All You Can Eat Business Wisdom by TJFRPress

Praise for

Monday Morning Radio No one has done more over the past half-century to chronicle the culture and evolution of business journalism—and the experiences of we who practice it—than Pulitzer Prize-nominated reporter Dean Rotbart. As co-host (with his son Maxwell) of Monday Morning Radio, Dean continues to deliver media that matters to a large and loyal audience of small business owners and entrepreneurs who bank on the actionable insights shared by guests (I’m honestly proud to have been among them) on the podcast. Expect to be inspired and energized by the best of those insights while reading All You Can Eat Business Wisdom. — Alfred A. Edmond Jr.

Senior VP/Executive Editor, Black Enterprise

Monday Morning Radio has a sophisticated, thoughtful approach. It tackles meaty, important topics in a captivating and entertaining fashion. Dean and Maxwell are superb. — Gregory Zuckerman

Special Writer, The Wall Street Journal

As a small business owner, I look to Dean Rotbart for incredible interviews, deep insights, and entertaining interviews. Having been on the show myself, it’s like conversing with an old friend outside on the patio. Nothing pretentious. Totally relaxed. Always enlightening. I’ve recommended Monday Morning Radio to every entrepreneur and business owner I know. — Clay Stafford

Bestselling Author & Filmmaker, and Founder of Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference

I’ve known Dean for well over a decade and have had the pleasure of appearing on Monday Morning Radio several times. Dean is an exceptional advocate for and friend to small businesses. We are proud to have him as one of our original “All Kids Bike” national ambassadors, joining our nonprofit mission to provide every child in America the opportunity to learn how to ride a bike! — Ryan McFarland

Founder and CEO of Strider Bikes Founder and Board Member, All Kids Bike

The magic of Monday Morning Radio is the wide variety of topics it covers that are relevant to business owners and entrepreneurs. The same podcast that regularly offers actionable advice on increasing profitability and employee retention also finds room to share fascinating small business tales such as those detailed in my book, Retail Gangster: The Insane Real-Life Story of Crazy Eddie. Week-to-week, subscribers never know in advance what the topic will be, but they can be confident it will be worth their time. — Gary Weiss

Award-Winning Investigative Journalist and Author

I love Morning Monday Radio. Host Dean Rotbart’s deep experience reporting on business pays off in his smart questions about business success and failure. You’ll discover great insights in this anthology! — Gary Hoover

Executive Director, American Business History Center

Monday Morning Radio brings something wonderfully unexpected by looking at issues important to small business owners from different perspectives. No surprise, there, with a host like Dean Rotbart, whose work at The Wall Street Journal earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination; he and Maxwell ask questions outside the usual boxes so that listeners get fresh perspectives to bring the insight that can be useful for them. What does a poet have to tell you about being an entrepreneur or running a business? There’s one place to find out this and a whole lot more from people inside and outside the usual business communities. — Matt Mason

Author and Nebraska State Poet (2019-2024)

Dean has deep background and knowledge in media and business, and is also a compassionate and thoughtful interviewer. Which means he doesn’t just get great guests but extracts great thoughts that stand out from the herd. You can really tell when a host knows his stuff and knows what to ask, and Dean stands out. — Matt Murray

Editor in Chief, The Wall Street Journal (2018-2023)

Monday Morning Radio offers great advice and tips for anyone interested in business, particularly small business owners. I can’t wait to read about past shows. — Chris Roush

Executive Editor, Business North Carolina, and Founder, Talking Biz News

A Monday Morning Radio Anthology of Actionable Advice

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom Maxwell Rotbart Co-Host & Associate Producer

TJFR Press Denver, Colorado

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom Maxwell Rotbart

Published by TJFR Press 200 Quebec Street Building 300, Suite 111 Denver, Colorado 80230 Copyright © 2024 by TJFR Press All rights reserved. Permission to reproduce or transmit in any form or by any means — electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording — or by an information storage or retrieval system, must be obtained by contacting the author via email at mondaymorningradio@gmail.com. Ordering Information For additional copies, visit www.GutenbergsStore.com or Amazon.com. Library of Congress Control Number: 2024908396 ISBN 978-1-956928-05-1 Book Editor: Dean Rotbart Text Production: Avital Romberg Copy Editing and Proofreading: Talya Rotbart First Edition: May 2024

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my grandfather and namesake, Max Rotbart, of blessed memory — the original entrepreneur of the Rotbart family. A survivor of Auschwitz and multiple Nazi labor camps, he came to the United States in 1949, age 25 — one of only two members of his immediate or extended family to escape the Holocaust with their lives. His formal education was cut off in eighth grade. Likely because of his experiences as a slave in the coal mines of southern Poland, Grandpa Max fiercely valued his independence. Settling in Denver — renowned for its wide open spaces and crisp mountain air — he bought a walk-in truck, from which he sold fruits and vegetables door to door. Later, as he aged, he would park his truck at a flea market and operate from there. My grandfather was devoted to his customers, and the neighborhood children adored him. He used to give them free samples and sometimes even let them ride along in his truck. Now they are grandparents themselves, and they still fondly recall “Max the Fruitman” to me on a regular basis. Grandpa Max died of a heart attack at work on his truck, Labor Day Weekend, 1982. I never met my grandfather, but his entrepreneurial legacy, commitment to honest business practices, and strong work ethic live on in the Rotbart family. His spirit is also present on every edition of Monday Morning Radio. From its launch in June 2012, each podcast ends with an audio snippet of Grandpa Max’s voice, the only one that is still extant: “Good luck, all the best, until we hear from you again.”

A Note to Readers Think of this as an ebook on paper — unless, of course, you are reading it in a digital format. Each chapter contains links — written in tinyurl format — and QR codes that allow you to quickly access the referenced web pages and podcast audios. You’ll need to manually enter the tinyurls into your browser’s address bar, but that is easier than trying to enter the full (original) URLs. For the podcasts, both the tinyurl and QR code work, whichever you prefer. All You Can Eat Business Wisdom is not intended to be read from cover to cover. It is more of a reference book. Chapters that may not speak to your interests or needs today might well provide the answers you’re searching for tomorrow. In winnowing the guest-candidates to include in this volume, I aimed to tap into the wisdom of pundits with different expertise and life experiences. Accordingly, I have not endeavored to homogenize their strategies. What one expert sees as the formula for effective leadership or greater financial success may contradict what another of the podcast guests prescribes. You be the judge of which recommendations make the most sense to you. The foundation of each chapter is what the guests shared during their Monday Morning Radio appearances. In addition, to supplement what they said on our podcast, I tapped into an array of reference materials, such as news articles and third-party podcasts, as well as their own books and website content. Monday Morning Radio is recorded live-to-tape, which is another way of saying we don’t edit the audio to alter its content. Guests do not know in advance what my father and co-host Dean Rotbart or I will ask, and we strive to avoid the rote questions they’ve answered one hundred times before. Their responses are generally extemporaneous — without the reflection and time that they would have if they were writing a blog post or chapter in one of their own books. As such, I’ve taken the liberty to make minor edits to their exact words spoken on the podcasts when doing so helps to clarify their meaning. Finally, a note on my father’s contributions to this book. Needless to say, I couldn’t have done this without his help. My father has a solid grounding in business and finance that I lack. His years

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reporting for The Wall Street Journal and writing its “Heard on the Street” investment column provide him with invaluable insights. (The paper nominated him for the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Journalism.) Ditto, his interviews with well over 500 of our podcast guests before I joined the team in 2023. My dad’s invisible hand — and sometimes a whole arm — has helped shape and vet each chapter in All You Can Eat Business Wisdom. You can trust that the wealth of actionable advice contained herein carries his imprimatur. — Maxwell Rotbart

Table of Contents Foreword: Dean Rotbart

Chapter One: Ken Blanchard: Simple Truths But Profound Leadership Tools

Chapter Two: Charles Duhigg: The Amazing Benefits of Good Habits, Preparedness, the Right Business Culture, and Connection

Chapter Three: Mike Kaeding: Utilize Proven Technologies and Techniques Adapted From Other Business Sectors

Chapter Four: Ramon Ray: Forget Modesty. Celebrity CEOs Thrive by Building a Strong Personal Brand

Chapter Five: Robert L. Dilenschneider: A Proven Formula Anyone Can Use to Obtain Power and Wield Influence

Chapter Six: Michelle D. Gladieux: Communication Skills as a Key Determinant of Happiness and Reputation

Chapter Seven: Carl J. Schramm: Entrepreneurial Success Requires Passion, Determination, and a Willingness to Experiment and Innovate

— Founding host and executive producer, Monday Morning Radio

— Leadership guru and author of The One Minute Manager and more than 50 other business books (With Randy Conley, Blanchard vice president and trust practice leader)

— A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and the author of The Power of Habit, Smarter Faster Better, and Supercommunicators

— A visionary residential real estate developer and CEO of Norhart, Inc.

— An effervescent small business evangelist, entrepreneur, public speaker, and author of The Celebrity CEO

— Author, historian, and founder of The Dilenschneider Group, considered by many in the field to be the dean of American public relations executives

— A workplace-communications specialist, teacher, keynote speaker, and author of Communicate with Courage: Taking Risks to Overcome the Four Hidden Challenges

— Distinguished professor at Syracuse University, author, and an internationally recognized leader in entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic growth

Chapter Eight: Blaine Oelkers: Your Mind Is Your Most Potent Business Tool

Chapter Nine: Bert Gervis and Tracy Posner: Holy Bat Logic! Companies Can Do Well By Doing Good

Chapter Ten: Roy H. Williams: Steps That Turn Words into Magic and Dreamers Into Millionaires

Chapter Eleven: Ryan Deiss: It’s Who You Serve, Not What You Serve, That Counts

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Chapter Twelve: Stephen Semple: Harnessing Unconventional Marketing to Build Your Business Empire

125

Chapter Thirteen: Joanne Lipman: Closing the Gender Gap at Work and Reinventing Your Career

137

Chapter Fourteen: Phebe Trotman: Before You Call It Quits, Read This Chapter

147

Chapter Fifteen: Jen Sincero: It is Never Too Late to Change Trajectories From Failure to Soaring Success

157

— A leading authority on personal implementation and America’s only Chief Results Officer

— Cofounders of Gentle Giants Products, a pet food company widely acclaimed for its business ethics, product quality, and financial success

— A widely acknowledged marketing genius, bestselling author, and co-founder of the non-profit Wizard Academy in Austin, Texas

— A serial entrepreneur, leader in the digital marketing space, and founder of the Traffic & Conversion Summit

— A marketing and advertising expert specializing in designing and executing winning campaigns for small and mid-sized owner-operated businesses. Director of Wizard of Ads Canada and host of The Empire Builders Podcast

— Former deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and editor-in-chief at USA Today, as well as a bestselling author and lecturer at Yale University

— MVP soccer athlete, author, coach, and expert on the importance of resilience

— Self-development expert and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life

Chapter Sixteen: Fauzia Burke: How to Influence People and Win Friends

167

Chapter Seventeen: Karen Wickre: Harnessing the Power of Social Media to Sustain Relationships and Form Valuable New Connections

177

Chapter Eighteen: Dave Combs: Make Your Own Kind of Music

185

Chapter Nineteen: Tom Ziglar: Unlocking the Steps That Lead to a Successful Life

195

Chapter Twenty: Gregory Shepard: It’s Likely You’d Never Hire Someone Like Gregory Shepard, And You’d Be Mistaken

205

Chapter Twenty-One: Ray Bard: That’s What They Said — Wise Words to Live A Fired-Up! Life

217

Acknowledgments

227

About the Author

231

Be Our Guest

233

Also From TJFR Press

235

— Founder and president of FSB Associates, a full-service marketing and publicity firm that specializes in creating awareness for books and authors

— A veteran Silicon Valley influencer, early Google executive, and author of Taking the Work Out of Networking: An Introvert’s Guide to Making Connections That Count

— One of the most successful songwriters and independent music distributors you’ve probably never heard of. He is the author of Touched by the Music: How the Story and Music of “Rachel’s Song” Can Change Your Life

— As CEO of Ziglar, Inc., he continues the teachings and fosters the legacy of his acclaimed father, the late Zig Ziglar

— The head of a capital partnership focused on technology investments, he has achieved remarkable success despite being autistic, dyslexic, and having a sensory condition known as synesthesia

— Founder of the eponymous Bard Press, publisher of 32 business and self-help titles, 18 of which became national bestsellers

Foreword By Dean Rotbart

Monday Morning Radio is a podcast, but it is also a community of global business owners and entrepreneurs who come together weekly to learn from one another how to improve the performance of their companies and derive greater personal satisfaction from their efforts. The show follows a model that Business Week magazine, founded in 1929, perfected as part of the McGraw-Hill publishing family: offering bankers practical insights they could glean from the forest products industry and alerting automakers and steel manufacturers to trends in consumer products, fashion, and entertainment. In other words, fostering a culture of cross-pollination where diverse business leaders share insights and innovations and draw inspiration from one another. The 600-plus guests who’ve appeared on Monday Morning Radio likewise run the gamut from billionaire financier, philanthropist, and medical innovator Michael R. Milken (November 2012) to elementary teacher Sarah Hassenger (April 2016), owner of Four Black Paws. When school is out for the day, Hassenger returns home to make and sell a full range of stylish designer collars and accessories for dogs. Her satisfied clients include Rachel Ray (and Isaboo), Amanda Seyfried (and Finn), Ryan Gosling (and George), and Alison Sweeney (and Jorge and Winky). Collectively, the business owners, entrepreneurs, coaches, authors, and investors who’ve shared their wisdom on Monday Morning Radio epitomize why — to reference one of the podcast’s long-time slogans — Small Business Drives America. Independent enterprises and startups are the target audience for Monday Morning Radio. No segment of the U.S. economy is more important for job creation, innovation, diversity and inclusion, and local community cohesion. As of March 2023, the U.S. Small Business Administration reported more than 61 million Americans were working in the small business sector, which accounted for almost 63% of all new jobs created since 1995. Monday Morning Radio is an outgrowth of an over-the-air weekly radio

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

program in Denver, Business Unconventional — “BUnconventional” — which I co-hosted every Sunday morning beginning in December 2011 with a local insurance executive, David Biondo, the show’s main sponsor. [https://tinyurl.com/BUnconventional] BUnconventional, despite its not-ready-for-prime-time slot and local orientation, attracted guests of national stature. I immediately realized that the insights and advice they had to offer were relevant well outside the signal range of our host station, 710 KNUS-AM. While Apple’s iTunes began incorporating podcasts in June 2005, the medium was still in its infancy in June 2012 when I decided to record and repackage BUnconventional as a podcast. I chose the name Monday Morning Radio for two reasons. The first, obvious one is that it is posted first thing every Monday morning. The second is that from the start, Monday Morning Radio piggybacked on the wildly popular weekly blog, The Monday Morning Memo, whose author is the incomparable Roy H. Williams III. Roy, featured in Chapter Ten, is a creative genius — not a compliment I toss around lightly. Roy is the mind that has launched 1,000 (metaphorically speaking) small businesses into higher orbits than they could ever have dreamed of reaching. He first published The Monday Morning Memo in May 1994 as a faxed newsletter, sharing his observations on the world at large, trends, tastes, marketing, advertising, small business, and whatever else was on his mind. Thirty years on and more than 1,550 consecutive fresh editions later, the Memo reaches a vast global audience, and thanks to Roy, at the bottom of each of his essays is a plug for that week’s Monday Morning Radio. I have been a Roy Williams acolyte since his seminal book, The Wizard of Ads: Turning Words into Magic and Dreamers into Millionaires, arrived in 1998. I loved that book from the first time I picked it up and began buying bulk copies and sending them to colleagues, clients, and fellow journalists. When Roy and his wife, Pennie — a creative genius in her own right — launched the nonprofit Wizard Academy to teach business owners the type of marketing and operating strategies that they’d never learn in business school, I was in the school’s very first class.

It was my honor, years later, to become a Wizard Academy director and faculty member.

Foreword

The business owners and entrepreneurs who read The Monday Morning Memo, subscribe to Monday Morning Radio, and attend classes at Wizard Academy are a self-selecting special breed of iconoclasts. They prefer to write and follow their own playbook, eschewing conventional approaches to success. The Wizard Academy/Monday Morning Radio tribe understands that there is no getrich-quick trick to business. Success takes persistence, networking, coaching, the support of a loving life partner, an appreciation of history, and counterintuitive thinking — all themes you will encounter throughout this book. As Roy imparts, entrepreneurs need to focus on these questions: “What do you believe in? Are you willing to invest in that? Are you willing to commit yourself to that? Are you willing to fight to make that happen?” All You Can Eat Business Wisdom is an anthology of the best insights and recommendations from two dozen of our age’s most influential and forward-thinking business virtuosos. It is a rich buffet of practical advice and inspiration. Bon appétit.

ean Rotbart, an award-winning author and former financial columnist with The Wall Street Journal, is Monday Morning Radio’s founding host and executive producer. While at the Journal, he was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism. He has won Gold Medals from the Nonfiction Authors Association for his 2021 book, September Twelfth: An American Comeback Story, and his 2023 book, Dedication and Service: 50 Years on Call with the Volunteers of Colorado’s Genesee Fire Rescue. Dean and his wife, Talya, also an author, live in Denver, Colorado.

Chapter One

Simple Truths But Profound Leadership Tools

Ken Blanchard and

Randy Conley

Success is Best Achieved When Managers Serve Workers, Inverting the Traditional Hierarchical Pyramid

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS 1. Leaders should not consider themselves omniscient; they should lead collaboratively. Effective leaders realize that humility is not a weakness. It’s a strength. 2. Instill in every employee, regardless of their rank, the sense that they are owners, not just wage workers. 3. If caring for your employees and your customers comes first, then you’ll be profitable. If generating profits comes first, then your employees and your customers will resent you, and your bottom line will suffer. 4. Don’t berate employees for their mistakes. Approach their errors as learning opportunities. Leaders who take the heat for their employees foster trust and psychological safety, which leads to innovation, productivity, and higher morale. 5. Create a reserve of goodwill with employees before offering constructive criticism. 1

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With Great Service, Success is in the Bag In Ken Blanchard’s 2017 book, The Simple Truths of Service, co-authored with Barbara Glanz, he shares the true story of a grocery store bagger with Down syndrome. It has become legendary on the motivational speakers’ circuit. The bagger, who Blanchard and Glanz identified only as “Johnny,” took it upon himself to elevate the food store’s standard of hospitality. Before work daily, Johnny would write up quotes that he liked, many of which were original to him. His father then typed up the sayings and printed multiple copies. Johnny would cut out the phrases and, at work, leave one quote strip in the bag of each customer he assisted. Soon, the line of shoppers at Johnny’s checkout aisle far exceeded those customers at the other registers. People were willing to queue up to receive Johnny’s daily dose of wisdom. Inspired by Johnny’s thoughtfulness and popularity, other store employees began adopting their own spin on customer service. The store’s managers did not conceive of or require their clerks’ behaviors; they arose organically from each employee.

Customer Service Royalty Blanchard shot to prominence with his blockbuster 1982 book, The One Minute Manager, co-authored with Spencer Johnson. Since then, he is often called the “King of Customer Service.” In Blanchard’s two appearances on Monday Morning Radio, he stressed the importance of treating every customer and employee with the utmost respect. Rather than dictating from on high what employees must do and how they are required to behave, Blanchard says the secret of business success is giving every employee — even lowly grocery clerks — the sense that they are owners, not just wage workers. Blanchard points to Colleen Barrett as a shining example of how employees can thrive and significantly contribute to their employers when their supervisors avoid pigeonholing them — restricting personnel to narrow roles or expectations. Barrett began her career as the legal secretary to Herb Kelleher, who, at the time, was practicing law. Kelleher subsequently co-founded and led Southwest Airlines for two decades.

Barrett followed Kelleher to Southwest, which, under his leadership, grew

Ken Blanchard and Randy Conley

dramatically from a tiny Texas low-fare, no-frills airline serving Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio to the fourth-largest domestic carrier, offering more than 2,700 daily flights to 57 cities in 29 states. Southwest, whose logo is a tri-colored heart, adopted “love,” which it spelled LUV, as its brand identity, so much so that its New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol is LUV. The label reflects the company’s caring culture, customer service, and employee appreciation. Barrett took it upon herself to spread the love by fostering and guarding the airline’s service-centric culture. It worked. Twenty years after joining Southwest full-time in 1981, she succeeded Kelleher in his role as president of the company, becoming the highest-ranking woman in U.S. airline history. On Monday Morning Radio, Blanchard answered the question of why Kelleher turned to Barrett — who graduated from Becker College in Worcester, Massachusetts, with a two-year legal secretary degree — and not some Harvard-MBA-type manager. “[Herb] didn’t want some Jack Welch look-alike coming down there and changing the vision and the values,” Blanchard explained. “He wanted somebody who had a servant’s heart.” “Colleen Barrett has lived the leadership principles extolled by Ken Blanchard,” Kelleher wrote in the Foreword to Lead with LUV: A Different Way to Create Real Success, the 2010 book co-authored by Blanchard and Barrett. “She has ensured that no grief goes unattended; that no joy goes unshared; that each achievement is celebrated; and that those requiring help receive it.” In 2015, Barrett donated $1 million to her alma mater, the largest individual contribution to Becker College in the school’s 230-year-history.

Be an Eagle, Not a Duck In The Simple Truths of Service, Blanchard and Glanz don’t write much about the grocery store managers who had the foresight to see the potential in a Down syndrome applicant, hire Johnny, and then permit him the liberty to improvise his heightened customer service. But Blanchard is unequivocal that employee and customer care trickles down from the top — a process he labels “servant leadership.”

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

“All that really means is reaching out to people in a caring way and seeing how you can encourage them,” he explains. “Praise them if they’re doing a good job. Redirect them if they’re having problems.” On the flip side, Blanchard says, are “self-serving leaders [who] want everybody sucking up to the hierarchy.” The result: enfeebled employees. Blanchard notes everyone has experienced interacting with robotic employees when trying to resolve a problem. “You’re used to talking to a duck. They go: ‘Quack, quack. It’s our policy. Quack, quack. I just work here. Quack, quack. I didn’t make the freaking rules. Quack, quack. You want to talk to my supervisor?” Don’t blame these “mallards,” Blanchard says. “Because if they take any risk, they get clobbered.” In contrast, Johnny the bagger, Colleen Barrett, and so many others like them who have the good fortune to work for servant leaders are “eagles” in Blanchard’s lexicon. They soar on the job. When a customer presents with an issue, these self-confident achievers take it upon themselves to address the problem. Blanchard likes to tell the story of a man who went shopping at Nordstrom for a gift for his wife. He was after a specific perfume, but the luxury department store didn’t carry it. However, the sales associate knew another store in the mall that did sell the perfume. What did this “eagle” do? She left her counter and took it upon herself to go to the other store and purchase the perfume. Then, she gift-wrapped the fragrance and charged the grateful husband only what she paid for the gift. “So Nordstrom didn’t make any money. But what did they make? They made a customer!” Blanchard affirms. “It all starts from the top,” he says, pointing out that the best-run small businesses are those where the owner is present, active, and service-minded.

Servant leadership inverts the hierarchical pyramid. Instead of employees trying to figure out what their bosses want, employers seek to ascertain what their workers need.

Ken Blanchard and Randy Conley

“Effective leadership is an inside job. It starts in your heart.”

Sit, Nero. Heel, Caesar. Randy Conley co-authored Simple Truths of Leadership with Blanchard and joined him on Monday Morning Radio in April 2022. Conley echoes what Blanchard teaches: “Servant leadership has proven time and time again to be a beneficial leadership model. It leads to organizations having higher profitability, higher employee engagement, and less turnover.” Conley acknowledges a key challenge in implementing a service-leadership model: So many business owners focus on increasing profitability in the near term that they lose sight of the long-term consequences of their myopia. The two co-authors sing from the same hymnal when it comes to the “simple truths” they espouse in their book and during speaking engagements. The principles of servant leadership, Conley says, are “common sense, but they’re just not common practice.” Blanchard has a theory for why servant-based leadership is often neglected, even by well-meaning, highly-educated executives. “I think when people become leaders, they often get scared, you know, ‘Am I going to do it right? Am I the right person?’ And they start focusing on themselves. When you start focusing on yourself, you don’t want to share your vulnerability, which is really sad.” The antidote, he believes, is to admit to subordinates that you don’t have the answers and to seek their advice. Instead of thinking that you are foolish for not knowing the answers, they’ll relish the opportunity to work with you as teammates. Moreover, they’ll realize that it’s all right if they don’t know all the answers, which will make for a much more collaborative workplace culture. That’s why, in Blanchard’s business courses, “we try to teach people about humility, to help with false pride and fear and self-doubt. Humility is not a weakness. It’s a strength.” The absence of these values has led to what Conley describes as “a crisis of trustworthy leaders” that has permeated the country since the 1960s. “I get asked all the time, ‘How can I be a servant leader when I work in a toxic culture?’ And I think you have to start at your own circle of influence. Who is it on your team that you can influence and practice these principles with?” To prove the value of servant leadership versus self-serving leadership,

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Blanchard references a quip by his colleague, Pastor John Ortberg. Let’s assume that 2,100 — 2,200 — years ago you were a gambler… Where would you bet your money on lasting? The Roman Empire and the Roman army or a little Jewish rabbi with twelve incompetent followers? This is interesting that 2,100 — 2,200 — years later we’re still naming kids Jesús, Peter, Paul, and Mary. And we name our dogs Nero and Caesar.

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: The February 12, 2024, episode of Monday Morning Radio featured Jane Boulware, a farm girl who used a combination of talent, grit, and ambition to become one of the ten highest-ranking women working for Microsoft Corp by the time she turned 40. She was miserable, thinking herself unworthy of her lofty position. Boulware worried: “If people realized I was just a pig farmer from Iowa, would they really follow me? I often felt like a fraud.” The fear of being discovered almost derailed her career. Only when Boulware came to the realization that it was okay not to have command of all her responsibilities and to seek help from those she supervised did the crisis pass. Here’s what she shared: I went back to what I learned as a kid growing up and gathered people around me who were better than me. I stopped pretending that I knew everything. I told myself it was okay not to know, and I realized that when I tried to be fearless, I felt like a fraud. I actually grew in my work. My trajectory went much greater than 90 degrees because I wasn’t trying to do it all. I started focusing on other people and what they were good at. I surrounded myself with people better than myself, and I wasn’t threatened by them. In the process of doing that I created an amazing team. And, you know, our results blew everybody else away. I’d find people who didn’t even know how good they were, and help them to be better than they thought they would be. We did things that people said couldn’t be done. Boulware’s entire interview is available at https://tinyurl.com/MMR021224]

A Short Checklist for Great Leadership Blanchard and Conley write that the words I Corinthians 13:4-7 uses to describe love can well be applied to leadership qualities:

Ken Blanchard and Randy Conley

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. More than the religious and philosophical intangibles of making you a better person and employer, Blanchard’s advice has practical benefits. No matter how great a company’s product or service is, he asserts, the business won’t succeed in the long run without embracing servant leadership. Like a tall tree with a weak root system, a company that is managed as an oligarchy will lack the foundation for long-term survival.

The Buck Stops Here Inevitably, all business owners retire or die. Conley warns that companies will not long survive those who eschewed servant-leadership and instead adopted the perspective that “it’s been about them. They do the work, they’ve built their business.” These types of owners don’t function collaboratively, failing to train a next generation of company leaders who can succeed them. Conley observes: At some point, business owners have to ask themselves, ‘How can I multiply my influence? I can’t be everywhere. At the same time, if I want my business to grow, if I want it to thrive, I need to multiply myself. I need to create other leaders.’ … When you raise a whole crop of leaders that are effectively running your organization, that makes your job easier, more enjoyable, more effective” and, to the point, more sustainable. Conley continues, “Lead your team to success and then other people around are going to start looking and saying, ‘Wow, look at him (or her), look what he’s doing with his team. Why are they crushing it? What are they doing differently than other teams?’ And like the proverbial dropping a pebble in a pond and seeing the ripple effect, hopefully that creates a ripple that then starts to change the organization from the inside out.”

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

Moreover, “people who feel good about themselves produce good results… When you understand that you are good enough that your self-worth is not predicated on the applause of others or the supposed success that you have or don’t have, then it frees you to produce good work.” Among the advice that Conley has for employers is to frame employee mistakes as learning opportunities. “When your leader is willing to take the heat for you that fosters trust, it fosters psychological safety, which leads to innovation, productivity, and higher morale.” Blanchard counsels that employers need to build a relationship with their employees before they can offer critical feedback. By having a reserve of goodwill, employees will be much less defensive and open to constructive remarks.

Beyond the Boardroom Concluding their book, Simple Truths of Leadership, Blanchard and Conley describe their approach to becoming effective leaders as having vital importance beyond the business world alone. The world is in desperate need of a new kind of leadership…. Clearly, what we’ve been doing isn’t working. We need a leadership philosophy grounded in the knowledge and belief that the most successful leaders and organizations are those that place an emphasis on serving others and leading with trust. Trusted servant leaders are the answer to today’s challenges. People are looking for deeper purpose and meaning as a way to meet the rapid changes happening in their lives. They are also looking for leaders they can trust and believe in — leaders whose focus is on serving the greater good.

en Blanchard seemed destined for the academia track.

From the fall of 1957, when he started his freshman year at Cornell University, until the spring of 1966, when he completed his Ph.D. there, Dr. Blanchard was continually in school.

He earned a bachelor’s in government and philosophy, a master’s in sociology and counseling, and a doctorate in education administration, leadership, and organizational behavior — all in short order. He was active in campus

Ken Blanchard and Randy Conley

life as part of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity and basketball team. So it was hardly a surprise when his first job out of college was as an assistant professor at Ohio University’s business school; followed by a full professorship in education at the University of Massachusetts. It was a university position that took Dr. Blanchard to San Diego in 1976. But three years later — after more than two decades in the academic world — Dr. Blanchard and his wife, Margie, launched The Ken Blanchard Companies, an international training and consulting firm. Dr. Blanchard has authored, co-authored, or contributed to more than 65 books and has been recognized by Amazon as one of its all-time best-selling authors. The One Minute Manager, co-authored with Spencer Johnson, has sold more than 13 million copies. Dr. Blanchard was born in New Jersey and raised in New York. He and Margie have two adult children.

andy Conley is a recognized authority in the fields of trust and leadership. He is popular keynote speaker, presenter, and trainer.

Conley joined Blanchard’s consulting firm in August 1996, having recently graduated from San Diego Christian College’s business management program. He quickly became a crucial member of Blanchard’s team, rising through the ranks to become a vice president and a leading expert on servant leadership. Among the clients he has advised are Amgen, American Express, Burlington, Wells Fargo, American Honda, Pfizer, and the San Diego Padres. Inc. magazine named Conley one of the country’s top leadership thinkers and speakers. He authors the Leading with Trust blog and is the co-author of Blanchard’s Building Trust training program. He and his wife, Kim, live in San Diego and have two adult sons.

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Scan the QR Codes Below to Listen to Ken Blanchard’s Appearances on Monday Morning Radio

Why Make Being an Effective Leader So Complex When — DUH! — All It Takes is Common Sense?s Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/Blanchard-Conley

Ken Blanchard, Author of ‘The One Minute Manager’ Ministers the Simple Truths of Great Customer Service Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/Blanchard-Johnny

Ken Blanchard’s and Randy Conley’s Websites and Social Media Ken Blanchard: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Blanchard How We Lead: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-HowWeLead LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/Blanchard-LinkedIn Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/Blanchard-Twitter Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/Blanchard-Facebook 10

Ken Blanchard and Randy Conley

Randy Conley: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Conley Leading with Trust: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-LeadingWithTrust LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/Conley-LinkedIn Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/Conley-Twitter

A Partial List of Ken Blanchard’s Books Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2022. — co-authored with Randy Conley https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-STLeadership Simple Truths of Service: Inspired by Johnny the Bagger. Ignite Reads, 2018 — co-authored with Barbara Glanz https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-STService The New One Minute Manager. William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2015. — co-authored with Spencer Johnson https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-New1Minute Lead with LUV: A Different Way to Create Real Success. Pearson, 2010. — co-authored with Colleen Barrett https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-LeadWithLUV Lead Like Jesus: Lessons from the Greatest Leadership Role Model of All Time. Thomas Nelson, 2005 — co-authored with Phil Hodges https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-LeadLikeJesus The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2004 — co-authored with Mark Miller https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-TheSecret Gung Ho! Turn On the People in Any Organization. William Morrow and Company, 1998 — co-authored with Sheldon M. Bowles https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-GungHo Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service. William Morrow and Company, 1993 — co-authored with Sheldon M. Bowles https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-RavingFans

Chapter Two

The Amazing Benefits of Good Habits, Preparedness, the Right Business Culture, and Connection

Charles Duhigg

As Unpredictable as Human Behavior Seems, There is a Practical Science to It

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS 1. Any bad habit, no matter how ingrained, can be replaced with a good one — at work or home — using well-established techniques. 2. Identify “keystone habits,” the small changes in regular routines that can have profound ripple effects. 3. Just as people have personality types, so do businesses. Fostering the right culture for your business is a necessary foundation of success. 4. Companies enjoy greater profits, longer survival rates, and more satisfied employees when they value everyone’s contributions, regardless of rank or responsibility. 5. The aim of the most significant conversations should be to learn how the people we’re speaking to see the world and to make clear our perspectives.

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Hi, I’m Bill, and I’m An Alcoholic. One night in December 1938, Bill Wilson sat on his bed in Akron, OH, pencil and pad in hand. He was depressed, but that wasn’t anything new; Wilson had suffered from depression for most of his life. His stomach hurt; that could have been anxiety or his ulcers. Rather than going for a drink, Wilson, a lifelong alcoholic who was already a couple of years sober, sketched out a twelve-step program to help fellow alcoholics achieve sobriety. The entire exercise took him 30 minutes to complete. More than eight decades later, Wilson’s twelve-step program — the core of the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) organization that he founded — has helped millions of people with addictions recover and has become what Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charles Duhigg writes in his 2012 breakout bestseller, The Power of Habit, “the largest, most well-known and successful habit-changing organization in the world.” But why? Wilson’s approach was not scientific. The number twelve — whether chosen at random or representative of the twelve apostles, as some contend — lacks empirical support. So why has Wilson’s twelve-step program proven so effective? Duhigg explains it is because AA comprehensively understands how detrimental habits are formed and the strategies required to cultivate new, beneficial ones. Drinking too much is a perfect example. The habit begins innocently with a shot of scotch, perhaps after a bad day at work. The bad day is the “cue,” as Duhigg describes it. The next step, the “routine,” develops after repeated bad days and visits to the neighborhood bar. The third and final step is the “reward,” the ongoing sense of satisfaction and relief that comes from imbibing the alcohol. The insight that AA relies on begins with the same cue but switches the routine, Duhigg explained, when he joined the podcast* from the newsroom of The New York Times, where he was working when The Power of Habit was published. “What AA says is, ‘Same cue. If you come home and you have a terrible day at work, the routine is: Go to a meeting instead of a bar.’ And the reward is the same thing. You talk to your friends, you unload your problems, you have an emotional catharsis.” It’s a lesson, Duhigg says, that business leaders would be wise to remember, as the methods of replacing a bad personal habit with a good one have direct and significant application to workplace cultures.

Charles Duhigg

Keystone Habits One habit-formation maestro was Paul O’Neill, who controversially began his tenure as the newly hired chairman and CEO of the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) in 1987 by promising to improve worker safety. What is controversial about worker safety? O’Neill arrived at Alcoa at a time of declining profits. The general consensus among investors and securities analysts was that his top priority should be on improving the financials of the Pittsburgh industrial giant, and not what critics perceived as a peripheral concern like worker safety. O’Neill proved his doubters wrong. In addressing worker safety, he had identified a “keystone habit” — a small change that would have profound ripple effects. Every time a worker was injured, O’Neill wanted to be briefed immediately. The “ripples,” Duhigg says, followed: For top executives to be able to write a report about why some guy got hurt on the floor in some factory [a] thousand miles away… they had to set up all these communication systems where even the lowliest employee could talk to the most senior executive within hours of something occurring. With efficient lines of communication established, work became more efficient and tensions between the union and management eased. Profits rose dramatically, and during O’Neill’s 13-year tenure with Alcoa, bolstered by investments in new technologies, the company’s market value grew roughly ninefold and its net income more than sevenfold. Simultaneously, the number of lost days per 100 employees due to workplace injury or illness fell by just shy of 90 percent. Keystone habits make clear what a company’s values are, Duhigg writes. In the case of Alcoa, O’Neill’s focus on safety proved to be much more than lip service. Putting his employees first, he restructured the entire company around that priority. [AUTHOR’S NOTE: Controversy followed the outspoken O’Neill as George W. Bush’s initial Secretary of the Treasury. On the job for less than two years, President Bush fired O’Neill in December 2002 over what observers described as O’Neill’s stubborn independence.]

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Pavlov and the National Football League In 1870, Ivan Pavlov, a Russian divinity student from Ryazan — 115 miles southeast of Moscow — decided to leave behind his religious studies and attend university in far-off Saint Petersburg. Initially aiming to study physics and mathematics, once the young man arrived at the university he developed a fascination with physiology — the study of organ systems and the body as a whole. While still in school, he distinguished himself for his research on the nerves in the pancreas. By the time he was 30, Pavlov was running a physiology lab and was a fellow at a medical society. In 1890, the year he turned 41, he was named director of the physiology department at the Institute of Experimental Medicine in Saint Petersburg. For his discoveries there, he would win a Nobel Prize in 1904. The irony, of course, is that Ivan Pavlov is not widely remembered for the work that won him a Nobel Prize but for an observation that he made only related tangentially to his work as a physiologist. At the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Pavlov focused on the digestive system, relying on laboratory dogs to conduct his studies. Pavlov noticed that the dogs would drool as soon as his assistant entered the room to feed them. This anticipatory reaction opened the door to far more detailed studies into how animals and humans can be conditioned to respond to external stimuli. Tony Dungy, who spent 13 years as a head coach in the National Football League, including seven years with the Super Bowl-winning Indianapolis Colts, was not a student of Pavlov’s or physiology. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. Yet Dungy, like Pavlov, understood that “classical conditioning,” better known in common parlance as “training,” could apply to humans as well as animals. Duhigg points to Dungy as a master of deep-seated habit development. Just as Pavlov’s dogs were conditioned to instinctively become excited at the thought of eating (even with no food in front of them), Dungy prepared his athletes to respond to plays so frequently that their reactions became instinctive. Duhigg explains, “His entire strategy was, ‘Stop my players from thinking on the field. Make them react automatically. Teach them habits so that they’re not making decisions, so they can move faster.’”

Dungy’s championship coaching methods work in the office as well as on the gridiron. Duhigg advises that when business executives establish standard operating rules and have their employees follow them over and over again, those employees will come to follow the corporate “playbook” on their own.

Charles Duhigg

“The thing that surprised me the most in reporting this is that any habit can be changed,” Duhigg says. “We know how now. It doesn’t matter how old you are. It doesn’t matter how ingrained that pattern is. You can change that pattern once you understand the tools for how it works.”

Learning on the Job Duhigg’s second book, Smarter Faster Better, released in 2016, was born out of his personal struggles in writing The Power of Habit. As a novice author, Duhigg wrestled with issues of productivity; he did not set aside time for self-care or family, yet he knew of very accomplished people who managed to maintain a successful work-life balance. As he did with The Power of Habit, in researching Smarter Faster Better Duhigg turned to science — in this case, the science of productivity — to find answers. The author tapped insights from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics studies. He also drew on the experiences of a wide range of productive people, including business executives, military commanders, members of law enforcement, and even theatrical songwriters. In Smarter Faster Better, as the book’s marketing material states, Duhigg revealed that “the most productive people, companies, and organizations don’t merely act differently. They view the world, and their choices, in profoundly different ways.” Oddly enough, it wasn’t until Duhigg was well into writing Smarter Faster Better — and still struggling with his productivity issues — that his editor suggested he follow the advice in his manuscript that he was telling others to embrace. It worked.

The Time to Repair the Roof In November 1920, two World War I flying ace veterans, Paul McGinness and Hudson Fysh, founded the Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services to expand aviation’s reach in Australia. Safety obsessed from day one, McGinness and Hudson’s airline, abbreviated as Qantas, has not suffered a fatality since December 1951, when the pilot and two passengers were killed after their small commercial aircraft hit the side of a hill in northern New Guinea. Just shy of six decades later, Qantas came close to a full-on disaster.

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In November 2010, on Qantas Flight 32 from Singapore to London, an engine exploded shortly after takeoff, puncturing the hull and a fuel tank. Still loaded with gasoline, returning to Singapore’s Changi Airport for an emergency landing was risky. Fortunately for the 440 passengers on board, the pilot, Richard Champion de Crespigny, formerly served in the Australian Air Force. Before boarding the plane, he quizzed his cockpit crew on how they would respond in an emergency — including a scenario like the one that arose minutes later. Such pre-flight reviews were not standard procedure for pilots, but de Crespigny operated differently. As Duhigg recounts in Smarter Faster Better, de Crespigny later told him, “It’s our job to think about what might happen.” Additionally, de Crespigny always instructed his crew to disagree with his decisions if they felt he was in error. Those missives likely saved the passengers on Flight 32. As the plane circled Changi Airport with cockpit alarms blaring, lights flashing, and computer instructions streaming in, de Crespigny and his co-pilots worked quickly as a team, methodically questioning each other’s decisions before reaching a consensus. “Let’s keep this simple,” de Crespigny instructed his crew. “We need to stop focusing on what’s wrong and start paying attention to what’s still working.” De Crespigny’s plane was a massive Airbus with sophisticated onboard telemetry. There was no time to process all the data and warning signals bombarding the flight deck. Instead, de Crespigny formed a mental picture of what it takes to operate a small Cessna, which features far fewer gauges, dials, and digital displays. He then paid attention only to the instruments and controls that the Airbus shared in common with a Cessna, not allowing himself or his crew to be distracted by the multitude of other gages. Against the odds, de Crespigny’s advanced preparedness and clear-headedness allowed him to land the plane safely in Singapore. Not a single passenger or crew member was injured or killed. As President John F. Kennedy told Congress in his 1962 State of the Union Address: “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” Whether working as part of a flight crew, a member of a board of directors, or part of a team of assembly-line workers, envisioning a disaster before it arises and running scenarios of how best to respond is essential. “When you’re driving to work, force yourself to envision your day… Find other people to hear your theories and challenge them. Get in a pattern of forcing yourself to anticipate what’s next,” Duhigg writes.

Charles Duhigg

It’s a habit that requires daily practice. In a genuine emergency, those involved will consequently be capable of responding with presence of mind rather than reacting in a panic.

When It’s Necessary to Put the ‘I’ in TEAM In 1945, the mother-daughter team of Katherine Briggs and Isabel Myers introduced a personality assessment that they had been working on for decades. As it appears today, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator lists 16 distinct personalities based on four dichotomous styles: Introversion vs. Extraversion, Sensing vs. iNtuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, and Judging vs. Perceiving. In the Myers-Briggs evaluation, an INTJ, for example, is a born leader who thrives on independence and personal achievement, whereas an ESFJ is an empathetic person who builds organizational consensus and enjoys sharing credit with others. Companies, too, Duhigg writes in Smarter Faster Better, have personality types. In 1994, two Stanford University professors — James Barron and Michael Hannan — started researching company cultures and eventually categorized businesses as having one of five personality types. The Star Culture — Employees come from the best universities in the country, operate with the confidence and independence of C-suite executives, and enjoy many workplace benefits. However, since not everyone can be a “star,” internal rivalries, often vicious, are more common than in the other four business types. The Engineering Culture — Employees are not stars yet but may become ones if they distinguish themselves. In this culture, employees are bright and ambitious but work more collaboratively, as engineers might when developing systems or solving problems. The Bureaucratic Culture — The most important people in the company are middle managers, who rely on handbooks, company meetings, and team-building activities to keep their subordinates motivated and in line. The Autocratic Culture — Here, the owner or chief executive officer is the most important person in the company. The culture is one of obedience to top management. Employees lack a sense of autonomy. The Commitment Culture — In this type of company, there is no ‘most important person.’ The focus is not on the employee, on middle management, or the CEO. The company’s values resemble those of a family

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business, where the success of the company inspires employees rather than being driven by personal agendas. The hope is that employees will stay with the company for their entire careers. Barron and Hannan discovered that Star Culture companies, when they succeeded, were vastly more successful than the other four business culture types. On the other hand, Star Culture companies had the highest failure rate. In contrast, Commitment Culture companies were consistently the most successful on all matrices, with the most satisfied and self-motivated employees, the largest profits, and the longest survival rates. Duhigg’s takeaway is that a positive team spirit and culture matter disproportionately to an endeavor’s success. When employees are made to compete internally or are dictated to by middle or upper management, they do not perform as effectively as when they feel they have a direct stake in the company’s success. To punctuate this point, Duhigg points to Amy Edmondson, a Harvard University Ph.D. candidate who, in 1991, studied a Boston-area hospital and found a seemingly counterintuitive pattern. Edmondson detected that hospital staff reported more medical mistakes taking place in wards with greater teamwork and a less competitive culture. Digging deeper, she realized why. It turned out that all wards committed about the same number of errors. The difference was that nurses in wards with better cohesion felt more comfortable reporting their mistakes and learning from them. While a Commitment Culture generally results in the best performance, it isn’t suitable for every company. Studio 8H, on the eighth floor of the 67-floor building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, is home to Saturday Night Live, the weekly sketch comedy show created in 1975 by comic genius Lorne Michaels. In assembling a working team on Saturday Night Live, Michaels created an Engineering Culture in which entertainers from varying backgrounds needed to collaborate to produce comedic gold. “The writers and actors worked amid norms that made everyone feel like they could take risks and be honest with one another, even as they were shooting down ideas, undermining one another, and competing for airtime,” Duhigg writes.

As Michaels told Duhigg, “You know that saying, ‘There’s no I in TEAM’?

Charles Duhigg

My goal was the opposite of that. All I wanted were a bunch of I’s. I wanted everyone to hear each other, but no one to disappear into the group.” Another instance where instituting a Commitment Culture would not have been the right approach to achieve the desired goal was the creation of the first Japanese bullet train in 1964. The engineers working on the project didn’t believe that the 120 mph speeds sought by the head of the Japanese railway system could be attained. Had the decision been left to the engineers, the bullet train would have reached a maximum speed of 65 mph. But, because of the railway’s Autocratic Culture, the engineers — despite their skepticism — felt compelled to obey their boss’s directive and pushed themselves to make his vision a reality.

Thriving and Coexisting Duhigg’s third book, Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection, was published in February 2024. It continues his winning formula of blending hundreds of interviews, and thousands of papers and studies, to develop fresh, breakthrough insights that aid readers both professionally and personally. As with Smarter Better Faster, Supercommunicators originated partly due to Duhigg’s inability to overcome aspects of his job. Asked to help manage a relatively complex work project, he figured, with his Harvard Business School MBA to guide him, that it would be a piece of cake. In the Prologue, he recalls thinking: “How hard could it be?” “Very hard, it turned out.” Duhigg’s colleagues told him they felt ignored, their contributions going unrecognized. The problem, the author confesses, also arose at home. “I could see, in retrospect, that I was failing the people who were most important to me, but I didn’t know how to fix it.” Supercommunicators is Duhigg’s antidote. As he writes, the book is designed to explain why communication goes awry and how to improve it. At its heart, Supercommunicators explores several key concepts: Many discussions are actually three different conversations: What’s This Really About? How Do We Feel? and Who Are We? Writes Duhigg: “If we aren’t having the same kind of conversation as our partners, at the same moment, we’re unlikely to connect with each other.”

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The aim of the most significant exchanges should be to learn how the people we’re speaking to see the world and to make our perspectives clear. Anyone can become a supercommunicator not only at work but also with friends, romantic partners, children, and the strangers we encounter during our daily routines. The timing of the release of Supercommunicators was not coincidental. It arrived as the United States entered a highly contentious election year marked by partisan rhetoric and internal division. “It’s no secret the world has become increasingly polarized, that we struggle to hear and be heard,” he writes. “But if we know how to sit down together, listen to each other, and even if we can’t resolve every disagreement, find ways to hear one another and say what is needed, we can coexist and thrive.” [*AUTHOR’S NOTE: Charles Duhigg was Dean Rotbart’s guest on Business Unconventional in July 2012. Business Unconventional, which Dean co-hosted with insurance executive David Biondo, aired each Sunday on 710 KNUS-AM radio in Denver. The half-hour program was the forerunner of Monday Morning Radio. Rotbart’s interview with Duhigg was subsequently posted on Monday Morning Radio, which debuted nationally in June 2012.]

harles Duhigg led the team at The New York Times that won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Journalism for “The iEconomy,” a series that examined Apple Inc.’s shady business practices, including “deadly conditions” at its Chinese plants, its “questionable” attempts to reduce its taxes, and the low salary its store workers received. The series forced Apple to allow outside inspections of its China plants, leading to improved conditions there; triggered a Congressional investigation into its tax mitigation practices; and led Apple to increase pay for store employees. While with the Times, where he worked from December 2006 to July 2017, Duhigg wrote both The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better. The Power of Habit, which spent more than three years on the New York Times bestseller list, was initially meant to bring in some extra cash to the Duhigg household. It did far more than that. Before joining The New York Times in 2006, he spent three years with the Los Angeles Times, including a stint reporting from Iraq about American military operations.

To embrace the long-form journalism that he wanted to engage with, Duhigg

Charles Duhigg

left The New York Times in 2017 for The New Yorker, where he remains. “The New Yorker has a very specific way of telling stories and of being literary that I just love,” Duhigg explained to Monday Morning Radio host Dean Rotbart, who conducted an oral history with Duhigg in November 2020 [https://tinyurl.com/OralHistory-Duhigg]. Raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, one of ten siblings and half-siblings in a Brady Bunch-style blended family, Duhigg was weaned on the belief that “those who can” have a duty to hold the powerful accountable, challenge bullies, and protect the poor, the injured, and the dispossessed. Duhigg majored in history as an undergraduate at Yale University, and received his MBA from Harvard Business School. Duhigg has two sons, Oliver and John Harry. He and his wife, Susan “Liz” Alter, a professor of biology at California State University-Monterey Bay, live in Santa Cruz, California.

Scan the QR Code Below to Listen to Charles Duhigg’s Appearance on Monday Morning Radio

New York Times Business Reporter Charles Duhigg on ‘The Power of Habit’ Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/Charles-Duhigg

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Charles Duhigg’s Websites and Social Media Charles Duhigg: http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Duhigg Speakers Bureau: https://tinyurl.com/Duhigg-Speaker Instagram: http://tinyurl.com/Duhigg-Instagram LinkedIn: http://tinyurl.com/Duhigg-LinkedIn Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/Duhigg-Facebook

Books by Charles Duhigg The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Random House, 2012. http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-PowerOfHabit Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity. Random House, 2016. http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-SmarterFaster Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. Random House, 2024. http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Supercommunicators

Chapter Three

Utilize Proven Technologies and Techniques Adapted From Other Business Sectors

Mike Kaeding

“The Secret To Success is Having The Tenacity and The Willingness to Keep Getting Up Every Time You Get Knocked Down.”

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS 1. Look outside your own field for innovative ways to improve productivity and profitability. 2. Ignorance can be the perfect preparation for running a successful company. Fresh eyes lead to fresh ideas. 3. Rather than search for an elusive “silver bullet,” combine smaller, incremental improvements to make meaningful business advances. 4. It is possible to reduce costs while simultaneously improving quality. The evolution of the personal computer and smartphones is a good example. 5. Have the confidence to fire good people in order to employ the best.

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A Quiet Revolution is Underway Mike Kaeding owns a 2019 Tesla Model Y that is nearing 16,000 miles on the odometer. However, by all rights, he should be driving a Ford Explorer or Ford Escape. After all, Kaeding owes much of his success as the CEO of Norhart, a $200 million residential real estate developer, to Henry Ford. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But it’s accurate to observe that the same innovative thinking that led to Ford Motor Company’s breakout success — when the automaker adopted the assembly-line model used by Chicago meat packers — is fueling Norhart’s impressive growth. In Norhart’s case, Kaeding is embracing technologies and techniques that have worked in other industries — including robotics and 3D printing — and utilizing them to streamline residential construction. He also has developed what might be termed a “reverse assembly line,” in which it is the craftspersons and construction workers who move sequentially through an unfinished unit, able to complete each new apartment in an astonishing five hours. In doing so, Kaeding and his colleagues have ignited a quiet revolution. They believe its ripple effects over the next ten to 15 years will help alleviate America’s critical affordable housing shortage by dramatically increasing supply and slashing costs. When it comes to innovation, the residential development industry has been anemic. Since the 1960s, Kaeding points out, manufacturing and agricultural innovations have given rise to a seven- to-tenfold-plus increase in productivity. Over the same period, the construction industry has eked out an uninspiring 10% improvement. At Norhart, Kaeding is changing the equation. Although he was unexpectedly catapulted into the CEO role in 2014 — when he was far from ready to take charge — he understood instinctively that his lack of preconceived notions of how the business should be run opened the door to finding solutions that other residential developers had overlooked for decades.

Mike Kaeding

“Mike, You Don’t Know What You’re Doing” Edward A. Kaeding, Mike’s father, was an electrical engineer who grew up on a family farm near Devils Lake, North Dakota. During college, Ed helped his brother construct new homes and, in the process, became adept at residential construction and maintenance. Ed and his wife, Brenda, began to dabble in real estate in 1988, purchasing and managing rental properties in North Dakota. Eight years later, having grown their portfolio to 20 units, the couple relocated to Forest Lake, Minnesota, where Norhart is now headquartered. Walter Mondale, a Minnesota native who was Jimmy Carter’s vice president, once lived in Forest Lake, as did Hall of Fame football coach Bud Grant, who led the Minnesota Vikings to four Super Bowl appearances. The city, located 30 miles northeast of Minneapolis, is a magnet for young professionals and families, offering excellent schools, parks, and easy commuter access to nearby interstate highways and public transportation. It was in Forest Lake in 1996 that the Kaedings first ventured into multi-family rentals by constructing an eight-unit apartment building. To keep development costs down, Ed used what Mike describes as “the scrappy technique” — a lot of sweat equity and a reliance on student labor. The 8-plex was followed by a 10-plex and then an 18-plex, and, in 2003, a 30-unit project. In 2013, Ed and Brenda gambled large — and successfully — on a 120-unit development in Forest Lake, the Mill Pond Apartments. Mike, who joined the company fulltime in 2009, and his wife, Alyssa, partnered to make the project a success. Mill Pond features two- and three-bedroom units, laminate kitchen countertops, outdoor balconies, an outdoor pool, a spa, a movie room, and a playground. More than any of their previous undertakings, Mill Pond demonstrated that the Kaedings were capable of conceiving, financing, building, managing, and marketing quality apartment complexes. Indeed, Norhart was riding a wave of success. The sky seemed the limit. Until, one day, without warning, it fell. The call came from the bank. Norhart’s payroll checks were bouncing. “I’m like, ‘This never happens. What’s going on?’” Mike recalls thinking. He phoned his father, who came into the office. At first, the issue seemed like a simple oversight. The company had the funds, no problem, but they

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were in the wrong account. “He went to fill out the transfer, and I realized he can’t even sign his name.” Ed had had a stroke. Worse, the cause was a previously undiagnosed malignant brain tumor. Ready or not — and in this instance, definitely not — Mike, 27 years old, was left to run the entire company from that day on. It was a turbulent transition. Ed, 61, died on January 26, 2015. As if the blow of his father’s passing and being tasked with keeping the Norhart ship afloat wasn’t enough of an ordeal, the city of Blaine, Minnesota, almost immediately compounded his misery. When Ed died, Norhart was in the process of permitting and building the Emberwood Apartments, a 112-unit rental complex in Blaine, another Twin Cities bedroom community. In what could have been a fatal setback, city officials pulled Norhart’s permits, effectively shutting down the project. “The looked at me and said, ‘Mike, you don’t know what you’re doing.’” They were, of course, correct.

Whoever Said “Ignorance is Bliss” Must Have Been Very Happy For Mike Kaeding, not knowing how to operate a successful company in the real estate development space was hell. “It was really tough. Here we had the city officials basically telling me every day, day in and day out, that you’re not good enough. And it’s hard not to start believing that.” The prospect that everything his parents built would implode on his watch was real. Kaeding was shattered.

If there was a saving grace, Kaeding reflects years later, it was that without knowing how things in the construction industry were supposed to be

Mike Kaeding

done, he started solving Norhart’s problems naively but effectively. “The [way out] was having the tenacity and the willingness to keep getting up every single time you get knocked down, and keep going back and going back again.” The City of Blaine’s shutdown of the Emberwood Apartments construction was brief. Development resumed, and Kaeding proved more resilient and adaptable than even he imagined. After about a year, a team from Blaine returned for a final, comprehensive, make-orbreak inspection — the real estate equivalent of a colonoscopy. “The head building official pulled me aside after the big final inspection and said, ‘Mike, this is the best project we’ve ever seen.’ And it was just like this relief that came out of that and realizing, ‘Okay, we can do this.’”

Problems Are the Mother of Innovation Fresh problems continued to confront Kaeding and Norhart. Like the Chinese proverb that observes a journey of one thousand miles begins with a single step, Kaeding learned quickly that stabilizing and optimizing the fortunes of Norhart would require phased solutions. “There’s no one silver bullet to solve all your problems,” he relays. “You just solve 10,000 little problems. Each one makes an incremental improvement, and you need them all together to see a meaningful impact and change in the way construction is done.” Kaeding’s many headaches consistently led to innovative solutions that, over time, helped the company improve its efficiency, cut costs, and stand apart from the rest of the industry. Given his young age at the time, his characteristic politeness and humility, and his all-American-boy looks — sporting bangs reminiscent of a young Leonardo DiCaprio, it’s clear that some of Norhart’s outside jobbers viewed Kaeding as a rube who they could easily exploit. For example, out of nowhere, a key plumbing contractor informed Kaeding that going forward, he would be tripling the price of his services. “I couldn’t afford that,” Kaeding remembers. His solution was to bring the needed plumbing capabilities in-house, the

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

first of many skilled positions that Norhart assimilated into its workforce. Unlike Mike’s father, Ed, who kept costs down by hiring the cheapest labor he could find — or doing the work himself — Mike took the advice of a local entrepreneur who urged him to “hire the best, and pay the best.” It proved game-changing advice, as Mike came to understand that engaging the most talented, and often most expensive, labor actually saved Norhart money because of how productive his crew became. “If you hire the right team and are really tenacious about not settling for anything but the best, magic happens,” Mike explains. Kaeding’s approach extends to the executive suite. As he recounts, it took him five different hires before he found the right chief operating officer. “You have to have the confidence to fire good people in order to get the best.”

The Wisdom of Henry Ford In 1926, Henry Ford, then 63 years old and one of the most influential Americans of the period, wrote an essay outlining his thoughts on high-volume assembly. Intentionally or not, Mike Kaeding has borrowed heavily from Ford’s playbook. “Mass production is the focusing upon a manufacturing project of the principles of power, accuracy, economy, system, continuity and speed,” Ford wrote for the 13th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “The normal result is a productive organization that delivers in quantities a useful commodity of standard material, workmanship and design at minimum cost.” Ford recognized that mass production was only possible as a consequence of mass demand; in his case, the public’s hunger for affordable automobiles. Likewise, Kaeding recognizes and aims to address the surging demand for affordable rental housing, especially as homeownership has become increasingly out of reach for many middle- and lower-class families. The solution, Kaeding believes, is dramatically lowering the cost of producing quality multi-family rental units and then flooding the country with them. As the supply of such residences increases markedly, the price of rental housing for consumers will inevitably fall.

Some would label that fantastical thinking, but Kaeding is well along the

Mike Kaeding

path to demonstrating proof of concept.

The Residential Construction Assembly Line What does it take to slow the construction of a multi-family rental complex and swell the costs? Not much. Bringing as many outside contractors in-house as possible, as Norhart does, has the additional benefit of not seeing progress on a new project slowed — or even ground to a halt — due to a subpar subcontractor who fails to show up or deliver necessary materials on time. As Kaeding explained to Hannah Davis, a reporter with the Forest Lake Times: Imagine if construction were to build cars. You’d have a different company selling the wheel, a different company that’s selling the door, a different company, yet again, installing the windshield. And then the windshield company will call and be like, ‘We’re busy on another job, we won’t be there for two weeks.’ Your line would be shut down for two weeks. Understandably, Norhart doesn’t stop at reducing the number of outside contractors it utilizes. Increasingly, Kaeding is growing Norhart’s capacity to produce and assemble the necessary components of apartment construction — steel studs and beams, precast cement slabs, floor systems, and pre-constructed wall panels, among others — in company-owned factories. Just by manufacturing its own steel beams — which form the framework of new buildings, serving as the primary load-bearing supports for the roof, upper floors, and walls — Norhart saves almost half the cost of buying the beams from an outside vendor and never needs to worry about delayed deliveries. Other significant cost savings accrue because, like an automotive assembly line, Kaeding has refined each aspect of development — design, engineering, construction, and management — to maximize efficiency. “We’re trying to make the designs [of new construction] iconic or timeless, so that we can reuse them, and then when the electricians come in to wire a unit, they know exactly what the layout’s going to be” because they’ve done it the same way 100 previous times, Marie Dickover, Norhart’s chief

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construction officer, told the Forest Lake Times. Lest anyone think that Norhart properties trade aesthetics or quality to reduce development costs, Kaeding is quick to disabuse skeptics of the notion. “We’re producing, honestly, some of the very nicest properties in the entire state,” he assures. On tap in 2024 is Norhart Oakdale, a $100 million apartment community offering thousands of square feet of amenity space, including a rooftop Zen garden, a 22-foothigh main lobby, two-story penthouses, and a restaurant, coffee shop, and coworking space. “When you think about things in the right way, you can get high quality and low cost combined,” he says. “Just like your iPhone, you have a supercomputer in your pocket for an affordable price. That’s unbelievable. And people think that can’t be done in housing.” But Kaeding is doing it. Again and again. As Norhart’s presence in Minnesota continues to grow — now encompassing 13 developments — Kaeding is eyeing eventual expansion into as many as 15 states. His ultimate goal is to leapfrog the number of apartment units Norhart owns and manages in the coming decade from 1,200 — an already impressive number given that his parents launched the business with only eight units — to 192,000. There is one eensy-weensy obstacle, however: He still has to find the hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars that will be necessary to pay for such aggressive growth.

“A Bank is a Place That Will Lend You Money If You Can Prove You Don’t Need It”

— Bob Hope

If Norhart can do away with plumbers, electricians, and other third-party subcontractors, and if it can manufacture its own steel beams, cement slabs, and pre-constructed wall panels, why can’t it eliminate banks, financing its growth on a do-it-yourself basis, too? Kaeding is trying. Very hard.

Norhart Invest, a captive financing vehicle, launched in 2023. Basically,

Mike Kaeding

Norhart aims to raise vital construction capital — as much as $75 million a year — by encouraging both sophisticated, well-heeled investors and those with less financial acumen and fewer assets to lend the company money by purchasing so-called promissory notes. Promissory notes, as the name suggests, are a promise to repay lenders their initial investment, known as principal, plus interest, at a specified future date. In the case of Norhart Invest, it is offering one-year, two-year, and five-year notes, paying as much as 10% in annual interest. Much like the residential real estate business back in 2015, with Norhart Invest, Kaeding faces a steep learning curve strewn with landmines along the road to financial self-sufficiency. “With us, your money makes better homes, lives, and dreams for people,” Norhart Invest explains. It is a noble and sincere sentiment. Moreover, typical bank instruments, such as certificates of deposit, don’t approach the interest rates that Norhart offers. The challenge is that bank deposits are generally backed by federal deposit insurance, whereas corporate promissory notes, such as those offered by Norhart Invest, are riskier because there is no government guarantee. Norhart Invest backs its promissory notes indirectly with the apartment buildings that the company owns and operates — an extra measure of safety. Still, investors must rely on the company’s integrity and financial stability to honor the terms of the notes.

Purpose-Driven Expansion Growing up, Mike Kaeding witnessed firsthand his parents’ commitment to giving back, helping others less fortunate than themselves. Over the years, Ed and Brenda hosted 25 foreign exchange students from ten different countries in their home. They were active supporters of the Special Olympics. And Mike’s dad, Ed, was a founding board member of IEF, a nonprofit that provided college tuition for needy students in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Ed hoped Mike would join him in the real estate business, but his eldest son resisted, mainly because Mike wanted to make his own way in the world and didn’t want people to think his career was handed to him. (Mike’s younger brother, Lucas, is a Disney Imagineer.) “I had to really wrestle with my own ego on that point,” Mike recalls. “But getting past that, I realized this is an opportunity to make an impact, and

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

deep down, I always knew I wanted to make a meaningful, positive impact in the world.” Kaeding remains steadfastly committed to bringing about significant change, specifically by addressing the country’s shortage of affordable housing. “We’re not just constructing buildings; we’re constructing a better future, addressing the U.S. housing affordability crisis with innovation and determination,” Kaeding writes on his LinkedIn page. What might sound like a public relations slogan to others is genuine for Kaeding and his colleagues. Theirs is a purpose-driven organization, a quality that gives them extra incentives to get it right, especially when things inevitably go wrong. “Norhart’s mission is to reshape U.S. housing,” Kaeding proclaims. The goal is audacious and a challenge to other businesses to think grandly, regardless of their size.

ike Kaeding, a Minnesota native, is the visionary CEO of Nohart Inc., a multifamily residence builder and operator.

The company has been recognized as an American Small Business Champion by SCORE, the nation’s largest network of business mentors. Norhart was formed in 1988 by Mike’s parents, Edward and Brenda. As children, he and his younger brother, Lucas, spent many hours after school and on breaks working alongside their parents. Mike received his B.S. in computer science from the University of Minnesota in 2009. Both he and his wife, Alyssa, are graduates of Forest Lake High School. They were wed in 2010. Mike initially joined Norhart as a project manager after college. When his father fell seriously ill in 2014, Mike assumed overall leadership of the business. Motivated to lead Norhart in an ethical and community-minded fashion, Mike views the company’s growth and success as a tribute to his father’s memory. Mike and Alyssa have two daughters, a redhead and a blonde, born in 2018 and 2020, respectively.

Mike Kaeding

Scan the QR Code Below to Listen to Mike Kaeding’s Appearance on Monday Morning Radio

Sometimes, Ignorance is the Perfect Preparation for Running a Successful Business Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/Mike-Kaeding

Mike Kaeding’s Websites and Social Media Norhart Inc. — http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-NorhartInc Norhart Invest — http://tinyurl.com/Norhart-Invest Blog: http://tinyurl.com/Norhart-Blog Zero to Unicorn Podcast: http://tinyurl.com/Norhart-Podcast LinkedIn: http://tinyurl.com/Norhart-LinkedIn Twitter Norhart: http://tinyurl.com/Norhart-Twitter Twitter Kaeding: http://tinyurl.com/Kaeding-Twitter Instagram: http://tinyurl.com/Norhart-Instagram Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/Norhart-Facebook YouTube: http://tinyurl.com/Norhart-YouTube

Chapter Four

Forget Modesty. Celebrity CEOs Thrive by Building a Strong Personal Brand

Ramon Ray

Discover the Magic Behind the Most-Watched YouTube Video Ever

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS 1. Business leaders need two websites: one focused on the business and the other a “personal website” that humanizes the company by letting customers and prospects know who stands behind it. 2. Sell to the right clients. Don’t waste time attracting people who won’t be repeat customers. 3. If you can get prospects to smile, you’re more likely to convert them to customers. 4. Dress for success. Adapting a signature style will help you distinguish yourself from the crowd. 5. Take selfies with as many business and entertainment celebrities as possible. Their cachet will rub off on you.

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The Most-Watched YouTube Video Ever From 2006 to 2009, the all-time most-watched YouTube video was Evolution of Dance, an energetic one-man performance by comedian Judson Laipply who demonstrated different styles of fancy footwork, gyrating to songs, including Macarena, Tubthumping, and Bye Bye Bye. Laipply’s video was eventually surpassed by Charlie Bit My Finger. Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance music video spent a few weeks as the reigning champ, and then Justin Bieber’s Baby climbed to the summit. In 2012, Psy’s Gangnam Style became the first YouTube video to hit one billion views. As of this writing, although Gangnam Style has quintupled to more than five billion views, that’s only enough to see it clinging to tenth place on the all-time most-viewed list. Evolution, Charlie, Bad Romance, and Baby are no longer among the top 30 YouTube Videos. The champion YouTube video has been seen over 14 billion times as of this writing (equating to more than once for every person on the planet). No other video has yet to crack the 10 billion-view mark. So what is it? It’s Baby Shark [https://tinyurl.com/YT-BabyShark], featuring two South Korean kids wearing pajama tops and set against an animated ocean-world background, singing about Baby Shark, Mommy Shark, and the rest of the Shark Family. The entire video lasts 2 minutes and 16 seconds. The video’s maker, Pinkfong, an integrated marketing company, uses the first eight seconds to promote the Seoul, South Korean brand, and the final 29 seconds to encourage viewers to subscribe to its other content. Pinkfong’s logo is visible in the upper-left-hand corner of the video the entire time. The Baby Shark video helped Pinkfong, founded in 2010, achieve a valuation of more than $1 billion. But how? According to its website, Pinkfong “forge[s] partnerships with brands and companies worldwide to drive business synergies across diverse industries including public institutions, consumer products, technology, and more.” Try getting your four-year-old to sing that!

Ultimately, the catchiness of the Baby Shark tune and the popularity of the video among toddlers drove investors and partners to sign-up with

Ramon Ray

Pinkfong rather than its competitors. It’s a process that personal branding coach Ramon Ray understands well. Ray is an effervescent small business evangelist, entrepreneur, public speaker, and author of The Celebrity CEO — a book that details how any owner or entrepreneur can effectively build a strong, profitable, personal brand and influential network. He offers a fuller definition in his book: A celebrity CEO can be defined as a business owner who has a growing community of engaged fans (not customers) who follow the business owner (via email newsletter, social media, or by attending events, etc.) in order to learn from him or her. A percentage of these fans are converted into regular paying customers. Ray’s logic follows along these lines: Suppose you have a sick dog or cat. Would you prefer to go to a veterinarian no one has ever heard of, or the one where Nicole Kidman takes her dog, Clyde, and Taylor Swift entrusts her three cats? Likewise, if you’re a journalist looking to interview a pet doctor, which one are you most likely to contact — the one with no famous customers or the one with a cadre of celebrity patrons? It’s the explanation for why Pinkfong, an integrated marketing company, was so inspired in producing and posting Baby Shark. The company’s executives understood that they had an unassailable pitch to potential clients: “Would you rather hire us, the marketing team behind the most popular YouTube video of all time, or another firm whose video features its executives wearing three-piece suits, sitting in a boardroom in front of a potted plant, explaining the company’s corporate strategy?” Needless to say, new clients flocked to Pinkfong following the success of Baby Shark. Which is the way it should work, Ray affirms. “I’ve found in my own business, as I’ve notched up personal branding, I’m chased after.” Key to the branding efforts that Ray advocates is producing fun, entertaining content, not corporate babble. In The Celebrity CEO, Ray explains that successful social media users need to provide frequent and relevant posts designed to engage visitors. While modern social media platforms were still a century away, in 1898, Elias St. Elmo Lewis, an inductee in the Advertising Hall of Fame, first outlined the steps necessary to make a sale, beginning with brand awareness and culminating in action. Ray says he’s found that loyal social media followers are money in the bank.

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They may not become instant customers or clients, but they’re “going to wake up at three in the morning [one day] and be like, ‘You know what? I forgot to do my taxes. Who’s that guy I’ve been watching that has funny tax videos? Oh, that’s right! Ramon the accountant!’” “It’s easier to get a smile,” Ray notes, “than to get a sale.” And smiles lead to sales.

George Washington Slept Here, Too It’s almost a joke how many guest houses claim that they lodged George Washington overnight. There are fifty-one sites in Maryland, 38 in New Jersey, 28 each in New York and Virginia, 23 in Pennsylvania, 13 in Georgia, 12 in South Carolina, 11 in North Carolina, 10 in West Virginia, five in Connecticut, three in Ohio, two in the District of Columbia, one in New Hampshire, and one in Barbados. The Nassau Inn in Princeton, NJ, is not one of the inns where Washington slept, but at check-in, guests are handed a list of other famous people who have spent a night there, including Alexander Hamilton, Bill Clinton, and Golda Meir. People are attracted to celebrities. If you’re at a restaurant and Tom Hanks is dining two tables over, you’ll keep staring, whether or not you get up the nerve to ask for a selfie. Ray recommends that you do, though. “Just get in the habit of clicking that shutter button on your camera. Just start somewhere and post.” Regularly uploading celebrity encounters and other photos to social media will increase your professional stature and following. “You will see [a] difference over time,” he promises. And celebrity sightings are the best photos to post, especially when they relate to your line of work. Are you an electrician called to the mayor’s house? Take a selfie with her. Did Dwayne Johnson stop into your barbershop? Click! “I go to events, I’m in circles of people, I get these kinds of photos,” Ray says. His digital photo album includes:

•

Jamie Siminoff, founder of Ring (Wi-Fi video doorbell) — Instagram, March 29, 2024

Ramon Ray

• • • •

David Meltzer, co-founder of Sports 1 Marketing and a top 100 business coach — Instagram, February 28, 2024 Evan Goldberg, founder of Oracle NetSuite — Instagram, October 17, 2023 Tim Storey, author and SiriusXM radio host — Instagram, August 17, 2023 Marcus Lemonis, chairman and CEO of Camping World — Instagram, August 17, 2023

To become a celebrity CEO — the type of person who attracts an audience and customers — you need to surround yourself with others who already enjoy star stature, even if only among a narrowly defined audience. “Seek or create opportunities…to get those photos and that rubbing-the-shoulder-with -the-celebrity status… then your star can get some of the gleam from their star, and that’ll take you up,” Ray advises.

Never Wear White After Labor Day In the 2006 dramedy The Devil Wears Prada, Andy Sachs (portrayed by Anne Hathaway), who has an unsophisticated sense of style, goes to work for the immaculately dressed fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly (played by Meryl Streep), who is loosely based on the real-life Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue. In a pivotal scene, Andy smirks as one of Miranda’s other employees refers to two aquablue belts as “so different.” Miranda hones in on the source of Andy’s amusement: “Oh, okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you?” the style maven asks her clueless intern. The air is briefly sucked out of the room as Miranda — the titular “devil” — calmly puts Andy in her place. “You go to your closet, and you select, I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back,” Miranda begins. After some comments about the history of the sweater and its particular shade of blue (“it’s actually cerulean”), Miranda reprimands Andy’s ignorance: However, that blue represents millions of dollars of countless jobs, and it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. Andy is sufficiently chastened, as should be all entrepreneurs who don’t pay attention to their wardrobe. Fashion is an essential choice in the business

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

world; how you dress will dictate more than just how seriously potential customers take you — investors are also paying attention. If you dress like a schlub, you’ll be viewed that way. But Ray doesn’t just recommend that business owners dress snappily; he maintains, they should dress uniquely. The late Steve Jobs of Apple was synonymous with black turtleneck sweaters. Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, wears a long, hipster beard. And has anyone ever seen a photo of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, other than at his wedding, sporting anything other than a blueish t-shirt? Or is it cerulean? Ray typically appears in public wearing a dapper suit vest, with a boldly colorful tie, matching pocket square, prominent cuffs, dazzlingly-colored socks, and an expensive watch. He can’t be missed in a room of thousands of people at a business conference. It’s all part of what Ray consistently describes as creating a “strong personal brand.” According to The Celebrity CEO, there are many other ways to develop a charismatic persona, such as building a firm handshake, listening well when others speak, and surrounding yourself with upbeat people. A firm handshake lets people know you’re a serious and confident person; listening well indicates that you care about what your client, customer, or investor has to say; and having a cadre of positive people in your life will help you think and act with vision and determination.

Finding Your Lost Tribe Ray is not interested in attracting the largest possible number of social media followers. He seeks the largest number of “the right people” to follow him. Ray points to two areas where executives and entrepreneurs can attain celebrity status among their followers: in their geographic region and in their industry. In fact, most “Celebrity CEOs” are not widely known nationally but are prominent within their city or professional field.

[It should be noted that while Ray’s book specifically addresses chief executives, the value of personal branding extends to virtually everyone in the business and nonprofit worlds, regardless of their title.]

Ramon Ray

Ray identifies a three-step marketing process for executives and entrepreneurs: Attract, Sell, and Wow. Those in the Attract phase need to consider, “What are you doing to attract attention to your business, from your community, from your market?” This is where viral videos, photos with celebrities, and signature-style clothing come into play. But once people take notice, they need to be converted from watchers to buyers. That’s where the Sell phase comes in. Ray readily acknowledges that not every CEO is a born showperson. There is something, however, that every business owner should be able to accomplish in the Sell phase — and that’s believing in and working as an evangelist for their product or service. “Educating my tribe is the number one secret on this journey of me having a strong personal brand and having a solid celebrity CEO status — and that anybody can do,” Ray says. The two operative words he uses are “educating” and “tribe.” The sales process isn’t about gimmicks or promotions. It’s about knowledge. Customers may come to your business because you are a celebrity CEO, but they won’t purchase anything unless they learn why you are different, why you are better, and why they genuinely need what you offer. Importantly, Ray coaches to be honest with customers and prospects. A slick salesperson may be able to get a potential customer to buy birdseed even when they don’t own a bird. But good luck getting that customer to make a second purchase when, a year later, they’ve still got two unopened bags of useless birdseed sitting in their garage. Ray counsels that your “tribe” is the people who would actually benefit from your product or service but who may not know it until you open their eyes. These are the people who will become repeat customers once you amaze them in the Wow phase because of how great your offerings are and the “systematic process” that you put in place “to get people to buy from you again and again.” The best marketing systems are those you establish after you make the sale, in which satisfied customers or clients keep coming back, refer their friends to you, and brag about you on social media.

A Brief History of the World (Wide Web) Tim Berners-Lee, an Oxford University-educated physicist working for CERN, the particle physics laboratory that straddles the Franco-Swiss

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

border near Geneva, pioneered the World Wide Web. He conceived of it in 1989 — its first-ever website went “online” in 1991. [Interested readers can still access Berners-Lee’s initial website here: http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-CERN].

Over the next two years, a dozen or so websites — mostly from universities or physics labs — emerged on the World Wide Web. But the really transformative moment came on April 30, 1993, when Berners-Lee made the World Wide Web publicly available. Now, anyone could create a website, which tens of thousands did in the mid-1990s. The World Wide Web’s millionth website was uploaded in 1997, its 10 millionth in 2000, its hundred millionth in 2007, and its billionth in 2016. What’s the relevance? In Ray’s view, there is no excuse for CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs, or any salesperson to avoid building and maintaining a quality personal website — instead of merely relying on a short biography on the company website. A corporate website is, necessarily, about the company and what it delivers. It is where potential customers go to learn about a product. A CEO’s personal website, however, is where potential customers learn about with whom they’ll be dealing. In the classic television comedy The Office, Michael Scott (portrayed by Steve Carrell) is a paper company branch manager who rejects the notion that business should be conducted impersonally. “Business is always personal,” he pronounces. “It’s the most personal thing in the world.” That’s no joke. Leaders who recognize the value of coming across as genuine tell their stories in a manner that engenders appreciation and loyalty. Their personal websites are filled with photos, videos, and blog posts. Even more significant to the success of a CEO’s website is the inclusion of a “What’s In It For Our Customers” statement. This explicitly tells visitors why they should conduct business with you personally and your company. Additionally, the statement should be followed by a “call to action” that provides a link to schedule a meeting, download an ebook, or sign up to be placed on the company’s mailing list.

Ultimately, showcasing your personal attributes will help your business’s

Ramon Ray

attractiveness and increase sales and customer loyalty. Leave modesty to others. A successful entrepreneur requires a healthy ego.

amon Ray had a great job with the United Nations and lost it. Here’s the story:

Early in his career, Ray worked for the UN. Starting in a clerical position, he rose through the ranks, eventually becoming the top New York administrator at a UN agency based in Asia. At least, that’s what he did officially. When not in his office on East 45th Street in Manhattan, Ray was a serial entrepreneur. At first, his UN bosses didn’t have an issue with his side hustles, but the organization’s policy eventually changed. Ray was given a choice: remain in his steady and prestigious day job or embrace his entrepreneurial passion and the professional uncertainties that came with it. We know what he chose. And here’s the story of how Ray won a contest and landed an interview with incumbent President Barack Obama. Google Hangouts, launched in 2013, was the early iteration of a communications platform that featured instant messaging, SMS, video chat, and other features. To promote the new service, Google Inc. held a competition. The prize was a one-onone audience with the commander-in-chief. Ray was one of 300,000 people who vied for the opportunity. The applicants were asked to list one question they would ask the president if chosen. Rather than a query about the roiling political controversies at the time, Ray submitted a question about the president’s proposed merger of government agencies in a bid to cut red tape for small businesses. “How can I ask something that’s a bit different?” Ray recalls wondering. And that’s precisely what the president’s staff was looking for. Taken together, the anecdotes demonstrate that Ray is a maverick, prescient, creative, and knows how to grab people’s attention. In 1997, in the primitive age before Google, Ray started his own newsletter writing about significant trends impacting small business owners. Early articles discussed his excitement over the forthcoming Windows 98 updates and how 45 to prepare for Y2K.

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Ray’s newsletter eventually morphed into a website, SmallBizTechnology.com, which he designed to help small and medium-sized businesses strategically use technology as a tool to grow their companies. He maintained the website from 1999 until 2019. In 2015, he founded Smart Hustle magazine, which showcased savvy business owners who personified “hustle.” After selling the title in 2022, he started Zone of Genius, a website that offers articles on marketing, mindset, finance, and leadership for small business owners. He hosts The Rundown with Ramon podcast, an extension of his Zone of Genius brand. Ray is a supercharged speaker. After witnessing one of his presentations in front of a conference with 10,000-plus registrants, Monday Morning Radio founding host Dean Rotbart offered this review: There is nothing quite like seeing Ramon in person. He’s funny, he’s quick on his feet, he jumps off the stage, he jumps back on the stage, he engages members of the audience, and he delivers a bulls-eye message tailored to small business owners and professionals.

Scan the QR Code Below to Listen to Ramon Ray’s Appearance on Monday Morning Radio

Why You Should Be Barefoot When You Listen to This Week’s Podcast: Otherwise, Ramon Ray, Effervescent Small Business Evangelist, Will Knock Your Socks Off Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/Ramon-Ray

Ramon Ray

Ramon Ray’s Websites and Social Media Ramon Ray: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Ray Zone of Genius: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-ZoneofGenius Rundown with Ramon: https://tinyurl.com/Ray-Podcast Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/Ray-Twitter YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/Ray-YouTube Instagram: https://tinyurl.com/Ray-Instagram Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/Ray-Facebook2 LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/Ray-LinkedIn2

Books by Ramon Ray The Celebrity CEO: How Entrepreneurs Can Thrive by Building a Community and a Strong Personal Brand. Indigo River Publishing, 2019. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-CelebrityCEO The Facebook Guide to Small Business Marketing. John Wiley & Sons, 2013. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-FacebookGuide Technology Resources for Growing Businesses. Self-Published, 2004. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-TechResources

Chapter Five

A Proven Formula Anyone Can Use to Obtain Power and Wield Influence

Robert L. Dilenschneider

Genuine Success Is About Giving Back

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS 1. Identify your values and practice them in your business. 2. Remain steadfast in your positions, regardless of whether others challenge them. 3. Always tell the truth, even when it’s unpleasant. Your employees, customers, and investors will respect it. 4. To stand still is inevitably to move backward, often into oblivion. 5. Successful companies and entrepreneurs are obligated to contribute to society.

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

It’s the Idea That Counts the Most Robert L. Dilenschneider wrote the seminal 21st-century book on power and influence, and how to obtain and wield both. The founder and principal of The Dilenschneider Group, a strategic communications concern, he is a prolific author, historian, thought leader, and legendary communications counselor. In his books and his consultancy, Dilenschneider draws wisdom from an assemblage of visionaries — living and gone — from Moses to Muhammad Ali, JeanJacques Rousseau to Michael Bloomberg, Joan of Arc to Malala Yousafzai. Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, the son of a newspaper executive, Dilenschneider undertook the actions he now advocates to become a confidant and advisor to global CEOs, political leaders, Wall Street kingpins, media tycoons, philanthropists, and other societal influencers. Regardless of pedigree or wealth, anyone can rise to prominence and have an impact on the thoughts and behaviors of others, he maintains. “What really counts is the idea,” along with a sense of purpose and persistence, Dilenschneider says. He points to Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, an Albanian nun working as a school principal in India. On September 10, 1946, she was riding on a train from Calcutta to Darjeeling in eastern India when she had an epiphany and decided to devote her life to serving India’s poorest citizens. Bojaxhiu — better known as Mother Teresa of Calcutta — founded the Missionaries of Charities, a movement that, in her lifetime, spread well beyond Southern Asia. Mother Teresa, winner of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize, was not a politician, CEO, or billionaire. In fact, she took a vow of poverty. But she had an idea, and she stuck with it. “What you’ve got to do,” Dilenschneider says, “is have people talking about you and about your idea. You don’t have to talk about it. Get other people to talk about it.” Practically speaking, Dilenschneider advises crafting one or two well-worded sentences to describe an original inspiration or to differentiate a new product or company: Write a simple sentence, not a paragraph. One sentence about what you want to do and why you want to do it. A lot of people can’t do that. Once you have that sentence written, then figure out how you’re going to expand on that sentence. That’s the way power and influence work. 50

Robert L. Dilenschneider

The Virtue of ‘Printegrity’ Dilenschneider was greatly influenced by his father, Sigmund John Dilenschneider, who colleagues and friends called “Dil.” As Dilenschneider wrote for the website Savvy Dad, Dil was a man of impeccable integrity. Dil joined the Columbus Citizen in 1950 as advertising director and was named the newspaper’s business manager in 1951. As a boy, young Bob remembers Dil taking a late-night phone call from Cussins & Fearn, the paper’s largest advertiser. The company operated a Columbus-area store chain selling a wide variety of items from farm supplies to furniture. “Huddled beneath the basement steps, in my secret spot, I could hear the tension in [my Dad’s] voice,” Dilenschneider wrote. As Dilenschneider recounted, on the other end of the call was a senior executive for the retailer who was urging Dil to squash a story about a Cussins & Fearn executive who had committed suicide. “Dad said he couldn’t. He promised to present the story respectfully. He pledged not to splash it across the front page. But the story would run,” Dilenschneider recalled. “A long silence ensued.” Next came the ultimatum. Kill the story entirely, or Cussins & Fearn will pull all its advertising from the paper. “My dad didn’t flinch,” Dilenschneider wrote in his Savvy Dad essay. “‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to do it, and I hope you can understand why. We would like to retain your advertising but not this way.’ My father hung up.” Dil did run the story, and Cussins & Fearn proceeded to pull all of its business from the Columbus Citizen — a huge setback. At least it seemed so until a few days later, when Fred Lazarus, founder of the Federated Department Store chain — parent of Abraham & Straus, Filene’s, and Bloomingdale’s — invited Dil for a visit. When Lazarus learned that Cussins & Fearn, a competitor, had discontinued advertising, Lazarus doubled his ad buy. “Dad’s stance could have destroyed the newspaper he had worked so hard to build. But he was willing to take that chance,” Dilenschneider wrote. “His responsibility to his readers to tell the truth and not hold back newsworthy events meant everything.” 51

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Dilenschneider, ever the wordsmith, coined a term to describe his father’s principle: Printegrity — defined as integrity in every word allowed into print. “Because of my dad, I try every day to live exactly that way.”

Have It Your Way Attaining power and influence is easier than most people imagine, Dilenschneider says. Take, for example, shift managers at Burger King who, in their own way, exert power and a degree of influence over employees, vendors, and customers. What is far rarer, and, in Dilenschneider’s view, infinitely more important, is using power and influence wisely, with integrity, and for the benefit of others. Genghis Khan, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Pol Pot each exercised command for all the wrong reasons. Ditto Enron’s Kenneth Lay, Adelphia Communications’ John Rigas, HealthSouth’s Richard Scrushy, Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes, and, of course, Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff. Rather than use “fear and strength to achieve their aims,” Dilenschneider affirms, history’s best leaders fostered goodwill and inspired those around them. “They all knew who they were and constantly acted in alignment with their ideals.” At one time or another, Dilenschneider advised six of the leaders who Fortune once listed as the “Ten Toughest Bosses.” Demanding they were, he acknowledges. But they were also decent. They made decisions that held sway over the fates and lives of tens of thousands of people working for them. I know they agonized in most cases over them, and I know they wanted to try to do the right thing. People need to say to themselves, “I’m going to try to do the right thing. I’m doing the right thing for my society. I’m doing the right thing for myself.” It’s extremely important.

Master of the House 52

Monsieur Thénardier, in the universe of Les Misérables — the Victor Hugo book turned acclaimed musical — is an innkeeper in the Parisian suburb of Montfermeil.

Robert L. Dilenschneider

Although Thénardier introduces himself in the stage play as the rare honest businessman, it quickly becomes apparent that he’s everything but. Thénardier boasts that he waters down the wine, stuffs his sausages with ground horse kidneys and cat livers, and charges add-on fees for his facility’s lice and mice. Plus, there is a tax for sleeping with the window shut. People recognize sleaze. Dilenschneider insists his clients be truthful and forthcoming, and it’s one of his core recommendations for all business people and professionals. “Honesty is essential,” he avows. “Anything a leader says should be the truth, and it should be something that could be challenged and still stand up.” “You really have to find the right way — the truthful way — to tell your story. If you try to skirt it, it’s not going to work, and eventually you’ll be found out.” When companies tell the truth, he continues, everybody wins — the shareholders, the customers, and the employees. If not for the unethical behavior of others, Dilenschneider might never have left the comfort and prestige of his position as president and chief executive officer of the venerable Hill and Knowlton (H&K) public relations agency in October 1991 to launch his own firm, The Dilenschneider Group. Dilenschneider didn’t name names. But in a 2022 interview with Mahan Tavakoli, host of the Partnering Leadership podcast, he shared his reasoning for striking out on his own. “I was asked to break the law, and I said to the person who asked me, ‘I could do this and do it really well.’ But I said, ‘if I broke the law, you’d have to go to jail, too.’ I said, ‘I don’t think you should be in pinstripes.’” That very same day, by chance, Dilenschneider was having lunch at New York’s Four Seasons restaurant. At the next table was August Busch III, CEO of Anheuser-Busch. Busch offered Dilenschneider a contract for $3 million. “I said, ‘August, I can’t really take this contract. I’m leaving the firm this afternoon. I won’t be there,’” Dilenschneider recalled on Tavakoli’s podcast. After explaining the circumstances of his departure, Dilenschneider and Busch each went their separate ways. Dilenschneider walked to his Fifth Avenue and 87th Street co-op apartment from the restaurant, which, at the time, was located on the ground floor of the Seagram Building at 99 East 52nd Street. Almost as soon as he arrived home,

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

Dilenschneider received calls from Chase Manhattan Bank, W.R. Grace, and Ford Motor Company, each having learned from Busch that Dilenschneider was leaving H&K to launch an independent firm. “That’s how I started the business,” Dilenschneider recalled.

We Can’t Rewind, We’ve Gone Too Far The MTV of today is decidedly different from the network that launched on August 1, 1981, as “Music Television.” Twenty-first-century teenagers associate MTV with series such as Teen Mom, Broke-A$$ Game Show, Caught in the Act: Unfaithful, and Buckwild. Originally, MTV just played music videos, a relatively new concept at the time. The first video it ever broadcast — 90 seconds after the network’s launch — was “Video Killed The Radio Star” by The Buggles, a British New Wave duo. The song’s lyrics include the verse: Video killed the radio star In my mind and in my car We can’t rewind, we’ve gone too far Pictures came and broke your heart Put the blame on VCR The choice of song was no accident. After the 3-minute-and-25-second video finished airing, an announcer attempted to provide context to MTV’s formation: Man invented the radio. And the phonograph. High fidelity made quite a splash. But it was full-stereo sound that made the explosion. Soon television came along and gave us the gift of sight. But it was cable that gave us the freedom of choice. For a while it seemed there was nothing new on the horizon. Announcing the latest achievement in home entertainment: The power of sight — video; the power of sound. MTV — Music Television. When it began, MTV was revolutionary, changing not only the music industry but greatly influencing fashion, language, and lifestyle. Just as video killed the radio star, DVDs replaced video tapes. Blu-Ray briefly stole the show before the emergence of streaming.

What will come next is as yet unknown, but metamorphosis is inevitable. “The pace of change is accelerating every day,” Dilenschneider observes. “If

Robert L. Dilenschneider

I’m going to keep with it and be successful, I better change too.” Witness, among many, many others that failed to evolve with the times: Tower Records, Borders, Circuit City, Radio Shack, MySpace, Woolworths, Sears, and the quintessential poster child of missed opportunities, Blockbuster. Business owners mustn’t be complacent with their existing products, management style, employee pool, client base, or economic model, Dilenschneider says. They should constantly be scouring the horizon for the direction in which the world is heading.

Youth is a Matter of Mind, Not Age Three days after the assassination of his brother, Robert F. “Bobby” Kennedy, on June 5, 1968, Edward “Ted” Kennedy delivered a eulogy. His remarks are widely considered among the most memorable speeches of Ted’s long public career. Ted shared a portion of a speech that Bobby delivered in South Africa in 1966, almost exactly two years to the day before he was shot dead in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Ted condensed and rephrased some of Bobby’s words but not his core message: Surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. The answer is to rely on youth — not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to the obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They cannot be moved by those who cling to a present that is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that come with even the most peaceful progress. Much of Dilenschneider’s advice to “young people of all ages,” especially those who are just entering the professional world, echoes Bobby and Ted Kennedy’s message. “Think about your future and develop a sense of determination,” Dilenschneider advises. Every action taken, whether by those fresh out of university or those within sight of retirement, should be devoted to achieving their goals. “There are so many people who are not determined, who just throw up their hands and say, ‘Let it come to me.’” Dilenschneider observes. “You can’t do that. You have to go after it yourself.”

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

As he elaborates: You might have a terrific career. You might be a really wonderful person. You might be somebody that everybody wants to be like. But the key [to true success in life and business] is not any of those things. The key is, what are you going to do for other people? How are you going to move society? How are people around you better because you showed up? The sooner people start asking themselves those questions, preferably early on in their careers, the more valuable they will be professionally and the sooner they’ll start making a meaningful difference in the world.

A Few Final Thoughts on Leadership Power, influence, and leadership are intertwined. It’s difficult to excel at one without the other two. Only one of Dilenschneider’s books, soon to number a library of 20, explicitly addresses leadership in its title — A Briefing For Leaders: Communication As the Ultimate Exercise of Power, released in 1992. Yet every book he has written since his first — Power and Influence in 1983 — qualifies as a manual for those in positions of authority. From the time he was a boy eavesdropping on his father’s call with the imperious executive from Cussins & Fearn, Dilenschneider has understood that leadership is forged in the crucible of integrity, courage, resilience, and self-confidence. As he affirmed over the course of his multiple appearances on Monday Morning Radio: •

“Remember the values that are important to you, that you learn throughout your life, and always be sure that you apply those values to your decisions.”

•

“Have courage. Stick with what you came with. Many people will try to knock you down. If you get knocked down, stand up.”

•

“Be brave. Oftentimes there are people who don’t like what you’ve done. Just stand up and say, ‘I’m going to do that, and here’s why I’m going to do that.’” •

“It doesn’t matter if every decision is exactly right. You’re going to score points over time by sticking with your decisions, by being brave, by being proud, by being firm, by remembering your values — not chang-

Robert L. Dilenschneider

ing. Those are really important things. And there’s no question in my mind, if you do that, you’re going to be very successful.”

obert L. Dilenschneider is considered by many of his peers to be the dean of American public relations executives.

A graduate of the University of Notre Dame with an M.A. in journalism from The Ohio State University, he first entered the field of public relations in 1967. Possessed of a keen intellect and vast knowledge of history and its relevance today, his defining attribute has been his high standards and strong moral principles. As a youth, Dilenschneider attended one of the nation’s top academic institutions for young men. As he wrote in the Foreword of his 2015 book, The Men of St. Charles: A Generation From The Turbulent ‘60s Reflects On Life: We were the sons of Moms and Dads who came out of World War II, put their heads down and built a post-war nation that would be the envy of the world. They lived the American Dream. Each of the young men at St. Charles [a preparatory school in Columbus, Ohio] enjoyed what their parents created for them in whole or in part. Each went on to make an important statement in society, each in his own way. They did it because of who they are. But they also did it because, at St. Charles, they were grounded in the basics of a life of quality and lasting values — honesty, integrity, dignity, giving back and a lifelong zest for learning. Dilenschneider worked for Hill and Knowlton for almost a quarter century, rising to the position of president and chief executive officer. On his watch, H&K’s revenues tripled to nearly $200 million. Over the course of his entire career, Dilenschneider has hired more than 3,000 successful professionals and advised thousands more. The Dilenschneider Group, DGI, which he launched in October 1991, never grew as large as other leading American public relations agencies, such as Burson-Marsteller, Edelman, Ketchum, or Weber Shandwick. But DGI’s stellar reputation for providing strategic advice and counsel to Fortune 500 companies and leading families and individuals worldwide is unmatched. The agency is best known for its expertise in mergers and acquisitions, crisis communications, government affairs, and international media. In 1986, when Dilenschneider was named CEO of H&K, he hired Joan Avagliano as his assistant. She remains with him almost four decades later.

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

Her title, “assistant,” is bogus. She is an indispensable aide-de-camp who juggles key responsibilities, including client relations and all administrative functions. “I credit Joan with my success,” Dilenschneider says. Which, without a doubt, is accurate. Maintaining a working partnership for nearly forty years, as Dilenschneider and Avagliano have done, says a great deal about their character and loyalty. Throughout his career, Dilenschneider has received many honors, served on multiple boards, and was awarded two honorary doctorates. Perhaps most impressive among all his recognitions is his investiture as a Knight of Malta, an elite religious order of the Roman Catholic Church with roots that date back to the 11th century. The order’s motto is “Tuitio Fidei et Obsequium Pauperum,” Latin for “Defense of the Faith and Assistance to the Poor.” Dilenschneider’s wife, Jan, is a renowned expressionist painter, whose work has been shown at the prestigious Galerie Pierre-Alain Challier in Paris’s historic Le Marais district and featured in a record-breaking solo show at the Bellarmine Museum in Fairfield, Connecticut. The Janet Hennessey Dilenschneider Gallery is located at the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture in New York City. [http://tinyurl.com/Dilenschneider-Gallery] The Dilenschneiders have two adult sons and three grandchildren.

Robert L. Dilenschneider

Scan the QR Codes Below to Listen to Robert L. Dilenschneider’s Appearances on Monday Morning Radio

PR Strategist Robert L. Dilenschneider Looks to History for Decision-Maker Role Models Also available to stream or download from http://tinyurl.com/MMR010620

The One Defining Trait Shared Early in Adulthood By 25 of History’s Heroes Also available to stream or download from http://tinyurl.com/MMR122021

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Events in Russia, China, and Domestically Punctuate the Need for Topnotch PR (A Panel Discussion with Robert L. Dilenschneider, Jack Devine, and Virginia A. Kamsky) Also available to stream or download from http://tinyurl.com/MMR031422

A Proven Formula Anyone Can Use to Obtain Power and Wield Influence Also available to stream or download from http://tinyurl.com/MMR091823

Robert L. Dilenschneider Websites and Social Media The Dilenschneider Group: http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-DilenschneiderGroup Individual: http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Dilenschneider LinkedIn: http://tinyurl.com/Dilenschneider-LinkedIn

Robert L. Dilenschneider

Books by Robert L. Dilenschneider The Corporate Communications Bible: Everything You Need to Know to Become a Public Relations Expert. New Millennium Press, 2000. http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-CCBible Moses: CEO: Lessons in Leadership. New Millennium Press, 2003. http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Moses Decisions: Practical Advice from 23 Men and Women Who Shaped the World. Citadel Press, 2020. http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Decisions2 Nailing It: How History’s Awesome Twentysomethings Got It Together. Citadel Press, 2022. http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-NailingIt The Public Relations Handbook. Matt Holt Books, an imprint of BenBella Books, 2022 — editor. http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-PRHandbook The Ultimate Guide to Power & Influence: Everything You Need to Know. Matt Holt Books, an imprint of BenBella Books, 2023. http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-PowerInfluence

Chapter Six

Communication Skills as a Key Determinant of Happiness and Reputation

Michelle D. Gladieux

Test Assumptions Rather Than Relying on Them

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS 1. Effective communication is extremely rewarding and potent but entails risk and demands grit. 2. Conflict gets a bad rap. It can be productive and stress-reducing to disagree constructively. 3. Solicit input from those who view the world differently than you. 4. Good enough isn’t really enough. You must outsmart the urge to take the “easy road” and do whatever is required to be your best. 5. In the world of communication, remaining silent is not a neutral stance.

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Addressing the House of Commons They were dark, dark days in Europe. On Friday, September 1, 1939, more than one million German forces, known as the Wehrmacht, invaded Poland from multiple directions. The German air force, the Luftwaffe, conducted one-thousand-plus sorties on Warsaw, Krakow, and Polish military facilities. Civilian and military casualties were heavy. Two days later, the UK and France declared war on Germany. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement towards Adolf Hitler proved an abject failure, as did military efforts to rebuff the Nazis. Britain was caught on its back foot. Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg succumbed to the German Blitzkrieg in May 1940. Only weeks later, 300,000 British Expeditionary Forces and Allied troops would find themselves hemmed in on the beaches of Dunkirk, France. But for a miraculous rescue, it would have proven the greatest military disaster in the UK’s long history. The prospect of a German invasion of Britain was palpably real. In the face of such ominous developments, Chamberlain resigned, and one of his principal war cabinet ministers, Lord Halifax, declined the job. Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, a fellow member of the Conservative Party who had been an outspoken critic of Chamberlain and appeasement, assumed the reins of leadership. Less than a month into his tenure, on June 4, 1940, Churchill rose to the podium to address the House of Commons: Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender… What Churchill had to say in that now timeless address took courage.

Michelle D. Gladieux

The Barra of Bad News What if Winston Churchill had been an uncharismatic speaker? Fearful of revealing the genuine predicament his country faced? Effective communication, requiring both courage and ability, is not a life skill exclusive to world leaders. It is essential for professionals and non-professionals from all walks of life. In 2014, General Motors faced an existential crisis. The ignition switches on millions of its Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Saturns, and other automobiles proved defective, resulting in a loss of power brakes, steering, and even preventing airbags from deploying. By the company’s count, the switch failures led to the deaths of 124 people, injuring an additional 275. Initially, the company recalled 2.6 million vehicles. But once Pandora’s box was opened and the company scrutinized its entire fleet, the recalls dominoed, leading to more than 30 million worldwide recalls. In July 2014, Mary Barra, GM’s CEO, was called to testify before a subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. She didn’t equivocate. In a town hall meeting before thousands of GM employees — and several thousand more around the world via satellite — we accepted responsibility for what went wrong. I told the men and women of GM that our actions will be guided by two clear principles: We will do everything within our power to make sure this never happens again. And, we will do the right thing for those who were harmed. ….. I want to recognize the families who lost loved ones and those who have suffered physical injury because of these mistakes. To each of them, I extend our deepest sympathies. We will not forget them, nor the special responsibility we have to them.

A Human Potential Whisperer Michelle D. Gladieux has a deep understanding of the power of effective communication to make individuals more adept as employers, industry and community leaders, and even family members and prospective life partners.

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

Conveying one’s thoughts and beliefs honestly and fully requires bravery, not just in the House of Commons or before a Congressional hearing but in all parts of our everyday lives. Typically, people build barriers to candor either to protect themselves, those with whom they communicate, or both. For example: •

An employer sugarcoats a performance review, not wanting to invite an argument or hurt a colleague’s feelings.

•

A politician, wary of offending a segment of the voting public, glosses over the real issues facing a community.

•

A loyal, hard-working employee merits a raise but is too shy to ask for one.

•

A life partner, unhappy in their relationship, nevertheless avoids addressing the behaviors that divide the couple.

In each case, and an infinite number of other examples, it’s easier to stay silent or place rigid shackles on speaking candidly than risk the discomfort often initially associated with straightforward communication. (As Gladieux coaches, such awkward interactions get easier after the first minute and with repetition.) As a result of curbing their messages, whether verbally or in writing, reluctant communicators miss out on the prospect of achieving greater levels of understanding and, ultimately, accomplishment. Simultaneously, they deprive their intended audience, be it an assembly of one or one thousand, the benefits of their perspectives. And it’s not just message-sending that’s vital. Listening is an equally critical skill. Gladieux (Glad-ee-oh), who has an extensive background in communication and organizational psychology, has made it her life’s mission to raise people’s game as communicators. The associated skills, she understands, nourish individual and collective success and satisfaction. In 2022, Gladieux published her first book, Communicate with Courage, a distillation of insights she accumulated over a quarter-century-plus as an executive coach, educator, and HR advisor. The book has garnered multiple prestigious awards and has become a go-to manual for leaders and future leaders. The central premise of Communicate with Courage, which, not coincidentally, is also Gladieux’s core doctrine, asserts that effective communication is extremely potent but entails risk and demands grit.

Michelle D. Gladieux

Four obstacles (which Gladieux writes as “hidden challenges”), often unrecognized, prevent most people from attaining proficiency as communicators and reaping the commensurate benefits. Identifying this quartet of veiled blocks is the first step in removing them.

Get on the Dance Floor (Hidden Challenge #1 — Hiding From Risk) It’s a common experience. At a bar or wedding, a segment of those present inevitably make their way to the dance floor and shimmy to the beat of the music. Admittedly, they can look silly. “It might be easy for us to point and say, ‘Oh, look at that guy, he’s had a few, hasn’t he?’” Gladieux muses. “But we’re not the ones on the dance floor.” Her point is simple: no risk, no gain. Fears of coming across poorly, offending others, or exposing one’s bumps and warts lead large numbers of people to sit out many of life’s best opportunities. The losses accrue not only to those who fail to express themselves openly and honestly but also to others who would benefit from the insights and experiences of the reticent. “Shrinking violets can become tall and mighty sunflowers, as I’ve seen countless times with training participants, college students, and coaching clients,” Gladieux writes. “If they can come out of hiding to rock the room, share their feelings, deliver candid feedback gracefully, or improve a conversation, so can you.” To become a confident, quality public speaker, Gladieux suggests individuals learn to make themselves comfortable with imperfections — lots of them, and seek out speaking engagements. “Accept the fact that no presentation — even for professional speakers — goes exactly as hoped and planned,” she writes. “Presentation prowess is learned.” One tenet Gladieux adheres to religiously and encourages others to do likewise is asking for constructive feedback. Those who speak publicly should invite comments on their content and delivery.

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

“There’s not too much to worry about as far as what others may say or think of us,” she explains. “Because if we’re doing our best and taking calculated risks, the outcome will be worth it.”

“I’m Right, You’re Wrong. Next.” (Hidden Challenge #2 — Defining to Be Right) Gladieux warns communicators against “Defining to Be Right,” i.e., thinking of themselves as flawless reasoners with all of the correct answers. She warns that such misplaced self-confidence is an express ticket to shutting down effective communication and missing out on significant, actionable new perspectives. Know-it-alls may be right, but then again, can they ever truly be certain if they won’t consider what others have to contribute? And, how will they gain trust among others when seen as unapproachable? In manufacturing and production homogeneity is ideal, but when creativity and astute decision-making are required, working only with clones of oneself often leads to an inaccurate worldview and poor choices. “If you’re a person who’s pretty sure in a situation that you’re right, summon the courage to test your assumptions rather than relying on them,” Gladieux advises. She assigns “extra credit” to those who come to accept that their hunches or data were wrong. “When you’re able to say, ‘My mistake’ or ‘I’d not thought of it that way,’ or ‘Gee, your perspective is a lot different than mine,’ that’s worthy of celebration,” she adds. Gladieux and her colleagues at Gladieux Consulting, the firm she founded twenty years ago, offer courses around the U.S. titled “Smart Selection: Best Practices for Interviewing and Hiring.” Lesson #1: Avoid uniformity when it comes to selecting employees. Considering an applicant’s gender, appearance, age, or ethnicity is not a smart move. They are not job-relevant traits, whereas knowledge, skill, and ability are. “We lose brainpower in organizations when we don’t practice inclusive hiring and promotion decisions,” Gladieux writes. “Diverse experiences of heterogeneous humans add creativity and innovation to any kind of process.”

Michelle D. Gladieux

Conflict is Unavoidable. Good! (Hidden Challenge #3 — Rationalizing the Negative) Conflict, Gladieux has found, gets a bad rap. Of course, it can be a destructive force. Then again, diverging viewpoints, properly channeled, frequently prove constructive. Gladieux has made the study of conflict a lifelong pursuit. The key to success is to avoid personalizing disagreements while seeking collaborative solutions in which both parties are heard, and both get some of what they want when possible. “The goal is to generate new energy, to move the conflict from ‘me vs. you’ to ‘us vs. this problem,’” she explains in Communicate with Courage. She is so high on the benefits of what she terms “healthy conflict” that in her book, she pens a love letter — “Dear Constructive Conflict” — containing expressions of affection, and recollections of shared moments, with vulnerability and honesty. “Because of you, we’ve learned our way is not the only way,” she affirms. “You encourage tough discussions that lead to higher ground with coworkers, friends, enemies, strangers, and families.” One example of how conflict can be beneficial arises when an employer is dissatisfied with the performance of an employee. Too often, bosses convince themselves that trying to change an employee is pointless, concluding that making the effort would only lead to unpleasantness. “To that, I would say, ‘You’re cutting them off before they have an opportunity to have someone sit down across from them and engage in sincere coaching,’” Gladieux advises. “Be willing to take a chance that the situation you think can’t change will change.” Individuals who take to heart Gladieux’s exhortation to cultivate a more heterogeneous workforce should anticipate they’ll need to get comfortable with the momentary discomfort that conflict can bring. “As workplaces become more diverse, there’s a lot to disagree about if one doesn’t try to understand opposing viewpoints,” she acknowledges. In the end, whether to openly disagree with another individual or not boils down to the question of weighing what can be gained by such interactions.

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

As Gladieux writes: Think about your wants. What is your desired state? What do you want this person to do differently? What might they want you to do differently? You can’t tell someone how to feel or what to think, but you can ask for behavior change. More than 85 years ago, Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, nailed it, as Gladieux observes, when the aviator opined: “Decide whether or not the goal is worth the risks involved. If it is, stop worrying.”

“Good Enough” Isn’t Really (Hidden Challenge #4 — Settling for “Good Enough”) It’s tempting to leave well enough alone. Why stir up potential trouble or extend yourself beyond your natural skill sets? Gladieux coaches that settling in the short run for the path of least resistance — which she terms “satisficing” — negates the possibility of realizing unexpected wins and joys. Satisficing, a combination of doing what suffices and is satisfactory, slams the door on growth. “Trying something different is where the exhilaration and the learning lies,” she professes. “‘X’ is what I always do, so I’ll try ‘Y’. You zig when you used to zag.” In Communicate with Courage, Gladieux shares that some clients confide in her that they believe doing nothing is a neutral stance. “They subscribe to the myth that good enough when writing, teaming, presenting, listening, speaking, or giving feedback is good enough,” she writes. “In reality, it’s often a negative influence on everyone.” Gladieux’s position is that those who settle for less than their best forgo the possible personal and professional benefits that would otherwise accrue to them. Those who satisfice also deprive the people with whom they interact — both at work and outside of work — of the advantages that effective communication offers. “We’re talking about situations where you lay low but have more to give and you know it,” she explains.

Take, for example, the supervisor who finally is candid with an employee who isn’t working out. “It takes courage to talk to them and say, ‘You’re fired,’” she says. “But it also takes courage to talk to them before you get to

Michelle D. Gladieux

that point, to let them know what’s bothering you about their performance and give them a chance to change.” Having a difficult conversation with a colleague or family member sooner is always better than having it later, Gladieux advises. “I’m a big fan of let’s have the conflict — even it’s sloppy, and let’s try to fight fair.” It may be true that no one, Gladieux allows, will ever achieve their full communication potential. But that isn’t an excuse not to improve. “We take a risk because we’re stretching out, sticking our necks out a little more than we have to in order to improve our life, our surroundings, relationships, or someone else’s life,” she says.

Thank You, But No Thank You Had they known each other, Michelle Gladieux and Elizabeth Bennet would have admired one another as kindred spirits. Elizabeth, “Lizzy,” found the confidence to express her true thoughts at a time when young women were expected to allow their parents, or perhaps a male suitor, to do their thinking for them. In the early 19th century, when Lizzy was an eligible young lady living in Meryton, north of London, her mother made it her mission to secure advantageous marriages for Lizzy and her four sisters. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be want of a wife,” Lizzy’s mother, Mrs. Bennet, declared ironically, when in fact, it was the Bennets, without titles of nobility and lacking a large dowry, who were in need of wealthy men as future sons-in-law. One such man, William Collins, a clergyman, does come calling for Lizzy. He is a distant cousin to her father. Due to English law at the time, only males could inherit property. Since the Bennets had no male offspring, Collins was not only in line to marry Lizzy but also stood to inherit the family’s modest estate, Longbourn. “Almost as soon as I entered the house, I singled you out as the companion of my future life,” Collins informs Lizzy, noting that he has her mother’s blessing. Collins assures Lizzy that her lack of a meaningful dowry will not stand in his way, adding, “I am convinced that [marrying her] will add very greatly to my happiness.” Besides, he tells Lizzy that clergymen should marry and serve

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

as role models for their parishes. Lizzy didn’t have the advantage of having read Gladieux’s book, Communicate with Courage, but she did just that — holding out for love in marriage rather than financial security. Accept my thanks for the compliment you are paying me. I am very sensible of the honor of your proposals, but it is impossible for me to do otherwise than to decline them. …. I am perfectly serious in my refusal. You could not make me happy, and I’m convinced that I am the last woman in the world who could make you so. Lizzy does something else that would make Gladieux proud. She comes to reevaluate her initial impressions of the wealthy and aloof Fitzwilliam Darcy — both of whom set aside their prejudices and pride only to marry for love and out of mutual respect. Greater even than Gladieux’s affection for Elizabeth Bennet, Gladieux would no doubt have related even more closely to Lizzy’s originator, Jane Austen, whose 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice clearly illustrated the risks and rewards of courageous communications. Austen, herself, bowing to the sensibilities of her era about the role of women, especially as authors and thought leaders, published Pride and Prejudice anonymously. Only after Austen’s passing in 1817 at age 41 did her brother, Henry, reveal his sister’s authorship. Listing America’s 100 most-loved books as part of The Great American Read, PBS numbered Pride and Prejudice #4 on the list. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, another homage to courageous communication, was #1.

Beyond Communication Strategy Gladieux, Gladieux Consulting, and Communicate with Courage collectively provide a tour de force playbook for facing and overcoming the greatest hurdles preventing effective, impactful, and joyful communication. Intentionally or not, the trio also provides a blueprint for facing and overcoming many of life’s challenges — hidden or otherwise — that have nothing specifically to do with communication.

Learning to accept risks, to be comfortable with our imperfections, to be good listeners and incorporate the viewpoints of others, to zig instead of

Michelle D. Gladieux

zag, and to aim for perpetual improvement are worthy skills regardless of the endeavor. Have the confidence to fail, then make a plan to do better next time. As Gladieux astutely observes: “Your act of trying is in itself a success. Do you see all the people not trying?”

ichelle D. Gladieux, a native of Indiana, is a rock ‘n’ roll enthusiast and an uber fan of Tom Petty. Like a baseball star who selects his walk-on song before each plate appearance, she’s partial to I Won’t Back Down as the lead-in to her company’s training events. Well, I know what’s right I got just one life In a world that keeps on pushin’ me around But I’ll stand my ground And I won’t back down

Those who know Gladieux know the lyrics perfectly describe her personal philosophy. Raised in a middle-class family, she is the youngest of three children and the only girl. Her father and his brothers all served in the American military during World War II — her father in the Army Air Corps. Gladieux received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Purdue University. Before launching Gladieux Consulting, she was a corporate human resources and training director in the cold storage, robotics, and construction industries. Gladieux Consulting has grown to service hundreds of companies and thousands of training participants, in addition to 1:1 coaching. Her consultancy focuses on leadership and communication topics, strategic planning facilitation, and building instructional tools and workbooks. Accepting her first faculty position at age 23, she has had 18 years of collegiate teaching experience at three in-state universities. When she is not working, Gladieux enjoys taking in live music shows and recharging on a Gulf Coast beach.

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

Scan the QR Code Below to Listen to Michelle D. Gladieux’s Appearance on Monday Morning Radio

How to Clear the Four Obstacles to Successful Communication: Hiding, Defining, Rationalizing, and Settling Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/Michelle-Gladieux

Michelle D. Gladieux’s Websites and Social Media Gladieux Consulting: http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Gladieux e-Newsletter: http://tinyurl.com/Gladieux-Breakdown LinkedIn: http://tinyurl.com/Gladieux-LinkedIn Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/Gladieux-Facebook

Michelle D. Gladieux’s Book Communicate with Courage: Taking Risks to Overcome the Four Hidden Challenges http://tinyurl.com/CommunicateWithCourage

Chapter Seven

Entrepreneurial Success Requires Passion, Determination, and a Willingness to Experiment and Innovate

Carl J. Schramm

The Best Advice for Most Would-Be Entrepreneurs — “Don’t Do It”

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS 1. Skip the MBA. If you want to be an entrepreneur, consider an engineering degree. 2. Only go into business for yourself after you’ve spent years as an employee, studying what works and what does not. 3. Keep clear of venture capital. It’s a fast path to business ruin. 4. There’s family, and then there’s business. Be sure that never the twain shall meet. 5. If you’re not in business to make money, then you shouldn’t be in business.

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

There’s Nothing Wrong With Being an Employee In 1985, there were 12 professors of entrepreneurship in the United States. Now, there are roughly 6,000. Logically, that stunning fact would suggest that there are far more entrepreneurs than four decades ago. False. According to Carl J. Schramm, who specializes in the study of entrepreneurship, the rate of people starting businesses today is 30% lower than in 1985. That reveals an inversely proportional correlation between learning about entrepreneurship and succeeding at it. Schramm, a distinguished educator, economist, and healthcare industry entrepreneur, counsels would-be entrepreneurs on how to succeed in business. And it’s not by going to business school. Or, for that matter, starting a company straight out of college. The Mark Zuckerberg model of career success (dropping out of university to start a multi-billion-dollar company) is elusive — it’s part of what makes Zuckerberg a legend in the business world. Instead, for those who start a successful business, it usually occurs years after graduation. In fact, the average age for entering the world of entrepreneurship is thirty-nine. “This is not to be taken on lightly,” Schramm cautions. “That’s why the failure rate is enormous for people before they’re thirty.” Schramm may seem like a fly in the ointment for any enthusiastic college graduate eager to succeed in the business world. But his observations and advice represent decades of investigation and experience. Schramm teaches entrepreneurship at Syracuse University. For his academic excellence, he has been honored as one of only 16 members of the faculty (since 1870) to be given the prestigious, at-large title of “University Professor.” The Economist magazine once described him as “The Evangelist of Entrepreneurship.” Schramm earned the moniker during the decade he was the president of the $2 billion Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which is among the largest private foundations in America, working to help entrepreneurs succeed. Not every person is destined to be an entrepreneur, Schramm holds. People who envision running a small business as a quick and easy way to get rich are often badly mistaken and lack the proper perspective to succeed.

He doesn’t recommend entrepreneurship to his students — or even his children — should they desire a financially successful career. “That’s the last thing I would say.”

Carl J. Schramm

He readily acknowledges that someone who leaves a job at Raytheon or General Electric to pursue entrepreneurship might very well make less money down the line than if that person had stayed. So, when should someone pursue entrepreneurship? The short answer is when the business bug infects them; like meeting the love of one’s life — it is irresistible and all-consuming. Schramm was mid-career before he perceived a societal need and started his first business. His personal and work experience provided a bedrock for his entrepreneurial aspirations. “You can see that actually the longer you wait, the chances of… having your business really succeed in making more money goes up.” He encourages people to start a business only after they’ve had years of experience working for others, keenly observing superiors’ decision-making and learning — both what’s effective and not — from them. That said, Schramm recommends that a first-year college student who is committed to business success should study engineering. Engineering, he explains, “was one of the last things to get into universities because all the ‘real’ university disciplines thought that was just a bunch of mechanics.” The value of engineering courses is that they are less focused on obtuse theory than practice and that “professors are actually always solving problems in their teaching, [and teaching] their students how to solve problems that haven’t occurred yet.” That is the mindset that an entrepreneur should have.

Stay Out of the Shark Tank Not all sharks are dangerous. Take the leopard shark. Most commonly found off the coasts of California and Baja California, Mexico, this fish is more like a curious puppy dog or kitty cat than a dangerous predator. While leopard sharks can grow up to seven feet in length, they are primarily interested in eating fish eggs and clams; they get along with humans almost affectionately. Then, you have the fearsome bull shark. Found off coastlines worldwide, the bull shark is much longer in size and larger in girth than the placid leopard shark. Freshwater rivers don’t deter them — they’ve been spotted as far upstream the Mississippi River as St. Louis, Missouri — and they’ll eat prey as large as dolphins and other bull sharks. Humans, of course, are a delicacy, too. The bull shark is an annual leader in unprovoked and fatal attacks on swimmers. Because bull sharks are so dangerous, most aquariums won’t keep them. In

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

fact, in the entire Western Hemisphere, you can only view bull sharks in one: the Oklahoma Aquarium in Tulsa County, home to the world’s largest collection of bull sharks. In Schramm’s view, there is one species of “shark” that entrepreneurs encounter far more often than any other. And that’s the venture capitalist. Small business owners mistakenly come to believe that they need venture capital to succeed, and they think that swimming with venture capitalists will leave them as unscathed as a dip with the leopard shark. “The way we go about teaching entrepreneurs or people who would be entrepreneurs is all wrong,” Schramm says. “The typical way that we tell people how to start a business is to write a business plan.” That approach, however, doesn’t align with the reality or spontaneity of starting a company. “We’ve got to stop teaching (and would-be entrepreneurs from learning) all the wrong lessons,” he continues, linking a decline in the rate of entrepreneurship to a poor education. In his 2018 book, Burn the Business Plan: What Great Entrepreneurs Really Do, Schramm explains that the main reason even to write a business plan is to convince venture capitalists to invest in your company. Schramm argues that new entrepreneurs should avoid venture capital as assiduously as they would a bull shark. First, most venture capitalists want to know what the company’s exit strategy is from the onset. Planning an exit, Schramm believes, is too much of a distraction from making the business a success. Founders should be focused on growing their companies, not leaving them. They need a vision of significant growth. The businesses that survive the longest are those that expand. Second, venture capitalists tend to interfere with business operations and push decisions — such as overemphasizing near-term profits — that often doom small companies to failure. Finally, most entrepreneurs can scrape together the funds required to start their companies. Doing so allows them to retain their decision-making rights without bringing on outside investors and the accompanying need for a business plan and an exit strategy. The other reason to avoid making a business plan is that you don’t want to be wed to a single vision for your company. Circumstances will change, and you will need flexibility to adapt. Kindly leopard sharks, with a skeleton made entirely of cartilage, are flexible. So, too, even ferocious bull sharks. Ruthless venture capitalists are not.

Carl J. Schramm

Risky Business Cincinnati sisters Olivia and Elizabeth Norris got married in the same year — 1833. Olivia, the elder sibling, wed Englishman William Procter, who made candles. Elizabeth married Irishman James Gamble, who made soap. In 1837, at the suggestion of their wives’ father, Alexander Norris, Procter and Gamble went into business together. Chicago-native Burton Baskin got into the ice cream business during World War II while stationed with the U.S. Navy in the New Hebrides — a humid island chain now known as Vanuatu, which author James Michener once generously described as “steaming.” At the end of the war, Baskin married Shirley Robbins of Tacoma, Washington, the daughter of a local dairyman and the brother of local ice cream salesman Irvine Robbins. Their Polish-born father, Aaron Robbins, had advice for Burton and Irvine: For the sake of family harmony, resist the temptation to get into business together. For a while, Baskin and Robbins remained friendly competitors. But the allure of working together proved too great, so they joined forces. Procter, Gamble, Baskin, and Robbins beat the odds. They made their family businesses work. To Schramm’s way of thinking, despite these and other notable exceptions, Aaron Robbins’s instinct to refrain from mixing family and business was wiser than Alexander Norris’s. Family businesses are risky businesses. They can implode. So, too, can families. It’s best to keep the two separate. Even more so, woe be the entrepreneur who hires a family member or a friend as an employee. It’s a recipe for ruining a good relationship. Schramm even warns not to turn to family or friends for advice; they’ll just parrot what the struggling entrepreneur wants to hear. If business owners want to learn new things and improve their product or service, they should listen to the naysayers who are more likely to be completely frank. Similarly, Schramm teaches that no entrepreneur should have a co-founder. Be Steve Jobs without Steve Wozniak; Mark Zuckerberg without Eduardo Saverin; Bill Gates without Paul Allen. Don’t divide your company’s decision-making power. Be the head honcho. The big kahuna. The grand poobah. Even offering equity to family members, friends, or employees can be a slippery slope that leads to the loss of full control. It’s your company, Schramm says. Be judicious in guarding your ownership of it.

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

Know When To Pick Up Your Marbles and Go Home Startup owners don’t need a business plan at launch, but they definitely need to generate revenue out of the starting gate. Customers and clients are proof of concept. Entrepreneurs must do everything they can to attract and retain patrons. Just because the entrepreneurial bug has bitten individuals and they think their concept is brilliant, doesn’t mean the public will agree. Entrepreneurs can’t be so enamored with their company that they don’t know when to change direction or quit. The goal of being in business is not to have fun or be the change owners want to see in the world, or sell a product that entrepreneurs think the public should want. “If you’re not starting a business to make money, go home,” Schramm says.

arl J. Schramm, like the majority of entrepreneurs, didn’t start in the business world as an owner. In fact, he began his career in the nonprofit milieu of academia.

I was an associate professor at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore,” Schramm explains, discussing his role at its School of Hygiene and Public Health. “I was going to be a professor at a world famous university. And then, in the middle of my research — Bang! — I had this insight… and I knew I had to start a business. To date, Schramm has started seven businesses, including Greenspring Advisors, a consultancy and business incubator he established in 1995. He served on the faculty at Johns Hopkins from 1973 to 1986. Starting in 2002, Schramm spent a decade heading the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation (http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Kauffman), which — according to his Syracuse University biography — “became the nation’s largest private funder of research related to entrepreneurship, economic growth and innovation.” When Schramm joined Syracuse University in 2012, he did so as an at-large “University Professor,” only the 16th in the school’s entire history. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin — Madison. He also has a J.D. from Georgetown University and holds six honorary doctorates.

While Schramm criticizes conventional university-level tracks in entrepreneurship and thinks too many people mistakenly venture into starting their own businesses, he is a surprising booster of the economic benefits that de-

Carl J. Schramm

rive from the startup and small business sectors of the economy. “Entrepreneurs are essential. They teach us about human needs we didn’t know we had,” he says. “The more businesses we start, the richer the economy becomes. Wealth expands. Everybody’s better off.”

Scan the QR Code Below to Listen to Carl J. Schramm’s Appearance on Monday Morning Radio

Carl Schramm, “The Evangelist of Entrepreneurship,” on the Proven Formula for Success Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/Carl-Schramm

Carl J. Schramm’s Websites and Social Media Syracuse University (Biographical): http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Schramm Syracuse University (Research): http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Schramm2 Twitter: http://tinyurl.com/Schramm-Twitter LinkedIn: http://tinyurl.com/Schramm-LinkedIn

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

Books by Carl J. Schramm Burn the Business Plan: What Great Entrepreneurs Really Do. Simon & Schuster, 2018. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Burn Better Capitalism: Renewing the Entrepreneurial Strength of the American Economy. Yale University Press, 2012. — co-authored with Robert E. Litan http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-BetterCapitalism Inside Real Innovation: How The Right Approach Can Move Ideas From R&d To Market - And Get The Economy Moving. World Scientific, 2010. — co-authored with Eugene A. Fitzgerald and Andreas Wankerl http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-RealInnovation Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity. Yale University Press, 2009. — co-authored with William J. Baumol and Robert E. Litan http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-GoodBadCapitalism The Entrepreneurial Imperative: How America’s Economic Miracle Will Reshape the World (and Change Your Life). Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2006. http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Imperative

Chapter Eight

Your Mind Is Your Most Potent Business Tool

Blaine Oelkers

“To succeed, you only need to do one thing, and that is each day to better your yesterday’s self.”

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS

1. Set goals and hold fast to them regardless of any naysayers. Nurture your objectives as you might the plants in a garden. 2. Win early and win often. Stay motivated by establishing achievable milestones that build toward your larger ambitions. 3. Aim to work each day as if it’s the last one before you leave on vacation. Block out any distractions and remain laser-focused on what needs to be accomplished. 4. To prevent frequent and random interruptions that sap your productivity, carve out a fixed time daily to respond to the needs of your employees and others. 5. View failure as a growth opportunity. Because, really, that’s what it is.

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

Imagine Where You’ll Be, and It Will Be So The night before he died, the Bible tells us that King Saul of Israel visited the Witch of Endor, a necromancer who could summon the dead. As the king prepared to battle the Philistines, Saul sought the advice of his old mentor, the prophet Samuel, who had long ago passed to the next world. Samuel, awoken from the grave, was angry at having been disturbed from his eternal rest. Rather than give Saul the help that the king sought, Samuel declared that the Israelites would lose the war. Saul and his sons would be killed in battle. Saul’s political rival, David, would inherit the throne. The biblical narrator attributes Saul’s divine death sentence, in part, to his decision to summon Samuel from the afterlife. The Bible, it is clear, opposes conjuring the departed. Blaine Oelkers is not concerned about bringing the dead back to life. He regularly summons the spirits of Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, Earl Nightingale, Jim Rohn and other titans of personal development seeking business and life wisdom. Rather than using a sorceress as a medium, Oelkers relies on YouTube and the public library. Oelkers, who dubs himself America’s “Chief Results Officer,” is a modern keeper of his predecessors’ inspirational flame. But he is also an original thinker, offering unique solutions for our 21st-century professional and personal challenges. Central to Oelkers’s doctrine is WYTAYBA, pronounced “why-tay-ba,” which is an acronym for “What you think about, you bring about.” It is reminiscent of the first lines from Gladiator, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2001. Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius (played by Russell Crowe) advises his troops, “Imagine where you will be, and it will be so.”

How I Learned To Bring About What I Think About The WYTAYBA concept is attributed to a variety of authors and thinkers. Regardless of its origin, Oelkers has become popularly associated with its message. His initiation into the principles of positive psychology began with a book-on-tape version of Think and Grow Rich by personal success author Napoleon Hill. Oelkers’s takeaway from Hill’s 1937 book, which he first listened to in the 1980s, was, “I can’t change my circumstances, but by focusing my thoughts, I can change my reaction to the circumstances.”

Oelkers has spent nearly four decades immersed in the study of personal implementation, i.e., “How to get yourself to do those things you know

Blaine Oelkers

you should do but maybe you’re not doing.” His ideology contrasts markedly with that of Rhonda Byrne, author of the 2006 bestseller The Secret. “It’s not the law of attraction [Byrne’s proposition].” In Oelkers’s experience, it’s more the law of thought and action — emphasis on “and.” In his own life, Oelkers has embraced the WYTAYBA philosophy. For instance, he wanted to be around the house more when his children were young, so — over the course of a year — he transitioned from a job that required him to go to the office daily and make regular business trips to owning his own business and working from home. It’s not about drawing on some secret metaphysical force, he explains; it’s just setting the appropriate goals and sticking to them.

Tips for Growing Tomatoes In his 2017 TEDx Talk, “Unlocking the Screen of Your Mind: WYTAYBA,” which has had more than 250,000 views, Oelkers likens entrepreneurial creativity to cultivating tomatoes. To grow the pulpy salad and sandwich fixing, you must first plant tomato seeds into nutrient-rich soil, caring for the plants as they grow by watering them, ensuring they receive proper sunlight, and preventing crows, blackbirds, and other produce bandits from feasting on them while still on the vine. Only after you successfully cultivate the plants can you reap the fruits of your labor and slice one of the juicy tomatoes to complement your BLT or mixed greens. The same principle applies to business vision. Whatever your dream is for your company, you must nurture the idea — let it grow in your mind — and take care not to let naysayers or negative thoughts peck away at it. Concentrate on your goals and care for them. As you do, you’ll conceive of new approaches. That is the express lane to success.

Off the Florida Keys, There’s a Place Called ‘Kokomo’... Kokomo, as the Beach Boys’s 1988 hit explains, is where to go when you want to get away from it all. Bodies in the sand. Tropical drink melting in your hand. Falling in love to the rhythm of a steel drum band.

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

But what about the crazed last day before your flight to paradise? You’re not in the Caribbean but in a dreary, cluttered office. Before you can escape to a tropical wonderland, you have a mountain of work to clear off your desk. Fail at that, and your mind won’t be free to relax on vacation. So somehow, semi-miraculously, between 9:00 am and 5:00 pm, you push out a week’s worth of work. If you can be a productivity superhero the day before vacation, why not every day? Oelkers asks. “You have this weird, fierce focus on the day before vacation,” he explains. “Think of all the things you don’t do. No chit-chat, no long responses… You’re running things so much more effectively.” Oelkers continues, explaining that people who say “no” to their colleagues and even clients’ requests on the day before vacation are — in fact — saying “yes” to their own needs. “So you’ve got to say ‘no’ more,” he insists. Instead of signaling uncooperativeness, saying “no” demonstrates wisdom and the proper prioritization of responsibilities. Multitasking is a smart time-saving strategy, especially when it can be done without compromising quality. His recommendation: batch-task. For example: Need to exercise but also want to spend quality time with your family? Take the kids bike-riding, tennis-playing, or hiking with you. Two goals can be accomplished without having to sacrifice one. The same approach will succeed in the workplace. Set a fixed time each day for your employees and others to ask you questions that they would typically interrupt you with intermittently. By batching all of your interruptions at the same time, you can protect the sacredness of your productive solo work time. Oelkers also suggests employing a method known as “positive progressive procrastination.” He delays what can be postponed in order to focus on what is essential and urgent. If the deferred task is never completed, then it wasn’t important enough to tackle in the first place.

The Chicago Way Some say it started with the Boston political machine. Others pinpoint its origin to Kansas City. But the phrase “Vote early and vote often,” is most frequently ascribed to the Windy City’s Democratic Party for much of the 20th century. It was the Chicago Way of ensuring an electoral victory, where corruption 86 was rampant and votes were counted more than once.

Blaine Oelkers

Oelkers believes in a variant of the Chicago Way: “Win early and win often.” Unlike the schemes of Second City Mayor William Hale “Big Bill’’ Thompson — a contemporary of Al Capone — Oelkers’s recommendation for entrepreneurs is benign and unquestionably legal. When you set new goals for yourself, do so in attainable increments. If you are not able to achieve a consistent pattern of success along the path to your goals, you’re likely to become discouraged and give up. “I like to start small and win,” Oelkers says. One tool that he relies on to advance his goals is keeping a journal. At the start of each day, Oelkers journals his plan for what he hopes to accomplish. What he found from the onset, though, is that it was a challenge to remember to do the journaling. That led Oelkers to focus on habit-linking — forming a new practice by connecting it to an existing routine. Perhaps the existing habit is checking your phone first thing in the morning. In that case, Oelkers recommends clearing the home screen of your phone from all apps except the one that promotes the habit you are trying to form or setting your phone’s wallpaper to display a note reminding you of the habit. Don’t check any other applications until you’ve completed the daily task.

If You’re Going to be a Jedi, Don’t be Darth Vader Former President Richard M. Nixon is seldom cited for his pearls of wisdom. Yet in his farewell address to the White House staff, delivered on August 9, 1974, Nixon offered timeless guidance. Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty; always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself. In like fashion, Oelkers advises business owners to avoid staying on what he terms “the bitter side.” Oelkers knows from experience what it’s like to sojourn there. On the day his son, Bo, was born in 1993, Oelkers phoned his dad to congratulate the new grandfather. Hours later, Oelkers’s father, Robert Oelkers, Sr., age 59, dropped dead from a sudden, massive heart attack. “The more I stayed on the bitter side, the larger the bitter side grew.” But when Oelkers transitioned to the “better side,” that’s what expanded.

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

Business owners who let life events and professional setbacks derail them emotionally will be unable to achieve their goals. For entrepreneurs, the pull toward bitterness is strong. Employees complain. Customers grouse. Bills need to be paid. Payrolls must be met. There are issues with vendors. Inventory arrives damaged or not at all. Stress rockets. In Episode VI—Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader (the Dark Lord formerly known as Anakin Skywalker) exhorts his son, Luke, to join him: “Give yourself to the Dark Side. It is the only way you can save your friends.” It would hardly be a leap for a business owner to replace the word “friends” with “company.” However, instead of saving their companies by embracing the “bitter side,” entrepreneurs will — as Nixon well understood — self-destruct. Oelkers draws an analogy between business owners who fear struggle and parents who guide their children who are afraid to fail. When coaching his daughter, Kaitlyn, and Bo to play tennis and encouraging them to compete in advanced brackets, one of his children protested: “Wait, Dad! I’m going to lose there.” “Yes,” Oelkers responded, “But you’re also going to learn there.” The same applies to entrepreneurship, where there can be achievement or misfortune. But when the result is disappointing, for those wise enough to spot them, there are valuable lessons — and growth. Perhaps Irish poet Samuel Beckett summed it best when he proposed this alternative to going down the path of darkness: “Ever tried, ever failed, no matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

When To Call It Quits For Oelkers, business success and professional satisfaction are byproducts of controlling his schedule. “Owning my own business and working from home gave me the good fortune to really figure out, ‘Why am I on the planet now?’”

Oelkers promotes entrepreneurship as a means of loving and finding meaning from your work, drawing energy from your labors, and taking control of your life.

Blaine Oelkers

Successful entrepreneurship is not some distant ideal, Oelkers argues. “Everything you need is within reach. You’re already doing it. And if you want to, you can master it,” he says. Even so, he acknowledges the importance of knowing when to change direction, especially if, despite your best efforts, you are not succeeding. “There is a skill and an art to knowing when to quit — when to change directions, when to pivot, when to be the Netflix not the Blockbuster,” he observes. “Some of the bigger lessons are the ones that hurt the most. The most traumatic times in my personal life and my business life were some of the most transformational.”

laine Oelkers is a leading authority on personal implementation, building on the foundations developed by Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, Earl Nightingale, and other immortals in the field of personal growth, professional achievement, and the psychology of success. Oelkers brings to his clients nearly four decades of business and coaching experience with a special focus on providing owners and entrepreneurs with practical methods to achieve their goals. In addition to his proven WYTAYBA approach, he is known for The 30 Minute Hour — get an hour of work done in just 30 minutes; 21-Second Habits — create new habits in just 21 seconds, not 21 days; and Results Machine — making your results automatic. Oelkers spent years working in the nutritional supplement industry before transitioning in 2008 to his current calling. He graduated from Purdue University in 1985 and returned to school in the mid-2010s, participating in social entrepreneurship programs at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University. In addition to his advisory company, Selfluence, Oelkers is on the board of his family’s business, Feeding Cards (tinyurl.com/Oelkers-Cards), which sells greeting cards, with a portion of the proceeds going to buy a hot meal for underserved children. Oelkers and his wife, Beth, live in Verrado, Arizona, on the west side of Phoenix. They have two adult children.

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

Scan the QR Code Below to Listen to Blaine Oelkers’s Appearance on Monday Morning Radio

Blaine Oelkers Channels the Wisdom of Carnegie, Nightingale, Rohn and Ziglar Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/Blaine-Oelkers

Blaine Oelkers’s Websites and Social Media Accounts Selfluence: www.tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Oelkers TEDx Talk Link: www.tinyurl.com/Oelkers-Speaking Instagram: www.tinyurl.com/Oelkers-Instagram LinkedIn: www.tinyurl.com/Oelkers-LinkedIn Twitter: www.tinyurl.com/Oelkers-Twitter Facebook: www.tinyurl.com/Oelkers-Facebook

Books by Blaine Oelkers Mastering Think and Grow Rich: www.tinyurl.com/Oelkers-TGR Download The Ultimate Guide to The 21 Second Habit: www.tinyurl.com/Oelkers-Guidebook

Chapter Nine

Holy Bat Logic! Companies Can Do Well By Doing Good

Bert Gervis

and Tracy Posner

Outmaneuver Big Competitors By Delivering the Personal Touch They Can’t Offer

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS 1. Companies thrive when their owners work for passion, not only for profit. 2. Taking the time to educate your customers about your products or services pays long-term dividends. 3. To quote novelist Rudyard Kipling: “Trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting, too.” 4. The best way to distinguish your business from the competition is through the commitment and personal involvement of upper-level management. 5. It’s 5:01 pm on Friday. Be sure someone is there to answer the company phone or, better yet, be available yourself.

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Honey, Is That You Licking My Ear? It’s the middle of the night in a bedroom community one hour east of Los Angeles. Bert Gervis, in his late seventies, wakes up to use the bathroom. His wife of more than 30 years, Tracy Posner, is in bed next to him. She stirs. Bert’s oversized dog is in the bed, too, between them. Well, one of his dogs. Another is at his feet. A third is at Tracy’s feet. A fourth is sleeping between the two pets. A fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth are on the floor at the foot of Bert’s bed. A few dozen more are scattered along the way to the bathroom. Bert isn’t suffering from a nightmare; in fact, he is living his dream. Bert and Tracy share their 15,000-square-foot home, situated on five acres, with about 50 adopted dogs, at least on this particular night. In the course of their lives, they have adopted more than 15,500 canines — most of whom were on death row, about to be euthanized by their shelters. If a Nobel Prize were bestowed for animal lives saved, Bert and Tracy would have given their acceptance speeches in Oslo long ago. But Bert and Tracy are more than philanthropists; they are successful for-profit business owners. Together, they demonstrate that the two can go paw in hand.

The Purrfect Pet Meal In addition to rescuing shelter pets and placing them for adoption, Bert and Tracy are the founders of Gentle Giants Products, a pet food company that cuts unnecessary fat and protein from its products. As a result, they claim that pets act more energetically, live longer, and have fewer health issues. In keeping with their charitable mindset, Bert and Tracy don’t take a salary, keeping costs down for consumers and more of the money in the company. “We approach it not as a business, but as a charity,” Bert says. Of course, most business owners cannot afford to skip their paychecks without the independent wealth that Bert and Tracy enjoy. But the couple’s values offer an important lesson to entrepreneurs nonetheless: Companies thrive when their owners work for passion, not only for profit.

Bert and Tracy have poured their hearts into Gentle Giants. Their philosophy — “Our pets are our family, and we want to give them the best of everything” — governs how they run their daily operations, often working

Bert Gervis

between 75 and 100 hours a week. The fact that they view their efforts as not solely a business undertaking but as a sacred mission has made Gentle Giants an extraordinary success. As Tracy explains, “I have never made a decision only based on, ‘What pure business [metrics] will this serve?’ I’ve made every decision based on doing the right thing…coming to a business decision because it helps the world.”

(951) 818-2512 This is* — or was — Bert’s personal phone number, printed on every package and can of Gentle Giants’ pet food. For many years, anyone who dialed it was able to reach Bert or Tracy directly. No joke. When consumers phoned (951) 818-2512, they had free reign to ask Bert or Tracy any questions about their pet food products. Callers could keep the dynamic duo for five minutes or 50 minutes: however long it took to resolve their queries about Gentle Giants satisfactorily. Good luck having such easy access to the top executives of Pedigree (owned by Mars Inc.) or Purina (owned by Nestlé). “When people call in who’ve got real concerns about the health of their dog and are making decisions as to how to care for an animal’s life, we only want either Tracy or me to speak to them,” Bert says, “We’re not going to give this to someone who doesn’t have that level of experience.” Tracy concurs, “We believe that our experience is what we want to share.” This level of exceptional customer service, in addition to building brand loyalty, reflects Bert and Tracy’s business savvy. “Let me tell you how we do it,” Bert says slyly. “Instead of just answering questions, and you hang up the phone, and the person says, ‘Oh, gee. Okay, I got my question answered,’ we educate every person who calls.” The Gentle Giants customers, therefore, can speak more intelligently about the product they feed their pets than do people who rely on the products of rival companies. They become evangelists for Gentle Giants. At least, that’s the theory. Customers are trained in the product’s finer talking points, form a personal connection to the company’s founders, and get a level of customer service that can’t be matched.

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

For many larger companies relying on artificial intelligence or a call center to handle customer questions, Bert and Tracy’s method must seem impossible to implement. Consider these questions: Which phone service provider is best — AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon? Which car company is best — Ford, General Motors, or Toyota? Which fast food company is best — Burger King, McDonald’s, or Wendy’s? Based on familiarity, customers may have a slight preference for one of the companies. But how strong is their loyalty? To distinguish their business from the competition, Bert and Tracy advise leaders to educate their customers and clients on why their company is better than the rest. The most reliable way to do so is through the commitment and personal involvement of upper-level management.

Butch and Sundance The setting is central Wyoming. It’s the turn of the 20th century. Outlaws Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, better known as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, are returning to their Hole-in-the-Wall hideout. In screenwriter William Goldman’s 1969 retelling, Butch — the brains of the gang — is telling Sundance about his latest scheme. “Bolivia,” Butch, played by Paul Newman, crows. “What’s Bolivia?” Sundance, portrayed by Robert Redford, asks. “Bolivia... that’s a country, stupid. Central or South America. One or the other.” Sundance is unconvinced. Butch tries to persuade his partner. “You wouldn’t believe what they’re finding in the ground down there… Silver mines, gold mines, tin mines — payrolls so heavy we’d strain ourselves stealing them.” Sundance laughs dismissively, “You just keep thinking, Butch. That’s what you’re good at.” Shaking his head, Butch remarks — to himself more than to Sundance — “Boy, I’ve got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals.”

Tracy has faced her share of bifocal-wearing professional critics over the years.

Bert Gervis

“There are a lot of naysayers out there that’ll always tell you something won’t work,” she cautions. “I could tell you honestly, in business, every idea I’ve ever come up with, someone would either tell me it wouldn’t work…” Tracy pauses in frustration. She picks up, “And I would say to them, ‘If you could logically show me why it wouldn’t [succeed], I won’t do it, because I don’t want it to fail. But if you’re only telling me it won’t work because it’s never been tried, we’re going to do it, and it’s going to be great.’” The balance that visionary business owners need to strike with their sometimes well-meaning critics (and sometimes they don’t mean well!) is challenging to maintain. Rudyard Kipling, the British author of The Jungle Book, understood this concept well. In his poem, If, first published in 1910, Kipling challenges his son to “trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting, too.”

It’s 5:01 pm on a Friday. Do You Know Where Your CEO is? Tracy hints that some of the criticism she’s received over the years has been aimed at her personal life, including her decision to wed Bert. In fact, at first, Tracy didn’t even want to meet Gervis. In the late 1980s, Tracy Posner was working for her father, Victor, helping her dad oversee a vast roster of multinational companies with more than 200,000 employees when the industrialist encouraged her to meet Bert in California for professional purposes. Tracy, fiercely independent, didn’t want to give Bert the time of day. Her father insisted. Tracy pushed back. Her father made Tracy a deal. “He said, ‘Look… It’s 5:00 on Friday. You could call the guy now. And if he’s not in the office at 5:00 on Friday, then he’s not one of us.” Stubborn Tracy waited 90 minutes before she phoned Bert, and, wow, he was still at work! They met the following day to discuss business, and by the end of their meeting, Tracy was convinced she’d met her future husband. The story of how Bert and Tracy met is romantic, but it also contains practical business wisdom. CEOs are known to exaggeratedly describe themselves as the “chief cook and bottle washer,” indicating that they serve all roles in their company, from the lowliest to the most prestigious.

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

Rising to the top of a business doesn’t mean you get to stroll in late, take long lunches, and quit early. Those aren’t the qualities that get you to the top or let you stay there. Bert and Tracy’s ethos is one in which the work never stops because they don’t want it to stop. They are in their business because they believe in its mission. That’s the level of passion Victor Posner knew would ensure that Bert would be in his office well past 5:00 pm on that fateful Friday evening. It is the type of work ethic that fueled the Posner family empire, and that is a role model for other companies and executives. * As of year-end 2023, this phone number can be found on every bag and can of Gentle Giants pet food. Bert or Tracy may still personally respond to incoming calls. When we tried several times in late 2023, our calls went to voicemail. ** Bert Gervis Color Photo (2014) courtesy of Gage Skidmore and Wikimedia Commons. Bert, as Robin, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

ert John Gervis Jr. is the only entrepreneur featured in this anthology with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. For three seasons, from 1966 to 1968, under the name “Burt Ward,” Gervis starred in the ABC television program Batman as the caped crusader’s crime-fighting sidekick — Robin, the Boy Wonder. Profiled in Variety in January 2020, the trade magazine wrote that Gervis “learned early on to take the inevitable highs and lows of showbiz in stride.” He was primed to play Benjamin Braddock in the 1967 motion picture The Graduate, only to have ABC put the kibosh on his casting, which instead went to Dustin Hoffman. [Hoffman was subsequently nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor, alongside Warren Beatty, Paul Newman, Spencer Tracy, and Rod Steiger, who won for In the Heat of the Night.] “Did it bother me? A little bit, but did I go nuts? No,” he told Variety. “Somebody else could be just devastated by it. I wasn’t.” Such resilience has served Gervis throughout his lifetime.

His first job, at age two, was in his father’s traveling ice show, Rhapsody on Ice. After being introduced by the arena’s announcer, two adults led him onto the ice rink, one holding each hand. “Then they let go of my hands. I remained skating, and people went nuts,” he recalled in a profile of him appearing in The Wall Street Journal.

Gervis later worked for his father’s real estate company until, at age 20, he

Bert Gervis

beat out more than 1,000 other hopefuls to win the coveted role alongside Adam West, who played Batman in the television series. “If Robin really existed, we think you’d be him,” the show’s producer told Gervis. As the studio’s suggestion, Gervis took his mother’s maiden name, Ward, and changed the spelling of his first name to Burt from Bert. Gervis’s wife, Tracy Posner, is the daughter of legendary industrialist and philanthropist Victor Posner, who The New York Times dubbed a master of hostile takeovers. As the Times reported in his obituary in February 2002, “at one time or another [he] controlled companies as diverse as the Arby’s restaurant chain, Royal Crown Cola, and Sharon Steel.” Bert and Tracy wed in 1990 and launched Gentle Giants in 1994. The company has received widespread acclaim for its business ethics, product quality, and financial success.

Scan the QR Code Below to Listen to Bert Gervis and Tracy Posner’s Appearance on Monday Morning Radio

Meet the Entrepreneurial Superheroes Who Are Helping Dogs Live into Their 20s Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/Bert-Tracy

Bert & Tracy’s Websites and Social Media Accounts Gentle Giants Dog Food: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Gervis Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/Gervis-Twitter YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/Gervis-YouTube Bert’s LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/Gervis-LinkedIn Tracy’s LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/Posner-LinkedIn

Chapter Ten

They Don’t Call Him ‘The Wizard’ for Nothing: Steps That Turn Words into Magic and Dreamers Into Millionaires

Roy and Pennie Williams

Take the Conventional Business and Marketing Playbooks and Trash Them. The Key to Success is to Think and Act Differently.

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS 1. Remember — you don’t sell a product or a service; you sell a solution. 2. Charging more isn’t dangerous. Disappointing the customer is. 3. Bold strategies and elegant ad writing are the cornerstones of a successful marketing campaign. 4. Take a long-term perspective when it comes to advertising. Think “next year,” not “next week.” 5. The most important business relationship you will ever have is with your spouse. Choose well, and you will be successful.

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: In June 2019, to kick off the eighth season of Monday Morning Radio, founding host Dean Rotbart flew to Austin, Texas, to record a conversation with two living marketing legends, Roy H. Williams and Ryan Deiss. Their episode remains one of the most listened-to installments since the podcast’s inception in 2012. While the two cognoscenti were interviewed together — showcasing not only their expertise but also their dynamic repartee — in this volume, we’ve elected to package their sage insights in two separate but complementary chapters. See next chapter.]

The Stars At Night Are Big and Bright… The Texas Hill Country, which originates just northwest of Austin, is one of the most scenic regions in the United States. It features a cornucopia of natural beauty, historic sites, quaint towns, vineyards, and wide-open skies. Here, you have real-life cowboys still riding horseback, gooey barbecue that’ll leave your fingers sticky and your stomach euphoric, and dirt paths that are a destination in themselves, leading to nowhere in particular. The summers are hot as a simmering kettle and the winter air harbors a shivering chill. The Hill Country is home to rattlers, tarantulas, and bats but also to white-tailed deer, golden-cheeked warblers, and some of the tastiest bass you’ll ever fish. And the spirits! Think beyond Napa Valley and Kentucky. This is where some of the country’s sweetest wine and smoothest whiskey is produced. Roy H. Williams III isn’t originally from the region. He lived in Muscogee, Oklahoma, when he was a young boy and spent most of his childhood in Broken Arrow, a suburb of Tulsa. But he and his wife, Pennie, who met in high school more than four decades ago, together have created a magical oasis in the Hill Country. The incomparable 21-acre Wizard Academy campus, established in 2005, is located atop a 900-foot plateau overlooking Austin in the distance. This nonprofit school for business owners and entrepreneurs is set among the rivers, brush, and hills five miles northeast of the hamlet of Driftwood, known for its vineyards and world-famous Salt Lick BBQ. Exit off Crystal Hills Drive and enter a fantastical architectural mashup: part Don Quixote’s La Mancha, part National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, part Old West whiskey saloon and distillery, and part mishmash (Peter Pan, 100 Lord of the Rings, antique store, gift shop, and paean to John Steinbeck).

Roy and Pennie WIlliams

The entire campus is a manifestation of Roy and Pennie’s limitless persistence, talent, and creativity. Two structures, in particular, are focal points: the Wizard’s Tower and Chapel Dulcinea. Classes at Wizard Academy are conducted in the grandiose five-story medieval Tower. Students enter the facility along a flagstone pathway flanked by tall retaining walls made of rough stone and guarded by statues of two lions on pedestals. In addition to a state-of-the-art classroom that can accommodate up to 32 people, the inner sanctums of the Tower feature a library stacked to the ceiling with carefully curated books, a banquet hall, an art gallery, a whiskey vault, secluded offices, and a 500-year-old Spanish ship’s bell ornamenting a wine cellar stocked with select vintages and esteemed labels. At the top of the Tower is the Star Deck, the highest point for hundreds of miles, offering unobstructed 360-degree daytime views of the horizon and awe-inspiring nighttime panoramas of the heavens. Planted in the battlement of the Star Deck is a blacksmith-forged sword, reminiscent of the one that the mythical future King Arthur would successfully extract from the stone. The blade’s hilt is strategically placed such that hovering just above it — visible at night — is the North Star, which for thousands of years helped guide seafaring navigators. Writes Williams: “Each of us needs a beautiful dream, a guiding light, an unreachable star.” Chapel Dulcinea, completed in April 2005, was the first building constructed on the Wizard Academy campus. The outdoor sanctuary rests on the edge of an ancient Native American trail and hosts more than 1,000 free weddings annually. In another time and alternate universe, the wedding venue, which draws couples from around the world, might well have betrothed Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, or Lancelot and Guinevere. Chapel Dulcinea features a Spanish-style bell tower, red clay tile roofing, a dozen upper windows, a 10-foot Gothic door, wooden internal arches evoking the ribs of Jonah’s great fish, and 18 lantern-style gas lamps that emit a warm, ambient glow. Roy and Pennie, who were married as teens in 1976 with hardly a dime to their names, envisioned Chapel Dulcinea as a sanctuary to help cash-strapped couples take their vows and first steps forward as a married couple. For almost two decades, the chapel has fulfilled their vision. More than that, however, Chapel Dulcinea has stood as a physical reminder to each student

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and visitor to the Wizard Academy campus of the ability — as Williams’s 1999 book, Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads offers — to turn paupers into princes and lead into gold.

The Potential Consequence of Being Unequivocal No one ever accused Williams of being shy when it comes to speaking his mind. He tells it like it is, using his ample Sooner charm to cushion any offense. “The risk of insult is the price of clarity,” is one of his best-known maxims. To be clear, Williams’s approach to advertising and marketing is the antithesis of the homogenized, sanitized drivel that conventional agencies pass off as “creative.” “Is clarity worth the risk of insult?” he asked in his 1998 breakout bestseller, The Wizard of Ads: Turning Words into Magic and Dreamers into Millionaires. “Most people think not, and it is for this reason that most advertising is flaccid.” Clients of Williams and Wizard of Ads Inc. span the full spectrum of small businesses: home services, jewelers, trash haulers, internet entrepreneurs, broadcasters, telecommunications companies, healthcare providers, and you name it. Unlike conventional agencies whose fees rise in sync with their clients’ media buys, Wizard of Ads Inc. and its 70 affiliated branches hitch their compensation to growth in their clients’ revenues. “We’re paid according to how much you grow,” is their catchphrase. Given that Williams’s income rises or falls with the results he attains for his clients, he is highly selective when it comes to the businesses he takes on. He only wants solid, wellrun companies that he can make great. “I find people who are unbelievably good at what they do. They’re just stellar. And I go, ‘Okay, look, let’s partner, and I’m going to help bring zillions of people to your door. And it’s gonna be very efficient,’” he explains. (Another attribute of Williams is that he sometimes — okay, often — engages in artistic hyperbole.) Williams insists that his clients have a long-term horizon. “They’re not trying to advertise on Thursday to sell on Saturday. They are advertising this year to sell next year.”

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Most often, his clients have proven track records selling products or services that buyers only need once, or a couple of times, in a lifetime, such as HVAC systems or engagement rings. “When I find somebody like that, I know how

Roy and Pennie WIlliams

to use mass media to make them a household word.” Williams notes that a key differentiator between so-so-service businesses and those with the potential to be great is how they view their mission. “Entrepreneurs are in the problem-solving business,” he says. “Customers come to your business because they have a problem that they don’t want to take care of themselves. Your job is to make the problem disappear as seamlessly as possible.” [While Williams doesn’t disclose his income, the success he has created for his clients and students is imprinted around virtually every corner of the Wizard Academy campus, where grateful devotees have made sizable donations to the nonprofit school that Roy and Pennie founded. Examples include Spence Manor, Engelbrecht House, Steve Rae Plaza, the David McInnis Star Deck, the Reneé Jenkins Pathway to Happiness, the Canadian Diamond Pavilion, the Lenhard-Murray amphitheater, the Jeff Morris bocce ball court, and the Zubiate Courtyard.]

Venturing into a Wonderland of Boundless Creativity Since its debut on May 16, 1994, as a faxed newsletter sent to about 40 clients and a handful of friends, Williams’s Monday Morning Memo has reliably delivered a creativity jolt akin to intellectual caffeine. Many readers can’t begin the new week without first quaffing a brew of Williams’s words and wit. Thirty years after the Memo’s launch, tens of thousands of business owners and entrepreneurs can’t remember what Monday mornings were like before they eagerly devoured the email containing the next edition of Williams’s missive on advertising, marketing, creativity, and whatever else is on his capacious mind. As Williams wrote at the start to his then-fledgling group of Memo readers: “Lately, I’ve noticed that you and I are both so busy attending to the merely urgent that we have no time for the truly important.” He went on to offer readers a compact: If you will agree to pause for just six minutes a week to think about your business and your future, I’ll write you a weekly memo about the timeless truths on which I have come to depend. At the end of a year, you will have spent more than three hours viewing the blurry, unknowable future through the sharp, bright lens of the past. That’s exactly three hours more than any of your competitors are 103 likely to invest in thinking, learning, and planning.

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

Overtaking the late New York Times “On Language” columnist William Safire — who wrote more than 1,300 installments between 1979 and 2009 — the Monday Morning Memo has surpassed 1,550 consecutive fresh editions, never once skipping a week. Long before Seth Godin published his seminal book in 2008, Williams recognized the value of “Tribes” — connecting groups of people to a leader (Williams) and an idea. In the instance of Monday Morning Memo, the belief is that small business owners and entrepreneurs can outsmart and outmaneuver conventional marketers and ad agencies by following the iconoclastic approaches developed by Williams. The current digital iterations of the Monday Morning Memo — on the web and as an email — offer bonus content, the so-called “Rabbit Hole,” for those who know the secret to unlocking the gems within. Hosted by an anthropomorphic harehound, Indiana Beagle — Williams’s alter ego, those on the “in” who click on the graphic atop each week’s Memo will find themselves transported to a hidden page with bonus content and one or more additional photos or graphics. Click on any of those images and adventure to additional hidden pages and visuals, on and on, until, at last, the terminus is reached. “Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end!”

— Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

“Shut Up. Raise Your Prices. Hire the People. Get Over It.” Picture this: All of the eager franchisees of an emerging home services business are gathered in the majestic classroom and lecture hall in the Wizard’s Tower. Williams, who believes strongly enough in the new concept and its founders that he’s agreed to take them on “really cheap,” knows that once their business zooms, so will his income. For five hours, fueled by adrenaline and vintage wine from the Academy’s world-class cellar, Williams drives home the point that the pathway to dominating the home care market is unsurpassed customer service. “What your customer wants is a painless, zero-frustration, effortless solution,” he exhorts. “The problem simply disappears.”

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Williams mocks typical home services contractors, calling them “Chuck in a Truck” — the guy who purchases his supplies at Home Depot, promises

Roy and Pennie WIlliams

to do the work “for less,” and rushes to complete the job in time for dinner. By contrast, Williams assures the franchisees that there are many other prospective customers for whom hassle-free service is paramount, not cost. Williams queried the group, “The last time you quoted somebody a price, how much was it?” A franchisee in the front row answered: “$5,000.” “I want you to put that customer in your head,” Williams continued. “If you told them it was $7,000, would they have paid it?” “Probably,” acknowledged the tradesman. “Your business model requires you to utterly blow the customer away and make them say, ‘Wow, you guys are amazing. You slipped in, and you slipped out. No disruption. It’s perfect,’” Williams reminded the group. Williams was and remains adamant that charging more isn’t dangerous. “Disappointing the customer is.” “So we agree they would just as happily have paid $7,000 as $5,000, but you’re struggling to make money and provide the service they require because you can’t find the right people cheap enough,” Williams recounted, before risking the insult that often accompanies clarity: “And I said, ‘So shut up. Raise your prices. Hire the people. Get over it.’”

Partners and the Most Important Partner In the 1996 film Multiplicity, Michael Keaton portrays an overstretched construction worker torn between job, family, and finding time for himself. When his character, Doug Kinney, is offered the chance to make clones of himself, the film introduces Doug Two, Doug Three, and Doug Four. Comic chaos ensues. The film’s tagline is: “Sometimes, to get more out of life, you have to make more of yourself.” The 70 global Wizard of Ads Partners are not exact clones of Williams, but they are extensions of their visionary founder. Each affiliate is carefully recruited and trained by Williams to serve a much larger number of owner-operator small businesses than he could ever hope to help on his own. 105

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The partners take a team approach to produce impressive results for their clients. Their specialties include strategy, creative, media buying, video and radio production, graphic design, and direct-response campaigns. Like Williams, the Wizard of Ads Partners* share core tenets, including: •

The message makes the media work; the media does not make the message work.

•

Bold strategies and elegant ad writing are the cornerstones of a successful campaign.

•

Ads must be new, surprising, and different.

•

Entertainment is the currency that will purchase the attention of customers.

Of all of Williams’s partners, the undisputed most important is the one he affectionately calls “the Princess of the World.” Pennie Collier was in the same grade as Roy Williams at Sequoyah Junior High School in Broken Arrow, OK, although — because of the large number of students enrolled — neither had met. Roy only spotted Pennie while flipping through his eighth-grade yearbook and stumbling on the image of the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. He determined then and there that he’d marry her one day. They met for the first time that autumn in Mr. Marks’s civics class. They went on their first date the following February. They were engaged by the end of high school. Williams doesn’t mince words about Pennie’s indispensable role in the success of his business, Wizard Academy, and personal life. If you ask either of my sons, I’ve told them at least once a month from the time they were old enough to understand. “Your entire life people can try to convince you that your choice of a career and choice of an educational path is incredibly important. It’s horribly wrong. Never listen to those people. Your choice of a life partner is the big choice. If you choose the right life partner, you’re going to be happy and you’re going to be successful no matter what you do.” *The Wizard of Ads Partners include Stephen Semple, who is profiled elsewhere in this book; Manley Miller, an expert in branding, strategy, and motivation, and current chair of the Wizard Academy board (guest on Monday Morning Radio, September 2012); Dave Nevland, an audio production guru who creates the audio version of each week’s Monday Morning Memo and has worked for Williams since 2001, and previous Monday Morning Radio guests Scott Fraser (July 2016), Charlie Moger (September 2017), Gene 106 Naftulyev (December 2016), Peter Nevland (July 2012 and June 2022), Jeff Sexton

Roy and Pennie WIlliams

(November 2013 and October 2021), Morty Silber (November 2016), and Mike Slover (April 2014).

oy and Pennie Williams are the proud parents of two sons, Rex and Jake, and four grandchildren, Hollister, Gideon, Eden, and Vance.

It was Pennie who discovered the farm property that they acquired to build the Wizard Academy, and her impeccable taste is reflected in every structure and interior on the masterful campus. The early Academy classes were hosted in the overcrowded attic of a small office building in Buda, Texas — a fire hazard if there ever was one — where Roy and his small crew worked. Across the farm-to-market rural state road from Williams’s office, a herd of cows grazed, utterly unaware of the creative genius regularly unfolding merely a couple hundred yards away. For a time, Roy tried to launch his own entrepreneurial ventures designed to leverage his strategic marketing skills. “I’ve actually started multiple businesses,” he says. He soon discovered that managing a business is easier said than done. He was brilliant at conceptualization but not so savvy at execution. “I can bring in the customers. But what happens after I bring in the customers? I’m not good at managing that. So I just quit doing it.” In March 1998, Roy had the good sense to hire Corrine Riviello Taylor to oversee the operational aspects of his enterprises. As his business expanded, so did her responsibilities. In 2024, still providing Williams the assistance he needs to concentrate on what he does best, Taylor is to the Wizard what Merlin was to King Arthur: a miracle worker, pivotal facilitator, and friend.

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All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

Scan the QR Code Below to Listen to Roy H. Williams’s Appearance on Monday Morning Radio

Two Living Legends of Marketing Offer You Actionable Tips for Success Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/Williams-Deiss

Roy H. Williams’s Websites and Social Media The Monday Morning Memo: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-MondayMemo The Wizard of Ads Partners: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-WizardOfAds Wizard Academy: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-WizardAcademy Chapel Dulcinea: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-ChapelDulcinea

Books by Roy H. Williams The Wizard of Ads: Turning Words into Magic And Dreamers into Millionaires. Bard Press, 1998. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-WizardBook-1 Secret Formulas of The Wizard of Ads. Bard Press, 1999. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-WizardBook-2 Magical Worlds of the Wizard of Ads: Tools and Techniques for Profitable Persuasion. Bard Press, 2001. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-WizardBook-3 Accidental Magic: The Wizard’s Techniques for Writing Words Worth 1,000 Pictures. Bard Press, 2001. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-AccidentalMagic

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Free the Beagle: A Journey to Destinae. Bard Press, 2002 https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-FreeTheBeagle

Roy and Pennie WIlliams

Destinae. Wizard Academy Press, 2003 https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Destinae Pendulum: How Past Generations Shape Our Present and Predict Our Future. By Roy H. Williams and Michael R. Drew. Vanguard Press, 2012 https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Pendulum

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Chapter Eleven

It’s Who You Serve, Not What You Serve, That Counts

Ryan Deiss

and Roy H. Williams

The Key to Success is to Be “Extra — Ordinary” — Just a Little Bit Better Than Your Astoundingly Ordinary Competition

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS 1. Leave nothing to chance or intuition. Test everything. 2. Stay alert to opportunities to create new companies or brands based on the preferences and interests of existing customers. 3. Being the low-price leader is possible but difficult. It’s better to excel at quality products and services and charge accordingly. 4. Don’t fret when prospects don’t initially buy what you’re selling. Like new friendships, the seller-buyer relationship often requires time to emerge. 5. Planning for the unexpected is a vital skill not only for survivalists and preppers but also for business owners and entrepreneurs.

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[AUTHOR’S NOTE: In June 2019, to kick off the eighth season of Monday Morning Radio, founding host Dean Rotbart flew to Austin, Texas, to record a conversation with two living marketing legends, Roy H. Williams and Ryan Deiss. Their episode remains one of the most listened-to installments since the podcast’s inception in 2012. While the two virtuosos were interviewed together — showcasing not only their expertise but also their dynamic repartee — in this volume, we’ve elected to package their sage insights in two separate but complementary chapters. See previous chapter.]

Puzzle Me This Ryan Deiss and Roy H. Williams rely on radically different approaches, but both get extraordinary results. While Williams focuses on business owners who run their companies exceptionally well and look to him to drive in customers, Deiss’s approach is customer-centric — identifying an unmet consumer desire and filling it by building and marketing an e-commerce company or brand. Williams is agnostic regarding which medium he uses to reach potential customers for his clients — so long as he reaches a mass audience inexpensively. By contrast, Deiss relies on digital marketing to target a specific demographic and is willing to pay a premium. Perhaps most notably, Williams, in his own words, “sucks at operations,” and thus sticks assiduously to helping clients grow their companies. Deiss is a gifted manager who would be happy owning and running a business in just about any market niche. Indeed, by the time Deiss poured some of his best ideas into his 2015 book, Invisible Selling Machine, about automating effective email campaigns, he had founded more than 40 different businesses in widely diverse industries and partnered in dozens more. To Deiss, entrepreneurship is a puzzle. He is a grandmaster when it comes to piecing together the people, strategies, and systems that fit together to build a company that is the picture of success. “I enjoy the process of business,” Deiss explains. “I love the game. I’ve always liked the different levers that you can pull, the people part, the marketing part.” Besides launching and running his own companies, Deiss has coached and mentored thousands of entrepreneurs on ways to double or triple their revenues. His flagship company, DigitalMarketer, founded in the early 2010s, is the leading provider of digital marketing training and certifications to small and mid-sized businesses. Its community has over 15,000 paid members 112 and more than half a million subscribers.

Ryan Deiss and Roy H. Williams

Taking the Path Less Traveled Sewing.com. Homesteading.com. GardenSeason.com. MakeupTutorials.com. HomemadeRecipes.com. OutdoorWarrior.com. DIYProjects.com. SurvivalLife.com. These eight e-commerce sites have only one thing in common. Each of these digital platforms, and many more, were either started or acquired by Ryan Deiss and his existing companies. To Deiss, what the businesses he operates sell matters not. What counts is that they serve a distinct market — often fringe — that he can identify and reach using email, social media, pay-per-click ads, or organic search engine optimization. “I don’t have to be passionate about a product or the market to be in business, because I’m passionate about the process of business,” he says. In that respect, Deiss is a consummate owner/investor, much like Warren Buffett, whose financial empire was on the precipice of achieving a $1 trillion market capitalization as of this publication. [Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns or has a significant investment in a potpourri of companies, including GEICO Auto Insurance, BNSF Railway, International Dairy Queen, Helzberg Diamonds, See’s Candies, and Business Wire. Buffett also holds multi-billion stakes in Apple Inc., Bank of America Corp., American Express Co., Coca-Cola Co., Chevron Corp., and Kraft Heinz Co., among many others.] While Deiss’s growing financial empire is nowhere near the same league as Buffett’s, what is similar to the Oracle of Omaha is that Deiss values his investments for their unique market position and ability to yield a sizeable profit. How Deiss’s companies and brands earn money is not his primary consideration. One example Deiss offers is his acquisition more than a decade ago of SurvivalLife.com, a blog that appealed to survivalists and preppers. Deiss, himself, is neither. He explains, “My idea of camping is staying in a hotel room that’s got the AC unit in the window.” Nevertheless, Deiss recognized a growing interest in the topics featured on SurvivalLife.com. In a February 2014 blog post for DigitalMarketer.com, Deiss recounted how he and his colleagues turned the SurvivalLife.com blog, which, when they purchased it, produced zero revenue, into a profit engine generating

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sales of $1 million a month and growing. “We tried making money blogging the way the so-called gurus told us to. It didn’t work,” Deiss wrote. “So we started breaking their rules.” A central tenet of Deiss’s approach is always to evaluate what works and what doesn’t. “We test everything,” he explained. For example, when Deiss took over SurvivalLife.com, he oversaw a redesign of the platform’s web pages that was, as he wrote, “way more engaging and professional-grade than any competing site in the survival niche.” It struck out, performing well below average on three key metrics. Strike One: Unique visitors Strike Two: Total pageviews Strike Three: Average time on page Even though the look of Deiss’s SurvivalLife.com mimicked the wildly popular gear site Uncrate.com, survivalists and preppers weren’t buying it — both figuratively and literally. Deiss doesn’t believe in testing incremental changes. Rather than making minor revisions to SurvivalLife.com and measuring the results, he blew up the entire design. “We swung the pendulum all the way from clean and minimalist to cluttered and downright ugly,” he remembered. The new SurvivalLife.com website included additional content on the home page, including multiple columns, tips, popular posts, and banner ads. “Crazy as it sounds, this cluttered design beat the crap out of the slicker, cleaner version. It wasn’t even close,” he wrote. “Almost immediately, we began to see our key metrics tick upward.” Deiss also experimented with the “messy” look on multiple sites he owned in different markets. And surprise! Our research suggests that a slick, minimalist site layout — like the ones virtually all major ad firms recommend — can drive engagement down and cause your readers to devalue your content and site as a whole,” he concluded. “I know this 114 isn’t what people want to hear, and I know I’ll get a huge backlash from the

Ryan Deiss and Roy H. Williams

design community. But data doesn’t lie and neither do bank accounts.

Follow Your Customers SurvivalLife.com generates revenue from selling a mix of products and content, some from its own inventory and some from third-party affiliates. Early on, one of the products provided instructions on how to grow a garden capable of feeding a family of four in just four square feet of space. Such so-called “vertical gardening,” they forecasted, would hold great appeal to survivalists and preppers. What Deiss hadn’t expected, upon examining data from the site, was the significant number of women purchasing the offering. “We didn’t even know we had women on our list,” Deiss confesses. “I assumed that the only people [coming to SurvivalLife.com] were angry white guys,” he jokes. The discovery led SurvivalLife.com to add more content addressing different aspects of gardening, which eventually led to the development of a spinoff, Homesteading.com., which begat MakeupTutorials.com, GardenSeason.com, HomemadeRecipes.com, CuteOutfits.com, and other sites targeting women. “All that’s doing is following our customers where they want to go,” Deiss explains. “What I’m interested in is the people. Who are they and what do they want?”

Traffic & Conversion To call Ryan Deiss a pop star might be a bit of an exaggeration, but when it comes to digital and AI-driven marketing, he is the Ed Sheeran of the global community. Deiss kicks off the Traffic & Conversion Summit (T&C) each year, taking the stage to raucous cheers and applause befitting a celebrity. And why not? Deiss launched the annual conference in 2009 with only 189 attendees. For the first three years, it lost money. Thanks to Deiss’s marketing prowess and the quality of the programming, by the time he sold the event in late August 2018, T&C was filling 10,000-

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seat venues to capacity, with attendees paying as much as $17,795 to participate in the three-day confab as “VIP” registrants. Many others had to content themselves watching the speakers via a live video feed. Deiss continues to be the face of Traffic & Conversion, with his DigitalMarketer team remaining responsible for marketing, programming, and support at the conference. Clarion Events, based in the UK, added T&C to its portfolio of events that it has presented since 1947. Each Summit offers registrants more speakers and breakout sessions than any human can possibly attend or digest. Many repeat registrants — and there are plenty of perennials — say the most valuable part of the conference is the people they can network with in the hallways before, between, and after sessions. The presenters at T&C generally fall into two categories, which are not mutually exclusive: celebrities and inspirational speakers, and heads of companies in the digital marketing space. A sampling of headliners over the years includes: • • • • • • • • • • •

Dave Asprey, the founder of Bulletproof 360 Bonin Bough, chief media and eCommerce officer at Mondelez International (formerly Kraft Foods) Sir Richard Branson, British entrepreneur and co-founder of Virgin Group Dr. Robert Cialdini, noted psychologist and author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Marie Forleo, star of MarieTV, with over 75 million views, and CEO of Marie Forleo International Daymond John, a motivational speaker and one of the panelists on the popular ABC program, Shark Tank Magic Johnson, one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history and chairman and CEO of Magic Johnson Enterprises, an investment conglomerate Donald Miller, CEO of StoryBrand and Business Made Simple Mari Smith, a perennial social media power influencer who is often referred to as “the Queen of Facebook” Martha Stewart, television host, publisher, author, and merchandiser Gary Vaynerchuk, a serial entrepreneur and authority on culture and shifting consumer behaviors

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Ryan Deiss and Roy H. Williams

Where Deiss and Williams See Eye-to-Eye As noted, Ryan Deiss and Roy H. Williams embrace different marketing approaches: Deiss favors harnessing data to target well-defined market segments, while Williams relies on mass media, taking a multi-channel shotgun approach to connect with potential buyers. Yet the persuasion maestros’ views on the consumer and professional marketplace and what it takes to operate a successful business frequently overlap. Three commonalities stand out: • • •

The necessity of wowing customers. The wisdom of paying more to attract quality employees. The indispensable benefits of selecting the right life partner.

Deiss believes many common challenges small businesses face can be overcome if they dazzle their customers with outstanding service. “Put yourself in a position to just be the best and to do amazing work,” he advises. “We use the word extraordinary. If you unpack that, it’s extra — ordinary, just a little bit better than ordinary. Most of your competition is so astoundingly ordinary.” Seconding Williams’s illustration of the value of providing exceptional customer care in the home services industry, Deiss says: What difference does it make in the life of a homeowner, for example, for this problem to be done? Just to be over quickly, and with no hassles and no follow up, and no muddy carpets. What is that worth to somebody? It’s worth way more than you could even quote with a reasonably straight face. This observation segues to Deiss’s concurrence with Williams’s counsel that a company should pay whatever it takes to hire and retain the type of employees who will consistently deliver superior service to its customers. “I can generally tell a successful business person from somebody who is an accidentally successful (soon-to-be unsuccessful) business person by one of the things that they complain about,” Deiss says. “When somebody complains that things are too expensive, then that usually suggests that they haven’t figured their business out. Your job as a business owner is to figure out, ‘How can I adjust the economics of my business, how can I increase my conversion rates, raise my prices, deliver more value, so I can ask for more value in return from my customers.’” Of course, payroll is just one dimension of business overhead. Deiss, unlike Williams, believes successful businesses must be willing to outspend their

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competition to woo customers to their door. “It always comes down to who is able and willing to spend the most to acquire a customer wins,” he says. “More times than not, that applies to ‘What are you willing to spend in media?’” Deiss says he respects businesses that are good enough at operations that they can be the low-price leader. “But I don’t recommend it. It’s far better to just put yourself in a position to be the best and do amazing work because most of your competition is so astoundingly ordinary.”

Almost All Friends Start As Strangers Who knows what Deiss would have become if, in 1999, as a 19-year-old freshman at the University of Texas at Austin, he hadn’t been smitten at a futuristic-themed campus party by Emily Parrish, the girl in a pink shirt, framed in a riot of unruly dark curls, showcasing ruby-red lips and a beaming smile. The debonair fellow that he was, for a costume, Deiss purchased a blue spandex bodysuit with broad gold stripes along the sleeves. He used gray duct tape to fashion a large “M” on his chest. Voila, Millennium Man. Emily would eventually marry him anyway. After posing for a group photo with Emily to his immediate left, he turned on the charm. “Hi, my name is Ryan.” “Hi, my name is Emily.” It was the beginning of his entrepreneurial journey. Deiss knew soon after meeting Emily that he planned on marrying her, although at first, he kept the wonderful news to himself, fearing if he confessed his intentions, it would creep her out. Rapidly, his thoughts turned from classwork and student life to figuring out how he could raise enough money to buy her a gold engagement ring. “That may not seem like a huge feat, but for a struggling college student, 118 this was daunting,” Deiss writes at RyanDeiss.com.

Ryan Deiss and Roy H. Williams

“I hadn’t ever thought much about entrepreneurship and had never considered building multiple companies or starting my career,” he recalled. (He did apply to attend the University of Texas’s business school but wasn’t accepted.) Living in a dormitory with access to high-speed internet, something not yet universally available in the pioneering days of the web, he taught himself basic site design and set out to build websites for others. That was his plan. As recounted by R.L. Adams in a 2017 article for Forbes.com, Deiss’s first and only client at the start was a lactation consultant. She turned to him to build her an e-commerce website peddling breast pumps, nursing pads, and the like. Additionally, his client asked Deiss to write an ebook instructing readers how to make their own baby food. He wrote the book, and she paid him for it. But before he could build her lactation website, she ran out of funds and, as a consolation, bequeathed him all rights to the baby food book. It was serendipity. Deiss built a one-page website promoting the book for $14.95. “To his surprise, Deiss was regularly selling two to three books per day, every single day, on autopilot,” Forbes’s Adams recounted. “For a college kid with no money to his name, this was a huge win.” His freshman year set the stage for the critical business insights that would propel Deiss to fortune and fame. In securing a steady drip of sales of the baby food book while he was attending classes or otherwise occupied, he developed the genesis of the sales automation system at the core of his book, Invisible Selling Machine, which promises readers, “Yes, you really can make money while you sleep.” And he did. Likewise, not only did Ryan win over a life partner in Emily — they wed the week after graduation — but he discovered a fundamental marketing principle in the manner in which their relationship blossomed and crystallized. “We started out as strangers,” he explained in his introduction to an asynchronous digital marketing course he teaches at CreativeLive.com. “Now as marketers, that’s important because your relationships with your customers start out as strangers as well,” he lectures. “So understanding how strangers become friends … or in the case of business, become customers, that’s critical.” Deiss notes that he knew he would one day marry Emily within days, or perhaps a few weeks, of first meeting her. But he had the common sense to let the relationship evolve more slowly before popping the question.

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He explains to his CreativeLive students: Oftentimes, the reason that people aren’t buying what you’re selling isn’t because it isn’t good. It isn’t because they don’t want it. It’s because they don’t want it yet. They don’t know you well enough. You were proposing marriage on a first date. You don’t have to fix your marketing. You might have to fix your sequencing.

The Coolest Tactical Knife You Will Ever Own The Hoffman Richter HR-15 tactical folding knife, full retail price $119.95, features a titanium-coated steel blade, spring-assisted opening, frame-lock safety switch, weighs only 9.8 ounces, and comes with a lifetime guarantee. The HR-15 is just one of a full line of knives and preparedness tools, including the HR-300 Titan ax and a tactical pen, each designed “to handle extremes but made for everyday life.” The name Hoffman Richter evokes the craftsmanship and quality one would expect from high-quality blades produced in Switzerland or Germany. The knives and brand, however, are the brainchild of Deiss and his colleagues, promoted heavily and sold on SurvivalLife.com and affiliated sites. The Hoffman Richter line reflects Deiss’s ability to leverage a single product’s success to introduce related products or services. What began as a blog, SurvivalLife.com, he reimagined as an e-commerce site and subsequently launched his own product line to meet demand. While Hoffman Richter is aimed at the niche market served by SurvivalLife.com, its advice on vigilance is every bit as appropriate for business owners and entrepreneurs. “Preparing for the expected is easy,” Hoffman Richter writes on the “About Us” page of its website. “Preparing for the unexpected requires a whole new level of dedication.”

yan Deiss (pronounced “Dice”) is a widely recognized and admired teacher, mentor, and doer.

When it comes to all things digital marketing, he exemplifies how it’s best done, having successfully scaled multiple businesses generating millions of dollars in revenues and even a nine-figure ($100 million-plus) blockbuster. 120

Ryan Deiss and Roy H. Williams

What began in his college dorm room as a single e-commerce site exploded to more than 500 web-based retail platforms by the time he shifted the tassel from the right side of his mortarboard to the left at graduation in 2003. Among his most prominent ventures, past and present: • • • • • •

DigitalMarketer.com — the leading provider of digital marketing training and certifications to small and mid-sized businesses Traffic & Conversion Summit — the largest digital marketing conference in North America RivalBrands.com — a digital media and e-commerce group that owns and operates hundreds of content-rich internet-based stores Plattr.com — specializes in direct-response marketing and helps companies drive visitors to their sites and monetize their traffic Scalable.co — as its name suggests, helps founders and CEOs scale their businesses using proprietary courses and coaching Praxio.com — a provider of knowledge management software that offers team training, documentation, and cross-departmental communication

Like many business owners and entrepreneurs who have attended courses at Wizard Academy, Deiss first became aware of its visionary co-founder when he read Roy H. William’s foundational book, The Wizard of Ads: Turning Words into Magic And Dreamers into Millionaires. The year was 1999, and Deiss was on a learning binge, purchasing books to help him grow his fledgling business. He reviewed The New York Times bestseller list, which included The Wizards of Ads. “I remember reading it and going, ‘OK, this is it. This makes sense’. It’s one of the books that I would return to and read multiple times,” he says. A colleague of Deiss’s first alerted him that Williams had created a remarkable campus not far from where Deiss lived that offered two-and-three day courses — Wizard Academy — expanding on the concepts in The Wizard of Ads. “I bought a ticket, showed up, and sat in the class,” the first of many Deiss would attend. Wizard Academy enjoys a prestigious group of alumni, many of whom credit the school and Williams with turbocharging their success. Deiss, among them, is one of the most successful graduates who regularly returned not only to take courses but eventually to teach them as well. Despite his crowded schedule, Deiss made time to serve as chairman of the Wizard Academy board and, as of this publication, continues to serve on the nonprofit school’s governing panel.

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Deiss and the co-ed who he met in his freshman year, Emily Parish, have been married for more than 20 years and have four children, Jonathan, Joyce, Ruth, and Timothy. Of Emily, Deiss says, she is “the girl who said ‘Yes’ and inspired it all.”

Scan the QR Code Below to Listen to Ryan Deiss’s Appearance on Monday Morning Radio

Two Living Legends of Marketing Offer You Actionable Tips for Success Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/Williams-Deiss

Ryan Deiss’s Websites and Social Media Ryan Deiss: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Deiss Traffic & Conversion: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-TrafficConversion Get Scalable: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-GetScalable Rival Brands: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-RivalBrands Praxio: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Praxio Plattr: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Plattr Digital Marketer: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-DigitalMarketer Scalable: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Scalable Facebook (Personal): https://tinyurl.com/Deiss-Facebook Facebook (Professional): https://tinyurl.com/Deiss-Facebook-2 LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/Deiss-LinkedIn Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/Deiss-Twitter

See Also 122

Sewing.com: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Sewing Homesteading.com: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Homesteading GardenSeason.com: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-GardenSeason

Ryan Deiss and Roy H. Williams

MakeupTutorials.com: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-MakeupTutorials HomemadeRecipes.com: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-HomemadeRecipes OutdoorWarrior.com: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-OutdoorWarrior DIYProjects.com: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-DIYProjects SurvivalLife.com: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-SurvivalLife

Books By Ryan Deiss Get Scalable: The Operating System Your Business Needs To Run and Scale Without You. Scalable Company, 2023. http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-ScalableBook Digital Marketing for Dummies. For Dummies, 2020 By Ryan Deiss and Russ Henneberry https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Dummies Invisible Selling Machine. 2015. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Invisible 13 Ways to Hack Facebook Ads: A Digital Marketer Hack Guide. Kindle Edition 2014. By Ryan Deiss and Molly Pittman https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Facebook

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Chapter Twelve

Harnessing Unconventional Marketing to Build Your Business Empire

Stephen Semple

“Great marketing is doing things differently, taking chances, and stepping way outside of the box.”

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS 1. Good storytelling and evoking emotions are far more effective when crafting an advertising campaign than detailing product features and benefits. 2. Relying on sales and discounts to draw customers in may deliver results in the short term but is ultimately counterproductive. 3. Many of the biggest e-commerce companies, including Google, Amazon, eBay, and Zoom, utilize so-called Legacy Media — such as radio, direct mail, and billboards — to reach potential customers and clients. Why? Because it’s cost-effective and works. 4. Consumers forget commercials that they see only now and then. The key to sticking in their memories is running ads with frequency. 5. Even seasonal businesses, such as those selling ski apparel or providing tax preparation, benefit from year-round advertising and marketing campaigns.

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The Legend of Kitchikewana and Its Relevance Today According to a legend passed down from the Wyandot — an Indigenous people living in the Great Lakes region of southern Ontario and present-day Michigan and Ohio — Kitchikewana was a powerful god with a ferocious temper. After he was spurned by the woman he wished to marry, Kitchikewana threw a tantrum, grabbing a ginormous fistful of earth and vaulting it into Lake Huron, where the splatter formed the 30,000 islands of the Georgian Bay. The impressions left by Kitchikewana’s five deific fingers, so it’s told, created the adjacent Matchedash Bay, Midland Bay, Penetang Bay, Hog Bay, and Sturgeon Bay. It’s a story that has endured for centuries. Legendary storytelling is at the core of the brilliance of Stephen Semple, who lives on the shores of Kitchikewana’s Georgian Bay in Collingwood, Ontario, but has enriched owner-operated businesses around the globe that rely on his marketing mastery. Semple gets it right where most advertising professionals get it wrong. (In addition to running his own agency — Business Growth Guys — he is one of seventy global Wizard of Ads partners, a network of professionals who team with one another and adhere to the core advertising and marketing tenets developed by Roy H. Williams, widely known as The Wizard of Ads.) Effective advertising, Semple professes, is not about your product, company, or — heaven forbid — the holiday or special occasion “sale” now underway. “Really great marketing,” he explains, “is about creating strong emotional bonds with your potential customer.” Semple recommends marketing that focuses on people — not the company or product that’s being advertised. “If we can create a human face to that business and share the owner’s story, people form a much stronger emotional bond with that company.” Here is the wording of one such “origin story” that Semple and his team used on behalf of Tapper’s Jewelry, a three-store chain in metro Detroit. I’m Mark Tapper. My father Howard built Tapper’s Jewelry from nothing. Imagine this: Early seventies, dad has a young family and agood job, and he’s about to quit. He wants his own business. Found the location. Sketched out the design on a napkin. He just needed… the money. Oh right, the money!

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His mother had a little. Then he asked his in-laws. I wouldn’t have the

Stephen Semple

nerve. But he did. And mom’s parents gave what they could. But that still left him five thousand dollars short. And so he sold his car. Nineteen seventy-six Oldsmobile Cutlass. His dream-car. But the store - that was his real dream. The car had to go. That’s what fathers did in those days. Today, dad’s mostly retired. Tapper’s Jewelry employs [dozens of] people in Metro Detroit, and I get to sit in his chair. If I could, I’d buy that old Cutlass back for him. Goodness knows he earned it. [Hear the full commerical at https://tinyurl.com/76-Olds]

Listeners to the ad learn absolutely nothing about the stores’ inventory or pricing. What they do come away with is a feel for the owners, the Tapper family, and the down-to-earth values the owners personify. This commercial, and others in the series, were designed to generate trust, which is pure marketing gold – especially in the jewelry business. For Mark Tapper, president of Tapper’s Jewelry, the “this is our story” ad campaign created by Semple and his colleagues* has spurred enormous growth.

For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn Our brains are hardwired, Semple counsels, to pay closer attention to emotions than to straightforward facts. Therefore, rather than saddle his marketing campaigns with product features and benefits — as most marketers do, he strives to infuse his ads with emotion. Semple points to one of his favorite examples of using emotion to grab attention. It’s a six-word classified ad from the early 1900s — some refer to it as flash fiction — often attributed to Ernest Hemingway, although its provenance is unclear: Baby shoes for sale, never worn. Did the baby succumb to sudden infant death? Did the mother suffer a miscarriage? The point is, without the need to fill in the details, the fact that the shoes are for sale grips the reader. It builds a powerful emotional connection. That’s what Semple aims to do, whether his canvas is radio and television ads, direct mail (a specialty of his), or billboards.

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Besides emphasizing features and benefits over emotions, Semple spells out four — often fatal — mistakes business owners commonly make in their marketing campaigns. 1. 2. 3. 4.

They spend the preponderance of their budgets on digital (online) ad placements They rely heavily on limited-time sales and discounts to draw customers in They skimp on how often they run their ads They only advertise seasonally

The Legacy Media Are Dead. Long Live the Legacy Media Where do Google, Amazon, eBay, Airbnb, Zoom, and other e-commerce and technology giants turn when they want to reach new customers and even prospective employees? Would you believe radio, television, direct mail, and billboards? “Google is one of the largest direct mail advertisers in the United States,” Semple notes. Amazon often dials in radio. eBay and Airbnb use television. Zoom utilizes billboards. “It begs the question, if they’re an online business, why are they using legacy media so heavily and increasing it?” Semple asks rhetorically. “The answer to that is it works.” Not only do legacy media platforms continue to deliver results, Semple says they do so far less expensively than their digital rivals. “Years ago when I first started doing online advertising, you could buy clicks for ten cents. It was very inexpensive media” and made it easy to run an entire campaign without requiring a massive budget, he recalls. No longer. “Online advertising is now very, very expensive, when you actually take a look at the cost of a click and conversion rates,” he adds. By relying on out-of-vogue legacy media buys, Semple says he is able to reach a large audience on behalf of his clients at comparatively inexpensive prices.

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A Surprise in Every Box In 1989, children’s book author Margaret Mahy published The Seven Chinese Brothers, a retelling of the classic Sino folktale of seven siblings, each with a distinct supernatural gift. Brother No. 1 has remarkable ears, capable of hearing a fly sneeze from 100 miles away. No. 2, blessed with extraordinary eyesight, can spot that very same fly. No. 3 has exceptional strength, able to lift mountains in his path and set them down once he has passed. No. 4 has unbreakable bones of iron. No. 5 has legs that can grow as tall and thick as tree trunks. No. 6 is resistant to heat, regardless of how scorching. And the seventh brother, the youngest, can cry such enormous tears that they are capable of wiping out entire villages or hostile armies. Together, the seven brothers constitute an invincible force. Semple and his associates in the Wizard of Ads network of affiliates are akin to that. Some of the partners excel at copywriting. Some at media buying or customer experience. Semple’s superpower is direct response. Here’s an example. A consultancy in the medical space retained Semple to promote a dry but significant booklet that would aid the compliance officers at pharmaceutical companies in obtaining regulatory approval from Health Canada and the FDA. “Really exciting stuff, right? Like, you’re just on the edge of your seat on this one!” Semple mocks. “Our challenge was how do we get more of these booklets into people’s hands and get them actually wanting to order more copies of these booklets,” he recalls. Semple could see the solution 100 miles away. While the expected response rate to direct mail solicitations is one to two sales per 100 mailers, Semple’s promotion of the prosaic compliance booklet was 30% — for every 100 mailers he posted, 30 of the recipients placed orders for more booklets. The secret to Semple’s success: Cracker Jack, the classic caramel-coated popcorn and peanut snack. Rather than post the admittedly unimaginative compliance booklet in a standard manilla envelope or even an overnight mailer that would get overlooked among lots of straight-into-the-trash junk mail, he enclosed the brochure in what resembled a Cracker Jack box, complete with the promise of a free prize inside. “What I was tapping into was something fun in this very dry environment.

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And there was also a bit of nostalgia to it,” Semple explains. “If you had a thing arrive on your desk that looked like a Cracker Jack box, and you picked it up, and you shook it, and it made a little noise, you’d have to open that, right?” Once the recipients were enticed to read the booklet, they quickly recognized its value.

Sale of the Century? Skip This Device There is no denying that for some businesses, promoting a “mega” sale serves as a kind of revenue-generating anabolic steroid: for a time, customer interest is enhanced, and the maneuver brings a momentary competitive advantage. The downside, however, is that sales promotions also addict many customers, such that they will only make a purchase when a sale is underway. With repetitive sales promotions, customers eventually grow indifferent. “I stand opposed to running sales,” Semple says. “When you run sales, you’re now attracting people who are just going to be constantly interested in the sale. And it’s really hard to maintain good margins while doing that.” Not only do profits suffer, but Semple sees such promotions as indirectly penalizing a business’s employees. “Being a good employer is going to be challenging for businesses that aren’t defending their margins because you need good margins to provide the extra benefits and create the kind of work environment that is attractive to employees,” Semple observes. “That’s really hard to do when you’re running on really thin margins.”

This Is A Campaign Killer Sleep is crucial to cognitive functioning. Among other benefits, slumber serves as a filter, allowing our brains to organize and store information acquired during the day. Essential knowledge is conveyed to long-term memory for easy retrieval. Less crucial input — including the radio, television, or other marketing ads that flash across our consciousness, get relegated to the Siberia of our minds. They’re forgotten as quickly as the names of the four strangers you just shook hands with at a business meeting.

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Semple knows what it takes to remember those commercials and names: Repeat exposure.

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The greater the frequency with which potential customers and clients come across your marketing campaign, the more likely they will retain your message. “When you transmit messages with high frequency, what happens is we start moving the memory of those ads into our long-term procedural memory rather than our shortterm memory. And that’s really, really important,” he explains. Semple has heard the complaints of business owners who, after running just a few advertisements, want to stop, dissatisfied with the response the ads generated. That’s not the way to market. Semple aims to reach the same prospects two or three times a week, whether their exposure is from radio, TV, or billboards. Given the choice of utilizing his ad budget to reach a larger number of prospective customers but limiting the frequency of his commercials or being exposed to fewer prospects with greater frequency, Semple says he’ll always opt for more repetition. “What ends up happening is frequency and repetition build long-term memory and also build trust and comfort — all of those elements that are really important to brand building,” he says.

The 12-Months-A-Year Campaign Yours is a seasonal business, ski apparel in winter, perhaps tax preparation at the first of the year. Logically, it’s pointless to promote your goods and services in the off-season. Right? Not in Semple’s playbook. An adjunct to his rule of frequency is that advertisers, regardless of the seasonality of their products and services, need to maintain a year-round marketing presence. Consistently reinforcing consumers’ memory of you and your ads by running 12-month campaigns has proven to work, Semple attests. While he doesn’t want any of his clients to take a campaign hiatus, Semple also wants to prevent their target audience from experiencing message fatigue. Thus, relying on the same core creative elements, he will freshen his campaigns roughly every three-and-ahalf weeks with new versions. A subsequent radio ad for Tapper’s Jewelry, for example, maintained its humble “get to know us” approach, while reinforcing trust and likeability.

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Here’s more of what Mark Tapper had to say on the radio: I’m Mark Tapper. And every few weeks I come into the studio and make a commercial for our family store, Tapper’s Jewelry. We meet a wide variety of people at our three locations across Metro Detroit. And our goal is to be inviting to everyone we serve. We didn’t get where we are by acting all, “Exclusive.” In fact, that word, “exclusive,” has always bothered me. Because exclusive implies exclusion. And that sounds like you’re leaving people out. My father Howard Tapper created Tapper’s Jewelry with a culture of “inclusion.” We believe everyone has a story to tell, if you just take the time to listen. Dad did things the hard way. Designed his first store on a scrap piece of paper. Opened and closed Tapper’s himself, every day for years. Yeah, it’s kind of humbling. And we’re grateful for his guidance as we continue to grow. There is still not a single word about the jewelry or its pricing. This commercial does conclude with a friendly invitation to visit one of Tapper’s stores. Come and meet the Tapper family. And if you’re lucky enough to catch dad at work, ask him to show you that scrap piece of paper. I’m Mark Tapper. Thanks for listening to a bit of our story. [Hear the full commercial at https://tinyurl.com/Tapper-Inclusion]

Storytelling like that is not only memorable; it leaves listeners looking forward to hearing more about the Tapper family. Thanks in part to the string of Tapper’s Jewelry folksy commercials, sales at the chain tripled in under five years. When the chain opened a new award-winning location, one of the judges singled out the ad campaign as “priceless.” The ads created an uncommonly engaged fan base. The 1976 bronze Oldsmobile Cutlass that company founder Howard Tapper sold to help finance his first store — “his first true love,” as Howard’s wife described it — became a recurring “character” in the commercials created by Semple and his team.

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As the storyline progressed, Howard’s son, Mark, began a quest to find and buy a 1976 Oldsmobile like the one his father sold decades earlier. As Mark

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relayed in one commercial: I decided to go looking for one and give it to him, so I mentioned that on a radio commercial. Here’s what I didn’t expect. Literally, dozens of people reaching out, offering to help me. I heard stories of others who’d once had a seventy-six Cutlass, and how great it ran. One person even visited the store and gave me a die-cast version of the exact car I was looking for. Who does that sort of thing? The people of Detroit, that’s who. And it made me more grateful than ever to call this place my home. [Hear the full commercial at https://tinyurl.com/Tapper-Unexpected]

Even Semple admits it was “a little bit nuts how people were connecting and responding” to the ad series. The denouement was that Mark did eventually locate and purchase a 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass for his dad. It was an endearing gesture that Howard Tapper will never forget and another heartwarming anecdote for the Tapper’s Jewelry radio campaign. The successful ad series not only embodied many of Semple’s best marketing strategies but also reflected favorably on Mark Tapper and his family for trusting the Semple team and being willing to serve as the cast of such an unconventional marketing campaign.

The World’s Best Kept Secrets Would Semple’s approach work for FORTUNE 500 companies selling products and services? Most certainly, elements of his strategy would apply to any company. But Semple’s clients, by design, are primarily owner-operated businesses where he’s not required to run his recommendations by a gauntlet of cover-your-behind committees or conduct multiple focus groups before finally winning approval for a diluted, homogenized marketing campaign. A Semple campaign is an original, unorthodox campaign. Owners, such as Mark Tapper, are quick to endorse and approve his strategy. “It’s very satisfying working with owner-operated businesses that have these great companies that sort of feel like they’re the world’s best kept secret,” he says. “They know they do a good job for their customers. They know they provide this great service, but they’re just frustrated in their inability to get the word out and become better known and grow that business.” 133

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The fees all Wizard of Ads partners receive, including Semple, are tied directly to the growth of their clients’ profitability, which can be impressive. “One of the most exciting things that I get to do is, after working with somebody for a few years, seeing their business being two and three times the size and how that creates this great opportunity for their employees and wealth for them and their families,” he says. “Moving the needle for them is really the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning and makes me love the work that we do because those are the people that we help, and they’re an important part of the economy. And it really makes, I believe, a difference in the world,” Semple adds. [* Semple, himself, didn’t write the commercials for Tapper’s — his Wizard of Ads partner Michael “Mick” Torbay did. It’s part of the genius of the Wizard of Ads network, drawing on the individual strengths of the group’s cadre of specialists to create highly effective, turnkey marketing campaigns.]

tephen Semple, who heads Business Growth Guys, is a marketing and advertising wizard specializing in designing and executing winning campaigns for small and mid-sized owner-operated businesses. Semple is the Director of Wizard of Ads Canada and one of the elite Wizard of Ads partners who work in collaboration with other talented creatives around the globe. His specialty is direct response writing direct mail letters, magazine ads, postcards and billboard copy. He designs interesting packaging so that anything mailed gets opened and read. He also builds trade show messaging and strategies that get leads. Semple has made a lifelong habit of studying, dissecting, and decoding the success secrets of business empires. Since July 2021, he has co-hosted The Empire Builders Podcast, which each week reverse-engineers the playbook of some of today’s most admired and successful companies, traveling back in time to their early years to study their growth formula. While Semple is based in Collingwood, Ontario, the majority of his clients are located outside of the Great White North.

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Scan the QR Code Below to Listen to Stephen Semple’s Appearance on Monday Morning Radio

‘Semple’ Strategies to Rev Your Advertising and Marketing Campaigns Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/Stephen-Semple

Stephen Semple’s Websites and Social Media Accounts Stephen Semple - Business Growth Guys: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Semple Stephen Semple - Speaking and Contact: https://tinyurl.com/Semple-Speaking Podcast - The Empire Builders: https://tinyurl.com/Empire-Builders Instagram: https://tinyurl.com/Semple-Instagram LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/Semple-LinkedIn Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/Semple-Twitter Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/Semple-Facebook

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Chapter Thirteen

Closing the Gender Gap at Work and Reinventing Your Career

Joanne Lipman

“One thing that I found with all the people I interviewed — and all the research I did — is that you would be surprised how transferable your skills are to aother area.”

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS 1. Because men are often unaware of the negative impact their words and behaviors have on their female colleagues, they should sit down in a non-confrontational and safe setting and have a conversation before an undesirable interaction occurs. Begin with an invitation: “Tell me your experience of working here.” 2. Rotate which team members lead company meetings to allow more women, persons of color, and members of the LGBTQ community the opportunity to lead. 3. Offer women returning to the workforce after stepping away to raise their children intern-like opportunities to refresh their skills and ease back into the workforce. These women are highly motivated, more mature, and have more life experience than recent college graduates. 4. Create a “CV of Failure” when planning a transition to a new job or career. Recognizing areas that need improvement can be as determinative in selecting your next occupation as identifying your strengths. 5. You needn’t know the final destination when you begin your journey to a reinvented you. Just begin.

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Me Too and the Geneses of ‘That’s What She Said’ and ‘Next!’ October 2017: “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” Actress Alyssa Milano, best known for her role on the 1990s television sitcom Who’s the Boss, posted this to her Twitter account. It was a tweet that echoed around the world. Milano did not launch the “Me Too” movement, but her viral post — coming on the heels of multiple sexual harassment allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein — sparked burgeoning global awareness of the struggles facing women in male-dominated industries and offices. January 2018: The timing of veteran journalist and editor Joanne Lipman’s book, That’s What She Said: What Men Need to Know (and Women Need to Tell Them) About Working Together, coming out just over one hundred days after Milano’s “me too” post, was perfect, although purely coincidental. That’s What She Said was an instant hit — a No. 1 national bestseller. The book offers a non-judgmental guide for well-meaning men to help them understand the inequitable treatment women experience in the workplace and ways men can be more sensitive and responsive to their female colleagues. March 2023: The on-the-job asymmetry detailed so effectively in That’s What She Said helps explain why women leave their jobs at higher rates than men. That professional instability, in turn, proved the genesis of Lipman’s subsequent book, Next!: The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work. Its purpose: to guide those who change jobs or careers to pivot successfully. Both books offer an abundance of actionable insights for women and men alike.

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Just Grab Lunch The indignities frequently confronting women at work include being talked over in meetings, ignored, interrupted, and taken less seriously than their male colleagues. (Much the same can be said regarding the employment experiences of men of color and gay men.) Lipman recognizes that most white, straight men want to be considerate of their coworkers but often aren’t even aware of the negative impact of their words and behaviors. She pooh-poohs the typical corporate practice of relying on workshops and seminars to address these marginalizing workplace interactions. Too often, such sessions leave men fearful of having conversations with colleagues who are not white male heterosexuals. Lipman advises that the correct approach for companies, regardless of size, is to foster understanding conversations in non-confrontational and safe settings. “The time to start this is not when your colleague has just said something really boneheaded and you’re yelling at him, right? That’s not productive. What is productive is to sit down and have a conversation” before an undesirable interaction occurs, she says. Men who want to make a difference might wish to follow the advice of one executive who Lipman interviewed for That’s What She Said and “just have a meal with a group of women who work in the organization, and ask ‘Hey, tell me your experience of working here.’” Lipman’s advice to men: We are in desperate need of cultural change, of policy changes, [and] strategic changes, but we’re not going to get there unless we change individual behavior and norms. And so each one of us can play a role in that.

The Killing Fields of a Woman’s Career If more women were at the top of organizational charts, would the problem of workplace discrimination improve? Most likely, yes. And, in time, the elevation of women will be a byproduct of the solutions Lipman proposes in That’s What She Said. More immediately, Lipman advocates for gender balance in leadership teams. “Every piece of research shows that when you have a gender-balanced work group and gender-balanced leadership, you are more successful. Work

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groups that are gender balanced are actually more creative. They’re better at problem solving.” Lipman quickly dismisses any claim that companies can maximize profits or achieve gender equality, but not both. “Those two things are one and the same.” More than a cultural imperative, Lipman apprises C-suite executives that gender balance is required to optimize financial performance. It’s as if students given the opportunity in gym class to choose their team only select from half the players. “They’re not going to get the most optimal result.” Another actionable recommendation Lipman suggests for restoring the balance of power is to rotate which team member leads company meetings “so it isn’t always the same white guy in charge.” Lipman describes conventional organization meetings as the “killing fields of a woman’s career” because the voices of female employees often pass unnoticed. Recalling her days as a senior newsroom manager with The Wall Street Journal, Lipman says, “I lost count of the times when I would suggest a story idea and nobody heard it. Two minutes later a guy would repeat my story idea, and he would get credit for it, and everybody would tell him that it was a great idea. And so I stopped speaking.” Such silence is poison to progress and profitability. Nevertheless, it is common for women to hold their tongues when no one has been paying attention to what they’ve had to say anyway. “Women often respond by not participating fully in meetings,” Lipman notes.

Return-to-Work Internships For women who step away from their careers for years to raise their children, Lipman proposes offering them an intern-like experience on their return to refresh their skills and ease them back into the workforce. “The beauty of this is these women are so highly motivated. They’re more mature and have more life experience than recent college grads. They bring so much to the party. They hit the ground running.”

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Other ways that male employees can advocate for and support their female

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coworkers include: •

Cut off people who interrupt women and remind them that their colleague is still speaking.

•

Make a point of sharing with senior executives the successes of specific women in their workplace.

•

Don’t compliment female colleagues on something superficial, such as their hair or wardrobe, if you wouldn’t express a similar appreciation to a man.

Because of the challenges they encounter in the workplace, many highly capable women have been forced to leave promising careers and seek new opportunities, often in unrelated professions and industries. Moreover, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, women and men alike, in unprecedented numbers, are pursuing fresh career horizons. “These past few years, people have really been reprioritizing their lives, rethinking their jobs, rethinking their relationship to their job.” Particularly at risk of being forced to make career changes are people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, and aging Baby Boomers, each susceptible to workplace discrimination.

Career Converts Lipman started writing Next! in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, anticipating what would await the world on the other side. She observed that, for the most part, people who switch from one career to the next often do so with little, if any, planning or intent. She sees the value in the conventional wisdom of advising individuals to start a career with an end goal, mapping out the steps to get there, and then proceeding with vigor. “But for many of the people who I met… their journeys were really unexpected. And I think that was incredibly refreshing.” In Next!, Lipman details four identifiable phases that career-shifters follow. The first is the Search. Here, individuals are safely ensconced in their current career but engaged in activities that will eventually lead to their exit. Typically, this involves dedicating personal time and energy to a side hustle.

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For example, Lipman cites advertising executive James Patterson, who wrote fiction in his free time, and Harvard University student Mark Zuckerberg, who launched an online social network between classes. Neither Patterson — who writes a ringing endorsement for Next! on the book’s dust jacket — nor Zuckerberg had an inkling that their hobby would become their new career. However, when they did make the switch, they weren’t starting from scratch. They had already established a proof of concept during the Search stage. The second leg is the Struggle, which Lipman says is “the one nobody wants to talk about. It is when you start to disconnect from your previous identity.” She describes this juncture as a lonely period because individuals in this stage struggle internally, even as those around them seem to be perfectly content in the same career. Lipman explains: “In our culture, you go from Cinderella [the lowly stepdaughter servant] to overnight princess to Superman and Spider-Man.” The tales we tell ourselves tend to skip over the struggles accompanying such jarring transitions. “When we are in [the Struggle phase], we think there’s something wrong with us, and we feel like the rest of the world has got their act together, and only we are struggling,” Lipman says. “So it’s very uncomfortable. And part of what I want to do is make that visible.” What women for generations, and society as a whole post-COVID, have pondered, is, “Am I happy in my job? Is this the career I want to be in? Am I at a place I like? Am I spending my days and my hours the way that I should be?” Stop is the third phase that Lipman describes. This is when those considering a switch come to a decision. Do they stay — a perfectly acceptable option — or pivot? Sometimes, the Stop is forced. Their company closes. They get fired. They have a health crisis and must quit. Other times, they reach the Stop on their own accord.

The CV of Failure One exercise Lipman recommends to help individuals move from the Struggle to Stop stage is to reflect objectively with a trusted friend on their strengths and 142 weaknesses. The friend is not there to sugarcoat their imperfections or to advise them on the next steps — just to help them generate the comparative list.

Joanne Lipman

Creating a “CV of Failure” is one tool prospective transitioners can use to clarify their weaknesses. Unlike a conventional résumé, the failure summary specifies disappointments, such as poor grades in a university course, rejection for a prestigious fellowship, and the criticisms of previous employers. An individual can have a “sterling” résumé, Lipman explains, but the CV of Failure provides data that is just as valuable. Comparing it to the traditional résumé of those considering a career change will provide a clear indication of whether it’s wise for them to jump to the new career they’ve been contemplating. The final phase that Lipman discusses in Next! is the “Solution.” This is when the people who have decided to move beyond Stop settle on their new direction. The Solution often comes as a eureka moment — a lightning bolt of inspiration and determination. To outsiders, the pivot might appear sudden and unexpected. It may even seem that way to the transitioners. But it is actually the result of a protracted — and reasonably predictable — process. As Lipman notes, no one says, “I’m quitting my [desk] job today, and tomorrow I’m going to be a concert pianist. It was always an organic [move]. Even when it looked extreme, there was a connective tissue from one thing, to the next, to the next.” If nothing else, Lipman hopes readers of Next! will come away with two lasting insights, both of which she believes are liberating. First, overnight Cinderellas are the stuff of childhood fairytales. Most adults wrestle with the question of leaving one job or profession for another, and the resolution rarely, if ever, comes with a single wave of a magic wand. Second, it’s unnecessary for those who are reinventing themselves to know where they are heading when they set out. To borrow a refrain from the 1969 musical film Paint Your Wagon: Where am I goin’? I don’t know Where am I headin’? I ain’t certain All I know Is I am on my way.

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oanne Lipman is a multi-talented journalist, author, and educator.

Her pioneering career includes serving as the first female deputy managing editor at The Wall Street Journal, where she created the Weekend Journal and Personal Journal sections and oversaw the creation of the paper’s Saturday edition. She was the founding editor-in-chief of Condé Nast Portfolio, a glossy, award-winning monthly business magazine highly regarded for its editorial excellence. In 2015, she was named Gannett’s first chief content officer, simultaneously serving as editor-in-chief of the company’s USA Today and the USA Today Network. In that latter role, she oversaw 109 metro newspapers and more than 3,000 journalists. A frequent speaker and commentator, she is an on-air contributor at CNBC and a journalism lecturer at Yale University, her alma mater. In 2020, Lipman was recognized by her peers as one of the decade’s Business News Visionaries, an honor society administered by Dean Rotbart, founding host of Monday Morning Radio. Lipman and her husband, Thomas Distler, an entertainment lawyer, have two adult children.

Scan the QR Codes Below to Listen to Joanne Lipman’s Appearances on Monday Morning Radio

Next!: Bestselling Author Joanne Lipman Shares Her Formula for Professional and Personal Reinvention

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Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/Joanne-Lipman

Joanne Lipman

That’s What She Said: Making Your Company More Successful by Fostering Gender Parity Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/Joanne-Lipman2

Joanne Lipman’s Website and Social Media Accounts Website: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Joanne LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/Lipman-LinkedIn Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/Lipman-Twitter Instagram: https://tinyurl.com/Lipman-Instagram Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/Lipman-Facebook

Books by Joanne Lipman Next!: The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work. Mariner Books, 2023. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Next That’s What She Said: What Men Need to Know (and Women Need to Tell Them) About Working Together. William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2018. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-SheSaid Strings Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Gift of Great Expectations. Hatchett Books, 2013. — co-authored with Melanie Kupchynsky https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Strings

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Chapter Fourteen

Before You Call It Quits, Read This Chapter

Phebe Trotman “The only reason I was able to enjoy some of those high moments is because of pushing through the tough moments, the low moments: not making a team, sitting on the bench, or getting only five minutes in a game when I wanted to play more.”

1. Success can take time, often requiring years of consistent hard work to achieve your goals. Never give up hope. 2. “Bad Days” teach important life lessons, so view them as learning opportunities. 3. The surest way to persevere through difficult times is to practice gratitude. 4. Turning to a trusted mentor is critical to resetting your perspective when your outlook is bleak. 5. To remain emotionally resilient, know your purpose and follow your passion.

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The 163rd Minute They were in Miami, Florida, competing for the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) women’s soccer championship. Regulation time came and went as both teams, deadlocked, fought off exhaustion in pursuit of netting the winning point. Back and forth, they ran up and down the pitch. And then the ball spiraled Phebe Trotman’s way.

When Trotman was deciding where to attend college, Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Burnaby, British Columbia — located only 20 kilometers from her home in Coquitlam — made the most sense. SFU had a highly competitive women’s soccer team and Trotman was eager to have the opportunity to join a strong soccer program, which she did in her second year at the school. In Trotman’s first season, played in 1997, the Simon Fraser University Women’s Soccer (SFUWS) team made it to the NAIA finals but lost to the University of Mobile Rams — the Alabama team that SFU had defeated the previous season in the championship game. In her second season — 1998 — SFUWS again made it to the NAIA finals, this time competing for the title against the Azusa Pacific University Cougars from Azusa, California. Again, SFUWS lost. In 1999, her third year with SFUWS, Trotman led the team in goals and assists. Nevertheless SFUWS failed to make it to the finals. The new millennium brought Trotman’s senior year and her last chance to win a college championship. By now, she was one of SFUWS’s undisputed stars, although — going into the playoffs — her team only had a passable 6-4 record (with one tie game), giving SFUWS the sixth seed in the tournament. Still, SFUWS made it to the finals — the third of Trotman’s college career. SFUWS was considered a safe bet to lose to the first-seeded Lindenwood University Lions, based in St. Charles, Missouri. A soccer match is 90 minutes long, played in two 45-minute halves. At the end of the second half, the score between SFUWS and the Lions was 0-0. So, the teams entered a 15-minute overtime period. At minute 105, the score was unchanged. SFUWS and the Lions began a second overtime. At minute 120, the score remained 0-0. In the third overtime period, Lindenwood’s Laura Wiedemeier launched a shot that seemed destined for the back of the net, only for SFUWS’s keeper, 148 Jeanette McKay, to deny the win to Wiedemeier and the Lions with a

Phebe Trotman

spectacular diving save. By the end of minute 135, the tie persisted. Overtime four ended at 150 minutes — the teams were still locked in a battle of goalies, nil-to-nil. With the NAIA title on the line, the players were near the point of collapse. The minutes felt more like quarter-hours. Then, in minute 163, with less than three minutes of play until the sixth overtime period was set to begin, the ball spiraled Trotman’s way. Drawing on her last reserves of strength, Trotman spun and kicked the ball into the back left of the Lindenwood net. That was it. Victory at last. During her first three seasons, Trotman felt the frustration of not winning the national championship. With less grit, Trotman might have given up on the goal. But Trotman persisted, and her dedication and hard work paid off. The SFUWS players were champions. Trotman was named the NAIA tournament’s most valuable player, and — best of all — she was recruited to play soccer professionally, eventually winning a championship with Vancouver’s professional women’s soccer club.

The Invaluable Lessons of Losing Today, Phebe Trotman is an author and coach for budding entrepreneurs. She uses her sports background to advise her clients — because, as she sees it, life is much like soccer. Reflecting on her career as an amateur and professional athlete, Trotman doesn’t regret her low-performing days or team losses. Sure, she celebrates and fondly recalls her most successful days. But she recognizes that her losses taught her valuable lessons. Foremost among them, everything in life is a learning process, and it can take time to succeed in any new venture. “When you’re first starting in a sport, you don’t always find success right away… You have to learn different techniques and master the fundamentals of the game and strategies. It’s the same thing in the business world.” 149

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In 1917, Canadian comic Stephen Leacock joked: According to all the legends and story books the principal factor in success is perseverance. Personally, I think there is nothing in it. If anything, the truth lies the other way. There is an old motto that runs, ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’ This is nonsense. It ought to read— ‘If at first you don’t succeed, quit, quit at once.’ If you can’t do a thing, more or less, the first time you try, you will never do it. Try something else while there is yet time. While Leacock wasn’t serious, many entrepreneurs and executives do, practically speaking, embrace that philosophy. Trotman offers a defense against surrender: Gratitude. When you have that underlying belief and attitude of gratitude, then a silver medal — as much as you wanted the gold — [isn’t as devastating]. It may take time, but you’ll eventually be grateful for that experience of getting there. So I encourage people to really pause and be grateful for every experience that you’re going through,” Trotman says, thinking back on her college playing days. Her three non-championship seasons gave her and her teammates a “burning desire… to make sure that we were going to win. Members of SFUWS learned from their mistakes and prior shortcomings. The 2000 season started off poorly, with back-to-back losses. Sitting on a hill, venting their frustration, Trotman and her co-captains knew they’d have to step up to avoid a humiliating record that year. She recalls their thinking: It starts with us going first. We have to work harder than we’ve ever worked before. We have to get everyone on the same page. We have to let every single person know they have a value — a role on this team — and we are grateful for them. The sense of order, collaboration, and camaraderie that Trotman’s team exhibited would not have gelled, but for all of their earlier losses and the growth they gained from those experiences.

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Thoughts on Quitting The title of Trotman’s debut book is Never Quit on a Bad Day: Inspiring Stories of Resilience. It is the first in a planned series of “Never Quit” books whose core tenet — like that of her coaching — is sticking it out. The reason you shouldn’t quit on a bad day is that’s typically when we’re going through all the negative emotions. When it’s a bad day, we’re usually frustrated. We’re disappointed. Someone didn’t treat us fairly. Something happened that wasn’t in our control. It’s coming from a place of negativity. And so what I encourage people to do is push through that bad day. Get to the other side. By pressing on, Trotman says, people grow and gain valuable insights that they can rely on in future situations. Trotman’s advice brings to mind one person’s well-documented stressful day back in 1972. This individual — call him “Al” — was experiencing problems at home and a rough morning commute before arriving at his day job, which likely compounded what came next. Al’s supervisor was dismissive of his work while heaping praise on a different associate (call him “Paul”), frustrating our protagonist. The supervisor’s lopsided review later triggered a verbal altercation between Al and Paul, leading Al to childishly exclaim, “I hope you sit on a tack!” Not his best moment, to be sure. In the afternoon, Al had a dentist appointment, where — to his surprise — he found out he needed an invasive procedure. What happened next was comical — something straight out of a Three Stooges skit. Leaving the dental office, the elevator door malfunctioned, slamming closed on his foot. Then, in the parking lot, perhaps because of his bruised foot, he tripped, falling into a mud puddle. A person standing nearby laughed rather than helping or inquiring about Al’s well-being. The final insult came that evening when Al’s cat snubbed him and slept in another room. Maybe domestic politics were on Al’s mind when, after that, he vowed he was done with America. He’d move to Australia. It might come as no surprise then, that when Disney adapted Al’s story into a movie in 2014, the filmmaker picked an Australian actor to portray him. But Al never did move to Australia. Instead, the real-life Al lives in Arlington, VA, where he is now an executive director for PGIM Real Estate (an affiliate of Prudential Financial) with $208 billion of assets under management and administration.

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His official biography doesn’t mention his notoriously bad day or the Disney adaptation of it. Then again, Alexander “Al” Viorst was only five years when his mother, children’s author Judith Viorst, published Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day — which admittedly, made up many of the specifics. The book, which has sold millions of copies worldwide, ends with Judith reminding Alexander that “some days are like that. Even in Australia.” Or, in Trotman’s case, Canada. Of course, the five-year-old Alexander wouldn’t have been allowed to “quit” school. With his mother’s encouragement, Alexander not only survived elementary school but also graduated from Georgetown University and earned an MBA from Northwestern University. Only by pushing through his bad day was Alexander Viorst able to compile many, many good days. As in Alexander’s case, Trotman says, “it’s not that just necessarily one thing happened [on a bad day]... It usually is a series of things, and it just compounds. And then finally you feel at the point where you’re just so frustrated you end up quitting.” So, when should a person leave their job or other responsibilities? Trotman looks to her decision to stop playing professional soccer: When I decided to retire from playing [professionally], it wasn’t a time where it was a bad day. It wasn’t after a loss. It wasn’t when I was angry or anything like that. It really was from a place of peace. My priorities had shifted in a way where I was really focused on just being able to be present for my family. I also had started a business that I was really looking at, focusing on. It was a good day… And I felt comfortable with it and was happy when I did it. It was the right decision at the right time. It’s important, she advises, to transition from whatever endeavor you are thinking about leaving, from a place of confidence, calm, and strength. How can you achieve that when all you feel is fatigue, bitterness, and despair? Trotman returns to gratitude as a means of attaining a more balanced perspective. She recommends people experiencing a bad day list five things for which they are grateful. In addition, she encourages “Alexanders” to reach out to a mentor, someone who has navigated the same shoals they now face. Trotman’s other recommendations include doing something active — going for a walk, exercising, meeting up with friends, or engaging in any activity that you enjoy, “just to shift that perspective and those emotions, so that you can figure 152 out what makes sense to do next.”

Phebe Trotman

Trusting in yourself and believing that brighter days lie ahead also helps overcome the urge to chuck it all. “You will make it through. You’ve been through tough times before and you’re still standing. It takes time.”

Repurposing Your Bad Day In his bestselling self-help book, Man’s Search for Meaning, first published in 1946, Dr. Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist, tells the story of an elderly physician who came to Frankl’s practice despondent over the death of his wife. “Now, how could I help him?” Frankl wondered. “What should I tell him?” Frankl writes: I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, ‘What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!’ Whereupon I replied, ‘You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering - to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her.’ He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. Trotman didn’t set out to write Never Quit on a Bad Day: Inspiring Stories of Resilience. She only undertook the project after friends pointed out that the book wouldn’t be for her benefit but for the people that it would help and inspire. Like the first Never Quit on a Bad Day book, Trotman envisions the series as compendiums of inspiring stories of resilience relayed by herself and other contributors, including business leaders, entrepreneurs, couples, and athletes. In her debut book, Trotman features one couple who recorded a video to document their low moments when they were in the throes of a difficult time. Intuitively, they recognized that in the future, their video would serve them and others as a reminder of the impermanence of rough times, even deeply troubling 153 ones.

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That act, in the spirit of Viktor Frankl’s response to his patient in mourning, gave the couple’s struggle an important purpose. To find meaning — i.e., purpose — especially during periods of despair is a challenge. Trotman reassures those who lose their sense of purpose, joy, passion, or excitement: “With hope, with focus, with determination, and with resilience, you can always turn things around.”

hebe Trotman is an author, speaker, and coach.

After graduating from British Columbia’s Simon Fraser University with a degree in kinesiology and as MVP of its championship soccer team, she joined a professional soccer squad based in Fort Collins, CO. After a year, she returned to British Columbia, winning a championship with Vancouver’s professional women’s soccer club. Since retiring from professional sports, she has pursued entrepreneurship in multiple industries. In writing Never Quit on a Bad Day: Inspiring Stories of Resilience, Trotman lived up to one of her defining character hallmarks, “I’ve always been someone who’s open to opportunities.” Inspired by motivational speakers including John Maxwell and Les Brown, she was curious to explore “the story behind the story that people go through to get to where they are.” The second book in the Never Quit on a Bad Day series, drawing lessons from a different group of contributors, is due out in 2024. .

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Scan the QR Code Below to Listen to Phebe Trotman’s Appearance on Monday Morning Radio

Before You Quit When You’re At Wit’s End, Listen to This Episode Also available to stream or download from http://tinyurl.com/MMR012924

Phebe Trotman’s Social Media Accounts Never Quit on a Bad Day: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Trotman Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/Trotman-Facebook-2 Instagram: https://tinyurl.com/Trotman-Instagram-2 YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/Trotman-YouTube-2

Books by Phebe Trotman Never Quit on a Bad Day: Inspiring Stories of Resilience. Self-published 2023. http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-NeverQuit Never Quit on a Bad Day: A Guided Workbook for Creating Good Days. Self-published 2023. http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-TrotmanWorkbook

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Chapter Fifteen

It is Never Too Late to Change Trajectories From Failure to Soaring Success

Jen Sincero

The Virtue of Being a ‘Badass’: Self-Confident, Iconoclastic, Fearless, Blunt, and a Bit Bawdy

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS 1. Anyone who wants to succeed in business must believe in themselves. 2. Pay no mind to naysayers and critics. The only opinion that counts is your own. 3. Fear is a wasted emotion that focuses on a future that may never arrive. 4. Often in life, you must trust your potential for greatness before it manifests. 5. Humor, storytelling, and a dash of profanity can make content more digestible and memorable.

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America’s Badass President Abraham Lincoln seemed the unlikeliest of giants. Born into deep poverty, he spent much of his career as an itinerant lawyer, riding circuits in rural Illinois. Running for the Illinois State Legislature in 1832, his first bid for public office, he lost. From 1847 to 1849, he served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives as a member of the Whig party but was rebuffed in his effort to seek re-election. Lincoln ran for the U.S. Senate in 1855. He came close to winning on the first ballot but ultimately conceded to Lyman Trumbull, an independent. Three years later, he suffered his most noted electoral loss, failing — despite his considerable debate skills — in his second run for the U.S. Senate against Democrat Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln might well have slinked back to his law practice in Springfield, Illinois, never again to test the political waters. But he didn’t. No, Lincoln was, by Jen Sincero’s definition, a “badass” — an individual with the tenacity to push past his fears and failures, wear down the naysayers, rethink his limiting beliefs, persist in the pursuit of his ambition, and recognize his unique gifts and talents. Facing three other candidates in the presidential election of 1860, Lincoln won, receiving 180 electoral votes out of a total of 303. He did so even though his support came almost entirely from the Northern states. The 16th president’s stewardship during the Civil War; his Emancipation Proclamation, signed on January 1, 1863, freeing all enslaved people in the South; and his assassination on April 14, 1865, less than six weeks after his second inauguration, enshrined Lincoln as one of the most revered presidents in American history. In contrast, Sincero, a one-time member of a punk band inelegantly named “Crotch,” has shown no inclination to seek public office. Nor does she mention President Lincoln in her mega-bestselling book, You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life. However, like Lincoln, she transformed her own life and career from what she calls “Loserville” to becoming “Mayor of Awesome City” by following the advice detailed in her book. 158

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If Lincoln could do it, and she did it, Sincero believes every wannabe entrepreneur and business owner can likewise overcome “insurmountable” obstacles to realize their dreams. Equally important, Badass winners don’t have to start as losers. “No matter where you are in your life, we all have room to grow,” she says.

“If My Broke Ass Can Get Rich, You Can Too” When Sincero was interviewed for Monday Morning Radio* in June 2013, a month after You Are a Badass was published, she had not yet been engulfed by the avalanche of success that was headed her way. Indeed, phoning the radio studio from Durango, Colorado, on the early leg of her first Badass book tour, Sincero was not staying in some four-star business hotel but sleeping on the couch of a childhood friend. At the time, she was leading a nomadic life, having sold most of her possessions two years earlier and living “home free” — the term she preferred to being “homeless.” Before her career as an author took off, as Sincero explained, “I was broke as a joke, and I was really sick of it.” Sincero recognized that she was on a self-destructive path. And she was the only person who could course correct. She bought dozens of self-help books, attended seminars, and hired coaches. “Let me tell you something,” Sincero remarked in her inaugural YouTube video, “That shit works.” It was then that she decided to do her first badass thing — write a semi-autobiographical novel titled Don’t Sleep With Your Drummer. I was terrified to write it. It was really putting me out there in a way that I had never stepped out before. I felt like I had to do it because I had this experience, and nobody had written about it yet. And so I was like, “Oh, I guess I’m going to have to write about it.” And it was terrifying. And I did it, and it completely changed my life because it was one of those things where I had no idea where it was going to, and it led me to becoming a sex expert. Yes, you read that correctly. The success of Sincero’s debut book prompted her writing The Straight Girl’s Guide to Sleeping With Chicks, based on her earlier exploration of same-sex relationships. This, in turn, landed her a guest spot on The Howard

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Stern Show and a nationally syndicated sex advice column. Advising individuals on their sex lives — which involved helping her readers “get over their shame, self-loathing, and fear” — inspired her to begin coaching people in other areas, especially their finances and careers. You Are a Badass was her third book, but the first one specifically aimed at entrepreneurs, whom she dubs “the adventure seekers of the world.” In repackaging the age-old advice she’d acquired from others, Sincero used humor, irreverence, a sprinkle of vulgarity, and a belief in the inherent potential of every individual to write a fresh, unique, and easily understood self-development guide. Sincero’s success snowballed, becoming a #1 New York Times bestseller, remaining on the list for over five years, selling more than five million copies worldwide, and reaching global fans with more than 40 foreign language versions, including Estonian: Sa oled tegija: Kuidas lõpetada endas kahtlemine ja hakata elama. Sincero’s formula for living an awesome life and succeeding professionally calls on her followers to act outside their comfort zones, take risks, and tune out all detractors. “DO NOT WASTE YOUR PRECIOUS TIME GIVING ONE SINGLE CRAP ABOUT WHAT ANYBODY ELSE THINKS OF YOU,” she writes in all-caps in You Are a Badass. As for overcoming the anxiety that often possesses entrepreneurs, Sincero sees it as a wasted emotion. “Fear is all a mental construct and it exists in the future,” she says. “The feeling of being afraid is real, but the fear that you’re projecting is in the future. It hasn’t even freakin’ happened yet.” Importantly, Sincero also believes people hoping to turn their lives around must do the precise opposite of the common expression, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” In her experience, she says, belief in yourself and your potential must come before you can achieve your goals. When you’re trying to radically change your life, you just have to believe that it can happen even if you have years and years of proof that you can’t pull off what you’re trying to pull off. You have to keep believing it anyway, and going for it, and then you will see it.

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Try Cursing Sometimes Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck, released in 2016, has sold more than twelve million copies worldwide. Although his book reigns as the exemplar of using vulgarity to draw the attention of prospective buyers, Sincero understood years earlier that peppering Badass with off-color language would help it stand out from the crowd of self-development books. [It’s highly doubtful, for example, that Zig Ziglar (whose son, Tom, is featured in Chapter 19 of this book) ever uttered anything more indelicate than “darn,” if that.] Certainly, profanity isn’t the right ingredient for every book or other serious type of communication, and it can be overdone. But as Sincero and Manson demonstrate, when used judiciously, expletives are effective. “You’re zooming along, and you’re reading something, and all of a sudden, you’re slapped in the face with the ‘F’ word,” Sincero explains. “It’s been proven to snap you out of whatever pattern of thinking you’re in. It is just like a cold bucket of water sometimes.” [Sincero’s main point stands even for those opposed to uttering vulgarities: Sometimes, people need to be shocked out of their element. When teams get into a rut of repetitive or negative thinking, a well-placed swear word or surprise activity can serve as an effective cognitive reset.] Sincero is likewise a role model when it comes to deploying humor and storytelling to deliver substantive messages. That readers often laugh out loud at her anecdotes while delving into Badass is one reason the book has resonated with so many for so long. “Humor, I find, engages me personally and especially with information that is very heady and sometimes scary,” she affirms. “If you can be laughing about it, it’s almost like sugarcoating the pill.” Here’s a composite sample from Badass that is a mash-up of advice, humor, and profanity: Many years ago, Los Angeles was hit by a relentless rainstorm, the likes of which I’d never seen in my life… This was the kind of rain you didn’t want to be driving around in, let alone in a twenty-three-year-old junker convertible with a leaky roof, no grill, a back window that was duct-taped shut, and a front tire that went flat every three days. I’d been in the market for a new car for a long time and couldn’t find anything I really loved or thought I could afford, but as I sat there in a puddle, driving to the supermarket with a trash bag under my ass and an old t-shirt 161 slammed in the door to keep the leaking to a minimum, it occurred to me

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that perhaps I should speed up my search… Purchasing the Audi should have had me waking up screaming in the middle of the night because it cost the kind of money I would normally only consider spending on something like mandatory heart surgery, certainly not on something as frivolous as a car. But after I bought it, I slept like a baby. Because once I made the decision to buy it, I also made the decision to get over my shit and become the kind of person who can make the kind of money to buy that kind of car or who can do anything else I want to do. Sincero concludes her car-buying anecdote by extolling the virtue of taking a leap of faith in oneself. After purchasing the Audi Q5 — with “leather seats you could have a sexual relationship with” — rather than the more affordable Honda CRV she came close to buying, Sincero wrote that her business accelerated from zero to sixty almost overnight. Here’s the thing: Making money isn’t only about the money, just as losing weight isn’t only about losing weight, and finding your soul mate isn’t only about finding your soul mate. It’s about who you become and what you believe is possible for yourself. [*AUTHOR’S NOTE: In June 2013, when Jen Sincero was a guest on Monday Morning Radio, the podcast was a hybrid. The first portion was broadcast on Business Unconventional, which aired each Sunday on 710 KNUS-AM radio in Denver and was co-hosted by Dean Rotbart and insurance executive David Biondo. The second portion of the conversation was available only to listeners who streamed or downloaded the podcast. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia.org, Drlogdr, CC BY-SA 4.0)]

en Sincero has turned being a “Badass” into a mini-industry, incorporating books (print, digital, and audio), notecards, desktop day-to-day calendars, t-shirts, refrigerator magnets, and even a “Badass” talking button — like the well-known Staples “Easy” button — that spouts inspiring messages in her own voice. Her original dream was to play in a rock band, which she did, despite her questionable guitar skills and a singing voice that she confesses was more of a yeller. “I was living my dream. I was in a rock bank. It was the funnest thing ever,” she says. “But I was superduper rickety, making no money, and barely scraping by.” At one point, Sincero was earning $28,000 a year, living in a tiny Los Angeles-area converted garage, shoplifting, and scrounging through her friends’ couches for spare change.

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A gifted writer with a sassy sense of humor, her fortunes began to change when she published her first book, Don’t Sleep with Your Drummer, a

Jen Sincero

semi-autobiographical novel relaying the experiences of 28-year-old “Jenny Troanni.” Her next book, The Straight Girl’s Guide to Sleeping with Chicks, was a national bestseller that landed her on The Howard Stern Show. As much as anything, The Straight Girl’s Guide made clear that for Sincero, no topic was off-limits, as she was willing to share the most intimate of her thoughts and experiences. [While there are certain areas that Sincero touches on that a human resources officer will warn a business owner to stay far away from in discussions with subordinates, the general concept of being open with those you work with is valuable advice to follow. Employees don’t want their bosses to be closed off, impersonal, and — quite frankly — intimidating. Entrepreneurs who are confident enough to discuss their foibles and growth experiences will inspire their employees and form connections that will only strengthen the business.] Sincero received her bachelor’s degree from Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and wrote print, TV, and radio advertisements for Sony Music in California from 1990 to 1996. She began coaching women entrepreneurs in 2005 and, in one form or another, has been a success coach ever since. Sincero does not publicly disclose much about her family. Public records indicate she was raised in Tarrytown, New York. In You Are a Badass, she makes reference to “my brothers and sister,” as well as her “Italian” father, a mother who “comes from a long lineage of WASPS,” and a maternal grandmother who lived to be one hundred years old and was “able to avoid confrontation with the skilled precision of an F-16 pilot.” Describing herself as a “motivational cattle prod,” Sincero shares her insights and recommendations in seminars and on the speakers circuit. Through her website, she offers an eight-week group coaching program. Between book royalties, consulting, speaking, and merchandise sales, Sincero’s income eventually jumped to more than one million dollars annually — enough to repay all her friends for the coins she lifted from beneath their cushions over the years. Based on the most recently available information, Sincero currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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Scan the QR Code Below to Listen to Jen Sincero’s Appearance on Monday Morning Radio

Jen Sincero Went from ‘Loserville’ to Mayor of ‘Awesome City’ and She’ll Show You How You, Too, Can Become a Badass Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/MMR-Sincero

Jen Sincero’s Websites and Social Media Jen Sincero: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Sincero Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/Sincero-Facebook Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/Sincero-Twitter Twitter (Book): https://tinyurl.com/Badass-Twitter LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/Sincero-LinkedIn YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/Sincero-YouTube

Books by Jen Sincero Don’t Sleep with Your Drummer. MTV Books/Pocket Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, 2002. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Drummer The Straight Girl’s Guide to Sleeping with Chicks. Touchstone, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, 2005. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-StraightGirls You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life. Running Press/Perseus Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, 2013. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Badass

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You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth. Viking Penguin, an imprint of Penguin Random House, 2017. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-BadassMoney You Are a Badass Every Day: How to Keep Your Motivation Strong, Your Vibe High, and Your Quest for Transformation Unstoppable. Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House, 2018. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-BadassEveryDay Badass Habits: Cultivate the Awareness, Boundaries, and Daily Upgrades You Need to Make Them Stick. Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House, 2020. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-BadassHabits

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Chapter Sixteen

Authorship: How to Influence People and Win Friends

Fauzia Burke

There Are Many Parallels Between Writing a Book and Starting a Small Business

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS 1. Owners and entrepreneurs who author books command an unmatched sense of authority and influence. 2. For successful authors, completing their manuscript is only the beginning. With a quality website, social media support, and other digital marketing tools, their books will find more traction. 3. Like any new ‘business,’ authors must surround themselves with a team that can provide the experience and expertise they lack. 4. Mass, generic book promotions are a waste of time and money. The best book publicity arises from one-to-one relations with journalists and bloggers. 5. Authors can leverage their books and online brands to open and seize fresh opportunities.

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Why Write a Book? In the 21st century, “author” has become a new type of honorific — akin to Dr., Professor, Reverend, and Esq. — conveying an elevated professional status. The majority of business owners and entrepreneurs who write books do so primarily to bolster their reputations or that of their company’s products and services. Certainly, an elite group of nonfiction business authors — such as Ken Blanchard, Charles Duhigg, and Joanne Lipman, who are featured in this book — sell enough copies that their efforts generate handsome royalties. More commonly, business book authors invest a great deal of time and money into their manuscripts, sometimes hiring ghostwriters and editors, and come to view their efforts as strategic marketing. They consider it a win if they are successful enough to break even on their out-of-pocket costs, not counting the hours they dedicated. When profits are to be had, they accrue not from book sales but from the credibility boost that comes in the eyes of customers and prospects. This is just a small sampling of business authors who’ve been guests on Monday Morning Radio promoting their books: •

Lindsay Pedersen — Forging an Ironclad Brand: A Leader’s Guide https://tinyurl.com/MMRPedersen

•

Dr. Laura Sicola — Speaking to Influence: Mastering Your Leadership Voice https://tinyurl.com/MMRSicola

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Brian Scudamore — BYOB: Build Your Own Business, Be Your Own Boss https://tinyurl.com/MMRScudamore

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Pamela Hackett — Manage to Engage: How Great Managers Create Remarkable Results https://tinyurl.com/MMRHackett

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Dr. Noah St. John — The 7-Figure Life: How to Leverage the 4 FOCUS FACTORS for Wealth and Happiness https://tinyurl.com/MMRStJohn

Years before my father, Dean Rotbart, began hosting and producing Monday Morning Radio, he became a faculty member at the nonprofit Wizard Academy in Austin, Texas, conducting workshops for executives and entrepreneurs on how to attract more attention from news organizations. Dean, a prize-win168 ning former reporter and financial columnist with The Wall Street Journal,

Fauzia Burke

became an expert at deciphering why some companies and individuals garnered good media coverage when others remained largely invisible. His Wizard Academy workshops — Newsroom Confidential, Buzz Snatching, and Reputation Tool Chest — were two-day intensive courses covering the whole gamut of strategies for what he described as “getting more than your fair share of free press.” Dean devoted one section of each class to encouraging attendees to write a book to showcase themselves as thought leaders in their respective industries or fields. “Reporters will rarely take the time to read your book cover-to-cover,” Dean taught. “Yet your book heightens your status as an ‘expert,’ and that’s what journalists will remember.” Customers and prospects, who are more likely than journalists to actually sit with a well-written book and digest its insights, will also regard book authors with greater reverence. It’s no coincidence that most of the Monday Morning Radio guests featured in All You Can Eat Business Wisdom — CEOs, business owners, entrepreneurs, consultants, and investors — are also authors. Their books caught the attention of my dad, the podcast’s founder and co-host, and their books provided listeners to the podcast the opportunity to delve deeper into these guests’ know-how following their appearances. As Dean affirmed in addressing his Monday Morning Radio audience when Burke was his guest in July 2019, “If you’re looking for [enhanced] reputation and credibility, being a published author is unbeatable.”

Do-It-All-Yourself Book Publishing is An Express Ticket to the Remainder Shelf Much like business startups that fail before their first anniversary, the books that are rapidly shuffled off to the remainder shelf at Barnes & Noble and other bookstores aren’t planned and executed well. Most books, especially self-published ones, fall well short of the mark. Fauzia Burke, founder and president of FSB Associates, a digital branding and online book marketing agency, has spent over three decades witnessing books soar and bomb. She has personally participated in more than 2,000 successful book publicity campaigns. Burke likens writing and publishing a book to launching a small business.

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It’s unwise to try to do it all yourself. “There are authors who now understand that they are literally small business people who have to run their publishing business like a small business,” she says. Successful authorship requires planning and research, dedication, persistence, and risk management. It also must consider marketing and audience engagement. Importantly, in Burke’s view, successful authors — like newly minted business owners — need to surround themselves with a professional team that can provide the experience and expertise the writers lack or don’t have the time to address. “I have clients who run companies, and they’re brilliant at that. They’ve written a book, and we’ve told them, ‘Okay, that’s all good and fine. But now you also have to do social media,’” Burke says. Ditto creating a book website and blog, and arranging media interviews. Even those writers whose manuscripts are picked up by the major publishing houses find that much of the responsibility to promote their books falls on their shoulders. It’s why roughly nine out of ten clients who turn to Burke and FSB Associates pay for her services out of their own pocket. They can’t do it all alone.

If You Write It, Will They Come? In the age of TikTok, X (Twitter), and ever-shorter attention spans, the U.S. book publishing industry remains surprisingly vibrant. According to Statista, the data and business intelligence platform, publishing generated more than $28 billion in revenues in 2022. Contributing to the sector’s vibrancy, as Burke points out, is the growing prevalence of on-demand printing and publishing, which has lowered the barriers to entry and allowed more people than ever to become published authors. “There’s room for everyone, and everybody can do publishing in the business model that suits them best,” she says. Caution is warranted here: Writing and publishing a book that few people read or hear about defeats the purpose. It’s why even bestselling authors — both fiction and nonfiction, have looked to Burke and FSB Associates to help promote their books, including Deepak 170 Chopra, Daniel Silva, Tom Brokaw, Alan Alda, Arianna Huffington, Sue Grafton, Jeffrey Archer, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Brian Tracy.

Fauzia Burke

While designed to publicize authors and their books, Burke’s methods can readily be applied to promoting any important content, including position papers, news releases, podcasts, and videos. For FSB Associates, quality is paramount. The firm excels at raising the visibility of authors and their books, but even the best publicists — and FSB Associates unquestionably ranks among them — can’t compensate for shoddy research, lousy writing, and a lack of attention to proofreading. “There really isn’t enough marketing [wizardry] if the other things are not there for it to succeed,” Burke says. The flip side is also true. Well-written and edited books are likely to languish without a well-conceived and executed marketing plan.

Writing Your Book is Only the Beginning You’ve sat at your computer screen for weeks — likely months — on end. The tips of your fingers are numb from typing. Your blurry eyes are seeing double. You’ve consumed enough caffeine to awaken the dead. But praise the Lord, you’re done at last. You’ve written your book, and it’s ready to be published. Um, no. The journey to becoming a successful author is only getting underway. As Burke explains in her 2016 book, Online Marketing for Busy Authors: A Step-by-Step Guide, authors need to identify their unique personal brand, define their audience, clarify their goals, and set priorities. Additional tasks include designing a quality website, building a mailing list of supporters, blogging, and developing an engagement strategy for social media. Burke says that when she informs her client-authors of all the work that still lies ahead after they’ve completed their manuscripts, “you know they laugh at me, because it seems like, ‘Really?’” Yes, really. Book sales are hard-earned, Burke observes. Successful authors need to be engaged in many aspects of the book-publishing process that they never previously considered, and they need to surround themselves with a professional marketing team. 171

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While noting that each author and book is unique, Burke relies on a formula that produces reliable results: Design + Engagement + Visibility = Success. Design: “Is how you represent yourself non-verbally online. What your photo looks like. What your website looks like. What’s your newsletter look like? What your social media looks like. How professional it all looks.” Engagement: “How engaged are you? How many times are you sending out newsletters, blogging, social media activity — all of those kinds of ways to connect with the readers?” Visibility: Being profiled by a news organization or interviewed on a podcast is important, but only after the design and engagement elements are in place. “A lot of times authors will come to us, and they are focused on [getting] publicity. That’s what they feel they need,” Burke says. Why? Because the publicity will drive many potential buyers back to the author’s website. “If the website doesn’t represent them well, if it’s not professional or if the content is dated, that’s a turnoff,” she explains.

Dear Editor… Burke and her FSB Associates team understand that while authors are their paying clients, journalists and bloggers are another core constituency and, as such, should be treated accordingly. Burke eschews the common publicists’ practice of repeatedly sending generic pitches to the same list of media people, regardless of the nature of the books they’re promoting. At FSB Associates, mass email pitches are a big ‘no, no.’ “I think it’s really important that we pitch people one at a time,” Burke says, avoiding the deadly generic salutation, ‘Dear Editor.’ That approach yields several positive advantages for FSB Associates and its clients. First, the members of the media who Burke and her team approach appreciate that FSB Associates isn’t wasting their time promoting a book of no possible interest. “We’ve worked with editors — some for 10, 20 years — always on a one-to-one basis,” she told Publishers Weekly, which profiled her in October 2020.

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Second, because FSB Associates only pitches books they have prescreened to be of interest to specific journalists and bloggers, their success rate is impressive. Client-authors recognize they aren’t being asked to pay for “air balls.”

Fauzia Burke

Third, by narrowing the field of those journalists and bloggers they pitch, FSB Associates can quickly course correct if its marketing efforts are falling short. Burke offers this example: If we are pitching [journalists] in the small business sector and getting crickets, we have to either regroup our efforts or decide maybe this is not the right community and then pivot to another community. Unlike traditional PR firms that do one generic press release that’s supposed to go to everyone, we really slice and dice the communities that we think will resonate with the book and then pitch them differently depending on who they are.

Opening Doors to Unexpected Opportunities In the Foreword to Burke’s book, Online Marketing for Busy Authors, S.C. Gwynne, whose book Empire of the Summer Moon spent 82 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list, writes of the frustrations that many authors — even those like him, who are in the major leagues — experience when it comes to promoting their books. Gwynne notes he is a child of “the old world of publishing…where publicity consists of sending review copies of your book to newspaper editors, where they take their place among the 200 other books that hit the editor’s desk that week.” The “new world,” the digital one where Burke and FSB Associates harness the full potential of internet marketing, allowed Gwynne to transition from a passive bystander to an active participant. “[Burke] opened the door to this new world for me. And, as I tell my author friends, once you’ve seen that world you are never going back,” he writes. Burke concludes her book’s Introduction with a similar endorsement of the transformational possibilities that result from being a well-promoted author. “Your online brand will serve you in everything you do, and it will help you in magical ways by opening doors to unexpected opportunities.”

auzia Burke has worked in book publishing for more than 30 years. She is the founder and president of FSB Associates, one of the first firms to specialize in digital branding and online publicity for books. 173

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She launched her agency in 1995 after working in the marketing departments of Springer-Verlag, John Wiley & Sons, and Henry Holt. Fauzia and her husband, John Burke, also a publishing industry veteran, are credited with launching the first-ever author website — for Sue Grafton, author of the ‘alphabet series’ of detective novels. (See https://tinyurl.com/FSB-Grafton.) Fauzia’s struggles finding an appropriate web platform for author websites inspired her and John to develop and launch Pub Site in 2018. The service is a user-friendly DIY authors’ platform that distinguishes itself through its ease of use — no technical background needed, offers the ability to sell books directly, provides integration with social media, and allows for scalability as authors publish new books. For example, Tom Clancy’s website on the Pub Site platform has pages recognizing the authors who have written books featuring Clancy characters since his death in 2013. Robin Cook’s Pub Site-based website has a page highlighting some of the best reviews of Cook’s many books. Both Clancy and Cook’s websites let potential buyers read excerpts of the authors’ novels and link to the pages of online booksellers who carry each of their books. Other Pub Site clients include S.C. Gwynne, Robert Parker, Janet Dailey, and Monday Morning Radio’s Dean Rotbart (See tinyurl.com/gutenbergs.) A native of Pakistan, Fauzia moved to the United States in 1981. She graduated from City University of New York’s Queens College, where she studied English language and literature. Fauzia’s father, Daud Subhani, was a journalist and war correspondent who died when she was 25. Fauzia dedicated her book to her mother, Nuzhat Subhani, “for her unyielding support and her unconditional love.” Fauzia and John have two adult daughters, Aliya and Syrah, who previously worked for FSB Associates.

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Scan the QR Code Below to Listen to Fauzia Burke’s Appearance on Monday Morning Radio

Meet the Amazing Founder of FSB Associates, Successfully Promoting More Than 2,000 Books Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/FauziaBurke

Fauzia Burke’s Websites and Social Media Fauzia Burke: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Burke FSB Associates: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-FSB Pub Site: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-PubSite LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/Burke-LinkedIn Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/Burke-Facebook Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/Burke-Twitter Instagram: https://tinyurl.com/Burke-Instagram YouTube (Pub Site): https://tinyurl.com/PubSite-YouTube Facebook (FSB Associates): https://tinyurl.com/FSB-Facebook Twitter (FSB Associates): https://tinyurl.com/FSB-Twitter LinkedIn (FSB Associates): https://tinyurl.com/FSB-LinkedIn Instagram (FSB Associates): https://tinyurl.com/FSB-Instagram

Fauzia Burke’s Book Online Marketing for Busy Authors: A Step-by-Step Guide. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2016. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-OnlineMarketing

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Chapter Seventeen

Harnessing the Power of Social Media to Sustain Relationships and Form Valuable New Connections

Karen Wickre

The Key to Social Media Success Can Be Summed Up in a Single Word: Authenticity

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS 1. Turn to social media instead of in-person networking events for a simpler and faster experience. 2. The successful social media user is not the one with the most connections but with the most useful ones. 3. Don’t come across as superficial on social media. Be your authentic self. 4. Post regularly and demonstrate a genuine interest in what other people have to say. 5. Be a social media “matchmaker,” connecting members of your network to one another, helping them and earning their appreciation.

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Laverne, Meet Shirley Whether in film, literature, or life, sometimes the names of two people are forever linked. Romeo and Juliet. Thelma and Louise. Rodgers and Hammerstein. Lucy and Desi. There’s no separating these pairs: Lovers, friends, collaborators, and family. Many less famous people are closely coupled with one or more BFFs (best friends forever). Then, there are the other 2,000 “friends” they’re connected to on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. How often have you seen a post featuring one of your social media contacts on their beach vacation, posting a photo of the sunset over the tranquil waters of the Pacific Ocean, and wondered, “How do I know this person, again?” Social media acquaintances are typically about as impersonal as relationships get. They devalue the meaning of the word “friend.” Given all that, why would business owners and professionals, with all of the responsibilities they must manage, invest any time whatsoever in the cute-cat-picture-dominated world of social media? The answer, says Karen Wickre, Silicon Valley’s networking Shihan — master instructor, is that social media is an indispensable business tool when done right. As she writes in her book, Taking the Work Out of Networking: An Introvert’s Guide to Making Connections That Count: With our habits of moving around and changing jobs becoming ingrained, you can see why it’s more important than ever to keep up contact with work colleagues, past employers, and professional acquaintances. The network you build can serve many purposes: as a reality check for whatever ideas you’re hatching, as a gateway to new opportunities you might not have considered, [and] as a resource for leads.

Coming to Know Boo Radley Near the end of Harper Lee’s classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, set in the early 1930s, the protagonist, an eight-year-old girl named Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, meets her bachelor neighbor for the first time. His name is Arthur Radley,

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but all the children in the fictitious town of Macomb, Alabama, call him “Boo.” Why that’s his nickname is never specified, but Radley, a ghost-like figure who rarely left his house and was once incarcerated for stabbing his father, a cross man, in the leg with a pair of scissors, is, in the children’s imaginations, a boogeyman — both fascinating and feared. At the outset of the novel, Scout is reluctant to even walk past Boo’s house. When she finally encounters him years later, he is hiding in a dark corner of her older brother Jem’s bedroom. Boo rescued the boy — who lies unconscious — and carried him home after a racist townsman assaulted him. The local was angry at Scout and Jem’s father, Atticus, a principled lawyer who defended a Black man who was falsely charged with raping a white woman, the attacker’s daughter. When Scout and Boo come face-to-face, he is more frightened by her than she is of him. It turns out that Boo is not at all the monster Scout and her friends believed, but a kind, protective, deeply misunderstood man. Harper Lee’s intent, it seems, was to highlight the harm that can come from making judgments about people without truly knowing them. If Arthur Radley — sensitive and timorous — lived in the 21st century, he would not naturally be the type of person to be active on Facebook or any other social media site. But following Wickre’s methods, even social hermits like Boo can build meaningful online networks and counter misperceptions about them. For introverts (and extroverts, too), Wickre sees social media as a far more efficient means of cultivating important personal and professional relations than glad-handing at an endless parade of in-person networking events.

Network as a Farmer, Not a Hunter Wickre’s core advice for business owners seeking to harness the power of social media calls to mind William Shakespeare’s longest play, Hamlet. In it, Polonius — advisor to the wicked Danish King Claudius — imparts wisdom on his son, Laertes: “This above all: to thine ownself be true.” Setting aside the book’s later plot complications (Hamlet mistakenly kills Polonius instead of the king; Laertes, seeking revenge, fatally poisons Hamlet with the king’s encouragement), the counsel stands. The key to social media success can be summed up in a single word: authenticity.

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Wickre cautions against trying to build the largest possible group of social media contacts, a contrivance many people use to make themselves appear more popular and influential. When meeting new people or reconnecting online with older acquaintances, Wickre clarifies that the aim should be a one-to-one connection. The right rationale for adding or refreshing contacts, she says, may include: “I really like this person. I want to be in touch with them. I want to ask them questions. I want to have a longer conversation.” The message to convey when connecting is, “I don’t want to know everybody. I want to know you.” Wickre continues, “It’s not about getting more followers. Your followers are not your network. It’s not really about a number so much as who might be of interest to you for some reason.” Wickre echoes a popular social media philosophy: Network like a farmer who plants seeds and nurtures them to grow over time, not a hunter, who pursues aggressive tactics for quick wins. When initiating contact with a potential new connection, she stresses the importance of sending a personalized message. This approach ensures that the recipient understands the outreach is from someone interested in fostering a genuine, ongoing interaction rather than merely seeking to increase their follower count. Contacts are significantly more likely to respond positively when they perceive the invitation is sincere and tailored to them, highlighting the value of thoughtful and individualized communication in building meaningful connections. For existing connections, Wickre recommends social networkers do more than click on the thumbs-up “like” or “heart” icons. Adding a comment offering praise or explaining why their posts were appealing signals that the gesture comes from a person who is genuinely paying attention. Okay, and yes, savvy connectors may want to consider becoming one of “those” people who post their cat or Pacific sunset photos. It does, Wickre concedes, demonstrate the poster’s multi-dimensionality. An excellent example of someone who did that is CNN’s Jake Tapper, who maintained a dedicated X (Twitter) account for his Australian terrier, Winston, that attracted more than 23,000 followers. (Tapper, himself, has more than three million followers on X.) “Winston’s” posts revealed a more “human” side to Tapper, the Washington-based anchor and State of the Union host. (Twelve years old, Winston went to heaven, where all dogs eventually go, in July 2023.)

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Staying Close to Those in Your Network’s Outer Orbit There are always individuals orbiting the edges of your core group of friends. You’re acquainted with these people; they have a presence in your life but don’t belong to your innermost circle of contacts. Social media excels at fostering professional relationships with those in the outer rings of your network. Contacts in this category include people you used to work for or with, people who applied for a job with you but who you didn’t hire, and journalists you crossed paths with along the way. If you nurture the connections, as Wickre wholeheartedly recommends, these people may one day provide you with valuable introductions, business leads, or answers to nagging questions. She also suggests that those who want to leverage their social media presence should become “super-connectors.” A super-connector provides introductions to two or more different people who are not in each other’s networks but should be. Being a social media matchmaker garners the appreciation of those who are matched while helping to broaden their own networks and influence.

aren Wickre describes herself as a clear-eyed, plain-speaking, good-humored Baby Boomer and introvert.

“I’m not out there working the room, I’m not going to a lot of networking events or any if I can avoid it,” she says. Neither her generation nor personality type would suggest that Wickre would become, in the words of venture capitalist Roy Bahat, who wrote the Foreword to the paperback edition of her book, “the perfect person to tell you how to build and keep your personal network.” Wickre’s lengthy career has included roles at magazines, a public relations firm, and a textbook publisher. She entered the online world in 1994 when she took a position with Ziff Davis, a global digital media and internet company. In 1995, while working for Ziff Davis, she wrote one of the first consumer books about the World Wide Web. Soon, she was working as a content developer for several online companies. In September 2002, she joined the communications team of a Silicon Valley unicorn — Google, which, since its founding four years prior, had soared in size to 500 181 employees. When Wickre left the search engine powerhouse nine years later,

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there were 50,000 Googlers. At Google, she was a senior member of the company’s global communications team. She launched the company’s official blog and built Google’s blog platform for publishing news and views worldwide. Early in 2009, she launched the company’s Twitter account, which attracted 3.4 million followers during her tenure. She joined Twitter in 2011 as its editorial director, focused on internal and external communications. Since leaving Twitter in March 2016, Wickre has taken various freelance and part-time communications consulting and advisory roles. Wickre received her undergraduate degree from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, and her Master’s degree in American Studies from George Washington University. Based in San Francisco, she is a board member of The John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford and the News Literacy Project. On her website, she writes: “I love dogs, Spotify playlists, dark UK crime series, and pie. I’m an art collector with no wall space left. I have both slide carousels and 42GB of photos, 100GB of music and my first batch of 45s, all of which surely qualifies me as a modern elder.”

Scan the QR Code Below to Listen to Karen Wickre’s Appearance on Monday Morning Radio

Building a Valuable Professional and Personal Network is Easier Than You Think

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Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/Karen-Wickre

Karen Wickre

Karen Wickre’s Websites and Social Media Karen Wickre: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Wickre Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/Wickre-Twitter Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/Wickre-Facebook LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/Wickre-LinkedIn Instagram: https://tinyurl.com/Wickre-Instagram Bluesky: https://tinyurl.com/Wickre-Bluesky Medium: https://tinyurl.com/Wickre-Medium

Books by Karen Wickre Taking the Work Out of Networking: An Introvert’s Guide to Making Connections That Count. Gallery Books, 2018. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Networking Atlas to the World Wide Web 1997. Ziff Davis Press: 1996. (Out of print) Guide to Netscape Navigator 2.0. Ziff Davis Press: 1996. — By James Barnett; edited by Karen Wickre (Out of print) Atlas to the World-Wide Web: Book, CD and Map. Ziff Davis Press: 1995. Co-authored with Bob Powell (Out of print)

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Chapter Eighteen

Make Your Own Kind of Music

Dave Combs

Sometimes in Life and in Business, There is Little More to Go on Than Faith in Yourself and Your Destiny

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS 1. When you encounter a large obstacle on the road to success, go around it, over it, or underneath it to reach the other side. 2. It’s easy to just want to put your feet up and relax after a long day. However, that may be when opportunity knocks the loudest. 3. It’s never too late to start in a new field and thrive. 4. Sometimes, success comes when you least expect it from sources you never considered. Don’t give up hope that you’ll make it as an entrepreneur. 5. Many of the most vexing puzzles are solved not with a thunderous revelation but with subtle insights that have been there all along, patiently awaiting your notice.

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Three Spinster Sisters About 50 miles southwest of the Greek city of Thessaloniki is Mount Olympus, the tallest peak in the country. According to legend, the Greek gods and goddesses lived there, including Zeus, king of the gods; Poseidon, god of the sea; Aphrodite, goddess of love; Athena, goddess of wisdom; and Apollo, god of the sun. Less well remembered are the goddesses Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Yet, these three sisters wielded more power than even mighty Zeus. The trio, known as the Fates, were spinsters in both marital status and occupation. Clotho, the youngest, was responsible for spinning the thread of life; Lachesis, the middle sister, took charge of measuring its length; while Atropos, the eldest, wielded the shears to cut it. Symbolically, their tasks encompassed life’s journey: Clotho had the power to initiate life, determining the moment of birth. Lachesis held sway over the unfolding of life’s events, shaping destinies with her measurements. Atropos, with a decisive snip, determined the end of each life. Together, they served as guardians of the cosmic order and arbiters of mortal destinies. No person or god could escape the Fates; all were subject to the spinning of their threads. An ancient Greek might have attributed Dave Combs’s success as a musician and entrepreneur to Lachesis’s measuring rod. A gambler might credit Lady Luck. As a devout Christian, Combs attributes his remarkable entrepreneurial tale to Divine intervention. Whatever its origin, Combs’s true-life journey has all the makings of a modern-day myth.

Don’t Ask Where Inspiration Arises, Just Be Grateful Music has always been a part of Dave Combs’s life. He was raised in a small town in upper East Tennessee, where both of his parents and his paternal grandmother played the piano. Likewise, the black and white keys became his playmates from an early age. Combs, who speaks with a decidedly drawn-out southern accent, was living and working in Bethesda, Maryland when inspiration first struck. The year was 1981 — 19 and 81, as Combs enunciates it. Thirty-three years old, he had spent his career until that point in the telecommunications industry, a left-brain 186 field if there ever was one.

Dave Combs

One day, however, a tune came to him out of nowhere. He didn’t compose it, he insists, as much as receive it. I played it on my piano and didn’t even realize that I had written a song. Little did I know that that song would change my life forever. The arrangement was catchy, perhaps fairly described as hypnotic. “It’s a very simple melody with a very simple chord progression,” he explains. “It starts out in a major key, which most people would say is associated with a more happy, upbeat kind of a thought. But then, in the chorus, it goes to an F and then an F-minor chord, which kind of takes it to almost a sad tone. It’s filled with this rollercoaster of emotions.” Combs’s wife, Linda, was the first to fall under its spell. “She came home from work a couple of days later and said, ‘Dave, what’s the name of this tune that I have stuck in my head?’ — humming a little bit of it.” “It doesn’t have a name, Linda.” “Well, it’s something you play on the piano all the time.” “It’s just something I made up the other night. “Well, you have to write it down.” “No, no. I’ve got it in my head. I’m not going to forget it.” “Oh, no, you’re not going to leave it there because something might happen to you and that song would be gone. You better write it down.” So he penned the notes of the melody and the chords, and then deposited the sheet music in the piano bench.

A Christening Almost three years passed. Some good friends of the Combses gave birth to a baby girl, Rachel, and asked Dave and Linda to be their newborn’s godparents. As Combs relays the story: 187

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“Linda and I are sitting there in the church [at the christening in December 1983] and it’s just us and the family and the minister. Up at the front of the church, in the center of the platform, is a grand piano.” Toward the end of the formal service, Combs nudged Linda. Hey, what do you think about me playing this little tune now on the piano? It seems like an appropriate place to play it. She smiled and nodded her approval. I went up and asked permission from the minister and the family, and they said, ‘Sure.’ So everybody sat back down. I went over to the piano and played this little song. When I got most of the way through the song, I could hear sounds from the audience of people clearing their throats and sniffling. Everyone, including Combs, was teary. “I looked over at little Rachel in the arms of her mother and I said, ‘From now on, this song will be called ‘Rachel’s Song’ in her honor.’” After Linda, Rachel’s family were among the first to experience ‘Rachel’s Song.’ Soon enough, millions of people worldwide would be touched by it.

Twilight Resolve In 1986, as an information technology consultant with Western Electric/AT&T Network Systems, Combs commuted weekly from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to Nashville. His job was to advise factory managers on using computer systems to squeeze more efficiency out of their operations. “If I could help a factory operate more effectively, I felt a strong sense of satisfaction and purpose,” he wrote in Touched by the Music, his 2021 autobiography. It was Linda who suggested that since Combs was spending so much time in Nashville — Music City, USA — he should consider finding a studio to make a demo recording of “Rachel’s Song:” “Turn it over and let a professional record it and arrange it and see what it sounds like.”

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“I could have said, “You know, after working such long days, the last thing I want to do is drive around town looking for a recording studio. What I real-

Dave Combs

ly want to do after a long day on the road is just put my feet up and relax,” Combs wrote in his book. “Fortunately, however, I stepped towards Linda’s idea and said, ‘What a great idea!’” One evening at day’s end, tired but determined, Combs randomly drove around downtown Nashville in search of a studio that might still be open for business at that hour. He concentrated on Music Square, an area rich in music businesses and lore. Out his windshield, he eyed the Country Music Hall of Fame, the historic RCA Victor Studios, BMI headquarters, and multiple recording facilities. The sole studio he found still open was the Music Mill, run by composer, songwriter, arranger, and session musician George Clinton. Clinton couldn’t have been friendlier, but he couldn’t help either. His fees were well outside Combs’s budget. But Clinton recommended a facility just across the street called Studio 803, run by a talented session musician, Gary Prim. Clinton’s fees were $125 an hour, plus an engineer, while Prim’s were a much more modest $15 an hour, plus engineer. Later that evening, as Combs recounts in Touched by the Music, he and Prim connected by telephone. “Well, I have written this simple instrumental piece called ‘Rachel’s Song,’ and I would like to get a good demo recording of it on piano. Is that something you could do for me? “‘Why sure!’ [Prim] said with genuine enthusiasm.” “You know how they say you can hear a smile in someone’s voice over the phone? Well, I heard Gary’s smile, and I instantly knew that I would really enjoy working with him.” In time, Combs and Prim would collaborate on 15 albums and more than 170 songs. “I write the songs in a very simple way, and I hand them to Gary, and he takes that creation and arranges it, and makes it sound a thousand times better than I could ever dream about,” Combs says modestly.

Turning a Pastime Into a Business Before “Rachel’s Song,” Combs had never composed music. Now, he wrote a few more musical pieces, and with Prim’s arrangements, produced an album. Like many would-be entrepreneurs, Combs’s gut, and feedback from family

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and friends told him people would want to buy his music. “The problem I had was I had no idea how to sell it,” he recalls. A radio station here and there agreed to play “Rachel’s Song” and the Combs-Prim tunes, but Combs couldn’t entice record stores to carry his cassette tapes. “Some of the folks that I did talk to about my music were almost insulting,” he recounts. Combs was convinced he had an excellent product, which encouraged him to keep knocking on doors. “Any entrepreneur will have to have a very, sometimes, exaggerated belief in their own product or what they’re creating,” Combs observes. He needed that belief in his cassette tape to persevere. Combs was no George Strait or Randy Tavis, who could command premium real estate in music stores nationwide. “Rachel’s Song” — unlike Strait’s “Famous Last Words of a Fool” and Travis’s “Deeper Than the Holler” — was instrumental, soft, soothing, and relaxing music from an unknown artist. “Store owners were only concerned about the performer and the promotion and the publicity around it,” Combs recalls. He found himself facing a mountain that he couldn’t seem to scale. In English, a preposition is a connector, typically describing the relationship between a noun and the word or words preceding it. Teachers commonly use this mnemonic device to help their students remember what prepositions are: “A preposition is anywhere a cat can go. A cat can go above something, or through something, or near something, or below something.” Combs must have learned his grammar well. Unable to win over the big music stores, he chose to go around them. “When you have an obstacle and you can’t go over it, you go around it or through it or under it or you find a way to get on the other side of that obstacle,” he recites. And so he did.

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Telegraphing Success Throughout his book and interview on Monday Morning Radio, Combs credits heavenly mediation for many of the serendipitous occurrences that led to his success. Most accomplished entrepreneurs — religious and atheist alike — acknowledge that being in the right place at the right time or having a chance encounter with a pivotal stranger was foundational to their accomplishments. While music stores shut out Combs and his album, Leslie, a coworker whose desk sat directly behind his, asked a fortuitous question one day, as he recounts in Touched by the Music. “Hey, Dave,” she said. “I was thinking. A friend of mine owns a gift shop called America in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. Do you think it would be okay if I gave her a CD of ‘Rachel’s Song’? I think she’d love it.” The shopkeeper, Jane, did and repeatedly played it overhead in her store. Responding to her customers’ requests, she pressed him to provide her CDs and cassettes of his album so she could sell them. Combs did, and his music quickly sold out. He restocked her store, and again, the cassettes and CDs were gone in a flash. “Nearly every customer in my shop that hears your music wants to take it home,” Jane told Combs, as he recounts in his book. His left brain began to noodle the possibilities. My thoughts quickly returned to the concept of compound interest and duplication. Let’s see, if I make X dollars with one gift shop, the music could earn 5X dollars if I had five gift shops. And what if I had just one gift shop in each state? Well, that would be 50X dollars! How about five in each state? 250X dollars! Looking at how much income was being generated from just this one shop, I realized, now we’re talkin’ some real income to support my music endeavors. At the time, few artists — Combs thinks fewer than five nationally — had tried a similar marketing strategy. He became a pioneer in the play-and-sell market, in which a retail outlet plays music in the background, and its customers seek to purchase the recordings. Combs never relied on any other form of advertising. It took six years, but Combs found himself averaging 20 gift shops in each state — a network of more than 1,000 stores. Approaching his mid-40s, Combs faced a choice: stay in the career to which

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he had dedicated 22-plus years of his life or forge a new, entrepreneurial path in the music industry. [Such inflection points are becoming much more common, Joanne Lipman noted during her June 2023 appearance on Monday Morning Radio. She is the author of Next! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work (https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Next). See Chapter 13.] By this point, Combs’s postal carrier was developing chronic back pain, hefting all the fan letters arriving at his home. (When Combs was interviewed in 2023, the number of supportive correspondences he’d received had risen to more than 50,000.) Over the years, Combs has tried to understand why his original tune has enraptured so many people, including an enthusiastic 25,000-person St. Louis audience that heard him perform live. “The piano is such a beautiful, simple instrument that can reach down into your soul in ways that other instruments don’t seem to be able to,” he reflects. “‘Rachel’s Song’ is a very simple melody with a very simple chord progression. It has no words. But I have had folks write to me and tell me that they come up with their own lyrics to the song as they listen to it.” One letter, in particular, struck a chord with Combs. At the end of 1991 (“19 and 91” in Combs’s retelling), he received a letter from a gentleman who insisted, “Writing music is what God put you on this planet to do.” Combs remembers he was contemplating that letter in church the following Sunday when the thought struck him: Good Lord, you must think I am the densest Christian on the planet. Here I’ve had thousands of people write me letters, and one even wrote and told me what you wanted me to hear. And I’ve been waiting for the lightning to strike and the thunder to roll and all the big things. And I said, ‘You’ve already told me what I need to do.’ So after that church service that Monday, I went and met with Bill, my boss, and said, “Okay, I gotta do what I gotta do.”

ave Combs is a songwriter, music distributor, author, photographer, and publisher.

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His Combs Music is an independent record company. It has established a business relationship with Separk Music Company, which operates a brickand-mortar facility on the outskirts of Winston-Salem, North Carolina,

Dave Combs

and provides Combs with day-to-day customer service and fulfillment. As a draw, and because Combs believes “Rachel’s Song” can soothe, inspire, and touch the hearts of so many people, he posts the three-minute-and-fifty-one-second song to stream or download for free from the Combs Music website: https://tinyurl.com/ AYCEBW-Combs. Combs’s autobiography, whose full title is Touched by the Music: How the Story and Music of “Rachel’s Song” Can Change Your Life, includes a Foreword by Jack Canfield, co-author of the mega-bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Canfield writes: One of the things that is beautiful about this book, in addition to his song and the music he has created, is that it really is a primer on what to do if you want to get something out into the world. It’s about trusting your intuition, taking action, not giving up, being persistent and consistent—all principles I talk about all the time. Combs dedicates his book to his wife, Linda Morrison Combs, for her inspiration, patience, advice, and love. Dave and Linda, an Ed.D., outside of the music world were best known as a Washington power couple. From 2005 to 2007, she was the Controller of the United States, responsible for establishing financial management policies and requirements for the Executive branch of the Federal government, totaling $2.7 trillion in revenue. She served under three presidents, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Dave rose through the technology world, eventually becoming the head of IT for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. When they neared retirement, Dave and Linda left the District of Columbia for quieter pastures in her native North Carolina. There, she worked as the state’s controller, and they both served on the board of the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, which works to preserve the beauty of America’s longest linear park. Linda had a catastrophic brain aneurysm on the morning of October 19, 2023, and passed away early the next morning. She was 77 years old. Linda and Dave had been married for close to 54 years. At her funeral, he played “Rachel’s Song.”

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Scan the QR Code Below to Listen to Dave Combs’s Appearance on Monday Morning Radio

Hear the Fairytale-Esq Story of Dave Combs’s “Rachel’s Song” – and the Business Savvy That Propels It Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/MMR050123

Dave Combs’s Websites and Social Media Dave Combs: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Combs Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/Combs-Twitter YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/Combs-YouTube Facebook (Personal): https://tinyurl.com/Combs-Facebook-2 Facebook (Professional): https://tinyurl.com/Combs-Facebook LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/Combs-LinkedIn

Combs’s published books include Touched by the Music: How the Story and Music of “Rachel’s Song” Can Change Your Life. TBTM Publishing, 2021. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-TouchedByMusic

Linda Combs was also a published author. Her books included: The Gift of Influence: Powerful Wisdom and Timeless Reflections for Today’s Leaders and Professionals. Combs Publishing, 2011. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-GiftOfInfluence

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A Long Goodbye and Beyond: Coping with Alzheimer’s. BookPartners, 1998. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-LongGoodbye

Chapter Nineteen

Unlocking the Steps That Lead to a Successful Life

Tom Ziglar

Like Father, Like Son: Reaping the Rewards of Helping Other People Realize Their Dreams

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS 1. Integrity, goal-setting, and “consistent persistence” allow individuals to align and advance their personal and professional lives. 2. Inspiration is powerful but only lasts so long. It is hope that will carry people past their struggles to achieve their objectives. 3. Significant personal and professional transformations are possible by making simple (but wise) choices, one at a time. 4. The authoritarian, top-down, hierarchical management style is obsolete. “Coach Leaders” recognize the importance of fostering their employees’ personal fulfillment and quality of life. 5. Trying to duplicate the unique skill set of a company founder is eldom possible. Next-generation leaders must leverage their talents and carve a fresh path forward.

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The Broken Mold Very few people can step into their father or mother’s shoes and successfully run the companies their parents founded. Henry Ford II tried with mixed results. He gave the world the Thunderbird and the Mustang. But also the Edsel. Aldo Gucci succeeded at turning his father’s Italian leather goods and luggage retailing business into a chic global brand. But Aldo wound up pleading guilty to evading $7 million in personal income taxes after his disgruntled son, Paolo, fingered Aldo to the Internal Revenue Service. Succession in family-run businesses can be messy and often results in frayed bonds and financial failure. Not so the Ziglar family. When Zig Ziglar died at 86 in November 2012, there was no question the mold was broken. His homespun wisdom, wit, and style of delivery have no equal. But his son, Tom, with support from Tom’s two sisters, has both succeeded in keeping Zig’s legacy alive and wrangled Ziglar Inc. to continue helping hundreds of thousands of global sales professionals, executive leaders, individuals in skilled trades, and anyone aspiring to achieve personal or professional growth. One of Zig’s best-known catchlines was passed down to Tom through his DNA: “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

Success the Easy Way in 5 Minutes or Less — Guaranteed Tom joined the Ziglar organization in 1987, became CEO seven years later, and took full reins of the company on his father’s retirement, at age 80, in April 2007. Along the way, Tom worked in various capacities, beginning in the warehouse. One responsibility he oversaw was marketing the company’s “success” seminars, which have been offered for more than four decades.

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In the preface to Born to Win: Find Your Success, co-authored with Zig, Tom shares his all-time favorite seminar title and marketing headline, one

Tom Ziglar

he notes his company never actually used: “Success the Easy Way in 5 Minutes or Less — GUARANTEED! Or Double Your Money Back.” “Yep, that pretty much sums up what almost every individual and company is looking for,” he writes. Of course, if success could be guaranteed in five minutes or less, Ziglar Inc. would quickly go out of business — everyone could spare five minutes and skip the standard Ziglar seminars, books, and training programs. While the five-minute fix is only a fantasy, Tom reassures his audiences and readers that it is possible to achieve a higher level of success with less effort and in less time than most people imagine. Before Zig died, Tom shared author credits with him on Born to Win. It was Tom’s first book and the only one he had the opportunity to co-author with his dad. Born to Win, Zig’s 30th book out of an eventual 36, aimed to distill into a single volume the core tenets that the master motivator had shared with more than 250 million people over his five-decade-plus career. The book also marked a transition of leadership. When Tom appeared on Business Unconventional, the forerunner of Monday Morning Radio*, in April 2012, he expressed an understanding that he wouldn’t be able to replace his father when the time came. No one could. Instead, Tom astutely recognized the necessity of forging his own path and developing his unique approach. “Dad never put any pressure on me to do what he’s done. But he has highly encouraged me to do what I do, the right way, and to the best of my ability,” Tom explained. By Zig’s own admission, as noted in his autobiography, Tom was always “a far more astute financial manager and decision maker in the business world than I am.” Eighty percent of Born to Win was Zig redux, but Tom used the book’s platform as a gateway to expand the Ziglar company’s franchise from a focus on personal and professional growth to one that also provides systems for businesses — especially small businesses, to set higher goals and achieve them. In addition, on Tom’s watch, Ziglar Inc. began exploiting social media, live video webcasts, blogging, and podcasting in a big way. The first edition of Born to Win — since republished — featured a prominent QR code on its cover and at the top of each chapter. Using QR codes

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in that fashion was both innovative for its time and confirmation that a new generation of Ziglars, led by Tom, had come into their own. If Tom had failed to move the company in fresh directions and penetrate new markets, today, people would undoubtedly be reading about Ziglar Inc. only in the past tense.

The Foundations of a Better Company: Better People The entire Born to Win book can be read in a single sitting, although its authors — Zig and Tom — are clear that the common-sense lessons they offer require regular review. “The Born to Win philosophy is both ‘profoundly simple’ and ‘simply profound,’” Tom writes. The precursors of success are Will, Skill, and Refill. The formula applies to both individuals and businesses. Basically, there needs to be a passion to achieve, the expertise to accomplish the required tasks, and, importantly, daily reinforcement of the difference-making levels of Will and Skill to reach the end goal. While Tom guided Ziglar Inc. more toward coaching organizational success than did his father, the son cites his dad, who explained, “you build a better company by building better people.” Tom believes the two end goals — better companies and better people — are complementary. Tom asks readers to imagine a metaphoric bicycle to illustrate the integration of an individual’s business and personal life. The front wheel — the business wheel — consists of five interdependent spokes: marketing, sales, operations, administration, and leadership. The rear wheel — the personal wheel — gains support and balance from seven spokes: physical health, family, mental wellness, financial, personal, spiritual, and career. To succeed in business and achieve a fulfilling personal life, all twelve spokes must function efficiently, and both wheels must move forward in sync. Before peddling off to fulfillment, Tom notes that his “bicycle” needs a few more parts. “Character is the foundation upon which you sit,” whereas goals 198 serve as the chain that connects the two wheels and propels the rider forward.

Tom Ziglar

“If you are like me, not only do you want to win, but you want to win faster, and you want to win more easily,” Tom continues. So, the “bike” requires gears, e.g., outside resources, including coaching, professional development training, seminars, and books, to convert a one-speed bike into one with ten or even twenty speeds. Completing Tom’s metaphor, riders can possess a well-constructed, well-appointed bicycle, but if they don’t commit to using the two-wheeler daily, even in those times when it’s not easy, they won’t get far. “I asked Dad while we were working on this book what he considered his biggest key to success other than character and integrity and he said persistent consistency (P.C.) was the number one reason for his success in life,” Tom recounted. “Another definition for P.C. is work ethic,” Tom clarified. “Working with P.C. is a true difference-maker.”

The Days the Music Died Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of the British rock band Queen, renowned for his vocal skills and dazzling stage presence. In the mid-and-late 1960s, audiences who attended concerts by the rock band The Doors were likewise awed by its lead vocalist, Jim Morrison, whose impulsive stage antics became legendary. After Morrison died in July 1971 and Mercury passed in November 1991, both The Doors and Queen, respectively, attempted to continue with talented substitute vocalists, but neither band was able to recreate the magic. Tom Ziglar never sought to rekindle the enchantment that dad Zig offered his live audiences. Tom, his family members, and Ziglar Inc. colleagues realized that the Ziglar name would continue to be a draw at live events, but the production — content and presentation — would have to evolve. Today’s Ziglar Inc. offers a sizable buffet of printed and digital content as well as live events — workshops and lectures. Its audience still includes individuals seeking personal growth and businesses seeking transformation. Ziglar Inc.’s offerings now include Ziglar Legacy Certification, a threeday program held at the company’s Dallas headquarters designed to train and authorize others to teach the Ziglar brand of personal and professional development. Tom and Julie Ziglar Norman, the youngest of his three older sisters, continue to conduct live events, often joined by one or more non-family presenters.

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Since Born to Win, Tom has written several books, including 10 Leadership Virtues for Disruptive Times: Coaching Your Team Through Immense Change and Challenge and Choose to Win: Transform Your Life, One Simple Choice at a Time. Both books revisit and expand on Tom and Zig’s earlier writing. In 10 Leadership Virtues, Tom draws a distinction between the obsolete style of “management leadership” and the emerging “coach leadership” model, in which supervisors understand “the importance of purpose, personal fulfillment, and quality of life as priorities and necessities rather than something to pursue on your own time.” As Tom writes, “The authoritarian, top-down, hierarchical, well-educated, fixed mindset, positional, ‘do-it-because-I-said-so’ leader is perfectly prepared for a world that no longer exists.” Coach leaders can bring out the best in their teams by emphasizing the values of kindness, selflessness, respect, humility, self-control, positivity, looking for the best, being the light, never giving up, and standing firm. Never giving up, in particular, is a tenet that carries over from Tom and Zig’s earlier books, where they also refer to it as “hope.” “Inspiration is powerful, and Dad may have been the most inspirational person on the planet,” Tom wrote in the Preface to Born to Win. “But inspiration only lasts so long. Hope is much different. When you have the hope that things can change and a plan to make that change possible, then you can take action.” In Choose to Win, Tom asserts that significant life changes can be brought about by making one simple and wise choice at a time. He focuses on seven central areas: mental, spiritual, physical, family, finance, personal, and career. Tom’s formula boils down to selecting positive habits to replace limiting and self-defeating behaviors. Tom writes that the trinity of transformation consists of desire, hope, and grit. He sums them up this way: •

Desire: Determine what you really want. This is the driving force that gets you started.

•

Hope: Believe that achieving your desires will give your life meaning and purpose.

•

Grit: Identify the skills, knowledge, attitudes, gifts, and talents you need, and the bad habits and limiting beliefs you need to get rid of, and then work on them relentlessly until you become the person who can achieve your 200 desires.

Tom Ziglar

Tom concludes Choose to Win by writing about Zig’s final days and how the choices he made throughout his life — especially sharing his God-given talents with others — served him well until the end. When Zig was 80 years old, he suffered a traumatic brain injury after falling down the stairs. The fall robbed him of the stage vitality that had been his trademark. In the few years that followed, Zig was joined on stage by his daughter, Julie, who engaged in a Q&A with Zig. Candidly, the Ziglar family was concerned that Zig wouldn’t connect with his audiences as he did before his injury. A friend of Julie’s attended an all-day arena event in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where Zig and Julie were on the program. Afterward, Julie asked if Zig was still well-received. Writes Tom: At the end of the day, Julie’s friend told her there was nothing to be concerned about. She told Julie that she had heard a lot of great speakers that day (there were nine top speakers, experts, and celebrities), but only one of the speakers was there just for the audience. Dad’s love and concern for the audience of ten thousand-plus was still palpable. Yes, when you share your gifts and talents with love, it changes everything and allows you to fulfill God’s purpose for you, no matter your ‘limitations.’ [AUTHOR’S NOTE: Tom Ziglar was Dean Rotbart’s guest on Business Unconventional in April 2012, seven months before Zig Ziglar passed. Business Unconventional, which Dean co-hosted with insurance executive David Biondo, aired each Sunday on 710 KNUS-AM radio in Denver. The half-hour program was the forerunner of Monday Morning Radio. Rotbart’s interview with Tom was subsequently posted on Monday Morning Radio, which debuted nationally in June 2012.]

ohn Thomas Ziglar is the CEO of Ziglar Inc., a position he’s held since 1994. He is the youngest of Jean and Hilary Hinton “Zig” Ziglar’s four children.

Tom’s eldest sister, Suzan, died following a prolonged illness in May 1995, only three days after her forty-sixth birthday. His other sisters, Cindy Ziglar Oates and Julie Ziglar Norman, like Tom, have worked in the family business since a young age. Tom met his wife, Chachis, who is from Campeche, Mexico, when they were students at Austin College, a private liberal arts college located in Sherman, Texas, far north of Dallas. Tom and Chachis have a daughter, Alexandra Ziglar Mis201 simo, a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, who is director of training

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operations for Ziglar Inc. In his autobiography, Zig credits Tom with finally helping him give up alcohol entirely, a challenge the father had wrestled with over the years. Zig described his drinking history as “fairly short and sporadic,” but he acknowledged that the taste of alcohol and the feeling it gave him risked his abusing the drink. He gave up alcohol for several months before relapsing in November 1972 at a restaurant where he and Jean — who he famously called “the Redhead” — went to celebrate their anniversary. As Zig wrote: When I got home that evening after dinner, my seven-year-old son (and he had never asked me this before) looked at me and asked, “Dad, did you have anything to drink tonight?” I said, “Yes, son, I did.” That seven-year-old boy looked me in the eye, dropped his head, and said, “Dad, I can’t begin to tell you how disappointed I am in you.” … And I’ve got to tell you, it really got to me. I said to Tom, “Well, son, if you will forgive me tonight, I can promise you never again as long as I live will I knowingly take a drink of alcohol.” That was November 26, 1972, and from that day until this I have maintained that vow. Jean “the Redhead” Ziglar died in July 2018 at age 90. Laurie Magers, joined Ziglar Inc. in June 1977, served as executive assistant to Zig for 35 years, and then filled the same role for Tom. As of this writing, she remains active with the company.

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Scan the QR Code Below to Listen to Tom Ziglar’s Appearance on Monday Morning Radio

Tom Ziglar on Finding Your Success Code Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/MMR050321

Tom Ziglar’s Websites and Social Media Ziglar Inc.: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Ziglar LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/Ziglar-LinkedIn Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/Ziglar-Facebook Twitter (Company): https://tinyurl.com/ZiglarInc Twitter (Individual): https://tinyurl.com/Ziglar-Twitter Instagram: https://tinyurl.com/Ziglar-Instagram YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/ZiglarYouTube

Tom Ziglar’s Published Books Include Born to Win: Find Your Success. Made for Success Publishing, 2017 Edition. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-BornToWin Choose to Win: Transform Your Life, One Simple Choice at a Time. Thomas Nelson, 2021. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-ChooseToWin 10 Leadership Virtues for Disruptive Times: Coaching Your Team Through Immense Change and Challenge. Thomas Nelson, 2021. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-LeadershipVirtues

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Zig Ziglar’s Books Include Zig: The Autobiography of Zig Ziglar. Doubleday, 2002. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-ZigAutobiography See You at the Top: 25th Anniversary Edition. Pelican Publishing, 2000. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-AtTheTop Zig Ziglar’s Secrets of Closing the Sale: For Anyone Who Must Get Others to Say Yes! Berkeley, 1985. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-ClosingTheSale

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Chapter Twenty

It’s Likely You’d Never Hire Someone Like Gregory Shepard, And You’d Be Mistaken

Gregory Shepard

“Some People Think Being Neurodivergent is Like a Disease. But It’s a Blessing in Many Ways”

FIVE ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS 1. Recognize that employees who are neurodiverse — offering your company their atypical perspective — can provide you with a competitive edge. 2. Learn to be at ease with struggle. Push yourself to take on new challenges well outside of your comfort zone. 3. Focus, drive, and enthusiasm are three of the essential elements of long-term success. 4. Know the stages a startup goes through and your current position in the process. 5. Think of failure as a stepping stone to success.

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He is Autistic, Dyslexic, and Has a Sensory Condition Known as Synesthesia, Which is Commonly Described as Having the Brain’s Wires Crossed To fully appreciate Gregory Shepard as a role model and wellspring of actionable advice, it is necessary to begin this chapter where the other passages in this book conclude: with his biography. The reversed aspect of this entry is an homage to the upside-down nature of Shepard’s life: from least likely to succeed to the pinnacle of achievement and mentor to thousands. Today, Shepard heads BOSS Capital Partners, an investment syndicate focused on early-stage technology companies. Concurrently, his school for entrepreneurship, Startup Science, provides extensive methodologies to guide founders through each step of the entrepreneurial journey from conception to successful operation to exit. Startup Science extends its curriculum beyond the boardroom to government programs and universities, including Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and Oxford. Shepard’s company is a partner of the Fulbright Entrepreneurship Initiative — a prestigious program that identifies and supports promising students, scholars, and independent researchers who seek to bring their ideas to market. Since the mid-1990s, Shepard has started thirteen companies and sold twelve of them, investing in an additional fourteen companies. He holds an honorary doctor of business administration from Michigan State University and has contributed business columns to more than thirty publications. Shepard is far from unique when it comes to Monday Morning Radio guests over the past decade-plus who had it rough as children and adolescents. But the extreme difficulties of Shepard’s younger days continue both to challenge and fuel his performance. The most valuable lesson that Shepard’s struggles impart is how adversity can serve as a stimulus to cultivate personal and professional achievement.

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Shepard’s Seven Circles of Hell Short of three angels arriving in Northern California to announce Shepard’s birth, it’s pretty clear that no one could have predicted it. Shepard’s mother was a nun; his father was a priest. Sick from birth, Shepard required nine blood transfusions and twice was pronounced dead. Raised by his mother in East Oakland, California, he struggled mightily. He was exiled to a trailer behind his elementary school to study with other slow learners. His classmates called him “retard.” Eventually, Shepard was diagnosed with dyslexia (Circle One), which explained some of his learning challenges. But dyslexia, the jumbling of letters when reading, isn’t uncommon — 20% of the population is estimated to be dyslexic. Thomas Jefferson, who drafted the Declaration of Independence (Dcelarotain of Inedpendnece), had dyslexia. Along with Shepard’s dyslexia diagnosis came dysgraphia (Circle Two), the jumbling of letters when writing. Given his dyslexia diagnosis and the high rate of comorbidity between the two, that isn’t surprising. Shepard is also autistic (Circle Three), a condition impacting just shy of 3% of the population. Autism can restrict an individual’s social skills and behaviors. A savant, he joins the 10% of the autistic population who demonstrate genius in at least one area. Savantism is a blessing and a curse (Circle Four). Shepard shares that he can be clipping roses and his mind will begin to ponder quantum physics. He’ll get so engrossed in his thoughts that he’ll accidentally cut himself. Shepard is one of 5% of the general population to have auditory processing disorder (Circle Five). People with APD can hear sounds clearly but have difficulty distinguishing speech from background noises, which makes listening to others a distinct challenge. APD is often linked to autism and can lead to feelings of being overwhelmed and anxious. Additionally, Shepard has synesthesia (Circle Six), a sensory confusion. People with synesthesia may link ideas with colors, or sounds with shapes, or words with tastes, or feelings with sounds. Just more than 4% of the population has some form of synesthesia. They perceive the world in ways that the other 96% of people can’t begin to imagine. 207

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On top of everything else, Shepard was diagnosed with dysmorphia (Circle Seven), which is an intense obsession with one’s perceived physical flaws. The condition, most prevalent in women, affects 2% of the population.

Anchors Aweigh As a youngster, Shepard recalls frequently coming home with a split lip and bloody nose from the beatings he endured from school bullies. “My mom was like, ‘We’ve got to move.’” She purchased a plot of land in Grass Valley, California, in the Sierra Nevada foothills between Sacramento and Tahoe. There, for a time, the family camped in tents with no running water. Eventually, with the help of an uncle, Greg, his brother, and his mother constructed a permanent home. “I had chickens, and we grew our food. We ate what was on the land, more or less. We had a one-acre garden. I had pigs, chickens, sheep, and goats. We grew up on goat milk. I would get up in the morning and milk goats and then feed the chickens.” As impoverished as his family was, and despite the challenges posed by his neurodivergence, Shepard showed early signs of the successful — and fearless — entrepreneur that he would one day become. For pocket money, he sold Rubik’s Cubes to local kids, offering to show them how to solve the puzzles for an additional fee. He made more money unscrambling the cubes than he did from their initial sales. More ominously, Shepard would catch rattlesnakes, which flourished in the wilderness areas of Grass Valley, and sell them for as much as $200 apiece. “People would buy them for anti-venom, which is quite valuable. Sometimes they’d defang them and then they’d sell the snakes as exotic pets.” Shepard devised a system to catch the venomous snakes without getting bitten himself. I would take a stick and I would split the tip with a knife. And then I’d put a small twig in between [the forks] so it would keep the split open. And then I would come up behind the snakes and I would plunge the stick down [on top of their heads]. And the little twig would break and it would pin them to the ground. And then I could grab them by the back of the neck, and throw them in 208 a feed sack.

Gregory Shepard

The schools in Grass Valley had no idea what to do with a student like Shepard. He bounced through five different high schools, including the one from which he finally graduated — just shy of 19 years old — after returning to the Bay Area. Unsure of what to do next, he enlisted in the Navy. Dating back to 1775, the U.S. Navy’s core values are “honor,” “courage,” and “commitment.” Its brave sailors have included American heroes John Paul Jones, Chester Nimitz, Neil Armstrong, and John McCain. Shepard is graced with honor, courage, and commitment, but the Navy was unimpressed. Viewing his disabilities as too heavy a personal and professional anchor, the naval brass cast him out soon after he joined. Eventually, Shepard got a series of concurrent jobs as a newspaper packager (mornings), waiter (evenings), and security guard (nights). He used the quiet hours of being a security guard to sleep. He also held menial positions in fast food and construction. Try as he might, none of his employers recognized his unlimited potential, nor could they adjust to his neurodivergent ways of thinking and behaving. Rather than continue the hunt for a supportive and appreciative workplace, Shepard concluded he had no choice but to go into business for himself.

The Labors of Hercules For more than 30 years, Shepard has undertaken annual “quests” — as he dubs them — to prove his competence, as much to himself as anyone. His adventures have included climbing 39 of Colorado’s highest peaks, base jumping, wrestling a crocodile, driving an Indy race car, camelback riding through the Sahara Desert, bicycling from San Francisco to Los Angeles (despite his asthma), swimming a six-and-a-half mile open-ocean marathon, and in 2023, undertaking a 30-day wateronly fast. Each of these challenges seemed impossible to meet, which is why he undertook them. “The idea is to put yourself in a situation where you have to struggle, so that struggle becomes something you’re comfortable with. Because life is full of struggle,” he says. “Struggle is very, very good. It’s required for you to be 209 healthy.”

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

Perhaps Shepard’s greatest quest has been surviving and prospering in the shark-infested waters of the entrepreneurial pool. Lest some think that Shepard only merits inclusion in this volume because of his life’s hardships — the way the producers of American Idol adore contestants who have tragic tales to tell — an examination of his business and investing track record will put any such notions to rest. Shepard has been profiled many times by newspapers and business magazines for his financial acumen. The articles seldom, if ever, mention his adolescent struggles or neurodiversity. Instead, news outlets are most interested in his business and financial achievements, such as the affiliate marketing agency he sold to a unit of eBay in 2016 as part of a deal worth $925 million. eBay Enterprises Marketing Solutions, which provided retailers with e-commerce technology, saw fit to appoint Shepard as its chief strategy officer. Among other diverse companies that Shepard birthed and then sold were: •

AllCurrencyExchange (sold 2001), which offered international travelers a range of local currencies at better rates than what would be available in airports or banks.

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Alaya Labs (sold 2003), which manufactured and sold SAMe (S-Adenosyl methionine), a supplement that helps produce and regulate hormones and maintain cell membranes.

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EMagazines (sold 2004), a direct-to-consumer website offering an extensive assortment of publications.

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Affiliate Announcement (sold 2006), the web’s most comprehensive, full-service affiliate directory submission company.

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AdAssured (sold 2016), a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business offering a single-point platform for search, domain, content, and coupon compliance.

Shepard’s track record of success has earned him four private equity awards for transactions between $250 million and $1 billion in the Silicon Valley, impressive validation from his peers of his entrepreneurial and deal-making prowess.

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Don’t Answer That Doorbell Shepard identifies five fundamentals that business leaders must implement to be successful. The first two are “focus” and “discipline.” Whether climbing El Capitan’s face or launching new companies, Shepard recognizes that “focus” is the first crucial element. Owners and C-suite executives can’t allow themselves to get distracted by whatever fresh opportunity — or crisis — presents itself. Society columnist Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), an incurable pessimist, used to react to her doorbell ringing by crying aloud, “What fresh hell can this be?” Shepard would have advised Parker not to answer the door. Whatever awaited — good or bad — would have drawn her away from her primary pursuit. In 2017, Shepard’s quest was running the San Diego Marathon (he lives in nearby San Marcos). When he started training, he couldn’t even finish one mile. He wouldn’t quit. Credit his autism. Yes, it frequently proves an asset. “It is pretty common for people on the spectrum to have to finish things. It makes me really kind of insane if I don’t. So whether it be in business or on a quest, I just have to finish everything I do,” Shepard explains. “Obstacles are the things you see when you take your mind off the goal. And if you just focus on the goal, what you’re trying to accomplish, and you’re just singularly focused on that, then you will finish it.” Running a marathon to its end requires discipline: daily endurance training, practice, and grit. Fewer than 30 people who completed the San Diego Marathon took longer than Shepard did (7 hours, 35 minutes, and 17 seconds) to run the course. No matter. He crossed the finish line and was ecstatic. A third component that entrepreneurs need is “drive.” In Shepard’s experience, business leaders must understand where they are, what their goals are, and how they intend to achieve them. Preparing for the San Diego Marathon, Shepard studied the course, had a sense of how fast he could run, and knew his goal. Likewise, he says, business owners demonstrate “drive” when they know their direction, have it mapped out, and can envision the finish line. The last traits that Shepard says successful entrepreneurs require are “enthusiasm” and “optimism.” It’s not enough to be willing to work hard to achieve

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a desired result. Leaders must be as enthusiastic about the journey as they are about the destination. And they must remain optimistic — regardless of any speed bumps they encounter — that they can complete what they start. The Late Show host Stephen Colbert once observed, “Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us.” Cynicism is the antithesis of “enthusiasm” and “optimism.” And, more often than not, it is the death of entrepreneurship. If business owners don’t believe in themselves, their concept, and its likelihood of success, then who will?

Be a BOSS To a Baby Boomer, a “boss” is an employer. To a Millennial, someone who is “boss” is awesome. To Shepard, a BOSS is anyone who follows his proprietary “Business Operating Support System,” which coaches entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs through the entire business lifecycle. Shepard identifies seven stages a start-up passes through — and the most successful businesses can navigate them in three to five years. To succeed, company executives need to understand the process and the stage they’ve reached. This roadmap lays the groundwork for the “drive” that Shepard believes is necessary to prosper. The first step is developing a business concept. Once the idea is fleshed out, entrepreneurs need to develop prototypes (step two) and then — after beta testing them — take the idea to market (step three). Any market release will require some course correction, so the fourth and fifth BOSS steps are to standardize the product or service and the company’s internal systems. Step six is to optimize the business’s financial efficiency. Finally, Shepard says, founders need to grow their businesses to the point that they can exit them and move on to their next idea.

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Most businesses will never complete the cycle; many won’t even get past the concept phase. Shepard says entrepreneurs should not be discouraged by this.

Gregory Shepard

Failure is not failure. Failure is a stepping stone. Think about when you go to the gym and you work out. The idea is to strain your muscles so that they get stronger. Failure is just a necessary precursor to success. People say, “I’m failing.” No, you’re not. You’re succeeding.

The One Who Got Away When Shepard travels through airports, he can’t help but notice the many accommodations that are made for people with physical challenges — elevators in addition to escalators, wide aisles that can accommodate wheelchairs, golf carts zipping the elderly to and fro, and the early boarding perks that those with mobility issues receive. None of those accommodations aid Shepard, whose neurodivergent challenges heighten his sensory sensitivities and cause bright lights and loud sounds to overwhelm him. (To compensate, he navigates terminals wearing sunglasses, custom earbuds, and standard headphones over those earbuds.) “There’s nothing for us,” he laments. “It drives me crazy.” Shepard has to practice mindfulness to get through many daily experiences that neurotypical people never even think twice about. The vast majority of workplaces are not designed to be welcoming to neurodiverse people. And because neurodiversity is a spectrum, it’s difficult to find a one-size-fits-all solution, such as adding an entrance ramp or enlarging a bathroom stall. But doing what it takes to accommodate neurodiverse employees can pay big dividends. I volunteer for these [studies] where they scan my brain. And if you look at the scans, you see the activity basically occurs in areas that other people aren’t even accessing, which means that there’s a unique perspective. It’s like a different operating system. So you see the world through a different lens, and that enables you to have certain superpowers. Shepard points to Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk as examples of innovators who he believes are, or were, neurodivergent. Imagine having had a chance to hire a job candidate who one day — like Musk or Gates — would become the world’s wealthiest person but having him choose not to work for you because your office setting was inhospitable to his needs. Or — worse — you rejected his application outright because he didn’t fit the 213 conventional employee mold.

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom

Colleges that Shepard never applied to — because his dyslexia and dysgraphia made the application process too daunting — now turn to him as a valued lecturer and curriculum developer. And talk about irony: Although the U.S. Armed Forces determined it had no room for someone like Shepard in their ranks after he enlisted in the Navy, Shepard has been invited to provide feedback during its war games held at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton aimed at improving the links between national security organizations, entrepreneurs, academia, and investors. “We see past what everybody else sees as the end, and we see that as the beginning,” Shepard says of neurodiverse people. “I look at a fence — everybody sees the fence — but I see what’s in between the cracks of the fence and what’s behind there. So I have the ability to sort of look at where something is going to be, not where it is.” Some companies have come around to recognizing the importance of hiring neurodiverse people. Shepard points to Microsoft, Salesforce, and Apple as examples of accommodating employers. Corporate engineering and art departments tend to be operations that offer the most opportunities for neurodiverse employment. “A neurodiverse person will come at a strategy in a way that nobody’s ever seen before and thus create a competitive advantage,” he says. “You bring in somebody that’s neurodiverse and you’re going to get an angle on something that neither party [you or your competition] has seen before, and then that creates a competitive advantage.”

Scan the QR Code Below to Listen to Gregory Shepard’s Appearance on Monday Morning Radio

Despite His Neurodivergent Struggles, He is a Successful Entrepreneur, Investor, and Philanthropist

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Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/Gregory-Shepard

Gregory Shepard

Gregory Shepard’s Websites and Social Media Accounts Gregory Shepard: https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Shepard Startup Science: https://tinyurl.com/Shepard-StartupScience BOSS Capital: https://tinyurl.com/Shepard-BossCapitalPartners Twitter: https://tinyurl.com/Shepard-Twitter YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/Shepard-YouTube Ted Talk: http://tinyurl.com/Shepard-TedTalk Instagram: https://tinyurl.com/Shepard-Instagram Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/Shepard-Facebook LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/Shepard-LinkedIn2

Gregory Shepard’s Book The Startup Lifecycle: The Definitive Guide to Building a Startup from Idea to Exit. Ben Bella Press, September 2024. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Startup

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Chapter Twenty -One

That’s What They Said

Ray Bard

Wise Words to Live A Fired-UP! Life

TWENTY ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS Be so good they can’t ignore you

— Steve Martin (Page 186)

The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer and The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan each sold more than two million copies worldwide. Credit their authors. But credit is also due to their perspicacious publisher, Ray Bard. Over the span of a quarter century of running the eponymous Bard Press, he would carefully select and release only a single book annually — or at most two — and dedicate all of his creative genius to it. Starting from the concept stage, he nurtured these books at each step on their path to the highly visible “face out” endcaps of bookstore shelves nationwide. His process ensured every Bard Press title reached its maximum potential and audience. Bard’s career tally: 32 business and self-help titles, 18 of which became national bestsellers.

Success doesn’t come from what you do occasionally; it comes from what you do consistently

— Marie Forleo (Page 80)

It was Bard Press that published The Wizard of Ads Trilogy by Roy H. Williams. Williams’s first book, The Wizard of Ads, was voted Business Book of the Year in 1998. His second book, Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads,

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was named The Wall Street Journal’s number-one Business Book in America in 1999 and became a New York Times bestseller. The third book in the trilogy, Magical Worlds of the Wizard of Ads, reached bestseller status again in late 2001. From the time Bard launched Bard Press in 1995, he dedicated all of his unique talents to his authors, promoting them and their books. It was not until 2017 that the bookseller finally saw fit to publish his own volume, Fired UP! Selling. Bard didn’t write Fired Up! Selling so much as bring it to life, winnowing 1,005 notable quotes — nominated by a corps of “Quote Judges” who he recruited — down to a group of 324 “diamonds,” selected to inspire and energize entrepreneurs and sales professionals.

Done is better than perfect

— Sheryl Sandberg (Page 200)

If you’re the smartest guy in the room, find another room

— James D. Watson (Page 117)

The most unprofitable item ever manufactured is an excuse

— John Mason (Page 66)

Throughout his career, Bard was a compulsive collector. His fascination was not incunabula or rare first editions; it was magnificent idioms, the type that, in a few words, can challenge, enlighten, persuade, or inspire. As he writes in Fired UP! Selling: “More than a decade ago I began collecting quotes. Words that spoke to me. Some were lyrical like poetry. Some had zing and punch. Others, plain, simple truth.” One of his favorite quotes, from the somewhat obscure author Peter Nivio Zarlenga (The Orator - 1981), has only three words: “Action conquers fear (Page 55).” Bard says he’s drawn inspiration from Zarlenga’s epigraph time and again. “I believe action is one of the determining factors of success. It may be the largest, biggest, most awesome of all,” he reflects. “Because if we don’t act, it’s not going to happen.” Bard is much more than a quotemeister.

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Merely surviving as an independent publishing imprint for 25 years — much less recording one of the industry’s strongest bestseller records (as a

Ray Bard

percentage of all books published) speaks to Bard’s business savvy. Peel back the cover of any of Bard Press’s books, and what is revealed is a visionary marketer, packager, negotiator, and editor, with a keen eye for debut authors and topics that appeal to the masses. His editorial intuition told him there might be a book in all the quotes he had amassed over the years. Doing his due diligence, Bard found hundreds of published inspirational quote books. The sheer volume of offerings put him off. Nevertheless, he continued to gather examples that spoke to him.

Some people have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can

— Willis R. Whitney (Page 66)

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take

— Wayne Gretzky (Page 42)

Years passed. As with many business and product concepts, Bard’s would-be quote book needed breathing room, time for him to better define it and identify the opportune market. His epiphany came after he asked himself, “Who needs quotes more than anyone else?” The answer, he realized, was salespeople and entrepreneurs.

Everyone lives by selling something

— Robert Louis Stevenson (Page 2)

“Those are the folks who dream the big dreams,” he recalls thinking. They are also the professionals who encounter a disproportionate number of roadblocks and rejection. “I thought, ‘Surely, there’s a whole bunch of books on Amazon for these folks.’ So I went [online], and for salespeople I found zero books. I thought, ‘Well how strange is that?’” Strange enough that he recognized a commercial opportunity in the vacuum. “I asked myself, ‘What does a sales manager want? What one characteristic do managers want more than anything else in their salespeople?’” His answer: “They want them to be fired up.”

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A fired-up person has a can-do attitude, contagious enthusiasm, boundless optimism, a courageous heart, and phenomenal perseverance — Ray Bard (Page 4)

The most difficult thing is the decision to act; the rest is merely tenacity

— Amelia Earhart (Page 64)

There are seven days in the week and someday isn’t one of them

— Shaquille O’Neal (Page 72)

Bard’s book project was a go. Still, he had to figure out how to select the best quotes from the thousands already stored on his hard drive and, perhaps, discover even more gems. “I didn’t want to do a big fat book with lots of mediocre quotes in it and just a few really good ones,” he says. His solution — wise for any CEO, entrepreneur, or author seeking to understand the market — was to ask prospective buyers of his book. Bard sought the input of sales professionals — managers, trainers, bloggers, and foot soldiers, as well as quote lovers and creatives. From his hoard of quotes, Bard drew a selection of candidates every week for more than a year and emailed them to his “quote judges,” asking for their verdict: Awful, OK, Good, or Great. More than 1,200 volunteer helpers from around the world weighed in, not just on the quotes but also on more than 100 artistic images — clouds, sunsets, animals, and children, among them — that would eventually amplify the impact of Fired Up! Selling’s words of wisdom. Gary Hespenheide, a longtime friend and collaborator of Bard’s, designed the final 5-by-8 ½ inch Moleskine-like imitation leather book, lusciously illustrated on the inside, utilizing full color on every page. The book’s cover is dominated by a striking boldred exclamation mark set against a stark black background, making a powerful visual statement. Adding an extra touch of class to Fired Up! Selling are three silk placeholder ribbons — red, white, and black — that readers can conveniently use to return to their favorite pages. There is genius behind the extravagance.

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Bard explains that he was influenced by authors Al Ries and Jack Trout,

Ray Bard

who, in their 2001 seminal book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, espoused the virtue of differentiation to “be seen and heard in the overcrowded marketplace.” That, Bard says, is why he invested so much time and money in the book, recruiting judges, electing expensive design elements — including purchasing the rights to eye-grabbing photography — and using three ribbons when most books use only one, or none at all.

There are no traffic jams along the extra mile

— Roger Staubach (Page 114)

“Obviously, we’ve all seen books that have one ribbon,” he explains. “I saw a book, I think at Barnes & Noble, that had two ribbons. And I thought, ‘Well, this book has to have three.’” Another distinguishing characteristic of Fired Up! Selling was its retail price. While typical quote books sell in the range of $8 to $12, Bard priced his at $19.99. That immediately signaled prospective buyers that Fired Up! Selling was not the run-of-the-mill quote book. “I tried to add so much value that when someone was walking by Hudson’s bookstore in the airport and saw the books, face out, they would go and pick it up and would say, ‘Wow, this feels like a $25 or $30 book.’”

When you sell on price, you are a commodity. When you sell on value, you are a resource — Bob Burg (Page 120)

Bard’s entire approach to book publishing differentiated Bard Press from mainstream publishing houses, such as HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster. “I would call my authors clients and treat them like clients,” Bard notes. “So I serve them in that collaborative way. We have lots of conversations back and forth about what the book’s personality is, what it’s going to look like, what it’s going to feel like, what it’s going to sell for, how it’s going to be marketed, just on and on and on.”

Start working with your prospects as if they’ve already hired you

— Jill Konrath (Page 108)

Bard’s decision to publish only one or two books yearly was a radical departure, even for a boutique publishing house. “It just gives me the luxury of spending a lot of time working with the

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authors and spending a lot of time on each book,” Bard says. When deciding which quotes to send to his volunteer judges, Bard also differentiated himself from the compilers of most other quote books. “When I began to look at quotes over the years, particularly in selling, one of the things [that stood out] is how underrepresented women are,” he recalls. “If you look historically at quote books, most of [the quotes] come from old, dead white guys — Greeks and British dudes.” In Fired Up Selling! readers will find dozens of women who are cited for their idiomatic treasures. To name just a few: Mary Kay Ash, Maria Bartiromo, Geena Davis, Debbi Fields, Roberta Flack, Helen Hayes, and Alice Walker. When all the judge scorecards were counted, and the quote candidates ranked, one was the undisputed most popular, from Maya Angelou, the legendary author, poet, and civil rights activist who died in 2014 (Page 167). Her quote:

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel Bard understands Angelou’s message and its relevance not only to sales executives but to all human interactions. What Maya is saying is that life is primarily an emotional experience, not a logical one,” he says. “How we make people feel, whether it’s our children, our mates, the people we supervise, the people that we sell to, our clients, our prospects, whomever, it’s what their experience they have with you, how they feel when that’s over, [that counts].

A year from now you may wish you had started today

— Karen Lamb (Page 203)

ay Bard is a master at applying Maya Angelou’s insight to his business and personal relations.

He officially retired from Bard Press in September 2020, turning the company over to Todd Sattersten, who joined the imprint in January 2009 as deputy publisher. Sattersten is a former president of 800-CEO-READ and co-author of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time.

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Bard and Sattersten planned the transition for more than a year and a half. “I feel incredibly lucky to have worked on so many great books with incred-

Ray Bard

ible authors,” Bard said in a news release announcing his retirement. “I am also very fortunate to have the success we had at Bard Press.”

Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress; working hard for something we love is called passion — Simon Sinek (Page 45)

Bard dedicates Fired Up! Selling to Spencer Hays, “who taught me fired-up selling and changed my life forever!” Spencer Hays (July 14, 1936 - March 1, 2017) was a master salesperson and the majority owner of Southwestern Company, whose roots dated back to 1855 as a publisher of a Baptist newspaper and religious booklets. Bard writes: For seven summers during my college years I worked under his leadership. Selling books, knocking on thousands of doors, earning college tuition, and learning life lessons. Spencer was my sales manager, teacher, mentor, and inspiration. He taught me enthusiasm, positive attitude, and perseverance — the foundation of fired-up selling. As Bard recounted to blogger Melissa Lombard in March 2014, he was raised on a farm in Oklahoma. His first attempt at selling bibles door-to-door didn’t go so well, so the following summer, he decided to take a job sorting scrap metal. “What it lacked in glamor, it made up for in stability,” he told Lombard.

Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life

— J.K. Rowling (Page 78)

Success is a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don’t quit when you are tired — you quit when the gorilla is tired

— Robert Strauss (Page 92)

Hays eventually persuaded Bard to give door-to-door sales another go. This time, inspired and working 75-80 hours a week, Bard succeeded. In the acknowledgments section of Fired Up! Selling, Bard writes that Hays made a difference in the lives of thousands of young men and women. His teaching and encouragement deeply enriched our lives and made untold opportunities possible. His generous spirit is a lasting example for all

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who knew him. Without Spencer, you would not be holding this book. I am forever grateful. Bard was the first chairman of the board of Austin’s Wizard Academy. He and his partner, Celeste Berteau, live on the outskirts of Taos, New Mexico.

It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that really matters in the end — Ursula K. LeGun (Page 30)

Scan the QR Codes Below to Listen to Ray Bard’s Appearances on Monday Morning Radio

Ray Bard’s New Book is Intended to Help Salespeople: But Don’t Be Fooled: Fired Up! Selling is Really About Fired Up! Living Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/MMR080717

To Be A Quote Judge or Not To Be? The Fired Up! Selling Project From “The Bard of Austin”

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Also available to stream or download from https://tinyurl.com/MMR110915

Ray Bard

Bard Press Website: http://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-Bard

Ray Bard’s Book Fired Up! Selling: Great Quotes To Inspire, Energize, Succeed. Bard Press, 2017. https://tinyurl.com/AYCEBW-FiredUp

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Acknowledgments Anyone who has ever written a well-reviewed book knows how invaluable a competent editor is. I have been fortunate to benefit from the experience of my father, Dean Rotbart, the best possible editor. Set aside more than a decade of interviews he has conducted for Monday Morning Radio — plenty of fodder for a would-be author to sift through. Leave behind the fact that he brought me on as co-host and associate producer of the podcast, mentored me, and allowed me to experience the thrill of being behind the microphone and learning from some of the greatest entrepreneurial minds. My father is a formidable editor. Case in point: I initially wrote a terse acknowledgment to my father: “I would like to acknowledge my father.” Dad brilliantly turned that one sentence into all the preceding words of this section, the sentence you’re currently reading, and a few additional paragraphs that I’ve excised. Thanks, Pop. Thank you, also, to Avital Romberg, this book’s graphics and layout editor. Avital took my prose and breathed life into it with her design. An American expat living in Italy, Avital’s book-design business exemplifies how the entrepreneurial spirit knows no international borders, as proven by her complicated tax filings. My mother, Talya Rotbart, played the crucial role of backstopping this entire project. She used her keen eye to ensure that as few typographical, formatting, or other production errors made it to print as possible. If you see a mistake, blame her — entirely. On behalf of my father, I would be remiss not to express our appreciation to Blane Nicholas, “Just Blane,” who for the first decade-plus served as Monday Morning Radio’s dependable audio producer, using his talented editing skills to elevate the … “um” … sound quality of each episode. If Blane, now the proprietor of the “Ride The Wave Media Podcast Network,” had been editing this page, you can be sure he would have caught the “um” and likely many other filler words I should have omitted. Lastly, as a decade-long educator, I believe that teachers not only serve as society’s foundation but also demonstrate to their students what is 227 possible.

I didn’t learn to write independently; my skill set was honed by years of practice — in grade school, college, and graduate school. In particular, I would like to thank my high school English teachers, Lea Kastenbaum Borenstein and Dr. Roy Danovitch, who — nearly two decades ago — encouraged a young student to read and write as much as he could. It’s thanks to their efforts I didn’t instruct ChatGPT to, “Write a 21-chapter book about business wisdom,” but trusted my skills to research and craft this volume. My journey as an author actually began in middle school with Dr. Peggy Kasloff, a veteran educator who promised on the very first day of class that she could transform us preteens into “advanced and distinguished writers.” It took two years of hard work, but Dr. Kasloff succeeded, as she always did, and continues to do so with each passing school year. — Maxwell Rotbart

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About The Author

axwell Rotbart is co-host and associate producer of Monday Morning Radio, the podcast started by his father, Dean Rotbart, in June 2012.

Maxwell joined Monday Morning Radio full-time in 2023 after spending a decade as a middle-and high-school history teacher. He brings to the podcast and All You Can Eat Business Wisdom a deep desire to educate business owners and entrepreneurs on techniques they can use to achieve greater professional success and personal fulfillment. Maxwell peppers his writing and interviews with relevant historical anecdotes that provide context for today’s challenges. He is completing his master’s degree in history from the University of Nebraska. A fifth-generation Coloradan, he attended high school in Los Angeles and now lives in Denver. Despite the pain, he is a fan of the Colorado Rockies. All You Can Eat Business Wisdom is Maxwell’s first book written for adults.

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Be Our Guest

Monday Morning Radio always welcomes innovative business owners, entrepreneurs, and business experts who can bring fresh, actionable insights to our global audience. Likewise, if you are interested in being featured in Volume Two of All You Can Eat Business Wisdom, please let us know. We invite your application at https://tinyurl.com/MMR-Guests. Left to Right: Row One — Chris Kane, Evan Hafer, Frank Armbruster, Helen Yu, Ruben Gonzalez, Randall Lane Row Two — Radhika Dutt, Raj Venkatesan, Jeff Sexton, Minal Bopaiah, Melissa Joseph, Sarah Cooper Row Three — Gary Hoover, Anton Suddia, David Hailey, Julie Winkle Giulioni, Daniel Burrus, Alfred Edmond, Jr. Row Four — Bill Fox, Hanah Polotsky, Gregory Zuckerman, Vicky Brown, Gary Weiss, Gino Wickman Row Five — Jane Boulware, Joseph Fung, Carina Ramirez Cahan, Jake Williams, Ryan Erickson, Lynette M. Smith Row Six — Nick Loper, Christopher Kolenda, Lori Poland, Robin Landa, Clay Safford, Gene Sticco

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Also From TJFR Press Winners of the Nonfiction Authors Association Gold Medal

A thrilling and inspiring tale of journalistic dedication — Kirkus Reviews

On September 11, 2001, The Wall Street Journal’s main newsroom — located just across the street from the World Trade Center — was severely damaged by falling debris and flaming smoke. This is the true story of how the traumatized men and women of the Journal and Dow Jones overcame their personal anguish and confusion and rallied to publish a Pulitzer Prize-winning edition on September 12th.

Dedication and Service masterfully tells the story of Genesee Fire Rescue, a remarkable volunteer company located in the foothills west of Denver. The book is an inspiring testament to the enduring spirit of American volunteerism, a beacon that continues to shine in towns and cities nationwide, often with little fanfare.

Available from Gutenberg’s Store https://tinyurl.com/gutenbergs

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Monday, Monday So good to me Monday mornin’, it was all I hoped it would be — John Phillips, The Mamas & the Papas (1966)

Listen and Subscribe To subscribe to Monday Morning Radio, visit our website at https://tinyurl.com/ MondayMorningRadio and enter your email address on the form in the right-hand column on our homepage, or find us on one of your favorite podcast platforms.

Apple Music: https://tinyurl.com/MMR-AppleMusic Amazon/Audible: https://tinyurl.com/MMR-Audible iHeart: https://tinyurl.com/MMR-iHeart Complete Archive of Monday Morning Radio Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/MMR-Archive

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Praise for Monday Morning Radio Dean and Maxwell offer an important addition to the podcast universe. They ask the tough questions backed by a deep understanding of business. — Alan Murray, CEO, Fortune I highly recommend Monday Morning Radio to small business owners, entrepreneurs, and anyone with a curious mind who appreciates actionable insights. Hosts Dean and Maxwell Rotbart ask questions that are insightful, in-depth, and well-researched. — Jane Boulware, author and former corporate vice president, Microsoft

FEAST ON SUCCESS: Unlock the Secrets of Business Mastery with All You Can Eat Business Wisdom With nearly one million downloads since its inception, the weekly Monday Morning Radio podcast has featured an unparalleled array of business owners, entrepreneurs, and experts who share their experiences and insights. Dean Rotbart, an award-winning author and former financial columnist with The Wall Street Journal, is the podcast’s founding host and executive producer. In 2023, Maxwell Rotbart, Dean’s son and the author of this volume, joined as co-host and associate producer. Maxwell reviewed nearly 600 episodes of Monday Morning Radio to select the guests featured in this anthology.

Chapters Include: • • • • • • • • •

Ken Blanchard: Simple Truths But Profound Leadership Tools Charles Duhigg: The Amazing Benefits of Good Habits Michelle D. Gladieux: The Key Determinant of Happiness and Reputation Mike Kaeding: Utilize Proven Strategies Adapted From Other Business Sectors Joanne Lipman: Closing the Gender Gap at Work and Reinventing Your Career Blaine Oelkers: Your Mind is Your Most Potent Business Tool Stephen Semple: Unconventional Marketing to Build Your Business Empire Roy H. Williams: How to Turn Words into Magic and Dreamers Into Millionaires Tom Ziglar: The Steps That Lead to a Successful Life

All You Can Eat Business Wisdom is a rich buffet of practical advice. Readers will want to fill their plates and return for seconds. About the Author: Maxwell Rotbart is an educator and historian.