In the consulting and coaching business, unless you're going to scale it by hiring hundreds of employees, there isn't this fear that the marketplace grabs this idea that you have and you start printing cash. That's what happened with the two businesses Tom Asacker was in. Tom is an educator, business advisor, and internationally published author. He says people started to lose their vision of why they were in business in the first place. Their focus was all on the numbers and metrics that they f...
Feb 04, 2019•46 min•Ep. 73
Transitions and changes can be challenging at times. It may be a little bit rockier for a short period, but the sooner that you make that transition toward the better, the sooner that you will reap the rewards. Douglas Miller, business leadership development and change management consultant, shares his story about his journey upon transitioning from working through agencies and consulting firms to actually building his own business with clients. Douglas shares his best practices to show people h...
Jan 31, 2019•27 min•Ep. 72
Any successful business has one thing and that is they stand out from the crowd. To put a better word, they are distinct. Diving in deep into why distinction is your next consulting advantage is Scott McKain. Scott is a keynote speaker and iconic authority known for helping organizations create distinction in every phase of business. He teaches the “Ultimate Customer Experience” and gives tangible examples that help organizations create and deliver distinction that greatly positions themselves i...
Jan 28, 2019•39 min•Ep. 71
Brand attachment is a metric that speaks to the level of emotional buy-in. People don’t just like these brands or these people, they adore them. They have a higher than normal word of mouth or advocacy, and thus tend to spend lower than their competitive set on traditional media. Chris Kneeland’s work aims to understand how to get somebody to pay more and be more loyal while spending less on advertising and discounts. Chris is the co-founder and CEO of a marketing consultancy called Cult Collect...
Jan 21, 2019•39 min•Ep. 70
Mark Pierce, owner, operator, and founder of E5 Leadership Academy, has been teaching people how to fish rather than giving them a fish. For 35 years, Mark has been in the coaching and mentoring business teaching, training, educating and motivating people how to be successful in life through a platform of five pillars - spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically and financially. Mark shares the importance of knowing and putting forth the value that they're creating. He also discusses the imp...
Jan 14, 2019•31 min•Ep. 69
Business doesn’t always have to be all about the technical processes. It’s also about the people running it. Professional speaker and corporate relationship expert Tony Chatman works with the people side of business to determine the kind of leadership that either makes the business succeed or fail. He points how, too often, people are trained for very specific technical expertise, failing to give them the proper skill set to navigate the relationships that help the organization to jump to the ne...
Jan 07, 2019•39 min•Ep. 68
First impression is really about human communication and how you can use your own behavior and body language to influence and persuade people. Mark Bowden is an expert in human behavior and body language and has helped people all over the world stand out with trust and gain credibility every time they communicate. Having four books on the subject under his belt, Mark give some tips on how consultants can make a great first impression and get good at communication, how to know when to raise your ...
Dec 17, 2018•35 min•Ep. 67
Leaving your consulting business to spend time with your family or friends in some other part of the world seems an inconceivable idea, most especially if you are the type who worries about their business constantly. Learn how to be able to do just that. Michael shares how he managed to run his million-dollar consulting business while traveling the world for five months. He lays down his approach and shares how to generate a significant income, be a consultant, and realize your full and true pot...
Dec 13, 2018•31 min
It’s a known fact that consulting firms tend to be small businesses with a small number of employees. Oftentimes, because of this, when a simple knock is at the door, we tend to burst it open, ever-willing to accept all the opportunities. However, this leads to finding your business drowning with all of these things that you start losing your purpose. Giving his insights on this dilemma is Dov Baron who is named one of the top leadership speakers in the world and someone who has been working wit...
Dec 10, 2018•41 min•Ep. 66
Nick Westergaard, consulting strategist, speaker, educator, and author, talks about strategies for branding and digital marketing. With his background in theater arts and psychology, he shares how the skills he got from improvisation has helped him improved being a consultant and strategist where it gave him the ability to consider multiple perspectives. Nick discusses the importance of content creation when it comes to the business of selling your mind. He shares his writing experiences with bi...
Dec 03, 2018•29 min•Ep. 65
So often people are spending a lot of time thinking about marketing and what they can do to get the next client. They don’t recognize that the next client is most often around them. Success comes from creating great value and results for those that you're already serving. Corporate advisor Lance Secretan focuses on only three things to attract world-class clients - doing the best possible work he can, writing books, and giving keynote speeches. Lance specializes in leadership consulting and has ...
Nov 26, 2018•27 min•Ep. 64
There are a lot of people who are working on building their consulting businesses. They may already have a process in place for their marketing or for their selling, yet they're not getting the results that they want. Oftentimes, it's because they're not working the plan even though they have the plan in front of them. Michael Norton, executive vice-president of corporate training for Sandler, says usually what's holding them back is their own head trash, their own attitude. Michael’s role withi...
Nov 19, 2018•25 min•Ep. 63
Building your business is about building a group of people around you. You need employees and you need clients. From there, you can expand and grow your business to reach various markets. Mike Anthony of Engage Marketing Consultants is all too familiar with that process. He was one of those that left the corporate world to start his own global consultancy business. He shares what you need to learn about starting your own business and growing it globally. He is an expert at shopper marketing and ...
Nov 12, 2018•28 min•Ep. 62
For the ten years being in industry, Shannon Adkins was a buyer of consulting services and of multimillion dollar contracts of consulting services. Shannon is the president and CEO of Future State Inc., a management consulting firm that brings change management and operational transformation expertise to global enterprises in the life sciences, healthcare and technology industries. Shannon says to win businesses, you have to leverage the relationships and networks you have. She shares that selli...
Nov 05, 2018•37 min•Ep. 61
In the consulting world, unfortunately, there are times where people are being put into projects or roles that aren’t necessarily their best fit. That bothered Donna Brighton, founder of Brighton Leadership Group. Donna believes in two things - understanding people and placing them in positions where they can be their absolute best and doing the right thing for clients. Her goal is to help high impact leaders to use their unique skills and perspective to lead in unexpected ways while achieving u...
Oct 29, 2018•39 min•Ep. 60
Life presents itself for most of us if we're open to it. For Michael Brenner, going out on his own and become a consultant literally had people and mentors pushing him in that direction. Michael is the CEO of his own company called Marketing Insider Group where they do marketing consulting, leadership coaching, and keynote speaking for conferences and brands all over the world. Michael says shifting from executive positions to becoming a consultant was something he always wanted to do even early...
Oct 22, 2018•32 min•Ep. 59
It's not about how much money you make. It's about how much you keep, what you do with that, and how it impacts your life, your freedom, your flexibility, your family, your community, and so forth. This is what profitability consulting is all about according to Thor Conklin, founder and CEO of Peak Performance Group. Sometimes it's as simple as shifting around the mindset from the tactical side to executive coaching and trying to figure out what’s going on in your business, what’s getting in the...
Oct 15, 2018•38 min•Ep. 58
When you’re selling yourself, a project, or a technology, at least from a technical perspective, firms want to find a technical implementer that can talk the tech talk but even more importantly be able to relate to those that write the checks. That's what Scott Eastin, owner of Eastin IT Security, would say is his big advantage. Scott can do the technical work, but more importantly, he can get up in front of people, tell some jokes, and try to make things fun when talking about technology or at ...
Oct 08, 2018•37 min•Ep. 57
When people think of innovation, they're often looking externally at products and services, but there's so much innovation that can happen within companies. Oftentimes we create systems that we think have one outcome, but they can often have another or implications that we haven't seen. Workplace anthropologist and lead inventor Erin Hersey talks about her work as an innovation consultant. Erin goes into organizations and help companies understand their employees. She says the outcome of her wor...
Oct 01, 2018•33 min•Ep. 56
To productize consulting services and build a sellable company, the ultimate challenge is to try to find something that you offer which is truly unique to what you do. It's very likely that if you canvas your customers, there is one or two things that you do better than anybody else. The raw material is going to be customer insight. Bestselling author and founder of five companies John Warrillow says they spend a lot of time talking to their customers and their salespeople as well to get a good ...
Sep 24, 2018•40 min•Ep. 55
Recent buyer research proves that buyers respond much more to people who engage with them as leaders versus stereotypical sellers. Sales and leadership expert Deb Calvert thinks people should abandon those old stereotypical ways of selling that make them feel icky or pushy because that’s not selling; that’s manipulating and forcing. Manipulation not helpful to guide people to the place they want to go. Deb says effective selling is all about understanding the buyers’ needs and talking to them ab...
Sep 17, 2018•29 min•Ep. 54
If you're going to be successful in business, you have to be a salesperson. King of Sales Jeffrey Gitomer gives an account of his journey from selling Encyclopedia Britannica to consulting to writing and to creating a sales training empire. Jeffrey says consulting is a very easy way to begin to make money, but a very difficult way to continue to make money. He decided to stop and dabbled into writing because it’s been said that writing takes you from expert to authority. He developed written sal...
Sep 10, 2018•30 min•Ep. 53
Maybe it’s time to reconsider your marketing approach, particularly in your path to becoming a 7-figure consultant. While some people invest a lot of time into creating content or figuring out how to do advertising or speaking or going to a lot of trade shows, Barc Holmes of Coral Mountain Consulting has found an approach that works well for him. He is a master of not only building and nurturing, but strengthening relationships. Using his simple Agile user experience delivery framework, Barc say...
Sep 03, 2018•32 min•Ep. 52
The people that I see that struggle the most are those that say to themselves, “I want to see greater success. I want to see a greater result in my life and my business,” but yet, they're not prepared to change anything that they're currently doing. They're just trying to do more of the same stuff. If the same stuff isn't getting you to where you want to go, then doing more of it is not going to help. Isn't that the definition of insanity? You might be doing the same things over and over again, ...
Aug 27, 2018•18 min•Ep. 51
Growing portfolio companies must focus on their sales, messaging, and go-to-market. Craig Wortmann of Sales Engine consulting reveals the key to sell more: networking. People may roll their eyes, but it’s true! Networking is all about prepping beforehand, being crisp, articulate, compelling, and magnetic in the moment, with unbelievable follow-through. Try studying the follow-up that companies have from trade shows and events. When we're selling, it’s not about knowledge. It’s about skill and di...
Aug 20, 2018•36 min•Ep. 50
Whether you’re an executive, a VP, a director, or whatever your level is within an organization, in most cases, it's not about you. Everything that you do is about the company. Even though much of the success the company is seeing is directly connected to you, you somehow feel uncomfortable talking about your accomplishments and contribution. When you leave the corporate world and decide to become a consultant, if you carry the same mindset that you had as an employee, that is going to hurt your...
Aug 13, 2018•19 min•Ep. 49
A lot of times, what we see for new product companies are you’ve got a couple of founders where one knows the product well because that started the idea, and then one knows how to market and sell the product. Once you have those two things together, the next piece is the ecommerce operations piece. Many times as companies grow quickly, the sales and marketing of those products quickly outpaces the operations. That’s typically where Mike Gammarino and his team at Bluprint Partners come in to prov...
Aug 06, 2018•21 min•Ep. 48
Anytime you’re solving a business problem or anytime you’re offering a service, one of the best ways to figure out what you should be offering is to find out what the market wants and figure out what problems the buyer is having and focusing on that. Open innovation catalyst Scott Wagers has been trying to address that question over the course of his career. Scott helps put together and deliver projects that are with multiple disciplines and multiple stakeholders in the life sciences, focusing a...
Jul 30, 2018•23 min•Ep. 47
Lead generation webinars are a powerful tool for generating high-ticket sales appointments. In recent years, building high-converting sales webinars and sales presentations have become a top priority for coaches, consultants, and solo entrepreneurs looking to sell their courses through specialists. One such company is The Webinar Agency, run by Joel Erway. He’s been in the game for nearly four years, graduating from Rochester Institute of Technology with a degree in mechanical engineering techno...
Jul 28, 2018•32 min•Ep. 46
What's the most productive time of your day? What would happen if you dedicated one hour of your most productive time to the most important person in the world every day? This is part of Bob Urichuk’s daily routine, and it has resulted in positive improvements to his business. He would visualize, doing anything to help him get where he wants to go at seven o'clock. Any behavior that gets recognized and rewarded gets repeated. Same goes for sales and marketing, where subtlety is highly appreciate...
Jul 21, 2018•40 min•Ep. 45
