Author Hour with Charlie Hoehn

Will Leach, the author of Marketing to Mindstates, is an expert in the realm of marketing. He is the founder of TriggerPoint Design and he’s worked with fortune 50 companies to solve their most important behavior challenges. Will is actually known as one of the top experts in America in applying behavioral science to marketing, and in this episode, he explains exactly how he applies these behavior design principles to marketing for these huge companies. It’s really powerful. So if you’re a marketer who loves books by Robert Cialdini or Dan Arielli or Seth Godin, this is the episode for you. It’s pretty mind-blowing.   Get Will’s new book Marketing to Mindstates on Amazon. Find out more at MarketingMindstates.com.   Will Leach: It’s funny because a lot of people think that subtle changes and packaging will show this massive behavioral change. Frankly, there’s so many different factors that influence people shopping behavior. We try to do much bigger packaging changes, just test really, if something significant was going to make a significant lift in sales. The whole genesis of behavioral design—and my journey—was in a moment. It was a study that I was running in this laboratory for Frito-Lay, and I pre-recruited 75 people. I was running shopper insights, and we had 75 people shop our laboratory. Then, I was expecting to have new packaging come in later on that afternoon. I was going to then switch out the old packaging with our newly redesigned packaging, and then the next day, have 75 more people come through and just see if the packaging made any significant lift. Well, 4:00 came, no packaging. 5:00 came, no new packaging. So by 6:00, I’m thinking, I don’t have any new packaging to test for tomorrow. We found out that the agency was running late. We weren’t going to get that packaging, but I had already pre-recruited 75 people to come in and shop the next day. So I just said, you know what? Keep the same environment. We’re not going to make a change. I’ll just get a sample size of 150 people. Next day, another 75 people come in, they shop the environment, and then they leave, great. We actually looked at the data. Just merged the data. And in doing that, actually, a really scary thing happens because between one day and the next, the data changed dramatically. Imagine in my world, I had the exact same variables. I had the same planagram, the same packaging, the same pricing, the same flow, but yet, very different shopping behavior. That as a researcher is a very big deal. Because now, what’s right? What’s the reality—is it the first day or the second day? Well, just so happens, a VP over in a shopper marketing, basically said, “Hey Will, you need to figure this out, because if you can’t tell me which reality is true, is it day one or day two…we’re spending a lot of money each year running these tests.” I thought I was going to lose my job or, certainly, this entire laboratory and all the employees we had—about eight employees. We’re all going to lose our jobs. Also, it’s kind of two stories merging. I went to a conference from the Institute for the Future, and it’s kind of a think tank if you will. I just so happen to get invited. This is where I was introduced to this idea around marketing to the non-conscious. It was around persuasion.

Julie Clegg, author of How to Become a World Class Investigator, is a licensed investigator with more than 20 years of experience in law enforcement and professional investigations. If you live in the UK, you probably known Julie as an intelligence expert on the reality TV series, Hunted. She’s taught investigative skills and procedures in more than 20 countries. The era of the lone wolf private eye is over. In this episode, Julie illuminates a new path to success in this exciting and rewarding field, all while debunking the culture of secrecy that’s always pervaded the industry. Few careers offer the challenges of investigative work, and fewer still offer the opportunity to make a real difference.   Get Julie’s new book How to Become a World Class Investigator on Amazon. Find out more at WorldClassInvestigator.com.   Julie Clegg: The story of this book begins about 25 years ago when I was a teenager—and I was a very studious teenager. Academics did not come easily to me. I struggled in school and I had to work 10 times harder than anybody else to get the same results. I was passionate about learning but it just did not come easy. Memory retention was never my strong point. I would study very hard, I would read voraciously. I was always reading, and I was determined to be a journalist. That was my dream job. It was my passion. I consumed articles and newspapers and books all through my teenage years. That was my passion and my goal. I love to write, and I love to read. I used to seek out little old book shops that I could go to. My collection of books was bigger than anything else that I had, even as a 14 year old girl. Then, when I was 17, my life changed completely. At Christmas time, I was a victim of a very serious assault, during which I almost died. In the days and weeks in the police station and going through that investigation afterwards, there was one detective called Diane Watts, who basically saved me. She comforted me, she was there for me, she helped me through the investigation, she supported my family, and she was the one that got me through. I knew what my life’s course was going to be. I knew I wanted to be a police officer. It was all because of that experience that I had been through. I tried to join the police. They rejected me the first time, I didn’t have enough confidence, I didn’t have enough life experience. So I went out and I got the job that I knew would make me grow as a person the most. I lacked confident interaction with people, so I went and got a job in a night club in this city part of Bradford in the north of England. I spent the next two years breaking up bar fights and dealing with the police, dealing with gangs and drug dealers and all of those nefarious characters so I could build that confidence and I could build those communications skills. I could lose my fear of violence and fear of confrontation and aggression. Three years later, I went back and applied for the police again, and I was accepted. That was my path in to the police, and I stayed in the police for 10 years before I moved out to Canada to work more in the technology field. I wanted to work in internet investigations because I’m also passionate about technology. I did that for the last 13 years, and then I just had this need, this desire to get back to frontline investigations.

The question that this episode is all about is this: What if you could skip the whole startup phase and generate profitable revenue on day one? Entrepreneurs have a big issue. We want to start things up, we want to build, but statistically speaking, we also know, we’ve got a 90% chance of failure. Walker Deibel, the author of Buy Then Build, is much more into the acquisition model to buy companies. Walker is an entrepreneur and an investor and he’s co-founded three startups, so he knows that side of the game. He’s also acquired seven companies and from all this experience, he has become a huge believer and proponent of the ‘Buy Then Build’ model. To acquire the infrastructure of a company first and then to go on doing all the things that you as an entrepreneur want to do. It’s serving customers, building something meaningful and sustainable and turning a profit by solving people’s problems, that’s what this episode is all about. If you’re an entrepreneur who has got several failures or difficult businesses under your belt and you’re looking for a better way of starting up, this is the episode for you.   Get Walker’s new book Buy Then Build on Amazon. Find out more at BuyThenBuild.com.   Walker Deibel: In 2004, two things were happening. One, I was finishing up at Washington University in St. Louis. I was finishing up grad school, it was the MBA program full time. During that program, me and a couple other classmates started a business. We were in business planning competitions, we were talking to customers, we were raising money. We were a finalist in a competition, we had very big potential customers deep in the pipeline and looked like they were going to buy. The month of our graduation, just because of licensing rights, the whole startup got hung up in legal and completely failed. Me and one of the other guys that were starting this company were the only people in the entire class that didn’t have jobs lined up. Here we went, graduation day, no job because I’m an entrepreneur, I’m starting a business, right? It completely failed the day before graduation. I went out into the world, and a couple of things that happened at once. First, I understood that entrepreneurship isn’t a job, it’s a condition. You just sort of are. Here I was, the unemployed entrepreneur. I didn’t have another idea hot off the press, queued up. I didn’t have an excuse. School was done, right? Here I am out in the workforce with no idea, my startup failed, nowhere to go. I could go corporate, and I kind of started to go that direction, but the thing is, I wanted to find a business to buy. I knew that you could do it. I knew that people did it and that they were financeable and all the rest of it. But I met two things. One, my MBA education really trained me to be either a middle manager at a large organization or a consultant. It really was very little to do with small business management and operations. A lot of it is transferable, but it’s indirect. The second thing that I found was, when I went to try to find a business to buy, here I am, I’m in my late 20s, I look 10 years younger, I’ve got no money…I know I can do this, I just don’t know the path. What I’m met with was a really opaque industry that is very fragmented. The range of people that are trying to sell businesses is enormous. I mean,

Our guest today is Jason Bradshaw, author of It’s All About CEX, and a customer experience expert who has helped a variety of companies grow and even save tens of millions of dollars. Companies and telecommunications and retail and media and finance and even automotive. By the end of this episode, you’ll know how you can improve your company’s experiences with your customers and your employees, potentially to the tune of millions of dollars. Now, here is our conversation with Jason Bradshaw.   Get Jason’s new book It’s All About CEX on Amazon. Find out more at It’sAllAboutCEX.com.   Jason Bradshaw: At 14, I decided that I wanted do something a little bit differentto achieve what I wanted at the time, which was the latest and greatest computer. I think my iPhone has more computing power than the computer I bought when I was 14. But at 14 years of age, my original goal was just to stop having to ask mom and dad to get me everything. I had a part time job, but that was going to take me forever to earn enough money to buy a computer. I decided that if I wanted to get that computer faster, that I would actually start my own business selling computers and telecommunication supplies. And in the very early days, it was about getting that shiny object, that new computer that I wanted. As those that know me will understand, it became much more than that. I started retailing renting computer and telecommunications and office supplies to local businesses well before I was 14. I think because of mom and dad’s side hustles and the various business ventures they had, I was reading small business magazines and reading books like In Pursuit of Wild by Tom Peters. So when I set up my business, I said from the very beginning that I was going to do things differently. I wasn’t going to compete on price, I was going to compete on service. As a result of that, I somewhat fell into a lifetime career focused on customer and employee experience. It’s been a journey that I wouldn’t change, but it all came from those really humble beginnings where all I wanted was to buy a computer that was better than the one I already had. It’s All About CEX Charlie Hoehn: What is the customer experience? Why did you decide it was worth writing about? Jason Bradshaw: If you check out my LinkedIn profile, the question that usually comes after I made a statement like that is, “You worked in the government for three years, where was the customer or the employee experience in that?” Well, when I worked for the state government here, my job was about putting the people of the state back into everything that we did. Making them front and center. And throughout my career, that has been the pillar of what I’ve done—it’s been making sure our customers and employees are  front and center of conversations and all the decision making, no matter what the conversation is. I found that in every instance where I’ve done that, I’ve differentiated myself from my peers. My team’s performance has been differentiated in positive ways, and as a result, individuals that I’ve had the pleasure of leading have been successful and their careers have grown. The one thing that was missing throughout my journey to where I am today is not a plethora of customer experience books or books on employee engagement, but a really practical, simple guide to get started.

This isn’t another self-help book teaching us how to be happy. Dr. Sanj Katyal, author of Positive Philosophy: Ancient and Modern Wisdom to Create a Flourishing Life, believes that happiness isn’t the goal. While most of us spend our entire lives working hard in the pursuit of happiness, what we really want is a life of meaning and fulfillment. We want to flourish. But when we’re young, so many of us follow society’s path to success and hope to hit these milestones of achievement and eventually be fulfilled. The good life isn’t built on wealth status and material goods and having it all. That only leaves you wanting more. In this episode, Sanj distills the discoveries from psychology, philosophy, neuroscience and medicine to give you a practical, easy blueprint for flourishing. By the end of this episode, you’ll have a personal operating system to lead an optimal life, where you can deepen your understanding of yourself and the cycle of materialism and achieve lasting meaning and fulfillment.   Get Sanj’s new book Positive Philosophy on Amazon. Find out more online.   Sanj Katyal: I remember a day about 10 years ago, very clearly. I was driving in my car and I began to wonder why I wasn’t happier. I had really achieved pretty much more than I could ever dream of, you know? I was married to my best friend, we have a great relationship, we have four healthy beautiful kids who really mean more to us than life itself. I had a really good job as a radiologist and a physician, executive at a growing startup company. Growing up, I had no real tragedy in my life. We always have plenty of money growing up. Both my parents and my in-laws are alive, healthy, and live close by. I began to worry that if I couldn’t figure out how to experience more joy and happiness when things were this good, how was I ever going to deal with any real adversity when it would come? Which by the way, it has since that time. I began really searching for answers, and I was searching for answers to a single question. How can I learn not just to function but to actually flourish? And that was the genesis of my journey and this book. Charlie Hoehn: What does flourishing really mean to you? Sanj Katyal: Before we talk about what flourishing is, let’s talk about the word happiness. I have a real problem with it. I think it’s overused, but I think the main problem I have is that it’s used incorrectly. If I ask you  if you want to be happy, the answer is of course. If I then ask you, well what does it mean to be happy? The answer becomes a little less obvious. The problem with the word happy is that it denotes an emotional state that is often changing and transitory. “Yesterday, I was happy but today I’m sad.” Or “I’ll be happy this weekend when I don’t have to work.” That type of happiness is not what the ancient philosophers, particularly Aristotle was referring to when he made the same quote, “Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and the end of human existence.” That’s a pretty famous quote, but the word that he and other philosophers used was eudaimonia, which is really accurately translated as human flourishing or a state of optimal living over a longer period of time. That’s kind of the way I think of flourishing and happiness is this state of optimal living over a perio...

Most companies know that winning customers is key but many don’t realize that loyalty starts from the inside with their employees. In order to build a brand that truly motivates, you must take your employees from liking their jobs to loving them. As the CEO of CPG Agency, Keith Alper, author of From Like to Love, has seen the competitive edge gained by creating a culture that turns employees into brand advocates. In this episode, Keith draws on real life examples to present his proven process for turning your organization from appreciated to adored. Keith has learned this in his 30 year career after cofounding CPG agency and then expanding it into the Nitrous Effect which is a seven agency collective that specializes in branding, marketing, events and more. They serve fast growing startups and Fortune 500 clients like Southwest Airlines, Carnival Cruise Line, Bridgestone and Virgin Hotels. By the end of this episode, you’ll know how to make your team happier, more able to create value and you’ll know how to retain them longer just by getting them from like to love.   Get Keith’s new book From Like to Love on Amazon. Find out more at FromLikeTo.Love.   Keith Alper: We had an old policy that wasn’t a great policy, and we had two women come to us and say hey, we love working here, we love working for you and your partner, but we don’t love your policy. We don’t love it enough that actually we might not stay. It was a maternity leave policy that we had started years ago. They came to us, and we looked at it and said, well why don’t you tell us what you think it should be? And in 24 hours, that was our new policy. We didn’t need to go to the board, everything was just that. They loved that we responded 100%, and I loved that we can respond to something that would continue to create employee love. They loved working here, they love their work, they love their coworkers but they also loved that they could be heard. That we would be reasonable and say, you know it’s a really good idea, thank you for bringing that to us. My goals as a company CEO is, how do we create employee love of people that love their job, love their coworkers but love working for our company? Charlie Hoehn: Was that one of the more defining moments that particular case with those women or was there something before that that really set you on that path? Keith Alper: That was one of those things that’s kind of seared in your brain. Every company says, we got great culture, we got great people, but not everybody can really respond to say, how do you have employees love working for you and you love your employees? So sometimes it gets very personal. How can we help somebody personally, how can we help somebody on their journey of work? Even if they don’t work for us one day, how can we help them on that journey? Along the way, actually, we look at this every day. Every day, what’s our journey, what’s our work space, what’s our work environment? There’s a lot of those things along the way that happen, but you know, one of my favorite things is, we had an intern, and we treat our interns like a work force. They’re not getting anybody coffee, they’re not running errands. They’re working. And we want them to leave saying, we had a great internship. But we had an intern that we coached along the way who was not the greatest intern and then ...

As an entrepreneur, building a company and turning a profit isn’t easy. Most businesses go through highs and lows and many don’t survive the tough times. To make it through and turn your business around, you need to create a culture of awesomeness. That’s where Craig Handley, author of Hired to Quit, Inspired to Stay, comes in. Craig is the CEO of ListenTrust, a multi-million dollar call center with a culture that honors personal values, giving back and allowing everyone at the company to pursue their own dreams. In this episode, he teaches you how you can do the same at your company. He draws upon the trials he’s faced to help you create your own ideal business. By the end of this episode, you’ll know what it takes to build a culture that inspires your employees and your customers and how to survive and enjoy the bumpy business ride along the way.   Get Craig’s new book Hired to Quit, Inspired to Stay on Amazon. Craig Handley: I always wanted to be a music maker when I was in high school, I wanted to go to college for music, and I actually applied to Julliard and Berklee College of Music. I ended up getting into both, which was great. But you know, even in 1991, Julliard was like $49,000 a year and Berklee was $29,000 a year. I couldn’t afford either. I grew up in middle class probably, but we didn’t have extra money for me to go to college. So I went in the US Army and joined the infantry because they promised me college money. They did. They delivered $570 a month, which paid for my apartment so I can go to college at a local school. I studied music for a few years, but I didn’t want to be a school teacher. It was really emphasis on half note versus a dotted quarter. I’m like, I don’t care, they’re both about the same, it’s like a fraction of a second, who cares? I was in school and I was doing what a side hustle work to make sure I could do everything I wanted to do. Side hustle work—meaning I was a disc jockey in a club, I did weddings, I even tried to DJ at comedy night on Sundays in order to fill my time. I did a night on at a hotel, where it took me two hours to balance the books and I could sleep and they’d ring the bell if they wanted to check in or check out. I umpired baseball and soccer because they paid like $100 a game for one hour. I was like, well this is better money than I’m going to make anywhere. It’s $100 an hour. I was all about the side hustle. Then I was going to school working out and taking classes, and I just didn’t want to be a music teacher. I didn’t know why I was taking math and English and why am I taking social studies to be a music major? Somebody said I was really good at sales and I could talk, so maybe I should try it. I ended up joining an insurance company that went door to door. I sold insurance door to door for two and a half years, and I was one of the top guys in the country. But at two and a half years, I was only making like $85,000 a year, and then they only paid residual for five years, this particular company. I realized that I had been working 70, 80 hours a week and I had reached the peak of what I was probably going to earn with that company. I didn’t want to work the rest of my life for $80,000 a year. I then shifted and tried to figure out what else I could do with the sales talent, and I ended up in a call center. It’s funny, I was making $80,000 a week in a call center too, but people were calling me. It was much easier.

Nir Kaldero, author of Data Science for Executives, is the Head of Data Science at Galvanize, and he’s trained a bunch of executives from Fortune 500 companies on how to use machine intelligence and data science to transform their companies and bring a positive impact into the world. We spent the first part of our conversation talking about a lot of those myths around AI. Then we spent the next part of our conversation talking about what happens to the companies who really incorporate AI and data science into how they operate. What’s going to happen to these Fortune 500 companies if they choose to do it or to not do it? Nir Kaldero has some thoughts.   Get Nir’s new book Data Science for Executives on Amazon. Find out more at NirKaldero.com.   Nir Kaldero: I started working in the field when I joined the Israeli Military Service at the age of 18, and I was leveraging data to increase efficiency and pretty much save lives. I truly saw the impact and power of leveraging data to make a positive impact on the world. Data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence is a very new field, and when I first heard about it around six to eight years ago, I felt I can make an impact and help reshape this field—especially through education, science, technology—by leveraging my experience that I gained to really make this world a better place and explain to people the benefit of using data and modeling techniques and how it can actually extend to every part of their life. Dispelling Myths about Data Charlie Hoehn: When you go in to these meetings, what are some of the things that they think that you have to dispel? Nir Kaldero: Yeah, there are many of these things, especially around people truly believe and think that artificial intelligence is a technology that will replace us. Some people will think the robot will conquer humanity and destroy the world. Charlie Hoehn: Really? I want to press you on that Nir because I mean, two very smart people have said it’s a potential existential threat. Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk—why is that a myth? Nir Kaldero: Long conversation, but I’ll try to make it short. So working closely with the largest technology companies, the one that actually creates all the chips and the technology infrastructure to run machine learning, data science, and AI, I see that they build this technology with three principles in mind. The purpose, transparency, and ownership. If you really think about the purpose when you build this technology and hardware specifically, you see that companies like IBM, Dell, Intel, and Nvidia build this hardware with the purpose to augment our human intelligence—not necessary to replace us. We are living in an era of a wealth of data, where our brain cannot process the vast amount of data anymore. We are in era of human plus the machine. You can really think about AI and all of this sophisticated modern techniques as a brain helper. AI is a tool. It’s a tool that is here to service us, to augment our intelligence, to help us make better decisions on a daily basis, not necessarily to replace us. We need this technology to basically digest and process the vast amount of data that we have, that we get as an input on a daily basis, and crunch it down and shrink it to a much smaller subset that we can actually read,

If you’re a business owner, you’ve probably realized that there is a massive audience on YouTube and a lot of them are ready to engage with you and potentially buy your products. All you need to do is keep them from hitting the skip ad button. That’s where Tom Breeze, author of Viewability, comes in. Tom is the CEO of Viewability, a YouTube advertising agency that’s built thousands of successful campaigns for clients like Frank Kern, Neil Patel and Brendon Bruchard. Here’s the cool part: Tom takes all the risk, and his agency only gets paid when they deliver results. By the end of this episode, you’ll know how Tom gets his clients to that special moment where every dollar spent on YouTube ads is bringing in $2, $3 even $4 to their business.   Get Tom’s new book Viewability on Amazon. Find out more at Viewability.Co.Uk.   Tom Breeze: I think I got my start when I was at university. I studied psychology for three years. Went on to do my master’s as well in psychology and the whole kind of five years whilst I was doing that, I was like literally every single day, learning more and more about humans, why we think the way we do, how we behave, how we act, how we feel. I think that really set me up for understanding people in general. Just understanding how people tend to think and understanding how we can change that sometimes as well. Charlie Hoehn: What were the lessons that stood out during that time that you still remember? Tom Breeze: I think that one of the things I really remember is that it’s understanding their landscape in their mindset. How someone else thinks is going to be always different to how we think, and that’s maybe because of the way that their environment is set up. Maybe what they’ve learned from the past. But everyone thinks differently. I know it’s obvious thing to say, but when it actually gets down to it. Let’s say for example, we think of creating an ad these days, a lot of people go into that like, what would I think? How would I advertise? I think that’s a bad thing to do. It’s much better to understand what is your market doing? It’s a population of people you’d be advertising to, but understanding each one of those population is an individual. It’s not a number. It’s not a data point. It’s actually a person. A person with a background. They’ve been through some experiences, they’re going to think in certain ways. It’s not right or wrong, it’s just different. If you can understand everyone’s landscape and perception of the world is slightly different, we can tap in to that and get to know those general trends of how a certain type of person will be thinking. It makes our lives so much easier when it comes to advertising. I think a lot of people, when it comes to creating an ad, think that from the outside looking at the advertising industry, people might be thinking, “They got to be really clever when it comes to sales and they got to be really effective when it comes to their communication.” While that sometimes can help, it’s more a case of a foundation and understanding how people think and how we can interact with that. Charlie Hoehn: How do you do that? Tom Breeze: It’s not trying to convince someone something. It’s more tapping into their existing mindset and really, at that point, being helpful. That’s really the crux of the book is to say,

People don’t just buy products, they buy experiences. From the second they consider purchasing to the point when they’re ready toss away an old model for a new one, every moment matters. A business really needs to develop an experience with the entire life cycle in mind. For the past two decades Tedde van Gelderen, author of Experience Thinking, has worked as an experience architect. In this conversation, he’ll be your guide to delivering remarkable experiences that delight people along the way.   Get Tedde’s new book Experience Thinking on Amazon. Learn more from Tedde on Akendi. Tedde van Gelderen: I came out of the airport after a two-hour flight, and we all walked to the rental place—you know these things have like four or five rental places in a row. We didn’t really know which one to pick, and we just go, “Well this seems decent. Let’s go with this one.” So we joined a queue, and as we turn a guy walked up next to me. It baffled me because I was not used to this: he reached out and shook my hand and said, “Hi, I’m Matt. I’m going to help you today.” So he touched me, he shook my hand. It’s not unusual in a business setting, but I was sort of taken aback. I couldn’t remember a moment where when I was renting a car that they introduced themselves and shook my hand. That made me realize the kind of business I’m in, which is all about how people interact with each other—on a personal level, but also on a business level and when they interact with information, with product, and with things around them. It broke the pattern of what I felt was more of a business transactional moment, where you just get in a car and fill in a bunch of forms and then off you go. They’re professional, they’re good, they’re cheerful, they’re polite, but they usually don’t connect with you in that way that early. That was really the moment where I thought, “I need to capture this and help more companies understand this kind of level of interaction that you could have with your clients, or your customers, or your users, and help them understand that it does make a difference.” It was notable, it was memorable, it was something that I clearly remember, and it was really about something completely mundane as renting a car. I will remember this company forever now because this one guy did it differently, did it better. Charlie Hoehn: So, was it memorable because it was a pattern disrupt, or did it make an impact on you because it was so personal and human? Tedde van Gelderen: I think both, and that’s what a lot of companies start to lose. The human side of things is more and more lost in professional interactions and in a lot of things we do now for each other and for making people have a better life in general. But also in a professional sense, to have a better business life. It’s been increasingly harder for companies and individuals to create this differentiator. How are you different than the next guy? How are you better than the next person that provides a product or service? Where is that differentiator? A lot of people grapple with debts and love people trying to find the answers to that. But they’re not very creative in making s...

CEOs and team leaders of Fortune 500 companies and venture backed startups often complain that they have trouble keeping their teams motivated. What if it’s actually not the job of leaders to motivate their teams? What if team members were responsible for motivating themselves? What might change in our companies if teams lived up to this expectation? In this episode, John Hittler, author of The Motivation Trap, proposes a more effective way to lead. A way that doesn’t involve motivating your employees. John is the cofounder of Evoking Genius, which is a business coaching firm in San Jose California. By the end of this episode, you’ll know how to create high achieving teams who find enjoyment in their work and are ready to take initiative and work more autonomously. For every leader who is looking to produce great results for their team and for their company, this episode is for you. Of course, I had to ask John about his last name. At the end of this interview, we talk about what it was like to grow up with the last name Hittler and it was surprisingly profound and moving. So stick around.   Get John’s new book The Motivation Trap on Amazon.   John Hittler: The place that struck me and it hit me several times, and it never dawned on me until I was working with a group out of New York, it was called high end sales group, like million dollar performers. And then they also have people that get started, that flush out really quickly, it’s financial services and it’s five in a hundred, make it to their 5th year and then the first 90 days, 50% are gone because you’re telling a 22 year old you need to go get people to turn over a million dollars of their assets and invest it with you. Nobody in their right mind is going to turn that over to a 22 year old. What the managers and what the leaders of these groups do is they create this contests with an incentive, a trip, you get to make the such and such club, you know, the big hoo-ha club and it includes five days with all of the other guys that hit this mark and it’s in Turks and Caicos. It’s all expenses paid and it’s going to be great. It dawned on me, I was working with a group of about a dozen of them, half of them were super high achievers. They were going to make this club in their sleep so it didn’t affect them one bit. They just schedule it every year on their calendar because at their pace, they were in, they were shoe in. Okay, it would be like LeBron James booking his tickets to the all-star game next year. He doesn’t probably have to worry about “Gee, will I be selected or will the fans vote for me?” he’s in. The all star game trip doesn’t motivate him a bit. Then the other end of the spectrum, they had this kids, you know, and the idea was, this will kick these kids into gear and they’ll really produce like crazy, but they simply weren’t experienced or competent enough. What I found in working with them, because I worked on both ends of the spectrum, they weren’t actually resentful because they had no shot in hell of making this trip and they knew it. So it was actually a disincentive for them. I thought, this guy use this leaders of this company have used this approach, they started this agency in the 70s. In the 70s, that’s what you did, you did incentive based carrot and stick stuff, and that worked. I looked at it and thought, the high end guys don’t pay attention because they’re a shoe in.

Getting the best home mortgage is about more than just considering interest rates and points or whoever offers you the best free giveaways. You want a package that fits your lifestyle and financial goals. In order to get that, you need to boost your mortgage IQ. In this episode, Angela Calla, author of The Mortgage Code and in the top 1% of all mortgage brokers in Canada, deconstructs the myths around mortgages. She tells you what banks won’t say, she outlines your responsibilities as a borrower, and a whole lot more. Whether you’re buying your first home or downsizing or building a real estate portfolio, this episode will help you understand the mortgage process so you can save money and make the right decisions.   Get Angela’s new book The Mortgage Code on Amazon. Find out more at AngelaCalla.ca. Angela Calla: When our family immigrated to Canada, they all lived together in one house and saved money so they could build their families and own their own home. How they did it and their frugalness is just a part of my blood. Growing up at the dinner table, at a very young age, the conversation was always, “Start saving money early because anything that you ever want is going to be five times more expensive and harder than it ever was for us.” The only thing that you have to work for you is time. My parents were super hard workers and I’m an only child. Honestly, I consider them my best friends. They knew, at a super young age, I was willing to do whatever it took and I would follow those who had already demonstrated the success that I admired and wanted to have, and they supported me in that 100%. We were a one income family. My mom stayed home and my dad worked around the clock, and we had a home. When I was in middle school, they said, “Hey, if you want the kind of clothes your friends are wearing, I’m so sorry, we love you so much but we can’t help you, you’re going to have to start working,” and I was like, “No problem. I don’t want to hang out with these people anyways because they’re teasing me that I don’t have what they have.” So I get to make money, get away from them and get some experience. This is awesome. It’s consistent with what you guys always told me. Anything I want, I’m going to have to start at a young age because it’s going to be that much harder. So I basically was an average student before that in elementary school, and I went to middle school and in grade nine, I started going to school from nine to three and working from five to nine. I was able to save money. My teachers were always amazed that I was all of a sudden on the honor roll and I was getting all my homework done, and so they were really reinforcing and encouraging me of that behavior. We had an accounting teacher in one of our classes that said, “Hey, if you bring me $100 today then I can show you how to have a million dollars by the time you’re 65.” That for me was the moment where I was like wow, all the stars have totally aligned for me, I’m so excited, I can’t wait to start this journey early and learn about compounding interest. These moments, these little things that you pick up along the way from teachers who care or mentors who care or people who just care to deliver the best of their knowledge is what makes the difference. It’s not always you know, the whole education as a whole that you learn. Sometimes, it’s one little component that you pick up and then you build the foundation on that. As time went on,

Never before has mankind changed so much, so fast but we still rely on outdated demographic stereotypes to understand groups of people. Now, there’s a better way to discover what matters to your target audience that you’re trying to motivate. A brand new big data tool that will change audience profiling for everything, forever. In this episode, David Allison, author of We Are All the Same Age Now, is the creator of ValueGraphics and has worked in advertising for over 30 years, explains how you can increase your efficiency and create better marketing strategies that are eight times more effective. He’s going to explain the data that he compiled over the years that completely up ended traditional marketing assumptions such as profiling by age. By the end of this episode, you’ll know how to motivate more people, more often. Simply by embracing the power of value graphics.   Get David’s new book We Are All the Same Age Now on Amazon. Find out more at ValueGraphics.com.   David Allison: About 10 years ago, I guess when I first started the branding and marketing firm that I began with a partner, started with two of us working out of a small illegally rented condo in a building that I was living in and gradually we grew and grew and it became large and we had a specialty as a branding and marketing organization, we worked with large scale global real estate developers, resort developers. Anybody who is doing anything that involved putting buildings on land and doing that all over the world. We did very well for quite a long time and then we had our good years and our bad years and after about 10 years, my original partner left and a new guy took his place and he came along, and we didn’t see eye to eye on where the future of the company was going. It was all very amicable. I essentially sold my share in the company to management and after 10 and a half years, of nurturing this company along, was sitting in my spare office going, “Okay, now what?” I’d always written books and given speeches as a new business tool when I had this company, I was writing a little book that was of interest of the particular niche that we were working in. It’s a great way to get invited to conferences and conventions to be a speaker and you get up on stage and talk about your book for a bit somewhere in that room was my next client. I decided it was a good idea and I should write a book for myself now. The previous book I had written was about baby boomers selling their single family home in the suburbs and moving to you know, apartments and condos and more dense urban environments. We all know that guy who, “It’s time to sell my house and try to get a good price for it so I can keep some money in my jeans and just got to downsize now.” We talked to a thousand of those folks and found out how it was going for them. What could we do better? I had baby boomers on the brain, I’d been talking about them writing about them, speaking with them for two or three years and this was about the same moment in our cultural history here in North America, where we all got really just deeply involved with this whole notion of what the millennials were all about. Every article and every newspaper and magazine was about the millennials and every story on the news led with something about millennials this, millennials that, millennials are ruining this or millennials all want that.

If Jay Z and Warren Buffett collaborated on a how to guide to building personal capital, then Jerry Ford’s book, Guns, Drugs, or Wealth, might well be the result. It’s a combination of financial expertise with street smart wisdom. Jerry should know, because he overcame inner city poverty, violence and tragedy and went on to achieve remarkable success. In this episode, he’s going to share his inspiring true story and a powerful three pronged investment strategy that anyone can follow to financial security and peace of mind. Even if you’re an inexperienced investor, you can still reap phenomenal rewards by establishing the streams of income that Jerry talks about. By the end of this episode, you’ll have proven investing strategies that can help you live the financial life of your dreams.   Get Jerry’s new book Guns, Drugs, or Wealth on Amazon.   Jerry Ford: As you guys know, I’m from Detroit, Michigan, but I’m from the ghetto. I am from the gutter. There’s no better way to put it. When I was 14, my brother was murdered on my mom’s birthday. That was by far the hardest thing my family and I ever had to deal with. Shortly, after that, my best friend was murdered. Seeing all of that negativity drove me to be one type of person, and that’s pretty much a product of my environment. The first time I felt like I had a bit of luck is when I went to college. I was able expand my horizons and get out to Rutgers University, and after that, I started personal training where I saw a lot of those high end clients, high end net worth individuals and as anybody may know, when you get around people who are a lot wealthier than you are, you kind of start to wonder what are they doing that I’m not doing. What are they doing that I could be doing? That’s what really got my wealth clock ticking. Before that, I had only known loved ones leaving me though death and seeing all of these things on the street. I mean, I witnessed gun violence, witnessed drug abusers, witnessed murders. I witnessed a lot of things I can leave somebody down their own path. Coming from there to seeing first hand these high net worth individuals and princes and royal family members and celebrities, that really motivated me to do something different. Picking a Path Charlie Hoehn: I’m curious, a lot of people who grew up in your circumstances, they end up staying, right? They go down the path—your book is called Guns, Drugs, or Wealth. They go down one of the first two paths. Maybe they did see some wealthy people but they decided for whatever reason, the story in their head stayed that this is the life I’m destined to live. What do you think separates you from them? What do you think made you choose that path and ultimately succeed on it? Jerry Ford: Well, you know what? It’s funny you mentioned that because my book is called Guns, Drugs, or Wealth specifically for that reason and it’s because where I’m from, there’s choices, right? There’s this choice of choosing the gun, which is the gangs and the territory. And then there is the choice of choosing the drugs, which is finding a way to take the pain away through drugs and alcohol. And then there is wealth, which is not really on the table. What really made me go toward something different was, when I was younger, I competed in martial arts. We always got a chance to travel state to state and a country to country to compete. The first time I traveled outside of Detroit,

More and more people are turning to credit unions for their banking needs, but most credit unions can’t provide the wide range of services offered by large global institutions. They lack the resources to keep up with evolving technologies. Credit unions need to become more flexible in order to remain vital and Brian Lauer, author of CUSOs, believes that credit union service organizations (or CUSOs) can make that happen. In this episode, Brian explains the rules, risks and rewards of forming or joining a CUSO, which is a working partnership that combines the individual strengths of multiple credit unions and financial technology entrepreneurs. Brian is a partner at Messick Lauer & Smith and a thought leader in the creation of forward thinking strategies that link credit unions with private sector entrepreneurs. If you work in the industry of credit unions, this is the episode for you. Brian is going to offer a bold vision to maximize your efficiency and encourage innovation, so that you can provide your members with more options in a higher level of service. Now, here is our conversation with Brian Lauer.   Get Brian’s new book CUSOs on Amazon. Find out more at CUSOLaw.com.   Brian Lauer: I was really interested in copyright when I went to law school because I don’t think anybody goes to law school to become a credit union or CUSO attorney. I went to law school for my love of books and interesting copyright and those sorts of things. I also always had this sort of tingle of business and small businesses and how they worked and operated. In fact, when I was in college, I actually started a record company and put out records for small bands in the local market where I lived and sort of got this taste of how business worked and what you were trying to accomplish. I went to undergrad at the University of Pittsburgh, and that’s where I was running this record label. Even then I was thinking about these things, how at the time, bands were getting taken advantage of by the record labels, and how could we try to combat that and support the local community. So I was only going to put out records for local bands that were from that area in Pittsburgh, and I did. I put out three or four different records, and the deal I would make is that all the costs would come off the top and then all profits would be split 50/50 between the band and myself. You know, 100% of what I did, what I received from it went right back into trying to put out another record. It wasn’t like I was getting rich off it. It introduced me to this idea of people helping people, and that community was really important. Back then, it was this idea that we need to support the local scene and the local bands, and the only way you can do that is to do it yourself. When I came out of law school, I needed a job, and I got that job. I was hired by actually my mentor Guy Masek here at the firm, and what he had built was a business that helped credit unions and their subsidiaries called CUSOs, and that introduced me to actually a world that was very similar to what I was really interested in. First of all, it’s business oriented. There’s no denying that. Everybody’s interested in doing good business and making good business transactions and so forth. But the founding of a credit union is really an industry and a culture that is people helping people and buildi...