The Power of Gold to Maintain One’s Purchasing Power (video)

In this Expert Insight Interview, James Turk discusses his new book, Money and Liberty. James Turk is the founder and director of Goldmoney Inc., a gold-based financial services company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange that administers $1.8 billion in precious metals. He has specialized in international banking, finance, and investment since the beginning of his career in the late 60s with Chase Manhattan (now JP Morgan). He later managed the commodity department at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

The difference between currency and money
The meaning of purchasing power
Gold’s ability to maintain purchasing power over a long period

Currency vs. Money

Purchasing power is the financial means to buy, sell, and invest. In other words, we work to acquire purchasing power, and money conveys that purchasing power. Currency is different than money. Cash can be created out of thin air by central banks, which puts people who earn purchasing power at a disadvantage.

For example, the Federal Reserve has been pumping out a quantity of dollar currency much faster than real money; politically honest money, such as gold, has been growing. Inflation is a consequence of that.

Inflation and Purchasing Power

Inflation is a big topic right now, but people often get confused about the difference between money and currency. We hear about gold all the time, but many people feel that gold is something specialized that perhaps they can’t get into or shouldn’t be considered because they do not know too much about it.

People sometimes are reluctant about what is considered “traditional” places to invest. However, gold is not an investment; it is money. These are fundamentally different things. An investment portfolio can be divided into investments and cash, and gold would go into the cash category.

Gold as a Store of Value

Gold doesn’t increase your purchasing power, it just maintains it over a long period, which is one of the functions of what money is supposed to do, and gold does it very well. The beauty of it is that there is no counterparty risk because it is a tangible investment.

It is money you own, not money owed to you by some bank or government. There’s a fundamental difference there too, and it becomes particularly important when we have a financial crisis, and there have been many of those throughout history.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Well-Being and Personal Development (video)

In this Expert Insight Interview, Hiten Bhatt discusses wellbeing and personal development within the context of his latest book, The Leadership Adventure: Five Powerful Secrets Every Leader Should Know to Motivate People & Maximize Productivity. Hiten Bhatt is the CEO of Be Great Training, an influential international speaker, award-winning author, and leadership/transformational coach.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

Hiten Bhatt’s motivation to write The Leadership Adventure
Why our relationship with ourselves is most important
The perils of the “shortcut” culture that we live in today

The Leadership Adventure

Nobody really teaches kids or adults how to handle life. We love to have our formal education, technical skills, and qualifications. Still, nobody teaches us how to deal with setbacks, failures, heartbreak, and many other inevitable things that we all face in life.

That understanding led Hiten down a path of self-discovery, self-development, and philosophy, which is where his book, The Leadership Adventure: Five Powerful Secrets Every Leader Should Know to Motivate People & Maximize Productivity, came from.

Our Relationship with Ourselves

The most important relationship we have in life is our relationship with ourselves. How we speak to ourselves is crucial, and there are too many people out there that don’t have a high sense of self-worth, don’t have a high sense of self-esteem, and don’t look after themselves. So how can we expect these people to look after somebody else?

One of the ways in which you can start to build that relationship with yourself and become somebody that you like and respect is by doing things that take you out of your comfort zone every day. This is how you build trust with yourself, and as a result, your self-esteem and confidence grow. When we break the promises that we make to ourselves, what happens is that we erode our confidence in ourselves.

Shortcut Culture

In some ways, we live in a strange “shortcut” culture today, where everything is supposed to be easy, and we rarely have to make an effort to get anything. Because of this, people are underachieving and feeling worse about themselves.

We have this false idea that everything is supposed to be easy, and when things don’t turn out that way, our self-confidence is eroded, and we end up in a difficult place mentally.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Biggest Mistakes Newbies Make When Starting A Podcast (video)

In this Expert Insight Interview, Samantha Lee Wright discusses the biggest mistakes newbies can make when starting a podcast. Samantha Lee Wright launched a #1 podcast, reaching over 5 million downloads despite zero formal training.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

Whether you should start a podcast at all
How to find your niche
Understanding your own reasons for starting a podcast

To Podcast Or Not to Podcast

Similar to how it was with the blog a while ago, many people feel like they should have a podcast nowadays. Podcasting has become a content marketing channel, and people want to take advantage of it. However, doing something just because everybody else is doing it is not a great starting point.

Instead, you should really have a good reason, purpose, and plan for what you want to do. Starting a podcast is not like opening a Twitter account or a Facebook page — it is a lot more work, so it should take some thought, follow-through, and planning. So, if you’re not 100% in love with your podcast, don’t start it.

Getting a Little Weird

One of the biggest mistakes people make when starting out is that they start way too broad. If you’re starting from scratch, or you’re a small business without a huge following to bring along to your podcast platform, you can give yourself a huge leg up by niching down, or as Samantha puts it, “getting a little weird.”

Discover what it is that you have to offer to the world that is just weird enough or small enough. You’re not looking for everyone in the world to be interested in it; you’re trying to make it easy for those who are interested in it to find you and enjoy your content.

Why?

Another hugely important question that you can ask yourself is “why?” Think about whether you want to do a podcast just for fun or a business-related goal such as brand awareness, generating leads, etc.

When it comes to answering this question, a great place to start would be to consider how you want to make money from the podcast. Do you want to try and reach as many people as you can to get random sponsors, or do you want to offer your own product? If your goal is the latter, start with the ideal customer for said product and work your way backward to find the kind of content those people would listen to.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Why the Secret to Successful Business Is Setting the Right Goals (video)

In this Expert Insight Interview, Shiv Gupta discusses why setting the right goals is the secret to business success. Shiv Gupta is the SEO Team Lead and Director of Marketing at Incrementors Web Solutions. He has been in the digital marketing sphere since the age of 17, attaining a deep knowledge of the industry and earning multiple awards along the way.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

The crucial mistakes people make when setting goals
How to divide your goals into smaller, more attainable tasks
Why accountability is essential when it comes to achieving your goals

SMART Goals

The beginning of the year is when people usually set goals, so goal setting is a big topic. There are a few things that people do wrong when setting goals, and the first one is that they don’t know what they want to achieve or have just a vague notion of what they want to do.

The problem with this is that if you can’t measure something, you can’t achieve it. Therefore, it is always a good idea to set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) goals. So, instead of saying simply, “I want to lose weight,” you should say, “I want to lose five pounds by the end of the month.”

Commitment and Consistency

Setting big goals is great — you should have something exciting to strive for, something that motivates you. However, if you don’t lay out clear steps towards achieving this big goal, you will become overwhelmed by the task and ultimately give up on it.

Whatever your goal is, you need to divide it into attainable tasks which you can achieve on a regular basis, either weekly or daily. Once that’s done, all you need to do is remain consistent, and you’ll reach your big goal almost automatically. Think of your dreams in terms of commitment and consistency, and you’ll become unstoppable.

Accountability

Accountability is another essential part of the goal-setting equation. Even if you feel like you’re committed to a cause, you’ll quickly run out of motivation and drive if you’re not held accountable for taking the necessary steps to reach it.

In a fitness context, sharing your goals with someone or going to a gym with a partner makes it more likely for you to stay consistent. This accountability is also crucial in business, regardless of your position or status.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

What It Means To Be A Good Leader And How To Build Better Leadership Teams (video)

In this Expert Insight Interview, Scott Drake discusses accelerated leadership training, employee engagement, and working better as a team of leaders. Scott Drake founded JumpCoach to reflect on his journey into leadership which was a long and painful one. He set JumpCoach up as a passion project, and it became a social enterprise, and Scott became a leader of leaders. Now he coaches, researches, and helps create a new leadership level.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

What it means to be a good leader
Why the most compassionate people make the best leaders
How being a leader is not about having all the answers

Meaning of Leadership

If you were to go and ask a leader how they knew they were doing a great job, they would probably not have a clear answer. The challenge of leadership is learning what it means to be a good leader and helping your team play the same game.

We all come to leadership positions from different backgrounds, so the experiences that we bring to the table are vastly different.

Compassion

In the simplest of terms, leadership is working through others to get things done. This means you choose to go through other people rather than do something yourself. However, most of us come into leadership positions as experts in a particular field, so we think that being a leader means being even better at this particular field or making sure we bring everyone around us to the same level.

Unfortunately, being a great computer programmer or salesperson doesn’t automatically make someone a great leader. The person who should become the leader is the most compassionate member of the team — the person who can see the world through the eyes of the people they’re leading. A good leader usually has a complementary personality type (see ENFJ) to achieve greatness.

Not Having All the Answers

When people get into a leadership position, they often think they need to know everything and be experts in every aspect of their job. We live in a world where this is practically impossible, with so many specific tasks and roles, each carried out by people with the highest level of expertise.

You can’t know everything, so you have to learn how to trust others. On the other hand, you also have to trust your instincts so that you’re not being defensive all the time. You must shift your focus from trying to have all the answers to getting other people to work hard and solve problems.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

The Most Persuasive Form Of Communication To Improve Your Sales Ability (video)

In this Expert Insight Interview, Jeremy Miner discusses his NEPQ sales methodology. Jeremy Miner is a sales trainer, author, podcast host, and founder/chairman of 7th Level, a global sales training company. His unique brand of sales training pioneers the use of behavioral science and human psychology.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

The three forms of communication according to behavioral science
How to be more persuasive through dialogue
What NEPQ stands for and how to use it to your advantage

ERA-1

According to behavioral science, there are three forms of communication. Once you understand the differences between them, your sales ability will improve dramatically, and you’ll be able to help a lot more of your prospects. The first mode of communication is called ERA-1 selling.

This is your typical “boiler-room” selling that you might see in The Wolf of Wall Street. It is about talking up your product and talking down the competition, keeping constant pressure on the prospect. It is just like telling your spouse that they need to do something, and the more you push them, the more they push back.

ERA-2

According to behavioral science, the second mode of communication, called ERA-2, is more consultative. This is all about asking logic-based questions and selling to the client’s needs. The problem with only selling to the client’s needs is that most of your prospects don’t know what they need, especially when you first start talking to them.

This is why if you’re selling to the needs, you’re potentially leaving a lot of profit on the table. You should never sell to the needs, but rather to the underlying problems.

ERA-3

ERA-3 type of sales is dialogue. We’re the most persuasive when we allow others to persuade themselves. To do this, we need to ask Neuro-Emotional Persuasion Questions (NEPQ). So, what questions and techniques get the prospect to want to engage with us, open up to us, and go beyond the surface of what’s going on?

Unfortunately, there’s no list of questions you can ask every prospect and get immediate results. You’ll need to learn these questions organically with each prospect, and not only that, but you’ll have to adapt your delivery, tonality, body language, and other aspects of communication to every potential customer.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

How To Develop Sales Heroes When There Aren’t Any Dragons Attacking The Village (video)

In this Expert Insight Interview, Andy Gole discusses how to develop sales heroes when there aren’t any dragons attacking the village. Andy Gole is the creator of the Urgency Based Selling system, a consultant, strategic growth catalyst, sales educator, practitioner, and author of Innovate Now and The Biggest Pitch of Your Life.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

How to develop sales heroes
How to get the best out of your team
Why it is essential, to be honest with your employees

Opening Closed Minds

Many people excel in chaos or when there’s a crisis. Executive teams, in particular, tend to be fantastic at crisis management. They pull their ranks, come together and… never fix any of the problems. It is all about consistency and anticipating issues when solving problems.

Andy Gole sees salespeople as heroes when they’re doing their job. This is because they are trying to bring their prospects to a higher peak of wellbeing, and the prospects are fighting them. So, when the salesperson succeeds in their task, they open a closed mind.

Salespeople as Heroes

Salespeople are heroic on so many levels not only because they help themselves, the company, and the client, but because opening closed minds moves civilization forward. Andy talks about situations in which “no dragons are attacking the village” because he has been in “do or die” scenarios multiple times.

These scenarios usually prompted him to be very entrepreneurial and creative to succeed. However, he doesn’t believe that the average salesperson necessarily faces such scenarios regularly. The average salesperson joins companies when they’re already established, so they’re not in “do or die” mode. This is why leaders have to find ways to help salespeople be entrepreneurs within the organization.

Being Honest

So, what can a leader or owner do if they find themselves paying their team astronomical figures to wait for the phone to ring? First, they have to level with their employees. They have to tell the sales team that they’re not happy with the results they’re getting.

One way to express this is to say that you’re not getting the return on the assets and that you see the unrealized potential of the team. This could be enough to shake things up and get your sales team to perform better.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Surround Yourself With People Who Have Skills & Passions You Do Not (video)

In this Expert Insight Interview, Randy Crabtree discusses finding a proper fit within your business and surrounding yourself with people who have skills and passions that you do not. Randy Crabtree is the co-founder and partner of Tri-Merit Specialty Tax Professionals. He is a widely followed author, lecturer, and podcast host for the accounting profession.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

How to play to your strengths in business
Why it is essential to be self-aware and accepting of your weaknesses
How to find the right people to help you reach your goals

Playing to Your Strengths

If you were to look at how we approach employees and work generally, you’d find that we do a lot of performance reviews. Unfortunately, these reviews tend to focus on what employees did wrong rather than what they might be doing right. Our focus is always in the wrong place, trying to get people to improve upon things they’re not good at or don’t like.

Randy Crabtree’s approach revolves around understanding what you and your team members are good at, and playing to your strengths, instead of fixing the weaknesses you may never improve upon.

Finding the Right People

When you’re starting out, you have to understand that there are things you’re not going to be good at. This realization frees you up to look for people who can take care of these people for you.

You might be passionate about what you do, but that doesn’t mean that your company will be successful. For that, you’ll need great marketing, accounting, finance, etc. The good news is that you can outsource these things and hire people to handle these tasks from within the company itself. Focus on your passion instead of wasting your time on things you don’t care for.

Outsourcing

We’re in a unique position now to build the hybrid companies of the future, where you have a core set of employees and outsource all kinds of tasks, including HR, bookkeeping, marketing, and everything in between.

You might have contractors coming in for short projects, as well as others with whom you’ve worked for a long time. That is precisely the challenge for leaders and organizations nowadays —making a hybrid business seamless.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.