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah, a lot of images. It would be better to use the crop function, rather than just the drag function, right? Which means you're gonna lose part of the image, but it's not going to be stretched or distorted. Right? When reduce So yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. You don't want to do anything that makes people think this person doesn't know what they're doing with this. Software.

 

Roy Barker  59:02

Yeah, exactly. One more thing, and I know we're running way late. We could talk about this for the next two or three hours, but themes backgrounds. Okay, you know, where do we land on them? Again, we can do too little, and we can be way too crazy.

 

Mike  59:22

Yes, yes. Well, we referred earlier to how we went from like one extreme to another, you know, when when all these options came out, people were going crazy with it. And then other people were saying, Well, you know, all you need is black background white font or the opposite of that. And you rightfully recognize the the reality for most people is somewhere in the middle. Right? I think it's hard to go wrong with keeping it simple. But that does not mean it has to be black with a white font, right? You can incorporate The organizational branding into that process in a lot of organizations, they have well designed templates that do just that, the background is going to be a certain color, the fonts gonna be a certain color, it's all gonna make sense with the branding. A common mistake that's made, even now with presentations is feeling like the company logo needs to be on every slide. It doesn't, or feeling like the name of the presentation needs to be on every slide. It doesn't. And that creates visual clutter, right on the slide. Now, you know, if you're working for an organization, that's part of the template, you're required to use a template, just roll with it. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's what you got to work with. But if you have total control, you want to keep it as simple as possible. With the colors that are used. You know, now, it's super easy in the presentation software to use the little eyedropper icon, you can pull your company's logo in and just use that I that eyedropper thing to choose the color of your font so that it is one of the colors in your logo, choose the background color. So it is one of the colors in your logo, you do want to make sure that the contrast is good. Because if if if the color of the fonts too close to the color of the background, it's not going to be easily readable unless you outline it in a contrast in color, you want to make sure everything is still readable. But just realize you're not locked into a black and white presentation in order for to have that type of simplicity, you can have that type of simplicity, and still be matching the branding of your organization in ways that communicate well.

 

Roy Barker  1:01:46

And if you work for large enough organization, if you check with them, like you said, they may have a template already put together, but also to the logos and images that you may need, they may have them. Because again, I've seen somebody go to a website, clip a logo off, and you know, it just doesn't translate as crisp and clean as what they had hoped, you know, and it was like, Well, that was just the last ditch effort. But you know, a lot of companies have image banks where like, you know, all of their stuff in different sizes, because they have certain color use. I mean, yes, there's a lot that goes into that, that, you know, somebody like myself doesn't really realize, but there's somebody behind the scenes that has put a lot of thought into that this is green, number one, and this is blue number 12. And, you know, all these things, because the way that they go together good, which I understand just saying Be careful, and you know, be respectful of your company, because that's, you don't want to if you're doing a presentation for the C suite, and you know, you've cobbled together something that's out of out of bounds, you know, you know, you don't want the you don't want your message to get lost, because the guy sitting there like that is not our logo.

 

Mike  1:03:03

So I think I think you benefit in a couple of ways. If you're willing to check out see what templates are available, your products probably going to look a lot better because you did that. Yeah. And secondly, the organization is going to appreciate you because they put a lot of time and effort into creating these templates and creating these high resolution logos. So that your presentation, yeah, look, look good. So we'd encourage, you know, all listeners, man, if you work for a big company, make sure that you're honoring the templates that they've spent so much time and money preparing for you to use,

 

Roy Barker  1:03:39

right? Because they are the thing, it's sometimes we have a simplistic approach that me and you are the only two people that are ever going to see this. And that's not always true. I mean, maybe, maybe it's so awesome that somebody wants to take this and show it to somebody else outside of the company. And so that representation, you know, we just need to make sure that we are representing our company in the very best possible way. And not be like, that was a great presentation. But you know, the aesthetics of it were so terrible that you know, I'm embarrassed to share it with somebody outside of our organization, because it looks so bad. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I know we are way over Mike, I appreciate your patience. The other thing just before we go, I was gonna ask, Is there any more, you know, larger global points that you wanted to get? And I promise I will asking questions. I'll just let you.

 

Mike  1:04:32

No, I don't think so. I think just going back to what we acknowledged at the beginning, making sure that you know your message know your audience and make the connection and that whatever visuals you use, make perfect sense. Given that process. They support your message. They are not a substitute for it.

 

Roy Barker  1:04:49

Yeah, we couldn't cover everything. So what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna recommend that y'all go pick up big presentations in small rooms, by Michael Gibson be It's a good read well worth it, it'll put you on the right track. And then I'm gonna also give you a chance to put some information out there in just a minute. But before I asked you that, what is a tool or a habit that you use in your life could be professional, personal, but what is something that you do that adds a lot of value?

 

Mike  1:05:20

One thing that I've learned recently that's been so helpful for me, is the limits of focused time. And I learned that from a book called Deep work by Cal Newport. And it took some pressure off of me, I used to feel like my ability to create and produce product was more of a self discipline issue than it actually is. And I'm kind of wired in ways that I want to do things, right, I want to get things done. And, and that actually can be hurtful and unhelpful for me, when you have the wrong mindset. So I was thinking, you know, for me to get stuff done, I just need to put my head down and focus and I can get it done. And if I'm struggling, it's because I don't have enough self discipline. And that's actually not true, right? There are mental limits on focus. And for most people, it's around two hours, if you work out that muscle, because it's kind of like a muscle, if you work out that muscle get really good shape, you might be able to stretch it to around four hours, me realizing that helped me structure my days, in ways that would protect that focus time, and I'm wired to be more of a morning person with that type of work. So when I was writing the book, I would protect the morning hours from like, 530 to 830, somewhere in that timeframe, where there's no distractions, and I could get and I was able to get a lot more done in less time. And take pressure off of myself. Right, right now, it wasn't gonna do me any good to sit there for eight hours. Yeah, I was just gonna be staring at the screen because my brain was gone at that time. So maybe that'll be helpful for some of our listeners realize that your ability to to think creatively or analyze data, it has limits on it. So don't don't beat yourself up. Trying to go beyond what you're physically able to do mentally able to do instead plan around it and protect those times.

 

Roy Barker  1:07:29

Yeah, and it's so you know, like myself, you bump into this, whether it's creative or problem solving, and it's like, just can't get it can't get it. Sometimes it cuz I'm like you used to be like, okay, I just need to think harder. Think longer think different. Yes. But now what I've realized is, is getting up taking a break, taking a little walk, even if it's just walking around the house for five minutes. Come back and have so much more clarity, then yeah, for for me anyway. Yeah, I

 

Mike  1:07:59

think you're right. So many of my best ideas have come after I've done a lot of research setting aside one for a long walk. Yeah, yeah, that's good. I'm glad. Yeah,

 

Roy Barker  1:08:07

we need to be kind to ourselves. I think that's one place. A lot of you know, a lot of business people are really, really hard on themselves. And we just need to say, Hey, you know, what we're humans. And, you know, I think like this, like, your suggestion is, you know, we need to figure out, we're more in person, being the person set aside those blocks of, you know, taking those harder tasks when we are at our best. And, you know, that's Self Realization, we have to think about, when are we best? When are we clear, you know, get in our sleep and everything like that. So, right. Yeah, right. Appreciate that. Very much. So Mike, tell everybody number one, how can we get the book? And then number two, how can they reach out get a hold of you? Who do you like to work with? Somebody needs you to help them with the presentation? Or maybe even somebody needs some training would like for you to come in and do that for them?

 

Mike  1:08:59

Yes, yes. Well, you can get the book at Amazon. You can get it in ebook format, and print or audio book, any one of those options are available at Amazon. If you just search for Big Presentations In Small Rooms on Amazon, it'll it'll pull that up. You can get that there. If you if you like to listen. We have a podcast and we have a lot of fun with that podcast, my host. And I we just tackled these different subjects. We laugh a lot. We share a lot of stories. And that's available pretty much anywhere you listen to podcasts. So if you search for The Big Presentations Podcast, you can find a lot of helpful information there that I think you will enjoy listening to. If you're looking for an encouraging community, there is a Facebook group called The Workplace Presentations Hub. And it's a place where content is released where people can ask questions and receive encouragement. And it's focused on those who I mean their work involves making presentations. If you're interested in booking trainings, throughout the years, I have had to tackle many different subjects at a training format, you can find a list of those at m r g presentations.com. Once again, that's mrgpresentations.com, for a list of trainings available, and there are links there, where you can contact me, if you would like help, especially if you'd like help for presentation design or coaching for presentations, you can find links there. If you enjoy reading and read the book and want to read even more there, there's a blog at big presentations calm, you can also ask for help through that site as well. So there's multiple ways that you can contact me, I am on Facebook, and I am on LinkedIn, you could just search my name, Michael Gibson, or search Big Presentations In Small Rooms, you can find me there as well. And I post quite a bit helpful tips and hints and encouragement, you'll find stuff from me daily on social media that can be helpful and encouraging for you.

 

Roy Barker  1:11:05

Awesome. Well, thanks again, we certainly do appreciate it. Again, reach out because there's so much that we didn't cover we would have liked to but it's just, you know, there's so many intricacies and there's so much to do with presentations and then it's who we're presenting to what the information is so many variables. So reach out to Mike let him give you a helping hand and have the best presentation you can get it makes a world of difference. You know, because if you stand up and struggle with one presentation, you'll never want to do it again. And there's such a powerful way to deliver information if we can just you know, get it right and we're not going to always be perfect, but we can we cannot embarrass ourselves. There is help out here. All right. Well, that's gonna do it for another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. Of course, I am your host Roy. You can find us at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com we're on all the major podcast platforms iTunes, Stitcher, Google Spotify, if we're not on one that you use, please reach out I'd be glad to get us added where you can listen easier. Also, we are on all the major social media platforms probably hang out a little bit more on Instagram, I'm very picture and visual focus. So that's that's kind of where I like to go. Also, a video of this interview will go up. When it goes live. You can find that over at our YouTube channel. So until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.bigpresentations.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

 

Change Management Risks Greatly Increase Without Strong Change Management Leadership Featuring Tim Sparks

Change management is fruitless unless you have the Change Leadership to lead the team through all the emotional up and down associated with change. Even though change is necessary we still have to manage our way through the minefields of change when dealing with employees, vendors, and clients.

About Tim

Tim Sparks is a Senior Certified Human Resources professional with over 20 years in HR. During his time in the HR profession, Tim has had the opportunity to work with some amazing people developing corporate programs like Change Management training and a very robust Mentoring program that kicked off his speaking career.

Tim and his team developed a highly successful High-Potential Mentoring program for a Fortune 500 company that captured the attention of other companies and industries. Time was asked to come share the program highlights at state and local SHRM chapters and conferences throughout Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia.

Although Tim loved his work as an HR Business Partner, he had found his true passion in speaking and consulting—helping others reach their greatest potential. Before his career in HR, Tim was a teacher and principal for 15 years.

When asked how he found his way from education to HR, he always remarks that the goal has always been the same—to help others achieve success in whatever goals they pursue. Tim would love to share that passion with your team. Whether you’re looking for a dynamic speaker to inspire, teach, and equip, or an individualized consulting session, Tim has what you need to succeed.

About the Book

Journey To Becoming A Great Change Leader: Navigating The Road To Extraordinary Leadership

In this book you will learn strategies that will make the difference between change success and change failure for you and your organization. Studies done on the effective[1]ness of organizational change reveals that 70% of all change initiatives fail to accomplish their intended result.

You will also learn what it takes to become a Great Change Leader and be a difference maker for your company. You do not have to be a high-level manager or leader in your organization to be a difference maker. Lead from where you are, and the higher-ups will notice. At the end of each section of this book, you will see a QR code that will take you to a video of Tim discussing the previous section and what you can expect in the next.

Even more, inside this book, there are exercises for you to complete to immediately implement what you earn. Now let's go change the world one team, one department, and one company at a time!

Book Excerpt

Seventy percent of all organizational change initiatives fail, and this failure rate has been consistent over the past 25 years! This is unacceptable. The Will Rogers quote above is from nearly 100 years ago but it still paints a picture. Many companies refuse to change and adapt for various reasons, but as Will Rogers stated, if we insist on sitting in the middle of the road, we are going to get run over—or worse, we become irrelevant.

It is not enough to be on the right road. We must be moving forward quickly if we wish to remain competitive in our respective markets. Otherwise, the only view we will see on the road is the sight of other companies passing us in the fast lane. I think you will agree that organizations must have the ability to quickly adapt and change to their business environment to stay relevant, yes?

And if you have ever found yourself in a change initiative that failed, it is a very frustrating experience, correct? This frustration is experienced at all levels of the organization, but especially if you were the leader of that initiative, as you are acutely aware of the wasted resources of time, money, and the emotional investment of your employees.

Regardless of your position in the company, failure during times of change does take its toll, and trust me, you are not alone. We have all felt this pain and frustration at one time or another. I have been part of failed change initiatives where I was fully invested, but the leadership failed to provide a clear vision of what the change would accomplish.

My role in the change process was not clearly communicated and no one had any idea what the end state should look like. If you have been, or are now in this situation, I feel your pain. You can feel lost, unsupported, and unsatisfied in your job. The good news is that it does not need to be this way.

In the chapters to follow, you will learn what it takes to be a Great Change Leader and you will develop the skills necessary to lead people successfully through times of change. You will learn some of the reasons why companies fail when it comes to change, so you can avoid making those same mistakes. You will learn about how to build the proper culture in your organization, so you can facilitate change more efficiently.

We will discuss many tools you can use before, during, and after change that will aid in planning your initiative, as well as helping to make it stick once the initiative is complete. And most importantly, you will learn what it takes to be a Great Change Leader. The traits that set leaders apart from mediocre leaders and managers will help you get to the 30% who are successful in leading through change.

I understand that it can be hard to open your mind to new concepts and ways of thinking. After all, we are creatures of habit, and bad habits are hard to break. If you are a smoker and you have tried to quit in the past, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The same struggle exists when it comes to leadership. It is hard to change your perspective when you have been looking at things the same way for years. But the principles and concepts you learn in this book can take you from the 70% failure group to the 30% success group.

My goal in life has always been to help others achieve their greatest potential, and it is no different with this book. If I can help just one reader succeed, I will be very gratified. My desire for you is for you to take your team, your company, and your career to the next level. So, are you ready? Are you ready to view leadership differently? To see things from a new perspective? Are you ready to grow as a leader? Are you ready to take the next step in your career? If so, keep reading. I know the lessons in this book will make you a better leader and, more importantly, a Great Change Leader.

www.BlueridgeHR.com

[email protected]

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

 

Full Transcript Below

Change Management Risks Greatly Increase Without Strong Change Management Leadership with Tim Sparks

Fri, 7/9 6:05PM • 41:52

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, organization, change, leaders, leader, big, trust, talk, planning, company, employees, develop, Tim, customers, HR, listen, learning, leadership, rolling, book

SPEAKERS

Tim, Roy Barker

 

Roy Barker  00:08

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. I'm your host, Roy, of course, we are the podcast that brings you a wide variety of guests that talk about a set of diverse topics. Today, today is no different. I've been waiting for last couple of weeks to talk to Tim, it's gonna be a great conversation that we were having a little pre show talk about that, you know, it will be spirited, definitely have a lot of opinions.

 

But Tim Sparks is a Senior, Certified Human Resource Professional with over 20 years in HR. During his time in the HR profession, Tim has had the opportunity to work with some amazing people developing corporate programs like Change Management Training, and a very robust mentor program that kicks off his speaking career that kicked off his speaking career. And that is what has also led him to write the book, Your Journey To Becoming A Great Change Leader, Navigating The Road To Extraordinary Leadership, Tim, thanks for taking time out of your day to be with us. certainly appreciate it.

 

Tim  01:14

Glad to be here, right. Thanks for having me

 

Roy Barker  01:16

on, I'm going to be taking notes. So please don't think I'm texting my order in over to the Mexican restaurant for later on. But like I said, this is gonna be a good conversation. Before we jump in, we got a lot to cover. But before we jump in, kind of tell us a little bit about your HR journey. And I'm assuming, you know, something jumped out about being a change leader that you know, really spoke to you and made you want to write this book. So tell us a little bit about that.

 

Tim  01:44

Yeah, so I've been, like I said in HR for about 20 years now. And before that I was a teacher and principal for 15 years. And so the transition from education to HR, you know, people ask me all the time, how I, you know, got into HR from education, and I tell people, you know, my goal in life has really always been the same, it's always been to help others achieve their greatest potential. And so, you know, as a, as a teacher and principal, of course, my students were primary, you know, and I wanted to help them to really maximize their potential. And as an HR professional, it's the same goal. So that's really, why I got into HR after education.

 

Roy Barker  02:28

Yeah, he probably don't, he probably didn't have to carry a gun in HR, or big stick like in trying to teach him. You know, I have to come in handy a couple of times. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I do have a lot of respect for, you know, our teachers and principals, and I won't get way off on that. But it's a tough job. And people I don't think, you know, the normal people don't understand the time, you know, people think they work from nine to three and take all summer off. But, you know, I had an ex that was a teacher and a principal as well.

 

And I guarantee you, she worked a lot more hours than I did. And, you know, she absolutely, she came home much more frazzled than I would So, you know, God bless you for doing that. But also, you know, change management, it's, I mean, it's a thing nowadays, because there's so much act, there's so many acquisitions, people getting, you know, taken over bought up, it's just, it seems kind of rampant. So I think it's really good timing, and then also there's a lot of changes coming up with this workforce with people, you know, are we going back to the office? Are we going remote? You know, there's talk about revolt. If you even talk about me coming back to the, it's right.

 

But then every profession, I mean, you can't watch the news now that there's not a profession as not having some type of a staffing crisis, and then, you know, that all goes downstream to affect others, which, you know, basically gets to the consumer. So I think, this seems, appears to be a time of great change for many, many different reasons. Absolutely.

 

Tim  04:14

And let me make a distinction before we kind of continue there. You know, you mentioned change management. And my book is about change leadership, and they go hand in hand. But change management is really the process side of change. It's the thing you know, it's managing the thing that's actually changing, or has changed leadership is actually leading people through those real you know, Rocky, emotional times of change. Read

 

Roy Barker  04:42

My apologies, yes, I did misspeak on that. It should be changed leadership, but you know, but we're definitely going to need some leadership to you know, help guide us through these times and keep these companies I guess, right, you know, we always think about change For the way of, well, we're doing things different, we're doing things better, but it may kind of be a little bit on the receiving end. I mean, instead of us directing the changes, like this change is coming at us that our leaders are going to have to deal with to get us through that.

 

Tim  05:17

Yeah, sometimes we, we see a need for a change. And we work toward that. And then like you said, sometimes change is kind of thrust upon us either by, you know, the environment that we were in or, you know, legislation that comes down, you know, from Congress or something like that. So, there's, there's lots of different reasons why change becomes necessary. But it's how we handle that and how we lead others through that time of change that really can dictate whether we fail or succeed in that change initiative

 

Roy Barker  05:49

rent. Speaking of which is, you know, what are some reasons, I guess, what are some qualities of a good change leader that you see? Maybe, conversely, the negative ones, but then also, you know, it's like, Why? Why do companies fail at this, it's not, we didn't just wake up yesterday and say, you know, change is the thing, I mean, change, things have always been changing from, again, the invention of things, it's always been moving. But it seems that we have more difficulty, you know, being successful at it today.

 

Tim  06:23

And I think a lot of times, organizations fail at change, for multiple reasons. And I listed a few of those in my book. One of the big things, I think, one of the big reasons why I think companies fail is because of fear. You know, companies who have achieved some degree of success, are fearful of change, because they're afraid that if they stray from that recipe that got them success in the first place, that they would lose what they gained. And a great example of that is Kodak, Kodak was a huge company, they were the king of, you know, print film, back for forever, until digital photography really kind of took over the industry.

 

And most people don't know this, but it was actually Kodak that developed the first digital camera. And so, ironically, you know, they had this technology that they had developed, and they feared that if they now introduce that technology to the public, that it would diminish where they were King, and that was in the print film industry. So they decided to put that digital technology on the shelf and, and try to sit on it. And of course, you can't hide technology like that forever. And, and so, it actually, you know, and actually, believe it or not, Kodak developed the first digital camera back in 1975, which was about 20 to 25 years before digital photography really became popular.

 

Roy Barker  08:06

Yeah, that's, that's an incredible story. And I've heard that before, but it's, you know, it just goes to the point of how things can just slip the slip out of our grasp, you know, I'm sure they thought, you know, they were on top of the world, and they really didn't have anything to worry about. But obviously, you know, I think that, if I'm not wrong, that was really one of the last assets they had was the patent on their, I guess, their process when they finally, you know, ended the business which I, you know, it's sad for people my age Anyway, you know, I remember the, that was really all we had was film, you know, digital, just come along, and later in my lifetime.

 

Tim  08:46

You know, and look at a company like Blockbuster Video, you know, they, they really ignore the signs of what their customers really were telling them. You know, the, of course, streaming services, like Netflix started to come out. And Blockbuster Video had the opportunity to work with Netflix to to get into the streaming business, but they really felt like their customers still wanted to drive to the store and wait in line and you know, look for that film that maybe was sold out, maybe not, you know, so it was kind of a roll of the dice.

 

Roy Barker  09:26

Yeah. And, you know, there's a commercial on TV that I just saw this morning, and I thought it was such a great saying is that success is just on the other side of fear. And so it's interesting that you bring that up. Yeah, it's a great question. Because I guess I'd have to ask the next question is were they fearful of change in the market? Were they fearful? I mean, I know they must have been fearful of losing their success. But was it ego as well that they thought that they were such a big powerful company? That the world follows them. And that that's all. I mean,

 

Tim  10:05

I think that's true in a lot of cases, especially with some of these big companies. Even, you know, tech companies like Facebook, and, you know, you know, some of those big tech organizations, they, they feel like, they're the only game in town, and they can do pretty much what they want. And, you know, I think sometimes that comes back to bite them later. Yeah.

 

Roy Barker  10:29

So how can leaders, you know, we have to make a conscious decision to listen, you know, and I was talking to another gentleman the other day, as you know, we were talking about seek first to understand, which means, basically, he know, we have to listen. So right. You know, I guess part of the message here is that, we've got to listen to our customers, no matter how crazy we think that they may sound eventually, there may be some truth in that, I'm assuming.

 

Tim  10:56

Yeah. Yeah, they, they definitely need to listen to their customers. But I think it also, you know, Richard Branson, kind of coined the phrase, you know, forget the customer always being right, treat your treat your people, your your employees, right, and then Dell treat the customer. Right. And, you know, I think that one of the traits of a great change leader is building a really solid foundation of trust with their people. So that when the leader does have that vision of what the future could be, his people or her people are eager and willing to jump on the bandwagon and follow.

 

Roy Barker  11:35

Yeah. Yeah, and I have seen that scenario play out before, you know, I talked to a guy that was very successful. And he, he didn't invent a new product, just to kind of a variation of the place. He worked for many years. And he's he said, you know, what, I tried to talk to him, and I've been thrown out of the office so many times that he's like, I didn't even go in this time, he just said, sent my resignation and went out, developed it, you know, started producing it on my own, and, you know, it really hurt the other people. So I definitely don't think we do enough of that, you know, I do a lot of talk about employee retention. And I think if these kind of go hand in hand in that respect, is that, you know, we have to listen to them, if we don't trust them they shouldn't be working for so we, you know, we have to hire people that we trust, but then we have to listen to them. And I think that's, Mike can correct me if I'm wrong, but maybe, was it Steve Jobs that said, you know, we have something about giving them the task and letting them handle it? And just getting out of the way at that level of trust in our employees? Yep.

 

Tim  12:45

Yeah, I totally agree with that. And, you know, you talked about ego before. And I think a lot of times, especially when you get up into the C suite, and you have CEOs or CFOs, CEOs that are, you know, they have that ego, and that's what really kind of got them there in the first place. And they feel like, they should have all the answers, they should know all the solutions to every problem. And that's just absurd, right? I mean, nobody has the answer for everything. And so the ability to to listen and to respond to when people come to us with their, with their ideas and solutions is just critical. Colin Powell actually said, the day that your soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you stop leading them.

 

Roy Barker  13:33

Right, yeah, and, you know, that's one of the main things I look for, you know, when in hiring is, if somebody tells me or somehow, you know, communicates to me that they have all the answers. It's a huge red flag, because we just don't mean, and I'm more interested in people that can actually go out, you know, and find those answers and right, you know. K

 

ind of building on that with our employees, most of the time, they, they are the closest to, you know, what's really happening out there in the field, they see how products are being used, and what the feedback is from customers. So, and unfortunately, in this day of the, you know, growing companies that are so big, the the C suite, are so far removed from that, that it's like, how, how would they ever get that information if they don't listen to their people?

 

Tim  14:26

Yeah, and you, you hear stories all the time about, you know, new policies, new dictates coming down, you know, into an organization and the people that are on the front lines, you know, kind of have this feeling like, here's this dictate coming from the ivory tower from people that have absolutely no clue what it's like to actually be in the front lines. And so, you know, until we learn to get them involved in some of these decision making processes, or at least, you know, requesting their feedback and getting there You know, maybe rolling ideas out to them before the it's actually rolled out to the, you know, organization as a whole, and get their feedback to see if, you know, what they have in mind really will work.

 

Roy Barker  15:12

Yeah. Yeah. And I guess that's part of building the the, you know, a culture of trust as well. I mean, because trust run both ways. I think management has to trust the employees, but employees have to trust management as well, that they're gonna listen and do the right thing.

 

Tim  15:30

Yeah, absolutely. Trust is, is really a foundational principle for, for all of that. And it's, you know, in, in my book, I talk a lot about culture. And, and building a culture of trust is really the foundation of the pyramid of culture, you know, you can't build a culture in your organization until you can build that foundational piece of trust,

 

Roy Barker  15:54

right? There's another, a lot of this overlaps. It's funny to, you know, retention and things like that, that we talk about to you is that, so learning is a big component of this as well. And you know, we always, there's an old joke, the, you know, the CFO comes to the CEO, and says, How can we afford to keep training all these people and have them leave and go to other places? And the CEO, says, How can we not train them and have him stay here, and, you know.

 

I think that kind of builds on, you know, having this force that's on the cutting edge, if they are learning, and we're promoting that learning, and helping them to learn and encouraging them to learn, then they are going to know that, you know, I don't know how that comes around. But you know, like, maybe, Hey, I heard this thing about this digital digital thing, or whatever that's going, right. It's something that we need to look into.

 

Tim  16:56

Yeah, and I think, you know, you kind of hit on it, you know, when we, when we build that culture, you know, the ultimate goal, especially when you're talking about change is to build a culture of change. Which means that your organization from top to bottom is agile, you know, they're adaptable, they're, they're willing to change, they're willing to look at new ways of doing things. And in order to get there, one of the besides trust that foundation of trust, I think you need a culture of learning, built into your organization to because if your people understand that you're willing to train them and develop them for the future, then they will move mountains for you.

 

You know, when when changes announced, one of the first things that I always hear from employees is, you know, how's this gonna affect my job? Am I going to get fired? Is this going to make my job obsolete or irrelevant, right. And if you have a learning culture in your organization, where your people know that you're going to invest in them as people to to develop them for success down the road, then you dispel a lot of those concerns.

 

Roy Barker  18:08

Yeah, and you know, that trust in the culture, too, I think it even if it's not big things, but we always want people to be aware of the little things, you know, in our process, that maybe it's become a problem, maybe it was always a problem. And we just, it was never magnified by something. But if you have that the employees are, like I said, they're the ones closest to these things they can know, to be able to make suggestions, like, you know, if we were to just do this a little bit different, will either provide greater value and satisfaction or you know, cut cost or, you know, whatever the result may be, but again, if we're not listening, we don't get those signals, and then I quit, and then people just quit sending them after a while.

 

Tim  18:54

Yeah, and in today's market, you know, like you said, it's recruiting is hard enough, you know, trying to find, you know, we made the comment the other day, you know, it used to be really hard to find top talent. Now, it's just hard to find anybody that has a pulse that you know, wants to work. And so recruiting and retention are so critical to an organization right now, because the difficulty in recruiting means that you have to work your existing people longer hours, you have to, you know, have them work weekends, overtime, all that which puts a drain on them. And then if they start leaving that just, you know, the snowball keeps getting bigger and, and now you're really in trouble.

 

Roy Barker  19:38

So we build some we build these foundations, you know, we've, we've got a good company culture, we're learning, you know, we're encouraging education and learning. We've got that trust. So what are some things that we can do as leaders to overcome you know, that last hurdle of fear Because I'm sure we can do all this stuff, but it's always that nagging voice in the back of your head, is this going to be the end? Or, you know, is this going to run this company? And I'm sure there's small, incremental steps we can take. But what do you suggest on that?

 

Tim  20:16

Well, in my book, I talk about the change the change model. And there's four aspects of the change model. And the first one is change readiness. So you really have to assess whether your organization and you as a leader in particular, are really ready for change. Because if you're, if you're not ready for change, than just throwing out change, just for the sake of change is a kind of a recipe for disaster. So you have to gauge your organization's readiness for change.

 

And then the second key component of that leader model is communication. You have to have a great communication plan. So that you can set clear expectations, clear goals and objectives for what this change is all about. Because the more people know about why something's changing, and why it's important, the more invested they're going to be. So I think those are the really two critical pieces, then we talk about change leadership, and you know, about that building trust and all of that.

 

And then the last part is sustainability, change sustainability, making sure that you know, because I think a lot of times what organizations do is they, they kind of half heartedly throw this change initiative out. Just because, you know, maybe the company down the road is doing it, or, you know, they heard somebody else doing it. So they said sound like a good idea. And change can't be that cookie cutter, right? It's got to be got to make sense for your organization. So it's got to be sustainable. And so we talk about sustainability as well.

 

Roy Barker  22:03

Yeah, cuz that, you know, I've seen instances of that where announcement was made, we're doing whatever this changes are, then it's like management loses their focus. And so then it seems what happens is, now the workforce is kind of wandering out there, because I really don't have any direction, they don't have that. I mean, depending on how big and what you're doing, I mean, you've got to have that enthusiastic push, you got to have, you know.

 

I look at the G Suite, as you know, they're the coaches that are coming around patent people in the back saying, good job, you know, this is really going to be worth it, if we can finish, you know, get this through. But you know, when it, I guess, when it kind of goes dark, and we never hear about this big initiative that we're in the middle of, and all of a sudden, you don't hear anything else about it. You know, people lose interest in we go right back to where we were.

 

Tim  22:57

Yeah. And, you know, it's communication, I tell leaders, the communication has to come early, it has to come often, and it has to take many forms. Because you can't, you can't just send out email after email after email, and expect people to get it. People learn differently, people want to receive information differently. And so you, as a leader have to be kind of that you have to have that emotional intelligence, to be able to understand how your people want to be communicated with and how to get it.

 

And I think, again, one of the biggest mistakes that leaders make is that after the changes introduced, and and set in motion, then they feel like their job is done, and they stopped communicating at that point. But I think people want to know, you know, was it worth it? You know, what are the what are some of the metrics that we're, you know, hitting now that we weren't hitting before, you know, some of the profits and things like that, that that made this worthwhile?

 

Roy Barker  24:12

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I'm kind of work on the strategy side, too. And so, look, I want to talk about the importance of really planning this out. And everything is differently if it's a new product or service that you know, there's all kinds of levels of intensity, but really have to think it out because I tell you, what's worse than anything is rolling something out and like, you know, day twos, like, Oh, that's a big hiccup we didn't really think about So, you know, I think that of course, you know, we're going to get back to the trust and involving people the communication is that we need every stakeholder involved in.

 

Well, not everyone but we need representatives involved with input because I may be able to, you know, if you don't work on line, and I do, I may be able to say, Hey, you know, we can't fit this eight foot long piece of equipment down this six foot, you know, conveyor belt that we're using or, you know, whatever these little things are because that that is certainly a way to kill enthusiasm is have Things Fall Apart immediately. Yeah, absolutely

 

Tim  25:21

if you if, you know, if you don't plan things well, then, you know, the statistic is already that 70% of all change initiatives fail. And that's been true for the last 25 years, we haven't really moved the needle a whole heck of a lot when it comes to successful change. And so, when you consider that only 30% of your change initiatives are going to succeed, you know, then it's time we start looking at those and say, you know, why did that succeed where the other 70% failed. And planning is such a key role in the success of any change initiative, really, in any, you know, business initiative, what what, regardless of what it is.

 

But when you're talking about change, if you don't plan well, and like you said, kind of identify some of those obstacles that you're going to face early on and have a plan to overcome them, then your people kind of lose that faith in you to, to really believe that you know, what you're talking about. And then something that we call change fatigue sets in, where if if we do change poorly, or if we try to change too much too fast, too often, then our people really get burned out. And so and anytime you could stand up as a leader and say, okay, you know, we've got another change initiative, we're going to start, it's like, oh, man, here we go. Again, you know, it's, instead of being that agile organization where everybody's really eager to change, it has really quite the opposite effect.

 

Roy Barker  27:00

Yeah, we were kind of snickering about that before, before the show is the fatigue. And I mean, it's, it's so real, but I think it gets back to the planning is that we have to choose, you know, what are the must haves, the big things that we have to do, because, you know, what I see instances of it's just, once you start going down this path, then it's like, you know, any little thing, hell, we need to do this, we need to do that. We haven't even finished this first major push.

 

Right, we've already, you know, identified, you know, and I'm not saying we shouldn't identify them, definitely, we identify them. But if they are not detrimental to this initial push, we got to get at me, you know, my opinion is we have to get so far through this initial before we start taking on all these other things, but it gets back to prioritizing even that we have to say, here's a list of our 100 wants, you know, what are the must haves and these ones?

 

Tim  28:00

Yeah, and I think sometimes, as leaders, we get, you know, we develop these Gantt charts, and we come up with these timelines, you know, in phase one is going to start here, and phase two is going to start here and phase, you know, and we come up with these great, you know, timelines of how things should happen. But when we do hit a snag, it's almost like we have to hit that second, you know, phase.

 

We got to start that second phase regardless, and instead of just taking, you know, putting your foot on the brake a little bit and saying, okay, we didn't anticipate this, let's regroup. Let's fix this before we move on. You know, it tends to turn into this like multicar pile up on the stake. And, you know, things just really get way out of hand. And we we just feel like we have to keep pushing forward, even though we're, we're not ready.

 

Roy Barker  28:53

Yeah, in the in planning, you know, planning is a roadmap. And I think, you know, we set these deadlines and what we hope but I think we have to be smart enough to be flexible, that instead of like you said, Well, we've got a drop dead date of august first, and we've identified a problem, that's going to mess us up on phase two, but instead of, you know, taking a minute, getting things in order, if we just push through, we just make it worse. And then then we get back to the fatigue that the employees are like, Oh, my gosh, you know, here comes another one.

 

Tim  29:30

Right. Yeah. And, you know, Roy, you'd mentioned about, you know, getting people at every level of the organization involved in that planning too. And, and I think that's such a critical piece, you know, to get all those levels involved in in brainstorming through the through the planning session. And one of the things I tell leaders too, is that when you're, when you're looking for those change, ambassadors or change champions, whatever you want to call them, to work on your planning committee, your steering committee to roll out this change.

 

A lot of times I tell them find the find the people in your organization that are the most hesitant. They're the maybe even aggressively against the change, and get them on on those committees so that they can see that bigger picture. They can see, you know how things work together. And if you can win those people over, then you've got an outstanding champion for your cause.

 

Roy Barker  30:35

Yeah, and I always use an example of back in the day when I worked in, you know, outside, we had these, it was a special set of gloves, there were three different gloves. And we had a special way that we had to fold them and for the life of me for years, couldn't figure it out, I would take them to, you know, one of the older guys on the crew and be like here, because it was a safety violation. If they weren't done right. I'd be like, that guy. I don't know how.

 

And the what what it ended up being is that nobody ever really sat me down and told me why it mattered. Yeah, I got the why it mattered. I knew from then on out, there was never a question, I could put those gloves back in there. And I think we lose sight of it. It's not just because I told you, this is what we're going to do and what we're going to happen, you know, people in sometimes people are just curmudgeons and they don't want to budge on something new.

 

But I have found that there are a segment of people that they really care about the company, and they're really worried. Is this really a good thing? Yeah, not me. But for this company. Because I need to be employed here for the next five or 10 years, they want to make sure that it's not detrimental. So it's not always just because somebody is wanting to be a hard case, I guess is the best way to put it.

 

Tim  31:54

Yeah, and I think you really hit the nail on the head. Because I dedicated my book a section about explaining the why, why it's so important. And you know, even mentioned Simon Sinek in his book, start with why. Because I believe I believe people really want to do a good job, I think people want to, to feel like what they do adds value to the organization. And so if we as leaders just take a few extra moments to explain why something is important. Because if I went if if you worked for me, Roy and I said, Hey, Roy, I need this out by five o'clock, you know, we got a deadline.

 

I need you to do XYZ, and then I just walked out the door, you had no clue why it was important, or why it had to get out the door by five o'clock, you're not really invested in that. But if I take that few extra moments to say, I need this out by five o'clock, and here's why, you know, we've got a customer and crisis, we need to get this out the door to them because they're needing it for you know, a special project they're working on or whatever, then you become invested, you're engaged in that and and i believe employees again, want to do a good job and they'll move mountains for you if you do that.

 

Roy Barker  33:05

Definitely. So what are some things that we you know, if I want to I want to get some change in my company. And I'm going to bring somebody in what what are some things that we want to look for, not only in you know, if we bring it outside town, but maybe we want to develop that change leader from within our company, you know, what are some things that we should look for some qualities?

 

Tim  33:32

Well, I, you know, some of the qualities that I talked about, for for change leaders is number one, you know, they have to be able to motivate, they have to be able to and I believe explaining the Why has a big part of that they have to be able to inspire you know, they have to be that kind of leader that people are naturally drawn to and want to follow and, and I want I want to kind of back back up on that just a little bit because I don't believe you have to be a type A personality to be a great change leader. I don't believe you have to be that you know, used car salesman, kind of, you know, charisma dripping out of your pores, you know, really likable person.

 

But in order to inspire I think you have to just be passionate. You have to have you'd have to show passion to your people that you really believe in the organization and you believe in, in this change that it's going to be positive. And then you know, caring for your people, you know, caring for them as individuals and not just you know, cogs in the wheel of production, you know, as a means to an end, getting to know them on a personal level know, knowing, you know, how many kids they have, they have a dog, the cat bird, whatever, you know, all those things that you know, sometimes leaders tend to shy away from From, because they don't necessarily they're not comfortable getting involved in on that personal level?

 

Roy Barker  35:06

Yeah. Yeah, I think the, in a lot of ways I think that type A personality that's going to come in, you know, like the bull in the China closet can actually do harm. And, you know, I was just reading jot some notes down, I was thinking, you know, along the lines, good communicator, somebody that has empathy for other people that we may disagree, but I can see that you've, you know, need to try to find out where this where your opinion, stem is rooted just in the fear that we've talked about? Or is it rooted in something that you know, information you have, I don't have a really need before we do things. So, you know, communication, it's, I don't think we talk about it enough.

 

But I think in all aspects of our life, it's, you know, in the, the old saying, to me holds is that, you know, what, God gave us two ears and one mouth because he expected us to listen twice as much as we talk. And instead of me, convincing you, as your boss, or as your leader, however, that works is that, you know, instead of me trying to convince you how smart I am, I probably need to listen and see how smart you are, you know, what, you know, when we can we all need to survive, they're really done, you know, we all have different roles, but we end up have to all pull the wagon in the same direction.

 

Tim  36:27

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I really think that great change leaders have to be visionaries, you know, to, and I always, I always say that visionaries are, are people that don't necessarily just see how the organization is today, but what it could be, you know, down the road, but they also have to be great communicators, to be able to communicate that vision to others. And, you know, we talk about being a great coach and mentor.

 

And, you know, if you think about a great coach, whether, you know, it's a professional sport or whatever, you know, great coaches are always great simplify errs, they can always take complex, you know, concepts and ideas, and break them down into simpler, bite sized pieces, so to speak, so that they can communicate that vision across their organization to get people understanding what the goal is, and then on board.

 

Roy Barker  37:29

Alright, well, Tim, thanks so much for taking time out of your day. I know we've run a little bit over, but is there anything else that you want to any other points you want to convey about change leadership, before we wrap this up?

 

Tim  37:41

Well, I did want to have a special offer for your listeners. So if the first five people have your broadcast, if they email me, they'll either I'll either email them a free book, or give them a free 15 minute consultation, over the phone or through zoom, their choice. So my email address is Tim at Blue Ridge HR Comm. So the first five people that email me and request that I'll give them what they want.

 

Roy Barker  38:13

Okay, great. I appreciate that. So before we get away a couple things, first off, what is a tool or a habit? What is something that you use in your daily life, it could be professional, personal, but just something that you feel adds a lot of value?

 

Tim  38:33

Well, I guess Personally, I'm a person of faith. And so, you know, spending time, you know, in God's word, and, and in prayer helps me a lot. From a professional standpoint, you're going to kind of laugh at me. But there's a game I play on my phone that really, I think really helps keep my mind sharp, it's a game that is designed to kind of help you always think 234, you know, steps ahead. And so, you know, just things like that, that, you know, I do to kind of keep my mind sharp. Yeah, no,

 

Roy Barker  39:11

I think that's awesome. And I think we, we don't think about exercise in our mind. And I begun to think a lot about our minds is just like our bodies that we got to exercise on, but we also have to give them that rest and, you know, so we need to be thinking about that. Especially, you know, as we go into older age, you know.

 

We want to stay sharp, I never want to you know, I don't want my body to outlive my mind or my mind. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, Tim, well, thanks so much. Again, tell us you know, who do you like to work with, again, how you help can help them you've given when given the website again, and then tell us the name of the book so they can either reach out to you or, you know, go over to Amazon and get that.

 

Tim  39:58

Okay, but the name of the book again is your Journey To Becoming A Great Change Leader. The Kindle version is available on Amazon. The paperback version is available on my website. So my website is Blue Ridge HR.COM And again, my email address is [email protected]. And I guess I do a lot of training sessions with leadership teams as a whole. So I'll come in, you know, spend a couple of days with leadership teams talk about ways to develop leadership skills, whether it's in change leadership or, or just leadership in general. I also do one on one coaching. And of course I do public speaking as well. So if you're looking for somebody to speak at a conference, I'm happy to do that as well.

 

Roy Barker  40:55

Okay. Yep. Hopefully, those are going to get cranked back up pretty soon. Yeah, I hope so. And up for a long time. So there, hopefully, there'll be a lot of pent up demand to get out and let's get these conferences rolling again. Amen to that, like, you know, you always learn so much. And there's a lot of great speakers like yourself that just really haven't been able to get out in effect the audience's normal. So hopefully we're almost there.

 

So, alright, Tim, well, thanks so much. Again, appreciate it. that's gonna do it for another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. Of course, you can find us at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com or on all the major social media platforms probably hang out on Instagram more than any place and we're also on all the major podcast platforms. So you can find us at iTunes, Stitcher, Google Spotify, if we're not on one that you use, please reach out I'd be glad to get to that and so you can listen to a CD. So Till next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.BlueridgeHR.com

[email protected]

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

Live Life With Intention And Exciting Transformation Will Take Place with Dr. Ian Brooks, MS

Are you living with intention? If you arent currently would you know where to start? Start from when yourself. Learn why you make the decisions you make. Learn what is keeping you from focusing on what you want and what you can control. Once you shift that focus the world is yours through transformation. Success is within reach your reach.

About Dr. Ian

Dr. Ian Brooks is the chief executive and founder of Rhodes Smith Consulting leading transformations of people and organizations for over 24 years. Ian has extensive experience in executive and leadership development, change management, business performance consulting, and communication planning.

Ian helps clients achieve their pursuits through:

Executive Coaching
Ian’s coaching is based on building client leadership capabilities and creating intentional scenarios to improve their team and organizations performance. Leveraging business and team feedback, Ian partners with executives in identifying behaviors, routines and measures for sustainment. Previous corporate clients include executives and their teams from Shondaland and Black Cultural Events, targeting improved employee morale and communication, delegation tactics, and executive leadership.

Leadership/Employee Development
By creating leadership development programs, Ian facilitates leadership and employee learning to help companies advance by providing insight-driven solutions. He partners with managers to model and develop processes that help teams overcome performance-limiting behaviors resulting in more effective coaches and mentors for their staff. Previous clients include executives and leaders at the Guitar Center, Bank of America, and Palo Alto Medical Health (Sutter Health) focused on succession planning, talent development, line of business skill assessment and leadership coaching.

Organizational Transformation/ Development
Ian is an expert in change management and partners with organizations in realizing business strategy through human change. He defines new generations of solutions through research and experience with clients around the world. Clients have included Nike, Sony Inc., Warner Brothers, Fox Sports, and Illumina focused on technology implementations impacting employees globally.

In addition to the clients listed, Ian has worked as a consultant with IBM and Slalom Consulting; as well, as internally at Kaiser Permanente and the Department of the Interior. He is the author of the upcoming book Intention: Building Capabilities to Transform Your Story and is content creator and trainer of Organization Development & Change Leadership certification program, in collaboration with the Drucker School of Management.

Ian holds a PhD in Industrial /Organizational Psychology from Marshall Goldsmith School of Management at Alliant International University, a Master’s in Clinical Psychology from Auburn University at Montgomery, and a
Bachelor’s in Psychology from Morehouse College.

www.rhodessmith.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

 

Full Transcript Below

Live Life With Intention And Exciting Transformation Will Take Place

Tue, 7/6 6:08PM • 56:54

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

work, people, organization, understand, solve, person, talent pipelines, roles, leadership development, job, acknowledge, standpoint, leaders, individuals, thinking, development standpoint, leadership, visibility, talked, develop

SPEAKERS

Iam, Roy Barker

 

Roy Barker  00:07

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. I'm your host, Roy. Of course we are the podcast that brings you a wide variety of guests that can speak to a set of diverse topics we want to do is maybe help you realize something that could be a good addition or a good fit for your business. But also, if you know that you're struggling some areas give you some experts that you can turn to, you know, to help you with that to build some trust, but in today is no different. We've been waiting for a couple weeks excited to have Dr. Ian Brooks, MS. He is the Chief Executive and Founder of Rhodes Smith Consulting. They're leading transformation of people in organizations over 24 years in has extensive experience in executive and leadership development, change management, business performance consulting and communication planning. Also, he is the author of an upcoming book Intention, Building Capabilities to Transform Your Story. And Ian, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.

 

Iam  01:13

Hey, thanks, Roy. Happy to be here. You said a lot of great things about me and I can live up to it today. Yeah.

 

Roy Barker  01:19

Let me go. No, I'm a guest on the show. I'm like, yeah, I'm quitting right now. While I'm mad. Well, no, I appreciate you. And like I said, I've been excited to have you on because I think there's so much to unpack. And, you know, I think we've talked about three or four for three or four different things. I think, if you don't mind, kind of start off with, you know, how did you end up here? What got you into the business side? And then, you know, just kind of how you got to this point?

 

01:52

Sure. Yeah, it's been a long, windy road, that it's continuous, to say the least. You I arrived here, you know, doing leadership development and change management for people. Over the last 2425 years. I started off as a psychologist. So as a 13 year old, I decided that I was always curious about why people did what they did and why people thought the way they did. I was someone who always want to just be average, I don't want to be too high, nor don't want to be too low. Because both of those offer judgment in a way that I didn't want or had to sustain. So for me, it was about understanding why people did what they did. And that required me being able to listen actively, as well as understanding who they are meeting them where they want it to go and where they want it to be, as well as allowed me to be in the background, so I wasn't being judged or out front. So I started this journey as being getting into psychology. And I first, when I got my master's in clinical psychology, had an opportunity to work in a 24 hour lockdown ward with adults. So imagine individuals coming straight off the street who have chemical imbalances. And they need be recycled back on their medications. And they need therapy, both individual and group therapy which I was able to conduct. And and I tell you it afforded me a chance to really see the see a lens to of people of the development and what they go through. And then that particular setting from a chemical imbalance standpoint, whereby we're really restricting them in that in a locked down ward. And where they could not go anywhere without any supervision or even leave without a key which only staff had, and then going from that environment and putting them into back to the day to day worlds that they were coming from. And seeing some of that some of those differences. And I'm really offered and ushered in a new perspective of how people interact, and who we are as individuals. And so I remember driving home one day, and thinking about a response that one of my clients had, and it was consistent response. Whenever I asked him, how's he doing? He would always come back and say, doing the best we can. Right. And, you know, when he said that when he said we as he had many people who use answering for but it got me thinking that, you know, we're all trying to do the best we can. But that kid is different from where we all start not and our reference points. And so from that time, you know, I decided, Hey, I wanted to work with higher functioning people. So I went made the transition to work with organizations. So that afforded me a chance to get my Doctorate in Psychology more specifically in Industrial Organizational Psychology, where I could focus on changes in management. If change management and coaching within organizations and people just one on one, even outside of organizations, and it's afforded me a chance to work with some amazing companies, and with some amazing people, and what I've come to realize, or along this journey is, I don't know if we're any different than the people in the ward, we can just cope better if things have just kind of worked out for us. But we all that narrative of we all just want to be better is is true for us all. And I've yet to meet anyone who isn't and does not want to do that. And so that, for me a chance to work again, with a number of different people from across great organizations, as well as author in a book that you mentioned, Intention, Building Capabilities To Transform Your Story, which just captures some of the guiding principles that I've picked up along the way of where I see people struggling the most from a development standpoint, VDM executives as well as just individuals in a day to day perspective, as we try to, again, Master our own intentions and be better.

 

Iam  06:06

Yeah. Wow, what

 

Roy Barker  06:07

a journey. I mean, I guess that says a lot about you with your patience and your empathy to be able to work. You know, with that group in the lockdown, it's tough. And, you know, I believe me, I'll say a prayer every day, because I think we're all one paycheck, or one, you know, incident, emotional incident or tragedy in our life from being in that position. And so yes, taking the time to, you know, really understand that is, you know, you know, God bless you for doing that, for doing that work. I know, it's hard to track, you know, everybody wants to be you know, with the glitz and the glamour. You know, that's where the real work is done in the trenches. So I would absolutely,

 

Iam  06:47

it's my tell you, it's an extremely rewarding experience. One that I'll that I will always treasure. But as you mentioned, people come from a lot of different backgrounds to get to that place. And a lot of different reasons that have sparked and having worked with adults in that setting, as well as with children, as well, in a very similar setting. I'm truly thankful for the the life that I can lead and, and, you know, family, friends, colleagues, and being able to do some things that we reported to do. But you never know, just the slightest of instances that can actually influence people in such profound ways that it carries throughout the fabric of their entire life. Right. It's extremely powerful. It's extremely scary. Yeah. And it's one of those things where I, yeah, I do, I do think about it a number of times, a month or so just to be just be thankful, because of this selfless work and a lot of ways. Yeah, I

 

Roy Barker  07:49

think we, you know, most of us could fill up our gratitude journals with, you know, just being where we are. And a lot of times we go straight in life, but we don't think about no matter how bad your day is going there, somebody that's having a much worse day. And we have, we were you know, we got shelter, food, and a place to go every day, you know, we've pretty much been good people in our life, you know, our families, our loved ones, we got all that we have a lot to be thankful for.

 

Iam  08:16

Absolutely. And it gives me my perspective on change and work with people because as you said, they can always be worse. So all we're trying to do is just be better. Yeah. is never actually curing cancer. We're not we're not doing anything else. We're just trying, we're just trying to take steps forward. That's it. Yeah,

 

Roy Barker  08:33

it's a pretty good transition. Because, you know, one thing we talked about is leadership, and, you know, kind of the development model versus maybe the bringing somebody in from the outside. But before we launch into that, I think, you know, kind of what this does also to it. He said something, you know, about trying to find where everybody's at, start from where they're at. And I think we need to think a lot about that in the workplace as well. Sometimes we don't we think this is a homogeneous group that everybody's on the same level, everybody thinks the same processes the same. I tell you a simple thing that really changed my mind about this many years ago was I went to one of these painting parties. And you know, the lady stands up the front says pick up brush to and doing green or whatever. I think what it taught me is that she said the same thing to all 25 of us. But we all had very different pictures. And so it just made me think about wow, you know, in the workplace. I can tell you one thing, and I could tell your neighbor the same exact thing, same exact way y'all could both be listening to me at the same time. You could walk away with two totally different

 

Iam  09:52

thoughts on that. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And, and, you know, that's, you know, it's a great, great example of just how We interpret what we hear, and how we process but also it aligns to our own skill and abilities of what we're actually able to apply. Yeah, both in sight and sound. And then action. Yeah. And when I step into an organization, I remind myself that I can't judge the book based on the chapter I've just walked in on, right. So I'm going to see a whole lot, I'm going to hear a lot. But there's so much other context around who each of my clients are the organization, the fabric, their own nuances, of which, in certain ways, I'm not going to know on that first day, I'm not going to go on that, in those first few weeks. I will know over time, based off of consistency of behavior, consistency of thought, action, because everyone in my mind, in some ways you're going to live, right, you're going to live in a context of just outright live, because you don't want to necessarily acknowledge the truth, you're going to lie, either in the context of, you're going to withhold information because you don't think it's relevant. Or you're going to lie, because you just don't know the information yourself. So it's not like you're admitting something, you just don't know it yourself. Right, right. And so for me, when I'm walking in and working with leaders and executives, I then have to start with, what am I hearing, and not judging the book on what I'm seeing on this chapter, but now understanding the fabric of who I'm actually working with. And I think it's a great segue, because I even talked about in my book intention. One of the key points in this book, at the very beginning is the principle of view, which really underscores who we are as people, because we all have characters that we have in our own lives, right? That that of who we are, and how we show up. And our characters aren't job titles like VP of this or director of that, or it's not even the title of dad, sibling, you know, brother, Uncle, you know, it's not a title defined by that. As much as it's a title of Mr. No doll. So in certain situations, when someone's challenged, how do they show up for the abominable snowman from no Bugs Bunny? cartoon, right. With Abominable Snowman, we just wanted nothing more than a buddy. And here are Daffy and Daffy Duck and bugs money get lost. And the bottom of snowman just found the pet. And he now he's just choking the heck out of Bugs Bunny, all because you just want to love them, they will hit a pet. But clearly Daffy and Bugs Bunny didn't see it that way at all. But imagine how that transfers over to one job, and to one's family life, where they want something so much and so bad, they just strangle the life out of it. Were all that to do with just let go a little bit. And they would get exactly what they want. Right? Um, and so in that context, and as you described, as I have worked with my leaders, I tried to find who their characters are, not what they're showing me. But do my interviews with their peers, or their direct reports. My conversations are with them on a regular basis to really understand who are your characters? And how are you showing up? Because as you described from that painting, each of us has our own characters on how our skills and abilities transfer over into what we hear and do. And it's my responsibility both for my clients, but even for myself to see how am I showing up in a way that's authentic, but also acknowledges all the things and characters I've created in my life that have kept me safe? and kept me in this proverbial box that have made me successful? Or at least halfway successful? to move forward?

 

Roy Barker  13:50

Right? Yeah, and you know, one thing too, I think, as you were talking, it was even thinking like likes and dislikes, because if if you're a spreadsheet person, that sit next to maybe somebody that really likes to read in the written word, you know, somebody tells me, okay, we need these numbers crunched in this, you know, I kind of get a little excited, like, okay, because that's what I like to do. I like spreadsheets and numbers. Now, the person that's more of the reader, the wordsmith, they're like, I see three numbers together. And, you know, I go blind for for sure. You know, so it's like, I think that also has a lot to do is, you know, not to jump the gun but you know, trying to match the right person with the right project with the right job. And not not making not intimidating like, you've got to do this, like, Well, why can't we just find you something that fits you? You can excel and then you know, we'll find you know, just suit everybody to the right project, I guess is the best way say it.

 

Iam  14:50

Yeah, I think that's I think it's a great point to acknowledge where people's skill sets and where can they all thrive, because I have yet to also meet just as I mentioned, someone who doesn't want To be better, I've yet to meet anyone who wants to waste their time, right? And then that people want to excel in what they're good at, and what they enjoy doing. So that person who enjoys Excel, crunching and looking at the numbers, etc, that's a different skill set, as well as potential different project or role on a project and say someone else who's, who has a different way of thinking, who just want likes the talking piece behind that, and all good leaders, you know, can they you know, acknowledge what their team's strengths and weaknesses are. Now, that doesn't mean we keep keep everyone in their strengths and dismiss their weaknesses, as much as it is acknowledging what they're strong at. And where we need to either coach them up from a leadership standpoint, or acknowledge that we're just going to extend them a little bit beyond their comfort zone, so that they can be contributed in different ways. So it creates a little bit more of a challenge, but also doing so so we don't impact their confidence, we don't impact their ability to actually get their job done. Yeah. Because at that point, you hit people who are then frustrated, or can't deliver all around expectations that may or may not have been set for themselves, or were set by somebody else. And it's all due to just not knowing who your who's on your team. And in that case, the effectiveness of that leader, being able to transfer that information over and getting the most out of the talent. And the thing, you know,

 

Roy Barker  16:26

you mentioned this a little earlier that, but I think it's good for especially when we come into a new situation, we have to realize there may be a small person, we're not gonna say everybody, but let's say the vast majority of people, they just want to come in, they want to do a good job, they want to feel good. I don't I have never met a person in my life. I don't think that woke up in the morning and said, I'm going in to do a terrible job today. Right? Yeah, maybe some people went in and said, I want to do as little as possible today. Yes, there are those people. But, you know, for the for the vast majority of people, you know, they want to go and they want to do a good job, they want to feel good when they leave. They don't they don't want to put themselves in a position to feel bad because they didn't do something. Right.

 

Iam  17:16

Absolutely. And I think one of the one of the challenges is, you know, for some leaders, and as we look at people who may be, you know, air quotes, slacking are not bringing their true selves or, or they're coming in wrecking things. When they come in, come in there, you know, for projects or work or otherwise, it's truly understanding what's their what's their priority, and what's their goal, right, it doesn't align to mind the line to ours as as a particular team, or mine as a leader. Because everyone has a purpose, and sometimes someone's purpose is to do as you mentioned, the least amount of work as possible. But they've executed against that purpose. Now, in that respect, they've done exactly what they said they wanted to do. And they can walk away thinking, yes, I did exactly what I wanted. But it also on the other hand, that also has an impact to others. And now it causes conflict, unnecessarily, right. And so really, as as you know, having a lead a team of 25 people at its max, at one point, my one of my chief responsibilities wasn't about the work, heck, I knew my team could do the work. So it was less about that. And in fact, I was the newest person on the team, so that many of them had been in their roles two years, at the least, and longer when I took over the team of which I had never led before. And one of the first things I had to do was understand who they were as people, and what was their motivation? Why did they come to work? What was the reason why they stayed in the role so long? What was their motivations? What is their priorities? And that's not only about the work itself, they're doing, but where did they see themselves in several years? Or what was their priorities outside of the work life right, outside of the four walls in which I saw them, you know, with their families, with their friends, what were their interests, what were the things that really captured their mind. And only then when I understood the balance between what they did at work and what their their families were and who they were as individuals outside of the four walls of which they're being paid to actually execute something. Only then could I actually truly lead them in a way that was truly authentic to who they were as individuals, but also bringing the team together in a way that they could partner in different ways and expand upon their own interest to keep them engaged. But oftentimes, we kind of jumped in the middle of saying that I know we talked briefly about this as well. Sometimes we can come in and we see things you know, first week we won't change anything but that third week we're changing everything. It's like there's something to be said for that. However, you know, they can go sideways very quickly and without truly acknowledge where where your team is. And where you're trying to go? Yeah, they told me don't change it the first day. So

 

Roy Barker  20:03

yeah, I'm just counting down till I can.

 

Iam  20:07

That's right, I've given enough grace period. NET right now, you know, now it's time to change because I'm frustrated by this stuff.

 

Roy Barker  20:14

You know, the other part of this is, I would suspect his communication, which is something I feel like we're very short on a lot of times, but like, if we take that time to actually communicate, and find out once, you know, something went subpar, if it went wrong there dragon, a one that may be a good employ, that's got some big burden that they're carrying with them. And, you know, I gave you a good example, a friend of mine used to work in, in the senior living industry, and she had a really good caregiver. And just no call no show, which is what most of the employees do, you know, they just find another job, and they just leave in that set. But this was a this person was different. And the staff said, don't worry about it. It's just normal. No call no show in this executive director said no, she actually went out to this lady's house to talk to her say, What's up, and, you know, found out that unfortunately, husband had gotten a DWI the night before. So they impounded the car. She had no way to work. No, no one to keep the kids. And so she's like, no, why is easier just to not come in not call, I'll go find another job. But you know, she, this executive directors, like she was such a good person. And such a good worker, they could not let her go. And so what they ended up doing was helping her get some childcare rearranged her schedule for a couple days to let her come in from three to 11 or whatever. But you know, there was a solution to the issue. Now, right? Now, we have to understand, not always going to be that simple, you know, sure. There are no solutions, except for, you know, just agree to disagree and part ways. But right, let's feel like it's a lot of times it's worth that conversation to find out what's going on in their life.

 

Iam  22:10

Yes, you're absolutely right. And to that very acknowledgement that very stories, one, actually taking the time to have the conversation, one to actually seek to understand, and that requires active listening. Well, you're not listening for an end result. You're just listening to what's being produced, and what's being in the moment, versus also having a communication of knowing where you're trying to go. Like there's a we're trying to solve this together, right. Oftentimes, I think we get in this this cycle of communication, where it's unit unit directional, yes, where we're just communicating what we think, or we get into arguments to win, not to solve, right, like, if you think about marriages that way, in any relationship where someone tries to have a position of power over someone based off what they're communicating, based on the language that they're using, and even the tone, and even how their posture, even in practice. That's a surefire way to make sure that once almost stays in power and put someone else down. But then even in the example that you offered, that was of effort, both of driving to the woman's home, having a conversation and understanding, understanding one, here's what our policies are here at the organization. That's not changing. But secondly, what's that policy in the context of the person of whom we're actually working with? Right, and having a compassion but also, I'm sure setting setting expectation as they move forward. I think oftentimes, when I work with leaders, especially new leaders who are coming into organizations, you know, they want to demonstrate their power, because that's how leadership is often defined, that I'm here and you're there. I'm the one coming up with a strategy. And you will follow that strategy. Because if you don't, then I don't survive. So I need people who can do that. And as such, we find ourselves, as we've talked about just starting to change stuff, because we need to set a tone. Right? When that tone might be the be one that is earmarked for something back in, you know, the 60s 70s 80s and not something that will really work isn't it is necessary, as we move forward as being true leaders, and how do we get the most out of really good people? And, again, that's, that is not always the case. Sometimes you have to make decisions that are in the best interests of the organization, the best interests of your team. And that best interest maybe, you know, we'll part we'll part part ways today, right? And that's fine too, because it isn't the right fit. But when you can actually communicate expectations, acknowledgement, setting ground rules, and then allowing someone to meet it the best way that they can. And let's talk about whether you are you are not in an open forum, and open way you'll get you'll be deep will be one feel a lot more respected. But secondly, they probably work a little bit harder, and they'll try to meet those expectations. And then it comes down to choice if they don't.

 

Roy Barker  25:26

Yeah, yeah. And one more thing, before we move on, I know, we want to talk about the, you know, external versus internal. But, you know, I see a lot of companies and I agree, we have to have, we can't change what we don't measure. And I'm, you know, I'm a numbers guy. So I love that. But yeah, thing I do talk a lot about is these, the metrics that we set, we can't use those to turn around and beat people up with them. Yes. And I was like, because I've worked for a company like that once that we had these, but I mean, then it turned around to be a stick. And so what happened was people figured out a way to work around these metrics, where we didn't really know what the heck was going on. I mean, and it, it messed the whole thing up, because now we weren't solving for what we were trying to measure for. We couldn't do any predicting, and the employees may be getting away with stuff because they weren't reporting correctly. But in because I will, what you'd said about this communication is that, you know, we can't Well, I don't like to always be my is right. And I think at some point, you know, we do have to make hard decisions. I'm not saying that they never come up. But instead of always looking around to try to punish somebody to fix things. If we would, again, seek to understand what is the problem here, and, and get people to be able to feel like they can actually open up with you. Yeah, to me, it's much easier to solve these problems, because I've worked with companies that were I can go in as a third party and do this mediation and say, let's talk about this process, what's going on, and they feel safe, because I'm not trying to hammer them or threaten their job. I'm just, you know, I'll just tell Switzerland, I'm trying to get to the bottom of this problem where we can document it and get it fixed. Whereas other people are like, hey, the first negative word, you know, the first thing you say you did wrong and coming out, well, you're gonna be fired anyway. So try to hide it as long as you can. So anyway, I just feel like we, you know, we have to walk this balancing act.

 

Iam  27:28

Yeah. And we do have to walk balancing act. But I know, from a leadership standpoint, it takes a lot more patience than some of us are willing to actually offer it. Correct. to actually communicate, to actually listen, to actually partner to solve versus solving in ourselves and making unilateral decisions. Yeah. That takes a lot more effort than just making a decision and go, Yeah, because we don't have necessarily time for that. Let's sit down and drive to someone's home and have a conversation. You know, a lot of executives in that are leaders in that place would pay, what's our policy? What, how many times has this person done this? Got it? That's all the data we need. And let's move on with our lives. Right? It takes a lot more work to actually do the right thing. Yeah. And I think that's one of the biggest reasons why we all I think, tend to struggle with development and leadership, and even just change in general, and why he wrote a book about it. Because it does take a lot of work. And work, we may not necessarily see it, as you mentioned, it's not something you can always measure, because people will work around, find loopholes in those measures. We always do. Yeah. Yeah,

 

Roy Barker  28:47

I look at it too, from the, you know, I do a lot of employee retention work. And so I look at it from that retention perspective is, in sometimes when we take the extra time, we can build a we build some goodwill with our people, where we can keep them and solve some problems, keep our people in place versus not, you know, because sometimes that unilateral decision, what I've seen is, you know, the first domino that drops, then we start having three or four more that say, I'm not dealing with that. So I'm just going to go ahead and be out of here. And now we've got other issues. So anyway, not that it doesn't need to be done. I'm not saying that. I know, like there are times where we have to make those quick decisions, I guess, done over and out and move forward. But I'm talking about developing leadership. That's important because, you know, we were kind of joking before we came on here that you know, sometimes it's better to develop prior. It's sometimes it's better develop internally versus bring somebody externally and I'll let you explain those differences. But then, if we want to develop internally It's a process and it's a long run game. It's not, you know, like we said is we can't say, you know, Joe's returned two weeks, we got to develop somebody to take his place. You know, it's just it's a much longer time horizon.

 

Iam  30:16

Absolutely. Any leadership development does take a lot, a lot of time, and effort. And as we were talking, and even as your question pointed out, you know, at times, it's appropriate to go outside of the organization to hire certain level of talent. In those instances, I've found that successful or, or helpful to bring someone from the outside in, when when they have a particular skill set, we're trying to integrate into our organization, be it on a particular product or particular leadership mindset, as we're looking to change the culture. In those instances, it can be extremely beneficial to actually bring someone in, even in the example of what you offered, around, hey, we have Joe retiring in two weeks, we need someone in here. Well, guess what, we probably need to hire someone, because we if we haven't developed that skill, we haven't identified that successor up to this point, then quite frankly, we don't have it right. In this, we're going to be scrambling anyway. Yeah. So who have we groomed in that respect, to actually take Joe's place, as I'm sure his retirement, while it may be a shock, probably was anticipated in some way. Yeah. And so I think those are some of the key benefits of bringing someone in, again, when you look at the chase a culture, and then and it can infuse some key skills and behaviors and expectations into the organization, it really does prove beneficial, as well as if there's some of the you know, last minute changes. And obviously, we haven't maybe maybe not done a good enough job from a succession planning standpoint. But as we talked about, you know, establishing an internal succession and talent pipeline is extremely important. As you talked about earlier, it leads into employee retention, because employees want to know that there's growth opportunities here, it doesn't mean that growth is defined by more money, a different title, that growth could also be, I get a new job, as in, I get to do different work, and I'm challenged. And that doesn't mean it's for everybody, it does mean that you have an opportunity, if you want to move in this organization, way that you can grow in different ways. Having worked in that talent, talent development field, and specifically, you know, for leadership development, and, and even creating talent pipelines, I've realized that creating talent pipelines, as you mentioned, is is a is a marathon. You know, um, it's something that you continuously plan for and, and identify in the respect that if you're looking for a new role, that should have been identified, unless it's a startup, you know, obviously, there's instances where you can't, but if we're looking for to have successors for some key jobs, then we need to make sure we're identifying those individuals with a two year runway, right? One, that they can build this the knowledge, skills and abilities across different industry or different experiences, as well as having the right level of visibility within the organization. Because the successor to a role is not the one doing the hiring. It's the person's boss who's doing the hiring. So they need to have trusted this individual who will be replacing me or you can actually do the job, right? They have trust in that. So what are those experiences that need to be created, as well as what are the what's the line of sight and visibility towards, you know, my peers or to my, to my boss, that they have some level of visibility, and that they can build some trust. I have found that, you know, as I think about this last year, as I've been working with organizations, around their talent pipelines, they really don't have them. They're not very strong, they're very weak. Some of the top talent are leaving, because it's a lot easier for people now to work from home and, and work remotely. And I think that's going to be continuous narrative. As we start to open back up nationwide wide and as we are open now, nationwide, in a lot of respects, we're going to be losing top talent. And those organizations that have done a strong enough job understanding that having succession planning for critical roles. And they've started that prior to from a development standpoint prior to someone leaving and prior to the old poop move moments where Joe is leaving in two weeks. Those are the ones we're going to be able to survive not only as a consistency of the fabric of the organization, not only the consistency of of projects, the consistency of the culture. But you also know who you're, you're being able to sustain momentum. And it's tied to a strategic vision of where the company is going. And those companies that are have done that very well or are doing that very well will find themselves consistently more successful than those companies that do not, and look to holistically or singularly hire someone from the outside to bring them in, because you didn't will have constant churn, which is not what we're looking for. Right? Yeah, and it's, you know, a

 

Roy Barker  35:33

lot of times, you get some resistance for the cost of the development plans. And, you know, I think it's definitely something that needs to be monitored, because if everybody works their way through the system, but they don't get, they don't finish it or get through it, or they don't get the job, then, you know, at some point, it may just be a waste of time and a waste of money. But I think the one thing to look at too, though, is that, you know, it's the old joke that the the CFO comes to the CEO and says, hey, how can we continue to train all these people and have them leave? And the CEOs? Like, how can we not train them and have them stay here? So yeah, again, we're gonna have to look at both sides of this, that, you know, there's going to be some leakage, we just probably can't capture everybody that would work through our programs. But if we can capture most of them, I assume we would still be beneficial to you know, and again, when I say internal, I don't necessarily mean we have to have our people doing the training, it could be a combination of our people, contractors, you know, programs, however, that looks but I'm just talking about, you know, the company spending the money on that pipeline

 

Iam  36:44

apps. Absolutely. And I think that that analogy you just made, that's absolutely the case. The CEOs, right? How can we not, you know, train these individuals. But also, as we think about it, as well, the higher we go up in the organization, there are less roles available. And so in that context, you will always have some leakage, because there aren't going to be roles for everyone. Right? The higher we get, the more seats that dropped out of this game of musical chairs that we call leadership, and executive level jobs. And so in that context, we have to be prepared for that, because we don't know who's going to stay who's going to go both from the those we've invested in, from a talent perspective, as well as those who may just leave, who are not investing in right now, who's jet who are individual sitting in critical roles. And, you know, one of the things that, you know, in one of my previous organizations, they, they did a really good solid job of that I was able to help lead from a development standpoint, or job rotations across different parts of the organization. And we focused on capabilities, our behaviors of communications, strategy, strategic thinking, their ability to influence their ability to partner and communicate. And we have this list of top talent that we just rotated across open roles and on different projects across different pillars within the organization, and afforded the organization to one have diversity of thought within those particular roles, as well as our top talent, being able to be viewed as top down and have that feeling of like, wow, they really want to invest in me to do something for six months, right. And we're swapping talent out with each other so that, again, we could share in the benefit of what one skill sets are, again, specifically on their capabilities. And more specifically, in that they're how behaviors, you know, those those how activities or behaviors, we can always teach somebody how to make something or do something, we can teach them a process, right? We can always teach them, especially from a leadership standpoint, we can always teach them the behaviors on how to be a good leader, you know, that takes a lot longer, longer time, a lot more reinforcement, a lot more visibility, then we're typically afforded because as we just talked about earlier, our metrics are tied tied to what we do. We're endlessly how we do it. And so it's a little bit more challenging in that respect. But I will say that, you know, we that leakage of top talent should be something that we see as a rite of doing the right thing for our employees in our organization, knowing that someone's leaving, not because they weren't developed, but because we just ran out of seats, and ran out of projects. And hey, we can say, you know what, we still did the right thing. And we're doing the right thing by this organization. And when we think about, as you mentioned, a retention perspective. People want to know, one clarity of their, you know, where's the organization? What are their values? Do I trust my leadership? Do I have an opportunity to grow? And one of the things that we can do that I stress with our leadership teams, is that growth perspective. And being cognizant of that?

 

Roy Barker  40:12

Yeah, as well. Yeah, it's hard when we lose those guys, you know, that we've developed and we hope may be our next leader to fill that position. But you know, I think we have to take the attitude of, like you say, we did the right thing for this person. And that's really, again, we're cultivating relationships, because you never know, when this guy may come back around. Again, it may go for a minute. But again, if we, if we part on bad ways, and we're destructive, that's not good for our image. And it's not good for, you know, those people that we may be able to attract back in sometime,

 

Iam  40:50

yes, absolute to bring them back in. And that would be, you know, obviously, the, you know, those re patriots, if you will bring them back into the organization because they can take what they learn with us do it someplace else, get refinement, and then opportunities to come back. I think the other part to reinforce as well as we think about it from leadership development standpoint, or just development in general, and that it's only that level of training and visibility, but it touches on job movement that we sometimes lose sight of, because again, as the higher we get up in the organization, those individuals tend to stay in their roles a lot longer, right. And absent a organizational change, of leadership change, of either bringing someone in or politics playing itself out at those higher levels of the organization, those roles typically don't open up all that often. So you're more likely to see people leave as they get higher and higher. Because the chairs just aren't there. And acknowledging At what point do we force change in certain ways, even though from a development standpoint, we made out invested in that person from a skillset standpoint, maybe they just developed in a one particular pillar, and now we need to move them into another area. Right. And so, you know, just really having that transparency around, and visibility for all of those across organizations so that they know that there is an opportunity to develop either in a singular track, let's say it's marketing, or HR, or, or in a production group, or across many pillars, right? Because there's different tracks that one can take in that development, but having that visibility, say, hey, it is possible. And just because we go to a new role does and we may not be successful doesn't make us any less talented. It just means that it shows us where we have some more growth to do. Yeah, yeah, that's also the acknowledgement as well.

 

Roy Barker  42:48

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, in addition to the self growth, and you know, learn the different skills for that person, maybe the other thing they do is learn a bit more about what these other departments do. Because, you know, I've seen that in big companies where it's, it's a one track guy, he was always in operations, excuse me, you know, it gets to the top, but he doesn't understand, you know, what is accounting and finance and quality assurance? You know, there's this whole other part of a company that they have really no clue about. So,

 

Iam  43:20

absolutely. And that's how you build that growth through that end to end view of Okay, what are you impacted by from finance, to marketing to HR? And you don't need to be an expert in it, just to the extent that you understand the process, and what are the upstream and downstream impacts, right. Because when we bring you back to our group here in processing and production area, or operations, you understand now holistically how the process works, and also how to better lead. Yeah, as a result. Yeah. And I think we sometimes lose sight of that. Actually, what's funny, I with my team, when I originally took them over that 25 I actually broke them into groups. They it was it was a training team for just acknowledgement. And so, you know, they'd often come to me and they'd be complaining, like, Oh, this group does this or Oh, that group does that right? Or all the call centers want this? Or our instructional designers are can't do this. There was always somebody else's fault. I said, I said that was fair, right? A guy knows Far be it for me to tell you that you that these aren't true experiences. But I what I asked him to do was okay, you know, cuz I was just one day I was like, Okay, this is gonna be part of your development plans for all 25 I said, I'm gonna break you. First off, I want you to just list out your top five things that you think we have problems with this individually, just give them to me. And then once I got on my end, if you don't have five, that's fine. Just give me that no more than five but no more than five. Don't give me everything. I didn't want that.

 

Roy Barker  45:02

Yeah, that turns in 10 pages.

 

Iam  45:04

exactly five was already too much for 25 people, please believe me, that was already more than it should have asked for. But I was giving them some rope. And I knew that there's be some overlap. So I said, Okay, here's the list, and they removed any duplicates. And I said, Okay, that we have the list from each of you individually. Now, I want you to go in. And you could only select the five that you think, have the most impact if we were to try to solve five of these, which would those five be and you could only select five. Now to see everyone's thought, and we got down to those five, based off of just pure ranking of how many dots were next to him. And then I said, Okay, now we have our five, I'm breaking you into five different groups, right? And you're going to select, I mean, you're going to randomly select one of these five projects to work on. And as part of this project is party is part of your development plan of understanding what is the root cause of this problem? I want you to set up interviews with the processes, and the people impacting these processes, upstream, our team and even downstream and understand where they think the challenges are related to this project. And this problem that you see, we're not placing blame. It's not it's you versus me, it's seeking to understand. And the third thing is okay, once you understand that, I want you to come back to me and then acknowledge, and let's talk about what is what is the true problem? Is it difference in strategy from one group to another? Is it because of resourcing is what is the what's the reason that you now have uncovered, and that is what we're going to solve? Once you get down to that theme or those themes. It was a good exercise for my team, to one develop it understand that, hey, we can all complain. Welcome to all worlds, all groups, someone else is doing something wrong, and it's someone else's fault. So check, we got that. Now we're actually I'm asking you to solve it. Now, I'm asking you to really think through organizationally, what are some of the decisions that were made? Why were those decisions made? How can we solve it? Because we're not gonna ask them to solve it, this is our problem. Or if we need them, how are we partnering with them for a solution. And that's how we're going to move forward. And I tell you, it was a very, it was a good growth opportunity for each of them to really acknowledge, as we're describing, from a development standpoint, that holistic perspective that we can get so entrenched in what we do every day, we lose. And we only see the negative sides of what others are doing to us, or against us. Yeah, lose sight of that, too. We work for one organization, we're all trying to be efficient. Now that efficiency might be defined differently. And it often is, but we're all trying to be efficient and successful. Right. So how can we all work together? Yeah, because no one wants to rework. And that was a good learning opportunity for them to think about it from business, but also change management as well.

 

Roy Barker  48:14

Right, right. Yeah. And sometimes it's sometimes it's very simple. When you start asking questions. It the the issue arises, and it's something so simple as there was a miscommunication. You know, one thing I'm thinking about was a process that it was totally messed up. But as we started asking questions, it was like, oh, there was a miscommunication. About a year ago, half the people got the letter, it was a miscommunication. The other half didn't. So we got people still working off this, you know, bogus plan that somebody had thrown out. Sometimes, again, it gets back to the communication aspect is, once everybody had the current and best available information, problem solved. I mean, it just,

 

Iam  49:02

yeah, sometimes just bringing awareness, as you mentioned, you don't need to do anything. It's like, Oh, got it. You can do anything. We really having the conversation was all we needed. Other times, it is like, okay, we need to work this out now, to see how we can help each other out.

 

Roy Barker  49:21

And I think the, you know, for me, the takeaway from this conversation is going to be the seek to understand I think that's the biggest thing we can do and a lot of life not just at work, but in life as well when, you know, like we're talking about our partner, you know, I usually do what I'm told so I'm stay out of trouble, but but, you know, when when she's offered her game, it's you know, like, I know, that's not who you are. So you know what's going on, was it you know, the kids did, you know, the dog bite you on the foot or you know, whatever, but I know there's something amiss and I think it's just a good thing because if then we can have empathy for, you know, if they were lashing out at me it wasn't because I did anything and I don't have to feel bad. I don't have to get mad if I miss a thing, and now we've worked through it, and it's over. It's not a thing anymore. Right?

 

Iam  50:14

Yeah, it's about creating that transparency. And even as we described it earlier, as well, it's, it's, we're in the conversations to solve this together, right? It's only when we're in the conversations to win head. The solve is my answer, not yours. Now, that's when we find ourselves in a lot more trouble. Yeah. And a lot more contentious environment, then probably we should be. Yeah. And that doesn't mean it's always gonna work out. It does not mean it's always pleasant. Right? It does mean, it does take a little bit more time. It does mean sometimes checking our emotions at the door. Yeah. And really coming in from a place that we're all trying to solve this together. Versus me versus you. Yeah. on ourselves. And I know, when I find myself, the me versus you situation. It's gonna be you. Because I'm not gonna fight. You can have it, right. It's not, it's not worth it to me. And I'm happy to go. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Roy Barker  51:13

Yeah, yeah. You know, we think about those things if then, because you kind of have to think about at the end, what did I really win? Yeah. If our organization is in disarray, and you know, we didn't work together to figure out that problem. You know, again, it's like, sometimes it's hard. It's hard to check your ego and say, yeah, maybe I'm not wrong. But I don't always have to try to prove our right that I am. I mean, there's, you know, we can find that common ground where somebody else can have the thought that works. And, you know, we kind of go with that instead of standing on our it's difficult. I mean, we just have, yeah, it's

 

Iam  51:54

Yeah, it is. The I would say without question it is, is a challenge, especially when pride gets gets gets the better of us sometimes. And as we climb the corporate ladder and become more successful, it's defined based on pride and our results and what we've done what we've been able to achieve. So the take a backseat or acquiesce can sometimes be a little bit of a challenge, to say the least. But what is our strength is also a weakness, but it can can be refined. Yeah. And I think that's the benefit.

 

Roy Barker  52:25

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Dr. Ian, well, we've run way over. Sorry about that. But it's such a good conversation that really appreciate you taking time out of your day to be with us. Before we go, first off, what is a tool or a habit, something that you use every day, either professionally or personally, that just adds a lot of value?

 

Iam  52:47

Sure, the first thing that I you know, do every single day is I work out. For me, it's a habit. It's just not merely of working out just for the sake of working out. it affords me an opportunity to one invest in myself in the day. As a leader, leadership, development coach, and speaker and author, I'm often given my time to others. That's what I enjoyed. That's what it makes me a whole, it makes me excited. That's what I'm passionate about. But I also recognize the need to invest in myself. And so for me, the habit that I do each morning is going to the gym and just giving reinvesting in my own health, because it also allows me to reinvest in my thinking, and just resettling and calming myself down, taking stock in my day, in where what am i prioritizing? And how am I prioritize prioritizing my actions? And any, anything that does not fit that priority? I also give myself the opportunity to think through is that should I be doing it or not? So the gym, in and of itself is an investment in myself, both from an health standpoint, physically, but also mentally, in taking stock in my priorities. And that may look like something different for each of us. But I do say the habit should be always invest in yourself, know, from a health standpoint. And then secondly, always react back home, what is your priority? And for me, I do that to Jim,

 

Roy Barker  54:15

I love that invest in yourself, because I don't think we do enough of that, you know, we tend to want to give ourselves away in business and in life. So great advice. Thanks for that. So tell everybody, who do you like to work with? How can you help them? And of course, how can they reach out and get a hold of you? Sure.

 

Iam  54:35

I like to work with people who are passionate about taking the next step. Many people from my work with and the organizations you're already successful, right? You're good enough as is. I'm trying to take you out of the box, you're in and take you to that next step. And so because of that you have a certain level of passion, dedication and commitment into yourself to get there. Knowing that you're going to do it the right way. And so those are the individuals I work with both organizationally, as well as individuals, I work with one on one. In that respect, I do work with a number of different organizations, both individually as well as doing large leadership development workshops, again, as well as work with people outside of organizations. So I can be found on my website, and that is that Rhodes Smith.com. That's our R H O D E S  S M I T.com. I can also be found on Instagram and Twitter at Dr. B underscore intention where you can find more information about myself more information about some my book material as well as some of the things I do day to day. as well. You can find my book on Amazon as well as Barnes and Noble under Intention, Building Capabilities To Transform Your Story.

 

Roy Barker  55:54

Okay, awesome. Y'all reach out, let doctoring and help you I know he can help take you to the next level for sure. All right, thanks a lot. that's gonna do it for another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. We appreciate all of our listeners for sure. You can find us at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com. We're on all the major podcast platforms iTunes, Stitcher, Google Spotify, if we're not on one that you listen to please reach out I'd be glad to get it added. We also on all the major social media networks, we typically probably hang out there on Instagram a little bit more. Pretty simple. So the pictures or pictures are worth 1000 words for me, that's for sure. But anyway, y'all reach out we love to hear from everybody. If you have a show ideas or guest ideas, let me know. Also, a video of this interview will go up on YouTube when the episode goes live so you can check us out over there as well. So until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.rhodessmith.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

Overworked and Overwhelmed Business Owner Help Is Here Don't Sacrifice Any Longer with Kasey Compton

When your in growth mode it's easy to start feeling overwhelmed and working too much? You probably got into the business for the perks of ownership. Between doing your books, marketing, fulfillment, and the many other tasks in your day you have no more time. One word...systems! You can apply systems in your business to make scaling easier.

About Kasey

Kasey Compton is a determined entrepreneur who has successfully scaled four businesses past the multi-million mark. Kasey designed her mental health practice, Mindsight Behavioral Group, to be highly recognizable, community-focused, and profitable, going from zero to three million in less than three years with plans to dominate the world! She is on a mission to help business owners find the entrepreneurial confidence to design and live the life they've always wanted.

Hi, I’m Kasey Compton. I went from bankrupt to Boss Babe when I took my first company from zero to three million in less than three years without ditching my life to do it. That experience allowed me to find the confidence I had stuffed down deep beneath all my fear and shame.

Now, I own a business consulting firm, a marketing company, a virtual assistant business, a commercial real estate corporation, and a hair salon in addition to my growing mental health practice.

I chose not to let fear get in my way and built my confidence one decision at a time.

Because of my experience, I am on a mission to help people find their own entrepreneurial confidence.

How did I do it? Glad you asked…..

Life is full of systems, even if you don't call them that. You have a system for checking the mail, a system for getting ready in the morning, and a system for running your business. When we strengthen those by increasing efficiency and decreasing friction, we create ease and confidence and decrease our limits.

Weak systems limit your freedom by tying you to your tasks. Feeling overworked and overwhelmed? Often, it's a systems issue.

When your systems are secure, you have the peace of mind to start a new business, scale your current business, or change paths altogether.

www.kaseycompton.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspdocast.com

 

Full Transcript Below

Overworked and Overwhelmed Business Owner? Help Is Here, Don't Sacrifice Any Longer with Kasey Compton

Wed, 6/30 12:02PM • 37:18

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, business, book, kasey, system, scale, scaling, reach, leads, component, businesses, business owners, good, marketing, person, work, hear, questions, healthcare, writing

SPEAKERS

Kasey, Roy Barker

 

Roy Barker  00:07

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. I'm your host Roy. Of course, we are the podcast that brings you a wide variety of topics from a diverse set of guests. We always are trying to find out those little missing pieces to help make us more successful. And also, we'd like to provide experts that can help you if you're bumping up against something that's holding you back, definitely give you some things to think about or somebody to reach out to.

 

Today, we're excited to have Kasey Compton with this. She is a determined entrepreneur who has had who has successfully scaled for businesses past the multi million dollar mark. She's designed for mental health practice, mindset behavioral group, to be the recognizable community focused and profitable, going from zero to 3 million in less than three years. with plans to dominate the world. I love that she is on a mission to help business owners find the entrepreneurial confidence to design and live the life they've always wanted.

 

Also, She is the author of fix this next, it's a book kind of geared at health care practitioners, if I'm not mistaken, that helps them to figure out what they need, or help them prioritize the needs of the business. So Kasey, thanks so much for being with us today. Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. So before we get too far into this, tell us a little bit about your story. I mean, I've read some other collateral, and you've got a good story to tell. So, you know, kind of tell us a little bit about that how you ended up here.

 

Kasey  01:37

Yeah, I think, um, my story is very similar to a lot of a lot of other stories that I hear, it's kind of that it sounds so cliche, but it's sort of like that rags to riches story, I started with basically nothing after a terrible relationship, and was working for a company and felt like I had no control over my future and the trajectory of my life that I was living in. So after a pretty rough, high risk pregnancy, that kept me on flat bed rest for about five months, after I had my daughter, I just decided I was going to take things into my own hands. And I tell people that the only thing I could really afford, because we lost almost everything we had during that time, because I wasn't financially prepared for that kind of hit.

 

The only thing I could afford to do was think and check out library books. So that's what I did, I spent a lot of time thinking about business and how I wanted to start my own and what that was going to look like. And very soon after, that's what I did. And it just has taken off. And one thing has led to another and I've found a lot of joy in creating and designing things from from nothing into something that is helpful to people.

 

Roy Barker  03:03

Yeah, that's awesome. I love to hear those stories. And I do like the component about you had time to think and he had time to, to, you know, check out these books, because I feel like education is very important. And I'm you know, I believe, even if you want to do a trade, the college experiences, important. But there's also a lot of other ways to gain that education, you just have to, like, reach out and take the time. To me, that's the biggest part is a lot of great books, but trying to take that time to really do it, study it and put it into play. It's difficult.

 

Kasey  03:36

It is I think people forget to that their, that their community is so rich in opportunity. And aside from just reading, I would you know, every time I would speak to the bank, or you know, the banker, or my CPA, or my accountant or any kind of professional, I would ask questions. And I would say, you know, so if I were going to do this, what should I be doing now to prepare myself and just really trying to build relationships so that I could hopefully leverage those relationships at some point down the road.

 

Roy Barker  04:13

And I was having a conversation with a gentleman over the weekend. And we kind of talked about that a little that. You'd be surprised how willing people are to help you out if you just ask the question. And I think you have to, you have to be mindful of how you approach people the relationship you have and how you ask it. But so many times people will be glad to help you out even you know, sometimes even people that are in the same industry in the same town a lot of times you know what I always do, try to find somebody that's maybe a little geographically diverse than I am to reach out to but I've never been turned down.

 

And but I always try to have something to give back to them as well. You just can't put a price in that. Right totally agree So, now you, you have a mental health practice the the mindset behavioral group, is that correct? And so you've been able to scale that I mean, going from three years to multi million dollars. That is, that's really quite a feat.

 

Kasey  05:17

Yeah, that's what that's what I hear. And and you know, honestly, I didn't know that that was that big of a deal. I live in a very small town in South Central Kentucky. And so there's not a lot of other supportive industry, people in my community that I can go to and say, because I would always wonder, I would say, Wait, are we on track? Like, are we are we where we should be? Is this normal? I was just always trying to establish a baseline, how much should I be making in this role, and nobody would tell me, I had no idea.

 

And so for a couple of years, I just kept my head down and just focused on what I was doing, and didn't even try anymore to look around and try to compare. And it just it, it happened, I think, because I was able to find what worked on a smaller, more manageable scale, and create systems to be able to sustain that when I was ready to scale it. So that's really what I did in that whole first year was, let's just fine tune everything, let's look at every single thing and ask ourselves, will this work?

 

If it's 100 times the size or you know, 10 times the size, and if it didn't work, then we wouldn't do it, we would change it. And so that's, that's really what happened is just put all the time into developing the systems. And then when we were ready to really go for it, there was there was no capacity anymore. You know, it was just it was limitless, almost right

 

Roy Barker  06:50

Yeah, the thing that he talked about an important part about developing systems, practices, procedures, not only, you know, for the scaling portion, but I think this goes for the business things as well. Because a lot of times, you know, once you start scaling, and you get behind on the other systems that you have, that you need to support this growth, it can be detrimental. And I hate to always bring this up.

 

But it's a real problem is that I have seen some very successful marketing and sales people that have gone out of business because they didn't have the support for the growth, you know, in basically what it is. It's just word of mouth, you went to their business, you didn't get good service, even if they have a good product or whatever, you know, word of mouth to the community, and they're dead. And so I think it's important to build that base.

 

Kasey  07:43

Yeah, absolutely. And that's actually So you mentioned the book that I wrote. And that's one of the big components in that book is I believe that there are taken from Mike mccalla wits, his original model called the business hierarchy of needs, I adapted it a little bit, but we believe that sales, you're in your sales level of your business, which is your foundational level of your business, because without sales, you have no business.

 

There are five coordinates and one of those core needs is delivering on commitments. And that is where so many people miss the mark, they they over promise under deliver, they without even realizing it get a bad reputation. They they can't do they want to do what they say that they're going to do, but they can't they don't have the infrastructure, strong enough to support that. And I think that that's where most businesses start to fail is right there at that level in sales.

 

Roy Barker  08:44

Yeah. That and the other thing is trust. You know, I think that and I'm not sure exactly, you know, your model, but a lot of times, it's the, when we do decide that we want to grow, we have to have people around us that we trust that we can leverage our time because at some point, we're just one person there's 24 hours in a day and we just can't touch in handle everything. So how, how big of a component has that been in you growing your business huge.

 

Kasey  09:14

It's huge. It's it's actually the thing that I feel like it's our bottleneck all the time. It's the thing that slows our growth down. It's the thing that makes me question Am I doing the right thing Am I not almost feel like, you know, I've been burned a lot and I've told some stories about those. Those things because they're pretty bad. And it's all boiled down to trust, trusting the wrong people, giving them too much responsibility without enough accountability.

 

And you know, so I really focus now on bringing people in giving them responsibility, making sure that they're held accountable and watching it while it cycles and and then that gives me a better understanding of who I am. can trust and who I can't trust? Because I'm a very open person I don't you know, like, Well, I'll tell anyone anything. It's not it's not that's just my nature. But that's come back to get me a few times. Yeah.

 

Roy Barker  10:12

Yeah. And it's difficult. And that's something I'm talking about, you know, I do a lot with employee retention. And we have a mindset, unfortunately, in this day and time is that, you know, employee retention means that we have a pool table, and we serve beer, you know, whatever the, the gimmicks are on the back end. But you know, one thing I feel and, you know. I'll put this to you as a question is, it's hiring the right people on the front end.

 

Because if you make a bad hire, you can give them all the beer and barbecue and pool tables that they want, they can still be toxic. They can still not be getting the job done. And so, really, which kind of ties into another point about our systems and procedures is that if you want to build your business, by scaling, you can't wake up on Monday and said, Hey, I really want to scale. I need to start, you know, or I'm scaling, I need to hire people. These are things that you really have to get out in front of and do in a good lead time.

 

Kasey  11:14

Right? Yeah. Yeah. And I wish it were just as easy as theirs. I'll just be honest, you know, there's been times in my business when the need, the demand was so strong, that I have sacrificed what I really knew my business deserved. As far as employees and people. You know, I would find myself making excuses for certain applicants like, well, they're not really what I'm looking for, but they'll probably be okay. And there's never been a time that that has worked out positively. For me. It's always backfired.

 

And then, you know, I think that there are so many posts out there on LinkedIn, and on social media that says, you know, people don't leave bad, what is it, people don't leave bad jobs, really bad managers? Or, you know, I hate that stuff. Because, yeah, it's probably true. But it makes us that all these businesses feel like crap, because there's some times that people are gonna leave, and it doesn't matter how great you are to them.

 

And doesn't matter what you do to them, it's just not a good fit. So like, knowing what your business is all about, and knowing what the personality traits are that you are looking for, and the work ethic and the talents and the task. It's huge and and I think it's something that takes a lot of practice. So people that that don't do it a lot or aren't aren't interested in it, I think it takes them a little longer to find those people that they really do trust.

 

Roy Barker  12:48

Yeah. And I talk about marketing as a, you know, you have the market for talent, like you market for consumers that you know, you it's, sometimes we get put in a position, we have to put the indeed out indeed out, indeed, ad out there and see what we get, you know, I get that. But typically, you know, we have a bunch of poor people to wade through. And then like you said, we start making, you know, it's like, it's 11 o'clock at night.

 

And you're bleary eyed from looking through, you know, 300 resumes, it's like this guy here. That's when we tend to make poor decisions, where if we kind of get out there and market a little bit and talk to people keep our eyes open, when we're at other businesses. You can have people that actually want to come to work for you. And so you can have a choice. It's difficult, it takes some time, it takes some work, but the position that you're in, I think we we've all been there before. It's like, you know, we knew it was questionable, but we felt like we had to do it, we didn't have a choice. And then it takes us more time to unwind all the bad things that happen, you know.

 

And the other thing too, given the time to it, I've talked to people the this guy was in health care, and he hired like, 15 people in one month. And I'm like, Oh, my gosh, I've got a part time marketing person that when I have to replace this person, I mean, it takes two three weeks a lot of grueling this. I mean, he just sometimes you get what you give, and you really have to put a lot of effort to making sure that the right person the right fit, and that you're you know, that you can get along.

 

Kasey  14:18

Yeah, and thinking about costs. You know, we talked about, like customer acquisition costs all the time, but not a lot of people talk about employee acquisition costs. And I and I have a human resources person in my business, and that's what I talked to her about all the time is like, Look, yes, you know, we can hire people, but we have, it's almost like it's almost like you're in Vegas, you know, you're betting on this. Here. We've spent $2,000 already just to get this person in here.

 

And if we get them in here, and they're the wrong person, how much more money is that going to cost us and then if they are toxic, and they start spreading that bad apple seed across the company and five more leave, how much does that cost? Do you so it It's just really, people are so unpredictable. And so it's, it's hard, that's a hard component to manage. Yeah. And

 

Roy Barker  15:09

in your business, especially, you know, because I've tell you, I've had a lot of professional practitioners that I love them. And I hated to quit going to them. But the office staff and the people that surrounded them was, it was insurmountable. I mean, it was just too much, you know, and, you know, finally, I had to make a decision to leave this person just because of that. So, yeah, it's important component, because you're not the only one that has contact with your consumers or your prospects.

 

So again, it makes a lot of difference. And, you know, the cost of the acquisition, you know, there are a lot of numbers out there, but I've seen some as high as even for a $10 an hour and employee, you know, cost and maybe up to $10,000. Now, I usually put that average around, you know, 3000 5000, maybe 750 70 7500. But it's a, it's a huge component, especially if you start turning over 10 1520 people a year.

 

Kasey  16:11

Yeah, and, you know, that's true, especially what you just said, for my mental health practice. But, you know, I have other businesses too, that are not mental health or not healthcare related whatsoever. And, specifically, my consulting business, where the the, the face of that the person that is has the most communication and contact with my clients, if she sets a bad example, it looks, it looks poorly on me. So I have to really make sure.

 

 And I think people don't always realize that you could have systems in place to make sure that that experience and those experiences that your customers or have or are having are happy and pleasant. And it's it's, it goes right back to that accountability piece. And so it's super important. We can't just, we can't throw money at something and then walk away. If we're going to put money into it, we have to make sure that we're getting money out of it.

 

Roy Barker  17:05

Yeah. Yeah. Unless that's a good transition to you know, being in growth mode and scaling is, you know, paying attention, then, let's just go back to you know, you design a good plan, you've kind of tested it, and life is good, but you can't just fling it out there and not pay attention. I mean, I'm sure that you still have to monitor that. And you still probably have to make some little tweaks, even if you think you got it 90% there.

 

Kasey  17:31

Yeah, yeah, I call it pressure testing, I don't know, everyone calls it something different. But I like to set up the system to, you know, set up the system with a very high capacity, and put it in as much of a controlled environment as I possibly can. So for example, let's say we're testing out a sales funnel, a new sales funnel, in the consulting business, if if we have 10 other projects going on at that time, and we have leads coming in from 10 different places, it's very hard for me to really key in on how effective the sales funnel is I'm trying to test and the system that we're going to use.

 

And so what what I like to try to do is just like turn everything else off, or at least figure out how to keep it from from muddying up the water here. And and then really just test it slowly. And then put some pressure on it, and then see where it cracks and then go back in and modify before I really open up and like, you know, some people are putting AD AD budgets and everything into certain marketing strategies. And I'm not gonna do that unless I know my system is working.

 

Roy Barker  18:45

Right. And I think that goes to a lot of areas of our business, it's like, if something is not working, a lot of times we make five different changes that we don't know, you know, were those the right changes, and I think that's a good thing is, you know, we make, make one change at a time if possible. And then let's see what the result Did that help. Because, again, you could make five changes, but you never know which one of those had the effect or, you know, one may have a negative offsetting the positive.

 

Kasey  19:16

Right? Yeah, we think that whenever something is not working, that if we just throw more at it, it's gonna fix it. But I actually think it's the opposite. I think you got to start taking stuff away, stripping it down, and really being able to identify the problem and but that's just her nature is like wanting more, let's do more. This isn't working or not, oh, have enough money. You know, let's do more of this. more of that more of this. But I think we need to really start to look at like pulling back. Right, right.

 

Roy Barker  19:46

Yeah. And, you know, an example I've used before is like, Facebook ads, if you know, I've talked to people before, it's like, Yeah, but $25 last week on a Facebook ad and I got nothing from it. And so now I'm switching over to to Instagram, and then you know, the next week, it'll be switching over to LinkedIn, it's like, you don't really take the time to evaluate not only the the audience the time, but our the amount of reach all those different components, but also the longevity.

 

And, again, I'll let you speak to this. But I think that, you know, if you, if you push out a marketing message or an ad and you get a huge response, then I consider you to be one of the lucky ones that marketing typically is just a grind in and out every day, it takes time people need to see you, I don't know, eight to 12 times before they want to really engage with you. It's not as simple as just, Hey, I placed an ad out there. And that's all I really need to do.

 

Kasey  20:48

Yeah, yeah, I think the language is super important. I guess this is coming from the therapists in me, I haven't seen I haven't even seen clients, and probably three to 434 years now. But you know, we can we can get people to do what we want them to do if we know how to speak their language. And so many times I see people, they'll they'll say, Oh, you know, let's say, let's say I asked them. Well, have you have you tried Facebook app? Yeah, I already tried. It didn't work. Have you tried this? Yeah, I've already tried, it didn't work.

 

But they just like, give up after that one thing, but they don't even consider the fact that maybe the language was wrong. Maybe the audience like you said, maybe the audience was wrong. Um, you know, people don't want to be necessarily sold to I think people want to be understood. And if you can put your marketing message out there, so that people see it. And they're like, oh, wow, yeah, they get me, then. That gets so much more, so much farther than some of the other stuff that's going on out there.

 

Roy Barker  21:56

Yeah, and I'm a huge proponent of the, you know, what I call the educational marketing is I don't, I don't want to just keep hammering you. Are you ready to buy? You know, what do I need to do to make you been like, take the time to educate? And, you know, like, even in email marketing, it's a good. One strategy I have is, if I see an article that may pertain to you is like, I'll send you a copy of it and say, like, Hey, I saw this article, here are three good points. I thought you might that might interest you or be helpful to your business.

 

And so number one, if you have existing clients you do this with that keeps this good relationship that you're interested in them and their success, but also with prospects is they don't feel like they're just hammered you. It's like, you can show them the value of having you in their life and in their business,

 

Kasey  22:45

right. Yeah, totally. I'm 100% on board with that. I don't, I don't like people that just ask ask, ask, ask ask. It's just it's a turn off. Right.

 

Roy Barker  22:56

Right. Well, so what are some other things that we need to think about? You know, if we want to scale, just some tips, tricks, some things that you've learned along the way you've had since you've had great success with it?

 

Kasey  23:08

Yeah, a few things that I would look at really before scaling, specifically. Gosh, there's so many things. But one of the things I always like to do if I want to grow something, but I'm not sure, when's the best time or any, you know, there's still some uncertainty is first I just want to uncover and unpack, I always call it unpacking my kitchen, I just want to throw everything out of the cabinets and put it out on the floor and see what I have. So I want to know, like everything that's going on in a particular system in the business.

 

So like, let's say it's leads, how are we collecting leads? I want to know, like, how are we what are the different ways we're collecting leads? Who are the different people involved in the collection of leads? What do we do with the leads when we collect them? I just want to know all of that stuff. And then the next thing that I do is I just start streamlining it. So I asked myself, how many platforms do we have? There's technology has so many options. And they're great, but sometimes, you know, if you have like if you're using QuickBooks for payments, and Zapier for zaps, and a different CRM and kajabi for your web host, like you're having to actually move through all those different platforms to just convert one lead, that's too many.

 

So I want to know how many platforms do I have how many steps are in this process, and just start trying to clean it up as much as I possibly can. I usually shoot for about 50% so I try to cut the steps down by 50%. What I found is that reduces error. The more the more steps, the more opportunity for error that you have within your system. Also. It just reduces it makes it easier so that you can bring in people whether it systems or virtual assistants or whatever they are, to help run the system for you. I think people often think that the the people and their business are the ones that should bear the brunt of the work. But really, the brunt of the work should be within the system.

 

And the last thing I do is just automate. So that's when I bring in technology and say, Hey, I'm manually having to send this email when this happens, let's figure out a way to get that to happen automatically. So just looking for ways to clean that up. And if you can just go through and identify each of the different systems in your business and do those three steps for whenever you decide you want to scale and grow, then all you have to focus on is sales, you just have to focus on how I'm going to get more leads, because everything else is going to take care of itself.

 

Roy Barker  25:48

Yeah, and just kind of building on that one thing I marked down here, while you were talking was to, it's always good to look at things to from your consumer side. Because I will tell you, you know, I've had some of those experiences where you go through this, and then you finally ask the person, if you ever get to talk to somebody, it's like, Have y'all ever really been through the customer journey, because it's like, it's, I don't know, my, my theory in life has never make it hard for people to give you money.

 

And so when you put obstacles in their way to like, just getting to where they need to sign up or get a call. But whatever it is, don't make it hard, there's got to be a way to simplify it. And I think that was, you know, something I've always heard about Steve Jobs. And what made the iPhone and the iPod so successful was he told his engineers, I want them to go from beginning to end in three steps no more. And so you know, they worked really hard to, you know, work on that process to cut it down to minimal needs to get from point A to point B.

 

Kasey  26:49

I love that you notice that because I totally forgot to mention it. But that's what whenever people come to me and they'll say, well, we have, you know, 100 different systems in our business, where should I start? And I always say you need because we call a most of our clients. So I say you need to follow the client's journey. So what is what is the first point of contact that they have with your company? And what does that look like? What does that system look like? And then just work through that journey? And that's how you know where to start? So that's, that's great. I'm glad you brought that up.

 

Roy Barker  27:24

Yeah, yeah, the other thing I was thinking about, too, is technology is that, you know, we have to, maybe not us individually, but we have to assign monitors for that. Because, you know, I've got a good friend that's in marketing. And for some reason, I went to her website one time, and you know, it was the blue screen of death, I couldn't get there, whatever.

 

And I'm like, you know, but that's something that we just never think about is kind of like, you know, once we set the system, we never really think about going through it to make sure all of these steps are working. So yeah, technology is great, as long as we you know, make it work for us instead of us working for. Yes. So tell us a little bit to let's talk about the book, and prioritizing the needs. What are some suggestions that you give people in the book?

 

Kasey  28:10

Well, so in the book, I have what's called the healthcare hierarchy of needs. And it's basically if anyone listening has ever heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it's very similar to that it's a it's a triangle. And it's divided into three sections. The on the base is sales in the middle is profit. And then the very tip top is order. And so what I tell people to do is ask themselves five, the five questions in each of the core levels, starting with sales?

 

And if they answer no to any of the questions that are directly related to the coordinates of their business, then that is where they start. So you're always going to start on the lowest level of an identified need. So for example, I'll just give you an example. So maybe those people who aren't as visual and more auditory can understand in the in the base level of sales, these are the five core needs that we believe all businesses should have. So the first one is lifestyle congruence, we need to know what our business needs to make in order to, I don't know, supply us with the lifestyle that we want to have.

 

So we know how much money we need to know the numbers. The second thing is just the prospect attraction. So are we attracting enough of the right kinds of clients to meet that level of need? And then from there, it's client conversion. So are we converting enough of those people that we are attracting? And then we get to delivering on commitments, which is basically are you doing everything that you say you're gonna do? And then the last one is collecting on commitments are you able to collect on that on those transactions and so if you To answer a no.

 

That you could not do that to any one of those questions, the one that was the low on the lowest level, that would be your starting point, because we think about like trading our business, like we treat our patients and mental health. If you came to me, and you said, Kasey, I'm having panic attacks five to six times a day. Feel like I'm floating, I'm just anxious, I'm not going to look at you and say, Okay, let me just teach you how to breathe. No, I need to get to the core, like what is what is the reason you're having these panic attacks? And let's treat that. And so this, this framework here that we've created is really based on like, let's always go after the core, rather than treating the symptoms of the core. Exactly. That makes sense.

 

Roy Barker  30:51

Yeah, no, definitely. Because I find that in a lot of businesses is like, something's not working, right. And so we try to implement these other things to offset that. And then next thing, you know, you've got 10 processes that really go back to the original thing, just not working like it should. It's, again, that's, you know, these are the good reasons that we need to really look at our situations and our systems and processes, you know, pretty regularly, not things change, too. You know, I guess that's another point is that we always want to stay on top and stay out front, we never want to wait till things get so bad that we're, you know, way far behind in any of those things. Right. Yeah, absolutely. So, um, anything else that you want to talk about? Excuse me on the on the book?

 

Kasey  31:43

I'm not really I don't know, when you will air this episode, the book comes out July 19. Okay, it's, it's available right now on Amazon, it has been for a while for pre order, we're really excited about it. It's been, it's different. It's a it's obviously it's a business book, but it's also full of a lot of story, I really wanted to write something that wasn't boring, and that people actually wanted to read. So you know, it's a, it's a good little mix of, here's what I'm trying to teach you, here's a good story. To emphasize my point, here's what you need to go do it,

 

Roy Barker  32:21

you know, when I worked in, in a portion of the healthcare as consulting for quite a few years. And I think a couple things to mention maybe is and I'll let you weigh in is that people get into, like health care professions, because they're usually caregivers, and they are good with the service that they provide. And all that doesn't necessarily mean that they're good business people. Right. So you know, one thing, it's, we can't let our egos get in the way and say, Well, I'm the business owner, so I have to make all the decisions, or I have to do all the jobs.

 

And the great thing about the day and time that we live in is we can find fractional help, or get consultants to come in and help us, you know, kind of push to get over the hills, though, you know, it's not a reflection of weakness or not being able to not knowing something just to reach out and ask for some help.

 

Kasey  33:17

Yeah, I think we we think that we should do at all are we, you know, we're like the bootstrap kings and queens of America. And, you know, that's not, that's not always good. And I've done it too. I mean, I've I'm like, very stubborn, I will figure it out myself, just let me do it myself. But when you want to scale and grow, you have to relinquish that control, because it will not happen. And if it does happen, you're going to be miserable in the process.

 

Roy Barker  33:45

Yeah, and I think that's the bottom line too. We all want to be happy we want you know, we get into business because, you know, we probably want to make a little more money, we want to have that time to enjoy it. And so we can't let a sift ourselves get into this position where you know, the business is running us instead of us writing business and yeah, I think that's a good component that you know, definitely check out the fix this next prioritizing the you know, the needs of business especially and it's geared more to the healthcare audience, correct.

 

Kasey  34:15

It is and there Mike mccalla Wits wrote the book fix this next that is geared for all business owners. But really, the interventions that we teach in both of these books apply for every type of business, okay.

 

Roy Barker  34:29

Okay, awesome. Well, Kasey, thanks so much for taking time out of your day to be with us. We certainly do appreciate it. Before we get away a couple questions. First off, what is a tool or a habit, something that you use in your daily life that really adds a lot of value and can be professional or personally the one

 

Kasey  34:47

I'm, I like to have daily writing routine. So every single day at 10 o'clock for an hour is when I just sit down and I block everything else out and I focus on writing. It doesn't matter what kind of writing it is, but something It just kind of keeps me clear headed and focused.

 

Roy Barker  35:03

Okay, awesome. All right. So tell people first off, you know, how can they reach out? Or well, who do you like to work with? How can you help them? And of course, how can they reach out and get a hold of you and then just run through the book one more time before? Yeah.

 

Kasey  35:16

Yeah. So we work with overworked, overextended business owners who are wanting more, but they don't really want to sacrifice any more time to get it. It is not industry specific. We work with everyone from, you know, hair salon owners to commercial property, real estate, until health and the whole nine yards. The best way to get ahold of me is either through social media, Instagram, or Facebook, or our website is just Kasey Compton com.

 

If you follow us on social media, you'll see all of the promos for the books, you'll see all the information about the book. It's also on our website, we do have it's called an FTM quickstart it's a free thing that you can opt to opt into on our website, that you get all the behind the scenes information, the interviews from the book, you get all of them lost content, all the content that didn't make it into the book. And then we also take you through the whole entire process through audio video version of the book, if if people aren't readers.

 

Roy Barker  36:22

Okay. All right, that's awesome. So y'all reach out, get Kasey to see what she can do to help you out help you scale and get things are under control and moving in your in your direction. We will also include all that information in the show notes as well. So again, thanks for your time. that's gonna do it for another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. Of course I am your host Roy.

 

You can find us at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com we're on all the major podcast platforms iTunes, Stitcher, Google Spotify for not one that you listen to please reach out I'd be glad to get it added for you. We're on all the major social media platforms probably hang out a little bit more on Instagram. If you want to reach out there we'd be glad to interact with you. And a video of this interview will go up when the episode goes live as well. So until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.kaseycompton.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspdocast.com

Professional Crisis Management You'll Appreciate in Your Time of Need with Jeff Chatterton

You know the old saying, plan for the worst and hope for the best. There is always a crisis just looming around the corner. When that reporter calls or the picture surfaces on Instagram, you need to be ready to address the issue and conduct damage control. It can happen to anyone in the blink of an eye. Be prepared

About Jeff

Jeff Chatterton is a high-stakes, risk and crisis communications specialist, and the author of the best-selling book "Leaders Under Fire: The CEO's Survivial Guide to Navigating Corporate Crisis. Chatterton's work handling high-stakes situations has taken him all over the world - from Sydney, to Stockholm, to the Serengeti. 

Whether it's a chemical spill, a boil-water advisory, or a controversial management decision, Jeff is no stranger to controversy in the public eye, and navigating the intense world of highly stressed stakeholders.  He has repeatedly been described as the guy you want in your corner when the spotlights turn on, the Mayor is on line one, and CNN is on line two. 

He's the calm voice who helps clients navigate and promote their version of the truth. This is an especially invaluable skill set when that very same truth is at risk of being crushed by fear and public criticism.

www.leadersundercrisis.com

www.checkmatepublicaffairs.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

 

Full Transcript Below

Professional Crisis Management You'll Appreciate in Your Time of Need with Jeff Chatterton

Sun, 6/27 7:08PM • 40:10

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

crisis, people, day, frankly, company, world, crisis communications, threat, find, biggest, problem, running, bad, roy, business, jeff, happen, clients, reporter, couple

SPEAKERS

Jeff, Roy Barker

 

Roy Barker  00:08

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. This is your host, Roy, of course where the podcast that brings you a wide variety of topics and with a diverse set of guests Well, we can talk about things that maybe you've never thought about, or at least give you someone to turn to if you have issues that are keeping you up at night, to not today, we're we are welcoming Jeff Chatterton. He is a high stakes risk and crisis communication specialist, and the author of the best selling book Leaders Under Fire: The CEO Survival Guide to Navigating Corporate Crisis.

 

His work handling high stakes situations has taken him all over the world, from Sydney to Stockholm, to the Serengeti, whether it's a chemical spill, a boil, water advisory or controversial management, just management decisions, Jeff is no stranger to controversy in the public. in navigating the intense world of highly stressed stakeholders, he has repeatedly been described as the guy you want in your corner, when the spotlights turn on you. The mayor is on line one, and CNN is on line two. He's the calm voice who helps clients navigate and promote their vision of their version of the truth. This is an especially in valuable skill set, when that very same truth is at risk of being crushed by fear and public criticism. Jeff, thanks so much for taking time out of your day to be with us. We certainly appreciate it.

 

Jeff  01:37

Hey, you know, typically the standard answer on that is Hey, I'm glad to be here. I'm wondering if anyone ever says you dragged me here? What, uh, you know,

 

Roy Barker  01:47

the guy standing camera right with the gun? Yeah, this is such a timely situation. I mean, I think, you know, as old as I am, used to, things didn't make it out, maybe didn't make it out to the spotlight unless it was a national disaster. But nowadays, I'm telling you, it seems like these little bitty things, you know, they have a way of with social media coming out, getting out in front of us.

 

Jeff  02:16

And it's a little bit of social media a little bit is the technology a little bit as the culture we live in. But if you think about it, if you're if you're in charge of communications for you know, Bob's ABC manufacturing company, and, and and you get a call from your local NBC affiliate saying, Hey, we understand that your VPS been, you know, doing something ugly and nefarious, you go absolutely, we want to be fully open and transparent with you, why don't you bring a crew by and at 11.

 

And, and you know, and you know, so that's 9am you've got an hour and a half to call up your CEO and your president and your shareholders, your your investors and say, hey, we've got something bad, we're dealing with it, you've got three, you know, a couple hours to prep, you know, your your, your your mental space, you can clean up the warehouse, you've got everything going on. They finally go to air at 6pm that night, and then it goes into the newspaper. The following morning. Yeah, that's old school. And it's old school thinking.

 

And frankly, a lot of the the crisis mechanisms that are out there haven't been updated, like the idea of a crisis communications plan is laughable. In today's day and age, because today, you get a call from your local NBC affiliate saying, Hey, your VP has been caught in the men's room as a four year old or something completely heinous. It's already on Twitter. It's already on social media. And I bet that NBC affiliate has a much bigger social media following than you do. Right?

 

Then it gets retweeted then it gets caught and before you know it, you've gone viral and it's 915 rent, right? That's the environment we live in and if you're sitting there in charge of your corporate reputation that old school static crisis communications plan sitting on your mid level managers filing cabinet that you paid $50,000 to some consultant three years ago for it's not helping you right now.

 

Roy Barker  04:28

Right? Yeah, in I guess you know, back in the olden days to think media tried to do the verification, let's make sure this is the real deal because you know, john smith, your your VP is named john smith, but this john smith is somebody else. So you get thrown into the spotlight used to they did a lot of double checking and verification of stories but you know, with the blogger world and well with anybody with a social media account, being able to blow out Anything it's like, you know, it happens immediately. And there's not always those checks and balances that maybe there were at

 

Jeff  05:06

it there, there is no distinction, whether it's a, whether it's a reporter, whether it's a member of the public, whether it's a blogger or anything else there, it doesn't matter anymore. They have access to the same tools and the same technology and therefore the same reach than anyone else that. So it's not the case of the reporters being lazy. It's a case of the reporters having as much competition in the field as anyone else these days, it's no longer their domain.

 

Roy Barker  05:37

Yeah. And they're also they're chasing these tighter deadlines as well, which I think, you know, they have to push the envelope to, you know, they want to get the scoop out before the neighboring channel next door here and gets it out as well.

 

Jeff  05:50

They're, they're, they're facing on unprecedented competence competition for an in an increasingly or a decreasingly small advertising pool. It's, I feel bad, I would never advise my kids to get into journalism these days. As a former reporter, I would never want people to get into journalism. It's a dying industry. It's a sad state of affairs. But at the end of the day, that's the world we live in.

 

Roy Barker  06:18

So yeah, and I was gonna ask you, so how did you find yourself in this space? how, you know, kind of, what was your journey? Did? You wake up one day and say, Well, yeah, that

 

Jeff  06:27

was this. The standard joke about crisis communications is how did you get into crisis PR by accident? Didn't? Yeah, I was I was a former reporter, and got into politics and ended up being the guy on the ground. In the middle of the biggest environmental catastrophe in Canadian history. It was a little town of 2000 people. 5000 people sorry, and 2000 of them were sick from drinking municipal tap water. And then and that was bad.

 

But where it got really bad was when they started to die. And it because it wasn't just a random death that you heard about. It was the town librarian died, the town police officers two year old daughter died, right. And this, this entire town is in chaos. It's the lead story across Canada, it was actually the lead story across North America for about three days. This is back in 2000. And, and I was the guy on the ground for the entire provincial government, Canadian, so his provincial, which is very similar to a state for those who are unfamiliar. Primarily because I was from up there, that was it. That was my sole credential.

 

But I ended up being the guy on the ground, handling all of the communications and then ended up getting into the private sector and then a year to the day later, instead of I remember, because instead of having anniversary cake in the boardroom, we sat in the boardroom and watched the Twin Towers come down. And so we were doing a lot of work for the US Navy at that point. We were doing a lot of different crisis communication, II type stuff. And the whole world changed after 911 and 20 years later, I'm I'm still here still running, still plugging away and dealing with a whole new world in which is even more different now in a post pandemic. environment.

 

Roy Barker  08:40

Yeah. So have you seen these? Have you seen like an increase in the crisises that y'all tend to handle? Or is it pretty much pretty level or, I guess he

 

Jeff  08:53

is funny, because the opportunities to get into any of the physical crises are, there's only so here's, here's a little secret for all your listeners out there. There's only three types of crisis. That's it. Anyone who tries to overcomplicate This is just trying to overcharge you, but there's a threat to yourself. You know, if you're at a cry at a concert, and there's a bomb, that is a threat to self drinking poisonous tap water, that is a threat to self anything that is going to affect your physical well being or your family's well being you know, that's, that's that's a problem. There is a threat to your wallet, my credit card information has been hacked or the the CEO of this company has been stealing money. You know, that is a threat to shareholders. You know, that is that is a threat.

 

But and the third and it's the biggest one and it's the the vaguest one is it's a threat to my feelings. And those are tough. That's when You know, if someone came out and said something offensive about the LGBTQ community in the middle of Pride Month, you know, whatever, it doesn't matter what the scenario is, and what I have discovered, because we're not going to concerts, we're not going to baseball games, we're not going to you know, so those crises, they've gone down, everyone's staying at home being safe, you know, wearing masks, you know, but the number of threat to feelings crisis has skyrocketed.

 

People are, if I can say it, at the risk of being blunt, people are pissy. Yeah. out there. People are angry. Yes. And and we're seeing that all over the place. And and where I, you, I strongly believe that, that, you know, politicians and all politicians of every stripe, they're there. They're fueling the flames. The and this is why I think back last summer, we had riots in the streets, there was a really legitimate issue that was being discussed and regards racial injustice, absolutely. No one wants to take away from that. It's a very, we need to have a national conversation about the issues of racial injustice in the country.

 

But, but there were riots, they were people shutting down downtown cores, there were, you know, people physically getting hurt. And I think it's because everyone's starting from a place of anger there. There's just no room for error. And if you're a company out there, and you thought you had the room to get away with something. It's an ugly wake up call. When you discover there is no room, there is no benefit of the doubt anymore. That benefit of the doubt is long since evaporated. That's what I'm finding. Yeah,

 

Roy Barker  12:05

it's strange. You mentioned that because we, me and my girlfriend, were talking about that. And just the other day that it's like the, everybody is just angry. And it's a little different, but like driving on the roads. You know, Friday afternoon, at three o'clock, two drivers pulled off on the shoulder got out, I had a big shootout right there in Friday afternoon traffic. And, you know, one guy in one car had his kids in the car. So you know, I don't know, the entire circumstance surrounding it.

 

But people just, you know, when you go into the stores, there's just this underlying anger for everything gets anyway, it's kind of crazy. But you know that you mentioned that. So when people feel wronged by a company, I guess with social media, it makes it a lot easier to band together to harm them, economically, by boycotting and different things like that. What are some other I guess, tactics that people are taking to try to take that revenge?

 

Jeff  13:09

absolutely huge. And everyone's everyone's heard about and is complaining about canceled culture. You know, you found out you've done something bad from, you know, three years ago.

 

13:22

There.

 

Jeff  13:24

Sometimes you discover that it wasn't even a bad thing, but it's too late. The damage is already done. Because everyone does have a voice and everyone is starting angry. And when you you see an opportunity to to act out to lash out at someone, people are taking it. It's anyone who's ever been married knows that sometimes you have full on pitched arguments over something completely stupid. I, you know, the biggest argument I ever had in my married life was over a coach. And for the last 15 years, we had an expression.

 

It's not about the coach is it's not right. But that's the environment we live in. You have to remember when when we're dealing with people who are furious over, you know, something that you've done. It's not about the coach, right? It's not about what they've actually done. You have to remember there, you're starting on the downhill. Yeah. And and unless you're prepared to acknowledge and communicate appropriately that way. It's not going to work. It's it's a it's a brand new world. It's your your marketing communications team doesn't have any experience in this. Yeah, it's a different world out there.

 

Roy Barker  14:51

Yeah, we've kind of expanded, you know, back when I was growing up. It was, you know, the man was the government and maybe the big corporations, but I think that there's spend so many disenfranchised individuals, you know, from race to religion to age, even that there's just a, I guess, an undercurrent of that. And that, instead of it being the government and the big corporations that's kind of trickled down to just anybody in any company, that doesn't matter the size anymore. If you if you're looking

 

Jeff  15:21

for a reason to get offended, you will find it I don't care how privileged you are. In your head and your prism, you're being hard done by Yeah. And and it's not, not our job as communicators, to prove that they're wrong. Right. Right. And and and that's where that's where it doesn't work. Yeah. What what the world frankly, just needs a bucket ton more of is empathy, right? We just need to be ability to say, Hey, you know what, I've asked myself that same question, Roy, I've looked in that because I know what's important to you. Here's what I'll tell you. Yeah. Boom, it just, you can take the temperature down. Right?

 

Roy Barker  16:06

Yeah. And I was reading some of your material. And I told you this pre show that what really struck me about you is that you mentioned that you want to be able to get the truth out which, yeah, that's a, that's an awesome quality these days, because so many people aren't necessarily worried about the truth. You know, we worry about, can we shield this until the new cycle turns over one more time, and then we're, you know, we're kind of out of it. And at that it's a smaller scale, but there was a, we're talking about online ratings. And so, you know, a local company got a bad one.

 

And instead of coming on and saying, you know, what, we may have had a bad day, what can I do to make this right? He, he actually, now started attacking the guy like, well, you're an idiot, you're a crazy customer. And I was like, Whoa, man, we just took, you know, a flame of a match. And we just blew it into this bonfire. Because of that reaction. And I think the word is a good word that you use is empathy. You know, as business people, we have to have empathy for people, because we have bad days, we're not going to be perfect every time.

 

Jeff  17:16

And, and, and what, what I think, we forget, is, in the spite of all the anger that's out there, how tremendously capable the public is of forgiveness, if you give them the room to forgive you. And it's usually it doesn't matter how heinous and offenses, frankly, for the last two years, you've had the best if you could, I was joking with clients, I said, you can go out and sacrifice virgins in your parking lot. And if people are complaining about it, you just shrug your shoulders and go COVID and they're gonna go, Oh, my Hey, COVID, right.

 

Doesn't matter what you're doing right now. But you need to give them the room to forgive you. And it's a one time deal. If you if you have a an amusement park and you kill some some of your passengers, you It's fine. You can get away with that. You ask for forgiveness, you prove how it's not going to happen again. The problem is if it ever does happen again, you're done. Yeah. There it's that now you don't have a communications problem. You have a legitimate, toxic right issue.

 

Roy Barker  18:32

Yeah. So as we come out of COVID, speaking of that, as we come out of this, Are y'all kind of bracing for a lot more activity with this underlying anger, and then everything starting to open back up again, thinking that there may be a lot more going on?

 

Jeff  18:49

I think what, what we are seeing is what and I'm calling it the sugar effect, you give you give a bunch of 12 year olds, nothing but you know, Kool Aid full of sugar for an afternoon, and then you let them free. They're gonna go absolutely ballistic. They're gonna run around and run a marathon on you, right? Until they hit that wall. And then they're going to crash. And I think, what is what is happening now you take an entire population, you you, you constrain them, you tell them.

 

You can't travel internationally, you can't do this, you're not allowed to go to professional sports, you can't go see Taylor Swift and concert, you can't do all of that. There's this massive pent up desire to go do all of the things that we haven't been allowed to do. But then we're going to hit that wall. And I don't think a lot of companies have really thought about what that means. In the future. We've just spent a year being told it's dangerous to touch other people. If your business depends on putting, you know, 10,000 people in a room and then sending them out again, you're going to be okay for a month, maybe even six months.

 

But Eventually there's going to be a reckoning, there's going to be people who are like, yeah, you know what, I don't necessarily want to go pay money to go see Taylor Swift and concert anymore or that professional corporate networking event or to go see the off track betting horse races or whatever. There's There's 1000 different industries that are all all going to be affected by this that haven't quite figured out how yet.

 

Roy Barker  20:32

One other thing, I was thinking about the, the ransomware, and people getting into other people's business, and I know that's not necessarily your thing, but the implications, you know, we had a huge pipeline down here that served like the whole southeast and a lot of the East Coast. And so, you know, I guess it's kind of a responsibility issue, like where somebody did something bad to them. Sure, we have to realize that, but were they unprepared for

 

Jeff  21:06

that? And that's what I tell clients, it doesn't matter what it is. And I'm familiar with the issue. The the pipeline that got bit where Bitcoin ransom hacked. So so there's there's two or three things that right away that come up? Obviously, it's not their fault that they've been hacked, but then you have to be able to address that, is it? Yes. You know, were they on their proper security procedures?

 

Or did someone basically leave a backdoor open and forget to tell us, and if that's the case, that informations gonna come out, so you better be prepared to come out and release it in a way, which is open and factual before the media finds it and blows up on you? If you're the Bitcoin community, how did the US government track that transaction, there's some real serious unanswered questions that are going to send some earthquakes and tremors throughout the entire crypto community. were completely anonymous, secure transactions just got very public, very public and very recalled. That's, and for good reason.

 

Yeah. But that shouldn't have been able to happen, and they need to be able to address that. And then and then you've got all of the other since service providers up and down the East Coast, you know, if you're, if you're a gym, that no longer had the ability to heat or cool your building, and you had to close down, you need to be able to talk to your customers and explain it in a way so that they're not blaming you. But there's a lot of delicate dancing that goes into these things. You can't just stand there and point the finger at someone you have to be able to. to own your piece of the pie.

 

Roy Barker  23:02

Yeah. Yeah. There's a good book, Ted Koppel wrote about this, the vulnerabilities that we have in a lot of areas, and I just, you know, you kind of hold your breath, thinking, when's that gonna happen? And you know, are these companies preparing for that? And then, you know, of course, we had our own crisis with the Erekat reliability Council in Texas Back in February, when, you know, we basically lost power for five days. And, I mean, it was a lot of devastation. And now they're still fighting through that. I mean, the all the local news channels are still running series on that. Okay.

 

And here's the thing, they've come out and assured everybody, you know, it was a fluke, there have placed things down for maintenance. But then, a couple weeks ago, it's 80 degrees, and they start sending out alerts again, hey, you might want to conserve, because we're in trouble again, we're in trouble at 80 degrees. And, you know, here we're, you know, usually into the hundreds very quickly, so that that messaging, you know, it makes people very confused, because they didn't own up and take responsibility from it from the beginning. But then you haven't really cleaned up their house, but they keep telling everybody Yeah, yeah, everything's good.

 

Jeff  24:18

Well, and sometimes what I have found is that it's the it's the regulator, especially a public sector government agency, where no one actually wants to take ownership or any sort of level of responsibility. And yeah, I just said what I said, but that's, that's my experience. Where now they're being ultra ultra careful and they don't want to be blamed if anything goes wrong, but the problem with that is is the your crying wolf, and we saw this, absolutely.

 

We saw this in the first three months of COVID. Well, don't do this, don't do this. Yes, do this. Don't do this. You know, no, we need to have a clear concise message. Even And and if it's going to change, that's okay. But you need to tell people Hey, this is why it's changed. Here's what we've learned. Here's what we're doing. Here's where we're going to go. Yeah. Right. And, and none of that was happening.

 

Roy Barker  25:16

So when things go bad, and I don't want to insinuate that we, the truth doesn't need to come out, I think the truth always is the best medicine, but how do you balance what you release when you release it? You know, because like you said, you can hold some things back. But if the media gets wind of it, then you kind of get, you know, they catch you on it. So do you just when, as the facts become available? Do you just recommend that, hey, we need to release it and get it all out there?

 

Jeff  25:50

I'll give you my favorite consultant answer, which is that depends. Yeah, every situation is a little bit different. And this is why, you know, when we wrote the book, we wrote the book, because we were sick and tired of, of seeing static crisis, communicate, everyone's every CEO has been told since the dawn of time, oh, there's, you know, really, really important to have a crisis communication plan, oh, you need to have a crisis plan.

 

That crisis plan is gonna run you between 10 and $50,000. And it's going to sit on a mid level managers shelf somewhere, and it's going to be static, and it's not going to actually help you if it's on fire. Every situation is always a little bit different. And what, frankly, makes so much more sense, take all those resources, there's a better, cheaper, more effective way of doing that. Go find a perspective buddy who can walk you through that? Someone who can sit there and go, Okay, so you've got this problem and this problem, this problem.

 

Alright, so, Roy, the issue here is that if people find out that this hasn't happened, that's going to be way worse. And you and maybe considered that at that point, that's not something that you're going to find out in the in the crisis communications plan. Alright, so we're going to take, we're going to make the decision to take a soccer ball to the face, rather than a bullet to the head. Right? We're going to go and we're, you know, and let's, let's have that conversation on Thursday of this week. And then and then announce what we're doing on Tuesday, you know, or, or whatever, but but at no point does, well, let's just bury it and hope that no one finds out about it.

 

That's not allowed to be part of the conversation, because frankly, it doesn't work. Yeah. It's just never ever right. Trust me. I get paid for results. I don't get paid on on some sort of moral high ground. I'm better than you. We all need to tell you. I'm you know what? I mean? Yeah, the truth is a good thing. But frankly, if I'm going to be really blunt, the reason I advocate telling the truth is because if you don't tell the truth, it is toxic. It is deadly. That's that's not anything you can recover from. Yeah, it has nothing to do with the morals of the situation. I'm trying to save my client here. Right.

 

Roy Barker  28:23

So what are some things? What are some tips, you know, that you could give, you know, give managers of even midsize to smaller companies? And then, you know, I think something you brought up is, I guess, it's, I guess that's why a good reason to engage somebody like yourself, as these crisis are as things come up, we can be in communication saying, hey, this thing just happened. What do you think?

 

Is it going to be something that we need to you know, go ahead and address now can we give it some time? You know, how do we handle each every each and every situation that comes? I mean, hopefully, I don't know. I was gonna say hopefully we're running our business well enough that that's not the case but then sometimes things outside of our control you know, influence that that it's not that we're running our business poorly, just in the wrong place that's routed them.

 

Jeff  29:14

But yeah, that's that's called life. There's there's nothing no shame in that. That's that happens everyone. Yeah, that's, that's a that's one of the services that we decided to start offering a couple years ago is it's almost like crisis communications, insurance.

 

Roy Barker  29:28

You know, it's

 

Jeff  29:29

a flat rate monthly, God forbid, you actually need us. It's already paid for looked after you. We've got your back. You can call us at 3am on Christmas Day. someone knows you. They know your media market. They know you know what your company does. They can sit down and say, okay, Roy, you're going to be tempted to say this. Don't say this right now. What you want to say is this, and I'm going to be on a plane.

 

Can you come pick me up at Dallas Fort Worth International and I'm going to be there for the next two weeks. We got your back. We'll get you through this. So that's that's been a Big Head. The shameless plug time, though, in terms of helpful tips, go to leisure center fire.com, I'll send you a copy of the book for free. Leaders under fire calm, I'm gonna ask for a couple bucks just for postage and handling. But the book itself, I paid for it, I will happily give it out to the world, I want to make sure that people get that.

 

The the other stuff that I run into, for heaven's sake, please make sure someone on your team a is the designated spokesperson be trained in crisis communications, not media training, immediate training is very different than crisis communications training. And see, has the freedom to do their job without running through 65 layers of approval and red tape and bureaucracy right. In the middle of a crisis, there is no excuse for not acting quickly. And you should have someone who has the freedom, the skills and the ability to communicate, and that alone is going to solve two thirds of your problem.

 

Roy Barker  31:16

Yeah, because kind of building on that is that once you have a crisis, you're kind of behind the eight ball to start going down through the yellow pages to find if there's a local crisis management because oh, it's like, you know, these they expect answers very soon. And I don't know what's worse is going on the the evening news, you know, with the statement or the we reached out to them, and there was no,

 

Jeff  31:39

there was no comment. And, and frankly, it's this, this was one of the reasons we came up with our insurance policies program called crisis to other because we were sick and tired of seeing good companies get into that same situation, they reach out to their local, you know, marketing company that also does SEO and also does this and also promises to do crisis stuff. And we're like, Okay, well, good luck. But then they're charging you 300 500 1000 bucks an hour. And frankly, they're not incentivized to make the problem go away.

 

Are you kidding me? They're milking you for 500 bucks an hour, they need to do a full report, they need to bring on extra people, they need to do all this stuff. And in this spirit of professionalism, and no, no, sometimes good enough has to be good enough. And and it's it's the wrong business model. If your crisis guy is charging you hourly, you need to have a real blunt conversation about whose interests they're truly serving. Right? Yeah

 

Roy Barker  32:44

Yeah, and it's important because of the trust factor, I mean, trust in doing business, especially if you're professional services company. It's that trust that you have with your clients. And so if a crisis comes up, and there's no comment, or there's a crummy comment, then what have you know, how have you affected your clientele? Are they going to be whether you're right, wrong, or indifferent, it doesn't matter. It's a perception.

 

And sometimes our perception of that company is it gets shaken. And it's like, well, I don't trust them enough that I'm not going to do business with them. So you know, this is important. And I really feel like this is going to be even more important. As we start getting back to normal. Just because we have so many disenfranchised people, there's just so much stuff going on in the world, you can't escape

 

Jeff  33:33

1. Perception is reality, and I hate using political example. But frankly, if if Donald Trump had invented the cure for COVID himself, and was able to prove it in the point where everyone knew that he was right, there are still 50 to 60% of the population out there. That would not do it. Right. Because of perception. Right? You know, there's a he it's a problem you brought on himself for the most part, but that's, that's, that's the world we live in. Anyone who says perception isn't reality isn't living in reality.

 

Roy Barker  34:18

Yeah, well, that's what they always say is my perception is my realities. And it definitely is and you know, like I said, it's not that we make it sometimes we don't even have to make a decision guilty. Not guilty. It's more just that there's enough stuff swirling around here. We need to just move on so. Yep. Anyway, well, Jeff, we appreciate the time and coming on and discussing this. First off, what is a tool or a habit? What is something that you do daily that adds a lot of value, either professional or personal. You know, as a one thing, I

 

Jeff  34:56

I'm not as good at it, as I As I used to be, and I keep, I keep trying to build that muscle discovered about three or four years ago, the power of just taking 10 minutes. And, and I don't know, I don't even like calling it meditation, it's it's just a, a recentering. Like, let let everything go just let it go it come back and hit hit stuff fresh. And I it is one thing that every now and then I need to I need to be better at that, because I've seen how powerful that is.

 

Roy Barker  35:37

Yeah, it's funny, you mentioned that because I started that probably, I don't know, two or three months ago. And, you know, I'm not the best, there's always something swirling around. But what I was telling somebody is like, you kind of have to take the average, like maybe today didn't work out so good, because I couldn't quiet the voices. But you know, on average, it's just sitting there being quiet, listening to yourself, breathe or whatever, you need to tell yourself that it's powerful. And I highly recommend it. If you don't do it, you should start and like I said, Be Be kind to yourself that every day is not going to be 100%. All right, so who do y'all like to work with? How can you help them? And then of course, how can they reach out and get a hold of you?

 

Jeff  36:21

I, you know, as long as you're committed to actually do the right thing, you know, if you're, if you're looking for someone who's going to, you know, help you you know, lie to the public or to your employees or your stakeholders, I'm not your guy, if you've got an ugly situation, or you're want to be prepared for a situation which hasn't happened, but may someday, you know, any anyone in the private sector pose, you know, dealing with the public or with their own employees. Absolutely, checkmatepublicaffairs.com is the website. And like I said, if you just want a copy of the book for free, leadersunder fire.com, will, will will get you there. And it'll magically show up in your, in your mailbox a couple weeks later, you'll probably get a bunch emails from me in the meantime. But that's, that's the price you pay.

 

Roy Barker  37:18

Exactly. So, you know, that was one question I had written down. Sorry, I'm gonna digress for just a minute. But you go into a company and kind of do those threat assessments, like look at their business, look at things that have happened in the past and say, Okay, I don't know, maybe here are three things that may potentially happen. And here's how that we would want to start that ball rolling, if it happens is, is there any value in that? Or is this stuff on the board

 

Jeff  37:45

happens happens quite a bit. Um, what I so so when I when I was first getting into the industry, that would be we, you know, crisis communications audit, and it would be 2030 $40,000. And it would take a couple of weeks, and it would do in it. And what I found is, quite frankly, that's again, it's a great way for a consultant to get rich, it's not a good way to prepare for a future crisis. So what I what I tend to do is we'll go in and we'll sit down with the client and go, alright, there are three types of crisis. We talked about them, what are those three going to look like?

 

Chances are good, what are we doing? What are you know, where, where are the fire extinguishers? in our life? Not not necessarily physically, but metaphorically, what can we do? And and what what do we need to do to be prepared to pull that fire extinguisher out? And I find you give me half a day with senior leadership team and and some time with the corporate communications department if that most of the time I work better straight up with the C suite, because they're the ones who are going to get fired. Yeah, frankly, the company may survive, but the CEO is going to get axed right. And that's not what anyone wants to see happen.

 

Roy Barker  39:11

All right, Jeff. Well, thanks so much. Y'all reach out Leaders Under Fire. Don't Don't wait till the crisis is upon you to start thinking about this in my advice is you know, get out in front of it. least have a chat with Jeff see how he can you know be there just in case we never know we never we hope it never happens. But unfortunately, things do happen when we least expect it so

 

Jeff  39:34

happy to have a conversation on non threatening non fattening don't bite unless requested.

 

Roy Barker  39:40

Alright, well, thanks a lot listeners. That's going to do it for another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. I'm your host Roy. You can of course find us at www.the businessofbusinesspodcast.com we're on all the major social media platforms, Instagram, probably where we hang out the most also on all the major podcast platforms at Stitcher, Google Spotify if we're not a one that you listen to please reach out we'd be glad to get it out and until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.checkmatepublicaffairs.com

www.ledersunderfire.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcat.com

An Open Mind And A Willingness To Learn Go A Long Way Toward Your Success with Kawan Karadaghi

The first step to mastery is apprenticeship. Find something you are interested, then find an expert doing it as a mentor. It's important to immerse ourselves in order to learn. We may find it's not what we thought and we need to move on. We might just find it's exactly what you thought it was with an opportunity to learn. Show up and be willing to work

About Kawan

Kawan Karadaghi stumbled into fitness and journeyed his way into becoming a master trainer. He wouldn’t be where he is without mentors and business partners. He now owns and helps operate gyms. Kawan now serves as a guide to help others find their strengths. He also hosts a podcast called ValueVerse to talk about the stories of mastery, growth and success.

www.thevalueverse.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

Full Transcript Below

An Open Mind And A Willingness To Learn Go A Long Way Toward Your Success with Kawan Karadaghi

Sun, 6/27 4:15PM • 43:35

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, business, sales, fitness, helping, buy, find, personal trainer, gym, day, product, mentor, instagram, big, thought, person, selling, work, questions, message

SPEAKERS

Kawan, Roy Barker

 

Roy Barker  00:08

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. I'm your host Roy. Of course, we are the podcast that brings you a diverse set of topics in the business world from a wide variety of guests want to talk about some things that may be enlightening, and maybe things we didn't think about, as well as give you solutions to some things that keep you up at night. Today, we're fortunate enough to have one Kawan Karadaghi. And he stumbled into fitness and journeyed his way into becoming a master trainer.

 

He wouldn't be where he was today without his mentors and his business partners, he now owns and helps operate gyms. He serves as a guide to help others find their strengths. He also hosts a podcast called Value Verse to talk about the stories of mastery, growth and success. Kawan, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to be with us.

 

Kawan  01:02

Roy, thanks so much for having me on. I love the work you're doing. I strongly believe it's important for the world to hear.

 

Roy Barker  01:08

Well, awesome. Thank you very much. And you know, we've had a few conversations prior to this. And I think that, you know, we have a lot of information a lot to unpack. So we're just gonna jump in first, and tell us a little bit about your history, kind of how you found yourself in, you know, in this space, and we'll go from there. Yeah, Roy.

 

Kawan  01:27

So, you know, I basically was, when I moved to Los Angeles, I initially moved there to pursue a career in entertainment. And in doing so, you know, you have plans, but no, as always joke around the universe, life has different plans for you, right? So I stumbled upon working out and I found that I was actually Okay, at doing that I love the immediate, you know, result from doing something and getting a result from it, right. So I got into fitness at that age in my in my late 20s there and mid to late 20s.

 

And it just kind of stuck, you know, I have a lot of credit to people around me that that helped me find that. And to, you know, help me allow me to explore that even more. So I got into it, because it first it the changes it made on me. And then eventually it would become my life there. And it just sort of fit my personality and everything that I believed in, which was, you know, improving yourself, knowing yourself and working on your strengths and weaknesses, and then somehow translating that to helping others.

 

Roy Barker  02:38

Yeah, I think a couple things you've said that really resonate is number one, finding something that you love, because even if you can make a lot of money, if you get enough hate in your life or hating to do whatever you do is just in the end, it's not worth it. So, you know, finding something that resonates. But then the other thing is the mentors and your partners and it's just surrounding yourself with good positive people that can, you know, that you trust that can be give you some good advice help you through these tough times, things that maybe you've seen, or they've seen before that you're bumping up against. So, you know, to me, those are a couple of the huge foundations of trying to do anything on your own.

 

Kawan  03:18

That's absolutely right. It's funny, you brought that specific point up, I posted something on my on my Instagram, yesterday, my Instagram story, it says the first step to to mastery is apprenticeship, you know, find a mentor and level yourself up, right? You know, find somebody that's doing kind of what you want to do or that has knowledge in what you're doing and and shadow him or her and ask questions and truly take on the role of just open mindedness and and being that student so not not knowing the answers is okay. Not, you know, shutting yourself out is the key takeaway there to be able to say, Okay, I don't know as much but I'm willing to learn I'm willing to put the work in and show up.

 

Roy Barker  04:02

Yeah, and I think that's a misconception that we have a couple of them. Number one is that we were supposed to have all the answers, which, you know, even when I look at hiring people, I know if somebody tells me they got all the answers, big red flag, when I'm looking for somebody that knows, hey, I don't have the answer, but I can go get that answer. I know where to find it. I have the resources to acquire that information much, much more important. But also, I think that well, also the our egos Don't let us say, I don't know that.

 

But of reaching out to other business people in the same space. Now, if you operate next door, same block. There may be a little pushback, but I think if if there's enough geographical distance, there's not a huge business overlap. I think people would be very surprised that business owners are willing to give up their time and their knowledge to help somebody you know, we all want to help people

 

Kawan  05:00

That's exactly right. And I'm, you know, Guilty as charged of doing that I'll find people that you know, that are doing something or are successful at doing something and I'll either approach or call or reach out via email, I may not get a response, but I'll try over and over again. And I'll usually present it in a form of either relating to a topic that they know about, or offering my service and something that I can do first and then saying, Okay, now, after doing that, is there some, can I ask you a question, you know, can I can I get something, a knowledge or anything like that, and most people will be surprised or willing to help.

 

You know, when I started off as a, as a personal trainer, I went up to the master trainers at the time, and I asked them how they became successful at doing what they're doing. And that question, you know, changed my life, it changed my trajectory of the career because they told me what, what they did, and they helped me avoid, sort of the pitfalls that I was either going to get into, or, you know, stumble upon trial and error. So, I firmly believe and, you know, reaching out to businesses, like you said, geographic, as long as there's no competition, direct competition, and then just just getting you know, tidbits and nuggets, if you if you do enough of that, you'll save yourself, you know, just so many years of, of trial and error.

 

Roy Barker  06:18

I knew these guys that they, they had a roundtable of about six or eight of them that they were in similar to different industries, but they would all meet once a month, breakfast or lunch and talk about things because even though I may not understand exactly, you know, a problem that's going on inside of the gym, if this is more of an employee problem, if I've had this same struggle with the situation, and now you're bumping into that, it's like, you know, that is a benefit, say, look, you know, here's some things I've done, here's some things that, you know, don't do this, it didn't work.

 

It didn't work well, or it didn't end well. But, you know, just those little things, you know, you use for a lawyer, who's your seat, you know, just all these things that we can gain from just taking the time to build those relationships. But you know, I think like you said, I like what you said about you tell them out, seeing how you can help. I think we can't just take take take, we have to be a be, we have to be in a mindset to give as well.

 

Kawan  07:16

100%. And I think that's something that's forgotten a couple things that that get forgotten or forgotten there rather, is no people forget to that no one really bothers to ask questions, right? They don't they don't say, let me, let me let me ask this person, right? Do you see so many successful people doing something that that you want to do, but no one bothers to say, hey, how'd you do it?

 

Or let me look, can I ask you something? Can I can I bench my ego real quick and say, Hey, you got something for me here. And the second thing is, you got to give to get you know, in business, so many people want something from you. And, you know, people are used to that all the time. So if you want to something for yourself, you got to offer something up.

 

And I always try to go in with that I'll go in and it'll be something small, you know, you'll be amazed, give somebody a good review, you know, on anything, and they'll say, wow, you know, that's nice of them. And now you can in turn when you do enough of that, and not in a superficial sense, but in a sense of truly just wanting to collaborate and help each other out.

 

Roy Barker  08:17

Yeah, you can't underestimate the importance of that at all. So the one thing I like about, and the one thing that interested me about you being a guest on here is a couple things, is self improvement, because I know that is a big part of the fitness industry, people come to personal trainers, because they want the self improvement.

 

But we can also look at this from a business aspect too. Is that to be successful? You know, we have to look at ourselves every day, what are we doing? what's working, what's not working? out? You know, we have to measure, how do you measure make these tweaks during our daily live. And I would venture to say, it's like training, if you want to run a marathon or if you want to lose weight, I can't come to you and say, you know, it's Sunday one, I'm really looking to lose 100 pounds by next week, you know, maybe the end of the month.

 

And, you know, we have to manage these expectations. But the same with an entrepreneurship, we can't come in and say, hey, I've got an idea for a business and I want it to be wildly successful next week, you know, we all hope that happens. But this is a journey and it all starts with small steps and really evaluating what we're doing.

 

Kawan  09:32

That's exactly right. You know, and for me, it started off as the in the health aspect that i when i when i saw that I had and what I always tell and why I always tell you know physical activity is because there's a couple things that happen when you you get out of your, your head space there. So when you start moving and you start working out or doing anything physical, it could be walking. No fascinating phenomenon that happens is transient hypofrontality right which means your prefrontal cortex goes offline, part of your brain shuts off, and you're allowed to sort of get out of your head a little bit, right.

 

And, for me, that helps me that's kind of how it started, I was able to work out and I would come back, and I'd have a fresh perspective on problems and things. So I always say, you know, go small, with, with something that, you know, that, that you can build efficacy and, and, you know, physicality really, really helps with that, and then coming back to those to those issues, and then revisiting those. And that could be anything on a business level to, you know, enrolling in a class, you know, picking up a business book on education, and strength are going to be the the two things that will always pay back tenfold and dividends for you.

 

So, you know, my message there is, it starts getting getting you know, out of your head by getting into your body a little bit by doing some movement, and pick up, you know, insightful books and people around you that, that help push you to further heights and then work on yourself go small, you know, people try to go for the, for the big, you know, as I've heard quantum leap, right, they, they try to go for this big jump, and then they find themselves short. And then they look back and say, Well, what happened, right? And, you know, nothing's gonna change unless you practice it daily. So whatever it is that you can chunk down in a small thing that you can do, you're going to build a habit. And over time, that thing just compound enormously.

 

Roy Barker  11:26

Yeah. Yeah, I think the the part that goes on that is consistency as well. There's a great book, it's kind of older, but it was called the slat. Edge. My one of my favorite books. Okay, so you know, yeah, that's like this guy, he talks about, you know, let's just take the weight loss journey is that, you know, if you eat a Big Mac every day, and you quit eating one for one day, it's not going to make that much difference.

 

But he quit eating it for every day, you know, in the comments that he uses, I think baseball a lot, like, you know, the, the guy that goes out and he hits like 500 extra pitches every day. You know, he does it one day, not much result. But you do that over a year. Now, all of a sudden, you probably increased your batting average and increased your paycheck at 100%.

 

Kawan  12:17

And that goes for everything down to, you know, fitness, it goes down to sales, it goes down to every little thing that you do time is the X Factor, right? Everything happens over the course of time, as he says which kind of Jeff Olson the author, there is one of my favorite books, because that people don't see the long term view of things, right, they see the short term, they see the day to day, but you got to step back and say, Okay, what happens over time.

 

If I do this, right, if you go up and, and you make 10 sales calls a day, it might not seem like many calls, but over the you know, the course of, you know, a week that's 70 sales calls, right? You're gonna get two or three sales, right? It's just it's the consistency of doing it daily. And that's, that's the beauty I found in fitness because I knew that if I did that my the dividends would pay back tenfold. So it's all about just seeing that geometric long progression that as humans, it's so hard for us to see.

 

Roy Barker  13:16

Yeah, in a talking about sales, you know, I usually try to relate that to the agrarian, agrarian society, you know, back in the 1800s, is, you planted the seed, you have to cultivate it, and then you can reap the harvest where, you know, a lot of times, especially in sales nowadays is like, you know, you get the phone calls, like wandy, are you ready to buy? Well, no, not at this moment.

 

And as like, we're off, you know, it's not, we don't cultivate that we're off to the next, you know, shiny object, but and it's the same in, you know, in business, and I'm sure in fitness, as well as you can't just decide today, you're you, even though you decided that you want to make that change, you have to manage your expectations, that man, this is a long haul. I mean, why they call it a marathon, not a sprint. So when we set up our marketing and everything like that, we have to take that into account.

 

Because the other thing I see is people jumping around, and not giving things long enough to play as like, Oh, I spent some money on a Facebook ad last week, you know, I ran it for three days, you know, spent $30. And then now I'm off to Instagram and I'm doing this I'm doing insights all over the place instead of maybe just backing up making a plan, sticking with it. And that's the other thing about like the having more things in, in play, especially when we talk about marketing is that, you know, we have a plan with multiple aspects and then we take this for the long road, you know, maybe we could tweak it as we go.

 

But it's the same in business. I mean, you have to give it a chance to develop, reach out, you know, people and especially the higher dollar you get and I'm sure that you met I see this diversity in your space that, you know, selling the memberships takes one methodology where when you start selling the Pat training packages, something totally different.

 

Kawan  15:15

That's absolutely right. And you know, paying attention to the data, just touch up on that point is is an important one, right? If you don't give enough time for that data to, to accumulate, you got nothing to really, you know, base it off of so an exercise is the same thing, people will jump on exercise program to jump off. And I said, Well, you never really gave a chance to take off there, you got to, you got to stick with a daily and that's, you know, regardless of the way that you feel, right, I see, you know, em gray, who wrote the article on the common denominator of success was successful people willing to do the things that unsuccessful people weren't willing to do.

 

And, and that's, that's kind of in a nutshell, when it comes to that you got to be willing to do it and continue to do it. And, you know, the training was, it came so easy to me, because for me, it was, Oh, well, I believe in this. And I can I can sell something I believe and so I was overjoyed in what that was because I was basically you know, as they call it a transference or the doozy as of right, I was I was giving other people what I had found, and what helped me and how that was gonna help them. So when it came to memberships, it was a smaller sale. And I was like, Oh, it's not the kind of the same transference.

 

Really. So how do I, how do I do that, and it came down to, you know, allowing them to feel it and giving them the product that's kind of sort of different by connecting with them on a more closer, closer level than just given them the real estate of the gym and just saying, Hey, good luck out there. You know, it was it was Hey, Larry, I'll meet you, I'll tell you which way to go. And I'm here for you to support you. And just given that value over and over and over again until they trust you.

 

Roy Barker  16:57

Yeah, yeah, definitely trust in like, are two important factors in that. But I love that transfer of enthusiasm, because it doesn't matter what we do. You know, I'm the same way I don't, I enjoy sales, but I really need to be selling something that I believe in, I couldn't, you know, I wouldn't make the good because I like to do that I'm excited about this product. And you know, I want to share it with you, that's what this is all about. I take it that way, instead of me trying to actually sell you on something, you know, I want to get you to buy in and believe it exactly like I do.

 

Kawan  17:30

That's right. And and I think that just comes from a place of, yeah, obviously you want to, you know, make sure that you're helping this person in the right way, but just being honest with them, and, and, you know, allowing for those sort of fluff and all the other things to fade away and just just helping this person help themselves.

 

And that's kind of the hardest thing to translate because it's you can't really, you know, everyone's so different. So you communicating to them is so is so key. So you kind of got to know who you're talking to and meet them where they are at the same time. You know, it's if I've talked to someone a certain way, and it might not appeal the way that the other person was starts, you got to kind of know what angles they want and what they're looking for, you know? Yeah,

 

Roy Barker  18:16

we talked about that a lot, too, is the that exploratory visit whether you know, like you maybe it's in person, maybe it's on the phone, but you have to ask the right questions, and you have to ask thoughtful questions. Because when, you know, when somebody calls you and says, Hey, I want to train, okay, there's all kinds of I want to train to run a marathon, an Iron Man, maybe I just want to train.

 

So when I walk up the stairs, I'm not huffing and puffing, you know, maybe I want to make this an integral part of weight loss. There's so many different variables, but I think that's where in sales we kind of fall short is we don't ask all these questions so that we can try to focus our, you know, our conversation on what is it that you really want? What is it you really need? What is my product really going to do to fix for you?

 

Kawan  19:05

That's exactly right. And for me, a big part of it was I would get so the first, you know, couple of years that have gotten into her first couple weeks, excuse me, I would, I would be so excited about it that, you know, I was used to just talking to people and that was kind of it. And I think the most important thing for me was that after every, you know, consultation or something that I had, I would always sit back and the ones that didn't buy.

 

I would ask myself what what we got missed, What didn't I listen to? And and what did I either not go over so that improvement in itself is kind of what helped me sort of, you know, get better at each one and do a better job of listening or doing a better job of delaying someone's fears or a building that trust and, and that's kind of you know, the message and improvement there is it doesn't you know, ignore sales either sales requires you to Constantly revisit and and make yourself sharper and better, right, which kind of leads to, to the reinvention.

 

But I had gotten so good at talking about and being happy that when someone was finally ready to buy, I think it was the first one, I was shocked, I thought I wasn't really expecting that because I thought we were just gonna tire I was getting ready for you to leave. And I was I didn't know what to do, I didn't know how to use the computer, right? So I had run around trying to find my manager. And then you know, I thought, wow, you know, this person kind of believes in me because you're the product right? As the personal trainer, you're the person that is going to you're selling yourself, you're selling your services, your your ideologies, your math, your science, right, your philosophy.

 

So get it getting that was was was very awakening, because then I knew I had to deliver on that. And that's, that's the important thing, it's doesn't end at the sale, you got to go the extra mile to deliver, you know, your product and make sure that they, they they see that and they get what they pay for. Yeah,

 

Roy Barker  20:57

I think that's an important part, too. You know, we're talking about asking the right questions that helps us with that follow up if they don't buy on the first go around. And, you know, the reality is, I think the smaller dollars you get, he probably that sales cycle is a lot smarter, quicker than high dollar. But I don't know, the last estimates I saw is that you have to touch somebody maybe eight to 12 times before they buy, you know, on average. So, you know, always kind of plan. Okay, if this doesn't close today, how can I follow up? And if we ask these thoughtful questions, then I think it makes it easier to have a not just a Hey, are you ready to buy yet?

 

By now, but more of, Hey, did you find another gym? Are you? You know, have you started walking? Are you doing anything, you know, whatever their issue was, you can kind of address that, or something else I'd like to do is just maybe find an article in the newspaper or in a you know, online nowadays, but you know, you find an article that speaks to what they were thinking about. And so I just have like five prospects and maybe even customers that I will send this email to and say, Hey, I saw this, I thought you might enjoy it. And then here are three bullet points that I really found interesting. I thought you would like you know, just like that just stay in front of them.

 

Kawan  22:17

That's exactly right. I think you nailed it. And I've read a simple book that by Gary Vee that stuck with me. And it was it's still repeat to me to say it's it was so easy and simple as give value, give value, give value ask, right. And for me in the gym, it was finding someone and saying, Hey, I like what you're doing. I try this, you know, hey, this is cool. You know, what do you need help with? What is it that you're looking for?

 

Okay, great, and not trying to press your agenda all the time, you know, just just keep giving value and keep giving value. And then eventually that person says, You know what, this guy's got a lot of knowledge, he can probably help me a little bit. They got to come to that realization, you know, and once they come to that realization, they trust you. They say, Okay, now I'm ready to go. And now you have someone that's that's bought in, and then you're gonna make great strides and have a beautiful relationship together.

 

Roy Barker  23:09

Yeah. Yeah, two points. I think there's one is that sometimes when we give this knowledge and advice, we can actually show people how difficult the situation is. And they come to realize that, hey, I really do need this guy's help. You know, a lot of times people are scared, like, Oh, I don't want to give anything away. But then, you know, it's like, uh, well, just like in your business, you know, I can come in and sit down and work on a machine, probably without much help. But I've had a personal trainer that he designed so many other activities for us to do.

 

Didn't have any, it wasn't him standing there counting reps on a weight machine. I mean, he had all these contraptions that he had me working on. And so, you know, the value in that for me was that he had all this knowledge of all these different things you can do. And so sometimes sharing that knowledge, I think, really leads people to the point of man, I need this guy. You know, I'm not doing it on my own. And the second point, sorry, I didn't. One more thing I was gonna say about that is that sometimes it's that reverse psychology to I've actually had people that and they were kind of waving if the in this and I said, Well, maybe this product isn't right for you. You'd be right. Yeah, that's

 

Kawan  24:25

that's exactly right. I've read that before and allowing them to say, Well, wait a minute, you know, what, why is that? Why isn't it right for me? Yeah. And that's a great question. They can ask themselves, right.

 

Roy Barker  24:38

Yeah, we just, you know, I don't know I'm just not a pushing. I don't want to, I want because what I have found is when you push somebody to be a client, they usually turn out it turns out bad. It just is not a good relationship as much as like you said, if they trust you, they want to work with you, then life is pretty good after that. So I think You have to, you know, my personal opinion, I know, there's some people like I you gotta, you gotta be pushing, you got to be harming them all the time, why aren't you buying, you can afford it, you know all but we never know other people's positions and so whether it's time money, whatever, you know, you have to be respectful of that.

 

Kawan  25:18

That's right that the mentor that had, you know Josh well more than later with my memberships was was Dan Sussman they they both had a different way of doing things but essentially got back down to they're both were, you know, excited about what they they believed in and one guy was great at being in the moment being excited, truly excited about it, because he believed in it. And then he really did a good job of simplifying what that was right. So not just not a lot of just talk and peaks and valleys and, and emotion, but rather, you know, clarifying that message for that, so that they could grasp it and say, Okay, this, this makes sense. Because less is more for him.

 

And then, you know, my, my mentor, Joshua would do a better job of getting them emotionally bought in as to seeing why this product was going to help their their future and what and what they want to do so. So given them the promise of the future, and what what that holds for them, if they if they do that is paramount as well. So, you know, David and I, as well as my other business partner, he kind of he's in though in the way of explaining things better and helping you choose options to find out what it is. So there's no right or wrong, it's, it's one of those strengths are for you, and then finding out how to just, you know, really use those without going back to trying a bunch of other things that that may or may not work.

 

Roy Barker  26:38

Yeah. The other thing, you know, again, putting our egos aside is maybe if we're struggling, or if we're new, is have somebody listened in on these sales calls. And I've done that before, when I'm new, and I, again, I don't try to hide it. Because if I got if, if I was trying to sell fitness to you right now, I would struggle, and it would be hard and you could, as a customer, you would see that as like, Well what's wrong with this guy. Whereas you can just have somebody like, Look, you know, my, my colleague, my manager, you know, I'm new, he's gonna sit down, make sure I cover everything, right. But that's how you learn.

 

Because, you know, if they're good, they will let you go through the process. And then you can debrief after that to say, here's what you could do better. Here's how you could tweak that. And I liked the other thing you said there was, paint that picture of what does success look like? I mean, you know, if, if you want to run a marathon, it's crossing the finish line. Yeah. I did it. But what does success look like if you use this?

 

Kawan  27:40

That's right. And one most important thing to do too, is to get you know, a lot of people wait and they push the product, then you get you know, these objections, right, or these people that say, you know, what, I don't know, an important thing is to get ahead of those and I'll, you know, find out what those are in the very beginning. That way you can address them and not run into them later on. Right. So for me, you know, one of my messages is never underestimate the power of repetition. You know, a song a fitness translates to so many things in business.

 

And one of the things that you said that was so true was having someone listen in and then run that, like, I'm a strong believer, now. I would, I would replay or roleplay with my business partners, my mentors and ROI like hundreds of times until I got until I was just you know what they call I think it's a psychologist theories unconscious competent, right? They, you get so you know, used to doing something that you can do it and you know, if you're asleep, right, I'm cautious, right. And I just did that over and over and over again, until I was just so familiar.

 

I had I knew the answers that were gonna come. And I was prepared to have an answer for those answers. Right. So it was it was really just just laying that groundwork. You can't you know, you're gonna save so much time and nobody likes role playing. It's one of the most boring things with your resume. Okay, yeah, Sally have ready to buy this thing yet. But it's, it's so important because you you find out how to get across obstacles, how to, to help them and to really, truly get to the solution.

 

Roy Barker  29:14

Yeah, I mean, you think about it, we in sports, we practice in practice and practice and we practice you know, take baseball, what happens? You know, okay, there's a man on first this time the guy hits it to the left, what do we do? Now you got first and third, you know, you work through all of these scenarios. So well, you know, you work as a team, but you also as an individual, you have to think Okay, in this situation, this is what I'm going to do and it's the same with building you know, questions from sales or from prospects, you know, you want to be able to flow be able to give them a you know, a good answer or not.

 

The other thing too is I am much more. I have much more respect for sales people that say, you know what, I don't know the answer. answer to that, versus making something up. But, you know, I think if you're prepared, then you don't put yourself in that position. But you know, you kind of like you said, you're prepared for what objections are going to be thrown at you,

 

Kawan  30:12

which circles back to the hole. If you believe in it, all of this makes sense. If you're selling something you don't believe in, don't do it, because you're gonna feel bad, you're gonna feel guilty about it. And that's, that's kind of, that's not what sales is, right sales is, is the transference of a doozy as, as well as influencing someone to help them in a way that will better their life truly, you know, and save them time or save them money or, or buy them in this case of Fitness, Health and a longer shelf life friend.

 

Roy Barker  30:45

So that's a good transition, what else I just written down was a self care. And, of course, it's easy for you because your business's self, but I think it's a it's a big thing for entrepreneurs and for business man, and I have to be the first to put myself under that bus and say, you know, I don't, there are things I do to push myself in probably unhealthy ways that, you know, like, not getting enough sleep feeling like if I just stay up late and complete this project, but what I have found in the past is that, that leads to, to other unhealthy habits, like, you know, eating bad trying to get that energy pop and things like that. So talk for a minute about how self care can really help us perform better in business as well.

 

Kawan  31:37

100% it, I think, you know, I read recently, I'm reading this book called ego is the enemy. And I never really put it this way. But it was he basically says Ryan holidays, if you can't manage yourself, you can't manage others, right. And I thought that was that was profound, because it touched back on some of the things as a leader in any business or anything that you're doing, be it CEO, you know, a sales advisor, and from an even lower level, I firmly believe everyone in their circle of influence, or immediate circle is a leader in that regard, you know, so in that you have to take care of yourself, so that you can take care of others, right.

 

And for me, I have systems where everything is routinely based, right? So, you know, I started off in working out, I still do that five, six days a week. And then so I wake up in the morning that the first thing I do, is I'm guilty of making, you know, a pot of coffee. And so I get that going, but the first thing I do is I immediately jump into my reading, so that I read about 30 pages in the morning. And some days, I don't want to do it, you know, but but I make myself do it. Because you're only a value to those around you.

 

Depending on how much value you put in yourself and how much you you basically, you know, work on yourself. So, so I do that. And then my second thing is I always meditate in the mornings, right? So I do about a 10 minute, just, you know, mindful meditation on the headspace app, or just sit, no thoughts, no anything and try not to have thoughts if possible. But you just gotta just just sit with yourself there and have that moment to slow everything down and be in the moment, right and then I do my writing. So I journal deal of gratitude journal things that I'm thankful for, then I go get my workout.

 

And usually I'm done with all that by around on a good day on 7:38am, right? So I'm okay, now, I can take on the day I can do things and do that. So my message there is finding a routine that works for you in terms of having a physicality in there, it could be the easiest thing as as walking, walk for 10 minutes, you know, just just get outside, look at some trees, leave some stuff out there, come back in, I know do a little bit of self care your thoughts and what you're feeling that day, write them down, write down one goal that you want to do. And my biggest message to everybody there is just go small. Don't create big, big standards for yourself.

 

Because you know, and I hate to sound like anything that's negative there, but it's just sure to fall apart when you create big, you know, quantum leaps that you got to do it, it becomes a chore like yeah, and then you don't want to do them. And then you say well, you know that's that's it falls off, it's over. So behind yourself, be allowing yourself the opportunity to succeed by by truly just, you know, lowering that expectation. So self care is critical.

 

Roy Barker  34:30

Yeah. And I think Be kind to yourself to that. You know, sometimes we can have that list of to dues and we get you know, if we got 10 things on there, maybe we get seven things done we wanted to do today. And we spend our time beating ourselves up over these three that we didn't and you know if we prioritize, we got the most important ones first. Like because you got seven done, pat yourself on the bank saying it was an awesome day because if you could bat 700 you'd be making you know, because zillion dollars in your legs.

 

But, you know, we just have to. And I like the part about being mindful, I have recently started meditating. And you know, what I will tell people is, don't, again, don't be too hard on yourself, and give yourself time because with me, it's hard to turn the thoughts off, and sit there and not have thoughts, and you just have to keep redirecting, but what I have found is, I have better, some days are better than others. And if you just stay after it, I think, on average, you will have better days than, than worst days, but it's difficult.

 

Kawan  35:36

That's exactly right. And I think that that's a beautiful message there on the on the average tip, and also, you know, it's all about just accumulating small wins, you know, create as many small wins for yourself as possible on daily basis. And you'll be surprised, you know, over the course of six months to a year, it's gonna show up big time for you. So, you know, getting out in nature, you know, in and of itself, I just recently read that you're supposed to spend 20 minutes, three days a week, five hours a week, or three days out of the year, five hours a month, or three days out of the year.

 

So that's, that's guys 25, and three, and that's supposed to have these effects on your, on your mind, as we're slowing you down, and get you in a place of, you know, better optimization, it's all about getting to that place where you're able to perform, right, and that could be something as easy as going to sleep on time, you know, and it's, you got to prioritize yourself and enable and in order to do those other things, well,

 

Roy Barker  36:38

yeah. And one thing I've started doing is I usually like to listen to podcast or to music while I walk. But so if I'm on, if I'm at the gym on the treadmill, I still do it. But when I'm walking around the neighborhood I've gotten where I'd take them off, and just try to listen to the nature and just have that quiet time. Because really, you know, I do a lot of strategic work. So it's a lot of problem solving.

 

Sometimes when I run into a block, if I just get up and go walk, it clears my head that it's like, the solution comes to you, or maybe creative thinking, if you're, you know, a new product line or something that you want to do different. It just seemed like everything just comes so much easier when you take the time to kind of get out in front of the computer screen and let your head get clear for a minute.

 

Kawan  37:27

That's right, you know, these these top athletes and you know, top business people, you know, they they all have ways that they're in a constant state of this productivity on this fun, enjoy it. Right? And how do they do that not not everyone is like that people all everyone has problems, everyone has personal things going on. But you know, in fitness, and this translates to business in life, I always say, you know, the growth happens when you rest, right?

 

When you work a muscle, and you go home and you you have proper nutrients, and you sleep, that muscle grows back stronger. It's the same thing in business in life, if you if you work all the time, and work yourself to the bone. First of all, you're not going to have a great attitude and mindset after three, four or five years of that. And second, you know, you're going to get tired, you're going to need sleep, you're gonna need rest, you're gonna need to reset I know, because I worked myself to the point of exhaustion, you know, 6070 hour work weeks.

 

I had to learn the hard way and say, hey, it's time to slow down, you know, you're getting these messages of, you know, not feeling too hot all the time or not wanting to go to work. These are signals. Yeah. So you got to strategize and like you said, problem solve and say, Okay, I need to step away a little bit. So I can come in a little bit harder there and then be be more effective. So take that time out for yourself. 100%

 

Roy Barker  38:48

Yeah, cuz that's why we do this, as you know, we do this to people try to get to be entrepreneurs, because they want more control over their time and what they do, but then it's unfortunate, because we, again, I have I'm guilty of this at times you get into the thing, instead of the dog wagging the tail, the tails wagging the dog, and, you know, you're letting the business move you around on the chessboard instead of you taking control and move in the business. So always take time, because that's what it's worth. In the end. It's those relationships and you know, we don't want to lose trying to build a business for our family, but then lose our family in the process of that tension to themselves.

 

Kawan  39:29

Well, yeah, well said on that and never really thought about that. That's exactly. That's exactly it. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Roy Barker  39:35

Well quite appreciate you taking time out of your day. It's been an awesome conversation. So tell me this, what is a tool or a habit, something that you do every day? That really adds a lot of value to your life. And you know, outside the meditation and the working out and the exercise.

 

Kawan  39:55

I'd say you know, connecting with people is is one of the most important things Things that that we can do as human beings, you know, you can have the best routine in the world. If you're not connecting with somebody, or having a meaningful conversation, you know, for me, sitting in this podcast with you is one of the highlights of my day because it allows me to connect another individual that we can, you know, share thoughts and feelings with.

 

And that's, that's what we're meant to do, you know, so, you know, Intel has this philosophy, what they call it wandering about, so that, you know, a person from a department will go to another department, and sort of wander and talk to the other individuals in that department, they come back, you know, with more perspectives in the gym is the same way, you know, I was joking around with a couple buddies and I was holding the door, I was working out the other day, and I held the door for a friend of mine, I said, you know, welcome back to the school of strength and improvement, you know, yeah, let out a chuckle.

 

And I went out to the gym floor, and I connected with the, you know, one of our members, there was a Marine, and we had talked, and we were talking about sort of the things of the struggles and the things we're getting through. And the answers are out there with those fellow individuals that you know, are sharing the same thing you are, and you're not alone, you know, each go out and, and meet them, and then talk about how to strike up a conversation with somebody in your department and, and get to that humanistic level. Right?

 

Roy Barker  41:17

Yep. That human contact, it's, it's very important, you know, we can spend so much time in front of our computer screens that we kind of lose that ability, if we're not careful. So, now, that's, that's good advice. So what kind of people do you like to work with? How can you help them? And of course, how can they reach out and get a hold of you? Oh,

 

Kawan  41:37

yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm always in the space that I'm in now is trying to add as much value as I can, you know, to give back what I learned, and, hopefully get back what I learned, and basically, you know, add as much value in their lives in terms of business, you know, health and in terms of that, so I have a podcast called value verse where we talk about the journey, the storytelling, of individuals that, like yourself, have, have succeeded on a business level on a life level to help others see that it's possible or to gain insight from and, you know, I'm on Instagram at Value Verse, the best way to reach me, so you always shoot me a message there, or www.thevalueverse com.

 

So I'm always open to adding value and to anyone that approaches me in any way that I can. And if I can't, then I'll point you in the direction of somebody that that can, you know, so that's kind of the what I lived by, because, you know, someone did that for me. So I don't want to be right if I could do that.

 

Roy Barker  42:37

Yeah, we need to pay it back. That's for sure. Yeah, it just, you know, I think something I was told long ago was that we are successful because other people want to want to see us be successful, which means you know, we've got people behind us helping us out and I think it's great anytime we can help other people. But yeah, y'all go check out value verse. Appreciate the time very much. that's gonna do it for another episode of The Business of Business Podcast.

 

Of course, you can find us on all the major podcast platforms, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Spotify, we're not a one that you listen to you reach out, I'd be glad to get you added. We're also at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com all the major social media platforms probably hang out at Instagram more than anywhere else. And a video of this interview will go up on YouTube once it goes live. So until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.thevalueverse.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

Local Search Engine Optimization: Help Your Clients Find Your Business with Wendell Jordan

In this day and time, even if you are a brick and mortar, old school traditional business it's a must to not only have a digital presence but also optimize for local SEO. So many consumers are driving down the road and doing a Google search for "X" business close to me. Google even has it for a prompt. Don't get left behind.

About Wendell

Wendell Jordan is a 10-year sales and marketing professional. Currently, he is the owner of Jordan Marking consultants, a digital agency focused on high ROI marketing solutions. As an SEO Consultant and web design professional, he helps local businesses get more sales, retain more customers, and build brand awareness online

www.jordanmarketingconsultants.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

Full Transcript Below

Local Search Engine Optimization: Help Your Clients Find Your Business with Wendell Jordan

Sat, 6/26 12:43PM • 1:04:34

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

pizza, people, google, reviews, pizza shop, business, content, day, local seo, customer, website, piece, site, talk, person, offer, local, nail salon, important, location

SPEAKERS

Wendell, Roy Barker

 

Roy Barker  00:07

Good afternoon, and welcome to another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. I'm your host, Roy. course we are the podcasts that do bring you a wide variety of topics, we have a diverse set of guests that come on to help us out with some things that we may not have thought about, and maybe even give us some tips on some things that are keeping us up at night. And today is no different. We are fortunate enough to have Wendell Jordan, he's a 10 year sales and marketing professional. He is currently the owner of Jordan marketing consultants. It's a digital agency focused on our own marketing solutions. As an SEO consultant and web design professional, he helps local businesses, get more sales, retain more customers and build brand awareness. Wendell, thanks so much for taking time out of your day to be with us.

 

Wendell  00:53

Yes, sir.

 

Roy Barker  00:54

So, you know, we talked a little bit, I think it's interesting, we really want to hit on the local SEO is kind of what you focus on. But before we jump off into that, tell us a little bit about, you know, how did you migrate into this space? How did you find yourself the owner of a marketing agency?

 

Wendell  01:12

Right, so excuse me, the, I won't give you the, you know, the long version, I'll give you the best, you know, the most, the most condensed one. So as you mentioned, I started off in sales. So I was originally a door to door sales rep selling cable in New York. And I had a friend who designed websites who needed to a salesperson. So we started reaching out to small businesses. And the demand exceeded his ability. So I had to learn how to do a little bit of design, right. And then, over time, him and I, we, we consider ourselves partners, rather, we had a partnership. And over time, it started to get to the point where we were going in two different directions.

 

And I started doing things by myself, right. And one thing that I noticed was when we would build websites, nothing would come with it. Right? Like, you know, we'd have these awesome, very aesthetically beautiful websites, but they really weren't generating a lot of traffic, there was no ROI at all. And I started doing some research. So I started looking into what SEO meant, especially, you know, coming from a space where the Internet has matured so much from you know, the days of the 90s, where SEO was just putting words on pages.

 

And, you know, people came to it. So I had to do a lot of research. And then eventually, I got to the point where I realized because I enjoy working with local small business, that local SEO made the most sense, because SEO is a little different. You know, they're kinda in the same space, but local SEO really speak to my ideal customer.

 

Roy Barker  02:49

Yeah, and I think that's mistaken, that a lot of the local businesses don't really think you know, the people that are selling products or services across the US, we think about it, because we want to attract, you know, somebody from California, but that local guy that's on the corner, they think that you know, the sign up front and brick and mortar, that that's really all that they have to offer. And certainly they First off, I may need to get to come back for episode just on baby being a door to door salesman in New York City. I can only imagine.

 

Wendell  03:26

We can talk about that. But I can tell you so many stories. And that that was my first sales job. That was I had no intention on being in sales. I just answered a Craigslist ad. And I was married at the time. And my wife said, I said to her I said but it's sales. And she was like, oh, try you like talking to people. And I ended up enjoying it. I loved the effect. So yeah, we'll definitely have to Yeah, we could definitely pin that. That would be Yeah.

 

Roy Barker  03:54

Yeah, and the other thing, you mentioned that thing, you know, courseware in 2021 now, but you know, back in the 90s, I guess SEO was actually having a web page. You know, it's like, if you had a web page that had maybe a picture on it, you were in the top 5% What was going on? And you know, you were probably one of 10 other people to add a web page up. So it was like, easy to find you. But you know, nowadays, it's so crowded and there's so much noise out there.

 

I mean, there's just even for local businesses, there's, you know, we have a, you know, a pizza place on every corner. Just so anyway, let's kind of talk about that. I mean, what are some of the challenges that you see for these local guys, you know, that may have a brick and mortar trying to do some SEO work? Right? So the pizza place is always a perfect example. Um, pizza place a gym, because

 

Wendell  04:48

there's a national franchise to those, you know that like, you know, you also have to be able to identify if you're Mario's pizza, Domino's and pizza and out of your competitors, the wage gap As your competitor, right? That's, that's really the place that you need to be looking at what are they doing? That's one of the biggest misconceptions that local businesses have is we're not competing for the market share from the large franchise a national franchise, one.

 

Each franchisee has a certain budget, the corporate office made sure that they come up high in search, also running ads, which may or may not be in Mario pizzas, budget, but the most important parts to it when trying to etch some form of local SEO is the use of free things first, right like making sure that you're on Yelp that you've claimed on Yelp, right? being sure that you have a Google My Business Page. And make sure that it's claimed, right, because that's also that's the key part is claiming it because every business can have one. But if it's not claimed, and you really don't, you don't have the rights to it. And you're not able to post and update customers and change your hours and do all the other important things that you want to make sure people know about your business.

 

Roy Barker  06:01

I'm gonna just interject for a minute people. I mean, I think as a business owner, you really need to understand we just had a situation is about a week ago. It was a it was a nail salon place that my girlfriend goes to, and she was like, you know, what is the name of that place? I can't think of it because she needed to call up there. So we Google Maps. And we got to the the complex the building that they were in. Right, but their name wasn't listed on? Yeah,

 

Wendell  06:29

that's very common. Yeah, very common. Yeah, I guess that's just a function of them not going and claim so. So it's not. So that's actually a totally separate component? Making sure yeah, so making sure that you're actually on map. So like, there's Apple Maps or Google Maps, believe it or not, MapQuest is still a part of my gosh, map citation. Right. Right. So and even with that, I can tell you some MapQuest stories from back when you had to print it out. But being sure that like especially when you're in a shopping center, because some locations have high turnover. So are you still listed as Stacy's plumbing service or is it now you know, Maria's nail salon?

 

My my my first encounter with local SEO before I really before I even knew what it was honestly, I moved to St. Louis from New York, and I needed a haircut. So I look up barber shops. Now. The first part about it is barber shop is is not it's a it's a universal term, right? So some barber shops cut a grain of hit, it's more like yours. Some barber shops, cut greens of hair that are more like mine. I never thought of it that way. Right? Like I've never was never something that crossed my mind. And then the other part to it was making sure that the a the barbershop was open because actually had pretty high turnover. But it took me two hours to find a barber shop The first time I was in St. Louis. First time I needed a haircut in St. Louis, I spent two hours finding a barber shop. And that was when the very first time the light bulb went off.

 

And I said this may be a problem for small businesses, right. So again, when you talk about being able to find someone, usually barbershops, hair salons, nail salons are usually in shopping centers very rarely are they standalone locations, right? You want to be sure if you're that owner, you go to Google My Business, you register your business, firstly. And then there's something called local citations, which we don't have enough time to go through. But again, talking about that Google map is it's a citation. So a citation, unlike in the legal term, right? It's just a mark, right? So in SEO citation is just a mark on the internet. So you want to make sure that all those things are aligned. So even if you just type in, so and so's nail salon. Hopefully, you can come up because, you know, some some business names are very similar throughout the US, right?

 

 You know, but hopefully, if someone puts some some nail salon in Houston, Texas, or in more specific Kima, right, and Kima, Texas, you come up, but that also that all goes into how you're making sure that you're being found on the internet, but those are all things that, you know, we don't think about even as business owners, because again, it took me two hours to find a barber shop and you would think I was telling me relatively easy to find.

 

Roy Barker  09:21

Exactly. So how, like, from a consumers point of view, I like to always be local mean, because, you know, I live in Fort Worth, Texas. So I in sometimes my you know, when I do a search, it defaults to another zip code, you know, I guess where my if it's so you learn maybe we're connecting or back to the office that the central opposite goes to But anyway, so you know, I don't want to drive 30 minutes across town to you know, do business. I want to be sure I go, you know, right up here in our most consumers pretty much that way I would assume that they would rather do Deal with somebody that's right in their neighborhood, even if they're part of a big city. So that's a good question.

 

Wendell  10:05

So there's two parts to that consumer journey. The first part is locality, right. So if you are a local consumer, you typically, like you said, you don't want to leave, you don't want to drive past 10 nail salons to get to the one that Google said you should go to. So that is really important. The way I used to describe local SEO was I am the near me part, right. So usually you put near me or you put your city or your zip code, if you don't put anything and like you said, Sometimes it'll default to wherever your IP address is pointing to.

 

The other parts of that that consumer journey is the reviews. So being sure that once you get your your Google My Business together, Yelp is a little tricky, because they don't let you solicit reviews, believe it or not, they'll they'll hide them. But Google, my business is pretty freeform. So as customers come in, you know, or as they're leaving, maybe you want to be sure that you're requesting reviews, right. If you're a place that gathers email addresses, it would behoove you to be sure to, to send out some emails, ask people to come go to your Google My Business Page, or even your Facebook page.

 

But again, just to go back to the initial question that you asked that locality is really important. So being sure that you're listed in the location that you're in, helps someone like yourself, find the nail salon that isn't 30 minutes away, I guess it's it's, it's it's really the detail, right? It's detail and making sure that if you're, you know, 2200, Suite B, that's exactly how you're listed on on all places that your business's is located, right. So that Google sees it as one uniform place. Google doesn't understand 20 220 ga suite B. Google sees that as two different places, even if has the same business day. Okay. Yeah.

 

Roy Barker  11:52

So one of the you had mentioned, you know, the corporate, let's go back to the pizza example, for a minute that, you know, we've got the Domino's Pizza Hut. So, thinking that if we're a local, you know, one shop person, that we can even rank on a Google page, is that even possible? When you have, you know, the Goliath, like, the corporates that are they're pouring their money in to make sure that their brands list on the top? And so the the local franchisor, he benefits from the dollars that they spend nationally, but so you know, if I'm that small mom and pop, am I right? Do I have a chance to get up on the first page somewhere?

 

Wendell  12:35

Absolutely. So yeah, absolutely. So it's really just defining the goal, right? I'm, we're given we're talking about businesses, the locality is what's gonna allow you to get on that first page, there's only going to be but so many dominoes, but so many Pizza Hut, just because of the way that their franchise ship works, where you know, they're only going to take up so much space on the map between locations for the most part, right. So when you when you're thinking about just use a pizza example, when you're thinking about that, as the site is designed, right, because it's not just going to be making sure that the Google My Business is put together, you're also going to need a website.

 

The biggest misnomer is the grub hubs and all the other things that give you those, those one page menus are going to act as the the website that you never need it. It's untrue, right, because you don't control what information gets put on there, you usually have to request to have certainty exchanged. But in order to get on that first page, because this is the way search is going to look, it's going to have those franchisees, right all those those national change, the delivery services, believe it or not, are actually probably going to come up second. And then you're going to be somewhere towards the middle of the bottom depending on how big the city you live in. So you have to accept the fact that you're never going to be number one, right? for pizza near me.

 

But again, when we go back to the nail salon example, even when we talk about the pizza shop, usually we have some idea of what the piece of shop is called unless we're relatively new. And then we may say we want brick oven pizza. So we want to be sure that when we're when we're putting together that website, brick oven pizza is something that's mentioned. Because now Domino's isn't even in the conversation anymore. Yeah, right like now you've positioned yourself as the local brick oven pizza shop. So it's it's it's things like that that are very realistic, but it's just a finding those goals as you're putting together that local SEO campaign.

 

Roy Barker  14:26

You mentioned platforms for just a minute, I think this is something I heard years ago is you know, we we have to be careful how we structure our platforms. Because you know, our you do a website, you basically have control what you know, you can put brick up and you can do all the stuff you need. But if we rely on other platforms, even if you know we may be able to get some information in there, but if they make changes to any of their policies or do anything, you can be left out in the dark if that's all that you have been relying on. Whereas with your own website, you know, that's an asset that you control?

 

Wendell  15:04

Absolutely, absolutely. So I mean, you just stated it perfectly. I mean, one other part to SEO and local SEO is making sure that you're creating content, right. So if we're thinking about those other platforms, and again, there's nothing wrong with having the grub hubs and stuff like that, because they're awesome SEO tools, because they pay 1000s of dollars to make sure that they rank high. So you will still come up with the name of the game is always seek to get business.

 

But when you're talking about your specific brand, right, because it's really controlling your brand, and the voice that your brand projects, regardless of the type of business that you're in. Because again, you don't want to be Miss, you don't want to be misunderstood as just a pizza shop. If you're brick oven, right. Or if you're true, if you're a very traditional pizza shop, you don't necessarily do all the chicken parms, and the pastas and all those other kinds of things. Maybe you have, and again, being in New York, and maybe you've got a new york sites for somebody like me, right.

 

Like maybe you sell it via slides, there's so many different ways that you can position yourself, when you control what information is being shared, because very rarely by the slice is going to be something that a place is going to be listing, right. I've been a few places looking for a slice of pizza when I was relatively new to live in New York. And I quickly learned that most people buy them by the pie, I did not know this. Growing up, I thought everywhere, everyone bought pizza, one slice at a time, right? So being able to have that information available on your site, you can kind of move in and position it the way that you'd like, um, you can also do cool things, like announce different types of pizza that you're doing. Right?

 

Like, you know, I was told a couple of days ago, somebody had a chicken and waffle pizza. And it was, I don't know, but it had syrup on it, I don't think that I would ever eat it. But it was an option. Right? It was an option. So, you know, it was I think I forgot how to describe it. But I think it had a little bits of waffle on it. Some chicken like fried chicken. And, again, if that's if you're the only person if you're the only business serving chicken and waffle pizza, that may be something that you want to announce, you know, you may want to write a blog about how you guys came about even putting together that that that concoction, right? But those are the things that you can control when you're in charge of the message, as opposed to, you know, some of the delivery services or even if you're talking about Yelp.

 

You know, where you can't really post much other than whoops, within the parameters of what they decide is okay. And again, not saying any of these platforms are bad, like Yelp has changed immensely. In the last 10 years, they used to they used to allow way more information to be shared. Whereas now they've segmented it, they've segmented each piece of it into a premium service. So on some yellow pages, you can't put your your logo unless you're willing to pay for

 

Roy Barker  18:06

going in order. We've talked about making sure we claim our business on Google, we've talked about having that website. But you know, and we've kind of touched on that content. But you know, how important is refreshing getting that out there? I mean, I think people, people want to deal with people that they like, people want to deal with people that seem to be like them. And so, you know, I think the owners getting their story out there wanted, you know, how did I get here? Why do we do this? You know, it's been a family tradition for 100 years, or those are very important messages to keep out there. Correct?

 

Wendell  18:42

Absolutely. Absolutely. And again, it just goes back to your choice of content delivery. Something else that I think is key to mentioned, because it is important to local SEO is social media, right? Those social platforms are important. And being sure that you're not saturating them with the coupons, right, like you said, being able to tell your brand story being able to talk about because I mean, you know, you go to some places, they may sell pizza just to stick to this pizza analogy, because I think you know, pizzas everywhere.

 

If If, if you're an Italian restaurant, you may offer pizza, but you may not be a pizzeria. Right. So you want to make sure that that's understood. Right? Maybe listed under pizzeria but that may not necessarily be with the space in which you would you fall, you may have some some niche items like gluten free crust, you may offer a vegan crust, you know, like you may have a few different options that allow for you to have a story to be told. So it's definitely something to be mentioned. But again, it just goes back to being able to control the brand voice that you're that you're giving out.

 

And again, having a website, Google my businesses is is probably the second most important to the website. Right. I think that those are one in one a because Google My Business gives you A lot of flexibility and being able to post content. So that's another thing. Google, my business allows you to post content. I don't think a lot of business owners know that.

 

Roy Barker  20:08

Yeah. Yeah. And it's just, you know, the days of the static web page are over. And I think that we have to always be refreshing. And it also it helps because the, you know, the way that you ride it when you get an expert like yourself to help write that content. Because again, as the years have gone by, you know, Google has gotten smart enough to you know, back in the olden days, you could write a about us. Pizza. Yeah, we serve pizza. I like pizza.

 

They like pizza, they come here for, you know, you could just be the time to be at the tip top right there. You'd be good to go. Absolutely. That was SEO. Yeah, you keyword stuff. The page, and it was good. But now, you know, Google is like Facebook, you know, they've built their own jail that, you know, they will put you in Google jail, if they deem that you have stepped over that line there.

 

Wendell  21:04

Yes. 100% Yeah, there is something there is a such thing as as having your site completely removed from search. Like that is a real thing. I've talked to a couple of business owners about it. They're like, really, you could be unsearchable. My guess that's a real thing. If you're deemed as spam. Yeah. You know, there's, it's a process to get that to get that that mark, that label removed from you. But like you just said, I mean, it's, it's one of those things where if you're really thoughtful, because you have to be sure that there's a couple other parts to the actual website piece, right?

 

Like, something that has become a very common term is web vitals. So being sure that the site loads, you know, relatively fast be being sure that your images are optimized for mobile and a bunch of other pieces that go into that. But making sure that like you said, the page, the on page stuff, like being sure you're talking about being the I don't want to use this is a bad example. But the number one brick oven pizza shop in Kima, right, like, and again, it's subjective. Google does not hot, it is not hurt you to say your number one, but like you said about trustworthiness. If you're if I if it's me, I want to know who deemed it number one. Right?

 

Roy Barker  22:19

Right. It's always better to have somebody else do me number one, right?

 

Wendell  22:24

Right. Right, right. So you know, that those are all part of that, that on site SEO, where you talk about where you're located, if you have more than one location, you got to separate those by page, right? Like, you can't talk about four locations all on one page. It doesn't work.

 

Roy Barker  22:40

So a couple things to the, the importance today of images and videos, I think we all probably understand it, but I'll let you just talk about that, you know, we we've got to have the correct language, the correct correct wording to help but, you know. I've been told in the past that, you know, pictures are like leaving breadcrumbs to your website, and videos, or like leaving chocolate covered videos to your website that, you know. Videos tend to rank higher, but you know, something a guy brought up to me one time. I never thought about is that social media, let's take that, for instance. That you know, you post a we're having, you know, two for one pizza night or whatever.

 

If you write that out in text, you know, it's gonna get away, you take up about this much real estate, when people are scrolling down through their feeds, where if you have a picture or video, now all of a sudden, you've expanded it to, you know, this amount of real estate. Right? Right. Yeah. So then, yeah, just talking about the importance of those videos.

 

And you know, we don't Well, I'll speak from my personal point of view, and then I'll let you weigh in as an expert. I like to see the reality I don't want to see scripted, I don't want to see it like it was way over produced, man, right? The The guy with his cell phone, you know, saying, Look, here we are in our kitchen, cooking some pizza. Right? talk about that a little bit. You know, it's it's good to do that.

 

Wendell  24:11

So something that the last piece that you touched on is perfect gets the authenticity, right? Something that has become way more available stock photos, stock video has even become, I mean, cheaply available nonetheless, right? Like once upon a time, if you want to stock photography, it would cost you hundreds, if not 1000s of dollars in order to get access to a portfolio of photos where now there's a bunch of places where you can get it for relatively cheap. So you want to be sure that you're taking the time as the business owner or assigning it to someone that works there.

 

Like you said, taking pictures in the environment, right, we're going to stick to the pizza shop, taking pictures of customers enjoying the food if you do have a sit down location, if you don't make sure that you have a picture of the storefront, you know, so that if they're looking at it from Google, they're not gonna Using Mario ees with Mario West, right, because that's a really important piece. There's also speaking to Google, there's a couple of services they specifically offer where I'm sure we've all use it, where you can look around the location inside.

 

So if you click the 3d view, you can, if they if the business owner is taking the photography, you can actually walk through as though you're in the store in the restaurant in that moment. So that's another cool thing, when you talk about the video component, and I'm in again, the pizza, I love pizza. So I'm definitely not saddened by the fact that this is the description. But you know, you can get an action, you know, and again, like you said, not even over produce, but I remember being a kid going into the local pizza shop that was in my community, and it was the coolest thing ever, to watch the make the pizza, right?

 

Because we will watch them, you know, toss the dough, do everything, make sure that they you know, they did the cross that everything, put the sauce on it, but they did everything right in front of us. So if you can capture that, right, like that would be something that would be again, when you go back to it, you can say, we do everything, you know, from scratch. Sounds great. But if I can watch a video of this pizza spinning in the air, even if it doesn't have a bunch of production value on it, you know, it's something that makes me go, Okay, I could see this now I'm not, I don't have to picture it in my mind, I can actually watch you take care of it.

 

Roy Barker  26:29

Yeah, in it. You know, sometimes we also too, we have to figure out who not only who our customer is, but who is driving that decision. And so, you know, Mom and Dad pay for the pizza, for sure. But if you've got some videos, you know, the pizza tossin, and you got a couple kids are looking at that saying, hey, I want to go see it. They're going to be on mom and dad, like, Hey, we really need to go, I want to go see this guy do this, sir. And so you know, you know, kind of figuring out who are we really targeting with these messages? Who influences the decision? Not necessarily? Who's paying for it?

 

Wendell  27:11

Right? I had a conversation with a client last week and I was the statement, we were talking about doing some some some outreach as far as, like article writing opportunities. And I said, the question you have to ask yourself is the decision maker who is the decision maker who's the person that makes a decision, and then where they get their information from? Right? Like, that's how we decide where this information needs to be, needs to be fed to a perfect example, there's a place as a fudge place in Kansas City, Missouri.

 

And during certain times of the day, you can watch to make the fudge. Right. And it's a known thing in the in the area. I don't I don't necessarily know that they publicize it on the on their website, but like you said it would be if they don't have it, it's an awesome opportunity for someone to get some video because it's a real big window. And the machines right there and all the cutting and everything happens, right? They didn't, right? It's I mean, it's, it almost looks like you can reach out and touch it.

 

That's how close it is to the window. But like if they could get you know, because it's supposed to be like a family thing. So you know, if they don't have that footage, they're doing themselves a disservice. Again, I don't know that they do it, they don't. But it's a perfect example of being able to show how it's a family environment, it's something that your kids are going to marvel at. There was something else that you mentioned, or if you're a place like, again, from my childhood, there was another pizza shop in the community, we'd like them better only because they had a couple of video games, right, they had a couple arcade games.

 

So again, if you're able to show even if you only got two arcade games, if you put if you point the camera at the right angle, it looks like you may have more, right? So you know, you can you can angle it to where it looks like you know, the kids have something to do, you know, it's not just you know, eat as fast as you can and went back out into the world. So, definitely, definitely making sure that you capture the environment and understand who the people are that are gonna make the decisions.

 

Roy Barker  29:03

And just as we talked to you that I think, you know, dads are probably the least people we need to target because, you know, all we're they're forced to pay for it. It's a little bit about the significant other. There's

 

Wendell  29:14

absolutely, absolutely we're definitely last on the totem pole for the decision. It's right, right, right. We're the navigator like you said, we may be the the financier of the adventure, but we're very rarely really pointing this out. Got a little lag.

 

Roy Barker  29:36

Oh, okay. Yeah. You mentioned earlier about the reviews. Yep. So in you know, one thing I will say his reviews, even a negative review doesn't have to be a negative, we can turn it into a positive. But I'll let you talk about how we handle that.

 

Wendell  29:58

Right. So online reputation It's it is paramount to local SEO, because, again in that in that in that customer experience, it's really the second piece to it right? Like once you find the place, you start to make that decision based on reviews. A negative review is always subjective, right? Some people live and die by reviews, as far as consumers go round, you have a negative review, it gives you an opportunity to address the issue, right?

 

Maybe they caught you on a bad day, maybe they just had a bad experience, maybe the employee that caused the bad experience has since been removed from payroll. So that's something that you may want to mention, right? Well, maybe you aren't into management, there's so many different things that you can do with reviews, if they are negative. But the main part is, is to be sure that you're asking for reviews, right?

 

You don't ever want to start asking for reviews. After the first one star, you want to start asking for reviews, as soon as you start claiming these pages, push people to these to them to write reviews. Again, Yelp is Yelp has their own guidelines. So it's a little tricky for Yelp, but especially Google My Business, a lot of in, again, we talked about old internet days, you used to be able to check into places and they would give you you know, a discount if you checked in.

 

You can still offer those kinds of things, depending on the platform that the business is being checked in, or even reviewed. But even if you know if you're willing, and you're willing to give a free fountain drink again to stick to the pizza shop, if you want to get free fountains, you get there, right, an honest review. You don't ask for the five star, ask for an honest review. You know, if you give me an honest review, get a free fountain drink next time you come in. Yeah, it'll help incentivize people to get it done. And it helps you bring new customers in because they see that people actually enjoy it here.

 

Roy Barker  31:38

Yeah, yeah, I think it could go either way, the way that we handle that negative review, because I've seen some local people like, Yeah, no, you know, you're an idiot for even tough. Like, Oh, my gosh, like no matter marginal situation, the minutes just, they just made it explode where it's terrible. But the other thing is, as a business owner, if somebody that has employees, I need and want that feedback, because I can't be everywhere at every minute.

 

So if something's going bad, or it's not right, for the customer, I like to know. And so I think we can present it as you know, be a positive, it, just say, hey, look, thanks for bringing that to my attention. You know, we've made some changes in our system, and we've done this or we've done that, but definitely address it. The other thing you can't do, I don't think he's you can't ignore it. And just pretend it doesn't know, I think you have

 

Wendell  32:33

1. Absolutely. The other thing, too, that you mentioned, that I do think is important, as people traverse the internet, right? Because just because I'm the person sharing the information doesn't mean everyone's going to call my phone right or email me be very leery of the places that are offering you the ability to filter those reviews. So there's a lot of companies that will do review gathering for you. So they'll set up an email system, an email sequence, and if you if a user clicks four or five stars, you can usually set the parameters is a term for it, but I can't think of it. But you can set the parameter.

 

So if someone does four or five stars, it'll it'll publish, if they do three or less, it, it'll reroute it back to you so that you can help remedy that is something that every platform looks down upon. And if you're if it's ever found out that people are doing any kind of filtering of the because it's a specific term for it, and forgive me for not remembering it, but just be really thoughtful with that any company that offers that I would run in the other direction, because there are lots that are solely based on reputation management, but their intention should be genuine reputation. Management, right, like not skewing the narrative so that you're only a five or a four star location, right?

 

Like if you got some three stars, people should know, right? Because you want your customer to be informed. But like you said, it gives you an opportunity to address the fact that your imperfections are honest, and you're willing to move forward through them.

 

Roy Barker  33:59

So how can you manage that? I don't know a lot about the the yelps and the the stars and all that. But okay, let's just say I'm your pizza competitor, you know, a couple blocks away. So I'm gonna slip by there have a pizza pizza, good, bad or indifferent. I'm going home and like, Oh my god, the service was terrible. It wasn't even like pizza that was more like a vegetable plate. And you know, just really, right. So how, how would it legitimate business owner kind of defend themselves against things like that.

 

Wendell  34:32

Unfortunately, in the last like two years, you see a lot more of that in Google My Business, especially because it's becoming a more prominent tool. The only thing that you can like the first part again, is start getting reviews before anyone else writes. Right? Start asking for reviews before you get the first bad one. So that hopefully it can balance things out. And you can report reviews that you believe are spam or or any kind of, you know, malicious intent.

 

So you can report those. Usually, it takes some time. But if, if there's some validity to it, definitely answer. If there is no validity to it, you should answer a very open ended question to give the person an opportunity to explain why the pizza was, like you said, a veggie plate, you know? So like, you know, okay, well, what did you order? Right? You know, you know, try to try to get them to make it a conversation. And in the absolute worst case scenario, let's just say nothing comes of it, maybe you respond again, and you say.

 

Hey, we're willing to offer some sort of remedy to this solution, or, you know, shoot us an email so that when the next person sees this review, they see that you do care, even even though even if you know that it's a it's a, it's a funny review, you release, you know, taking the effort, because, unfortunately, you know, john smith is not going to know that the pizza shop around the corner wrote a bad review, right, like, you know, so you definitely have to, you still have to address it, you can report it. And, again, before everything else, as soon as you claim that, that location, start asking people to write some some reviews for you.

 

Roy Barker  36:13

Yeah, not just, you know, from my consumer perspective, and, you know, I've been around for quite a while. So I realize every day is not going to be perfection in business. I mean, it's just, sometimes it's stuff they do, sometimes it's beyond their control. So if when I see a negative review. I don't necessarily run the other way. But like you said, it's like, if the person is willing to try to make it right, like.

 

Hey, we're sorry, that happened, come back in, we'd be glad to replace it, then I feel very comfortable that, you know, if I go to this place, have a bad experience, they're gonna try their best to make it right. And I think that gets back to the whole, you know, don't don't take a match and light a bonfire with it by you know, attacking the customer. And never, never has a good outcome.

 

Wendell  37:01

Never, never, no, no, no, right. If you're, if you're responding to a bad review is when you were a bad customer. Yeah, I think you're trending down anyway. So I don't know. Yeah, there isn't much else that can be done.

 

Roy Barker  37:17

So we've talked a lot about website. Oh, I know what I wanted to touch on for just a minute content. So when we talk about rotten content, the other thing that's I think, I'll let you speak to is being able to cut that content up and use it multiple times. You know, if you read a, I don't know, 500 1200, I guess that's we'll start there. I don't think Google index is under 500. So I'll let you kind of give a little bit of the parameters on that. And then being able to take bits and pieces out of that and get a lot of mileage out of this one blog that we may have written.

 

Wendell  37:53

So the first part to it is, believe it or not, Google has no preference. It's at this point in the age of Google, it has way more to do with with the, with the context of the content, right. So in theory, you really can't write anything under 300 or so words, that is, you know, that would make much of any sense, right. But anything under five is, it's usually the best, it's the most palatable, right? Like any anything, five or better, excuse me, is the most palatable, right, like 500 words really using a lot, you can usually, you know, touch on enough points to make it make sense to the user.

 

Because that's really what it's about at this point in Google's in Google's understanding of content, it's all about the relevance to what someone's looking for. So now, when you talk about that blog post, right, or some piece of content that's on the site, maybe it's just an FAQ, you can, again, in depending on if it's an in house thing, or if you if you've hired an agency, you can create an infographic based on the points that you talked about, from that blog post, you can take a snippet from it, and put it on on your social platforms.

 

You can even break it up. Or I should say, you could take smaller snippets and turn it into into several posts on social media. So again, just to speak to the pizza shop, right? Let's say the pizza shop, right? You know, the five most ordered pizzas, pizza toppings, you know, at our at our location, right? Just throwing that out there. So maybe you do five different posts, right? Maybe you do that over the course of the week.

 

Every other day you post about, you know, the, which is a new one for me. I most recently discovered this pepper, pepperoni and pineapple. That's the thing. I didn't know that was the thing. Yeah, it is. It's good though. I didn't think it would be good. No, it's actually good. It's actually good. It's good. I like the salty, sweet kind of thing all but again, that in itself is a post. Right? So then you say when you say, Well, yeah, people have started ordering pineapple and pepperoni. What is your favorite? Right? Do you make it something that gives people the opportunity to talk about how much they wouldn't do pineapple on pizza? Right?

 

So, you know, but that would be the ideal situation where you create when you're thinking about the content that you're going to write, especially when it's a blog content. You think about it? How can we turn this into smaller pieces? Right, so one part again, infographic, right, depending on the business type? Maybe you make it and they call it a listicle. Right. So maybe the infographic is just, you know, 1234? or five, right? With the question at the bottom, what is your favorite topic? Right? And, you know, just kind of breaking it down that way would be would be a perfect situation when it came to content.

 

Roy Barker  40:52

Yeah, because we want to drive engagement, we want to put things out there that make people want to comment, comment, start a conversation, that's the optimal, but talking about Google for a minute, you know, part of their job or part of their mission is they want to make the experience better for their, their search people. And so that's why all these things are so important. Because if you have you have some kind of funky on your website, they're gonna be little leery about sending people to you, because they are worried about they want to give their search people the very best experience that they can get.

 

Wendell  41:32

Right? So we're gonna, my I was like, oh, funky, it's a perfect description. So the 14 pieces to your website, right? If it's really slow, if you don't have an SSL certificate, which is just that little, that little padlock in the in the URL, right? Once upon a time, an SSL certificate only mattered if you were selling things. But today, an SSL certificate means this site is less likely to be hacked, it means that whatever information you input is less likely to be to be taken. Right?

 

It means that it is secure. So little things like like the speed, the SSL certificate, also being sure that your images and just the text as a whole is responsive. Right? So if your Believe it or not, there are some clients I had that actually most of the traffic still comes from desktop. Right? So the Yeah, so their mobile optimization isn't as important as, say, some of my other clients where it's like, 80% Mobile, so I got to be sure that the imagery works, right, that the the words aren't, you know, giant fonts, you know, on your screen, right?

 

And even when you talk about on a, because technically, it's desktop, and then you have like tablet, and then you have phone, right? Because usually just a mobile device, but that's so subjective now. Yeah. So I'm being sure that your site is responsive, that all falls into that funky space. The begin the understanding with Google is, in what context? Are you helping our users? Right? So again, if someone's looking for pizza, pizza shop near me, right, and everything on your site talks about? Sausage, pepperoni, chicken, olives, you talk about fountain drink, you talk about the ice cream that you serve, but you only say pizza one time in all 10 pages on your site, right?

 

The likelihood that people that Google's going to send people your way is slim, because you sound like a distributor of things, not necessarily a pizza shop, right? So you want to be sure that you're describing the the sauces that pepperoni as things that are available in your pizzeria, right, like, you know, so just being sure that as you're creating content, you're thoughtful about who's going to read it the same thing, like you said about the video content or the imagery, who is the person that we want to understand what we're submitting for the world to view. Right?

 

Roy Barker  44:01

Let's talk about YouTube for just a minute. Because I think it's forgotten of by a lot of people and myself, you know, back in the olden days, when I first started this podcast, we did Skype. And then it became so difficult to connect is like, you know, we spent 30 minutes connecting is like, okay, we're both worn out, we can't even do this.

 

So, you know, kind of laid off of it. And then you know, somebody you know, once zoom became prevalent, started back doing it again. But, you know, depend on who you listen to some people say good. YouTube could even be a bigger search engine than Google itself. But regardless, you know, YouTube is probably a number two. By far, I don't think there's anybody that would even be close. But the.

 

The good thing about it is the how tos and so sticking with our pizza analogy, you know, I was just thinking while we were talking is like, so the perfect thing and the perfect video for them is how do you build a perfect pizza and then actually do Video watching them, you know, kind of go through this process, you know, we do the dough, we do this, right? I mean, how interesting would that be? Because maybe I want to make one at home. But then maybe I'm like, wow, that just made me hungry. I'm gonna call these guys.

 

Wendell  45:14

So that that last part is the most important piece right there is, for some businesses, the how tos are, are repellent to their customer, right? So, you know, you want to make sure that the how tos that you do offer, like you said, How do you make the perfect pizza, I do think that that is a great thought, right? Because again, if you've ever made pizza at home, once they get to like the third or fourth step, you may just, you may tap out and go, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get ready, but he's making or she's like, I'm gonna just go get that.

 

But definitely being sure that on YouTube, because there is a certain level of optimization on YouTube as well. So it does give you the opportunity to, again, share more content, not only video, but also being able to have some actual keywords within your description of these videos, right. So that's important as well. And then again, also thinking about what, what is the goal of the content, right, because you also don't want to be we used to call it in, in sales, you don't want to throw up on the customer, that's especially door to door, so you don't want to throw up on the customer, you know, I got everything, I just gotta I gotta, you got to slow down, right?

 

So you got to be thoughtful with who is the person that you want to digest this video. Again, if you're catering to the kids, maybe you maybe you do something geared around the arcade that you had there. Or, again, if you have any other things that make you a little different than than maybe some of the other pizza shops. The other part to it is, is when you're doing the description, you make sure that you're mentioning where you're located, because YouTube, unlike Google, that search really isn't going to be a local search is going to be a much broader spectrum.

 

So again, going back into YouTube may not be the ideal space for every business only because you're not going to be able to tell her the way that people are searching and you know, just depending on what industry you're actually servicing.

 

Roy Barker  47:10

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, going back to the how tos, I think you you know, you made it a point that we have to be careful, we don't give things away that are definitely part of that. But sometimes I think too, when we have complex procedures, it's like, you know, the consumer was like, well, this would be easy for me to do. And then they watch this video and they're like, and there's no way no way. The other thing that you know what I've used and of course I'm trying to reach a national. You know, my reach is National so that does nothing to do but the other thing they have that's very reasonable is you can slice these videos like 30 seconds or less and you do the in line.

 

So like if you've ever gone to watch your favorite video, whatever you know, is a football clip or baseball they have that little thing that you have to watch before so but you can do those they're very inexpensive and then you know maybe trigger somebody be like well Yeah, that would be good a good fit for me So anyway, there's just a certain amount of moving components to this YouTube is definitely I you said he said the olden days rally up once upon a time was it was it was not now people called the university to Bray like you can find pretty much anything on YouTube now. But once upon a time, it wasn't but you definitely if you can

 

Wendell  48:32

utilize it, right but definitely have a thought you know, have a have a strategy in mind. Again, going back to if you're doing it internally, having that conversation if you're going to hire an agency like myself, then you know, that's definitely a conversation that needs to be had before we start even considering video content. I have a friend who's a barber, and he does videos, but again, it's one of those things where like I don't know you know, like if you've ever tried to cut your own here it's it's it's not as simple as the as the barber makes it look right. So you got to cut mine when I was a kid and that was the last home home home haircut I ever got.

 

Roy Barker  49:15

look a little bit weird for the eye.

 

Wendell  49:17

I've got a couple of those stories too. My mom cut my hair and so I was like 10 minutes. It wasn't that bad. But I had a couple of had a couple of rough times. I had a couple of rough times couple of rough times couple of rough cuts.

 

Roy Barker  49:28

Yeah, something to think about too, I think when you said earlier about not throwing up on the customer and we definitely don't want to do that. But we have to take a long term approach to this whole marketing thing and we have to realize that I don't really have to get everything I need out to wrap this very instant. You know, we could take that in smaller bites and people tend to likes I do reading I like smaller pieces. I like smaller videos I like just to get bite sized pieces and then I can decide you.

 

Do I need to dig further to get more information or not. But I think the you know, the keep in mind is that don't feel like you have to cram everything into the one post or the one video, it's actually better to take it in snippets and do 10 of them. I mean, it just gives you a lot more mileage for that content.

 

Wendell  50:15

Certainly, I agree with that, I have to say, I, again, just to speak to this to my, my, some of my, my ideologies come from my sales space, right. So I've always been a cell the way I want to be so kind of guy. So to go back to the content piece where you talk about, you know, having a certain word count. For me, personally, I don't like to do over 1000 words, because over 1000 words, for me, I get lost, like, I'm like, if I if I, if I scroll, and this is 2020 500 words, I'm never gonna read this.

 

And if I do, I'm going to skim over it as best I can. I'm never going to actually, you know, digest its content. So it's definitely something to consider. And that again, or I shouldn't say, again, that would go into understanding your user. Right? So you know, if, if, if it's something that you can break up into a series or parts, whether it be video, or, or blog posts, or whatever it is, you hit it right on the head, you definitely want to be thoughtful with where the where the endpoint is. Right, like, Okay, I'm done explaining this. I'll let you come back for more later. Yeah, yeah. And

 

Roy Barker  51:24

the device, it gets back to that if I'm reading 1000 words on a computer, I may be a little more likely, if I'm trying to read it on my phone. Never go away. You know, once it gets past this first screen, I'm like, Okay, I'm pretty much done with that. Right. And that may be my short attention span. But I think it's, you know, it seems to be more prevalent that these bite sized pieces of text video tend to work better, you know, in certain situations. So don't be, I guess, talking to an expert like you, you could give them guidance. But don't be scared to do that. Because you can extend this message out, you

 

Wendell  52:02

know, you hit around in the head, like you said, you also understanding how someone's digesting the content. For me personally, it doesn't matter what screen I'm on, if it's over 1000 words, it's a struggle.

 

Roy Barker  52:11

It's a

 

Wendell  52:13

struggle. I have so many articles and stuff, blog posts that I read that, like the notion of reading, you know, 10,000 words a day is like, I'm not doing that. Yeah, but actually, it's not true. If I read 10,000 words a day, 1000 words or 500 words at a time, I wouldn't realize it, but it was 2500, you know, word posts, am I I'm not, I'm not, I'm not any other thing to, to speak to being able to make it digestible. Again, those infographics and then also creating things like, like downloadables, right.

 

So in some cases, you would call it a lead magnet, the pizzeria is really a great example of that. The only thing that you could possibly do is like the is a menu, but no one ever asked you to give any information to get the menu because that would be counterintuitive to your sales process. But being able to give something as downloadable that they can then digest on their own time, right? Like if it's a, if it's a, you know, a top 10 for a plumber, right to take things and make sure that your garbage disposal is functioning properly.

 

If you don't write the 2500 words, maybe you turn it into the same 2500 words, just make it a downloadable, so then I can look at it on my time, and I'm not stuck on your website. And it also, like you said, gets to the point where, you know, at some point, you may go, I'm not I'm not gonna take this thing apart and clean it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna pay somebody else to do this part.

 

Roy Barker  53:33

Easily on the other way. I've already got it apart, and I'm gonna have to hire somebody put it all back together. Right? Right, exactly. The other good thing about the downloadables too, is that now this person, if they printed out like some of us older people, you know, they printed out now they've got your name or your logo, your information in their house somewhere that they're going to have to see it more than once. So anytime you can put that in from put some kind of information with your name and contact information on it to person you're always much further ahead.

 

Wendell  54:06

Yep. And you and because they they had they should have had to submit their phone I mean, their their email and their name, they should be going into an email list that then should give the opportunity to follow up on the garbage disposal experience. And as you know, is it is it is it in shambles on the floor yet or What time should I come by? You know,

 

Roy Barker  54:28

that's Yeah. Wendell, I appreciate it. appreciate you stopping by Is there anything else? You know, we talked about websites content, YouTube, reputation management. Anything else that we need to cover?

 

Wendell  54:46

I don't think so. I made my notes here cuz I can I am a person who verbally is more of a 2500 word kind of guy. So I made sure to make keep my notes. I mean, we did fantastic man. I mean, we covered some of the more important parts, you know, there's a lot of underlining pieces again, like the citations and stuff like that. But, you know, that's the kind of stuff you really got to reach out, you know, to me, we can we can have a deeper conversation, you know, if a person is

 

Roy Barker  55:12

the one. The other part you touched on a little bit that the the power of that email list is it's Don't be I say, don't be hesitant or scared to ask for those emails, if you're giving somebody something of quality because it helps you to reach out to them. And, you know, it's nice for the you know, maybe we're having a sale or maybe a special event. And so you have these people that you can drip on, because maybe not so much in pizza.

 

But other things, right. Let's talk about, well, the garbage disposal, okay, like, right now mine is working great. So I don't really, I'm not really listening to your message, I don't care. But if it's dripping on me, where three days from now, now I got some garbage disposal issues. It's like, Hey, I remember window, you know, he's been sending me stuff, or I've seen his ads that you're top of mind. So I tend to go with you. Because you know, what I see, like in high dollar items is like, I called you up and said, Hey, window, do you need my service? Or my product? You know, No, I don't. Okay, so I forget you. And then we're moving on to the new guy.

 

But we don't think that, you know, maybe three months, six months that you are actually going to need that or you're going to want it or you got the money available, whatever the the roadblock may have been at the time. And so that's the importance of the emails and the dripping. But again, we have to structure where we are educating not just sales, because this kills me. It's like, hey, when did we talk last week? Are you ready yet? Right? Like, okay, that's not want to, you know, push out information about whatever your product or services educate people that stands in front of them?

 

Wendell  56:55

Yeah, no, absolutely. So again, to go back to the garbage disposal, or just plumbing in general, because that would be a plumber. So even if you see the person that downloads the garbage disposal, depending on how that piece of content is put together, and where they grabbed it from on the site, you should have a segment in a way where and again, this is not quite local SEO, but you know, it's all marketing science.

 

But you should have it in a way where, again, you understand that this is a residential customer, right? So maybe it's a question of having content geared towards a residential, client or residential, you know, consumer, if you're the plumber. So maybe you ask the questions about the way that their drains are working as a hole in the house, do they have a clogged drain in the bathroom? Right? Like, just to give the example, there was a clogged drain in the house. I am not a plumber, right? I don't I'm my claim to fame is it's not that I can't do I don't want to write it's, that's usually my my thing is that I can't, I just don't want to.

 

So to put the short to that is, after having to take some stuff apart, and using an auger and all this other stuff. It probably was an hour's worth of fix, right? So we were able to do it in house. But if it would have exceeded an hour, the next time something happened with that drain, we would just pay somebody because I'm not gonna spend five hours doing it wrong, right? When I could pay someone else to do it for two hours or an hour. And it'd be just be done with it. But to go back to it, maybe I downloaded something about unclogging a bathroom drain.

 

And now you're sending me information about you know, different things to keep drains from being clogged. How to get hair out, when what to use what not to use, like you said, just just nurturing the lead is. Right. You want to nurture nurturing can be sales, but it should never be. Are you ready yet? It's not good. That's never No, no. Did you do have your car today? No, you didn't bring your cash. Okay, I'm gonna go into you have your cash.

 

Roy Barker  59:00

Well, Wendell, thanks so much. So, a couple questions before we get out of here. First off is do you have a tool or a habit? Something that you do every day that you feel adds a lot of value to your life professional or personal? That's a good question.

 

Wendell  59:16

So I have to have to so it's not every day, but three days a week I work out. And that in it's not the workout part. It's the commitment, right? And I've actually transitioned that in other parts of my life because no matter what, I workout three days a week. So having the goal of three days a week and not necessarily looking at what the physical aesthetic is or how much weight I'm gonna lose whatever it is.

 

My goal is three days a week, right? So I work out three days a week, that is the thing that has actually changed the way that my day goes, because I realized 16 weeks into working out three days a week that like if I put this level of focus into other spaces, How many things can I get done? right? Exactly, you know, it's just three days a week, and I work off one hour, you know, it's not, it's not groundbreaking, I'm not spending three hours in the gym.

 

It's just an hour, three days a week, but I do it. Like, I mean, you would have no understanding of this commitment. So that would be the one thing is, is finding something to hone in on. And this is sort of looking at the goal, but just looking at the habit. And the other thing that I've that I've attrition to again, over the last, within the last 12 months or so, is finding some sort of project management software.

 

For me personally, that has completely revolutionized the game for me, is using a project management software that has due dates, so that you can keep track of the things even if it's personal stuff, like I put everything on there, I have a notification for me to do 30 minutes of language learning. Right. So. Yeah. Nice. learning Spanish.

 

Roy Barker  1:01:02

Well, that's good. Yeah, I think that commitment. And, you know, sometimes we tend to look at the, the larger goal or where we want to be in a thriving time, it can be overwhelming and daunting, where if we just like, you know, it was we had this conversation earlier today with somebody that I used to have a, you know, pretty nice fitness watch.

 

But I didn't like I didn't use all the bells and whistles on it, I just need something to count some steps. So I went back to the Fitbit, and they've got a new thing that it's like every hour, 250 steps. And so you know, you know how it is sitting at a desk all day. I mean, and working from home, I could, I could really do 500 steps a day, if I'm not careful, you know.

 

So this thing here, it reminds me and the great thing is, is at the end of the day, you know, when maybe I get a chance to go for a walk, I've already got like 2500 steps, and just by taking those little incremental steps. So I think that's good, right? Focus on what you could do today. And then after 16 weeks, like you said, all of a sudden,

 

Wendell  1:02:07

turn around, looked up. And I was like, oh, man, it's been 16 weeks I've been doing this, I can't believe it. Because I've done it off. And I've worked out off and on for years. But the only thing I focus on is not even this week, like I just make sure my first day happens. And then there's been a couple of times where I couldn't do it three consecutive days in a row. But I always make sure I get my three days.

 

Roy Barker  1:02:27

Yeah, it's the old adage, you know how to eat an elephant one bite at a time. So. Alright, window. Well, thanks so much for giving up your time. It's been some great information. So local SEO, marketing, I guess of all kinds that you can help help them with tell people how, who do you like to work with? What can you do for them? And then of course, how can they reach out and get a hold of me? Sure.

 

Wendell  1:02:51

So the clients that I enjoyed the most are those that have a local service area, right? So we use the pizza shop, you know, the plumber, someone who's looking for local customers, what we do is ROI focused, right. So we make sure that there's a return on investment, if we don't believe that we can, you know, make more than what we're charging you we really won't do the project. The other parts of that is our focus is organic, right?

 

So we don't run out, we don't run ads, we don't do any of that kind of stuff a lot. Everything that we do is based on content and making sure that we're we're bringing your brand voice You know, we're putting a loudspeaker on that. The best way to reach me is on the website. Jordan Jordanmarketingconsultants.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn at Wendell Jordan Jr. It's it's this funny looking face. So wherever wherever you find it. It's me.

 

Roy Barker  1:03:50

All right. All right, Wendell. Well, have a great rest of your day. We appreciate it. That will do it for another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. course you can find us at www dot the business of business podcast calm we're on all the major podcast platforms. iTunes, Stitcher, Google, Spotify, we're on all the major social media networks probably hang out on Instagram a little more than the other. So check us out over there if you have any. If you have any issues in your business that you'd like for us to address, please send us in. Send me an email. We'd be glad to try to get a guest on I can help you so until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.jordanmarketingconsultants.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

Is Offering Remote Work Critical To Recruiting Better Talent? with Laura Miller

Some companies are ordering worker back to the office, while others are making the most of those that want to stay working remotely. There has been a lot of rumbling about a mass exodus from traditional on-site employers. Some benefits, you don't limit your talent pool to those in your backyard, reduced overhead in office space, and making loyal employees.

About Laura

Laura Miller is the Founder and CEO of TempDev, a company of healthcare information technology consultants nationwide who specialize in NextGen EPM and EHR. She combines a technical background and business savvy to create holistic and sustainable solutions positive clinical, financial, and operational impacts.

Links:

1. Homepage: https://www.tempdev.com
2. Twitter - https://twitter.com/TheTempDev
3. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/thetempdev
4. Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thetempdev  
5. LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/874106/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxu77uOzURp2RH8UoCWWv1Q

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

Full Transcript Below

Is Offering Remote Work Critical To Recruiting Better Talent? with Laura Miller

Thu, 6/24 12:07PM • 38:07

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, office, employees, home, pandemic, work, talent, company, remote, feel, trust, doctor, employers, day, long, struggling, kids, recruit, clients, talk

SPEAKERS

Laura, Roy Barker

Roy Barker  00:07

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. I'm your host, Roy. We are the podcast that brings you episodes on a wide variety of topics with a diverse set of guest speakers, and today is no different. We have with us, Laura Miller.

 

She is the founder and CEO of TempDev, a company of more than 30, healthcare technology consultants nationwide who are experts in next gen EPM, and EHR and development. With personal strengths and development, she is able to combine her strong technical background and business acumen to create holistic and sustainable solutions that go beyond meeting clinical needs and creating positive financial and operational impacts. So without any further delay, Laura, thanks so much for being with us today.

 

Laura  00:59

Thank you for having me,

 

Roy Barker  01:00

You bet. And we're gonna deviate, I'll let you talk a little bit about the business. But we're gonna deviate and talk a little bit about working from home and coming out from the pandemic. But before we do that, tell us kind of, you know, how you got here? How did you get into this space, this technology space in the healthcare industry?

 

Laura  01:19

Sure. So I started as a computer engineer, as I got out of college, and I was looking for a technology job that actually had more females in it, because in college, I was the only female in my graduating class in my major. Wow. And the nice thing that I found about healthcare, it was that there were more women in it, then I would say like the general population of it jobs, you know, we lived in Silicon Valley. So you had your plethora of jobs available to you, as you know, an outgoing college senior, but I really liked that healthcare space.

 

So I started, I worked for a group that had purchased next gen software, which is that software that physicians use when you go for a doctor's visit. So you know, how they chart on a computer nowadays, or hopefully, they are, let's say, hopefully, um, it's that kind of software, okay. And we, this was kind of at the forefront of that of beginning to really roll those, that software out. And as I worked more and more in that industry, I started to be recruited quite a bit. And as soon as that happened, I ended up creating a consulting firm from that. Okay. Okay, and building an out from from that experience

 

Roy Barker  02:57

So now, do you consult with individuals about specific other products? Or do you consult with them about building more building things that are more specific to their needs?

 

Laura  03:09

Yeah, so we primarily consult with I would say, larger healthcare organizations, but more in the ambulatory space, which is the not hospital space, I guess you could say. That's normally how I describe it because it's the doctors you're used to seeing every day those those doctors, but I think when people hear healthcare, they think hospital, no, the the doctors etc. And we consult on solutions for them, you know, it might be programs they want to, they want to take part in it might be payment programs that they they want to go after or grant funding. They want to do reporting, it's all different. But yes, tailor making solutions that might include development, training, project management, consulting, advice, so we can we can have the whole breadth of that world in our firm now.

 

Roy Barker  04:11

Right. Okay. Yeah, that's interesting. And so the other part of this is, you know, talking about working from home, I think that we've got some challenges that people have, there's some people you know, I think there's about three groups, there's some people very comfortable working from home and don't want to go back and then there's some people that hate working from home and want to go back and then there's those in the middle that and I like to work from home and you know, go in and participate with things as the office do and, you know, with this employment situation, it's just been crazy.

 

For the last month or two about it's not you know, at first I think it was hospitality, the fast food restaurants, they were struggling for help. But now, you know, I'm here that this is just expanding to other industry. So I think this is gonna be a challenge of not only managing that going forward, but you know, taking the chance on maybe losing some people, if you forced them to come back into the office, what are your thoughts on that?

 

Laura  05:13

Yeah, I think I think we what we have seen, because as consultants, we have insight into a lot more companies than I think they average room might. And what we have seen is that that first group, I just want to work from home, please lead me, it's gotten a lot larger than it used to be, you know, we, we all figured it out, we all had to, we've been living that life for over a year. And they don't want to go back. And I think, as the pandemic has started to wane, and things are starting to get back to normal, we have definitely seen the job market improve in all aspects, you know, and we are seeing a lot of attrition. We're seeing a lot of movement between companies, we're seeing a lot of hiring and open racks between groups.

 

So I think that, you know, it's just going to get harder as employers to retain talent. And what can you do to improve your because because that is always my number one concern, it is always probably my number one issue is keeping good talent. Right? And because that is my number one asset, in my opinion, is, especially as a consulting firm, right? My consultants are my largest asset. Right? And so keeping them is, is critical. And I think companies really need to see that in general with their employees. Right?

 

Roy Barker  06:44

Yeah. And I think it can be limiting. And I, you know, for my background, I've worked from home for, you know, the most of the last 20 something years, it's just been natural, and I'm very used to it. And in your company, you're structured where you have people scattered out all across the US. And I think that, you know, the other part of this is not only you know what workers need to retain them.

 

But I think it's that talent issue, too. It's like, well, how many people within a six block radius of where you live in office, you know, are going to be good fit, you got to fit. And that's a little extreme, but we could expand that scope. But I just the point is that, you know, we kind of limit ourselves as a company with talent that we may be able to acquire.

 

Laura  07:27

Absolutely. And I think that's one of the keys that we've had to a successful business is being able to recruit across the US, and being able to say, I don't care where you live in the US. You can work for us. Right, right.

 

Roy Barker  07:43

Yeah. And in your business, you know, I'm sure that there's some traveling to be on site. But you know, a lot of things can be handled through zoom. And, you know, sometimes it's a lot more productive, because you get on get your meeting over with and you're off and on to the next thing instead of, you know, back in the old days, when you went somewhere in math, and we have to have coffee, doughnuts, maybe lunch.

 

Laura  08:06

Great. Everybody comes and talks to you, everybody comes to your cube. Yeah, I find myself far more productive at home than I am ever when I go into an office and part of that is naturally my position. But yeah, you're not. It's somewhat removes that social aspect, which, hey, some of its good, and some of its bad. So I think having that opportunity to go into an office occasionally, and having those team meetings or whatever it might be. I think that's, that's still worth while and still very valuable. But it doesn't need to be every day. I don't even think it needs to be every week, quite frankly. Yeah. And I kind of jokingly say back, you know, 90s, long time ago when I did work in an office downtown.

 

You know, I joked at first it was, you know, I just had the door open, and then got to a point where I had the door closed and people just got where they'd knock can come in. And jokingly say, then I had to, like, you know, wedge a chair up underneath the door handle where people couldn't come in, because it seemed like, you know, when you have 30 4050 100 people in an office, it seemed like it was a constant stream of, you know, from eight to five, a constant stream of people and then you know, from six o'clock till midnight, that's when I could actually get some work done. Yeah. And I feel like it also cuts down a little bit on the office politicking. Yes.

 

You know, there's not so much gossip, there's not so much. Um, you know, it just it we haven't seen it at our company. And I have to think that a lot of it. I think we have really good people but I think a lot of it has to do with you know, everybody's not everybody's face and personal business all the time. You have a little bit of separation and you have a little bit of privacy, which I think is is kind of really key to keeping The gossip and drama right out of it. Barely having drama. Yeah, yeah. Not being robbed on top of each other constantly to that, you know, that does help in that.

 

So what are some factors that you, in your opinion or what you've seen? Why do you feel the urgency or the need to try to bring people back to the office? Is it distrust? Is it an old school of thought that? Well, they've always worked here? They just need to be here. What do you think on on that? I think some of it is trust. You know, I think some of it is absolutely trust. I do think there is there are some old school people, you know, I'll hear Oh, well, the CEO once people back in, okay, but nobody else does. So let's go talk to the CEO, or let's go talk to the CEO. Um, I think some people want to escape from their families or work commitments.

 

I heard that, you know, they like to go hide, because they don't want their teenage child maybe coming and bothering them, which have how space for those people, certainly, that's it make that available, but for the majority, and don't make it like a second class citizen thing for people who are at the office and aren't at the office, because I do worry about those kinds of situations getting set up too. But but that's kind of where I've seen people wanting to go back. Or they feel like, we've wasted all this money on rent, equipment, everything else for it to just go away, you know, for not being used, it feels like such a waste. Right? Right. Yeah, I

 

Roy Barker  11:46

thought that would be a good opportunity for, you know, for the realization that maybe we do have a little bit too much space, too much stuff. And that, you know, if we're able to, to operate off this, I feel, you know, because if I have an idea, or if I'm working on a problem, and I get a solution at seven or eight o'clock at night, I'm easily able to walk over my computer and take care of something where you know, what, if I'm not at the office, it's it's a little bit more difficult.

 

But I also to, you know, I realize it from my point of view, it's that commute. I mean, good gravy, some people in big cities, they have, you know, hours commute. So we got that time were taken, you know, we're kind of giving back personally. So I don't mind. I think you can give a little bit more because of that, you know, but the costs the buy and the lunches and it just such a benefit to both sides, I

 

Laura  12:38

think. Yeah, I did, too. And I, I have not really heard a lot of valuable arguments as to why you need to be back. I mean, it certainly if you're dealing with customer, isn't it? You know, you're like in the health care space. But even you know, as we talked about, I work in health care, right? I don't know, have you had a telehealth visit yet? With the doctor?

 

Roy Barker  13:02

It's been a while but yes, I have done that before.

 

Laura  13:04

They're amazing. Yeah. Right. And it saves you so much time. So I think even now, we're gonna see like a nice mixture of remote work too,

 

Roy Barker  13:16

right? Well, it saves you two hour, you know, as a cut as a customer saves me, you know, the drive to the place, and usually setting 30 minutes in the waiting room, and then another 30 minutes in the exam. You know, I just feel like I'm getting an hour and a half of my life back and not having to go Plus, it's like the, I think I didn't think about this much before. But now with the pandemic. It's kind of everybody's looking sideways at the people that are sitting around this room with them thinking what have they gotten them? You know, am I going to catch that?

 

Laura  13:46

Yeah, I mean, you're out. You're sending sick people in with sick people. And then you're all getting more sick. Right, right. Yeah,

 

Roy Barker  13:52

exactly. So you know, I think the trust to me is the biggest thing. And, you know, I think like you said, I think we should have more free will if you want to work at home. Great. beyond being the office great. Neither one of you rises above the other because of that, you know, we have to treat everybody equal. But the the trust factor, it's interesting, because it's like, Okay, well, I don't trust you as my worker. Now. I mean, if we really examine that, it's like, well, I should probably hire better people that I do trust.

 

But also, I think we can look back and say that the problem probably isn't you as much as it is me and maybe I need to go through some sensitivity or some training to like, learn to trust and open up and not be scared until something happens. Now. You know, if you fall off the radar for two or three days, then it's like, then we can have a talk like, Hey, what's going on? Maybe it's not awesome for you. Maybe you need to come in where you can have more structure, but as long as you're producing Why do I really care where that happens?

 

Laura  14:57

Yeah, I you know, I used to feel like And I will tell you, I probably the first 10 years of our company, I felt like that. And then I got burned a couple times pretty badly by people that I trusted, and later kind of found out, they were, you know, not really as President, and you do get suspicious as an employer. And as an employer becomes difficult to, you know, manage that, because, like, how are you logging? How are you tracking, so what we ended up doing, and I and it's funny, because we do healthcare consulting, but as all our all our clients switch to remote work, we ended up doing like remote work consulting, just because we knew all about it. So we implemented Time Doctor, which is screenshotting software.

 

And it does blur the screenshots. So I can't like necessarily read exactly what you're writing, but I can see, like, you're on Facebook, and I can see like, how long you're on Facebook, you know, I could see you're on there for 30 minutes, or I could see that you're not active on your computer for the day. Yeah, um, and, you know, it's so it's not like I go, and I look at it every day, because I don't really have that kind of time, nor does my HR department. But if we start getting suspicious, it is very helpful. And as you do you know, when, like, 15 states or something, I can't go and watch so and so and build a case.

 

So I need something to kind of help manage employees. So we did implement that. It it pained me to do it, it deeply pained me, you have no idea. And I, it took a lot for me to get there. But you know, I also, I also feel for my clients, I don't want to ever fraudulently bill my clients for work, that's not happening, right. And I had to really take it at that level for me to like, get to that place. And so it took so much for me to get over there with the trust, because I like to just trust my employees. That's something I deeply feel.

 

But my employees don't care. You know, it's just kind of like, oh, whatever, it's there. And they know that like, unless we're suspicious, we're not really looking. Right, exactly, you know, but it is there if we need it. And it does help us manage people better. Because if we see they're struggling, we can see kind of what they're doing to you know, and you know, and one on ones, we could go okay, but you're like in your email all day, you're not really doing development. And so maybe that's where the issues are, or it looks like you're just struggling here looking at your screen, like maybe, maybe we should spend some more time with you and help you out.

 

So I think we have found a greatly beneficial, but it took a lot for me to jump over. So I do say, if you are having trust, and that's the one area you feel like is making people come back into the office, there are other solutions out there, available that can help you get over that hump without making people come into the office.

 

Roy Barker  18:17

So how, how does that impact your recruiting? When you? You know, I guess first off is how do you recruit if you put you know, like local ads, or, you know, like a local indeed, or D reach out or kind of talk about that process. Because that's the other thing is looking at, if you just maybe advertise recruit in a local area, you're only get local talent where some way you know that you're operating, you're getting it spread out across the states.

 

Laura  18:51

So I would say that, I would beg that these companies like indeed and LinkedIn, allow that you be able to post a US job, because they don't, you cannot just go and post like anywhere in America, I don't care where you are, you can't post them like that, you know, you can't even pay like a premium to post it like that you have to pick a city. So we kind of just go Okay, we're gonna pick these five cities, and we're gonna post racks. Now we do end up getting people from completely outside of those areas. So I know that that's a feat.

 

You know, I know that other people are seeing, you know, they're searching next gen consulting jobs and they're coming up and finding are indeed, we use indeed quite a bit, I find it most helpful because it has a lot of screening options that other sites don't tend to have, but I really wish they would let us recruit from just throughout the whole country. And then when it's not working in those cities, we will just switch to other cities. And that's kind of what we have to do because I feel like As much as we are, I don't think we're bleeding edge. But maybe we are. But like, it feels like corporate America has not caught up with us in this regard at all.

 

Roy Barker  20:11

Yeah, and that's one thing for being, you know, your size and being nimble and being kind of forward thinking about, you know, the talent issue, because you all have a, you know, pretty specific talent that is needed. It's not just, you know, any pool of workers. But let's talk and I know that you're not in HR, he, you know, he may not have your finger directly on the pulse, but I'm sure you have some idea is, so how does it look? When you once you make contact with somebody, is it like, Oh, awesome, that we're remote? Or do they get a little disappointed that Oh, you don't have somewhere for me to show up every day?

 

Laura  20:47

literally never had that impression. You know, I mean, I'm, I'm always the last interview with a candidate I'm, I'm somewhat of a control freak, I think when it comes to our clients or in our employees, but I like to control the brand. So I'm always the last interview, so I always kind of get can gauge the pulse. I have never once had anybody say to me, oh, I really wish we had an office, we could go in there like cool. I love that you're remote. This is great. I can work from home, you send me a laptop, you sent me monitors? Awesome. Like, that's generally how this goes.

 

Roy Barker  21:27

or most of these people, you know, in your estimation, are most of these people that have been working remote? anyway? And this is something that's not new to them? Are these people that have been because he's used to do some I had a co share office with one, you know, kind of like the Oh, I can't think of the name of it. But you know, where they have different we work? Yeah, yeah. Similar to that. And there was a lot of developers in there that, you know, they were working for companies spread out all over. So it may be a little more prevalent in, in your world. But I guess, thinking about those people that you talk to is this like, oh, wow, I've never had this opportunity. There's like a I've been doing this for a long time. Anyway,

 

Laura  22:11

I would say it's like 5050. Okay. You know, I think that there are enough company, you know, especially they've been consultants before, I think more of them have been remote. If they're coming straight from like a practice, most of them have never been remote. So there are some growing pains. There are some coaching, there's some coaching we have to do around like, Hey, here's some advice about how we do remote work, because I think there is a certain learning curve, right? Being remote. And, you know, to me, it's like, you have to have a routine, things like that are just doesn't work out very well for you. And I think that not everybody's made for it, too.

 

Roy Barker  22:53

Yeah, exactly. So have you won some candidates? Have you won them over that? Maybe you were in the competition for the talent with another company? And they're like, Oh, I love this model. Um, you know,

 

Laura  23:06

I'm pretty sure we have I don't know if they've actually told us like, Oh, that was the deciding factor. But I'm pretty sure we

 

Roy Barker  23:14

do have any specific questions are, you know, I don't know if you can even tell I guess it's hard to everybody puts on their best face for an interview. But y'all have any specific questions that you're asking based around the, the home base? Do you have a segregated area to work in? Do you have an internet connection, a dedicated, you know, you have to have a dedicated phone back in the day, it's like, a dedicated line for the fax machine. But you know, those are, those are long gone. But, you know, are there things like that, that john tried to talk to him about prior to hiring?

 

Laura  23:48

So, you know, my dad and I were having this conversation this weekend, because he was like, Well, what do you do Do for for remote, like people and I'm like, well, we do like an internet and cell phone stipend. And we pay people for that. And we just do a flat rate to pay for it. And he's like, Well, what about people who can't get internet to their home? And I'm like, Dad, we've literally never had that person. Because I think for us, the people who like we're recruiting are people that like probably would always have Netflix and want to stream television in their house. I think that's just what we're recruiting tech people. Anything tech people want fast internet.

 

So I don't know if I've really ever had that as as an issue. But we do ask people like, have you ever worked from home? Do you have a quiet place you can work? Um, we did have one time an employee who was really struggling working from home. So we picked up the cost of like a we work type situation, because it just was working out it would work out better for that employee. I think sometimes you just have to figure out what's going to be the best situation for your employee. And go with it.

 

Roy Barker  25:01

Yeah, yeah, you know, I'm lucky, my, I started this, you know, when my kids were middle school, high school, you know, they were older, but I can only imagine, you know, if you have smaller kids, big family, you know, a lot of activity going on, it may be a little bit distracting to be at home. But you know, I just feel so much more productive and kind of going back to your, your internet. You know, we had a little pre pre show discussion about that I've been having some internet issues. But you know, I live in the 12 largest city in the US.

 

And we we don't have the infrastructure in our particular plays. I mean, we have no cable cable TV is 4937 feet away from me. And, you know, we had an old copper cable, so we survived off of hotspots for many years. And, you know, before we got this new, we got a new fiber buried in over the last month. But prior to that, you know, we had four hot spots that we were, you know, we'd burn through data in about a week it, it's difficult. You know, like, I actually had one guy that I had to put off on taping and, you know, after a couple weeks, he's like, why do you live in a third world country?

 

Or do you live in the States? Like, no, I live here, it's just, you know, it's a very unique situation. But yeah, thank you, you know, you're right, that most techie people that they you know, they probably do some coding and stuff on the side that, you know, they probably always have some pretty decent internet.

 

Laura  26:29

But it is a sad state when, you know, a lot of the good majority of Americans don't have access to good broadband, right. And I think as a city folk, forget that. I totally do, I will admit it, but that is something I completely forgot about,

 

Roy Barker  26:51

well, you know, what's been kind of cool here is the pandemic enlightened, a lot of even some of the urban districts that they didn't have, you know, some of their students families couldn't afford it. So some of them are starting to build out their own Wi Fi networks. And I just wonder, you know, I wonder how long that's going to be before, that's just the something that's an added value for the city is just already have that built out on it, we may be a long way off, especially out, you know, with me on the outskirts of town, but I can only imagine, you know, in the in the city.

 

It wouldn't take that much really. Right. And especially with 5g coming out to Exactly, exactly. Well, um, so any other aspects of the work from home, you know, either on the because, you know, I see you work from home, so you're, your partner partake in that. So any other things that you want to talk about, either from the work from home person or from the employers perspective?

 

Laura  27:52

You know, one thing I will say is that what we've seen in the pandemic, right, is women leaving the workforce, right, in mass numbers, right. And I think, from my own personal experience, because I have had both my children as a work from home employee, right, also the employer, but also as an employee. And I try to think of how I could have done it, going to an office every day. And I don't know if I could up in a two working parent home.

 

You know, I was home, I got to see my kids. And I did have a day I did have help, which I was incredibly fortunate for. But even now, I don't actually have one anymore. Because once my kids could go to school, I just didn't really feel like I needed that. But, you know, when my kids are sick, I can just run to their school and get them and bring them home and they can hang out at home and my employees are none the wiser, that I'm like managing this to my clients are none the wiser. Maybe I'm taking a call from the car on going and getting them but like, you know, nobody really notices. And I wonder if employers had been more flexible. If people had been more forgiving about childcare.

 

I wonder how many women would have left the workforce? Right or had to? You know, I think you and I had talked a while ago about just working at different hours. Right? If women had been able to kind of work a little bit later and maybe helped their kids during school hours, because I would say that was the hardest part of my life was when my kids were out of school. They were home. My husband and I were still working. I was trying to make sure that my company was going to survive. And we were the lucky ones right?

 

We were the employed ones. And that was so difficult. Call because we had nobody here to help us. We were We were struggling so much. But if people had been flexible, about like, Oh, you can just work at night, as long as you're productive, as long as you're getting the work done, or Hey, get half the work done you used to because we're in the middle of a pandemic, like, let's just do what we can for each other. Like, I, I wonder what would have been different because I find that such a shame. And I think that if we want to think about how to get women back in the workforce.

 

If we want to think about how to make, make work a better place for mothers, as I keep I keep reading about how, you know, the birth rate goes down? How are we supposed to have a bunch of and like, go to an office and, and somehow take care of our kids when they're sick? And like, take them on all these appointments and deal with that, and summers are off and everything? No wonder the birthrate is down? Yeah,

 

Roy Barker  31:04

yep. Well, and it's the stigma, as well as just the struggle is that, you know, I think that when you have to if you're in an office, and you have to go to somebody and say, Look, I've got a sick child I have, you know, it's unrightfully, but it still happens, it's that stereotype, well, she doesn't really care about the job. And the unfortunate part, as you know, and I'll say, from a male point of view is that we put a lot of that burden on, on the females and the women, you know, for the childcare, things like that.

 

I mean, you can't even imagine if I was having to take care of a sick kid, I don't know what would happen, both of us would maybe, you know, disappear. But the other part of this I'm talking, I had a guest not long ago on aging, and so we not only got the children, but now we have some women that are moving to taking care of elderly parents. And the unfortunate statistics show that usually the the daughter in law even takes care of the husbands.

 

So they get you take care of the kids, and then they get to take care of the parents in old age. And again, it's, it's cost a lot to leave the workforce, just because they can't juggle it all. They feel like if they're at an office, they're not at home, you know, maybe closely supervising somebody. And when they're home, they're not paying attention to the office, and then the flat between, hey, you need to be here. And you know, just all of that where again, it's not the total panacea. But that's where we get back to the work from home option.

 

You know, it really solves a lot of these problems, especially if you're in a position that didn't really matter. If you wrote that report, at two o'clock in the afternoon, or eight o'clock at night, you know, there are certain functions of jobs that it just really doesn't matter. As long as it gets done, what time it actually took place. Or the location.

 

Laura  32:56

You know, it's funny, my, one of my employees, she, her sons, the father is always listed on the school paperwork, like in an emergency call the dad. And the dad has never been called ever to pick up the kids from school, it is always mom. And she's like, you know, even if you try, it doesn't happen. And yeah, I think, you know, we were talking about the drama of, you know, office politics, if they're not seeing you go and pick up your kid if they don't even know what's happening. Right. I think it kind of cuts that down quite a bit.

 

Because and I wonder how much worse it's going to get? Because I will, I'm sure almost every mom will admit that at some point or another we've all given our children Tylenol when they've woken up with a fever and sent them to school. We're definitely not doing anymore after COVID or I would at least hope not. So I think now we're gonna be really forced to keep our kids are not for us.

 

But I think we all see the the issue with sending our kids to school sick right after we saw what happened with COVID. And so we're, we're gonna have kids home even more. And we need an alternative for that because it's just gonna fall on the moms know, no matter what, and I have a very, I have a husband who is very good at trying to pick up some of the responsibility but even then it falls

 

Roy Barker  34:20

down I'm gonna say on the emergency contact list that give you a little insight there's that the dads have the emergency contact, like when you're contacted in an emergency is like they have the wife's phone number like or like a the school's going and got problems, like auto forward. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, Laura, thanks so much for taking time out of your day to talk to us.

 

I think this is a you know, it's going to be more and more of an important issue. I think as we get through this pandemic and it you know, I've read a lot of stuff that said it actually can change the landscape of a you know, Employment an employee in that relationship going forward, because they said, I don't remember the exact percentage, but I think it was around 40% of workers just said, not going back, I'll just go do something different. And right now there's seems to be, you know, a lot of churn, a lot of positions are coming open.

 

And so they actually have that. The option to do that. So I think as employers, we have to be very mindful, if we're going to retain our top talent, we have to listen to them, what is their position, and figure out a good way to manage it, I think there's always a solution. And no one Thank you for having me. Because this is a conversation that needs to keep happening. But so what is a tool or a habit that you use in your daily life, that really adds value?

 

Laura  35:46

So what I did Time Doctor, so I told you about that. I would also say Teams, it's been our that is like the number one thing that is probably the most valuable thing to me, because I'm in meetings all day, actually probably on teams, but I can call I can have lots of conversations with my own employees and dm them and talk to them all the time. And it's, it's able to allow me to communicate effectively, because a remote work, right, we have to be able to communicate. And I think it helps us keep in touch and keep a good relationship with our employees. And I find it very valuable.

 

Roy Barker  36:30

Yeah, it's been, you know, kind of migrating from the old Skype days. It was a very, it was awkward and bulky. But they've done a good job with teams. I love teams. Yeah, no, it's so much better. All right, well, tell us again, about TempDev. And, you know, tell us what y'all do, who you like to work with how you help them? And of course, how can somebody reach out and get a hold of you.

 

Laura  36:56

So we are a consulting firm that primarily works with ambulatory physicians. We specifically work on the practice management side with revenue cycle, medical billing, and also the EHR. We primarily work with next gen, but we also work with other ones as our clients somewhat want to but again, we're like an extra preferred partner. So we like to stay in that wheelhouse. We can be found at tempdev.com and, or by emailing us at [email protected].

 

Roy Barker  37:36

Okay, great. Well, again, thanks so much. Hope you have a great rest of the day. And that's gonna do it for another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. course you can find us on the web at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com we're on all the major social media platforms and a video of this interview will go up when the episode goes live. So until next time, thanks for listening. Take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.tempdev.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

Strategic Accounting Is An Investment In The Success of Your Company with Jeannie Doherty

In this episode, we explore the financial side of the business with Jeannie Doherty with Cloud 9 Strategic. Much of the time we focus heavily on sales and marketing, which are necessities, but we forget about the financial side. How much do we need to sell our product for? How many do we need to sell? Planning goes a long way to financial success.

About Jeannie

Jeannie runs a Strategic Bookkeeping practice on the beautiful Gold Coast, Australia.

Jeannie has a unique business background, having been raised by high-profile, successful retail entrepreneurs she was privileged to attend the “school of hard knocks” and learn from the ground up what it takes to truly scale a business.

Jeannie has dedicated herself to product innovation (in her industry) to develop methodologies, with a foundation in numbers, to help her clients transform their business from surviving to thriving.

Jeannie’s niche is “working dads”, primarily trades and services and because of this, she’s passionate about the impact her work can have on families. Helping families thrive is what gets her out of bed in the morning.

Personally, Jeannie is a proud mum, lover of Latin Dance & an advocate for putting your health first.

www.cloud9strategic.com.au

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

 

Full Transcript Below

Strategic Accounting Is An Investment In The Success of Your Company with Jeannie Doherty

Tue, 9/21 9:09PM • 43:25

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

business, numbers, sales, people, paying, cost, clients, benchmarks, leads, plan, started, planning, money, Jeannie, turnover, targets, CFO, marketing, businesses, revenue

SPEAKERS

Jeannie, Roy Barker

 

Roy Barker  00:09

Episode of The Business of Business Podcast, I'm your host Roy course on our podcast we bring you a wide variety of guests that can talk about a diverse set of topics. Some things we you know, meet we introduce may be new, some things we introduce you may already have on your radar and we give you professionals that can, you know, give you a helping hand and maybe help you through some troubled times.

 

And you know, we want to say success for all businesses for sure. So today is no different. Today we have Jeannie Doherty, she runs a strategic bookkeeping practice called Cloud 9 Strategic and she is on the beautiful Gold Coast of Australia. Jeannie, we want to welcome you today. Jeannie has a unique business background having been raised by high profile successful retail entrepreneurs.

 

She was privileged to attend the school of hard knocks, and learn from the ground up what it takes to truly scale a business. Jeannie has dedicated herself to product innovation in her industry, to develop methodologies with foundation in numbers to help her clients transform their businesses from surviving to thriving. Jenny's niche is working dad's primarily trades and services. And because of this, she's passionate about the impact her work can have on families, helping families thrive is what gets her out of bed in the morning.

 

Personally, Jeannie is a proud mom. And Mom, let me rephrase it. It's in Australia. She's a proud mom, lover of Latin dance and an advocate for putting your health first. Janie, thanks so much for taking time out of your day to be with us. I certainly do appreciate it.

 

Jeannie  01:51

Thank you, I am very excited to be here and share something of value with everyone.

 

Roy Barker  01:55

Yeah, of course. And you know, we don't talk enough about finance. And we had a conversation leading up, you know, in the, in before the show, too, that, you know, most people put a lot of focus on marketing and sales. And we kind of don't talk about the back end until things go horribly wrong. Unfortunately, a lot of times, but before we kick off into that, yeah. Tell us a little bit about you know, growing up and have been in an entrepreneurial family and just, you know, kind of how you ended up here in this space.

 

Jeannie  02:29

Yes, so Okay. So yes, bit of a unique background. So my parents were, so we started out quite poor, like many people. So when I came along, yeah, we didn't have much money. So they worked very hard. And they built a retail business that slowly evolved into, I guess, what became, you know, a really successful venture. They had it a long time, they actually did. So then business twice, there's a whole story behind.

 

Roy Barker  03:05

Wow, that's always good.

 

Jeannie  03:08

You should register it Right, exactly. One of their businesses after selling it for millions, but to the cost of IP registration. So that's another cool story. And so then second time around with them when I was older, they restarted their retail enterprise. And in this case, they were hoping it would be just a nice little retirement venture. But their marketing campaign worked so well, that we had to decide if we would leave it where it was 10 million turnover, or grow it to $100 million turnover with the goal of selling it to a public company. And we did that. And my job was to I call it I was the cleanup girl.

 

As they wrote up his 100 million dollar company, I went around behind them fixing everything, and cleaning everything out. And it was it was so much fun. Because it was lots of problem solving. And if I'm not problem solving, then I am rocking in a corner. So that is really my background. And then because I had done all things business, I was really I was really involved in finance in that business as well so heavily into the finance department.

 

So then when I was having I decided I'll have my own, I'll have a child. And I thought you know what, bookkeeping, that's fine to be flexible. It's fine to work around my child when he comes along. And I thought every business needs great numbers work. Right, right. So this will be perfect, but I have to say I never knew how much I would love it.

 

Roy Barker  04:48

That's awesome. Well, I think that's such a good thing to be, you know, brought up in that entrepreneurial spirit and, you know, being able to see and be involved in that growth. Got one. I think that's an awesome story.

 

Jeannie  05:03

Thank you. Yeah, look, I do feel privileged. And I got to see, you know what I got to see the wonderful side of it. And I got to see the dark side of it. Now, my parents were very successful in terms of money was the cost to it? Yes, it probably was. So these days, I love to help business owners chase what I call the prosperity synergy. And that is time, money. Freedom.

 

Roy Barker  05:27

Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. You know, like we kind of said in the in the lead in that, you know, so many new businesses, especially, it's just the focus, sales, marketing, and nobody really thinks about the back end and taking care of the money that we're bringing in the door. And, you know, there's so many reasons for that. But that's kind of, you know, I think what you have built your practice on is kind of helping people to realize and unfortunately, with you as same with others, you know, you usually don't get called in until things have gone bad.

 

Jeannie  06:01

Yes, it's true. And so that is definitely one of my favorite misconceptions. So focusing on sales and revenue, and sales and revenue is really, really important. But my mom used to have a little joke, she would say, anybody can sell something for nothing. And let me explain what I mean by that, when it comes down to the numbers. And it's this is so important, this little piece of information can save on making money immediately. So we go out with focusing on sales and revenue. But how are we going in terms of cost of sales? How are we going in terms of collecting the money after we sell something? And so

 

Roy Barker  06:46

if we, if we collected

 

Jeannie  06:51

and there's a notice saying around that, and that is that revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, and cash is king? You know, I love that. Yeah, and the time that we end, and I find when I meet a lot of business owners, they're often hunters, and I'm, look, I'm a natural Hunter, as well. So in terms of sales, were a hunter or farmer, and hunters, you know, we want the next kill, we want the next sale. And it does make us feel great, right?

 

There's a, there's a reason reason we say revenue is vanity. But what we find is, and what I see is that business owners are often talking about all the sales they're making, but if I look at the financials, it's not translating into the bottom line, right? And sometimes they might be aware of that, and they want to bury their head in the sand, rather than face up to it and do some meaningful work to, to fatten up that bottom line.

 

Roy Barker  07:47

Yeah, and you know, being a numbers guy, that's, you know, kind of always my, my, my answer when people tell you, you know, I've got a $25 million company, or, you know, we got 25 million revenue. And in my sometimes I don't say it, if it's somebody friendly, I may, but I'm always like, well, that really doesn't tell us much. Because if it costs you 50 million, in order to get 25 million in revenue, you know, we're upside down, and we're not it's really not a business, it's more of a charity or a giveaway.

And yeah, you know, and the other part of that is we talked about is I don't know how people, price products, good services, whatever they're selling, because if you're not watching your numbers, and don't keep up on what is it that, like you said, the cost of sales? What is that? How do we know where our price points? And then how do we know, our markup to get our correct margins? It's hard to figure all that stuff out.

 

Jeannie  08:44

Yes, yeah, exactly. And look, I work with a lot of service businesses and small businesses, primarily our service base. And so the pain points that we see are definitely cost of sales. So Job Costing wages, because that's your other cost of sales, even in hospitality wages. So those two things are the main pain points that I see that need deep work done to improve them. And with regard to that, it's also business owners not understanding numbers wise, what optimal business performance looks like.

 

So in terms of sweat out chasing sales, and maybe we're not thinking about cost of sales, and even if we did look at our cost of sales, and we go well, you know, it's it's it is what it is I charge $100 for this, I pay my staff member 30 that seems okay to me. But there are industry benchmarks, right everywhere that you know, it doesn't matter where you are in the world, you can easily access industry benchmarks for us in Australia, that's available on our taxation website takes two seconds.

 

And then let's say you're a plumber, you're able to have a look at what plumbers are doing on average. Okay. What is the average cost of sales for a plumber? And how are you in comparison to them? So that numbers work. It's it is also about understanding, well, what does optimal business performance look like for me?

 

Roy Barker  10:17

Yeah, yeah, in, you know, here in the US, I know, we have a lot of a lot of large associations for different industries. And, you know, one that I was in, worked in for a long time was the senior living industry. And we had two or three very good sources of, you know, what we called benchmarks, they could talk to you about everything from, you know, what they're paying in property tax to real estate to general and administrative, you know, labor, and it's good.

 

It's a good check mark. And, you know, we, we, every business that you work with, when you try to when you first roll out benchmarking is like, they the standard answers, well, we're different, you know, we're all different, like, you know, well, you're all different, but you're all the same. And, you know, the benchmark is not it's not something what it does, it helps us to define if you're close or not, and if if you're not, if there's an explanation for it, just like some people would use a dietary.

 

The food component for marketing, they'd have dinners and this and that, but yeah, those dollars should probably be flown over into the marketing budget. But it really helps you determine, you know, are we way off in some areas? And if we are investigating, want to see if it's appropriate or inappropriate?

 

Jeannie  11:40

Yes, yes. And it's interesting, you know, I listen to what you say, right? And I tend to like, I want to challenge your listeners, to you know, you were saying a lot about business there. But if we really listen, it's all it's all about the numbers, right? And I like to say your numbers are like the slab of your house, they are the absolute foundation. And with regard to those benchmarks, exactly, they're not everything. But yes, business industries are same, same, you know, there are variables, but they are same, same.

 

And so just to elaborate on that a little bit for anyone who doesn't, you know, fully understand what we are talking about there. So one that I would tend to point out is something we call the rule of thirds. So let's say you're a service based business like myself, so bookkeepers, accountants, consultants, to a large extent trades as well. The rule of thirds is a beautiful benchmark where you can work on, and that is that so we have a turnover, you should have a third for cost of sales, a third for operational expenses, including your wages, and then a third is left for profit.

 

And if you can work towards that and get that right over time, then what you have is your business has turned into an investment. And the other thing that I want to mention about benchmarks is it's all about all of your expenses as a percentage of turnover. So that's how you use a benchmark. So for example, rent as a percentage of turnover. So let's say you have a factory, you might find that the industry benchmarks are the average that people are paying for a factory, in your kind of industry is 6% of their turnover. So if you're paying 8%, then that seems okay.

 

If you're paying 4% Yeah, if you're paying 15%, and you're wondering where all the profits going, this is where the gold of benchmarks is. So don't be afraid of it being something if you're only a little business, if you're a one man band, or if you've got 10 stuff, or 100 staff, don't be afraid that you can't use this even if you're small.

 

Roy Barker  14:00

Yeah, and the other thing kind of going along with that is the you talked about wages earlier is that there are a lot, not a lot, let's say there are people that I have dealt with in the past that if they paid their employee $20 an hour, that is all that they would build in, you know, if they were sending their person out to your house, they'd say, Oh, I paid this guy 20 I'm gonna send him to you, you pay me 20 and we're covering our costs, but we you know, you know, number one, especially in the States, there's all kinds of employment costs that go along with that.

 

Which, you know, the 20 depends on your benefit structure and a lot but your $20 an hour employee can then turn into a 30 to $35 ours, you know, easy, but then we also have to put our profit margin on top of that, and I don't want to get off into the weeds but just think about there's a lot more that goes into this. And this is why we have to know like you said build our numbers as the foundation of our house because Because this is how we know how to price our goods and services based on all of these inputs.

 

Jeannie  15:06

Yes, exactly. And that's Yeah, this is the kind of thing we say all the time. And the only way you know is to look at the numbers, and it's not about. So the other thing to know is that you don't need to look at the numbers and get this right. On day one, I say to all of my clients, so we are on day one of a 365 day journey, exactly the day we're going to get started and I owe the guy and I don't operate like a high end accountant, I love to get, I love to be real.

 

And I tend to say, let's get into the numbers, let's be vulnerable, let's not expect to have all the answers. Let's scratch our heads, let's get dirty in the numbers and just start putting one foot in front of the other. Because if we do that, we aren't going to get some way we're going to move forward. Whereas if we stand still and do nothing, where are we going to go? Yeah,

 

Roy Barker  16:01

yeah. And you know, in the States, sometimes we have this idea that well, we, you know, our taxes are due on April 15, generally, so we think, oh, we just need to talk to the bookkeeper. March 10, March 15, you know, we take the shoebox full of receipts and dump out, and we just think about the taxable component of getting the stuff done to pay the taxes and move on. But I think what you said is, right, is that, you know, these are conversation if we want to get it right.

 

These are conversations that are throughout the year, maybe they become a little bit more intense around tax time to get that done. But you know, the planning and everything, it's not, you know, plan once and forget it. It's like, this has got to be something that's constant. Because, you know, as you go from June to July to August, did wages spike, you know, do you need to change your pricing structure, because of that, you know, what else is going on in the business? You know, that we have to monitor and set up KPIs to be very diligent about looking at?

 

Jeannie  17:08

Yes, exactly, exactly. And that's, I mean, that we, I only engage with clients who are engaged, we keep everything up to date, weekly, for example. And I recommend that whether you're doing it yourself or having it done for you, that you absolutely, so there are five parts to my number system, and with numbers one to one that is up to date, accurate accounting records, and that's up to date weekly.

 

If you can't keep it up to date weekly, talk to someone and find out what it's going to look like for them to do it. Because the money that you spend in this area, you can turn into an investment. Okay, we see clients get five to 10 times return on their money. And often that's early on. I mean, it's not unusual for me to sit with someone for an hour and save them $100,000 in that hour kindergarten stuff for me, right? But they needed somebody to shine the light on the numbers, could I run their business for them? Absolutely not.

 

They're the expert in their business. But I can shine a light and I can show them what they need to see to make the decisions they need to make to save or make money and so numbers one to one up to date accurate accounting records, you need to get that done. And I was only thinking the other day, you know, when it comes to accounting and bookkeeping, nothing has changed. double entry accounting is double entry accounting, it's actually the same today as it was 100 years ago. But the difference is that now we actually have amazing AI artificial intelligence apps that will do it all for us. So if you treat numbers one by one like baking a cake and that is you need the recipe you need the ingredients and you need the timing right, then it can actually be really really easy.

 

So what I'm going to say about that is is one of the main rules there is please don't mix your business and personal expenditure within your business bank accounts. If you get that right. Then the rest will flow a lot easier then get yourself some really nice tech leverage the heck out of it and get the tech doing most of that numbers 101 job

 

Roy Barker  19:26

yeah, and you were talking about you develop this numbers one to one for your clients and for others to help them out. But you said there are five major components I guess one is the the up to date. And then the number two or maybe not in this order, but the second one would be to separate your your business and your personal to make sure there's a delineation and that again, let me just say, not from experience, thank goodness but that is one of the things that will get you in trouble.

 

The Fast is here. Because what if they notice a little thing, then it makes him want to look for bigger things. And so sometimes that leads to trouble. So it's much easier and you may save a few dollars by trying to run this expense through the business. But let me just say it's not worth it. It's not worth it for the price that you end up paying, you know, if you get caught doing that.

 

Jeannie  20:24

Yes. And it's not like a success strategy is tax evasion. Anyway, exactly, exactly. success strategies around sales and marketing, cost of sales, all those things. I've never met a business side of it says I made my fortune to tell the tale. So yeah, look, one, two numbers one and the thing that I really passionate about numbers, when and why. And if you're thinking to yourself, oh, but I'm so busy, I challenge you and say, you know, if you want to run a successful business, there is no successful business owner that doesn't know and use their numbers.

 

And the other thing around numbers when I want if you're going to say, Oh, yeah, but I just my my business and personal accounts are kind of mixed at the moment, because I'm busy. And I don't really want to do this. And that I would say come back to the cake. So if you're going to bake a cake, and you choose to use the wrong ingredients, and you choose not to follow the recipe and you choose to leave it in the oven for half the time, we're not going to get the cake.

 

So numbers one to one is easy, as long as you're willing to lean in and follow the recipe and make it easy. And from there. Once you've got that foundation in place, you can start to be able to move on to numbers knowledge, it's our second step where you can start to get educated around what it all means. So the head scratching part of it. From there, once you start to have those aha moments and understand what it all means you can move on to getting those numbers to be more strategic. And what I mean by that is it might be that once your numbers are in order, we were to look at your profit and loss.

 

And we were to establish, okay, well, you might scratch your head and say, cost of sales, right? Well, why my wages are actually cost of sales. If we put those numbers up into the cost of sales area, that's when you're getting strategic, because when you get those numbers looking right, when you're strategic around the placement of them, you are ready to set targets. And once you've set your targets, which come from the benchmarks that we talked about, then you're ready to monitor your targets. And that is, okay, my target or my budget, or my KPI, these are all the same things. Because sometimes these terminology can be a bit like, Ah, so these are all like, what was what did I want to do in sales?

 

What should my cost of sales be? Once you have those targets, and you come back to their financials at the end of the month? You can say, Okay, well, this was my target, what was my actual? What's the gap in between? And what do I need to do to get my actual closer to my target? Boom, you've got an action plan? Yeah, right. You know, so I want to, I want to help everyone see that it's not as hard as it might seem.

 

Roy Barker  23:17

Yeah. And we don't have to make an avalanche. Like you said earlier. You know, this is a, I guess it's a lifelong project for the business. And so we can start putting in little changes, we can investigate, you know, if we find differences in these benchmarks in different areas, we can investigate the reasons why, and start bringing them more in line. And so again, it's not just, we're gonna do this once and have a consultation and send you off, and life will be good, you know, especially yourself, you will work with your clients all through the year, to not only keep, you know, to let's get on track, but then keep them on track, as well.

 

Jeannie  23:56

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. You really need to be engaging in those numbers regularly to make the decisions that you need to make. And that is, you know, that's a combination of things. So we sat down with a client or a client come to came to me a little while ago. And she said she, you know, she really wants to invest in administration help, but she's nervous. And so that was just a matter of sitting down. And having so her virtual CFO on our team sat down with her, how to look at the numbers. And because we do everything in a very realistic, relevant way.

 

And this is small business. I call it let's do some back of the napkin stuff. So we run the numbers, we do what we would call a what if analysis, again, a fancy term, but it means what if I hired an admin, what would happen to my profit, right? Okay, this is what will happen probably over the next few few months. And then but we know that if you can leverage that and you're employing these new people, then you will be out Get this because you told us your demand is this. So that's an end that that client said without looking at the numbers with her, and shining that light and helping her to make a decision, she would not have employed that administrator, she she would have stayed still, she wouldn't have moved forward.

 

And the truth is that she shouldn't have hired admin at administrative before she looked at the numbers because you do meet need to make sure that you can afford these things that it's viable. Do we need to go and get some more capital? So it's really important to be looking at your numbers on a regular basis, and usually getting somebody to to help you even if that's a little mastermind group that you've formed, and you're holding each other accountable. But getting someone to help you.

 

Roy Barker  25:49

Yeah, yeah, a few key words that you said through that is, you know, delegation, and the virtual See, CFO, but I want to talk about that for a minute sometimes that we think we can't afford to hire people, but then we also have to take the look at for whatever time that frees me up, is it worth it? In my personal life? Is it something, I could take that time and focus more on sales, marketing, production, other things that are out there. So you know, it's typically it is a good trade off, to get to be able to delegate and get you some help.

 

But you know, the other thing, especially with people just starting out in businesses that we know, I'll say this, because I've done it in the past is, you know, we feel like we have to do everything, we have to touch everything. And we don't think about for a minute that you know, if you're good at sales, or you're good at marketing, or if you're like the production guy, then that's what you need to focus on where your skills or talents. Just because you're find yourself in business or being an entrepreneur doesn't mean that you have to perform each and every task of this business.

 

So sometimes it makes sense to look to see if you can find that numbers guy. If you can find that person, then, you know, a lot of people were small or grown can afford it. But now like you mentioned, we have virtual and fractional where you don't have to pay for this person's entire salary for their year, you get them for the little bits and pieces that you need them through the year.

 

Jeannie  27:32

Yes, exactly. And that's exactly right. So if you're a business, and you're interested in scaling, and scaling is different to growing. So growing is traditionally just growing that revenue. But scaling, you know, it is so much more scaling is also so I'm all about scale. And about five or six years into starting my business, I was successful in getting it to a point where I call it I could just pop it on autopilot, I could work a few hours a week, take lots of time off, and the business ran without me. So that is scaling. And that's but the only way you're going to scale is to leverage those things.

 

So in terms of like when I talked about setting those numbers, targets and monitoring those targets, when you get to my favorite part, which is action planning, and then taking that meaningful action, the action that you take. So let's say you've looked at the numbers, and you've looked at your targets, and let's say you're three or four months in and you've established with your virtual CFO and bear in mind, virtual CFO can be as little as $50 a week like this doesn't have to be a high end accountant. So let's say you've established You know what, there's some more money that we could spend on some other things. The action that you take, when you look at the budget versus actual, I like to say is always in five areas.

 

So it's around planning, team marketing, selling or your standards. And I'll give you an example of that. So let's say we've looked at the numbers, and we've gone through, you know what, we're just not hitting those turnover targets, we're not hitting those turnover targets. What action Do we need to take? And you talk about the business and you say, well, and I'll give you a couple of examples. Well, we're really not generating enough leads we're generating leads is marketing. That's what it is. Okay, well, if we're not generating enough leads, what do we need to do? Okay, we probably need to go into planning mode because everything needs to be planned, even if it's on a napkin, even if it's 10 minutes, right doesn't need to be grand.

 

You just need to sit down with a pen and paper, come up with a plan and then swing into marketing so you can see how that action is taken. Another example might be where we go, okay, the sales are low, but what we've established is the business owner, as you were saying why maybe they love being the technique. But they don't love doing the sales and they're avoiding it. So then we're going to swing into some action around team, again, we're going to go back to planning, and then we might be, I think we need to bite the bullet and look at getting, you know, someone part time I call it a sales mom the best way, you know, and so we're going to take action around team.

 

So to scale our business, we are going to need to dig in and recruit people, you know, find suppliers. And the other thing is I like to say about scale. Personally, I don't like to grow my business in a manner where I couldn't replace myself. So anything I do, I asked myself right at the beginning, how can I make sure that this was a job that I could hand off to someone? If it's all about me, I can't scale it, I can't scale myself out of the business.

 

Roy Barker  30:55

Right? Yeah. And gets back to planning to is that we, you know, if you have to think about in the beginning, it's a tough conversation is and it's good to, to speak with other people, other trusted advisors to have this conversation is do you want to grow this business? Do you want to scale the business, because if you do, the these, these things need to be part of that strategic plan. We can't wait until you know, it's Monday where you're at, it's till Sunday night where I'm at, but I can't wake up in the morning and be like, wow, I really need to add a marketing person to sales people.

 

And a fractional CFO, you know, it's like, we need to think about well, what's going to trigger these things? You know, when when does it outgrow me? When is it outgrow the staff that we currently have? So we can be proactive? And so we're not scrambling? Because you know, kind of on the the recruiting and the hiring side is we want to make the best possible hires that we can or even if we're bringing in fractional people, we want to get a good match for ourselves. So these are things that we need to have some lead time on.

 

Jeannie  32:06

Yeah, look, I'm for me, you if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. I'm in a small business, I do planning in a realistic on the fly way, but I plan, plan, plan, plan plan. And it is constant with clients where I get them and they say, Oh, I'm going to do this. And they're usually quite down when they go, I'm going to try this. And I say No, No, No, we haven't. We haven't made a plan. And a good example with that might be let's say I get someone come in. And this is a real story. So that Oh, Jamie, I don't have enough leads. So I'm just going to do Google AdWords.

 

So that's an example if you've jumped in in the middle without a plan, and it like I say, even if that's a little plan, so I might say, okay, you're gonna do Google AdWords. So what happens when the phone rings? and john might say, I don't know what happens when the phone rings Jamie? And I say, Well, do you answer the phone? No, I probably not. Because I'm too busy. And I say okay, so they'll probably bring somebody else for that service. Because that's how AdWords works. Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. You know, and then there's Oh, and it's like, okay, and also your, let's say, You're an air conditioning installer. We're in September, I know about to get really busy. Oh, yeah, I am. And so let's talk capacity.

 

So just, you know, just that, and we actually, that day, we spent an hour with my big whiteboard. And we just wrote a whole lot of stuff down. And at the end of it, he said, I'm not going to do Google AdWords. You know, and, you know, his after we did a lot of, you know, mini plans and constant planning on the go. His his first real marketing campaign ended up rather than spending money on something that probably wasn't going to work. When we dug in and understood the business. I got him to do what I love.

 

It's called the kit marketing, keep in touch. So I said you've got these database, right? How about we do manners marketing, where we reach out and we say, Hi, Sally, just checking in to see how your air conditionings going, and that no cost marketing campaign? Got him lots of business and lots of PR, so plan, plan, plan, plan plan.

 

Roy Barker  34:26

Just a couple things like not to get off the track in under marketing, but you know, the follow up component the people that we already know, we tend to always overlook them and when we think we need to always be covering new ground and I think there's a lot of sales opportunity, you know, in these leads other even if they're happy and everything is good. Do you know of somebody that may be having an air condition troubles that she may want to refer to us and then on the other part of that they're busy.

 

This is hard to understand, but you They're businesses that have gone out of business because they had too much business. And, you know, like you said, he, you know, starts this Google campaign and the phone ring and nobody's there to answer. And then it starts getting in Yelp and all these other places about, you know, how this person never answer their phone and they can't deliver. And it can be as bad as not having any business. Well,

 

Jeannie  35:25

exactly. And the end, the way that it relates to the numbers is at all I mean, as you know, I'm a strategic bookkeeper, right. So all these conversations, starting the numbers, you know, they don't. And when Paul went, I'm going to do Edwards, he didn't start in the numbers. You know, if I'm looking at the numbers, and I'm truly thinking about Paul's business here and air conditioning, business, but coming up to some, I'm looking at the numbers, I know you panicked, because winter was really quiet.

 

So all these conversations started in the numbers. But I also love Roy, what you said then, like keeping it simple. People won't go in the older Edwards before they do the simple things, you know. But yeah, all these conversations, definitely start in the numbers. Because that's where, you know, that's where we see what's happening in the business.

 

Roy Barker  36:19

And then the second part is, if you would have gone ahead and gone with the add words is, we need to set up monitoring, how much are you spending? How much are we bringing in? What, what is the is that? You know, after a few months, six months, whatever, is it really even paying off? Is that what we need to do, or? But then we get into a lot of other things like we have to ask our clients, you know, where did you hear about us?

 

And how did you get a hold of us, you know, all these different things that lead into helping us make better decisions, a lot of data. It's simple. It's simple as asking a question takes about two seconds. But a lot of people just don't do it. So we don't know. You know, on that budgeting advertising side, we don't know where we really need to put our dollars because we don't know where all these people are coming from.

 

Jeannie  37:07

Yeah, 100%. And when we when we're looking at numbers, like let's say we're looking at cost of sales, and we've establishes that it's too high. To be honest, the first thing you're always jumping into is plan because it's that Oh, okay, what business? Am I running again? What am I benchmarks like he'd going into just let me just set the scene here, you know, and that's what the planning is always let me just set the same. Let me scratch my head and remind myself who's my target market again, who do I want?

 

You know, so And same with revenue. If we haven't hit that revenue goal, we're going into plan. If our wages are too high, we're gonna start in plan. If our rent is too high as a percentage of turnover, even we're gonna make a plan to talk to a landlord or move. So and then once you know that, you've got that, what is it give me give me six hours to chop down a tree and I'll spend the four first four sharpening the axe, something like that. You know, the first action you take from the numbers is always going to be sharpening that axe. Yeah,

 

Roy Barker  38:12

exactly. No, that's good advice. Well, Jeannie, we certainly do appreciate you coming on. Is there anything else that you want to mention before we wrap up?

 

Jeannie  38:22

No, I only that. Look, I I absolutely just am so passionate about giving small business owners something that they can take, and use to make or save money straight away. And so if you please feel free, if you do have a look at our website, which is cloud nine, strategic Comdata you.

We do offer and if you have a look at that one forward slash strategy, you'll find links to register for our free webinars and do our scorecard and just things that you can opt into.

 

That will educate you even further and help you further we've also got lots of blogs, lots of tools and tips and hacks, because, you know, every business owner has to invest, invest constantly in education, and there's lots of great free stuff out there. So just start investing in that education.

 

Roy Barker  39:14

You know, there's, there's never been a better time to be in business because we have so much data and information at our fingertips, we can do so much research, it's really never been a better time but we have to make the time to take advantage of that I think is the big message to so what is a what is a tool or a habit? Something that you use in your daily life professional or personal that you feel adds a lot of value?

 

Jeannie  39:42

Yeah, so one that I definitely do so it's actually around prioritizing. So I like to have I love the number three and I think a lot of people love the number three, it's easy, you know, three things to do three things to think about. Always, always be writing these things down. So I like to have a big picture three focuses. So my number one focus, and it's something I ask everybody to consider putting first is their health.

 

So I put my health first, and that is mental, spiritual, and physical, those three things. My second focus is my beautiful little boy. So if I'm healthy, and at my best, I can give him my best. And my third focus is my empire building. We're all building a little Empire justice, fun, money is only the product of doing something really well. So when I had those three priorities, a couple of things happen. Number one, your health has to come first.

 

So you're well enough to do everything. But I'm always able to ask myself and they're written down and they're on my whiteboard. Is my focus today, in this moment around one of those things, anything is, I'm pretty sure that I'm going to get things right. Because I'm moving in the right direction.

 

Roy Barker  41:01

Yeah, that's awesome. And that gets back to our, to our planning, we need to think about what we really do. And today adding value in is that where we need to be spending our time and attention. So that's great. I love that. Well, Jeannie, thanks so much for being with us. We appreciate it. Again, tell us who do you like to work with? How can you help them? And again, tell us again? How can they reach out and get a hold of you?

 

Jeannie  41:26

Yeah, lovely. So my absolute niche is working dads often often work working with men. And they are running service based businesses trades on my absolute favorite see plumbers or electricians, you trade businesses, outside of that other services, under 10 on the team, so anywhere between your one man then and 10 on the team.

 

That's my absolute sweet spot niche, you can reach out to me by visiting my website. So Cloud 9 Strategic.com.au. And that's the number 9 in there. And if your proper forward slash strategy, we're going to have a nice page where you can opt into those free resources in Yeah, that's how you get in touch with

 

Roy Barker  42:10

Okay, awesome. Well, we hope that you have a wonderful week. We appreciate you starting it off with us and bringing this great information y'all go over check out Jeannie's site, get a lot of good information. Let's dig into these numbers. And you know, we still have some time during this year to get out there and make a difference we can end the year on a high note. And then once we're in the groove, we'll we'll just keep it going into the next year.

So never too late to get started. Let's jump out there and do that. So that's gonna do it for another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. Of course I am your host Roy, you can find us at www.thebusinessofbusiness podcast.com we're on all the major social media networks. We're on all the major podcast platforms Stitcher, Google, iTunes, and Spotify, where you are. A video of this interview will also go up on our YouTube channel when it goes live. So until next time, thanks for listening and again take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.cloud9strategic.com.au

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

Marketing Fundamentals, The Starting Point For An Awesome Marketing Plan with Tim Fitzpatrick

Don't skip the fundamentals. If you skip the fundamentals, you're gonna waste time, you're gonna waste money. One of my favorite quotes about the fundamentals was from Michael Jordan, where he said, Get the fundamentals down, and the level of everything you do will rise.

About Tim

Tim is an entrepreneur/business owner with expertise in marketing and business growth. He has 20+ years of entrepreneurial experience with a passion for developing and growing businesses. That passion served him well in operating and managing a wholesale distribution company he co-owned for nine years. The company grew an average of 60% a year before being acquired in 2005.

Since then, he’s had failures and successes that have been valuable learning experiences. He started Rialto Marketing in 2013 and has been helping service businesses simplify marketing so they can grow with less stress. Most people overcomplicate marketing. It doesn't have to be that way.

www.rialtomarketing.com

www.rialtomarketing.com/the-business-of-business

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

 

Full Transcript Below

Marketing Fundamentals, The Starting Point For An Awesome Marketing Plan with Tim Fitzpatrick

Tue, 9/21 9:08PM • 44:50

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

work, people, marketing, starting, plan, dentists, business, target market, fundamentals, focus, problem, selling, channels, website, ex presidents, customers, talk, clients, attract, ideal client

SPEAKERS

Tim, Roy Barker

 

Roy Barker  00:00

I'm your host Roy, of course, we are the podcast that brings you a wide variety of guests, I can talk about a large, diverse set of topics, we want to try to provide help and support for all of our small businesses, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs that are out there. And today is no different. We have an awesome guest, Tim Fitzpatrick have been waiting. We had a schedule conflict or actually had a power outage last time we were scheduled. So I've been waiting for this for about the last three weeks. So Tim is an entrepreneur, slash business owner with expertise in marketing and business growth. He has 20 plus years of entrepreneurial experience with a passion for developing and growing businesses. That passion served him well in operating in and managing a wholesale distribution company he co owned for nine years, then the company grew an average of 60% a year before being acquired in 2005. Since then, he has had failures and successes that have been very valuable learning experiences. He started re alto marketing in 2013, and has been helping service business simplify marketing so that they can grow with less stress. Most people overcomplicate marketing. It doesn't have to be that way. Tim, thanks so much. Welcome to the show.

 

Tim  01:19

Thanks for having me. Right. I'm excited to be here.

 

Roy Barker  01:22

Yeah, awesome. less stress. We're all looking for that, especially in our marketing plan when we're up at night ringer. Before we jump into the marketing aspect, tell us just a little bit. And I know I just read a little bit of your story, but kind of tell us how you found yourself here.

 

Tim  01:40

Yeah, so I'll try to make a long story somewhat short. You touched on the fact that I, my first business that I got involved with was a wholesale distribution company that was actually right out of college. I was not one of those people that was like an entrepreneur from you know, a young age I wasn't, you know, Hawking stuff at garage sales and selling baseball cards. I the only thing I cared about at that point was riding my bike and hanging out with my friends. So when I graduated from college, I still didn't really have any idea what I wanted to do. I was a math major. I was good with numbers analytical, and I figured a math is used all over the place. So there's got to be something I can do. So I got involved in this distribution company that was selling wholesale. We were selling wholesale, we were selling home theater, equipment, speakers, TVs, receivers. I mean, it was like toys. And after the first three months of that I was man, I was hooked. I loved it, I was the first full time employee. And I ended up managing and running that company on a day to day basis. My other partners were involved, but they weren't involved on a day to day basis. And I learned more in six months of doing that than I did four years of college, you know, it was just real world experience feed on the feet on the ground. And I loved it. We We We were in it a good time we the company grew very quickly. And after we sold I worked for the company that bought us for another three years. And then I actually stayed with them and moved from where I was in Northern California out to Denver, with the company. And this was in the 2008 timeframe. So we all know what the hell happened. Yeah. And we got bought by a public company. And so in early 2009, they were starting to really freak out, they were starting to make decisions to manage, based on the quarter and the quarterly financials rather than long term thinking. They cut 30% of the branch locations we had across the country. And I got laid off. So they did me a favor. I wasn't happy at that point in time, I took a little bit of time off, tried to figure out what my next step was going to be. And I had always been interested in real estate. So I got my real estate license started selling residential real estate. And, man, I've learned a ton doing that I was putting myself outside of my comfort zone all the time. But I did not like it. It was not for me. It's a great living for some people for me. I just reached the point where I was like, man, I don't want to go to work tomorrow. Yeah. So I said, I gotta I gotta do something different. What's the point? No, no, my own business if I'm not loving what I'm doing. And that's when I decided to get into marketing after I kind of took a step back and said, Man, what did I like about distribution? Because when I was in distribution, I felt like it didn't work. I loved it. And so I started thinking about that. And I said, Look, I'm going to get involved in marketing. That has not been a straight path either. But you know where we are today is we're working with service based businesses, helping them simplify marketing. And we act as you know, a marketing consultant or an outsourced marketing partner for them and helping them actually implement. Okay, but what we really focus on first are the fundamentals because those have to be in place to have long term success.

 

Roy Barker  04:53

Yeah, great. And that's kind of some notes I'd taken here where the you know, starting back at the fundamentals because so many Many times, we just don't, you know, it's like, I don't know, I saw digital ad or I heard something on TV. And so we're kind of off in that direction without really thinking about what is our overall plan. And we'll get into that for just in just a minute, the one thing you did bring up in your going through your narrative there was chasing quarterly results. And, you know, I had the same experience when I worked for a large public company, as well as, like, we changed our focus from long term and to this, you know, three month period, and the bad thing is we would do anything in our power to save $1 this quarter, only to spend $5, next quarter, or, you know, or into the future. And so, you know, I think what we Yeah, we can probably extrapolate that lesson into our, you know, into our marketing and our fundamentals, because marketing is, I mean, we hope we can send an email out, or we hope we can put up an ad, and we get flooded with calls, but just gonna say that's not my experience, it's, it's a long term play, trying to build those pipelines. And so taking this back to the fundamentals is really where you know, where we need to start. And so what, you know, another thing that we talked about, kind of with this fundamentals is actually taking the client and sitting down and talk with them. And so that's kind of how you start the process, if I'm not wrong, is trying to find out who they are, what they are, where their direction where they want to go.

 

Tim  06:31

Yeah, we need to, in order to put a plan together of where some what somebody needs to do, you first need to establish a baseline, you know, understand where they're at, and where they're starting from, to determine what you need to do to get to where they want to be, you know, it's no different than my GPS, if I'm trying to go to Denver International Airport, or Dallas Fort Worth airport, right, I have to first tell my GPS, where the hell I'm starting from, otherwise, it ain't gonna do anything, right. And marketing is no different. Frankly, there's a lot of things in business that are no different, you have to establish that baseline. And then you can start to put the plan together of what you need to do to get to where you want to be and reach your goals. Yeah.

 

Roy Barker  07:16

And that's all you know, I will say, I'll speak to the businesses and entrepreneurs. And that is a true honest assessment of where we are. And, you know, this is why I professionals that helped me I love to work with people who I like and who I trust, because I need to be able to tell Tim and his team, everything, the good, the bad and the ugly, you know about where we're struggling and where we're failing. Because if, if we gloss over that we're probably going to have a subpar plan that you end up rolling out.

 

Tim  07:48

Right? We'll think about it like this, here's an analogy for you. Because it's a great example. If if somebody's sick, and they go into the doctor, you know, they're having pain in their gut or wherever. And they go in and the doctor says, Well, you know, why are you here? And they're like, well, I don't know, just, I want you to find out what's wrong. Where, where's the problem, right now start feeling around and tell me like, that's never gonna work. Right? You got to tell the doctor what the problem is. So they can start honing in on it. You have to give them the information they need to do their job. And this is no different.

 

Roy Barker  08:25

Yeah, yeah. And I guess the the kind of the next part of that is that the developing an avatar for the consumer, because that's something else that I've heard some horror stories about in the last couple of weeks is like, well, who is your consumer? Well, I don't know. He was the guy that walked through the door, you know, the last guy that walked through the door, he clicked on the buy link. And that's, that's the guy. It's like, well. So tell us a little bit, you know, some things that we need to think about when we zero in on who is our client? Yeah, and and the whys of that as well. Yeah.

 

Tim  09:03

So the way I look at the fundamentals, the first fundamental is this target market question, Who, who are you going to serve? And how are you going to serve those people? Everything from a marketing standpoint, starts with your target market. If you don't know who your target market is. And you just start acting, you're putting the cart before the horse and you're gonna waste time, you're gonna waste money. There's so many of us we look, I've made this mistake before tons of us have made this mistake. It's like you get into business and who are you working with? Well, are you breathing? Do you have the money to pay me? Are you somewhat interested? Cool, yes, I will work with you. And what we find when we do that is not everybody that we work with is great, right? They we may not like to work with them. They may not be profitable clients. We may not do great work for them. There's some clients that we do great work for and there's others that we don't We need to hone in on that. So that we start to attract those people that we really want to work with. So the easiest place for most existing businesses to start with this. You've got if you've been in business for a while you've got existing customers, you got past customers, I like to start by asking three questions. The first question is, who do you enjoy working with? Why the hell do you want to amend owning a business is hard enough? Why do you want to pound your head against a wall working with clients that just make it difficult? To Who are your most profitable clients? If we're going to stay in business and make money, we have to work with profitable clients. If we work with clients that aren't profitable, not only are we doing ourselves a disservice, we're doing our clients a disservice, because we're not going to be in business to help them right. And the third question is, who do we do our best work for? Who do we get great results for it? If we saw the group of those clients that we answered positively to those three questions, that's where you start to identify your ideal client types. Most businesses have 123, ideal client types, I don't think you should have more than three, because I think you're gonna dilute your focus. Okay. So if you look at that subgroup that you answer positively to those three questions, now you can start to look at that group and start to look at the demographics, right, the numbers, Where do they live? How old are they? What kind of jobs do they have? Those types of things are demographics. And then you're also going to look at the psychographics, psychographics have to do more with the feelings, you know, what they are like, as people? What are their goals? What are their aspirations, their dreams? What common problems do they have that you can solve? Those are the psychographics. And when you pull the demographics and the psychographics, out of that group, inevitably, what happens is subgroups come from that those subgroups are your ideal client types. Okay. And now, when you know who your ideal client types are, the next thing you can start to do is look at, okay, where are these people? Where are they online? Where are they offline? So let's look at an example. Let's say, I looked at my, my clients with Sam, we have a CPA. Okay. We have a CPA firm, and that we work with, and they have two different ideal client types, dentists and veterinarians. Okay, great. So we're trying to attract dentists? What associations do dentists belong to, you know, the American Dental Association, or whatever those may be? What, what manufacturers do they commonly buy from those manufacturers who already have existing relationships? Right, maybe I can start to build referral partner relationships, some of these manufacturers, what websites do they frequent? What influencers? Do they follow in the dental space? What podcasts? Do they listen to? What YouTube channels do they follow? What groups do they belong to in fate on Facebook or in LinkedIn? Right? These are all examples of areas that we can look at to start to create a list of where those dentists are. And once I have that list, now I know exactly where I need to be, to put my message out there to get in front of those people. That's, that's how this whole process starts to unfold.

 

Roy Barker  13:34

Yeah, and I think that's the it's kind of a, it's a major part. But it's a part I don't think we think about it's like, what Who is this person that we want to sell to? But the other great thing about that is you find out like you said, Where do these people live? Because that's, you know, where do they live online, basically, because that's where we're going to want to target our dollars. Because, you know, us I don't like to pick on Pinterest, but we'll pick on Pinterest for a moment that, you know, it's like, you know, if I've got a b2b, that's not really where I'm probably going to want to spend a lot of my dollars unless I'm, I think it's more focused on you know, women, and I'm not gonna mention their age group, women of a certain age, so I don't get any getting any bricks or something on the other corner here, but you know, and so I think that's, that's another great part of that is you find out where, you know, helps us to zone in and where we really want to focus those dollars.

 

Tim  14:31

Otherwise, if we don't, we waste time, and we waste money, right? Because like before we jumped on the air here we were, you mentioned YouTube ads. Well, if I know that I'm trying to attract dentists, and I want to take advantage of YouTube ads. Am I going to get to start randomly putting YouTube ads up on on any video? No, absolutely not. Because I'm just going to waste time and money, right. I'm going to identify what What up youtube channels do? Do dentist frequent, and then guess what I'm going to put my videos, my ads on their videos that is much more targeted, you're going to get much better results. And the message you communicate is much more targeted to those people and you're naturally going to attract those people and get better results, right? It's a very simple example. But this happens all the time where people are like, yeah, I'm trying to attract I work with small business owners. Well, that's great. But Jesus, they're everywhere. What like, what types of small business owners? Are you trying to attract? You know, that it needs to be specific enough? Where when people read what you're saying, they can at least say to themselves, you know, what Roy is talking to me. Right? If so, it has to be that specific. It doesn't have to be, you know, we work with, you know, underwater basket Weaver's that are located in Dallas, Texas, it doesn't have to be that specific, right. But it has to be specific enough where they read it, and they go, Oh, my God, he's, he's talking to me, or she's talking to me, or they're talking to me. If if you're good if, if that happens,

 

Roy Barker  16:08

right, right. Yeah, and it's so big. And that's the, I guess the the breadth of this is so wide, you know, we have to narrow our focus, because nobody has just enough money to throw it to all corners of the world. And so you know, some of us with very limited budgets, we're definitely trying to narrow that focus, where we get the biggest bang for our buck.

 

Tim  16:29

You you hit the nail on the head, I use Amazon as an as an example for this all the time. They they didn't start out selling everything to everybody. They started out as an online book seller. And after they nailed that niche, they started to expand. Right? Well, they can target a lot of people now because they have more money than God. Yeah, you know, but most small business owners do not have an unlimited budget, right? You have to make sure you have to hone in because if you're trying to target everybody, you need to have a huge budget in order to do so. And if you don't, then you have no business trying to do that. Yeah.

 

Roy Barker  17:06

And it may be it's a little different, I guess, in in a product environment a little bit not quite, but I can the service business you brought up a good point is that, you know, we want to work with people who we want to work with. I know in the beginning, sometimes we take on people we may not. But the reality is that there are some people that are slow pay to no pay, there are people that really suck all of your time and energy that you know, you have this scope of work, but it just never seems to end and nothing worse than having to fire a client. You know, it happens all the time. But I think this, this also helps us to say who do you really want to work with? Are you know, like, in my practice, do I want to? Well, you know, like the CPA you're using, if if they know the ins and outs of the dental industry, then well, by far I can talk to the dentist in an intelligent manner versus you know, maybe a a offshore drilling company that's like, well, I don't even I wouldn't even know where to begin talking with them about, you know, their business structure and their write offs and how we do all this stuff. But if you kind of hone in on that niche, it's a much easier conversation starter as well.

 

Tim  18:21

And you can start to use language that's familiar to them, right? You know, like dentists don't call their business, a business. It's a practice, right? Even just that simple thing can make a huge difference, you know, so there's a lot of nuances and when you when you understand your target market, your ideal clients well enough where you can start to enter the conversation that they're having in their head. They're gonna say, Oh, my God, Roy is speaking to me. Yeah. Well, Tim is speaking to me. That's what we want to have happen.

 

Roy Barker  18:54

Yeah, and you mentioned the psychographics for a minute. We don't have to get too deep but it's important and I think about myself when I go by car because me and Terry, my partner were very different in this aspect. I don't need to touch it, smell it, feel it. I don't need to fall in love with it. I need something that is got four wheels and engine hopefully it's all in close where I don't get wet when it's raining. heaters nice and air conditioned even better. But you know, she is more on the Oh, it's red. You know it has this and it has that she is more of that person that you know you really need to talk and like, you know, I've got a lady I've been dealing with for years. That's why I love her because she doesn't call and try to give me that stuff. I mean, we had this conversation the very first car bought from her about 15 years ago. I was like, I am not going to fall in love with it. I don't want to hear all that. Give me the this model with these features. Best priced. Bottom line. That's all I'm looking for.

 

Tim  19:54

Yep. Yep, absolutely. This psychographics To me, the same psychographics are equally if not more important than the demographics because the psychographics are what really get people hooked into what you're saying. And that's what gets people to buy. It's the psychographics is the results, they're looking for the problem that they have. Super, super important. So you don't want to skip that aspect of

 

Roy Barker  20:22

1. Yeah. Yeah. And that, that's another thing is, you know, we're trying to solve problems we're trying, you know, we think about it in this way, like a guy was telling me one time, you know, he had a posthole digging company. And he's like, I structure my advertising. For people who need holes in the ground, not people that need a posthole digger, because they don't need a posthole digger, they need a hole somewhere in the ground. Yes, they do. Yeah. So, you know, trying to really get to the root of what problem are we trying to solve? Or what benefit do we have for the individual that we're selling to? I'm sure that's a very important part of this.

 

Tim  21:04

super important, right, which leads kind of leads us into that next marketing fundamental, which is your messaging. And there's, there's so many people that make the mistake of focusing their message on their business. And you just kind of touched on this, our, our customers don't care about us, but what they care about is how we can help them solve the problem they have, and help them get to where they want to be. And so our messaging needs to focus on that, right. It also needs to be clear and engaging. If it's not clear, right? If we confuse people, we're gonna lose them. We are so short on attention spans at this point. If I land on your website, and I can't quickly without scrolling down the page, understand, have a general idea of what you do and what the benefit and working with you is. I'm moving on, right. And, and so many people make that mistake, and it doesn't. It doesn't need to be that way. Yeah. So how do we fix that? We use a storytelling framework. I did not create this ROI. But it just works. It makes sense to people. And it gives you a playbook that from a messaging standpoint, you can come back to each and every time, so you're not reinventing the wheel. So if we look at how our most story structure, there's a hero or main character, they have a problem, right? without a problem, there is no story. So there's got to be a problem. They need a guide. The guide knows exactly what they need to do because the guide was in the hero shoes. They know how to solve the problem. So they call them to action. They give them a plan that calls them to action, so that they can avoid failure, and they reach success. So let's see what that looks like. One of my favorite movies is the original point break with Keanu Reeves. You ever seen though? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So he's an FBI agent. He's green, he's a rookie. The problem. The EX presidents is this band of bank robbers robbing banks in Southern California. The guide is his crazy FBI partner, Gary Busey. He's been there, done that, you know, seasoned. And he says to cure to reverse. He's like, Look, I believe the ex presidents are surfers. So the call to the plan is you need to learn how to surf so that you can befriend these guys and infiltrate them. So the call to action is you're going to learn how to surf. So that hopefully we avoid failure, which is the ex presidents get away. And we reach success, which is we catch them the they go to jail. Okay, so that's a simple example. How do we apply that to our business? What we do is we take that same framework, and we're inviting your customers who are the main character or hero in the story. And you are the guide? Why is the key Why aren't you the guy, you're the guide, because you know exactly how to solve the customer's problem. The customer is not looking for another hero, right? They're looking for a guy that knows exactly what they need to do. So we use this framework and start putting in these elements that position you as the guide and them as the hero. And then every time you need to create a message, you come back to the framework and you pull the elements you need. And you move forward. And it helps you eliminate those two common problems of make it difficult for people to understand what I do, and I don't focus my message on what's going to help my customers survive and thrive.

 

Roy Barker  24:42

That's it. Yeah, and I think you know, you mentioned this earlier about it's not making, you know, we want to be the hero to solve the problem, but it's not making it all about us. And you know, I'll just say that that's a big turn off for me is when the message is all about how great you are not about this. Solution Are you know how much I'm hurting with this problem less? That's what I want to know. I want to know that you understand how bad that I'm hurting and I need the solution.

 

Tim  25:08

How have you ever seen? I think we've all seen these videos where you know, our ads where the person that's there is they're talking about themselves, right? It's like, hey, look at, I've looked at all the things that I've done, here's my million dollar house, here's my frickin boat. yada, yada, yada, right? I don't know about you, but when I see that stuff, I'm like, Oh my God, what a blowhard. Yeah. I don't give I don't care. Yep. You know, and I think look, then obviously works with a certain subset of the population. But I also think maybe that just works for the type of people that you want to attract. I'm not that type of persons ideal client, because I see that and I'm totally turned off. Right. So but that's also part of understanding your target market. You don't maybe their target markets totally respond to that. Because that's, they want that, yeah, I look at that, I just go well, okay, that doesn't mean that you do a great job, right? It just means you're a great salesperson. Exactly. So or, or it could mean that you just rented that whole thing and shot that video, and now you're going somewhere else, I don't know. So you got to understand who your target market is. And then your message has to focus on how you can help them, you only talk about yourself enough to position yourself as the guy right. And guides have two qualities, they show empathy. I understand what it's like to be in your shoes. And they have credibility and authority. I don't need to talk about myself a ton. I can use two or three testimonials, I can use logos for certifications, awards that we've won high profile clients we may have worked with, those are always to help establish and position yourself as the guide because you don't need a ton of it to do so. Yeah, it's

 

Roy Barker  27:01

always better to have somebody else telling people how great you are versus you. That's exactly right. I learned that raising kids. Well, so let's talk about the integration for a minute. Because, you know, we've kind of, we've got our path, we've got our messaging our target market, but you know, we, we want to build a plane, oh, unless we find somebody that just lives in one space, most of the time, we may have to go over three or four channels. So we want to make sure that we get the exponential benefit from that. Because, you know, if we spend our money correctly and have the right campaigns, we should be better off. For you know, for each dollar we spend across these, we should get, you know, a higher return than just porn, it may be into one.

 

Tim  27:53

Yep. So I want to post something out that you just said, because I think it's really, really important. I think you or your business is very vulnerable. If you're generating all your leads from one channel. Like there's a lot of small businesses that build their business on referral in the beginning, and it's a great way to build your business. But if you're 100% referral, it's a very vulnerable place to be I think you need to be generating business leads from at least three if not four or more channels. I think your business will be much more predictable. If you do so. That's the first thing. Now when it comes to putting a plan together, I like to keep things simple. To me people overcomplicate things, you know, if the beginning of 2020, you would have spent 1000s of dollars on a one year marketing plan. Come March, most of us would have burned it or put it up on a shelf to collect dust. I think our businesses are evolving quickly and our marketing needs to evolve with that. And so the way I look at marketing plans is in 90 day sprints. They're short, Sprint's we keep them simple. The plan and the template we use and by the way, all the resources that we've been talking about, your listeners can get for free. We'll talk about that later. But okay, I don't I don't keep any of this stuff secret, okay. But there's six steps in this 90 day plan. First step, who is your target market? At a minimum? I want you to have a paragraph for each of your ideal clients. Who are they? What are statistically What are they the demographics and then get some of those psychographics in there? What type of people are they? Okay? If you have a paragraph on each of your ideal clients, you're ahead of most businesses because most businesses do not have that down on paper. It's on the plan because I want it to be top of mind of who you intend to attract. The second step is What's your goal? What's my goal for the next 90 days It needs to be specific. It needs to be measurable, it is time bound, because this is a 90 day plan. So maybe my goal is I intend to bring on 10 new clients in the next 90 days. That's specific. It's measurable. I know, I either hit it or I didn't. It's not arbitrary. The set the third step is what's my budget? And what are my resources? Do I have $500 a month to invest? Do I 5000 a month to invest in my marketing? From a resources standpoint? I'm talking about staff time, like, Do I have time to invest in this? Do I have other people on board the halftime to invested in it's also capability. Just because, you know, genome, my staff has five hours to dedicate to social media each week? Does she understand social media enough to do that work? If she doesn't, then that's not going to be a good fit. So we have to, we have to look at all of that stuff. From a budget and a resource standpoint. And that gives us an idea of what we have to work with. The fourth step is what's my current marketing plan? And when I say that, right, I know that a lot of people don't have a current marketing plan. That's okay. We just need to get down on paper, where we're starting from it's that reference point. It's that baseline. And when I look at where we're starting from, I look at eight main marketing channels, all the tactics can go into any one of the one of these, Okay, so first, you have strategy or your fundamentals, your target market, your messaging, that's where everything starts. Your next channel is your website, then you have content. am I creating a blog? Do I have a podcast doing my doing video? Then you have Seo? Right? helping you get found in search results? Social media, I've got email marketing, paid advertising, like Google ads, or Facebook ads, and then offline marketing? Am I doing speaking, networking and referral group? Am I doing direct mail advertising? All those types of things? All I want you to do in this phase, just write down? Do you have this dialed in? What are you doing? Are you not using this channel, you don't have to have be in every one of those channels to be successful. We just want to get an idea of where you're starting from. And then in the next step, the fifth step is what am I going to focus on the next 90 days, what you focus on in the next 90 days is going to depend on where you're starting from, and the budget and the resources that you have. If it's just me, and I don't have a budget, and I just have my time, well, I may only focus on one channel and getting that up to speed. If you don't know your target market, and you don't have good messaging, you have to start there, you know, you must, from there, you're going to you got to have your website, okay, and it's got to have good, good content, clear calls to action, telling people what you want them to do when they're on your website. And then from there, you can expand. One of the tools that is in the free resources is is a checklist that I call the evolution index checklist that looks at businesses in three phases as you start to grow. And it looks at each of the channels we talked about. And there's just a checklist of Hey, if you're in phase one of your website, these are some of the things you should think about having in place. So it gives people kind of a guideposts that they can look at. Okay, I've done these these things. Here's the next logical step for me, if I want to focus on my website, or I want to focus on my social media, because that's a really common question people ask is okay, well, I know where I'm starting from, how do I know what to focus on in the next 90 days? Use the evolution index checklist to give you some some ideas of where you may want to focus. And then the last step in this plan is the metrics. What metrics Am I going to track? The metrics give us an idea of whether the actions we're taking are actually having an impact or not? Yeah, keep it simple. Don't overcomplicate it, I was a math major, I can dig into the weeds, but there's so many vanity metrics when it comes to marketing, right? You don't want to have X amount of people on my email list, or I have these number of followers on social media. Who cares? How many leads are you generating? And how many of those leads? Are you converting to customers, right? That's what you really want to know. I think you can start to get more sophisticated and advanced as you move down the road, but keep the simple focus on you know, one to three metrics initially, that are going to give you an idea of where you need to go. But when you do this, and you put this in place, all you do is at the end of 90 days, you look at what worked, what didn't adjust your plan moving forward, and you wash, rinse and repeat. It keeps you focused, so you know exactly Hey, the next 90 days, these are the actions that I'm focusing on right. So that now Next week when somebody says, Oh my god, Tim, you have to be on clubhouse it is the newest hottest place to be, you're missing out on leads, and bla bla bla bla bla, I have the discipline and the focus to be able to go, you know what, I may have some interest in that. But right now until I get these other things in place, I'm not going to focus on that, or at least if I choose to focus on that, I know, I can adjust my plan, you can adjust your plan, that's okay, this is not set in stone. But in the absence of having a plan, everything that comes across your desk is going to look like an opportunity.

 

Roy Barker  35:35

I was just fixing to say that is that, you know, I think part of the plan is the value of that is to keep us from being you know, like the squirrel and the shiny object is like, you know, it's like somebody because we talked to people and they're like, Oh, this worked for me, okay, well, I'm abandoned. And, you know, three weeks in or two weeks into what I just started, I haven't given it a chance to work, so I'm going to abandon it. And I'm moving to this next thing, which I will probably give two weeks abandon. Move on to the next thing. The other thing that you mentioned, I like to talk about, you know a little bit is the metrics and a couple things, the vanity metrics, we kind of be so careful, because, you know, I kind of tell the story that one time, I posted something I got 1000 likes, and that evening, we went to the Mexican restaurant to celebrate and we ordered some, you know, Margarita is and a big plate. And then when the lady brought the check, I'm like, oh, here, I've got 1000 likes, I'm gonna trade those in for, you know, for this meal that we just had. And she's like, Yeah, well, that's not gonna work. So we've got to be able to think about these, you know, what actually makes us money? The, I guess the vanity part of it is good, because we're getting exposure. But it's not the end all be all, you know, maybe it gives us a point to look at the kind of content that gets people's attention if it's in a good way. Because, you know, my reality is, you get 1000 likes and no phone calls, it doesn't matter. You get one lakh and one phone call. That's the magic right there.

 

Tim  37:03

Yeah. Think about how empowering it is, if you know, let's say I know that for every five leads, I generate one of those converts to a customer. Now I've got a really actionable information. And I can start to focus on Okay, well, what types of things can I do to generate five leads so that I get one customer, right? Most people have no idea what that number is for their business. And when they know that, it becomes a very empowering thing to figure out. And once you have that, then you can start to work your way backwards and figure out okay, well, can we start to tie the number of leads we generate to website visits or to email lists, signups? And if you can do that, all these numbers start to come together? And, and things become a lot more predictable. When you can do that.

 

Roy Barker  37:59

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, in big corporations, we talk a lot about silos is that you know, there has to be communication between sales and marketing, because the reality is, marketing can be doing an awesome job and driving tremendous traffic to us. If they're not our buying public, it doesn't matter. And you know, I kind of use the example of if you're selling adult beverages and marketing puts on this awesome campaign. And we've got, you know, 12 year olds ring in our phone off the hook. You know, it's been a successful campaign in the fact that we generate a lot of interest, but we didn't generate dollars, which is really what we want to do. And kind of taking that to the smaller businesses. I always tell everybody, don't be afraid to ask Where Where did you hear about us? You know, why are you calling in? You know, we can say it a little nicer than that. But basically, we want to know, where did this interest come from? Keep a checklist of that, because it'll get more important not just to know where the traffic is coming from, but we can also tell, okay, we had 100 calls from, you know, Facebook, that turned into zero buyers. We did this thing on Instagram, we had 50. But we got five buyers, you know, you can really start to see the picture much more clear, not just on, you know, is the phone ringing.

 

Tim  39:18

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think you bring up a really good point about that handoff between marketing and sales. You know, I've never understood in some companies, sales and marketing are almost adversarial. In some companies. It's just, that's never gonna work. You know, when we talk about like our marketing message, that message that we use to attract people needs to filter down into the sales process, the sales conversations, and frankly, after that, it needs to go into customer service. All those departments should be saying the same thing, right. Otherwise there's no consistency and you know, somebody gets in trouble. From marketing, and then if some buddy in sales is is hitting on a different problem versus like, what the hell? I thought you solve this problem? Yeah. You know, so all those things have to be in concert. Right. But it starts with marketing. Yeah.

 

Roy Barker  40:15

Yeah. And you know, one thing that that dialogue is, you know, because I've been on both sides of that coin. And it's like the, you know, sales is always like, you send me these people that have had to call 12 times and they, you know, you send me the hardest people. But, you know, we saw that dialogue has to be constructive. And it has to be inclusive, where we can, you know, we we want to look at it as solving problems, we want to bring all those groups to the table to say, our end game is to sell this product or service. Now we're How can we tweak all this? Because, you know, especially in marketing, you can just say, Well, I just developed a very awesome, most awesomest plan ever. So don't tell me it's not working. If you know, if the phone's not working phones aren't ringing, or if we're not selling anything, it's not.

 

Tim  41:03

Yeah, I think all the departments need to be open minded and have an open line of communication, because sales can give marketing, awesome information. You know, it's like, hey, the leads that you've been bringing in from this campaign, they're fantastic. Here's why. Here's what's happening. And it's like, Okay, great. Well, how, why why was that the case? And how can we recreate that in other channels? Like, hey, these coming in? They're not good, right? And here's why. Right? And then marketing can take information and make better decisions about where the money needs to be invested to improve that.

 

Roy Barker  41:42

Right. Right. Now, that is so true. So true. Well, Tim, I know we are running long on time, anything, any other points you want to leave us with?

 

Tim  41:56

You know, I would just say, Don't skip the fundamentals. If you skip the fundamentals, you're gonna waste time, you're gonna waste money. One of my favorite quotes about the fundamentals was from Michael Jordan, where he said, Get the fundamentals down, and the level of everything you do will rise. Bat professionals, professional sports, players make things look easy. Because they have the fundamentals nailed. You don't see Michael Jordan shooting free throws for five hours, you know, but because those fundamentals are in place, everything that they do on that court or on that field is better. It's the same thing with your marketing, so don't skip them. You will waste time and money if you do. So, I would just like to leave people with that. Yeah. And you know, if if they want more our website rialtomarketing.com free consult button there, be happy to chat with you and help give you some clarity on where to focus. And we did put that resource together with a free resource from our for the marketing fundamentals, which is that rialtomarketing.com/the-business-of-business.

 

Roy Barker  43:13

Okay, awesome. And yeah, we will be sure and put that in the notes. And so,

 

Tim  43:17

yeah, if people want more information, they can go to our website at, Rialto Marketing.com, that's rialtomarketing.com. Okay, if they want those free resources that I touched on earlier, to help implement those marketing fundamentals we talked about, they can go to rialtomarketing.com/the-business-of-business, okay, if they get stuck, they're hitting roadblocks with their marketing, just hit the get a free console button that is all over our website. Be happy to chat with you for a few minutes and hope you gained some clarity on where to focus your marketing efforts. All right. All right, great, man. Thanks so much. Really appreciate the time.

 

Roy Barker  43:56

Hey you bet. Thanks for the great information. It's always good to things start at the beginning. And then also, it's that whole iceberg thing that all the work is underwater. It's those, you know, the end results are what we see on top, but there's a lot of work that goes into that. So anyway, y'all reach out let's see how Tim can help you and increase your marketing increase your customers and hopefully have a lot of success. So that's gonna do it for another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. I'm your host Roy. Of course you can find us at www.thebusinessofbusiness podcast.com. We are on all the major social media networks as well as the major podcast platforms, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Spotify, we're not a one that you listen to please reach out I'd be glad to get you added and video of this will go up to when it goes live. So until next time, y'all Take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.rialtomarketing.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com