On this episode of Rhodes to Success, I interview Gene Hammett, who proves no failure is big enough to keep you from success, even a failure that costs you millions of dollars! Gene is a business strategist who brings with him the experience of running two multimillion dollar businesses. He is fiercely committed to working with high-achieving leaders who want to lead with confidence and achieve financial freedom. Gene is the host of the Leaders in the Trenches podcast and, during this episode, talks podcasts as marketing tools, downloads and frequency, guest pitches, discovering your most profitable customers, niching down, and getting out behind the curtain.

 

Main Questions Asked:

• What kept you going, and what has kept you from ‘podfading?’
• How did you come to figure out who your audience is, and how do you bring them what they want?
• How has the podcast been a successful marketing tool for your coaching business?
• How important are podcast downloads to you when you know the podcast is producing results in your business?
• Talk about the decision to go from three episodes a week to a weekly show.
• Why is knowing the most profitable segment of your business so important?
• Can you niche down too much and exclude people?

 

Key Lessons Learned:

Leaders in the Trenches Podcast

• Prior to launching his podcast, Gene put together an executive roundtable of people he thought would be great coaching clients and spoke to them about what they wanted in a podcast.
• After his research, Gene was confident on what he was here to do, who he was going to interview, the show’s structure, and how long episodes should be.
• When things got tough, having the research prevented Gene from ‘podfading.’

 

Podcasts as Marketing Tools

• The podcast has been a successful marketing tool to grow Gene’s business and extend it to people who aren’t reading the content or seeing him speak.
• The podcast was designed to bring clients into the business, and Gene had his first client within 3 months.
• The turning moment was speaking at Podcast Movement.
• Podcasting has raised Gene’s authority level, as he is seen as a peer and not just a fanboy.
• You can absolutely start a podcast for business purposes.

 

Downloads & Frequency

• Gene was falling into the trap of more content is better.
• More content isn’t better. Better content is better.
• When Gene’s podcast moved from a three episode a week show to two, his download numbers didn’t change much. However, there was a shift when he downsized to one episode per week.
• Download numbers only mean as much as you put into it.
• It’s hard to maintain a high-quality of show when you are churning out so many podcasts.

 

Guest Pitches

• When you get to the point where your podcast is more than a year old, you will get 1-2 email pitches per day requesting to be a guest on the show.
• A lot of pitches are going out to podcasters where there isn’t a good fit between the guest and the host.
• As a podcaster, if you don’t feel curious about someone’s story or expertise, then it’s best to say no to them as a guest.
• If you record an interview that you don’t feel good about, then it’s best not to release them.

 

Who are Your Most Profitable Customers?

• Most people only aim at the people they ‘can serve.’
• If all of those people want to do business with you, then who do you want to do business with? Who inspires you? That becomes your niche!
• John Lee Dumas says if you’re going to have a niche, you have to have it three levels deep.
• The profitable niche is the people who get the highest value from what you offer.

 

Authority Approach

• This involves getting out from behind the curtain, niching down, and becoming an authority figure.
• Speaking gigs can be lucrative in building your business, as people are attracted to leaders.
• Position yourself as the expert and speak in rooms, and create content that is directly in alignment with your most profitable customers.

 

Can You Niche Down Too Much?

• This is a mindset issues of FOMO (fear of missing out) and not wanting to exclude people.
• Uber did not start in every major city in the world. It started in San Francisco; Facebook started in Boston.
• We only pay attention to what is specific to us and directed to us. If you aren’t willing to create the content that speaks directly to the heart of where someone is and connect, then they will ignore what you have.
• Is your goal to reach millions with generic content or build a platform and transform the lives of those that get the highest value of what you offer?
• A powerful way to niche down is to have people apply to your service so you can review them before they pay you.

 

Subscribe to the show in iTunes or Stitcher Radio!

 

The music in today's episode was written by The Danger Os and produced by Nick Palmer. Check them out at https://www.facebook.com/thedangerosmakemusic 

 

Links to Resources Mentioned

Leaders in the Trenches Podcast

Leaders in the trenches (Jessica’s episode)

7 Steps to Getting More Speaking Gigs (Video)

Interview Connections

Podcast Movement

 

On this episode of Rhodes to Success, I interview Julie Gray, who is a holistic time coach. Julie goes beyond traditional time management to guide time-stressed executives and entrepreneurs through a powerful process that results in more guilt-free time, focused productivity, and the rejuvenation of your mind, body, and spirit. She is the author of Digital True For You Time Management Workbook and co-creator of the 21-Day Time Makeover Program with Self Magazine, as well as a featured time expert in the Washington Post’s Time Hacks section. During this episode, we discuss to-do lists, work hours anxiety, finding your anchors, email management, productivity tools, and external triggers.

 

Main Questions Asked:

• What is holistic time management, and how is that different from a time management expert?
• What are your thoughts on to-do lists?
• What are your tips for entrepreneurs who work from home?
• What are your email management tips?

 

Key Lessons Learned:

Holistic Time Management

• Includes a traditional approach.
• In order for systems to ‘stick,’ it is necessary to look at the whole person.
• Time management is not just how you manage your time. It is also how you manage your energy, emotions, relationships, and communication.
• There is no such thing as a cookie cutter time management system.
• Every person behaves differently and has a different preferred work style, flow, and rhythm to his or her life.

 

To-Do Lists

• There are a lot of different ways that are helpful, successful, efficient, and effective to use to-do lists.
• Drill down to 1, 2, or 3 things you can do today.
• Feeling overwhelmed is an indicator that you need to get stuff out of your head and onto a list, as you have too much backlog.
• Make sure to separate your to-do list from a reminder list.
• People will do a ‘brain dump’ and feel overwhelmed, but this is often a list of things you don’t want to forget rather than a to-do list.
• What makes a to-do list is that you actually know you have the time to do those items.

 

To-Do List Tips

• Draw a horizontal line across your to-do list.
• Everything above the line is what you have to get done and you have the time to complete it. This forces you to prioritize at a high level.
• Everything below the line are things you’d love to do but don’t have to be done within your time frame.
• Think of this as have to/want, now/later, or to-do/reminders.

 

Work Hours Anxiety

• What are the activities you need to do that make it feel okay to work less?
• You are going to be more productive when you take breaks.
• Schedule your work hours when you know you are at your best for client calls, interviews, and writing. This is an element of mindfulness that will inform your schedule over time.

 

Find Your Anchors

• Anchors are the activities and times in your schedule you consistently adhere to.
• Let your anchors inform your schedule as a framework and arrange your work around the anchors.
• Everyone falls somewhere along the continuum between spaciousness and structure.
• If you are not fitting something in, then it’s not a high enough priority in your to-do list.

 

E-Mail Management

• Cut the cord when it comes to notifications. This is really distracting and energy draining.
• It can take your brain 15-20 minutes to get back to the level of concentration it was at prior to interruption.
• Any time we can an email or text, we get a boost of dopamine and the pleasure of someone communicating with us.

 

Batching

• When you are on email less, you get less email.
• Processing and checking email is not the same thing.
• The managing of email takes less time.
• Examples: Check email at 9, 12, 5, or check email once an hour for 15 minutes.

 

Manage ‘Off’ Email:

• Shut down the notifications and sounds in order to be ‘offline.’
• This naturally pushes email to where you can process it in batches.

 

Productivity Tools

• We are at the saturation point of productivity tools.
• The system behind the tool is what is more important than the tool itself.
• People get caught up in the ‘perfect tool’ trap.

 

External Triggers

• A compelling external trigger is when other people are dependent on the fact you get certain things done.
• It’s possible to bookend high-priority tasks with external triggers.

 

Subscribe to the show in iTunes or Stitcher Radio!

 

The music in today's episode was written by The Danger Os and produced by Nick Palmer. Check them out at https://www.facebook.com/thedangerosmakemusic 

 

Links to Resources Mentioned

Profound Impact

 

On this episode of Rhodes to Success, I interview Jamie Turner, who is the Less Stress business coach and leadership consultant. Jamie worked in education for more than twenty years, of which the last twelve were as a school principal. During the show, we discuss providing and giving and receiving feedback from your team, coaching versus compliance leadership, how the 80/20 rule applies to feedback, and the five words you need to know when it comes to providing feedback. 

 

Main Questions Asked: 

§  Why is feedback the lifeblood of a healthy business?

§  How do you help business owners receive feedback and not get defensive?

§  Talk about what a coaching style leadership is and how that is different to compliance leadership?

§  What are your tips on how to structure one-on-one check-in calls?

§  Talk about providing feedback to your employees and having difficult conversations.

§  Why is it important to focus more on the positive feedback than the negative?

 

Key Lessons Learned:

Feedback

-          Without feedback a business can’t be healthy and grow.

-          Feedback allows change to happen and new ideas to surface.

-          If leaders can create a safe place where the team can tell them what they truly think, those ideas can improve the business in ways that haven’t been imagined.

-          Feedback has to be two-way and not just the leader giving feedback to the employees

-          The leader of the team has to be the person to invite and encourage feedback.

 

Accepting Feedback

-          The natural inclination when receiving feedback is to defend your point of view. If you do this, people will stop providing feedback.

-          Often, leaders invite feedback but do nothing with it. If nothing happens as a result, people will stop providing feedback.

-          Learn how to be less defensive and let the feedback in.

-          “Thank you so much for that feedback.” This shifts the brain into gratitude mode.

-          Stay curious. Try and understand what the feedback is about.

-          It’s okay to not respond in the moment and offer to reconnect the following day.

-          Learn to recognize the signs of emotions and hit the pause button and give yourself time to process.

 

Coaching Vs. Compliance Leadership

-          Coaching is about helping the employee solve the problem rather than providing the solution.

-          It’s a mix of asking great powerful questions and providing information.

 

One-on-one Check-in Calls

-          80% of the conversation should come from what your team member needs to talk about.

-          “What is most important for us to talk about today,” and take the lead from the employee. This will uncover the challenges they are facing.

-          The aim of the conversation is to help the employee do the best job that they can.

-          We want to create a safe place where our employee can let us know when things aren’t going well.

-          Make it clear what the purpose of the time is, as well as the expected outcome.

-          It’s important to end the call with a plan and next steps.

 

Providing Feedback to the Team

-          Don’t let too much time go by before you have the difficult conversation.

-          Make sure you have at least two concrete examples and are clear on exactly what the issue is.

-          Have the conversation when you aren’t feeling emotional about the issue.

 

The Five Words

1. When
2. You
3. I
4. Feel
5. Because

-          Example: “Jessica, when you come in late a few times a week, I feel really frustrated and upset because we’ve talked about how important it is to be on time for work and how our customers are here…”

 

Positive Feedback

-          Many employees need to hear positive feedback and really benefit from knowing they are on the right path.

-          Often, leaders don’t need positive feedback as they are self-driven.  

-          Positive feedback needs to be specific and letting the employee know what they did well. This enables the employee to repeat that behavior.

 

Subscribe to the show in iTunes or Stitcher Radio!

 

The music in today's episode was written by The Danger Os and produced by Nick Palmer. Check them out at https://www.facebook.com/thedangerosmakemusic 

 

Links to Resources Mentioned

Less Stress Business

Top 3 Pitfalls When Leading Virtual Employees

 

 

On this episode of Rhodes to Success, I interview Ronsley Vaz, who is the chief food sharer at Bond Appetit, a company that unites people over food. He is the host of Australia’s number one food podcast on iTunes and the author of the upcoming book Fuel: Uniting Peak Performers Over Food. During the show, we discuss sharing meals, entrepreneurs and gratitude, essentialism, podcasting, and ‘soapboxisodes.’

 

Main Questions Asked:

-       Talk about sharing food and the impact that has on families and relationships.

-       How did you come to take Bond Appetit and niche it to entrepreneurs?

-       What bad habits and traits do you see with the entrepreneurs you cook for that are holding them back?

-       Talk about podcasting, what it has done for your business, and how you’re leveraging it.

-       Tell us about Podcast Revolution.

 

Key Lessons Learned:

Meet Ronsley

-          Ronsley cooks for entrepreneurs and provides them food, but sees it more as a service to provide time.

-          He has been cooking professionally for more than nineteen years and started to run his own fresh food restaurants specializing in uniquely flavored food.

-          Ronsley focuses on entrepreneurs and people who are high achievers but don’t have the time, mental space, or energy to focus on cooking and eating well.

 

Sharing Meals

-       The importance of sharing can be seen with the move toward the sharing economy. E.g. Uber, AirBnB.

-       We forget the connection made around the table when sharing a meal with someone.

-       When sharing a meal, it is important to keeping the distractions away and keeping the conversation focused on each other.

-       When we stop to eat, our body gets ready to digest.

-       Based on a study of families that ate together at least once per week, there was no sign of depression with teenage kids in the family.

 

Entrepreneurs and Gratitude

-       High achieving entrepreneurs often write daily in a gratitude journal.

-       Exercise: make a list of 100 things you are grateful for.

 

Essentialism

-       This is the discipline pursuit of less and doing the things we are good at and love to do, while not doing the other things and pretending to be busy.

-       We are always taught to look at our weaknesses and make them better, but not taught to recognize our strengths and focus on them.

-       Focus on your strengths and delegate the rest.

-       Figure out what you don’t like to do and takes up your time so you can outsource and use that time to either work on revenue generating business activities or spend time with your family.

 

Making Change With The Auditory

-       The auditory sense is the first sense we develop in our mother’s womb and is how we communicate with our parents.

-       All change in human history points back to a point in time when a speech was made that changed a group of people’s minds.

-       Today, we have the ability to create our own personal movements on passions and have the hardware to create change in our pocket.

 

Podcasting

-       As a PR tool, Ronsley finds podcasting to be more effective than spending thousands of dollars on a PR campaign.

-       It’s important for businesses to go to where people are looking at your message.

-       Create a podcast, get guests to talk about things you’re interested in, become the center point where the information is gathered.

-       Podcasts are great for analytics, as you can trace how many people have been on your show and how many people listen to it.

-       Podcasting is speaking to a niched audience and can be done with very little financial investment.

-       Relationships formed through podcasting with guests and listeners are extremely powerful.

 

Subscribe to the show in iTunes or Stitcher Radio!

 

The music in today's episode was written by The Danger Os and produced by Nick Palmer. Check them out at https://www.facebook.com/thedangerosmakemusic 

 

Links to Resources Mentioned

Bond Appetit

Travel Shoot    

Essentialism

Strengths 2.0

Ronsley Vaz

Podcast Revolution

We Are Podcast

 

 

On this episode of Rhodes to Success, I interview Dr. Ken Nedd, who is a medical doctor and internationally renowned keynote speaker. Dr. Nedd specializes in behavioral sciences and stress management and serves as the president of the International Stress Control Center. During the show, we discuss awareness, focusing inward, trimming the stress, and happiness.

 

Main Questions Asked 

-       What impact does doing something that doesn’t make one happy have on them?

-       Do entrepreneurs have a bigger ability to be happier due to the flexible lifestyle?

-       What can we do when we get past the point of stress prevention?

-       Can different personalities be affected by these activities in different ways?

 

Key Lessons Learned:

How to Beat Stress

1. Awareness

2. Focus inward

3. Learn to listen for deregulation

 

Awareness

-       The 50 trillion cells in the body have to be in a state of harmony.

-       Build up levels of internal awareness and assess how you are feeling, thinking, and what you are doing.

-       Awareness can be practiced.

-       The greatest obstacle to health is not knowing and feeling where you are.

 

Focus Inward

-       One way to enhance happiness is to prevent disease. The greatest source for the prevention of disease is awareness and focusing inward.

-       Remember, too much fire means you’ll end up burning out.

-       As an entrepreneur, you can adjust your schedule and work in a way that makes you happy.

-       Institute a physical and mental health preventative program.

 

Trim the Stress

T - Tense your body and breathe

R - Relax

I - Inwardly sweep tension out with awareness

M - Mantra (Ex. “My arms and legs and legs are heavy and warm.”)

 

What is Stress?

-       Deal with stress by using happiness.

-       Stress is not an event or being tired; it is your response to an event.

-       Raise your perception by saying, “I can handle that.”

-       Use the stress to do certain things such as TRIM.

 

Happiness

-       When you are happy, you have the secretion of certain chemicals in your body.

-       By changing the outer action of your body, you can change the inner singles of the mind.

-       Decide to be happy.

-       Sleep for 7-8 hours per night.

-       When you are angry at someone, write down 5 things you like about them, and the stress will dissipate.

 

Women who live long have three things:

1) Exercise

2) Passion

3) Mastery of emotion (happiness)

 

GREAT

G- Give

R- Relax

E- Empathize

A- Act as if you are happy

T- Thankful

 

Subscribe to the show in iTunes or Stitcher Radio!

 

The music in today's episode was written by The Danger Os and produced by Nick Palmer. Check them out at https://www.facebook.com/thedangerosmakemusic 

 

Links to Resources Mentioned

Dr. Nedd