Mon, 31 October 2016
Episode 177 - Mike Paton on the Entrepreneurial Operating System & Helping Leadership Teams Achieve Traction
Mike Paton has spent a lifetime learning from entrepreneurs. Eight years ago he met Gino Wickman and was immediately drawn to the simplicity and usefulness of his Entrepreneurial Operating System® (EOS). He is now the Visionary at EOS Worldwide, LLC – a role we explore in this interview – and an author, speaker and EOS implementer at Achieve Traction, where he uses his lifetime of entrepreneurial wisdom to helps entrepreneurs and their leadership teams clarify, simplify and achieve their vision. “We believe that what leaders do is solve problems and resolve issues.” In This Interview I Ask:
What Makes EOS Worldwide Unique? EOS gives homage to the great work done by many of the great business thought leaders that came before it, such as Jim Collins, Michael Gerber, Verne Harnish, Patrick Lencioni, and Dan Sullivan. The tools and the concepts aren’t completely unique, but the way EOS Worldwide implements EOS with entrepreneurial leadership teams helps them get better at three things fast and permanently.
“It's early success that gives an entrepreneur and his or her leadership team that confidence to continue with, quite frankly, what is fundamental change in the way the business operates.” EOS Implementers & The Six Key Components That Exist in Every Business Generally any EOS implementer starts interacting with an entrepreneur when he or she has hit the ceiling. Things are humming along and all of a sudden you come to a screeching halt. It has a tendency to happen multiple times, and the root cause of those problems, challenges, obstacles and frustrations tend to be one of six things. When you're implementing EOS in your business what you're doing is working to assess how weak or strong you are in each of these six things and strengthen each component.
“My advice would be to work on strengthening all six of these components. Use all of the tools. We put them out there for the world to use. They are very simple and practical. You don't need to have an Ivy League MBA to figure this stuff out. We just really hope it helps your listeners get what they want from their business.” Visionaries and Integrators The relationship between visionaries and integrators is the heart of Rocket Fuel by Gino Hackman and Mark C. Winters. Most entrepreneurial companies are started and grown to a point by a visionary who then has to, in order to be successful, transition more into an integrator role. It's really hard to make that transition. Very few have what it takes to do it, and one of the things Mike does with entrepreneurial leadership teams is help visionaries understand that they don't need to be the integrator to grow their business. “They should be sitting in the visionary seat loving their lives everyday and relying on an integrator to run the day-to-day and help the leadership team work to achieve the visionary's vision.”
Five Rules to a Great Meeting Pulse Every level-10 leadership meeting should be:
We appreciate Mike taking the time to talk with us today. Head over to www.EOSworldwide.com for information on all of the books, to download free tools, watch a lot of instructional videos, and you can even find Mike in the implementer directory to reach out directly. Resources
Production & Development for The Impact Entrepreneur Show by Podcast Masters |
Mon, 24 October 2016
Vinnie Fisher is a Founder and CEO of The Total CEO and Founder and Chairman of Fully Accountable. Today we really dove into The Total CEO, unpacked the six core areas of business, and really what we find bleeding through everything is strategy and intention.
In This Interview I Ask:
Finding Your Core Competency Vinnie shared the story of the baseball player Ted Williams. He got voted in the hall of fame by hitting just over 300 for his career. That means he strikes out a lot, but he was still great. The nature of business is trial-and-error. Through failure and perseverance, by identifying your strengths and weaknesses, anyone can discover their core competency in business.
Take a Step “Take a step – it might be the wrong one, but it's the one that's ultimately going to lead to your success.” Sometimes the strategy is to get going. Just go out and do it. Don’t mature and double down and spend marketing dollars when you’re in makeup mode. Sometimes you're in developing a strategy mode and then when things start to click is when you have to slow down, and not slow down sales but slow down. You have to find the tension between being able to break away a little bit and look at it, instead of just being fully immersed in it The tipping point is when you get to a critical mass – and Vinnie describes the critical mass as when you start being unable to grow beyond your shadow or you already have grown beyond your shadow and you've lost the passion piece of your business – and you need to start addressing this big issue.
The Six Core Areas of Business
“I'm saying to you that strategy is real, and just because you don't know how to do something doesn't mean you aren't capable of doing it, and that's the whole beauty of being an entrepreneur.”
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Fri, 21 October 2016
Craig Ballantyne is a productivity and success transformation coach and the author of The Perfect Day Formula: How to Own the Day and Control Your Life. He has contributed to Men’s Health Magazine since 2000, and in 2001 he created the popular home workout program Turbulence Training. On his journey to success Craig has had to overcome crippling anxiety attacks, and he did that with his Five Pillars of Success and Transformation. Today Craig shows men and women how to use these five pillars to lose 10-75 pounds, get a raise and make more money, find the love of their lives, and overcome any obstacle in the way of success. You can read his daily essays on success, productivity and business at Early to Rise.
In This Interview I Ask:
(Some of) Craig’s Personal Rules for Success
The Five Pillars of Transformation and Success
The Impact of Setting a Vision “The Vision is essentially where you want to be in a couple years from now. Not only thinking about it, but actually writing it down. I call it creating a movie script for your life.” Five years, three months and 17 days after Craig first articulated his vision to his coach – owning a business like Early to Rise – Craig bought the business of his dreams. Not something like it, but the exact business of his dreams: EarlyToRise.com. Craig developed a mentor relationship with Mark Ford, the previous owner of Early to Rise. Mark told Craig to narrow his focus and set four goals:
How To Build Your Perfect Day This is incredibly important. If you learn to optimize your day, and you just focus on your daily habits, your perfect day becomes your perfect week becomes your perfect month becomes your perfect quarter becomes your perfect year. This is the highest leverage point to be focusing your time and energy on if you’re going to be making some sort of habit change.
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Mon, 17 October 2016
In This Interview I Ask:
How to Launch a Successful MeetUp Community
A Path to Monetization in MeetUp Groups After your MeetUp group has grown to about 150 people and you are ready to launch your first event, you might want to start looking for a path to monetization.
Tips For Pre-Networking The first few minutes of a networking event can be one of the most awkward experiences ever. So, to make it easier on yourself and on the people you want to network with, do a little pre-networking. Get in touch with them on a social network or by email and make an introduction.
Preparing And Delivering Your Pitch Over practice your pitch. Don’t just remember it. Practice your pitch so well that you can’t forget it, like your birthday or phone number. Then, when you are talking to someone, don’t open with your pitch. Ask them questions about them. Then, when they ask what you do, they will be interested.
Common Mistakes in Networking
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Mon, 10 October 2016
Rob Walch, recently inducted into the Podcast Hall of Fame, is the VP of Podcaster Relations with Libsyn and hosts the podCast411 podcast. His books, “Podcast 101” and “Tricks of the Podcasting Masters,” are available on Amazon and iBooks.
In this episode, Rob outlines his tips to entrepreneurs interested in starting a podcast, including when and why to monetize, how to use a podcast to build credibility in your niche, and the importance of providing great content in podcasting. Rob also discusses his opinion of where the future of podcasting is going.
In This Interview I Ask: 2:50 - What were you up to before you got into the podcast world? 6:45 - When you say clients, what do you mean? What were you helping them with at the time? 8:50 - What is your opinion for entrepreneurs on poor reasons to start a podcast? 11:50 - What are some opportunities available to you if you do start a podcast? 17:30 - If someone wants to build authority in a niche, how does podcasting compare to self-publishing? 21:40 - What is the key to someone new picking a topic? 24:00 - What is the right length for an episode? 31:25 - Tell us about people using their Twitter to inflate their numbers. 35:10 - What are the real, important numbers to be tracking? 43:25 - What is the future of podcasting? 47:50 - What advice do you have for new podcasters with regard to the importance of interviewing as a skill? 52:30 - Where can people go to check your stuff out?
Starting a Podcast: Pros and Cons If your goal is to start a podcast as a means of income, you have better odds elsewhere. With or without great content, income is not a guarantee. On the other hand, podcasting is a great way to set yourself apart in your niche as an expert, and an equally great way to get speaking gigs at conferences in your industry.
Choosing a Topic and Format It is important to choose a topic you care about and and produce content you yourself would want to listen to. The length of your episodes is not nearly as important as the content provided. Great content wins over great marketing every time.
The Future of Podcasting The future sits in the hands of the people… literally. Although car-connectivity makes listening easier, we are all very attached at a personal level with our mobile devices, and they make it simple to listen while we’re doing everyday tasks. Our devices put podcasts in the hands, at the fingertips, and in the ears of the people. Because of this, podcasters should also look into apps to maximize the potential of their podcast.
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Fri, 9 September 2016
Oren Klaff is the author of Pitch Anything, an innovative method for presenting, persuading, and winning the deal. Oren has personally worked on a billion dollar in deals. In this interview, Oren breaks down the Pitch Anything Method, including setting the frame, creating tension and overcoming objections.
In This Interview I Ask:
How To Start A Presentation
How NOT To Start A Presentation
Setting the Frame Setting the frame is giving people a lens through which to see your product or service. During a pitch, you only have minutes to close the deal. Most likely, the people you are pitching don’t know you or your product or service well enough to know your full capabilities. You have to give them a window from which to see you through so they don’t make their own assumptions. In Hollywood, it's called the “establishing shot.” In business finance, it's called “framing” or “frame control.” In politics, it's called a “narrative.” How the buyer sees you is up to you, and that's frame control.
Create Tension Most people can look at their sales presentations and they lack tension. Tension produces chemicals in the mind - epinephrine and norepinephrine - which give us pains of excitement. We can be afraid to say something that might insult the buyer, or give them a negative view of our company, that we don’t end up triggering any tension at all, positive or negative. Without that tension, the pitch falls flat and the buyer lacks the enthusiasm. However, if you only are providing excitement, you're only doing half of the formula. You also have to trigger tension in order to provide a different kind of arousal for the buyer. To avoid becoming antagonizing in your attempt to create tension, start small and build up. You want to:
How To Close Your Presentation You cannot end a sales presentation with, “That’s what we have. Excited to be here. Do you have any questions?” You’re inadvertently saying to the buyer, “I’m a low-status individual. You're in charge of my livelihood. I have no control over you. You have complete control over me.” Just because a buyer is ready to sign, doesn’t mean that the deal is closed. Give them an authentic test that will assure you that they are a good fit for your company. Here’s a script:
How To Handle Objections Objections are handled by the correct structure of the sales presentation. If you are getting big objections, then something is wrong with your presentation. In some cases, the objections you're seeing probably aren’t objections at all; they’re requests for the meeting to end. In the old model of sales, the objection came out and then you talked over. It was an indication of confusion about what you were presenting. In today's world, if you use the Pitch Anything Method correctly, and there’s still objection, it means there's something wrong with the product-to-market match, and that has to be addressed.
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Fri, 26 August 2016
Jeremy Chatelaine is the founder of Quickmail.io, a tool to help businesses generate leads on autopilot with automated outbound emails and smart follow-ups. Quickmail.io is one of the first companies to provide a solution for sales automation. In just two years since inception, Jeremy grew Quickmail.io to over 1,000 customers and over $50,000 in monthly recurring revenue. In this interview, Jeremy breaks down each phase of growing his business, from validating his idea to his first customer acquisition to hiring his first team member. He also shares his insights on the realities of a having the freedom of choice with your lifestyle business, and why chooses to focus on customer experience over massive growth.
In This Interview I Ask: 2:30 - Why did you decide to become an entrepreneur? 3:34 - What problem did you build Quickmail.io to solve? 4:41 - What did your process look like to validate the idea? 5:42 - Can you give us a sense of where Quickmail.io is right now in terms of monthly revenues and customers? 6:35 - What was it actually like for you to get your first customers? 9:42 - When you first experienced this problem for yourself, did you initially go see if there was something out there to solve it for you? 10:57 - When did you make the shift to focus on Quickmail.io as the business [you’re] going to build? 12:05 - Where were you finding those people [to have one-on-one sales conversations with]? 14:25 - How many sales conversations would you say you had? When you were doing the one-on-one sales conversations, how long did you do that? 15:38 - Once you switched from having one-on-one conversations, what was the primary way that you were acquiring new customers? 16:25 - Roughly what dollar amount, on a monthly basis, did you grow to [during the period] you weren’t really focusing any specific marketing effort? 19:20 - What sort of things are you looking for that would cause you to advise someone it’s time to leave [their] job? 21:42 - What is your most successful channel for customer acquisition? What is the number one factor that drives growth for you over the past couple of months? 23:45 - Have you thought about, [in] three years, what Quickmail.io would look like? Do you have a vision in place for what you want Quickmail.io to be? 24:45 - What was just one thing you personally needed to work on or overcome to grow Quickmail in the way that you did in the last two years? 28:48 - Have you put together any team? 31:13 - What does it look like for you to run a $50k/month business? What do you do on a daily basis? 35:44 - Who is an entrepreneur you admire? 36:30 - Is there something that you do every day in a ritual type way, no matter what? 39:21 - Who was your hero growing up? 41:47 - You’re going to a desert island and you can only bring one book, what book would you bring?
When to Quit Your Job When you know for sure that if you spend more time on your business and it will equate to more sales, then you can quit your job. If you leave before there’s a predictable path to more customers, you’re gambling with your future and your family.
The Freedom to Choose When and When Not to Work Many people build a lifestyle business to have the freedom to choose when and when not to work. However, sometimes you may need to force yourself to work, even when you don’t want to, in order to get things done. Other entrepreneurs who only work when they “feel like it” end up not doing much for their business. A business is like a child. It needs to be fed and changed. There are a few things that you just have to do. It’s not always sexy, but just do it.
How to Choose Your Mentors Have mentors with the skillsets you wish to acquire.
Show Links: Quickmail.io, website Quickmail.io Job Opening for Customer Support, apply |
Sun, 21 August 2016
Brian Scudamore is the founder of many companies under the umbrella of O2E Brands (Ordinary 2 Exceptional). He started his first business 1-800-GOT-JUNK, a junk removal company, in college, and grew it to a global brand with franchises in over 30 cities across North America. Brian’s other franchises include Wow 1 Day Painting, You Move Me, and Shack Shine. In this interview, Brian tells us how he grew 1-800-GOT-JUNK from a college side hustle to a 250 million dollar franchise. Brian credits his success to two things: having a clear vision for his business, and hiring the right people.
In This Interview I Ask: 2:30 - How much money can you make running a junk removal business? 4:07 - What were you studying when you were in college? 4:42 - If you were about to have the possibility to enter college today and you still wanted to be an entrepreneur, do you think you would go through it? 6:36 - What did [it] actually look like for you to go from nothing, to getting something created out of thin air? 10:26 - What kind of income were you actually taking home, roughly? 11:44 - During those first five years, what was your relationship like with [your friends and family] relevant to your business? Were they supportive? 14:53 - After you lay off these eleven people, do you start to create a system in a structure around exactly what it looks like to hire the perfect employee for you? 18:32 - So you've actually never taken outside funding for 1-800-Got-Junk or any of the brands, is that right? 20:21 - What kind of a process have you put in place to onboard new franchisees and keep the culture? 21:45 - Was there anything that happened with the franchising model that you guys really learned a lesson from? 24:49 - You guys have a pretty unique way of managing your vision, don't you? 26:26 - How close to that five-year goal did you hit your 30th city? 27:46 - So when does O2E [Brands] come about in relation to 1-800-Got-Junk?
Learn in the Way That Works Best for You In the world of business, there're so many ways to learn. Brian’s style of learning had always been getting out and talking to mentors, finding real-life people who had been where he wanted to go and learn from them. It all depends on what you're doing. If you're learning to code, you don't necessarily need to go to college. If you're learning to be a doctor, you probably should. Lots of successful people have gone the route of the classroom and studying to get an MBA. Find the method that works best for you.
Overnight Success Stories Take a Long Time As entrepreneurs, it's worth reminding ourselves that “overnight success stories” take a long time. It took Brian ten years to generate his first million dollars in revenue. There's so much talk of people getting into tech and building the next billion-dollar app, but those are truly unicorns. They do not happen very often. Real businesses are the ones that take time, take that passion that never wanes, and you're just constantly giving to try and really grow your company.
Systematize Your Business Write down all your business processes into a documentation of how your brand does everything. Systematizing became the foundation for 1-800-Got-Junk’s scaling. Brian took everything in his business, how he answered the phone, how he price jobs, how he resolved customer complaints, how he marketed the business when things were slow or busy; and compiled it on a one-page checklist of “how you do this the 1-800-Got-Junk way”.
“Inspect What They're Expecting” When it comes to customer service, always ask, “What we expect, is that getting delivered?” A CEO shouldn’t ever get so far away from the front lines. You have to connect. You have to check in and you have to “inspect what you expect”, even as you continue to grow a business.
The Keys to Growing a Business Successfully
“If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there”. It knows exactly where you're going. You don't have to figure out exactly how to get there until time starts progressing and you start figuring out the how. The vision is all about where you going. What's the destination? Imagine pure possibility. What could the future look like if only you could imagine it? Write down on a sheet of paper that your business would look like, feel like, and how you’d act at a point in the future. Example: The “painted picture” for 1-800-Got-Junk was a five-year vision that they would complete by December 31, 2003. It said they'd be in the top thirty metros in North America. It said they would be on The Oprah Winfrey Show. It said they would build the “FedEx of junk removal”, but with clean shiny trucks, friendly uniformed drivers. That painted picture compelled Brian to start seeing the future, and he shared it with friends, family, co-workers, and new hires so that everybody would see this vision and make a decision if they believed, or if they should be doing something different.
It's all about people. It's people that make businesses grow and succeed and thrive. Find the right people. Ask yourself, who’s the team? What does the team look like? What are the right seats? Bring those people in who have the same shared passion for your vision and towards building something bigger together. Hire and train them. Give them love and support and everything they need to be successful. Treat them right. Never compromise on the quality of people that you bring into your organization. However, keep in mind that no one will ever be as passionate about your business as you are.
What is an Entrepreneur? Entrepreneur stands for two things: opening doors to a new opportunity and then working together, building something much bigger together than anyone would have ever chosen to build alone. An entrepreneur is someone who isn't going solo. They're not flying solo. They're building something together and what's awesome about our entrepreneurs is once they've had their own runway and started becoming successful, they recognize that the fastest way for themselves to grow, is taking other employees they have and saying, “Hey, have you ever thought of running your own business, of living the American Dream? I think I can help”. O2E Brands is a cheerleading organization. They set a vision and help everybody work together towards that common vision. They also provide opportunities. They open doors and say “Come on in. Take the risk”. They invest with entrepreneurs and help introduce them to people could partner with one another to build a successful moving business or shine-our-window and gutter cleaning business in a new market.
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Fri, 12 August 2016
Andrei Mincov is the “trademark guy” and founder of Trademark Factory. He earned his PhD in law and worked for the biggest international law firm in Russia doing intellectual property work for the likes of Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, J. K. Rowling, DreamWorks and more. When Andrei moved to Canada, he went from being a hotshot lawyer to a nobody. It wasn’t until he read Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad that he decided to start his own firm. In this interview, Andrei teaches us about what a trademark does, and why it’s better to trademark before you launch your company rather than later. He also shares the story of how he became “the trademark guy” and how he challenged himself to become an entrepreneur.
In This Interview I Ask: 1:05 - How [did] you come to be the “trademark guy” in the Trademark Factory. What’s your story? 6:15 - How long ago did you join the biggest law firm in Russia? 15:00 - Why are trademarks important, and why are we wrong for not thinking about this stuff? 21:23 - You actually did some research on whether or not the top brands and the world were following [the saying “ideas are nothing”]. What did you find? 22:56 - Let’s say I’ve got a vision of building a lifestyle business, and it’s going to be $100k a year, roughly, is there any value in me going out and trademarking it if I have no intention of going bigger? 24:33 - Does [having a trademark] raise my value if I’m eventually going to sell a company? Is that going to allow me to get a bigger price for my business when I sell it? 27:42 - Are you educating people through your marketing on why they need trademarks or are you just doing traditional marketing in the traditional sense where you are making yourself known to people who are looking for a trademark? 32:46 - What is the cost [of trademarking] dependent on, or is there a flat cost for me to go out and get a trademark? 36:39 - Where can we go if we want to see some educational [trademark] cartoons?
What is a Trademark? A trademark is anything that allows the market to tell your stuff apart from identical or similar products or services of your competitors. The trademark has nothing to do with protecting the product or service itself but has everything to do with the way people identify it. The more competitive the environment, the more important the branding becomes because everyone is doing the same thing. It’s so easy to copy those ideas so the only thing that will allow you to have the competitive advantage is to protect the brand. “If you don’t protect your competitive advantage, you don’t have a competitive advantage.”
3 Reasons Why Protecting Your Trademark is Vital for Any Business
“If you’re running a business [and] you don’t think the value of the business is more than a few hundred thousand dollars, basically it’s a hobby. It’s not a business.”
Trademark Your Brand Before You Launch All the big, hot startups (like Uber, Firefox, Facebook, Google, etc) filed their first trademark applications within the same month, if not many months, prior to launching. One thing that distinguishes these founders from other entrepreneurs is that they believed they could be the next big thing; so they did what potential big things do and protected their assets. “Trademarks are all about timing. You need to be the first. Just because your trademark was available yesterday, doesn’t mean it’ll be available today.”
Trademarking is Not a Huge Investment The cost of trademarking is marginal is compared to the cost of filing a patent. A patent typically requires tens of thousands of dollars and years of your life. When determining if you should trademark or not, ask yourself the following questions:
If the answer is yes to all, then you don’t have a business.
How Trademarks Affect the Sale of Your Company Whenever someone buys a company, they do their due diligence. They check competitors to see if your business may be infringing on someone else’s. They check to make sure all your logos and branding assets are protected. If everything is protected, it makes it easier for the buyer. They’re not just buying your systems, but also your customers and the time that you invested building your brand. If they can’t take advantage of that, that’s a problem. The brand affects the value of the company.
Show Links: Trademark Factory, website Request Your Free Trademark Search, fill out the form Trademark Educational Cartoons, website |
Fri, 5 August 2016
Aaron Vidas is the founder and CEO of Strategy Box, a company that helps others companies find their most profitable customers and creates radically simple plans to help them grow. In this interview, Aaron talks to us about the software he built to help B2B companies determine the ROI of their marketing. Aaron shares his journey from validating his idea to hiring someone else to execute on his minimum viable product. We learn the importance of evaluating the ROI of our marketing and how you can use Strategy Box's dashboard to see what’s working for you in your business.
In This Interview I Ask:
Minimum Viable Product You need a condensed set of specifications of what your MVP needs to do. The functionalities don’t have to be your full vision. You just need to make sure it works solves a problem today. Also, make sure you can sell that version.
What is the ROI of Your Marketing? You need to know the ROI of your marketing. You need to know what’s working and what’s not. You need to have a clear picture of every dollar and how much revenue you get back. The average CMO is using nine to twelve tools to figure out what’s going on in their marketing.
There is One Reason Someone is Buying In any given B2B sale, there is literally one reason somebody is buying. It might they can get it faster. It might be the service is better, but there’s an itch that you’re scratching. That’s the 80% of the reason they’re buying. The other reasons are the 20%.
About StrategyBox StrategyBox shows you what your company does this week in regards to what is driving revenue for you, and what is suck on revenue for you. That way you can evaluate what about your marketing and sales activities is working or not, and who is responsible for what within that. StrategyBox’s intention is that if you are going to spend a dollar with them, they can provide you an insight or information that you can then go make an action and make eight to ten more dollars on. StrategyBox’s ideal customers are B2B SaaS (software as a solution) and B2B professional services (ie: agency work, consulting) who spend a lot of money spend a lot of money on marketing and sales, but don’t necessarily know the performance of it. They can help you find leakage in your sales and marketing, even if you are getting leads. Customers who are not ideal are companies generating less than one million dollars in revenue.
Show Links: Aaron Vidas.com, website Strategy Box, website Contact Aaron, email CrazyEgg: Website Heatmaps, website Zapier: App Automation, website |