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  • How to Achieve Peak Performance by Creating a “Performance Bubble” with Craig Domann

    How to Achieve Peak Performance by Creating a “Performance Bubble” with Craig Domann
    2024/12/17
    If you want to achieve peak performance, you can probably benefit from creating a Performance Bubble. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Craig Domann. Craig is a veteran NFL agent who has negotiated more than half a billion dollars’ worth of contracts for more than 300 NFL athletes, coaches and now high school and college athletes for their NIL. His journey as a sports attorney has shown him that having a Pro Mindset is key to a successful pro-athlete career. Craig released a book, Pro Mindset: Be Your Best In Your Biggest Moments, and he has a podcast Pro Mindset Podcast where he discusses with guests on his show, the mental ingredients that are common for elite performers and then he transfers that knowledge in insightful stories and daily applications. Your Performance Bubble Explained The Performance Bubble is like a secret weapon that the best of the best utilize to create a mental space so that they can be “in the zone”. The Performance Bubble is applicable to all areas of life, whether you’re in business and you have a big-time sales call or if you’re an athlete and you have a big game. What it does is creates this safe zone where you block out all the things that work against you; fear, doubt, what happened the last time, what somebody told you, etc. When you’re in your Performance Bubble those types of things don’t throw you off your game. Everyone has been in those situations where they had their act together, they had their game plan, they show up for whatever they need to show up for and their bubble got burst by some curveball, some unexpected comment, objection, whatever it may have been. The Performance Bubble creates a safe zone, a safe mental space where you can be your best in your biggest moments. What Does a Performance Bubble Do for You? Number one is the awareness that you have one. If you don’t have one you might be awesome for a short time because you’ve prepared for it, you strategized, you might have visualized it, you think you’re all set. Until they throw you that curve ball and then it blows up in your face. Or you have that pocket voice which is talking to you at the same time you’re doing the presentation that says “Hey man, remember the last time that you were in this situation? It didn’t work out so well.” And that negative thought comes in and now you’re operating on that negative thought. The Performance Bubble is boundaries and anchors. The boundaries block out the noise, past failures, and so on. In business, if you’re counting your commission check before the sales meeting is over, most of the time you don’t get the check because you’re so attached to the results and the outcome. When you can embody why you’re there and what you’re doing and let the results take care of themselves, the scoreboard usually tilts in the right direction. Your bank account looks pretty good. And so, the bubble is going back to the boundaries and anchors, it’s blocking out the things that don’t serve you and everything that does serve you gets to come in. Craig always talks about how you step into that bubble on game day, you step into that bubble when you walk into the board room and the only things that come with you are belief in who you are, confidence in what you’re going to do, all the preparation you did, gets to come in. All the practice you did gets to come in. You visualized yourself on the drive to the meeting or the bus ride to the stadium. You visualized it maybe for the whole week. That gets to manifest itself in the Performance Bubble. In this episode we also dive into topics such as: Two ways to lower the volume of the negative voices in your head. How to create a regulator for your mental state. How to turn up the volume for the positive voices in your head. The three parts of the pro mindset. How an entrepreneur can find good council to shorten their learning curve. What to do create a Performance Bubble for success before a netwo...
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    23 分
  • How to Use Storytelling to Stand Out from the Crowd with Thom Van Dycke

    How to Use Storytelling to Stand Out from the Crowd with Thom Van Dycke
    2024/12/11
    People love to hear and listen intently to great stories. If you can craft them for your marketing initiatives, you’ll build your business faster. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Thom Van Dycke. Thom is a business advisor for solopreneurs and small agencies and a certified StoryBrand Guide. He works to help his clients develop strategic offers that deliver huge value to their customers. Thom was a pastor for 19 years. When you’re in that kind of role there’s a lot of storytelling already involved. In 2020 he left the ministry and started his own business after reading the book “Building a Storybrand” by Donald Miller. In the back of the book the author described how to get certified as a “Storybrand Guide”. Thom realized that the Storybrand framework is very powerful for organizing your thoughts around storytelling. That sparked the idea: “I wonder if it’s time for a switch”. After getting certified Thom launched his business and started out as a copywriter. He fell in love with taking the genre of communication, marketing, and figuring out ways to interweave it with storytelling. Thom has been copywriting for four years and now and is starting to do more storytelling consulting work. When it comes to storytelling and marketing, where do you begin? Many people think storytelling is about telling their story and being autobiographical. While there is a place for that in marketing, that’s not necessarily what it means to tell your story in marketing. Storytelling in marketing really looks at what other parts of a story are and how do we can use them in our marketing strategy. Storytelling begins with a hero who wants something and can’t get it, they have an external problem. Then frustration about that leads to internal problems for them. Then the hero meets a guide. The guide gives them a plan, paints a picture of success and failure, and calls the hero to action. The whole arc of the story is one of transformation. So, the idea is the framework for a story. The reason that is so powerful is that our brains are wired to recognize the patterns of stories. From the beginning of written communication humankind has used stories to make sense of their world. The more ancient you go, the more the stories are more supernatural in nature. The Need for Storytelling In modern times we’re still creating stories to explain the world around us. We are still using stories to make sense of the universe, often in scientific and naturalistic ways. It’s part of our DNA to make sense of the world that way. When Thom starts working with a client, he first makes sure they understand that concept. Then he helps them understand that when it comes to marketing, in order to be effective, you need to be extremely clear. The brain wants to find the shortest path to an understanding or meaning as possible. When we put our marketing and messaging into a story format, we’re helping people’s brains get to the point we’re trying to make faster. It helps us land more deals and close more sales because it cuts out some of the brain’s confusion of trying to get to the point. In this episode we also discuss: How to get to the point quicker in your marketing strategy. The case for making your clients to heroes of your stories instead of yourself. The pitfalls of the least effective marketing campaigns and how to avoid them. How to articulate your hero’s (customer’s) problems effectively and show them how you solve them. The role of and need for compassion in marketing. How to position yourself as the hero’s guide in your customer’s journey. How to arrange the content on your website to create a hero’s journey. The need for a call to action and how to create one. How to balance explaining problems with explaining solutions in your marketing. Two common storytelling mistakes most people make and how to avoid them. The one thing that,
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    27 分
  • How You Can Become a Lifelong Learner with Eric Pfeiffer

    How You Can Become a Lifelong Learner with Eric Pfeiffer
    2024/11/20
    Everyone can be and probably should be a lifelong learner; that practice can change the course of your life. I discuss how and why to do that in this episode with my guest, Eric Pfeiffer. Eric is the founder and CEO of MPWR Coaching. Eric has been in the leadership development space for over 15 years, having helped build a multi-million-dollar coaching business and trained over 150 coaches worldwide. Eric says becoming a lifelong learner didn’t start early enough in his career. In his twenties and even into his early thirties he felt pressure to know everything, to have arrived, to have achieved, and to have whatever knowledge base he needed to be successful. He constantly ran into roadblocks and to different challenges that kept reflecting to him “You don’t know everything.” There was a long season when every time some inadequacy was exposed in him through some deficiency, usually by other people, he would take that as an insult as somehow diminishing his value, disqualifying him from something better. This eventually changed with help from mentors. One day a mentor said to Eric “You need to get over yourself! You’re going to spend the rest of your life becoming a better version of you. If you see every exposure of something you don’t know or don’t know how to do as some kind of diminishing of your value, you’re going to stay plateaued and stuck. Then what you’ll do is create a world around you where what you know and know how to do currently is the only thing that’s required. That means your success level and trajectory are diminished as well.” Something Changed He says he “flipped that script” and recognized that every time some deficiency in him was exposed he decided to celebrate it. He realized that he could be grateful and appreciative because it’s exposing a potential new growth opportunity. If he can embrace the positive perspective, he sees it as an opportunity instead of being an obstacle. Then what happens is every time something’s exposed as a deficiency he gets to experience another area to grow in. He could go on another journey of personal transformation and development. As that became more and more the norm for his life Eric realized that his trajectory radically changed, and he found himself on this continual growth path. How Does Becoming a Lifelong Learner Begin? At first, it’s a choice, it’s a mindset shift to “flip the script” by realizing we can always choose how we interpret an experience. When we experience an area of life that we’ve fallen short in we’re either going to self-protect and project responsibility on everybody else or decide in that moment to choose to see those circumstances as opportunities for our own personal growth and development. That is the starting point because until we have that mindset, until we can control our mindset about our failures and shortcomings then we will always see those as roadblocks rather than the opportunities that they really are. From there Eric believes that we have to learn some basic mechanisms to squeeze the learning out of our life experiences, whether they be positive or negative. It’s all up to you! We also dive into topics such as: How to flip the script on internal dialogue/shift your mindset. The importance of and how to practice self-awareness. How to shift your mindset from my failure is an obstacle to it’s an opportunity. How developing and adopting small habits leads to big success. How to know what to take in and what to leave out. Words for time: Chronos (sequential/stopwatch/calendar time) and Kairos. How to recognize moments that are most relevant to you and embrace them. What are brains are hardwired to do in our best moments. How to maintain a life of lifelong learning and not just have it be a blip on your radar. The ROI of being a lifelong learner versus just being a momentary learner. How to create a paradigm shift from obstacle to opportunity.
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    23 分
  • How to Build and Scale a Business You Love with Mary Kelly

    How to Build and Scale a Business You Love with Mary Kelly
    2024/11/05
    If you’re going to build a business, you should love what you do. Once you build a foundation it’s time to scale the business. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Mary Kelly. Mary started working for her dad’s business at trade shows when she was just seven years old. Her parents would leave her at their tradeshow booth to write orders while they worked the room to get more business. Mary took a hiatus from the business world for 25 years when she joined the navy and spent 17 of those years in Asia. During that time, she got experience leading teams that were both multi-cultural and multi-lingual. She learned how to manage people, assets, and supply chains. Transitioning into the Private Sector During her last tour in the Navy, Mary taught at the naval academy. The admiral was always being called to give talks about the status of the Navy, leadership, and other topics to government institutions and private sector businesses. One day the admiral was busy, and Mary’s friend called her and asked her to give a talk. That led to more talks. At one of those talks the organizer asked her to come back and train their people. Mary was ready for the opportunity because the premises of what you’re managing doesn’t really change. It doesn’t matter if it’s Navy people or businesspeople. Managing and leading people is still managing and leading people. This is where people get hung up on “How do we lead Gen Z, or millennials, or boomers if they’re older or younger than us?” Mary believes that regardless of the demographic, people need great leadership. You don’t lead demographics, you lead individuals. Lead your people well and the rest will follow suit. This belief has led to a very successful private sector speaking career for Mary. The Biggest Lessons Learned Number one, you must pay attention to your numbers, always pay attention to your numbers. Number two, realize and embrace that your people are your most important assets. You must make sure that people show up every day to serve you, the mission and the vision you’ve got in mind. The third thing is when you see a disruption there’s almost always more to it than what you think. Dig a little bit deeper than you initially want to, look at the surface problem and go “Ok, we’ve solved that, put a band-aid on it, everything is fine, NO. What Mary found is there’s almost always a deeper-rooted problem that needs a solution. Many leaders are worried about making a mistake or going in the wrong direction, so they do nothing. Sometimes they stagnate or believe a decision they made a year ago is still a good decision today. In that case they’re not taking the current market conditions into consideration. You need to ask yourself what is the situation today and how has it changed since yesterday and how might it change tomorrow. How to Start Building a Business and Do It Effectively First you must figure out your vision and your mission. The next question to answer is why are you better at those than somebody else? You can be competitively better (you’re just better) or you can be comparatively better (and have a lower price point, or you’re more convenient, and so on). This means answering: Competitively and comparatively where are you better? Build your value proposition around that. Then you build out your mission and figure out where you want to go. From there you create the action steps to get you there. When you cross the action steps, this is where Mary believes a lot of people get stuck, you must first say, “What’s going to be the biggest obstacle?” Sometimes, it’s your own friends and family. They’re going to say things like “You can’t start that business.” Those are not the people you don’t want to listen to. Once you see those obstacles then you brainstorm on the solutions. If you don’t give your brain a place to go with the solutions, it’s going to focus on the obstacles.
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    24 分
  • How Entrepreneurs Can Build a Stronger Brand Online with Shon Christy

    How Entrepreneurs Can Build a Stronger Brand Online with Shon Christy
    2024/10/30
    Building a strong brand and powerful online presence are necessities for entrepreneurs. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Shon Christy. Shon brings over 20 years of marketing expertise as the founder of Shon Christy Social Media, Fractional Social Pro, and NeuroSocial Labs. He's worked with over 800 companies internationally, pioneering innovative social media marketing and engagement approaches. When Shon got discovered social media he was just a basic user. When social media got to college campuses, he was getting his master’s degree at the University of Akron. He was in the right place at the right time. Shon launched his first social media company. They were the first niche social media marketing agency in the state of Ohio. Talk about a great start! Shon had to build the business “brick by brick” by practicing what he was preaching and trying new things online. In addition to his company he built his own personal brand, establishing himself as the local leader in social media through public speaking and his online activity. Shon was building his online presence and promoting himself. When he looked back after a couple years of doing that, he examined why some things worked and why some things didn’t work. He realized that attention was becoming the new currency. We’re getting bombarded with marketing messages more and more every day. Our minds are filtering and rejecting information all the time. For this reason, it’s even more important for you to stand out. So that’s what Shon started to do. He focused on some principles that he successfully used to grab people’s attention. You don’t automatically have somebody’s attention during your first interaction with them. Shon realized that saying the same things on social media over and over gets boring to your audiences. He shifted his messaging from time to time to stay fresh in his marketing efforts. How to Start Building Your Online Brand Shon started by asking “Who am I?” The answer guided his online branding messages. Social media is the great digital amplifier, and he was amplifying the right messages. Marketing begins with taking an authentic look at yourself. Shon likens your personal brand to a recipe. It’s the concept of a “secret sauce”. Understanding what that taste palette is for you and understanding the ingredients of your personal brand is where it starts. Shon recommends broadcasting multiple things to attract like-minded people. You might try five or six things, and the sixth thing creates a way to connect with somebody on a human level, that will grab attention. That’s part of his alignment concept. If you’re aligned with other people they’re going to like you a little bit more. Getting somebody to like you because of that branding is a key to long term success. We also delve into things such as: How to get people’s attention. How to eliminate roadblocks for people to communicate with you. How to keep people’s attention after you get it. Two ways to know that you have someone’s attention. The importance of amplifying other people's stories while amplifying your own and how to do that. How to build a reputation and not just have a bunch of people’s attention. How to move along the know, like, and trust continuum faster. How to build and balance your personal reputation with your professional reputation. How to build a reputation and a business without being “salesy”. The importance of practicing the Golden Rule in your professional life. How to maintain your reputation over time after you build it. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” Click here for more outstanding interviews with entrepreneurs and thought leaders! About the Guest Shon Christy brings over 20 years of marketing expertise as the founde...
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    25 分
  • Beat Your Brain Bully: How to Master Your Mind and Manifest Your Mission with Lynn Smith

    Beat Your Brain Bully: How to Master Your Mind and Manifest Your Mission with Lynn Smith
    2024/10/16
    Do you ever run into your Brain Bully? What does that feel like? With the right strategies you can build your self esteem and achieve success in all areas of your life. In this episode I discuss how to do that with my guest, Lynn Smith. Lynn is a national media expert, consultant, keynote speaker, and host of “StrollerCoaster” a parenting podcast brought to you by Munchkin the world most loved baby brand in the world. Previously, she spent 15 years as an anchor on the TODAY Show, NBC News, MSNBC, and CNN Headline News. In 2021, Smith left TV News to launch her company Rylan Media which takes her media insight and expertise to tackle corporate and individuals greatest branding and communications challenges. Meet Your Brain Bully The brain bully is that voice we all have in our mind that’s saying, “What if I screw this up?” or “Does Mark like what I’m saying?” or “What if the audience thinks I’m a total idiot?” Lynn realized after coaching hundreds of executives, after being a news anchor for 15 years, and having her own Brain Bully incidents many times, that almost 100% of us have a Brain Bully. If you don’t, you’re likely a sociopath or a narcissist. Just saying. Her brain bully creeping in was so common that Lynn decided “I have to create something in order to help myself and other people overcome this situation…”, and through self-examination she did just that. As a news anchor she was told many times (to her face) “You’re not good enough, you’ll never make it in TV”. Then she had her own internal audio loop; “Maybe they’re right, maybe I’m not good at this…” She had to create techniques to overcome her Brain Bully to sustain a long term career in television. Now, when she shares her methodology with executives it’s this lightbulb moment for them. “Oh, I shouldn’t ignore this voice, this voice is actually not real, or right, I just have to tame it, I need to know how to manage my Brain Bully”. How do you overcome your Brain Bully? Initially, early on, when Lynn was in her early twenties and started in television, beating her Brain Bully was the result of pure grit and tenacity. It was a case of “just keep going”. Sometimes she didn’t have any reason or logic to believe in her eventual success, she just had to push through it. There was no other option. From seeing what good came from pushing through her Brain Bully dialogues she realized “Now I can have fun with this, and I can talk to my Brain Bully. I can say, ‘Brain Bully’, listen here, you’re through right now”. She parented her Brain Bully out of the situation. If you have kids, what would you say to them if they had a bully? What advice would you have to get rid of that bully? That’s what she did. You must literally name it and then tame it. You tame it by having those conversations with it. The next step? Reframe it. That Brain Bully could be an asset to you by keeping you on your toes. We don’t want to get complacent. It’s when we lose control of the dialogue that we have problems. So, you must name it, tame it and reframe it. We do a deeper dive into that methodology and discuss topics such as: What’s really holding you back in life, and it’s not your professional skillset or lack of one. How to find ways to do whatever it is you were meant to do with your life. Why just pushing your Brain Bully away won’t work. How to control your fight, flight, or freeze responses in your primitive brain. It doesn’t know the difference between you giving a presentation and you being attacked by a tiger. It’s protecting you from what you perceive as a threat. How to create a Brain Buddy and use it to your advantage. How and why you have complete control over which thoughts you focus on. How to show up as your authentic self. …and more golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”
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    24 分
  • How to Leverage LinkedIn to Build Your Brand with Donna Serdula

    How to Leverage LinkedIn to Build Your Brand with Donna Serdula
    2024/10/09
    LinkedIn is only a powerful tool if you know how to use it. My guest Donna Serdula and I discuss LinkedIn branding strategies in this episode. Donna has almost 20 years of experience on LinkedIn. She is the founder and president of Vision Board Media, a professional branding company that helps individuals and companies tell their unique stories on LinkedIn and beyond. Getting Started Donna’s relationship with LinkedIn started in 2005. A colleague of Donna’s asked if she had heard of LinkedIn and said “You should join, you will get a lot of opportunities. Things just drop in your lap; you’ve got to sign up for it!” When she signed up, she saw that her profile looked like a resume. So, she copied and pasted her very dry, dull, out of date resume. She thought “Ok, opportunity, hit me! I can’t wait to see what happens here!”. Then nothing happened. It seemed like a huge waste of time. She continued with her professional life and didn’t think much more of that LinkedIn profile for quite some time. She accepted another job, no thanks to LinkedIn. She found herself in a much more cutthroat sales type of environment. She was dialing for dollars; she was cold calling. Suddenly LinkedIn started to cross her path again. She was using it to enhance her cold calling, she wanted to learn about the people were that she was calling before she spoke with them. One day she had an epiphany; she thought about all these people and every time she looked at their profiles, she was disappointed. She wanted to learn more about their story. Then it hit her, how was she showing up? She Googled herself and her LinkedIn profile was the first thing to pop up. She realized by lack of caring and lack of activity she was doing the same thing all the other people were doing – nothing. That’s when she realized that your LinkedIn profile isn’t your resume. It’s much bigger than that, it’s your online presence, often your first impression, and your brand. A BIG Shift in Thinking and Results… Donna contemplated how she wanted to be perceived and what goals she was striving to achieve. She looked at LinkedIn strategically. She created a new profile that was much more aligned with her desired personal brand. As soon as she did that amazing results started to happen. She became a magnet for opportunities. People were searching for someone like her, and she was popping up in the search results. People were seeing her as someone in their industry that is a thought leader and cares about other people in her industry. That’s when she realized she wanted to help other people do the same thing and get the same branding results. They need help with their resumes, help with their bios, help with strategically using LinkedIn as a networking tool, help with thought leadership assistance and so on. How to Build Your Brand to Get Opportunities to Come to You When it comes to LinkedIn certain things have changed, and certain things haven’t changed. When you think of the LinkedIn feed, that has changed massively. The LinkedIn profile hasn’t really changed, it’s still this huge area to really tell your story, to showcase your career trajectory, and it’s a place to get found. Most people forget that LinkedIn is a search engine. A lot of people think LinkedIn is just a professional social network. Many people on LinkedIn are there looking for someone like you. That’s one place where successful branding strategies begin. What terms do you want to be found for? You need to be peppering those terms throughout your profile, that way you can collide with opportunity. Many times, Donna finds big mistakes that people make are doing what she had been doing. For example, she was looking for opportunities in sales, but she was aligning herself as a job seeker. Her target audience wasn’t recruiters, it was sales managers and other people in her industry. She overhauled her profile, and the right people started to find her because she was align...
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    23 分
  • How to Develop the Mindset for Successful Networking with Dr. Ivan Misner

    How to Develop the Mindset for Successful Networking with Dr. Ivan Misner
    2024/10/01
    Networking needs to begin with the development of a successful mindset long before you get into tactics and strategies. I discuss how to develop that mindset in this episode with my guest, Dr. Ivan Misner. Dr. Ivan Misner is the Founder & Chief Visionary Officer of BNI (Business Network International), the world’s largest business networking organization. Founded in 1985, the organization now has over 11,100 chapters in 76 countries throughout every populated continent of the world. Last year alone, BNI generated 15.2 million referrals resulting in more than $23.4 billion dollars’ worth of business for its members. When I asked how he learned the mindset for networking, Ivan replied “I have a lot of grey hair, I learned the hard way.” Fortunately, you don’t have to do that with a little guidance! One of the big problems with networking (the right way) is that we don’t teach that in colleges and universities. It’s not taught in schools anywhere in the world. So, what happens from lack of education? People go out and they have the wrong mindset; they use networking as a face-to-face cold calling opportunity. Some people teach to end every networking conversation with: “Here are three copies of my card, maybe you’ll pass them along to your friends”. If you don’t know, like and trust someone why would you do that? Ivan was recently the keynote speaker for an event in London with some 900 people in attendance. He asked the audience, “How many of you are here today to hopefully sell something?” 900 people raised their hands. “How many of you are here today hoping to buy something?” Nobody raised their hand. That’s a problem. V-C-P in Action That’s what Ivan calls the “networking disconnect”. People show up to networking events hoping to sell, but nobody’s there to buy. So why go? You go to work your way through the V-C-P Process. This is the beginning of the mindset. V-C-P stands for visibility, credibility, and profitability. First, you must have visibility. Of course, you want to let people know who you are and what you do. Then you must establish credibility, that’s the one that takes a long time. It doesn't happen overnight. It’s more of a marathon than it is a sprint. You must go into networking situations understanding that. Then the third is profitability. Once people know who you are, what you do, and they know you’re credible, they’re willing to pass you referrals because then you have this relationship with them. What tends to happen is we try to jump over visibility, jump over credibility, and get right to profitability. That’s not how it works. Ivan refers to that as “premature solicitation”. That’s the foundation of the mindset. It’s all about relationships, it’s not about transactions. We discuss how to develop those all-important relationships in this episode. We dive into topics such as: How to bridge the gap faster between visibility, credibility, and profitability without being “salesy”. Why givers gain, it pays to be a giver in the long run. How to make quality, meaningful introductions for your network. How to build credibility. Networking is a contact sport, we discuss how to win at that sport. What to say and do in your 1:1 networking meetings to move along the visibility-credibility-profitability (V-C-P) continuum faster. The best way to get more ongoing, qualified referrals with the GAINS methodology. What “profitability” looks like when it’s done the right way. Why the V-C-P continuum is a referral process, not a sales The (big) difference between a lead and a referral. The case for looking for referral partners at events instead of clients. Why the closing rate from referrals is significantly higher than from advertisements. More reasons why if you build a relationship with someone then you’re more likely to get referrals. Why the chances of a referral leading to closed business is much higher than hunting for your next sale...
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    24 分