3:24 "Look guys, it is easy to have a great year – we just need to have a great day every day."

4:45 How a student of Chris’s started creating business though he comes from an engineering background, which is an entirely different field.

5:40 “We make sure that everybody applies the six values of the company.”

7:26 “We together learn how to scale, create value, create culture and everything around that small business mindset.”

8:44 Why there is a need for clear communication in businesses.

10:34 How organically Chris’ business started to take shape.

13:19 “We are not dealing with banks.” Chris gives a few insights into alternative financing.

14:47 How Chris and his son sold a house in just two days.

16:05 “33% of the properties in United States are debt free.”

17:46 Lightning Round begins

Coming...

2:03 How Dashama’s running coach taught her about where success really comes from and the importance of meditation and visualization.

4:09 On the significance of books and reading about people through books - “I always thought ‘These people are my friends!’”

4:36 “It took a lot of courage to go the route that I went, to create communities.”

6:20 The courage of Anne Frank and how that inspired Dashama

7:17 “Even as a young person, I always knew that I came here to help humanity.”

8:46 “I can look back now and see how everything was preparing me for who I am today, but there was no person who was shaping that or helping me along at all.”

10:20 How Dashama came to start creating yoga videos and develop a worldwide community.

10:50 “He uploaded the first video and I didn’t do anything for about a year, I didn’t know anything about Youtube.”

12:25 The movement of 30 day challenges

13:10 “The 30 day yoga challenge was to build community, but the first video was really to add value to their lives.”

14:01 “How do I get people to have results? Well, a lot of people are motivated by incentives.”

15:15 “I’m a cheerleader. I’m going to cheer you on even if you’re trying.”

16:30 Yoga tips for humans who spend a lot of time sitting at desks.

18:33 How yoga is capable of transcending religious and national boundaries. - “Yoga is just phenomenally good for your health, beneficial, and positive and it can be done in a context that has no religious affiliation.”

20:42 “If you keep a light heart, anything can be enjoyable if you breathe and relax.”

24:07 “Everyone’s life goal is to be happy.”

24:20 “The happiness comes from inside, it has nothing to do with an external attainment.”

26:45 My Quest for the Best Lighting Round 

1:51 How Nicole’s high school drama teacher taught her to have confidence and find her voice.

2:59 “My favorite part of a medical practice is talking to the patience and talking to the families, and the business side never really interested me.

4:08 “It was actually after discovering her betrayal that I thought back on all the lies, all the misrepresentations she had given through the years that I started to realize that her brain does not function like everybody else’s.”

5:19 “So this nurse, who had embezzled all this money, was a sociopath.”

5:56 Some of the signs that Nicole picked up on over time, and what she did as a response. - “The numbers were the numbers.”

7:13 “Sociopaths believe that they are superior to everyone else.”

9:39 “One in 25 people are on the sociopath spectrum, which means that we run into them everyday, it means that they are in our companies working for us.”

10:21 “People who are on the sociopath spectrum which goes from sociopath to psychopath, manipulator to monster, these people are born with the genes to have no empathy, no conscience.”

11:00 “Although not universal, sociopaths have higher IQ’s and impulse control, or are better able to blend into society wearing a different mask for every group of people they interact with.”

11:11 “Sexopaths are my term for a sociopath or a psychopath with a sex addiction.”

12:16 “Just because someone is a jerk doesn’t mean that they’re a psychopath or a sociopath.”

13:53 “I’m hoping for the empathetic majority to understand there are people unlike us, all around us, and how we interact with them has to be different in order to change our world.”

16:06 People should show their best qualities, not tell about them.

17:02 Why character recommendations are so important in the hiring process.

18:34 “Sociopaths are attracted to positions of power.”

19:15 “In the effort to be polite we’re letting the sociopath take advantage of us.”

21:29 My Quest for the Best Lightning Round 

2:26 Why Kristen was inspired by the work of Marshall McLuhan as a young undergrad.

3:06 “The medium is the message.”

4:16 “I define data visualization as a process for creating data graphics.”

5:04 “The process of becoming visual is something that takes time, and begins with what you really want to understand and communicate out to others with regard to your data.”

6:47 “Visualization is, in fact, an exploratory tool in addition to a presentation tool.”

7:22 “It’s been necessary for me to make data-driven arguments.”

8:31 “It becomes clear what we we should do by looking at the data, and knowing where things are successful and where things went awry.”

8:58 Examples of how data visualization is used to show change over time.

10:52 The story of Samantha Feldman at Gray Scalable

11:30 “We want to think about what the key message is. We want to think about where we are within the industry range and where we’re exceeding it.”

14:25 Things to consider when presenting information visually.

15:26 “What the presenter is saying should match what’s on the screen.”

16:32 Progressive Disclosure: how to walk your audience through what the data means.

17:52 “Whatever your metric of success is is what you want to look at.”

19:51 “A lot of things are interesting to look at it when you have data, but to make them persuasive, we need to be talking the same language as the stakeholders.

20:45 The significance of dashboards and how they interact with an audience

24:11 Scooter usage case study
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27:09 Lightning Round

1:45 How Dan’s father, a Sargent-Major in the U.S. Army who grew up in North Dakotan coal-mining country, inspired him to rise out of one environment and build a life better than the one he knew. 

3:36 “As a child you just experience things.” 

4:36 “How often in your world of work have you ever experienced a situation where someone who didn’t necessarily deserve credit got credit for a project that turned out pretty well?” 

5:10 “How often does the world of work seem a little arbitrary and crazy to you?” - the Answer, too often. 

5:54 “Human beings are, in their own way, arbitrary, crazy people, and as much as we want to believe we are all sentient, logical people and the workplace is a meritocracy, it’s not. The workplace is driven by imperfect beings.” 

7:39 “I was always that person in school who thought first before I spoke.” 

8:40 “There’s so much communication that occurs beneath the surface.” 

10:09 Smartphones make it incredibly difficult to listen and communicate in a deep manner. 

11:20 The majority of the stories in Dan’s are other people’s stories, except for the story of Tony. - “I was absolutely flabbergasted.” 

14:09 Why connecting with people is so important, and how you can be more like Tony and recognize what to pay attention to. 

15:40 “The times when I had been best at reading the room are the times in which I was emotionally disengaged.” 

15:54 “The more emotionally engaged you are, the less you are able to truly read them from an objective standpoint.” 

18:09 The worst hiring mistake that Dan ever made in his life, and why friendships and emotional connection can cause problems at work. 

19:16 Workplace Poker vs. Traditional Business Politics 

19:43 “In Workplace Poker we acknowledge we’re all humans, we’re imperfect.” 

21:41 “People aren’t going to be as transparent with you if you have some degree of power over them.” 

24:00 Case study of Vivic Corps and client distribution among senior brokers, and why Darwinian ethics of feeding off the lower tiers of the business doesn’t help company culture. 

29:41 The importance of likability and why it matters so much in business. - “Men can get farther in their career by being pushy and obnoxious because many people will simply get out of their way.” 

30:32 “There comes a point in every career where being an abrasive hammer doesn’t bring about the same results as it initially produces.” 

31:00 “Likability, charm, connecting with other people – you can still be a driver, someone who drives performances - but if you can do it with a degree of charm and likability you’re going to do it so much better.” 

36:26 Case study of a company with internal challenges, and how Dan was able to come in and get the projects back on track. 

40:39 “You have to want to be likable.” 

42:05 The Lightning Round 

​2:16 How Stacey’s parents insistence on reading encouraged her to love books and to eventually pursue a career in communications, teaching, and writing.

3:21 How a TV restriction allowed her to explore new avenues of life including books, play, and adventure.

4:48 “There were some big lessons I was having to learn behind the scenes about a well-run, functioning business.”

5:13 “Most people don’t create our own company because we want to create a job for ourselves, but we usually want more. We want the freedom and the responsibility to make decisions.”

5:58 “I started paying attention to how I developed business.”

6:25 “I know referrals are like a great way to bring in business, they’re like the holy grail, because everything about them is real.”

7:05 “The idea is that if you want a referral, you have to ask.”

8:34 “When you go asking for someone to give you a referral, they actually can’t, because that’s not how a referral happens. They can give you a lead, and they may or may not enjoy giving you that lead – and most of us don’t, we find it awkward.”

10:18 “Why do we listen to advice that tells us to do something that we are fundamentally not doing, and why are we keeping it going?”

10:50 “You absolutely deserve referrals. The truth is, you’re just not owed them, and there is some work you have to do.”

12:18 “The term ‘referrals’ is so overused that it’s diluted what it actual stands for and what it actually means.”

12:52 “When you think about a referral, it has two things that the other types of referrals don’t have.”

13:45 Referrals require both a personal connection and a need identify.

15:18 How referrals can make the hiring process easier.

16:52 Strategies for successful referrals: a case study, and why language used is so significant in this context.

19:35 “The myth about referrals is that our referral sources are sitting around thinking about us, and they’re not.”

20:58 “We have to recognize that typically when a referral is going to happen, it’s because there has been a triggering event, which means that a conversation has happened, and there is somebody who knows you can solve somebody’s problem.”

22:46 “I think, in general, we just go looking for the easy button in business.”

23:05 “We have to be careful about the outreach we’re going to do to our referral sources.”

25:17 “It’s so much more fun going through a referral process rather than going out and doing all that prospecting and networking and cold calling, but it’s still work.”

27:06 How to build referral touchpoints on a shoestring budget.

28:33 Lightning Round

1:48 The writer who inspired Dan the most when he was growing up.

2:30 “As a kid, I spent a lot of time in libraries and being in libraries gave me the sense that the world was far bigger than the town I grew up in.”

2:43 “The institution of a public library shaped me more than anything else?”

3:13 “I want to do something that I’m curious about.”

4:29 “There have been times when I’ve written a book proposal only to discover that I don’t want to write the book.”

5:16 How Dan came to write the book When.

6:14 “There were all these things that I had in my own work and life that I was approaching in a very sloppy guesswork, patchwork way, and I found that frustrating.”

7:49 Why going to the doctor’s office in the afternoon is more dangerous than going in the morning.”

8:31 “Our brain power does not stay static over the course of the day.”

8:46 “The best time to do something depends on what it is you are doing.”

9:15 The best times of day to exercise according to the goals of the exerciser.

11:12 The Fresh Start Effect: “There are certain dates of the year that researchers call temporal landmarks, they stand out in time the way landmarks stand out in space.”

12:01 “We relegate our imperfect selves to the past, and open up a fresh ledger on our new and better selves.”

13:18 “Time of day accounts for 20% of the variance regarding how people perform on brain-oriented workplace tasks.”

14:53 “Most of us move through the day in three stages: a peak, a trough, a recovery.”

15:24 The best time of day for analytic work is during our peak, for insight work is during our recovery period, and the trough time is better for the administrative stuff.

16:27 The perfect way to plan and implement a hiring process according the time of day.

19:03 How to take morning people and night owls into account when it comes to time-based directive.

20:54 Why structured interview processes are far better than unstructured processes.

23:01 “Diurnal processes are pretty ferocious opponents.”

23:44 “We’ve gotten breaks largely wrong in America.”

24:36 “We need to think of breaks as part of our performance and not a deviation from our performance. Professionals take breaks, amateurs don’t take breaks.”

25:39 “The highest performers take more breaks.”

27:15 “The most effective naps are very short naps: 10-15 minutes tops.”

28:58 The Lightning Round

2:59 How Thomas Edison inspired Perry Marshall to be curious about his environment when he was young, much to the dismay of his parents.

4:29 Perry’s epiphany about the 80/20 principle - “It’s a universal law of cause and effect.”

5:29 “People are using this every single day to figure out what gaps exist in their business.”

6:56 The Invisible Money Finder - “If Starbucks has a thousand people a week who buy a five dollar latte, it’s pretty much guaranteed that one of those people will buy a $2700 espresso machine.”

7:34 “People in large numbers are extremely predictable. If they’re not doing what the formula predicts it means they’re doing something wrong.”

8:49 “The Pareto principle has only often been used as a rearview mirror.”

10:14 How to use the 80/20 principle as a metric to determine what is working fine versus what just isn’t.

11:30 “Everyone’s accustomed to averages.”

12:00 “The most interesting thing is, who are the most capable people in the science class, and how much science can they do.”

12:15 The 80/20 curve

12:59 “Average conceals the extremities.”

14:21 “If I’m selling a million dollars a month, one of my salespeople is going to sell half, one of them is going to sell 2 or 300 thousand, and the other 8 are going to sell the rest.”

15:02 When 20% of your sales people are outselling the other 80%, it’s time to get rid of the 80% and focus time and resources on the top sellers.

16:22 “It’s possible to defy the laws of nature, but look how much effort it takes you to do it.”

16:49 “Everything in business is all about outliers.”

17:02 “The first rule of 80/20 is deciding what you’re not going to do.”

18:21 Racking the shotgun, the story of John the gambler,  - “The way you win more poker games is you need to find people who are going to lose.”

21:35 “Sales and marketing is not a convincing people process, it’s an elimination process.”

22:50 “A buyer is a buyer is a buyer.”

23:42 “Selling is harnessing natural processes to enable what already wants to happen, to already happen.”

25:45 80/20’s are everywhere, it’s just about knowing how to look for them.

28:04 “It’s probable that 3/5/10% of your customers are just bleeding money out of your bank account.”

28:16 “Most people just haven’t been given permission to just get rid of the customers.”

29:43 Why most people don’t actually know how to make a business better.

30:30 “There’s no rule that says you have to take these people’s money.”

32:25 How to fire someone gracefully.

34:37 “Maybe the reason that you’re struggling is that you’re carrying too heavy of a burden.”

34:52 “It is possible to get 70% of the work done with 30% of the people, it requires surgery to that, but it is possible.”

35:50 “Having the wrong person in a position is catastrophic.”

36:06 Lighting Round

2:01 How Jeff’s youth piano teacher instilled a sense of discipline and determination in him.

4:19 “Manipulation is to control or influence a person or situation, to do it cleverly, to do it unfairly. So like persuasion, we are moving people, but we’re moving people out of our own self-interest or our own best interest.”

4:38 “Persuasion is the same, we are causing people to do something, but we’re doing it through reasoning or through argument.”

5:26 The two words that identify whether someone has been manipulated or persuaded.

5:40 On Persuasion “They have adopted my truth, my reasoning for themselves, and they see it in their own self-interest.”

6:53 “When other people are asking and we’re expressing, that’s when we begin to have these good conversations.”

8:41 Why sales isn’t about the product but about solving problems for your customers.

9:19 “Persuasion is leadership.”

9:45 Paraphrasing Zig Ziglar - “If we help enough other people get what they want in life, then we’ll get what we want in life.”

11:39 On social media - “We’ve got seconds here to capture their attention and we have to capture their attention early.”

13:11 “The big part of this is not throwing everything out there at once, but we’re trying to just whet people’s appetite.”

13:51 Have conversations, don’t give monologues.

14:22 “I want them to be so curious that they’re asking me questions.”

15:15 “Use the words 'you' or 'your' extremely early in the conversation.”

17:37 #freethemimosa - “I had to attach that emotion of being told ‘no,’ to a solution of being told ‘yes.”

19:02 Loss aversion vs. prospect theory - “People will respond to what you want them to do more readily if you take $1000 out of their checking account versus promising them that they’ll get a thousand dollars.”

19:50 How to use humor to connect with your audience

22:10 Why Billy Graham was such a phenomenon

23:24 “We believe that we do bring a solution to people.”

24:00 The Lightning Round

2:10 About looking up to Steve Jobs. “He inspired me most with how he speaks.”

3:05 The specialness of the tinkering mindset

3:49 “It was the way that [Jobs] communicated things that I loved so much.”

4:10 “You can’t doubt vision.”

5:20 “Our minds are so complex, we have to understand them because they’re the mechanism by which we run companies, by which we run our lives and make decisions.”

6:06 “It’s very easy to come into this subject of focus with a lot of preconceptions.”

6:37 Common misconceptions about focus and thought processes.

6:42 “Research shows that being interrupted is one of the best things that can happen for us and for our team.”

7:35 Case study of a team of engineers - “Interruption is the process by which collaboration happens.”

9:04 “I think the most important context in regard to focus on a team level is the breakdown of how much of the work that the team does is a) collaborative or b) focused-work.”

10:07 Analysis of news and how it drives focus

12:15 “If you’re doing work that’s focused, find an office where you can focus on that work.”

14:10 “50-60% of my work is focused and 40-50% of it is collaborative.”

14:56 Why it’s important to schedule in focus time for yourself. “It’s how the important stuff gets done.”

15:24 Chris’s focus rituals.

16:39 “You ask a lot of people where they are the most productive and few people say the office.”

17:18 “In any one moment of the day either you’re focused on something or your mind is wandering, you can’t be focused and wandering at the same time.”

17:45 “Most of the time we’re unfocused, we’re unfocused against our will.”

18:45 Why a wandering mind provides the perfect chance for brilliant ideas to form.”

19:13 “When we’re focused, we’re moving our work forward.”

19:44 “Managing our attention is something that we should do because we’re able to achieve a nicer and more deliberate balance of these two modes, once that’s productive, one that’s creative, one that’s about focusing, one that’s about wandering.”

21:47 The peril of focusing all day long.

22:17 “If someone’s connected 100% of the time, they’re going to be focused 100% of the time and no ideas will ever come to them.

23:12 “We’re more focused than we have to be.”

23:44 “We think about our goals 14 times as much when our mind is wandering.”

24:52 “We need to see email differently.”

25:32 “The average office worker checks their email 88 times over the course of a day.”

26:03 Strategies for dealing with email management

27:57 Lightning Round

2:00 Heather recalls how her teachers in school influenced her when she was young, particularly Mrs. Rugg, who inspired Heather’s love of theater.

3:51 How Heather transitioned from being a high school drama teacher to starting her own, and how the experience of 9/11 gave her the courage she needed to strike out on her own.

4:43 “I always had a passion about nutrition and overall wellness.”

6:19 “I believe so deeply in the power of teaching, right alongside coaching.”

8:12 About her journey into entrepreneurship: “I started sharing and that was really the first transition into supporting others in their business.”

8:53 How a “dark night of the soul” led to Heather coming into contact with Dr. Elaine Aron and her research on what it means to be a highly sensitive person.

9:18 “It didn’t surprise me that I was highly sensitive, but it did surprise me how highly sensitive I was.”

9:35 “A person who is highly sensitive is someone who is born into the world with a nervous system that is wired differently than someone who is not highly sensitive, and through that different wiring, you interpret stimulation at a much higher level or degree than someone who is not highly sensitive.”

10:09 “One of the aspects of being highly sensitive is that you can become overwhelmed quite easily.”

10:53 About assessing a group of woman with Dr. Aron’s study “Not one woman in that room wanted to be highly sensitive.”

11:32 “We have to learn how to embrace this and how to really use it to our benefit and our advantage than having it work against us.”

11:12 The Royal Advisors: “We are here, we are brought here to this planet to do well, to be able to create balance to those who are not highly sensitive.”

14:01 “There are 20% of us who are born into the world highly sensitive.”

14:12 The HSE Coping Mechanism - “I’m a recovering pusher.”

15:01 “The coping mechanisms are really about how those of use who are highly sensitive respond to anxiety.”

16:13 HSE coping mechanisms: pushing vs. hiding.

17:40 How a HSE dentist overcome her tendency towards combo plattering, and what Heather did to help her.

20:51 My Quest for the Best Lightning “Flash” Round

3:10 Readers of Caroline’s newest book are entitled to new worksheets for the rest of their lives.

3:41 “I believe I am born competitive, my top Gallup strength is competitor.”

5:40 “Half of your happiness is hard wired, and the other half is completely up to you.”

6:13 “The environment unlocks and refines certain qualities that you can turn into the best possible strengths you have.”

7:22 How Angela Duckworth first stumbled across the idea of grit.

7:49 “You can have too soft a life where you don’t discover what you’re made of because you’re constantly being rescued from your own misdeeds.”

8:23 “We all need to have 3-7 major setbacks that cause us to challenge our belief system and ask ourselves ‘Is this really the direction I want to go in?”

9:49 “Instead of seeking excellence we have a lot of mediocrity.”

10:28 The relationship between student-athletes and grit

10:54 “If you don’t show up the boat doesn’t go out on the water.”

11:16 “In order to get to the fruit at the end of the vine at the end of the growing season to find out what your made of and what your best possible outcome is, you’ll have to eat bitter first.”

13:02 The psychology of the near miss - “For many people it wasn’t their appetite to go back and do more.”

13:33 “If you don’t grow up with that kind of experience in your life, woe to you.”

13:57 “How do we hire people who’ve never held themselves to high standards?”

16:08 On Millennials - “A lot of them are chasing likes and not seeking respect.”

18:12 “I bring research and evidence-based tools to people so that they can understand that smart goals are just the tip of the iceberg.”

19:20 The two aspects of goal-setting theory

20:00 “If I know people’s top 5-7 strengths, I can help people use those strengths in the proper context so they can maximize their chances of achieving their goals.”

21:55 “I’ve made it my mission to always turn around and pull people with me.”

24:33 Why smart goals just don’t take it far enough - “The best performance doesn’t come from only setting realistic goals.”

26:00 Case study of how Caroline helped a team use their measurable goals to determine new learning and performance goals.

30:03 “Optimal relationships where there’s flourishing, where work teams are doing better and better, they have a ration of about 5 positive interactions or facial expressions or pats on the back or 5 positive to 1 negative tend to predict work teams and organizations and marriages where you have optimal amounts of flourishing.”

33:45 Why it’s important for a leader to have a sense of humor.

35:10 “People who have humor, or have the ability to lighten the mood or make other people laugh are basically saying ‘it’s not all about me.’”

38:43 The problem with stupid grit.

39:04  “People who don’t give up on old goals that live past their usefulness have what I call stupid grit.”

42:19 The research surrounding lost possible selves

2:42 How Greg was inspired by Gandhi’s life and approach when Greg was young. - “He had the discipline to be present for an hour a day to listen, to be there, and just be all there for his grandson.”

4:04 “It’s about discernment, and to follow through on that discernment.”

6:04 “He was operating as an essentialist.”

6:52 “He was removing from his life all sorts of clutter, and then he’s using the space that remains to keep designing a system of life to help him achieve what he sees as being most important.”

7:07 “Explore, eliminate, and execute.”

7:53 “The basis of entrepreneurship is essentially this: the freedom to do the things you want to do, and therefore have the money that you need to have to be financially independent, and to be able to pursue the things that are important to you.”

9:25 “Entrepreneurs end up feeling stretched too thin at work.”

10:49 “There’s a great big con that’s been given to entrepreneurs, it’s well-intended I’m sure, but it’s still there.”

10:54 “The undisciplined pursuit of more does not produce the freedom, the joy, the results that people are promised.”

11:41 “The highest priority is creating space to think, plan, to design.

12:38 How to prioritize your to-do list.

13:11 “If you’ve got three important things done in your business today, would you feel good about the day?”

14:50 “Why don’t people focus on the things that are really essential?”

16:45 Bill Ringle goes through the three steps of Essentialism.

20:30 How to use your phone settings to monitor how much time you spend on different apps and time wasters.

22:49 “If you ask these questions it reveals to you what your values are based on what you’re trying to achieve.”

23:48 How to approach execution - “When I feel highly motivated to do a thing, I do that thing.”

25:36 “What we need to do is create a new system, create a system that works in your favor.”

25:51 “The system will help you make the trade-offs you need to make on the days you don’t want to make them.”

29:19 “Use the discipline to make the system rather than using the discipline to make the thing happen.”

31:28 The 90% rule

32:19 “The essential intent is identifying the highest priority intent over a multi-year period.”

34:37 Why writing books back to back isn’t always a great idea.

37:49 How a change of intent led Greg to meet and work with Steve Harvey

1:41 How Jacob’s father, a Holocaust survivor, became an entrepreneur and inspired Jacob when he was young. – “He was extremely charitable.”

3:53 Jacob’s father’s 10 commandments of good business – “Never confuse efforts for results.”

4:27 “Know what you stand for and know what you won’t stand for.”

4:57 “I realized I wasn’t really in the spice business, I was in the people business.”

5:11 “Building your organization is all about bringing in the right people.”

6:13 “Family businesses are notorious for many different things, among them it’s very difficult to keep the second or third generation going.”

6:52 How the financial crash of 2008 affected Jacob’s business prospects.

7:38 ‘If I suggest something and people aren’t interested, I do it myself.”

8:01 “I think it’s a well-known thing that people are continually distracted. Technology is a huge distractor if we don’t create boundaries to our distractions.”

10:31 How Jacob was able to coach a woman whose distractibility was getting in the way of her effectiveness.

10:56 “She needed to learn to spend a good part of her day being proactive about things rather than reactive.”

12:14 “You want your people to stretch, you want people to think outside of the box.”

12:30 “If you encourage mitigated risk, and you encourage people to make that leap and really think outside of the box, and be ambitious, you never know.”

13:14 The 3 part evaluation Jacob uses with his clients.

13:49 “Oftentimes entrepreneurs want to be the voice around the table.”

14:42 My Quest for the Best Lightning Round

15:29 “I’m very focused on having impact.”

19:39 “When I talk about prosperity and the definition of prosperity, it’s about character.”

2:03 How Fabi’s dad inspired her when she was growing up.

3:03 “I moved to Charlotte at 17 and started my life, and that was a very independent journey.”

4:29 “I love having these amazing clients and people who come into our business and our circle that have great stories to tell and those stories are stories that can really impact and build platforms for other people.”

5:06 “The building of the platform comes when they are able to start establishing a tribe, an audience, and they are able to share information through books or their programs.”

5:30 “That’s what I call building a platform, it’s taking what you know and being able to put it out there in a much bigger, better way.”

7:15 How a cancer survivor used a book to build her platform.

8:15 “It needed to stand apart. It needed to be able to speak more directly to the audiences that it was speaking to. So in order to do that, you need to have a really good marketable book.”

8:59 “They’re not mass market books, they could become that way, but that’s not our goal.”

11:13 How a “yes” when it should’ve been a “no” during a business deal ended very badly for one SparkPublications author, and how she was able to eventually turn all of that around for good.

13:32 “Sometimes you think you have a great message and sometimes you think you have a good audience to speak to, but you’re not really clear on what they want from you.”

14:26 “We establish peer reviews for our authors.”

15:33 “Someone who thinks they can do a book for $1200 is not someone with the same focus as what we’re looking for.”

15:48 “We really focus on the success of the book, and the success of the goal that the client has for the book.”

16:59 “I could not have gone through this just to keep all this great knowledge to myself.”

18:40 What inspired Fabi to write the book. - “I came into this world as an F word.”

19:24 “I became obsessed with finding fabulous F words for everything.”

19:58 “Fog is just that blanket of overwhelm that’s caused by a lack of knowledge or outright fear.”

21:23 “What do your desk and counter space look like?”

21:52 Lightning Round

2:01 Michael tells about his experiences in Japan under Moria-san, who opened up doors for him when he was creating a new branch of his business.

2:46 Michael recounts his time growing up with his cousin Sam, and how they eventually began to work together. - “We created a bond really quickly, and we’ve been like brothers ever since.”

3:55 “We wanted to create a way to really help others, but do it online.”

6:11 “I think anyone can be a consultant if they have a few things. The first and most important is the ability to provide value to the client you’re consulting.”

6:42 Why it’s important to see your consultancy business as an actual business.

7:26 “The best consultants are people who ask questions consistently.”

9:21 “Instead of focusing on the process or the methodology to gather data…he should shift it to focusing on what the buyer actually wants.”

11:40 “One of the prerequisites to reaching a higher level of success is the desire to continue learning.”

13:32 Why it’s so important for new consultants to put in place the right fundamentals when they’re starting out.

15:10 “What you really want to get focused on is #1 identifying who your ideal clients are.”

15:54 “If I were to encourage people to do one thing and one thing alone, it would be to have conversations.”

18:22 How one of Michael’s clients took the idea of having conversations to the next level.

19:57 “If [new consultants] don’t have the fundamentals into their business, it doesn’t matter what tools or technology they use, it doesn’t really make an impact.”

22:38 “There’s a lot of things we can do that might seem a little more uncomfortable, because it’s very easy to hide behind technology, but it’s infinitely more effective because it gets you in front of your ideal client in a more direct way.”

23:57 “If your goal is to bring in more business now, writing an article and putting it on your site rather then finding the time to get in front of your ideal clients, that’s not good prioritization.”

24:53 The Lightning Round

2:54 “I was very fortunate to have great parents who lived their lives like very much what I would refer to as a go-giver, people who always look to give value to others.”

3:35 “People always show up at just the right times. I always took it upon myself to give value to them in whatever way I could and really try to make it worth their while. I think when you do that you attract people into your life.”

4:51 Why asking someone to mentor you out of the blue doesn’t exactly work.

5:14 “You can reach out to anyone you like, regardless of the medium, and just let them know you’re an admirer of theirs.”

6:53 Why a handwritten note to thank someone for their help, especially if they’re in a position of authority or thought leadership, is so important.

7:35 “Value is always in the eyes of the beholder.”

8:06 “A mentor-protegé relationship is just that, it takes time to build.

8:43 “This is really the key: shifting your focus from getting to giving.”

9:31 “Nobody is going to buy from you because you have a quota to meet.”

9:48 “They’re going to buy from you only because they believe they will be better off by doing so than by not doing so.”

11:12 “Value is the relative worth or desirability of something.”

12:17 “Selling is actually discovering what the other person wants, needs, or desires and and helping them to get it.”

14:03 Case study of two terrible salespeople who were incapable of giving the other what they wanted or needed.

14:23 “The first thing we need to do in any business or situation is to master our emotions.”

19:18 “That’s how we live our lives, we come from different belief systems, we see the world from different points of view.”

19:53 “Let go of having to be right.”

20:58 “Bias means that when you come across some new information that confirms your already held beliefs or biases, you accept them. But if they differ from your accepted beliefs, you ignore them.”

22:58 “Great influencers don’t push, they pull.”

23:42 Why it’s better to seek commitment than compliance.

24:14 “What we also want to do is understand our strengths.”

25:06 Why it’s common for so many salespeople and entrepreneurs to undercharge.

25:33 “When you sell on price, you’re a commodity, when you sell on value, you're a resource.”

26:46 Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value - “They tend to come down to 5 Elements of value. Those 5 are excellence, consistency, attention, appreciation, and empathy.”

28:29 Lightning Round

30:37 “I think the biggest misconception about influence is that you get it by pushing your will onto others, and you don’t. It goes back to attraction.”

1:55 How Anne’s parents, and her early life experiences with the opera, were able to show her the importance of subscribers at a young age.

3:32 “There was a real difference for me between the people who were buying a ticket for one show and the people who were subscribing to the series.”

4:09 “It wasn’t just the revenue part, but also what that meant when somebody showed up and said I’m going to subscribe to your season, even though I haven’t seen a season yet.”

5:17 “The fundamental shift that I think we need to make when we think about selling things one off versus selling a subscription to something is this: a subscription sale isn’t a one time transaction, it’s actually the beginning of a relationship.”

5:41 “How do I create a relationship with this person that will deliver value to them, and deliver value to the business.”

6:45 “Every single business model you can find someone who has a subscription play on it.”

7:35 The Adobe model for subscriptions and how it changed the game.

9:27 “If you spend the time and the money acquiring these subscription customers at $30 or $60, and they don’t renew for a year, or they quit after a year, if you have not continued to make them happy, you are losing money on that new customer.”

10:48 On the media response - “Financial people weren't accustomed to this, they don’t know how to look at those metrics at first.” 

11:32 On adopting the subscription model: “It takes a little patience and persistence and tinkering to figure out.”

13:33 How a recruiter successfully shifted the services of his company to a subscription model.

16:50 “We picture a funnel and we know how they work, they’re one way.”

17:18 “If your business is based on a subscription model, then you’re really just getting started at the moment someone becomes a subscriber.”

18:35 “A subscription is a vehicle for an ongoing relationship with your customers, and everything you do with your customer from that point forward is part of their experience.”

19:36 How CDBaby modeled exemplary customer engagement in a small way.

21:21 “Another thing we need to think about is trust.”

22:01 An example of a bad customer engagement experience Anne dealt with during a stolen credit card situation.

24:04 “If you’re not finding value within 90 days, the chances that you’re going to renew are really really small.”

24:26 “The best time to reach out and help people start using things is as early as possible.”

25:21 Why companies should find ways to celebrate their customers’ success with the product.

26:54 “Businesses are so quick to send out emails announcing their own successes.”

27:20 Lightning Round

30:12 How to find and define superusers - "A superuser is that person who finds so much value in your business that they find it important to share it with others."

2:06 How Alvin Toffler inspired Ron when he was a boy. “He was always an intellectual hero of mine.”

3:06 “There’s a limit to the absorption rate people can adapt.”

3:40 “More than half of [leaders] fail within their first 18 months.”

5:03 “The organizational obstacles put in people’s way on their way towards broader leadership are pervasive, it’s a wonder any of them succeed.”

6:46 “What leader or HR department isn’t saying we aren’t getting enough talent in?”

7:30 On the importance of interviews and resumes: “You have a recipe, you have a formula, we’d like you to repeat your success here…without understanding the context.”

9:07 “You can’t be such an outsider or such an abrasive force that the organization doesn’t trust you.”

9:14 “Nobody knows how bad things are more than the people who are already there.”

10:23 “Most leaders don’t want to do diagnostics.”

13:06 Case study of a problem client, who suddenly had a change of heart and decided to go in a more cohesive direction. - “They co-authored their future together in a way that built trust.”

16:13 Why it’s crucial for top leaders to be vulnerable and make changes.

16:46 On leaders in the spotlight - “They need to behave as if everything they’re doing and saying has a megaphone strapped to their mouth 24/7.”

18:02 On Leading Out Loud - “Never assume people are clairvoyant and reading your mind.”

18:41 The essentials of the Rise to Power diagram - “As you plan and navigate your ascent, there are predictable phases.”

22:16 “We all come readily wired to want our individuality noticed.”

24:19 “Any leader who wants to do it well will suffer.”

25:06 “Every executive I’ve ever consulted with has a moment of buyer’s remorse.”

26:33 The value of honest feedback and calibration

27:55 Lightning Round

36:20 "We all have sources of power we don't realize."

1:57 How Robbie’s dad inspired her when she was growing up. “After about 25 years at being at the law firm, he retired from the law firm and started a venture capital firm.”

5:01 How Robbie took the risk to start her own consulting company - “I said I’m going to just give this a try.”

6:46 Robbie recounts her experiences working with the Netflix acquisitions team.

7:39 “It was a very big driver in the direction of my business because I fell in love with [Netflix’s] business model and I fell in love with the very rigorous, analytical approach to what I call a membership economy.”

8:41 “I loved the way [Netflix] focused on solving one problem for their audience.”

9:00 “It’s so easy for business people to get distracted by shiny pennies.”

10:33 On the Membership Economy “If you depend on having relationships with your customers to be successful, then this is important to you.”

11:06 “If you care about the relationships you’re building with your customers, then the membership economy is something worth considering because it’s all about taking a long term focus on your members’ needs as a guide to building your business.”

12:13 “If you grab 3 people who all love LinkedIn, they probably all use it in very different ways, but all of us use it to advance our careers.”

14:09 Robbie describes the “palette for painting a new business model.”

16:42 The importance of going from transactional to relational, and how a subscription/membership model can help make that a possibility.

18:55 “What if the person I cared about most in the world were my customer, how would I structure the work for that person to give them the best value?”

22:16 “If you focus on knowing who your customers really are and serving them for the long term, your customers tell you what they want next.”

22:48 Weeding out bad prospects becomes easier when you know your customer base.

23:59 “You have to know who your best customer is, and be able to measure customer goodness.”

26:49 “Why are you successful when so many people fail?”

28:51 “Starting to create content and experiences for the people who want to know what you know is a really great way to extend your impact and also, in many cases, create passive income.”

30:15 Tips for gaining credibility as an expert in your niche. - “You want to start with the lowest hanging fruit.”

31:59 Steps toward making a contribution in the world and positioning yourself as a thought leader.

32:56 The Lightning Round