In this Expert Insight Interview, Scott Paradis discusses leadership, … Scott Paradis helps people achieve their full potential through his transformational books, online programs, and live training. He helps his clients understand the way life works so they can embrace their ultimate power. Scott had a 30+ year career with the US Army, retiring with the rank of Colonel.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• How leaders should be approaching the current global crisis
• The two types of leaders and how they differ
• Why many people fail in leadership positions

Fundamentals vs. Implementation

The world is going through an unprecedented transition now, and leaders need to understand what is happening and lead by empowering people and co-opting people into the process of moving forward.

Despite all these changes, the fundamentals of leadership always remain the same. However, the challenge is implementation. There’s a lot of anxiety surrounding the changes happening nowadays, and part of our fallback position is to always go back to something secure, something we can try to control. We see this in leadership as well.

Trailblazers and Team Leaders

According to Scott Paradis, there are two types of leaders: the trailblazer and the team leader. The former just focus on being who they are, doing what they do, charting a new path for people to follow.

On the other hand, the team leaders are who we traditionally think of as leaders in a business setting. These people socially engage and connect with others to achieve an objective. The challenge with leadership is taking control of our ego and understanding that leadership is not about achieving any individual’s goal but about helping others become greater versions of themselves.

Carrots and Sticks

When people first get into leadership positions, sometimes they think it is about telling people what to do. Leaders often talk about “carrots and sticks,” and both positive and negative reinforcement can be powerful weapons in a leader’s arsenal.

However, many fail to realize that these tools should only be used to motivate people to become the best versions of themselves.

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.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Richard White discusses how to help remote sales teams work more efficiently. Richard White is the founder and CEO of Fathom, a Zoom plugin that allows you to record and highlight your meetings in real-time, so you can write notes or share clips from your calls with colleagues later.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• How Fathom came to be and the inspiration behind its creation
• How the plugin can be utilized in sales and marketing
• How the app can be used in management and training

Fathom

Richard’s inspiration for the Fathom app came from problems he faced during Zoom calls. During the first six weeks of 2020, he took part in roughly 300 calls as part of an extensive sales and marketing push in his previous company. He realized that writing good notes was very difficult on a Zoom call, as it is practically impossible to capture all the nuance of a conversation.

Fathom is designed to solve this problem because the digitization of our meetings should allow us to record these calls, take snippets out of them and help us remember, or get the information to the right people. This allows us to focus on having a conversation during the meeting rather than constantly stopping to write things down.

Sales Applications

Fathom is a free app that records and transcribes your Zoom calls in real-time, and all you have to do is click a button when you hear something important. This will get the plug-in to flag that part of the conversation as something important, according to a set of tags you previously set.

After the call, you’ll get instant access to the entire recording, which is an improvement even on Zoom’s in-built recording system, which can take up to 30 minutes to give you access to the call. The team will then do the rest of the data entry for you, automatically adding the meeting to your CRM, sharing a link to your Slack workspace, etc.

Training and Management Applications

The app also doubles as an excellent coaching tool. Many sales leaders and managers struggle with managing and coaching virtual teams because it is so different from how they used to do it.

If you’re able to find all the critical moments in a call and share them with your team, explaining all the essential tips and strategies along the way, your ability to train and manage them goes up significantly.

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.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Laura Adams discusses how to create financial safety nets, delivering tips for individuals and small-business owners to minimize risks and protect hard-earned assets and survive any crisis. Laura Adams is a nationally-recognized personal finance and business expert, author of nine books and audiobooks, including Money Girl’s Smart Moves to Grow Rich and her latest book Money-Smart Solopreneur: A Personal Finance System for Freelancers, Entrepreneurs, and Side-Hustlers.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• The most common financial mistakes people make when starting a business
• How to build a “financial runway”
• Why it might be a good idea to keep your day job for a bit longer

Taking Out an Insurance Policy

There certainly seem to be many more people nowadays who are thinking of going out on their own and becoming solopreneurs. As people start to think about going into business on their own, they should focus on some initial financial things to protect themselves from the get-go instead of learning about them the hard way.

One of the main things that Laura sees people overlook about starting a business is thinking about insurance. This is no surprise: people are generally very excited about their business opportunities. That excitement can be a great tool in generating revenue, but having some insurance is always a good idea as you never know what might happen.

Building a Financial Runway

Laura also suggests testing your idea before investing all your savings into it, especially if it is something you plan to do on the side. Think about your emergency savings goals and whether you have enough of a “financial runway” to ensure that you’re OK even if the business doesn’t do as well as you hoped for.

Most people don’t save up enough upfront, so they end up in panic mode when the business begins to eat into their savings.

Keeping Your Day Job

Another thing Laura Adams encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to do is to keep their day jobs as long as possible. If you’re doing something on the side, you might get excited about it and think it is what you want to do for the rest of your life.

However, keeping your day job for just a bit longer gives you the ability to save up a bit more and keep the benefits you have at work. In that case, the additional source of income becomes a type of insurance policy in its own right.

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.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Kathy Davis discusses healthy habits for entrepreneurs from the perspective of plant-based foods. Kathy Davis is a plant-based life coach, recipe developer, and founder of VegInspired.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• The benefits of a plant-based diet
• How to create a healthier food environment
• Harnessing motivation from a mindset shift

Plant-Based Living

Eating more plants doesn’t just mean eating more salads. Quinoa, seeds, almonds, fruit, whole grains, greens, beans, etc., are all plants. Adding chickpeas to your salad in the middle of the day can pack in that perfect blend of protein and carbohydrates to sustain you.

Instead of heading into the kitchen at the end of the day to munch on unhealthy snacks for the rest of the evening, why not focus your energy on creating a nourishing meal that will make you feel great?

Healthier Food Environment

So how do people who are constantly on the move or can’t seem to fit cooking into their schedules create a healthy food environment? The trick is to make it accessible. Processed foods high in sugar, salt, and oil, are convenient, but they’ll leave you feeling groggy or hungry an hour later.

Instead, try to make the same simple breakfast every day. Perhaps you want to include nice whole grains, such as oats or quinoa, and some berries. You can make this the night before or even on Sunday for the entire week. You can opt for a salad for lunch or pre-cook some potatoes to take with you. Tweaks like this help create good healthy habits that fuel you on the path to fulfilling your mission.

Shifting Your Mindset

Let’s not forget that Mother Nature makes fruit in perfect little packages to travel with us. Sure, thinking about eating an apple is not nearly as exciting as thinking about eating a bag of potato chips, but it’s all about shifting your mindset.

Think of the food you eat as the fuel for your body. This shift in thinking will enable you to eat the foods that will give you the energy to run your business and create the kind of impact in the world that you want. Also, bring your refillable water bottle with you everywhere and stay hydrated at all times.

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.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Josh Fonger discusses yo-yo businesses. Josh Fonger is a consultant, coach, and speaker, developing and implementing systematic solutions to complex business problems. He is also the sole agent for the Work the System Method, based on Sam Carpenter’s book Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• The “yo-yo effect” in business and how to overcome it
• How to avoid burnout and scale your business effectively
• Why having a clear idea of what you want to achieve is imperative

Yo-Yo Businesses

Most companies don’t last because they never get beyond the “yo-yo string.” They get stuck at a plateau of growth, only making short moves above and below that line until a series of catastrophic events such as a trusted employee leaving or losing a big account forces them to go under.

The owner of the typical yo-yo business starts with the idea of building themself a job. They’re typically the hardest-working person in the company, and once they hit a certain level, making the income they want to make, they remain at that point, working a bit harder when they want to make a bit more and working a little less when they want to relax.

Burnout

This yo-yo approach might seem ok for a while, but the business owner eventually reaches a point of burnout. They get burned out having to be on call six days a week, putting out all the fires, and being the only one in the business who knows how to solve problems.

They need to mature to the point of understanding that they need to treat their business like a business rather than like a job.

Doing the Research

Solopreneurs and small business owners often have a vague idea of what they want their businesses to be. The ability to think on your toes, shift directions, and solve problems as they come is critical to entrepreneurial success, particularly during the early phase.

However, once you get past that and figure out who your customers are, what they want, and how you can deliver that, you have to shift your mindset and begin to scale your business for consistency. At this point, it is time to build up a team and see how far you can go and how big of an impact you can make with this value proposition that you’ve come up with.

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.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Joseph Wilkins discusses the simple steps any business can follow to make a video go viral. Joseph Wilkins is the owner of FunnySalesVideos.com. He and his team founded ProCreative studios in 2000, producing infomercials, TV spots, and web sales videos.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• Using humor in sales videos and marketing campaigns
• Why it is crucial to do your research first
• How to create a funny sales video for your audience

Humor in Marketing

Humor is very subjective and often doesn’t translate across cultures. There’s also the pitfall of trying to be something that you’re not in your videos and ending up looking silly. We have recently seen this with many brands, and it can be particularly jarring.

That said, every brand on the planet can use humor if they do it right. This is because every brand’s customer is a human being with emotions and responses, who enjoys a good story, and enjoys smiling and laughing. In fact, there’s no better way to connect with a customer than to start with a smile.

Doing Your Homework

You have to start with your research. Most people in marketing know this; it is Marketing 101. You would never write a letter, go to a post office, and then decide who to address it to. You have to understand at as granular a level as you can who the target is for the video and the action you want them to take.

Once you’ve done the research and understand the pain points of the people you’re trying to reach, it’s time to start brainstorming. People get intimidated by brainstorming, but you need to understand that it is not about quality but quantity. In other words, brainstorming is all about bad ideas because any bad idea could trigger somebody else to come up with a great one.

Bad Ideas

When you’re coming up with an idea for a funny sales video, you’re only looking to answer two questions:

• Who is the main character in the video?
• What problem do they have?

Joseph Wilkins and his team try to come up with 50 bad ideas for each video they are commissioned to create. Once they have those 50 bad ideas, they will distill them and present the top five to their client.

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.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Ashley Ann discusses relationship building and its importance for sales and business. Ashley Ann is a professional speaker, social media strategy/business builder, award-winning event designer, and educational technologist.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• The importance of human connection in sales and business
• How people have come to underestimate human contact
• How automation can help improve your business relationships

Human Contact and Technology

Over the last while, primarily through the pandemic, we have seen that people are craving human contact. We want to connect with others on a human level through personal and business relationships. While technology can be a great enabler of that, it can also be used to remove the human element from many aspects of life.

We’ve all had the frustrating experience of trying to talk to a company only to be sent from one bot to the next, never getting a chance to interact with a human being. Ironically, these companies often market themselves as “customer-centric”, but the experience with them is so different.

Value of Interaction

As entrepreneurs and business owners, we’re all really busy, but there’s a certain spark that comes from human connection, and it has been undervalued for a very long time. People have become so focused on sales that they forget that sales are driven by service and how someone feels about your company.

Most customers leave businesses because they don’t like how the interaction with the company made them feel, not because the business wasn’t the most inventive or didn’t have the latest and greatest product.

Automation as a Tool for Improving Relationships

The beauty of automation is that it frees up time for relationships. Instead of taking away from the relationships you have with your customers, it should enhance them because of the additional time it gives you to nurture those relationships.

For example, automation opens the door to segmenting your clients, so whenever you reach out to a client, you’re giving them highly valuable information. The pendulum is swinging towards more human engagement, so if you’re hoping to succeed in sales without engaging with anyone, you’re probably not in the right business.

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.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Asa Hochhauser discusses choosing and rolling out the right sales tech. Asa Hochhauser helps marketing leaders drive growth with MarTech and data. He is the VP of Sales at McGaw.io, a team of consultants and practitioners who help companies harness the power of marketing technology and data.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• How to choose the right marketing technologies and roll them out efficiently
• Why it is crucial always to remain focused on your goal
• The importance of integration within your stack

Working Backwards from Your Goal

Regardless of how well marketing technology is chosen, its roll-out often fails because people tend not to plan beyond the acquisition phase. So how can you do a better job assessing the technology you need and rolling it out efficiently?

Choosing the right technology often has nothing to do with technology per se. Whatever you’re doing, you should first and foremost be working backward from a goal. Usually, this will uncover a whole slew of problems or opportunities. These problems and opportunities should be the driving force behind your choice of technology. As you start to understand what you’re looking to achieve, you can focus on how you will go about doing it.

Focusing on What Is Important

We all know how many technologies exist today, so there will be plenty to choose from, but you’ll get distracted if you don’t remain focused on what’s most important to you. When it comes to getting buy-in, there’s the combination of going upmarket and focusing on your team that will be using the technology.

It is critical to help your team understand that the technology will make them more successful. You need to get alignment from the team that will be using the technology, and they need to know how it will change their workflow, what kind of skillset they’ll need, what type of training it will require, etc.

Integration

With the development of web technologies, it has become relatively easy to disappear into your basement for a few months and program a new tool. As a result, we’re seeing lots of new tools coming onto the market all the time. This means it is easy to get distracted and overwhelm yourself and your team by continuing to lay tool upon tool on them.

Another vital thing to think about when you’re building your stack is integration and how things will connect and talk to each other, and the best solutions are built to enable that.

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.