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

2:14 How his grandfather inspired Dave to have a strong work ethic.

3:55 “I came from a family of non-sales people.”

5:26 The importance of putting your own personality into sales.

5:39 How Dave started working with David Sandler.

7:09 Characteristics of entrepreneurs who need outside help

8:04 Why it’s essential for a team of sales people to use the same sales language.

9:54 How to recognize when you have a blind spot and what to do about it.

10:30 “Being an entrepreneur, it’s a lonely business.”

11:10 “People will work harder for themselves than they will for you.”

12:06 “In order to link the corporate goal to the personal goal, you should sit down and have a conversation that would look something like this.”

14:09 “Do you know the top 2 or 3 goals for the people who work for you? If not, you have a blind spot.”

15:21 “If you’re working on the business it’s really tough to work on the business.”

15:45 How having best practices allows your employees to mimic success.

17:06 “If someone’s stepping into that role, i want them to produce at the same level as the person who’s leaving that role.”

17:17 The 6 “P’s” in the excellence process.

18:19 “Where I want to be then affects where the company will be.”

22:12 How to set up your company’s practices so that if the leader or a pivotal employee leaves, the company isn’t paralyzed.

24:31 The Lightning Round

1:52 What David is excited about in his life and business right now.

2:10 “One of the benefits of running a small business is that the practice serves you if you do it right.”

3:28 How having a book in accessible spaces leads to an influx of inquiries.

4:15 What it means to have a learning conversation

5:21 “In order for me to remain a thought leader in consulting I have to talk to people and understand what they’re doing.”

5:58 Why David is interested in how people have failed.

6:51”You have to be willing to admit you don’t know, and you need to have a genuine desire to learn.”

7:44 “The obstacles are all internal.”

8:54 Why if you’re targeting smaller company prospects, you need to make sure they have big issues.

11:14 “The place to start is not by defining your target.”

11:20 “The number one attribute of a right prospect is that you can reach them.”

12:32 Why you need to reach the influencer and the decision maker and make A1 relationships.

13:47 Trade associations and the 5 marketing musts in consulting.

14:40 How David helped a small firm explode their business through trade associations.

16:14 Why trade media is still relevant.

17:18 Ways to measure the success of your outreach.”

18:08 “There’s a difference between goals and behaviors.”

20:10 “Most people absolutely suck at asking for referrals.”

21:53 “People who are interesting are people who are doing things.”

22:53 “Consulting is not about you.”

24:29 How you interact with people everyday, how you respond, affects your business.

25:49 “We are wired to think about ourselves.”

25:59 Lightning Round

3:04 Eric discusses what it was like meeting Bob Perkins at YoungLife.

3:19 “Great leaders lead other leaders.”

4:01 “If you want to hire and keep great people then you’re going to have to be prepared to invest in a few and have that team be the core that impacts the many.”

6:08 Why “A Players” can sometimes be difficult.

7:48 “I think there’s a difference between disagreeable [people] and people who are behaving poorly because they’re not getting the attention, and not getting treated the way that they need.”

9:25 Why leaders should always have a Plan B when it comes to dealing with toxic A Players.

12:02 “You’ve got to get your whole team involved in recruiting.”

14:25 What it means to have an A Player scorecard, and what the process means for team buy-in of new recruits.

14:51 How asking questions can create a whole new level of employee engagement.

16:23 “We get better at things that we practice.”

18:03 Tested tips and tricks for putting interviewees at ease before and during an interview.

18:08 “The most important interview question is the follow-up question.”

20:54 “What you’re doing as an interviewer is working to ensure a good mutual fit: good for the company, and good for the person.”

22:45 “There are not that many great leaders out there, so if you invest in your own ability as a leader, if you get better as a leader, then you’ll attract other leaders.”

23:25 “I’m committed to finding and hiring the best people that I can.”

23:57 What inspired Eric to write the book How to Hire A-Players.

26:54 “Over the last 6 months the talent markets have gotten hotter, making it harder to find and hire the best.”

27:35 What Eric does to stay productive and on track. 

1:38 Campbell’s journey from corporate attorney to business decision-maker and consultant to founder of Small Business Trends.

4:07 [On curating content in the web’s earlier days] – “We would follow our website statistics and see which articles were most popular. We would see which articles were getting linked to by others, just which ones were getting the attention, and from there we were able to do more of the things that were really popular.”

5:08 [On reacting to customer feedback] – “Like any magazine we get communications from readers and we act on that.”

5:47 The different types of content, personalities, and media Campbell hosts on her podcast.

6:37 “We like an eclectic mix of good information whether it’s on technology, or human resources, management, marketing, whatever it is, as long as it’s of interest to small businesses.”

7:08 “People are interested in actionable kinds of advice rather than long essays that may be real thought pieces, I mean there’s a place for those, but we need to have a steady diet of good actionable tips.”

7:52 “A lot of our advice applies whether you are a sole proprietor, or if you have a staff of 5,10, 50 people working in the business. We just react to ‘What do people say is the most important to them?’”

8:22 How tracking private email shares can indicate the success of published content.

9:25 [On SBT’s most popular content] “Our perennial favorites are the startup failure statistics, they get quoted a lot…People are just trying to make sure that they don’t become a statistic.”

10:10 [On SBT’s popular 1 page marketing plan] “People are looking for something that doesn’t overwhelm them, and when you think about your typical small business owner – well think about yourself, I think about myself – I have so many things coming at me in a day’s time I don’t have big blocks of time to sit down and write a lengthy marketing plan.”

11:15 “We want help. We look for aids and assistance. But it’s gotta be stuff that we can deal with quickly, because we don’t have a lot of time.”

12:25 [On the inspiration for Visual Marketing] “We’re very busy, our brains our fried from all of the other things we have to worry about and get done in a day. Even if we have some outside marketing help, we’re rolling up our sleeves and helping our outside marketing agency or consultant. And we have to think up new ideas and that’s very tough.”

12:50 Campbell’s technique for quick idea formulation.

13:20 [What the book is about] “It’s 99 examples that you can use of low-cost creative marketing to pull ideas and hopefully trigger some ideas of something you can apply in your own business.”

13:55 “With the explosion of blogs today, so many small business, and in particular those that sell B2B to other small business, have started their own blogs. And while getting information and advice was useful, one thing that so many of them were looking for is a way to also get visibility for their own blog, for their own thoughts, and to be able to share with the world what they are doing.”

14:24 “One of the very powerful things that we learned was that we could become more popular if we helped our readers become better known.”

15:01 “While we want to give you information and resources as a reader, we know that it’s also key for you as a small business owner – perhaps you’re a consultant, account, or some sort of professional, head of your own marketing agency – you need to establish your own thought leadership, and to be able to get out there and let the world know what you’re doing.”

16:00 The story of BIzSugar.com and what it does for small business owners.

17:57 [On BizSugar’s content] – “We keep the site very focused on small business, we don’t allow anything off topic in there. If you are really into sports or entertainment, there are plenty of sites for that. BizSugar is not one of them. And it’s because we keep it so focused that it’s a useful resource.”

19:35 “We’re open and we relish serving even the smallest of small business, or even if you think your business is a mundane kind of business, there’s probably a place for it to be mentioned in some way. We always look for the unique, what’s special about a business. I think every business has something special – I don’t care how small, where you’re located, there’s something special in your business, and if we can spot that, we love to talk about it.”

20:45 On how Small Business Trends is able to track changes and trends in the market, especially with emerging technology. 

1:22 [On what it means to be a positioning expert] “[A positioning expert/consultant is the one who finds] in a business the big, sexy idea of what that business should be about. The thing that people are going to talk about, the differentiated point…and bring that to the fore of the business  so it comes through loud and clear.”

2:14 The story of Bill Treasurer, aka Captain Inferno, and his career evolution from stunt performer with a fear of heights to management consultant to courage builder.

4:32 [On Bill Treasurer’s Big Sexy Idea] “All of Bill’s workshops, all of his keynotes, all of his consulting, all of his material started to revolve around ways of driving fear out of the workplace.”

6:00 Levy describes his early days in the publishing field.

6:55 “The interesting thing in the field I came from, the books I had were identical to the books my competitors had, and identical to the ones my customers had…I had to bring ways of making my product stand out from other people’s products.”

7:57 “After I left the book field, I just took that knowledge of how to sum up what the story was behind something, and whether it should be sold or not, with me.”

8:13 “So it’s like, here’s your compelling idea, here’s what you need to go to market with it.”

8:52 How spotting a trend and taking a risk in the publishing industry helped Mark win over one of his best clients.

10:15 [On taking the leap from publishing to his current career] “I remember that someone hired me to write a book with him, and that gave me the courage to jettison this career…I didn’t leave my work to go to nothing, I had one big client.”

12:04 How attending conferences, and speaking at conferences, helped Mark to jumpstart his “point of differentiation” consulting business.

12:46 “What’s your big idea? And how do you write about this big idea?”

13:19 [Common obstacles and blind spots] – “When people come to me they often think they want to be differentiated, they think they want to stand out, but they don’t really. In order to stand out, you have to have a very specific message, but it has to be for a very specific audience. People are often scared to choose who it is they’re speaking to.”

14:30 “You have to talk to an audience in such a clear way about their problems and their vision and their worldview, and you have to talk about it with such precision. You can’t use the same language and the same ideas for everyone that you’re speaking to. It’s just not going to resonate.”

14:40 [On narrowing your focus] “It seems counterintuitive, but again, because you can’t reach everyone…you just have to be accepting that way to success is too narrow rather than to expand.”

16:11 How Mark helped Sales Training Consultant Lisa Earl McCloud narrow her focus and harness the power of her big idea to have more success in her field.

18:19 “You have to get narrower if you want to get bigger.”

19:16 Mark explains the benefits of targeting subgroups within larger groups.

19:55 [Paraphrasing Jerry Garcia] “The Grateful Dead is like licorice, now some people out there hate licorice, but the people who love licorice, really love licorice. So you find the people who really love licorice, and give them licorice.”

20:54 [On Why People Hire Mark] – “If people knew what their big sexy idea was, they would already be using it. They wouldn’t need to hire me.”

21:38 “[On finding the big sexy idea] –  “I instantly assume that whatever their directly saying is not working to the extent that it should be. So what I need to do when I’m working with them is I question them from such a variety of angles…I try to take backdoor routes to get them to be more honest about what they’re actually saying.”

22:38 The one question Mark asks people to get them to realize their true focus.

24:20 [On why facts are more compelling than hyperbole] “I say to them, ‘Look, I believe your service is remarkable, you even use the word remarkable, what would I see if I watched you delivering this remarkable service? What would I actually see you doing.”

26:57 [On spotting trends in your own business] “I didn’t come up with a claim and find ways of justifying it. I dispassionately looked over my business and asked what are all the ways I’m helping customers?”

28:08 How Mark’s book Accidental Genius helps readers use free writing to take off the limits of their thinking.

30:26 [On the extensive reach of Accidental Genius] “I can’t be everywhere in the world, but the book gets to places I don’t know about and acts as an emissary for me.”

31:01 How Mark uses free writing to stay productive in the midst of a busy schedule.

33:55 [On the importance of varying your inputs and also being immersed in your field] – “It’s very hard to create in a vacuum.”

1:12 How Figliuolo’s experiences at WestPoint launched him into a career in leadership.

2:52 “I think the biggest realization in terms of people leadership is getting to know people as individuals and treating them that way.”

3:23 “To lead [people] effectively you couldn’t treat them like a cog in the machine, you needed to understand who they were, what motivated them, who inspired them in order to get the best out of them.”

4:47 “I say to them, ‘Tell me what you’re spending your time on,’ and invariably a lot of that time is spent in meetings, on email, on powerpoint, or in excel. The question I then ask is, ‘Help me understand how replying to e-mails and clearing out your inbox is more important and more impactful than sitting down with a member of your team for ten minutes or fifteen minutes trying to figure out what they’re working on or what they care about.”

5:50 [On the biggest myths in leadership] – “We confuse management and leadership.”

6:22 [Paraphrasing Admiral Grace Mary Hopper] – “You manage things and you lead people.”

7:07 “If you didn’t understand your people and you burn them out in the process and your people felt like you didn’t care about them as you got all these things done and managed well, I would think that you’re not really a good leader, you’re a poor one.”

7:24 “The best leaders I know are the ones who do both. To be a great leader you also have to be a really good manager.”

8:08 The importance of giving people room to make mistakes, and also to stand up for them.

9:20 [On Figliuolo’s Ideal Client] – “Most of our clients tend to be large corporations, Fortune 1000’s types of organizations, because we spend a lot of time with their executives as well as their learning development professionals.”

10:06 [On problem-solving communication issues] – “We tend to go in and teach people a method for being clearer, being more succinct, and being more impactful.”

11:00 [On decision-making issues] – “We all see the analysis paralysis which can grip an organization, and we help them understand how they can make decisions more quickly, how can they reduce the risk in the decisions they’re making, and how can they break that gridlock.”

11:45 “The reason I built the course was: I was seeing a lot of folks who were spending more time managing than they were leading, and I was seeing some confusion around that. I was seeing folks miss major aspects of leadership, which were causing major problems.”

12:55 What leaders did to deepen trust and improve communications at a Fortune 100 company.

13:05 “When people really understood a lot better what drove the other members of the team, you could see the connections happening in the classroom.”

14:30 [On leadership skills] – “One thing that I see as a need is being able to let go and give people space.”

15:17 “As companies grow, we might outgrow our leaders. And the very mature organizations I’ve seen and the successful ones I’ve seen have a recognition of: we need that next level of talent and how do we get there?”

16:05 “I think the role of that senior executive is really setting that direction first and foremost, because the pressing needs of the daily operations tend to pull us down and we focus on the minutiae in front of us.”

16:55 “You have plenty of people on your team who can solve those day to operational issues, but you have very few people on your team who are doing that longer range look at where you’re taking the organization.”

17:36 “One of the reasons we don’t have balance in our work or in our lives is that we don’t set those boundaries, we don’t think about them. Or even if we do think about them we don’t always articulate them to the people around us and share what those boundaries are.”

20:09 [On the Leadership Maxim] – “It’s that individuals responsibility to spend that time reflecting and being introspective on what is important.”

20:55 Why it’s important for employees to talk to leaders to ascertain how to be better aligned with the company’s goals, and why leaders should create space for these conversations to happen.

21:45 “If you don’t know what motivates and inspires your people, it’s really hard to motivate and inspire them.”

22:39 “Once you understand what that person wants, you’re better able to get that higher performance out of them, because you have an understanding of what’s important to them.”

23:08 [Challenges of owning your own company] – “You are fully responsible for the success or failure of your organization as an entrepreneur. I like to say, ‘If I don’t sell, I don’t eat.’”

23:50 [On benefits of owning your own company] – “When your organization is extremely successful, you know it’s because of all of your hard work, and there’s a direct correlation between the input and the output of the organization.”

24:31 [On letting go] – “If I send one of these senior people out, I need to be comfortable that they’re going to conduct the training in a manner that’s most effective for them.”

26:15 Figliuolo’s path from part time consultant to full time entrepreneur.

28:09 How Figliuolo is inspired by his clients.

29:02 “We get to ask ourselves, ‘Is what we’re building and delivering meeting the needs, meeting the latest challenges of our clients?’”

30:23 “We’re always trying to make that what we’re delivering is going to help the organization at a broader level.”

31:00 What Figliuolo looks at to gauge progress in his organization.

1:23 Stanier describes how his high school peers’ teenage angst inspired him to begin coaching.

1:51 “The typical thing was we’d go out dancing, or something like that, and on the drive home I’d be sort of listening to somebody in the car…I remember feeling right there at the time going ‘you know what? I am obviously ok with this whole listening thing.”

2:34 “When I went to university one of the things I did was I took a telephone crisis counseling course, so effectively a suicide hotline for teens, and that was my first kind of formal training in this area. So I had a sense of how you might respond when somebody’s struggling.”

3:28 [On transitioning from coaching to training] – “But of course these days I actually don’t do very much coaching anymore myself. My real focus is training managers and leaders to be more effective coaches in their day to day working lives.”

4:20 [On the negative connotations of coaching] – “If you’re getting coaching you’re probably broken, you know you’ve screwed up somehow. You know coaching, it’s just a code word for ‘We’re going to fire you in three months time but we’re going to do this token thing before we get to the year 2000.”

4:37 Stanier discusses Daniel Goleman’s HBR article about Emotional Intelligence: Leadership Against Results.

5:00 “You can identify coaching as a style of leadership but [Goleman] said you know even though it really has a great job driving engagement and driving kind of cultural change and driving even bottom-line success, it’s perceived as taking too long and too much effort for it to be a much used leadership style.”

5:24 [On the importance of engaging employees with meaningful work] “What I’ve noticed over the time is that the focus now has turned into: ‘We know that we need to keep our people focused on the stuff that matters and we need to keep people engaged so that they’re doing work that’s meaningful for them.”

6:40 [On John Whitmore’s view of Coaching] – “Its not you unlocking a potential but helping others unlock their own potential and then [Whitmore] says it’s about helping people learn rather than teaching them.”

6:53 Stanier discusses the key distinction between teaching someone and helping them learn.

7:10 [On what really helps people learn] – “Helping them learn is when you help them make their own connections and that’s when new neural pathways kind of happen in the brain that’s when people with potential and capacity and self-sufficiency all increase.”

8:11 Stanier’s tools for leaders in helping their employees get to the next level.

8:19 [On the benefits of offering curiosity] “[The tool] to make your life more effective is to give a little less advice and to offer up a little more curiosity.”

9:07 [The focus question] – “The focus question acknowledges that in many organizations people are very busily, very creatively, with best of intentions coming up with answers to solve the wrong problems.”

9:26: “The focus question is about helping slow down the rush to action and actually spend time trying to figure out what the real challenge might be. So what is that question? Well, it’s pretty simple: it’s simply to ask, ‘What’s the real challenge here for you?”

10:43 [On persisting with the focus question] – “If we stick with that question for a little bit you’re going to find you’ve got better focus on what really needs to be done, but you’re also going to walk away with some insight as to how you’re part of the issue and what you need to do to overcome your own challenges so that you can better answer this problem that’s in front of you.”

12:05 How asking your people the right questions can help them change their behavior.

12:37 [On the benefits of employees taking ownership] – “It’s a very sweet thing when, actually, the person you’re working with understands what’s happening as well as you do because it makes the system even more effective and more efficient.”

13:08 Stanier discusses his company Box of Crayons and its role in managerial training.

13:42: [On why most training programs don’t work] – “Most training programs don’t think hard enough about the behavior change that’s required. How do you shift from new insights into new actions? How do you help people do things differently when they walk out the door? But the other key sites where these things fall short, in my opinion, is that they’re often, I would say, non-strategic; meaning there’s a kind of ad-hoc ‘let’s just throw some training at people and hope that works.’

14:32: How a Canadian company upped their bench strength for better problem solving.

15:42: The best coaching question in the world.

16:38 “The first answer somebody gives you is never the only answer, and it’s rarely the best answer.”

16:59: [On the importance of slowing down] – “The other thing we’re trying to achieve is a
little less rush to action just slow down the action a little bit so that when you move you move more effectively and more efficiently.

17:55 [On the benefits of strategic laziness for managers] “We actually want people to be lazy so that they’re better able to coach the other person. The other person gets to do the work and gets the benefit of the learning, increasing their own capacity, increasing their own potential.”

18:13: “[If] manager finds him or herself working too hard the focus is probably back on them providing [their employees] with the solution rather than helping develop and cultivate the kind of thinking that will make them a more valuable asset to the company.”

19:18 [On helping people use the tools Box of Crayons provides] – “if there’s one thing at the very heart of it all…it’s about teaching people how to build new habits because habits are the building blocks of our behavior.”

19:38 “At least 50% of our waking behavior is purely habitual.”

20:08 Best of the available information concerning habit building.

20:36 The three parts of Stanier’s new habit forming formula.

21:41 [On asking instead of telling] – “Asking a question always takes less than a minute.”

23:17 [On the practical nature of the formula] – “It’s not mystical you don’t have to go up on a retreat you don’t have to sacrifice a small animal, you don’t have to entice a life coach or do anything like that. It’s really practical it feels like this is accessible to anybody.”

23:31 The difficulty of forming new habits to replace old ones.

25:24 “There’s definitely a role for [managers] to play to support and encourage and
help and hold accountable and check in with people, but I wouldn’t write their habits for them…nobody wins from that.”

26:17 “If you’ve got the discipline and the courage and the willingness to be in service to the people who you lead and influence, then you’ll have that greater commitment to be able to. in the moment, be more coach like – which is where the power lies.”

26:53 The characteristics of organizations who are ready to adopt behavioral change.

27:30 “If you were a culture which is massively disengaged, where people have kind of opted out, then this behavior change won’t in itself be sufficient to shift things.”

28:15 Stanier discusses the process of writing the book, and how hiring an editing “coach” helped him create the best version of it.

31:05 “I’m not saying never give anybody any advice ever again, I’m just saying slow down the rush to [give] advice until you really know what the challenge is.”

32:42 “Often advice creates resistance so the very help that you’re offering…it really creates a breakdown in trust and influence when you go for authority first rather than truly looking to understand a problem.”

33:08 [On Edgar Schein’s Helping] “The more you try and thrust help upon people the more you create resistance.”

33:53 The research process for the books – testing with real people.

35:30 The miracle question.

36:08 “I don’t imagine it being 10% better, I imagine it being 10x better.”

36:46 [On the most powerful question: What do you want?] “Once people are clear on what they want that’s actually a strong foundation for some really interesting action.”

37:10 [On the lazy question] – ‘It’s a bit of a paradox of a title because the question is, ‘How can I help?’ And when people hear that they go, ‘That doesn’t sound like a lazy question at all that sounds like it’s more work for me…but [the lazy question] forces them to make an explicit request rather than an implied request.”

37:54 Why explicit requests are far better than implied requests.

41:00 The importance of being clear of what you want in your own mind before asking for it.

1:12 Where Conant started his career, moving from Kellogg in Chicago to General Mills in Minnesota.

2:05 [On how to get things done] – “I learned very early on that most of the people I worked with had full lives. If they were going to be helpful to me, I generally needed to be helpful to them.”

2:53 How getting fired from General Mills played a pivotal role in Conant’s career, and how meeting executive outplacement counselor Neil McKenna helped get Conant made the difference in getting him back on his feet.

4:45 “It reaffirmed for me the importance of just trying to be helpful, to be helpful in a thoughtful caring way, with intentionality to move the enterprise forward.”

5:27 [Lessons learned: The Importance of Empathy] – “My first thought was one of betrayal and devastation, I had given everything to this company for nine years, and I felt it was incredibly insensitive the way it was handled. And that was a good thing too because I’ve had to make tough calls too, but I’ve made them in a caring way.”

6:45 Turning the coin over after devastating news.

8:09 [Paraphrasing Louis L’Amour on Perseverance] –  “He never knew when he was licked, so he never was.”

9:37 “Great things are having powerful incremental impacts in the moment with people.”

10:21 “Life is just a sequence of interactions. And if I’m really alert and thinking abundantly I find that I can be helpful in those small interactions, and cumulatively over time, I develop enormous credibility, which Stephen Covey might call a very positive emotional bank account with people. And as we build the emotional bank account up, it’s amazing what we find we are able to do collectively and individually.”

11:01 “It’s about making it personal. People are either at work or thinking about work, more than anything else they do, including spending time with their families. I think we sort of have to honor that as sacred ground, their work, and I think we have to take it personally.”

11:19 “I have found that if I make it personal and it I lean into creating a personally fulfilling work experience for people, they lean into the agenda of the company in a more personal and committed way.”

11:41 “Make it personal, be alert to the moment – be helpful in the moment, are two of the foundational ideas that I have…The third one would be that leadership, ultimately, it starts with personal leadership and getting comfortable with the things you can control.”

12:20 “If you really want to be good at leadership, my observation is that you have to treat it as a mastery model. You have to apprentice at it, you have to work at it, you have study it, you have to be thoughtful about it, you have to think through your philosophy of how you want to walk in the world and how you want to lead.”

13:06 “I take issue, for the most part, with this concept of born leaders. Some leaders have a capacity to lead at a certain level that may be above average, but to be great I guarantee you they all work at at.”

13:17 Jack Welch’s leadership work ethic.

14:14 Some of the problems Campbell’s faced internally and externally before Conant took leadership in the company.

16:33 “We were overpraising and under delivering and making bad decisions to patch up the performance.”

18:29 Conant lists the four criteria you need to win in the marketplace.

21:01 [On challenges in taking over leadership at Campbell’s] – “It literally took a few years to get the kind of traction we needed and get the company on solid footing.”

23:04 “I was going to bed thinking about all of the things we needed to do 365 days a year for the first three years.”

23:45 “Employees are not mind readers. You need to tell them what’s expected and how to expected to deliver that performance.”

24:25 “The more clear we could be, the more accessible the whole came to every employee.”

24:34 How Conant used the “Balanced Scorecard” create clarity and direction for employees.

25:50 “The single most important thing in any of these organizations is employee engagement.”

26:32 “I have found over time that if I just focus on the people, the people take care of the business. But if you have to put one over the other, you put the people first.”

27:02 The Campbell Success Model – metrics for management.

29:14 The Boston College reputation institute.

30:17 [Campbell’s success model] – “Winning in the workplace, winning in the marketplace, winning in the community, and winning with integrity.”

30:59 “It helps to have metrics, it helps to create focus for the organization that says, at a high level, this is what we stand for as a company.”

32:04 “The more engaged people can become in the work of the enterprise, the better you’ll do.”

32:15 Four things which drive employee engagement.

33:15 “Driving an aggressive social agenda, while we were driving an aggressive economic value creation agenda was very synergistic. Because we were saying, ‘Here’s how you can leave a legacy of contribution through your work that transcends your ordinary work experience while you’re making a living, while you’re feeling valued, and while you’re learning.”

33:44 “The more we leaned into building a better world, the more engaged our employees got, and the better we performed in the marketplace.”

35:14 “I think the challenge in the next decade is going to be for corporations to build this intuitively obvious practice more into the fabric of how they run their companies.”

36:01 Examples of companies building a better world by building better companies.

37:11 “All organizations aspire to be relevant in the world, to certainly create economic value, but they also are committed to enduring success. All leaders want to be associated with enduring success. And they see the value in being good citizens.”

38:12 “It’s important that once you declare yourself, you deliver on it.”

39:24 What Conant reads for inspiration.

0:59 Dave discusses how he became interested in business, and talks about the role that management plays in business.

1:34 Dave’s father enjoyed his job until management changed, which is what Dave considers the catalyst of interest in working on fixing the “conspiracy toward mediocrity.”

4:10 “Running a company… requires a lot of raw intelligence.”

7:22 “When people are struggling, they do what’s easy rather than do what’s right.”

7:55 Dave talks about an addiction to the status quo, and that often businesses don’t want to rock the boat when they really should be changing with the times.

9:03 Even when it’s uncomfortable, often the best thing for businesses leaders is to get out of the way of others who can do their job better.

10:14 Business leaders must follow their gut and intuition when answering important questions.

10:40 Dave brings up the Oracle Question: “What is likely to happen in the business if nothing unexpected comes along?”

11:05 People act as if their answer to the Oracle Question is the right answer, but depending on their answer, this can negatively impact the business.

11:41 Dave lists the ways in which this sense of superiority can cause a lack of forward movement and growth.

12:21 “Even if they are preaching vision and change and growth… when you actually examine what they do, there’s a default future, the answer to the Oracle Question, that is something other than they are preaching, and they and other people are actively bringing that about. And I think that’s the most important question that business leaders can ever ask.”

12:51 Dave gives an example of a business with which he has worked that was not aware of this questioning process, which led to an undesirable default future.

18:34 “When you actually figure it out and implement it, there’s this wave of enthusiasm and relief and passion and innovation, and every thing that people want ends up happening naturally. You don’t need to bribe people into innovating; they just do it.”

19:34 Dave tells us that there are four things that a business needs to get right, and that there is at least one of the four that need attention: Strategy, Structure, Systems and Processes, and Culture.

20:23 There is an instrument on Dave’s website that can help a business leader find which of the four needs to be reviewed.

21:26 Most of what analysts have written about Culture is dead wrong, and Dave’s book Tribal Leadership discusses how to get it right.

22:14 DaveLogan.com contains a free download for the audiobook of Tribal Leadership, a free instrument called Fix Your Company, and other instruments that can rate a business’ culture.

22:50 The objective of these free instruments on his website is to help a business leader see what is really going on in one’s company.

23:12 Dave was surprised to learn that very few employees would devote themselves to the company’s values, regardless of the bottom line.

25:20 One of the most widespread problems in management is that many of the management techniques are out of date.

00:59 “Does anyone ever imagine a career in sales when they’re growing up?”

1:27 How growing up in a family of entrepreneurs, including her grandfather who owned a successful shoe peddling business, inspired Lee to become an entrepreneur herself.

2:21 “I started with a corporate job. I didn’t know what I wanted as a business. I had a very cavalier attitude toward it all.”

2:58 “In a corporate job it’s often hard to tell what are your talents. What should that job be when you start, or what should that business be when you start one? So it took me a while to figure out what were my true talents, that somebody would like to purchase, that would make a good business.”

3:31 “When I left IBM I had been in sales, but I didn’t believe that I was as good as I was.”

4:20 “Well I started in sales and knew, because of this entrepreneurial background, that I wanted to be what was called a new business sales rep, better known as a hunter…I really wanted to work with companies that had never worked with IBM before.”

5:18 “We don’t always recognize what we’re good at and what makes us different. We think everybody else could do it.”

5:45 “I actually did not feel that I had the skills to start a business, and still didn’t really know what made me different, and what the market needed. So I chose to leave IBM to see if I really could sell.”

6:27 “I thought, ‘If I could make it at the number 2 player, then maybe I could sell, and get over this imposter complex.’”

6:58 “Inside of 6 months I was the top rep worldwide, and I had done my million dollar deal. So that was when I realized, ‘Uh, oh. Now I have to do what I said I was always going to do and go start this company. What is it?’”

7:20 What Lee did with KLA group to figure out the path the business should take.

8:15 “Yes, we still do what I founded KLA Group on.”

9:36 “Market analysis could just mean going and talking to the people who are going to buy from you and asking them what they really want.”

10:53 “I think talking to your real market gives you a better feel for what exactly it is that you have to offer, and what would they pay for it. Your friends and family can’t do that.”

11:57 “The reason I wrote the book is because my staff kept saying to me, ‘Kendra, we have to have a book. People want a book. They want more than just the class.’”

13:48 [Myths of prospect generation] – “I think the biggest one is that they can either hiring a telemarketing firm to set appointments, and that they’ll have all the appointments they need; or that cold calling is the only way to get new appointments.”

14:09 “When we talk about prospecting, your goal is to set an appointment with a prospect that is qualified at the very highest level.”

14:48 [On criteria for cold calling] – “They forget that there’s a consistency that’s required, there’s training, and those people who are going to be calling on their behalf really need to understand what your solutions are, who your ideal audience is, why that target market would want to talk with you.”

15:27 Why it’s so important for people who are managing the people making cold calls on behalf of the company need to understand sales.

16:51 Lee recounts two common downfalls of sales managers.

18:12 “The executive team or the business owner needs to recognize how they have to evolve their sales team, and be ok with the fact that they may have to bring in a different caliber of person.”

18:53 The story of HSF and how KLA Group helped them grow more aggressively.

20:14 “Whether you are a small company with only 20 employees, or a larger company like HSF…you still encounter that sales management team that may not truly understand sales, for many it’s like a foreign language.”

21:00 [On why people hire KLA Group] – “They may have had failure or a series of failures in either hiring sales people or in executing lead generation, so they may have tried many different lead generation techniques but they’re not seeing results.”

22:42 [Common misconceptions about lead generation] – “If they’re thinking about campaigns – lead generation campaigns, nurturing campaigns – they may oftentimes think, ‘If I do one email campaign or if run one event, a lunch and learn or a webinar, I will get leads and that’s all I need to do. They don’t realize that what lead generation is all about or what makes selling easier, even if you’ve got a great hunter salesperson, is that name recognition.”

24:15 “Even if you have great [brand] awareness, you have to have certain strategies in place to make sure that your market is going to notice that you are doing that event.”

24:39 [On brand awareness and demonstrating consistency] – “It is having a strategy in place that outlines what exactly you want to do from who is your target market to what are the issues they are experiencing that you can address to what can you offer them that’s going to make them want to talk to you.”

25:38 How Lee was able to convince one of their largest clients to hire KLA Group.

27:43 “When you’re doing lead generation, you can start to identify who are those people who need you right now, and you’re going to move those people into your sales process and start working with them.”

28:13 “Lead generation gives you that consistency of a funnel where you’re continuing to nurture until they’re ready.”

28:25 Lee’s 4 essential tips for lead generation: strategy, sales follow up, targeting, and the right message for your target market.

30:37 “There are processes in lead generation and processes in sales, there’s a structure.”

31:08 “As a business owner, once you’ve had the systems in place – you’ve identified your target market and you have your strategy in place – it’s no different than directing your operations manager. When you’ve got a person who’s fully trained and knows what they’re doing, they don’t need a lot of direction.”

32:28 “The biggest thing that I do is communicate with the staff. Direct reports I meet with on a weekly basis.”

34:00 “I look outside our industry. I have one person I network with who runs a retail business, another that owns an oil company. For me, I want to talk to people who aren’t just in my same type of business, because I could pick up some great idea.”

1:48 Roth’s first entrepreneurial experiences as an 8 year old selling toys to her younger sister.

3:20 [On problem solving for business leaders] – “I look at other people and I ask them what their problem is, or I spend time with them to try to uncover their problem, and try to solve this problem for them.”

4:55 “I tend to favor frameworks because I believe that everyone has their own definition of success, not to mention their own circumstances, goals, and objectives.”

5:16 Roth tells about some difficult experiences that occurred in her young adult life.

6:49 “Through all these times when I felt I wasn’t going to make it, I was not going to be able to go on another day, I kept persisting. I kept keeping my eye on the goal, on what was going to make me strong, and what was going to help me give back to the world.”

8:01 [On inspiration for writing the book] “I wanted to give people a realistic, decision-making framework, again, very particular to their own situation. I didn’t want to say, ‘This is the way to do it.’

8:17 “My definition of success, and what I’m able to bring to the table in terms of resources and experiences, is very different from what other people bring to the table and what they’re looking to accomplish.”

9:27 [Why people appreciate The Entrepreneur Equation] “It’s just having that structure, that non-emotional, non-biased ‘What am I trying to do and how am I going to get there focus’ that has been very valuable for people.

9:33 [Roth’s definition of success] – “Getting through a day without collapsing.”

9:39 [Roth’s actual definition of success] – “It revolves around accomplishing certain goals that I’ve set out, that involve being a good wife and friend and relative and person. I sort of have a whole list of criteria that I live my life by.”

10:19 “I don’t think success is a place that I get to, I think it’s a journey. Because every time I accomplish something, we’re coming up with three additional things to add to the list.”

10:52 “I always have a plan. And it’s always a very large plan. And the way that I approach things is that I start with a big goal, some people call it the B-HAG, I some times call it the balls to the walls crazy goal, and then I break it up into smaller chunks that kind of lead there.”

11:45 [On entrepreneurial self-awareness] –  “I think so many people go into business because they are in love, or rather in lust, with an idea, with the emotion driving what they are trying to accomplish rather than rational thinking.”

12:22 The value of properly thinking through new opportunities in light of the risk/reward trade off, and taking the time to fully build the necessary foundation before taking the leap.

13:11 Why entrepreneurs should avoid the field of dreams business model.

14:40 [TGFO – Thank God for Oprah] “If it takes Oprah a couple of years to get her venture off the ground, it will probably take you the same”

15:00 “I’m convinced that once you become an entrepreneur you catch being bipolar, I didn’t know that it was contagious, something that you can get, but it’s amazing to me the high highs and the low lows that you go through, sometimes in rapid succession after another. And you really have to have the constitution, the stomach to be able to handle those because that is what throws so many entrepreneurs for a loop.”

15:59 [What it takes to be an entrepreneur] – “It really is something that you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable with leaning into the ride on the rollercoaster and realizing that if you get knocked down seven times, that you need to get up eight times.”

17:10 “Equity value is the value of the business as a going concern, the value of the business by itself that’s separate from you.”

17:31 The story of the Terry the massage therapist: examples of companies with and without equity value.

18:32 “The way that most entrepreneurs really make a lot of money, and the ones you see on all the magazines and on the media, when they’re able to sell their business or create this value that’s not completely dependent upon them.”

20:01 [On the rule of 3] “Anything that you would do in business is going to take three times longer, is going to cost three times more, and be three times as difficult as you anticipate.”

20:45 “In terms of scaling, you have to go back to what’s the end goal. What are you trying to do? Are you trying to build a business just for a lifestyle? Or are you trying to build something that has equity value? Are you looking to employ other people and give back to the community? Are you looking to leave a legacy?”

21:15 “It always goes back to having a lot of clarity about what you see in the future.”

22:05 “One of the things I always encourage people to do, especially if you are financially risk averse, or that you don’t have the financial wherewithal, is to think about entrepreneurship within the confines of somebody’s else’s organization. You can be an entrepreneur in spirit without risking your own capital.”

22:55 “If you’re not willing to take the financial risk or even gain some relevant experience, go do it on somebody else’s dime, go do it within the confines of another organization. You still have something at risk, you’re still risking your reputation, you’re still risking your job, your salary; but it’s a different kind of risk, and sometimes that makes people more comfortable, and can be a good starting point.”

24:14 “One of the things I’ve learned is that you let the market tell you what it wants from you. You can go out with any product or service, and the market is going to tell you if they want it.”

24:35 The Doctor is in, Roth’s role as advice-giver.

26:00 “I’ve always been an advisory business, I started my career as an investment banker, that’s what I was clearly meant to do, and that’s frankly what people want from me.”

26:41 How Roth uses expansive lists to stay productive.

28:47 Roths’ sources of inspiration.

1:10 “I have always been infatuated with successful people and how they become successful.”

1:25 How a conversation with a friend in the airport led to Vaden writing Take the Stairs.

2:30 Vaden’s early experiences with public speakers, and how his stint working as a door-to-door salesperson with the Southwestern Company as a freshman in college instilled essential business skills in him.

5:10 “Southwestern really created this system of self-discipline, getting perhaps the most least likely person to succeed in sales – a college student – putting them in one of the toughest sales environments imaginable – residential door-to-door – and the training them to be extraordinarily successful.”

5:52 “I realized self-discipline was the key and with the most disciplined people the world, it’s not that they like discipline more than the rest of us. In other words, their brain processes their choices that are presented to them through a different set of criteria, and they make calculations of opportunities based through a different set of lenses.”

6:44 “There are these seven key distinctions in how the most disciplined people think that is different from everybody else.”

8:00 [On the book’s case studies] – “We tend to think that success is about luck or skill or education level or who your parents are or who you know, and you know all of those things do play a role, but all of these people they somewhere along the line learned about thinking differently, they learned how to process things differently from most people.”

9:00 [The Paradox Principle of Success] – “Easy short term choices lead to difficult long term consequences. Meanwhile, difficult short term choices lead to easy long-term consequences.”

9:35 “We are governed by emotions, feelings, and impulses and what feels good right here and now in the moment.”

10:03 “The most successful people they realized at some point that the inverse is also true, if you save that money, your money grows by the virtue of investing or saving it.”

10:21 “When we make good choices on the front end – the students who work hard in school and pay the price while they’re in school have a whole different set of opportunities that are open to them in the long run that are not necessarily available to everyone else.”

10:45 “Problems that are procrastinated on are only amplified.”

11:32 The Harvest Principle – Time Management, how do you use your time?

12:05 “Balance is a horrible metaphor for spending time. Balance by definition means equal force in opposite directions.”

12:51 “It doesn’t matter how much time you spend on something, all that matters is the results that you create.”

13:42 “They’re strategy was imbalance: imbalancing their energy, time, and their resources in one specific area of their life, and once they created that result, it was much easier to maintain it.”

14:21 “Balance is not equal time spread across equal activities, it’s appropriate time, spread across critical priorities.”

14:47 “You learn to work double time part time for full time free time.”

15:53 What Vaden did to introduce self-discipline in his own life for a healthy lifestyle.

17:15 “When you let go of the escalator mentality of the magic pill and the secret potion and the hidden formula and the escalator way of thinking of there’s gotta be some convenient way to make the change, and instead you embrace the change of this take the stairs philosophy, in taking pride in things you don’t want to do, you get the life you want to have quicker.”

18:18 “I’m not interested in increasing your motivation, I’m interested in changing your mindset.”

18:38 “If you can change the way a person thinks just by providing a few insights, then I don’t have to tell them what to do.”

19:58 The perspective principle of faith

20:20 “All of the other 6 strategies of the take the stairs methodology all have to with achieving success, they all have to do with accomplishing something and how to get yourself to do things you don’t want to do. But this one, the perspective principle of faith, is the one that talks about how do you respond to failure. What happens when there’s unexplained tragedy in your life.”

21:55 How to respond to everyday challenges in a way that positive and productive.

22:43 “What horrible thing could happen to me today that in 1000 years would affect the whole world.”

23:07 “Our ability to have peace has nothing to do with money. Our ability to have peace has nothing to do with success. Our ability to have peace in the face in the face of failures, setbacks, and tragedies is directly proportionate to the term of our perspective.”

24:43 How Vaden uses spirituality in his own life to cope with unseen circumstances.

25:45 “You do your best and you forget the rest.”

27:20 “If I’m not consciously choosing a good attitude then I’m unconsciously choosing a negative one.”

27:40 Vaden’s regular habits for positivity and productivity.

1:35 How an interest in jazz music sparked Linkner’s early passion for creativity.

1:55 “Creativity, truly, is the currency of success.”

2:08 “Today with the challenges of our times more difficult than ever, creativity has shifted from a ‘nice to have’ to ‘mission critical.’”

2:31 “In business we’re often heads down and doing task-oriented things and are following a manual, procedure, or process. In creativity involves using your imagination to come up with new ways, whether it’s a new product or service, or new way to communicate and tell the story of your business.”

2:59 “What we’ve found is that following the operating manual is no pathway to success. If anything that we learned from the financial crisis of 2008, it’s that the rules of the game have fundamentally changed.”

3:25 Why improvisation is such a valuable skill in the marketplace.

3:44 “In today’s world of dizzying speed, exponential complexity, and ruthless competition, creativity has really become job #1. A recent survey of 1500 CEO’s across 32 countries reveal that the #1 most important attribute for success in the next 5 years of business, in fact, is creativity.”

4:09 “What we need more than ever aren’t people who can just do what they’re told and follow the rules and cut costs, we need people that can think on their feet and who can innovate new products and services, and reimagine the way they do work. The people that are always obsessed with finding a better way.”

4:19 “Creativity is fundamentally a learned behavior, which means that all of us as human beings have enormous creative potential, we just need a systematic approach to unleashing it.”

5:13 “Most of us are brought up in environments that restrict creativity. We’re taught in school to follow the rules, there’s only one right answer, and whatever you do don’t make any mistakes. The problem is that if you run that game plan in the real world, if you run that game plan today, it’s a surefire path to mediocrity. Doing exactly the opposite is what allows us to reach our potential.”

5:41 Examples of companies who are fostering creativity well.

6:34 “So many individuals in companies spend their lives trying to play it safe, only to discover playing it safe has become the riskiest move at all.”

6:47 “The companies that embrace making mistakes and failing along the way, understanding that mistakes are the portals of discovery, are the ones that truly thrive and are building sustainable organizations.”

7:15 The story of ePrize and how they used creativity to stay ahead of competitors, even the ones they invented themselves.

9:52 “The most important natural resource of all is the human creativity that lives inside your team…Your job as a leader is not just to manage costs, but to help unleash that creative capacity.”

10:27 Why the way leaders interact with their teams affect productivity or, in some cases, keep employees from unlocking their creative potential.

11:50 How 3M fosters continually fosters innovation.

12:41 “No matter how big or successful you get, you always want to be focused on reinvention. You always want to be the force of disruptive change. Because it’s always more fun to be the disruptor than the disruptee.”

13:20 The difference between incremental and disruptive change.

13:29 “Disruptive thinking has to start with the ability to imagine what can be, instead of what is. It’s about imagining the possibilities and not being restricted by the way things currently are.”

14:25 The story of Detroit and its innovative early years, complacent middle years, and its rebirth of innovation in current years.

15:51 [On Detroit’s future] “Creativity can be applied not only to small companies, but even to troubled cities.”

16:38 “Sometimes the only way to make progress is through bold action.”

17:55 What if the Founding Fathers had not taken bold action?

18:30 The prevalent myths of creativity.

19:16 “Everyone in an organization, irrespective of job title, not only has the ability to be creative, has the responsibility to be creative.”

19:50 Why it’s important to spend time doing things you enjoy away from work.

20:15 The art of role-storming, rather than brainstorming.

1:37 Lisa’s days in advertising showed her that she was creative in a strategic way, leading her to create innovative businesses.

2:53 “I thought that everybody could be creative and innovative, they just needed to be able to flex it in different ways.”

4:40 A big misunderstanding in business and innovation is that only artists are creative, and Lisa wants to make sure people understand that every person at every level can be creative and innovative.

6:11 “It’s often the folks that are stereotyped as least innovative, that want to be innovative the most.”

8:20 Lisa observes that one of the biggest obstacles to fostering creativity is skepticism, and that business leaders need to break down their propensity to immediately be skeptical of new ideas.

9:10 “Skepticism definitely does [have a place in the creative process]. But what we’re talking about is a balance with potential. What we’ve groomed today are professional skeptics, and when that’s all you do, you don’t give ideas that have potential a fair hearing, and you might miss out on big opportunities.”

12:10 Lisa estimates that 80% of companies around the world are committing a grave mistake: having a complacent culture, where employees are resigned to the status quo and to not make waves.

13:25 There is a diagnostic in Lisa’s book “Kill the Company” where an employee can see how complacent they are, and she outlines three things one must do to no longer be complacent: diagnose oneself, figure out which behaviors one wants to change, and then figure out what small things one can empower others to do to contribute to an overall cultural change.

15:00 Lisa is careful to point out that these changes should be implemented from the middle out. In other words, it is not effective to have upper leadership telling people what to do, instead empowerment should come from the people at the center.

16:01 Lisa implements something she calls ‘Little-Bigs’ in which a company can see the biggest overall change by doing little, every day changes. She gives two examples that have been effective for her clients.

17:30 One of the most effective exercises Lisa has used with executives is having them imagine they were trying to kill their own company as a competitor would, which helped them identify the things which were weak or not working, enabling them to root out the bad to make room for more prosperity.

21:03 Lisa makes sure her own company implements these practices she teaches, and does a lot of ‘spring cleaning.’

1:23 Tom discusses how he entered the world of Big Sale Hunting, through large account selling.

2:05 “What I learned, I learned through some trial and error. You can make some really big mistakes when you’re trying to sell big companies.”

2:18 Tom says he had to build a system for sales, rather than relying upon networking, relationships, luck, or right timing.

3:15 Bill and Tom discuss minimizing risk: “There are a lot of pieces to minimizing the risk…you need to run it as a regular system or process to make it happen.”

3:35 Tom gives Bill three brief ideas around minimizing risk: 1. A business owner must figure out what is the best opportunity for them. This eliminates “between 90% and 95% of ideas that might look good,” but are really what he calls a ‘Black Hole Prospect.’

4:06 A business owner must know up front what the characteristics of successful relationships are.

4:10 The second idea around minimizing risk: A business owner must know their own capacity and goals, and be able to climb the ladder rather than take a running leap across a chasm.

4:40 The third idea around minimizing risk: A business owner should not hunt one large account at a time, but rather one should hunt multiple accounts at a time.

4:58 “By defining what that stretch account is on the ladder of your growth, you put yourself in a good position to only get those kinds of accounts that fit into a plan or a pattern.”

5:15 Bill uses a pool analogy to describe setting oneself up for future growth and success.
5:41 Before entering a deal with a large and impressive company or entity, one must know both the qualifying and disqualifying attributes of said company.

6:10 Tom cautions against lack of research on how entering into a relationship might cause lack of goal completion.

6:30 One must be strategic rather than purely optimistic.

7:09 Tom discusses some questions he might ask his clients prior to meeting with a big potential large account.

9:27 A business can get ahead of their competition by asking multifaceted and non-standard questions that tell them more about their potential clients and accounts.

10:26 If a potential client or business does not have long term goals or has not considered what improvement they wish to make in six months, then they are likely not going to be good partners, nor are they serious about their business.

12:13 By asking these questions, the risk is not only reduced for the company, but also for their potential clients.

13:36 Tom tells us about a solution that enables to him and his company to connect with ideal clients and grow his business, in spite of the rapidly changing marketplace, and social media has been central to that growth for him in the last six months.

14:19 “Social media puts together people who have unique problems that are specific to the kinds of problems we solve… and that gives a lot of endorsements in the social media space for the benefits we bring the client.”

19:20 Engaging on multiple platforms, especially social media, can attract new clients, and allows a welcoming and easy experience for them.

20:08 Tom talks about why and how he became a consultant: he was asked to do some consulting for companies, and although he had the ultimate goal of buying a company, he began having fun as a consultant, so he began his own consultancy.

22:40 “When you sell growth and can deliver on that promise, let me tell you, things roll forward better.”

2:28 Tamara has found that creating partnerships and collaborating have grown her business in the last six months.

4:09 These partnerships have been intuited through paying attention to the clues that others display when they want to work with Tamara.

7:17 A core part of Tamara’s business is referring to others’ works and networking.

8:57 Tamara finds self-care is essential to creating a sturdy foundation on which people can then help others: “People will take care of everyone and everything else, and put themselves last.”

10:30 Tamara gives an example of a ‘Radiance Makeover’: start with self-awareness and think of an aspect of your life you could be a bit more radiant, create a new story to see what else might be possible, then recalibrate and let your light out.

11:56 “It’s about turning up your lights. The new story is the beautiful, radiant ‘turn up your lights’ story, and you get to enthusiastically choose what you’re going to do with confidence, and wake up all your passion. Tell the story about the life you want to have, and then you start acting like that.”

14:21 One of the first shifts towards sustainable business practices was finding a mentor, who told Tamara that she was running a business, not just working a job, after she started her own gymnastics center.

16:07 Tamara identifies resiliency and persistence as key aspects for business owners to have in order to promote change by taking risks.

21:13 “Be more radiant; your life will be better!”

0:55 Reich recounts his formative years in politics, working in President Clinton’s speechwriting office and as Vice President Gore’s briefing director.

1:44 “I started to look at information and how people get information and how they move and share information.”

2:34 [On how to be an information strategist] – “You have to love information, you have to love consuming and looking at the world as a constant stream of knowledge and potential insight.”

3:01 How information consumption habits change over time.

3:09 “Everything you consume and make sense of informs your work.”

3:36 “For information strategy to really work well you have to live that idea of being the expert generalist. You have to be good enough at everything in order to put all the pieces together.”

4:41 [On how his learning style and way of interpreting information affected his education] – “I was less capable of delivering the exact answer for the assignment.”

5:49 “One of the things that’s unique to politics is that when you start a campaign, or even before you officially start a campaign, you’re always on. Every minute of every day is an opportunity to engage with some prospective voter.”

7:19 [How Reich’s political work has informed his career] – “I’m always on, which is incredibly important and more important today in a digitally connected world.”

8:42 “Campaigns have been reduced to these small sound bytes, these tweets back and forth…what they’re missing is that unique and wonderful ability in today’s age to educate people. And when you have a knowledge-based connection rather than just an emotional connection, rather than just a response to whatever is happening, you actually have a greater likelihood of staying engaged.”

10:22 “The common complaint in today’s world is that there’s too much information and people are overwhelmed by it. But the reality is, there’s not too much information, there’s a lack of good information.”

10:47 “We live in this world where people have much more control over their information experience, they have far greater expectations for the level of detail and specificity that they’re gonna get for any engagement experience that they create.”

11:45 [Reich’s prescription for modern campaign success] – “Take the content that is being created  – the comments and the questions by the voting populace as a whole – and harness that and turn that around and channel that and focus that.”

12:49 How marketers and politicians are missing the obvious opportunities.

13:38 “I think in a lot of places we have let technology and social media get in the way of the core understanding of the things we’ve learned over time about how to market.”

14:30 “We have to look at technology as the tool, and use our brains to figure out what people want and when they want it and how to serve those interests,”

14:51 What inspired Reich to write his book.

15:29 “We talk about how we understand what these problems are, but we are using an old playbook.”

16:14 “Until we solve these complex problems, until we start to move and make real progress, things are only gonna get worse and that’s a very scary proposition.”

17:08 “We have three times the number of solutions and resources to address these issues and we lack the political will.”

17:16 “We lack the individual selflessness, the understanding that serving our own interests doesn’t have to come at the expense of the larger good.”

17:43 “We’re better as a team than we are as individuals.”

18:58 “None of these complex problems…is going to be solved with one strategy or overnight because people become aware.”

19:24 “You gotta think smaller. You’ve got to break these larger problems into component pieces, and you need to start solving those pieces one at a time.”

20:10 Why the only way to solve big problems is by being flexible and adaptable.

21:41 How Reich sorts through information to find the most relevant and important.

22:17 “The truth is that the definition of good information is entirely about the context.”

22:50 “It’s not about keeping it in my head or sort of finding value in the moment, it’s about processing as much information as possible, so when I need to go deeper I have a sort of repository or curated list, a refined focus.”

23:15 “You have to maintain your own networks of knowledge.”

24:01 How Reich maintains his information repository.

24:50 “I can’t be dependent upon only what I’m able to consume, I have to be smart enough to know when to ask and who to ask for help.”

1:05 Scott discusses how he got his start in business with a start-up that he joined at 18.

2:13 Scott describes how he worked his way up this company straight out of high school, then began his own business.

6:19 “The first things I learned right off the bat were how much accountability there was when you’re the one who now owns [the company]. There’s no one really that’s going to come to your rescue. You have to make all the decisions.”

7:08 It took four months to get his company to stability.

8:04 Scott realized he was no longer in “start-up mode” when his company picked up big orders from large companies, as well as when they opened new stores.

9:03 However, he does admit that his naivety caused his company to grow too fast, and later had to file for bankruptcy.

9:54 Scott talks about the problems faced by young entrepreneurs.

11:50 “You have to be good at looking forward into the future.”

13:15 Scott always recommends that a company gets a two-year lead on the competition with how they use technology.

13:41 There are two areas to think about when trying to grow one’s technology use in the business: back of house and digital marketing.

18:12 Scott wrote his book “The Velocity Manifesto” because he was working with so many leaders who didn’t understand the difference that technology makes in the marketplace, and they needed to cultivate new skills regarding technology strategies.

23:01 Every company should be able to access all customer information in one platform.

23:30 Digital marketing engines are also a necessary technology to keep up with their competitors.

24:35 Some indicators of sustainability that Scott always looks out for in his company are profitability and profit growth, as well as how well the company is helping clients succeed.

29:00 The customization of how people market to specific businesses and demographics will continue to change.

30:43 Every day, Scott digests as much information as he can so that he can be more valuable in the marketplace and a more effective leader.

32:06 “The marketplace is changing, and technology is driving that change.”