Author Hour with Charlie Hoehn

If you don’t deliver an exceptional experience to your customer that make them want to shout your name from the rooftops, you might die. I mean this. Companies are faced with the choice to either listen to their customers and thrive or eventually die. Our world is dominated by social media, where our customer’s voices are broadcast louder and wider than ever before. No matter what industry you’re in, you need to listen. In this episode, I talk with Sean McDade, author of Listen or Die and customer experience expert with more than 20 years of experience. You’ll get advice on every step of the process so you’ll know how to turn customer feedback into gold and actually deliver a clear ROI to your company. By the end of this episode, you’ll know how to develop a competitive edge just by managing your customer experience to drive real, impactful business results.   Get Sean’s new book Listen or Die on Amazon. Find out more at PeopleMetrics.com.   Sean McDade: I’ve always been in the world of market research, where we’re reaching out to customers to ask them questions. When I first started my company, there was a client who is doing that on a periodic basis—maybe once a year they would survey their customers and ask them what was going on, how they feel—but they were really struggling because they kept losing customers. Every year, they said, year over year, they kept losing more customers. I would work with them and do our survey once a year, but we weren’t really a bit able to help them more than say “Hey, you know what? Service isn’t great and your call center has to get a little bit better…” They would take these recommendations, but they really struggled with putting them into place. What I realized is that companies like this needed to listen a lot more regularly than once a year or ounce every two years. We started to work with them to identify where were they really falling down with their customers. We identified that touch point and started to measure it regularly. Basically, after every customer visited their store, we would send out a survey, asking how was it, what did you like, was there a problem? The book really was borne out of the lessons that came out of working with this customer and helping them really save their business and helping them not only reduce churn but turn it into net positive loyalty. Meaning, they have more customers year over year than they lose. I think that’s obviously the goal of every business is to not only reduce the customers they lose but gain more of them. The Big Idea behind Listen or Die Charlie Hoehn: What became more apparent, and how come it was much easier for them to make the changes necessary? Sean McDade: It was like the big revelation. We talk about this in the book. It is when you’re listening to customers, it’s not good enough to just listen and tally up the results and figure out, “25% of our customers are dissatisfied, so what are we going to do?” What we actually did is, every time a customer had a poor experience and they were, say, dissatisfied or revealed a problem, we alerted that company to that problem for that customer. We helped them create a process for they would follow up with that customer—we call it “close the loop.” Basically, it’s “make it right.”

 Today’s episode is with Charlotte Kikel, author of Eat in Peace to Live in Peace. If you’re listening to this episode, it’s likely you’ve been trying to heal for a long time, and you’re not alone. We’ve all been taught to listen to people in white coats and numbers at the expense of understanding our own inner wisdom. Charlotte believes that healing doesn’t always look like the media portrays it. True healing is more like a mosaic than a straight line. She believes that it’s possible to live in a way that promotes more health, not more sickness. Charlotte is a nutritionist, an herbalist and the founder of Eat In Peace Wellness Consulting. She’s based in Austin, where I live, and she sent me her book and I loved it. This is a topic that’s not only near and dear to my heart but it’s also something frankly I just like to geek out on. We ended up meeting in person and we had a great conversation. I really encourage you to stick through the whole episode. Note: There was a part where my microphone recorder – the memory card ran out of space and I didn’t see it. If I talk like I’m muted in the background for a portion of the interview, bear with me, because we fix the problem later on.   Get Charlotte’s new book Eat in Peace to Live in Peace on Amazon. Find out more at CharlotteKikel.com.   Charlotte Kikel: Hindsight’s 20/20, right? Now, in the more spiritual framework, I think it was Rudolf Steiner that talks about how people’s life’s work can come from a wound you experience as a child. That was definitely my experience, because my dad ran a sugar company. He was Vice President of Transportation of Imperial Sugar in Sugarland, Texas. I literally grew up hearing about how sugar did not cause any diseases, had no fat because fat is bad, has only 16 calories a teaspoon, and is totally natural and has no effect on children’s behavior. Now, my nickname as a child was ‘the exorcist’. Okay, It should have been Linda Blair to be more accurate. But when I was hungry, I was insane. My body was so accustomed to sugar, but we didn’t know any of this at the time. It was just a matter of, “When Charlotte eats, she’s happy, when she doesn’t eat, she’s unhappy.” My wellbeing was totally tied to food. Wven saying that creates a relaxed sensation in my body, just to acknowledge that sugar was very drug-like in my developing brain. It worked. I would go from crying and angry and kicking a hole in a wall to being sweet Charlotte. It was like a possession of sorts. It all started there. My dream was to have a bakery, I was going to call it “Room for Dessert,” because I loved baking. Baking made me happy, eating it made me happy, giving it to other people made me happy—until I realized that it was causing me a lot of problems. When Everything Changed Charlie Hoehn: What was the tipping point where you started becoming aware? Charlotte Kikel: Once again, in retrospect, there were lots of signs along the way, which is one of the things that my book attempts to point out. People catch this early to where they don’t end up in the hospital like I did. That was my turning point, was when I ended up in the emergency room and they couldn’t really tell me what was wrong. What they said was, “It looks like your gallbladder is going to need to be remo...

We’ve all experienced illness and disease and even aging. But those are not the only things that are attacking your wellness. The US Healthcare system has failed to evolve, like other industries, and instead it’s remained fragmented and inefficient and simply unable to keep up with the changing needs of our citizens. Particularly those of Medicare age and veterans. But there is hope. Whether it’s you or a loved one that gets put on to the healthcare battle field, the best time to prepare is now. In this episode, Darwin Hale, author of Need to Know and a decorated retired military officer with more than twenty years in the healthcare arena, is going to show you the practical strategies to manage the system’s flaws, based on military lessons learned. Some of his solutions include: * How to navigate a system that can cure or kill you * How to use wellness to fight disease * How to arm yourself with a battle plan so you don’t have to fight alone By the end of this episode, you’ll know how to take care of yourself and how to get the care you deserve.   Get Darwin’s new book Need to Know on Amazon. Find out more at DarwinHale.com.   Darwin Hale: When I was in Afghanistan, working in the joint operations center, I wanted to write a book to help people understand what was happening in the world. I had a knack for helping people understand complex things in an unbiased way. Doesn’t matter your political party. My friend’s spouses would say, “Hey, you know, you better run the world, you’ve done this in the military.” I kind of felt like I needed to share that. I got the title and the desire there and it was a pretty heavy topic. Ultimately, they captured or killed Osama Bin Laden, and I was doing other things and had a family. As a not so young man, but my mother had asked me for help with Medicare when she turned 65. So fast forward a little bit past my deployment, and I couldn’t help her. I didn’t understand Medicare. So I had an accomplished military career, had a good, corporate career, had an MBA, and as my mom turned to me for help, I actually had to turn to one of my friends from the military for help. I thought, gosh, if I’m having a tough time making these decisions or helping her make those decisions, probably other people will too. That was really the genesis for my company and for writing the book. Getting a Handle on Health Charlie Hoehn: When did you first really have a breakthrough or I guess I should say a real grasp on the topic? How long did that take? Darwin Hale: You know, it took a long time. I was working as the AT&T healthcare director. My very first job in healthcare was researching national healthcare policies for Senator Graham in Florida right out of college, trying to find my way. Later, that allowed me to take a job at IBM and really interact with our customers and understand their needs. Talking to all those accomplished people at an early age and taking lots of notes really helped me understand the landscape of the industry and concluded that it’s not a technology problem, per se, but that the industry faces and the other things. And that was about a 20-year journey, and then even in the final stages of the book, I still learned things about the future that I didn’t know.

No matter who you are, you’ve probably at some point struggled with your own self confidence or unleashing your inner self or forming lasting friendships or maybe even experiencing orgasms. That’s what this episode with Melissa Ambrosini, author of Open Wide, is all about. Melissa is here to teach us how to have deeper love, rocking relationships and soulful sex. ELLE magazine called Melissa a self-love guru. She’s really trying to be the voice for the modern woman. Rather than trying to preach like a lot of other relationship guides, she tries to be like the voice of your supportive best friend who is sharing her wisdom in a way that makes your journey a lot more fun and simple and easier to follow. Melissa is going to give you tools that you can start using immediately to rewrite your future. So that you can have more authentic connections and to experience heart bursting love with a soul mate who gets you on the deepest level and of course, the best soulful sex of your life.   Get Melissa’s new book Open Wide on Amazon. Find out more at MelissaAmbrosini.com.   Melissa Ambrosini: Most of my life, I was living a life that was deeply that was unfulfilling to myself. I grew up in a house where it was all filled with people pleasersm and there was a lot of shame around our bodies. There was a lot of slamming of the doors when you walk past someone in the shower. It was taboo and rude and naughty and dirty. This kind of planted a seed in my mind that my body was not something to be proud of. It planted another seed that sex and sexuality and my femininity was something that needed to be suppressed. For most of my life, I carried that with me, and when I started dating, I had very little confidence. I dated men just because they liked me and not because my heart really wanted to be in those relationships. I lived a life that was very outwardly focused ,so my measure of happiness was on the boyfriend or the jobs or what I looked like or how much money I was earning. I didn’t know that there was another way to live. I didn’t know that you could actually feel grateful for your body. I didn’t know that your sexuality and your femininity was something to be celebrated. To Rock Bottom and Back Melissa Ambrosini: I went through most of my teens and 20s dating men that treated me like absolute crap and were verbally abusive and really suppressed and in that time, I really suppressed my truth, and I had what I call junk-food sex. Which was just quick, easy, no connection, just about two people getting off as quickly as possible. Until I hit rock bottom in 2010. I ended up in a hospital with a whole host of health issues. I had chronic fatigue, thyroid problems, I was dealing with anxiety, panic attacks, depression, an eating disorder. Not only a whole host of physical manifestations but also mental as well. I was in the darkest and hardest place of my life. I had just had another guy dump me, he had just cheated on me. I had just moved back from living overseas, so I didn’t have a job. I was sleeping on my friend’s fold-out, single little bed—rent free, thank goodness. I had no job, my friends dumped me because I was “too emotional” for them and going through too much at that time. I remember just thinking, what the F? God,

Joshua Miller, author of I Call Bullshit, wants you to be happy. Not just getting by, and not being successful by society’s standards, but can’t wait to wake up every single day happy. If you’re shaking your head, convinced that this is impossible for you, Joshua calls bullshit. The life that you want is attainable, and Joshua believes that you simply need to reconnect with the person you really are. In this episode, Joshua takes some of the overly complicated advice that’s presented by the self-help industry and distills it down to its basic principles and reveals how you can use those to help you become your authentic self. If you’re suspecting that your life maybe doesn’t have to suck, this episode is for you.   Get Joshua’s new book I Call Bullshit on Amazon. Find out more at JoshHMiller.com.   Joshua Miller: I grew up in New York City, in a time where I was surrounded by uber-wealthy people and raised middle class, you know? This is what I was surrounded by and what I knew. It was always kind of this false narrative when you’re surrounded by this. It’s kind of misleading as to where you want to go in your life. Growing up, I had two loving parents who are artists and an older brother. I went off to this high school that I never fit in. I went to this private high school that I was the outlier. I wasn’t the smartest kid, I was a C plus, B minus student, but everyone else was an A plus student. I was the creative art guy, and everyone else was the mathlete or whatever you want to call it. And so, I, for the most part in my high school life, I just never felt like I fit in. I went off to college and struggled to get my communications design and advertising degree because that’s what I was most passionate about, but I unfortunately just was not prepared for it. The call that changed everything for me came my senior year. Working two jobs and to get my act together, I got a call from my mother and my father. My brother was on the phone that my dad was sick, and they weren’t really being truthful with it, about the situation. He had cancer. It was really bad. I knew it was bad, but I also knew they weren’t telling me the truth. It hit home when Thanksgiving break came, and they were like, “We’d prefer you not come home,” which was unheard of. I went to a friend’s house, and obviously, I was concerned and when Christmas break came by, they thought, you know what? You probably shouldn’t come home as well, which tore them apart. Stumbling Into a New Life Joshua Miller: My father was literally falling apart in pieces with chemotherapy and stuff. Here is a man who, this is my idol, my father, my dad, a leader, a friend. Someone I looked up to. And he was withering away and fighting for his life. I was fighting to just graduate, and it was a dark time, a tough time for me. I had to dig deep to focus and graduate college. I was blessed and feel grateful that my father was miraculously able to turn around and, through chemo and stuff, show up for my graduation. He did not look like the man that I knew when I went off to my senior year in college, but there he was. He stood by me in graduation. It was one of my most proud moments. I mean, in my life. Shortly thereafter, he passed way. It changed everything for me.

This episode is the story of how Kristen Hadeed, author of Permission to Screw Up, went from being an almost comically inept leader to a sought after CEO who teaches others how to lead. Kristen is the founder of Student Maid. A cleaning company where people are happy, loyal, productive and empowered. Even while they’re scrubbing toilets and mopping floors. In this episode, Kristen talks about how she got it wrong almost as often as she got it right. Her willingness to admit and learn from her mistakes actually helped her team and gave them the chance to learn from their own screw-ups too. Kristen dismisses the idea that leaders in organizations should try to be perfect. Instead, she encourages people of all ages to go for it and learn to lead by acting rather than waiting or thinking. If you’ve ever wondered, what would happen to you if you actually embrace your failure? How would that affect you as the leader or an employee? By the end of this episode, you’ll know. Get Kristen’s new book Permission to Screw Up on Amazon. Find out more at KristenHadeed.com.   Kristen Hadeed: I was 19, so this was 11 years ago, when I started my company and my first major contract that I got, it’s a cleaning company, so I got this big cleaning contract to clean hundreds of empty apartments. I think we had 800-something apartments to clean, and we had 21 days to do the work. I know nothing about business, I don’t know anything about leadership. I was just a lost college student. I started this company really just to save money. I thought I was moving to New York to be an investment banker. So this was not in my mind, this was not my career. I didn’t really take it seriously. I hired 60 students and there was no – I mean, the selection process was like, if you had a pulse, you were hired for the job. A disaster from the beginning. We get to this complex, and I don’t know what my role is as leader. I give everyone their assignments, and I decide to sit in this air-conditioned clubhouse, just kind of like the office in the apartment complex, and I’m sitting there for eight hours. My feet are propped up, I’m on social media, I’m ordering lunch and I remember thinking to myself, this is easy. Maybe I should not go to Wall Street and be an entrepreneur. This is so easy. This went on for a couple of days, and the work as you could probably imagine was awful, these are empty, filthy college apartments, it’s so hot outside, these people have a leader that does not seem to care about them at all. I didn’t even know their names. I think it was the third day, 45 of them walked into that clubhouse where I was sitting, completely unannounced, and they quit. Stepping out of the Clubhouse Charlie Hoehn: They unionized really fast. Kristen Hadeed: Yeah they did and I don’t know what the other 15 were doing, they didn’t get the memo, but the 45 people, I call them The 45, they walked in, they quit. It was so awkward and uncomfortable. I was eating lunch and they walked in and no one was making eye contact with me. I was saying, “Hey guys, how’s it going?” No one acknowledged me. I could hear them whispering. I heard someone say, “Do it.” And then they got a little closer to me and one person stood forward and she did not look at me and ...

This conversation is for baby boomers who are really at the dental turning point. Maybe you’re ready to eat without pain or speak without feeling embarrassed. Most of all, you’re probably ready to smile confidently again. If any of those situations apply to you, Michael Tischler and Claudia Patch, the coauthors of Teeth Tomorrow, are here for you. Your smile and self-confidence are assets, but as you get older, they get severely compromised by tooth decay, tooth loss, and the health and psychological problems that often a company major dental issues. In this episode, Claudia and Michael lay out their unique solution that helps their patients with dental distress permanently and gives you a great smile that last a lifetime. Michael is the founder of the Teeth Tomorrow franchise network and the implant editor for Dentistry Today magazine. Claudia has been recognized as one of the top 25 women in dentistry by Dental Products Reporter.   Get Michael and Claudia’s new book Teeth Tomorrow on Amazon. Find out more at TeethTomorrow.com.   Michael Tischler: We were providing this acrylic hybrid option, which has really been the standard for most dentists for many years. That was what was accepted, it was often called all on four and it was made out of acrylic with a metal substructure. When we tried this, the success rate was so much worse than what I had done previously. At the same time, though, I had opened up a dental lab in my office to cater to all the dental services that we needed, it was a large practice, Claudia just joined us, and at the same time, two doctors in Barcelona came here. We believe things happen for a reason, and they kind of handed us this Prettau bridge. Claudia Patch: They weren’t even here for that reason—they just happened to bring it with them to show us because they thought we would find it interesting. We just held it in our hands. I felt like it was glowing, like a halo around it, because we saw the potential of it meeting our needs, and we trusted them and what they were telling us about the success that they had. Just to point out—there have been many research studies that show for acrylic hybrids, we’re not the only ones who were having about a 30% issue. That’s published in the literature. It’s just something that type of restoration was vulnerable to. A New Solution Michael Tischler: Yeah, it’s plastic. We saw this Zirconia Prettau bridge and we realized that this really has the potential to really be a solution for the problem that we saw. It looks similar and avoids a lot of the complexities of the previous solutions that are mentioned in the book, what’s called FP1—porous infused and metal bridges, removable, over dentures. And I really believed them. I put two and two together and I said, I’m going to take a chance here, and I basically reconfigured my dental lab to be able to mill cad cam, you know, with the computer design, this bridge, and we started supplying it for our patients. At that point, there were really no articles to back up its success. Maybe there was one, and that was 2012, maybe about 2013 or ‘14 there was one article by doctor Rojas that showed some success with it in a limited study. But I knew that this was going to work. I knew it from the experience of people that introduced it to us...

It’s easy to take life for granted. We can pursue fame and fortune and success and totally forget to take care of ourselves. We miss out on things that bring us joy and happiness and wellbeing. Greg believes that we need to transform burnout into happiness by investing in ourselves so that we can be the best for those who need us most. In this episode, Greg Hiebert, author of You Can’t Give What You Don’t Have, shares the fundamental habits he’s learned as an executive coach and leadership educator to help you become more personally and professionally fulfilled. He also offers techniques to integrate these habits into any challenging busy life. By the end of this episode, you’ll know how to create a more remarkable and fulfilling life and transform into your very best self. Get Greg’s new book You Can’t Give What You Don’t Have on Amazon. Find out more at LeadershipForward.com. Greg Hiebert: Most of us don’t get through life without some kind of psychological wound and I, right or wrong, I had mine. From a very young age, mine was that if you really knew me, the story of my life was “Greg the unlovable worthless failure.” I’d carried that burden around with me for many years, and I had just gotten to a point where I needed to do something with it and as the beginning of the book says I was miserable. In my family, you don’t ask for help and you certainly don’t seek out therapy. But someone recommended that I should seek out this associate pastor at this progressive episcopal church. That associate pastor was kind and caring and he said, “Look, I really think you need to see professional help. I’m not it, and I’d love to refer you to this wonderful, counselor of mine by the name of Kempton Hanes.” And I said yes. Paradigm Shift Greg Hiebert: I went to visit Kempton in this annex of a Presbyterian church in downtown Atlanta. He looked a bit like Santa clause, smiled a lot, didn’t say much, a bit uncomfortable of this warm compassionate, caring human being just brightly smiling at me. I filled up the silence with my story. As I began to share the story that I don’t believe I’ve shared with anyone, it was cathartic and I think by the fourth session though, he spoke very clearly and said, “Man, I’d hate to be your wife.”  “Wow, what do you mean you’d hate to be my wife?” He says, “It’s clear that you don’t see your responsibility and being happy as yours. You’ve put all the burden of your happiness on her. She’s your only friend, she’s your lover, she’s everything to you. It must be a real burden to be her.” And that took me for quite a shock but there was something within me that said he was absolutely right. I went home that night and I said to Claudia, “Is it hard bearing all of, you know, the responsibility for your husband’s happiness?” And she said, “Yeah, it’s real hard and it’s tiring. I wish you’d take responsibility for it.” And that began the last 18 years of work. I’m a work in progress, but once I got cleared that my responsibility, my joy was my responsibility, in that I had it all wrong. The paradigm that I lived in was that one day, when I had enough, one day when I was enough, one day when you know, my ship came in, when I had enough money, when the kids were out ofcollege.Whatever it was, then I would get to be happy,

Are you tired of the same old self-help advice that doesn’t work? Well, so was David Levin (@fromdavidlevin), author of Raise Your Inner Game. In this episode, he talks about the three skills you really need in order to thrive in today’s distracting fast paced world. By the end of this episode, you’ll know how to better control your negative thoughts and emotions. How to shout out distractions and stay focused and how to strengthen your willpower and self-control. If you’re driven to be your best and to make a difference in the world or you just want to feel happier and more fulfilled. This episode is for you. Get David’s new book Raise Your Inner Game on Amazon. Find out more at DavidLevin.com. David Levin: It was like 1992, and I was just really struggling. I mean, it didn’t necessarily look like I was struggling. I’ve always been sort of an upbeat, optimistic sort of—my vibe comes off that way. My future wife, Margaret, and I had been together a couple of years. We had our first little house, I had a little studio in the basement. It just looked like things were moving forward nicely. But inside, it really felt like things were falling apart. I’d been a professional touring musician for 10, 15 years before that, but that had stopped. I was off the road and I was really sort of lost and drifting. I had no idea. I was really losing my identity around that. I was spending money I didn’t have piling up debt. I just really felt like things were slipping out of control, and I had no idea how to do anything about it. One day, this is a funny little story, I was just walking through our house in the middle of the day and I suddenly had the urge to weigh myself. I was like, “I wonder what I weigh right now?” Which doesn’t sound that odd necessarily. I was on a diet at the time so I was thinking about my weight. Here’s the thing, I had already weighed myself that morning and the night before and the morning before that. I really didn’t need to weigh myself right then, especially in the middle of the day. In fact, it was sort of ridiculous to want to weigh myself in the middle of the day, but the pull to do it was really strong and sort of urgent. It Doesn’t Happen Overnight David Levin: There was just something about that, sort of clicked me up into a meta level. Just like, “What’s going on? Where is this pull coming from?” All of a sudden, I saw something I hadn’t really noticed before. It was like that scene in The Wizard of Oz. where Toto pulls back the curtain and you see the guy there pushing the button and pulling the levers, you know, the man behind the curtain. It was absolutely clear to me in that moment that there was something else inside me. It actually felt like another person, and that this pull was coming from them. Seeing that just changed everything. It didn’t happen overnight. I mean, it took a while and years really in some areas to just to fully understand and implement some of the things and the implications of that. That moment is where the pivot started. Looking back, I can honestly say everything I’m proud of in my life happened since then. At that time, in that struggle, I was just tense and testy and fearful and sort of desperate and depressed but k...

Even the best companies and executives can use a set of fresh eyes when they’re tackling tough challenges. So who should they call? Damon Neth, the co-author of X-Formation, believes they should call interim executives who are highly trained experts in organizational leadership and transformation. Interim executives draw on their wealth of previous executive level engagements to help companies blast past barriers, crush their challenges and catapult themselves to new performance heights. And in this episode Damon shares the principles that successful interim executives apply when they’re helping companies attain world-class results. In this conversation, we dive deep into the characteristics that make interims unique, why they are different from consultants who simply perform studies or make recommendations? Damon believes that interims are true unbiased leaders who are interested only in achieving tangible results. By the end of this episode, you’ll know what it takes to work with an interim executive who can actively help your company transform. So whether you’re an executive at a startup or a Fortune 500 company, this episode is for you. Get Damon’s new book X-Formation on Amazon. Find out more at X-FormationBook.com. Damon Neth: So for me, the notion of X-Formation and the concepts in the book started back in the 1990s when I was leading large scale technology initiatives and transformations for massive companies, multibillion-dollar organizations that had worldwide scope. One client in particular, they called me up, they had to have me immediately, they had initiatives that were on fire that needed rescuing. I stopped what I was doing, I went to that client, I had the initial meeting, and I couldn’t help but be struck by the sense of déjà vu as they described the challenges they were having with this massive technology initiative. “Team isn’t getting the right things done. We had no idea when it’s going to be complete. We have no idea if this will deliver value to the organization.” Things like that. The reason that was like déjà vu is because my specialty was rescuing failing tech initiatives, and these were common things I was hearing over and over at organizations. For me, it turned on the light bulb that most companies don’t have the skills or the perspective to really properly address large-scale or important transformations in their business. That’s what X-Formation talks about, is getting the right specialized on-demand executive leadership to leave your company through a transformation or a change that the team itself can’t accomplish. What Is an Interim Leader? Charlie Hoehn: So this book talks about interim leadership. What is interim leadership? What is that about? Damon Neth: Yeah. The book specifically talks about interim executive leadership. There’re all kinds of leaders in different organizations at different levels. Interim executive leadership is finding on-demand talent to solve your specific business problem at the time you need that talent, and that kind of flies in the face of traditional hiring practices where especially at the top of an organization, you look to hire a long-term stable team. The reality in today’s rapidly changing wor...

You’ve probably tried countless diets, but maybe the weight you lose keeps coming back. The truth is that dieting is always going to fail unless you’re 100% committed to a beneficial lifestyle change. Thom King, author of Guy Gone Keto, is here to guide you to your goal of not only shaping up but staying healthy, losing weight and keeping it off. See, Thom always struggled with his weight before he adopted a ketogenic lifestyle and in this episode, he details how a high fat and low carb diet enabled him to drop five waist sizes in a single year. Thom is the founder and CEO of Steviva Brands, which is one of the largest importers, manufacturers and distributors of Stevia and natural sweeteners. His program includes tips for reading and understanding food labels, techniques to make you feel empowered as well as recipes and easy to follow meal plans to keep you fit and healthy for life. Thom did it, and you can too. By the end of this conversation, you might find yourself dedicated to going Keto and becoming who you really want to be. Get Thom’s new book Guy Gone Keto on Amazon. Find out more at ThomKing.com.   Thom King: It was 2015, I was in Las Vegas for a trade show and I was checking in to The Luxor. I don’t know if people in your audience ever stayed at the Luxor before but back in the day, the Luxor was probably a pretty nice hotel. But it is really dated. They upgraded me to a suite, which I thought would be excellent, but when I actually got into the suite, it was basically just like it was back in the 80s. It smelled like stale booze and regret. And that’s how it sort of started. After the trade show that I went to in Vegas, I had dinner with some clients, and of course I overindulged in food and some wine and dessert. The next morning, I woke up and felt somewhat shitty, but more than that, it’s like, I woke up in this room that just reeked and I just felt terrible. You know, I went to the mirror, I looked at myself, and I just felt like the biggest hypocrite on the face of the planet. I own a company that we help consumer goods companies reduce sugar, and we push the keto cause and low carb cause, paleo cause. I was looking at myself in the mirror, I was 35 pounds overweight, my blood pressure was like 190 over 99. I was on blood pressure medication, I was going through my second divorce and having the crap sued out of me. I just looked in the mirror and it’s like, “What’s going on? I mean, look at you, you’re fat, you have low energy. Your personal life is a disaster. Where’s your integrity?” I’ve always practiced meditation, I went into a meditation and just really associated so much pain with my slothful indulgent behavior that I took a stand. I said, “This will be the last day that I live this particular lifestyle.” I made a commitment to myself that from this point forward, I will only live in a state of integrity and dignity. Being 35 pounds overweight, you know, I had a lot of weight to lose, but mostly, I just had to be honest with myself and honest with my friends and my family about my lifestyle. That is when I began my ketogenic journey. Guy Discovers Keto Charlie Hoehn: How did you get into promoting and selling products that endorse the keto healthier lifestyle in the first place? Thom King: I dabbled in it,

Have you ever misread someone’s actions at work? Maybe you thought they were being a jerk bur for them, that’s how they communicate with everybody. Well, Dan Silvert, author of The True Competitive Advantage, is an expert at demystifying the workplace behaviors of your colleagues. As an executive coach and strategic adviser, Dan helps organizations identify personality types so they can predict how they’re likely to behave within the company. Our mistaken explanations for other people’s behavior can get in the way of unlocking opportunities for growth in our careers. We simply misread why people say and do the things that they do. By the end of this episode, you’ll know how to make the most of your relationships with your colleagues. Get Dan’s new book The True Competitive Advantage on Amazon. Find out more at OrderDISC.com. Dan Silvert: Many years ago, my wife and I and two children moved from overseas to the States. Prior to that, I had been a musician and a sound engineer, and I had lucked out and just an amazing nine to five job composing music. When we moved to the States, that ended. I essentially had to start from scratch. I was unemployed for 10 months with two kids and a wife who wasn’t working, and this was the longest 10 months of my life. It probably shaved five years off of my life. I did just about everything wrong when it came to looking for a job, and I learned what to do right, making everything wrong first. And eventually, I sat down with a transition coach and he was extremely helpful and pointed me into some very good directions. I was able to get a job in sales, and from that point on, thank goodness I haven’t been unemployed since. But I always look back on that searing experience of tremendous stress and self-doubt. Probably the best learning experience of my life. Within a few years, I decided that I wanted to get into career coaching myself, because I knew what to do and I saw a lot of people out there suffering and as lost as I was. I left sales and I became a transition coach, and I’ve worked with over a thousand people, mostly executives who were transitioning from one phase of their career to the next. That really got me into the coaching world and what different types of people need in order to take the steps required to make progress in life. Depending on who you are, there are different buttons that need to be pushed. That got me interested in personality. Why is it that some people are really motivated when you get in their face and speak very bluntly to them? Others will completely shut down if you were to do that. Rock Bottom Charlie Hoehn: Before we get into sort of the personality types and why some people are more successful than others, can you talk a little bit about maybe the hardest day or what the dynamic was like between you and your family when you were in those months of unemployment and trying to get a job, what did your days even look like? Dan Silvert: I did what most people do, which was I spent an enormous amount of time on the job boards. Now, this is going back many years. The internet wasn’t nearly sophisticated, this was before Linkedin, there was still job boards and I was answering job postings and I was trying to network into interviews.

If you work for a traditional insurance agency or broker, you’re probably leaving millions on the table, along with the opportunity to create the dream life you’ve always wanted. You’re forced to waste time on meetings, and you have little control over your time or compensation. Even worse, your job can disappear, taking all your clients with it. But in order to thrive, Bruce Johnson, author of Earn It, Own It, believes that you need to break those corporate bonds. In this episode, Bruce gives you his roadmap to independence. Bruce is the Vice President of Insurance Office of America. In this conversation, he tells you how to become a sales entrepreneur. How to earn significantly higher commissions and scale your business through partnering, all while being able to spend more time with your family. Get Bruce’s new book Earn It, Own It on Amazon. Connect with Bruce on LinkedIn. Bruce Johnson: About 18 years ago, I was an insurance producer in a pretty large local agency, it was a quality agency with a lot of good people. I really enjoyed everybody that I worked with and most things about it. Except, I don’t know, I just kind of felt like something was missing, like I wasn’t really giving it 100%. I wasn’t really experiencing the success that I wanted to have by that stage in life. It just kind of seemed like I was going through the motions. Around that time, my boss invited me into his office to review my production, and we were going to talk about my new business goal for the coming year. So you can imagine how much I was looking forward to that meeting, right? Anyway, we went in there and just to picture this scene, our office was in a high rise building in downtown Tampa and my boss had this corner office with these huge windows, and it was a big office. My boss, he was six foot seven, silver hair who wore perfectly tailored suit every day. He was the prototype to corporate CEO. For me, it was a little intimidating. Every time I’d go in there, he’d always been really cool to me and treated me well, so I didn’t really have any need to be intimidated necessarily. But I just kind of was anyway. Especially with the subject we’re about to talk about. Going for Bigger Goals Bruce Johnson: We looked at my numbers and reviewed everything, and up until that point, my production goal had been to write $50,000 each year in new business revenue or commission which at the time, 18 years ago. I thought it was okay but that wasn’t really a stretch or it wasn’t really a super high goal, you know? By any means. Just based on my normal activity, I didn’t really have to work super hard to hit that goal, so I pretty much was able to hit it without straining too hard. He looked at me and we both recognized that I had some potential. I had potential to do more than that or to be better than that. We mutually agreed that my new business would be more like a $100,000 in revenue or more every year, going forward. Essentially, within a space of about five minutes, we agreed that my goal was going to be double, more than it ever had been, and I had never really hit that or written that much business before. I’d never really worked that hard.

The evidence is in: you can reduce cancer risk and support treatment by focusing on six key areas of health and wellness. Over the last decade, the scientific data on the link between lifestyle, environmental factors, and cancer risk has been accumulating at an accelerated rate. It seems, every week, we learned something more that we can do as individuals. That decreases our risk of cancer and improves the likelihood of long term survival. Dr. Lorenzo Cohen and Alison Jeffries, the coauthors of Anticancer Living</i>, believe in the mix of six. There are six areas that you can focus on, that will promote an optimal environment for health and wellbeing. While each of those six plays an independent role, it’s the synergy that creates all six factors. If you’re wanting to either delay or prevent or recover from cancer, pay attention to this episode, because these six factors can radically transform your health.   Get Lorenzo and Alison’s new book Anticancer Living on Amazon. Find out more at Anticancer-Living.com. Alison Jeffries: You know, we started this book idea a long time ago, but we didn’t know it. We were a young family who had one child and what we started to see was people around us making choices of around health for their kids. We kind of reacted to and thought, now, do we want to be doing this? We started questioning it, and Lorenzo would come home from work and talk about what the latest science was saying about lifestyle and cancer. We started realizing that we wanted to do everything in our power to give our children as many tools in their tool box to live a healthy life. So that was the start of our book. At first, we focused on our kids and then we got to a point where we realized, we weren’t doing it but we were doing it for our children. We had to reassess and start making these changes ourselves. That was really the start of Anticancer Living. Why Cancer? Charlie Hoehn: Why the concern with cancer? I mean, some parents get concerned over a bunch of things, why’d you focus on cancer? Lorenzo Cohen: Well, I work at Indiana Cancer Center.One of the top cancer centers in the country and you know, I have the focus of course as a scientist on cancer. But in fact, these same factors that we talk about, the mix of six line up for cardiovascular disease which includes heart disease and stroke for diabetes, for Alzheimer’s, for metabolic syndrome, essentially for the non-communicable diseases that are responsible for the majority of more biting and mortality in our world, cancer being one of the top killers. Why we tend to focus on this is that there are things that we can do to reduce our risk. It personally kind of hit home when I found out my father at 69 was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and finding out that his father, my grandfather, was also diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer. I was looking into the future and knowing that change needs to happen now if I want to reduce my risk. What is it that I can do personally and for our children and for our community to reduce my risk as much as possible? About Anticancer Living Charlie Hoehn: Let’s begin with the big idea in your book. I’ve read other cancer books, what makes this book unique, what differentiates it?

If you’ve ever wished you knew the exact thing to say that could instantly close a sale then this episode is for you. Brian Robinson, author of The Selling Formula, has worked in sales and marketing with some of the best known companies in the world, including Coca-Cola and Johnson & Johnson. After leaving his corporate career, he helped launch a successful startup where he was the first person in the history of the industry to sell more than a million dollars in business in 12 months, entirely by phone. He has more than two decades worth of in the trenches, battle tested, face to face and phone presentation knowledge that can benefit anyone, whether you’re working for fortune 500 companies or you’re an entrepreneur. In this episode, you’re going to be transformed into someone who communicates like a top performing sales professional. These are steps that can instantly increase your sales.   Get Brian’s new book The Selling Formula on Amazon. Find out more at TheSellingFormula.com. Brian Robinson: It started about 18 years ago, I was working for Johnson & Johnson and my fourth division with them and came to a place where in sales and marketing, I was highly penetrated in my territory, about 85% of the business we were enjoying. It was going to take a lot of work to get the additional 15% that was left. A friend of mine approached me and said, “Hey, I am starting a company and I’d like you to consider joining me,” and the opportunity looked strong. I was kind of disappointed that all the years as I looked back, working in corporate America, I wasn’t really building equity in myself, it was building equity in a company and so I thought, I’d really like to build equity in a company that I have some interest in. For about four months, my wife and I really prayed about it and were very serious about it and we decided to jump in. About six months into this endeavor, I reached kind of a watershed moment where my wife gave birth to twins. We had six children, 14 and under at the time, we have a total of eight children now. Yeah, even when I say it, I’m shocked. I’d been driving about 1,500 miles a week, cold calling our prospects, driving from state to state and she was drowning at home with the twins. I had to figure out a way to get off the road. Interestingly, what came into my hands was a really life changing audio series by Joe Polish and Tim Paulson entitled Piranha Marketing. In that, Joe talks about prerecorded messages. I remember vividly, driving up to Kansas and hearing this thought about being able to record a message and drive people to that number, and then they’ll respond to you. Immediately, I yelled out loud: This is the answer, this is it. I called my partner, explained it to him and he, it kind of just flew over his head. It’s like whatever, I’ve got to keep calling people, I’ll talk to you later. I came back to the office, I set up one of our extensions with an extended voice greeting which became the message, and at the time, we had relationships with several state banking associations. That was our focus, was banks. I sent out a fax blast—yes, a fax blast—when it was important and started to get the lines got jammed. People were calling, leaving messages, and I was able to generate leads this way.