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.

In this Expert Insight Interview, Wendy Swire discusses mental fitness and neuro-leadership for sales and business professionals. Wendy Swire has coached leaders in the US and globally for two decades. She is the co-author of the highly acclaimed book Anytime Coaching: Unleashing Employee Performance and a thought leader in the field of neuro-leadership.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• Neuro-leadership as the connection between science and leadership
• How understanding our brain helps us control our instincts
• The importance of mental fitness training

Neuro-Leadership

Neuro-leadership is at the intersection of science, leadership, and sales. It is about taking the latest research and cutting-edge neuroscience and applying it to fields of leadership management, including sales. It deals with things like resilience, positive emotions, brain health, and various other topics.

Neuroscience has been gaining in popularity recently, with many people talking about it. The reason it has gained so much traction lately is that people are beginning to understand that the brain is the most powerful information transfer system on the planet.

Controlling the Lizard Brain

There is nothing more powerful than your brain, so beginning to understand the capability of this three-pound mass that we all have can be incredibly insightful. So many things can be tied to brain science, including why we keep doing things over and over again, creating both good and bad habits.

Learning more about the brain can teach us how to control the reptile, primitive part of our brain and instincts. Just a little bit of science explains a heck of a lot, enabling us to be at our peak in terms of performance.

Mental Fitness

Mental pressure and mental health issues seem to be bubbling up to the surface more than ever before, perhaps spurred on by the pandemic. Something like one in four people suffers from loneliness and anxiety — these are unprecedented numbers.

We can think of mental fitness along the same lines as physical fitness. To remain physically fit, we go to the gym, lift weights, run on the treadmill, etc. We know that these activities are good for our heart, mood, and brain. Wendy Swire wants us all to think of mental fitness as the equivalent of this. You have to train your brain to withstand life challenges with the right mindset.

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, Tarun Kumar discusses the concepts of adaptability and being an infinite thought leader. Tarun Kumar is a professional speaker, author, and infinite thought leader. He is also a former army colonel, so he brings all of that experience to bear.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• The concept of being an infinite thought leader
• How the military has thought Tarun to be adaptable and think on his feet
• The fact successful business leaders share the same traits as successful military leaders

Infinite Thought Leader

An infinite thought leader is not constrained by the environment. The army teaches you that we are all looking at possibilities and that opportunity will not knock on your door unless you build the door first.

We miss many opportunities because we do not have that kind of vision and mindset. When Tarun talks about being an infinite thought leader, he is talking about the possibility that we as individuals have. Human beings are the best gift that God could create, and we have infinite potential. We need to look for opportunities, we need to look for possibilities, and that is what makes us as humans so great.

Thinking on Your Feet

John hasn’t been in the military himself, but he has talked to plenty of people who have. He has found that one of the things that you become very good at is making decisions and figuring out a way forward when you don’t have all the information at hand. Tarun Kumar agrees with this observation.

In whichever military, whichever army, your best laid-out plans go out the window upon first contact with the enemy. So, despite having worked out many contingencies, you often find yourself all of a sudden grappling with something altogether different, something you have not prepared for. This is where your adaptability and ability to work in an unpredictable environment come in.

Leadership Skills

In the military, you are what you are and what your environment makes you because you have to think on your feet and possibly look after the people around you. The same holds for the corporate world.

As a leader in the military, when the going gets tough or when you engage with the enemy, people are looking to you for answers or looking to see how you will react. This is the same in business — people tend to look to their leaders, expecting them to have the answers.

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, Mags Bell discusses her formula Cut, Polish, and Reset Your Inner Diamond Keeping You Transparent and Clear on Your Goals and Values. Mags Bell is an elite executive master coach with 20 years of experience imparting leadership expertise, and she is also the director of a speaking and coaching practice.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• Finding the right amount of pressure to create your diamond
• Why do we feel addicted to pressure
• The problem with being distracted and unable to relax

Pressure Creates Diamonds

Diamonds are made of carbon, just like humans, and the pressure they’re under makes them into diamonds and makes them valuable. We put ourselves under a lot of pressure in business nowadays, regardless of whether you’re on the sales floor or you’re the head of a company.

Pressure can go one way or the other — it can make an amazing diamond, but if pushed too far, it can also destroy whatever it grabs hold of. Mags Bell is interested in the balance of getting the “diamond” out under pressure, which compelled her to create the Cut, Polish, and Reset formula.

Addiction to Pressure

We also sometimes get addicted to pressure, or we feel like if there’s not a ton of pressure on our shoulders, we’re slacking or not reaching our potential. Not only do we put an enormous amount of pressure on ourselves, but we’re also not good at separating good pressure from bad pressure.

This leads to us living a life under stress, which means we often don’t know how to relax, even when we think we’re resting. Everything that Mags talks about is about finding the balance in your life to find that diamond within yourself.

Distraction

Nowadays, people are so overwhelmed, they have so many distractions, and so many things are invading their heads at all times. Rather than being busier than ever, we’re all more distracted than ever.

A lot of our stress is self-inflicted as a result of our own behavior, and it takes some discipline to start creating the space where you can have good pressure, but also where you can remove the bad.

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, Philipp Kristian discusses human transformation. Philipp Kristian is an international keynote speaker on the Future of Trust, Hybrid Work, and Digital Innovation. He is also a TEDx speaker and the author of RESET and The Trust Economy.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• The critical role of human transformation
• Why we need to work on humanizing our interactions post-pandemic
• How we must approach change from the inside out

Digital vs Human Transformation

We hear a lot of talk about digital transformation and the use of technology and automation to increase efficiency. However, we don’t tend to hear as much about human transformation. If we look at the past few years especially, technology that was supposed to help us has almost gotten in our way.

This is not the fault of humans but the result of the fact that we’ve built our technology ecosystems around a monolithic view of organizations. As everyone intuitively knows, organizations are not very human, so we are now faced with, after emerging from the pandemic, losing the human touch in many aspects.

Humanizing Interactions

With the benefit of hindsight and insight, we can bring back what all of us value the most, which is humanizing our interactions — particularly those at work — because these human interactions are sorely missed. They can be done online, and they can be done virtually, but we have to plan and design for them.

What Philipp Kristian means by human transformation is to kind of shift the perspective inwards for a moment. For certain logistical reasons, we were all confronted with ourselves in different ways in the last 24 months, so there’s a nugget of wisdom to be gained from that.

Change in Perspective

We now look at the world differently. For example, we used to look at sales, customer centricity and digital transformation with an externalization perspective. We thought that we could just change the environment, change things on the outside, and things would click into place.

Yet, time and time again, we see that things don’t change because, for some reason, people stay the same. Therefore, human transformation is an invitation towards introspection — to realize that organizations have a chance of transforming only when we as humans change.

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.