Influencer marketing seems to be quite the buzz-phrase these days, but for good reason. Tapping into social media influencers to help promote your product or service can be a viable marketing strategy for your business. 

My guest today is Dr. Emmanuel Probst, a Director of Media and Digital presence at Kantar Millward Brown, a Professor at UCLA, and someone who has been studying consumer behavior and psychology for over 15 years. He's the author of the upcoming book entitled Tension: How to Grow Remarkable Brands By Fulfilling Consumers' Quest for Meaning. 

What We Discuss in This Episode:

• What is “influencer marketing”?
• What makes an individual on social media “influential”?
• Should brands rely on influencers or become the influencers themselves?
• Why the more emotional your product is, the more important it is for you to work with influencers
• Can a service-based business use influencers?
• Should a brand always look for the right influencer who is in alignment with their brand or is the amount of followers sufficient?
• What are the emotional elements of consumption and how can you emphasize that aspect of your product/service?
• What you should do before you engage with influencers

Resources Mentioned: 

Emmanuel's article on The Psychology of Influencer Marketing 

Contact Information:

Emmanuel's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmanuelprobst 

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Learning to trust your instincts and knowing that you are the expert of your own experience are what should act as a guiding light for anyone looking to take more risks in their lives. Joining me today is Salem Afangideh, a social justice lawyer, storyteller, podcast host, and startup founder.

What You’ll Learn in this Episode:

• How you can recognize when you’re in a space that’s not conducive to your growth
• Should you go all in on risks or have a backup plan?
• Learning to appreciate the natural transitions of your career(s)
• Why you are the expert of your own experiences so trusting your process is key
• What self-leadership means and looks like
• Is leadership the same as influence?
• Can you be a leader on a micro-level?
• Why focusing on affirmations is better than setting goals 
• How to combine affirmations with “harder” business goals

Resources Mentioned:

Iban Care

Thrive Table Podcast 

Alex Elle 

Contact Information:

IG: @Salem_afangideh

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We live in an evolved eco-system. The context of our work and social lives is fundamentally different. We are now in the social age and that requires that we step up and become social leaders. What exactly is a social leader and what will it take for us to become social leaders? That’s what my guest and I discuss in this episode.  

I’m joined by author, speaker, captain at Sea Salt Learning, a consulting firm helping organisations understand the Social Age, Julian Stodd.

Julian’s work is an exploration of the changing nature of work, the evolution of forms of power, and how social nature of power is disrupting hierarchical structures.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Organizations exist to serve the community, not the other way around
• How a person or company with a compelling authentic story can hold the most powerful companies or governments accountable
• No longer are rigid structures and archaic organizations necessary because of the rise of social authority and communities
• How we, as the business owners, build in our own constraints in our own companies when there’s nothing forcing us to do that. We do it to ourselves
• Even with the changing nature of work, there is still room for formal systems
• What the social age is and why it is more important than the digital age
• Why we shouldn’t fear the companies we’re growing and instead should realize that we can design these orgs as we want them to be
• Organizations used to be at the center of power and control but that’s no longer the case, and unless you realize that as a business leader, you’ll lose track of your company
• What social leadership is and how it’s earned
• The 5 things social leaders do every day

Resources: 

Julian's 5 Things Social Leaders Do Every Day graphic

Contact Information:

www.julianstodd.wordpress.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/julianstodd

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There are several truths that are common to all exceptional customer service experiences and certain behaviors that, when performed by employees, truly elevate the customer service experience.

My guest today is customer enthusiast, speaker, and a former 20-year Marriott International employee, Steve Curtin. Steve joins us to discuss these common truths and behaviors that are present in all exceptional customer service experiences. We discuss Steve’s book, Delight Your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary. 

What You'll Learn in this Episode:

• Why employees consistently perform their job functions but inconsistently perform tasks for which there is little to no reward
• Every job is made up of two parts: job function and job essence. What are these two? 
• How you can hire and ensure that job essence requirements are communicated properly
• Why it’s important for employers to validate and inspect job essence in order to convey its importance to employees
• The three truths of exceptional customer service
• Why most employers are happy with their employees being competent but why great leaders ensure that their employees know why they’re doing what they’re doing
• 3 simple ways to enhance and elevate the customer experience
• The importance of expressing genuine interest in your customers when delivering your product or service
• The effect of unexpected surprises on lasting impressions
• How do you deliver service heroics?
• What the best way to interact with customers is and solicit feedback in order to improve
• If you’re a smaller business with a smaller clientele base, how can you solicit feedback?

Contact Information:

www.stevecurtin.com

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Customers don't want to be sold to. However, they do want to know about businesses that offer solutions to their problems.So how can you, as a business owner, craft your marketing and sales messages in a way that resonates with your prospective customers and gets them to take action? Through storytelling!

I’m joined by leader, speaker, and Vice President of Products at Liquid Web, Chris Lema. Chris is a master storyteller with a story for every scenario. He shares a few with us in this episode and they will certainly change the way you think about sales pitches.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why most communication is forgotten within an hour and what you can do about making your message resonate
• If you improve memorability regarding your message, you’ll grow your business by simply doing that
• Attaching a new idea to a previous idea is how ideas and stories resonate with people. That’s why it’s important to tap into preexisting stories and ideas in order for your idea to stick
• The importance of storytelling in motivating others, like your employees or customers, to take action
• When it comes to crafting your marketing message and the copy on your website, where can you find the appropriate stories to tell?
• Always collect stories. Even if you have no idea how you’re going to use them; collect them
• What is the bridge framework and how can you use it to make more sales?
• You have to tell the story of pain in order to connect with customers who have a similar pain and who are looking for a solution
• Why you shouldn’t worry about emphasizing the pain in your sales message because with the right audience, that message will resonate
• Collect data from your customers by asking questions about them, their families, their work, etc. in order to craft your sales pitch
• How “marinating in the problem space” aka listening to the customer’s problems in order to tailor your message to their problems, will help you make more sales

Resources Mentioned:

Carol Dweck – Mindset

Contact Information:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/chrislema

Blog: www.chrislema.com 

Chris's Leadership Blog

courses.chrislema.com

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As your business grows, so will your team. While many business owners might overlook the importance of hiring the right people and nurturing a team, we, leaders, know how important our team members are to our success as a whole. So how do you start building a team that works well together and provides the support you need to continue to grow? When you have a growing team, what can you do to make sure you’re providing the support your employees need to continually expand?

In this episode, I’m joined by intellectual property attorney and fellow podcaster Autumn Witt Boyd who takes us into her law firm and breaks down how she’s been growing her team.

What We Discuss in This Episode:

• The moment Autumn decided to start expanding her law firm and why she started with a Virtual Assistant (VA)
• How Autumn decided to take on another team member follower her VA
• How to decide where in your business you need the most help
• The fears that come along with hiring someone, mainly, financial fears!
• What about maintaining the same level of service? Is it concern when you’re hiring someone?
• Why you shouldn’t try to find someone who is a duplicate of you. Search for someone better at whatever they’re hired to do
• How much control over an employee’s work schedule should you have?
• Is there value in using a placement service to help you find help?
• Are team meetings necessary? Are they effective?
• The value in going through a vision board exercise with your team at team retreats
• Do you think about how you can support your team members in their own personal and professional goals, even if those goals lead them away from working for you?

Resources Mentioned:

Dina Eisenberg's episode on delegating and outsourcing 

MomSource Network

Manager Tools Podcast

DISC personality test

Heather Hubbard 

www.awbfirm.com

[email protected]

Legal Road Map Podcast

Thanks for Checking Out the Show Notes and for Listening!

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Understanding how your customers make decisions when confronted with things like pricing, limited time offers, and diverse choices, can help you as a business owner make better decisions in your own business. There are certain patterns that can be extrapolated and accounted for when building your products and services.

My guest is adjunct assistant professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Linnea Gandhi. Along with teaching, Linnea runs a company called BehavioralSight, which applies insights and methodologies from the growing field of behavioral science to everyday business problems. 

Our discussion revolves around behavioral science and the information we can extract as business owners from the behaviors of our customers that will help us provide better service.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why customers (aka humans) are working with limited cognitive resources and aren’t very logical in their decision-making
• The common decision-making errors that all humans make and how business owners can understand those better
• Anticipate decision-making errors that consumers might commit so you can build your products and service to help them avoid them
• As a new entrepreneur with no existing clients, how do you begin to understand the behaviors of your prospective customers? 
• Writing the narrative of how your new product or service could be a failure, you begin eliciting all the risks and errors and that allows you to get the benefit of hindsight prospectively
• How the left-digit bias affects how you price your products/services
• How many choices are too many? In-n-out and Cheesecake Factory sit on both ends of the spectrum when it comes to how many food items they offer so which one is more effective?
• Enriched vs. impoverished offerings – which one will a customer select?
• The importance of social proof like testimonials, especially when there’s uncertainty around your product/service
• Time scarcity and the role urgency plays in getting customers to take their wallets out

Resources:

Daniel Kahneman 

Sheena Iyengar – “jam” study

Robert Cialdini – Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Contact Information:

Twitter: @linneagandhi

www.behavioralsight.com

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For many, public speaking is terrifying. For others, it’s just a fun hobby. For me, having the opportunity to stand in front of a crowd and capture their attention for a prolonged period of time is a privilege and an amazing opportunity for business development, when done right. 6 years ago, I decided to take public speaking more seriously and make it part of my business. Through my experience, which I share with you in this episode, I’ve learned how to work the stage, so to speak, to make public speaking an additional source of revenue in my business.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:  

• Before you begin your speaking journey, you should know what you’re talking about
• Why selecting a few topics to become known for is way more effective than listing about 30 things you can talk about
• Practice and preparation are key and can mean the difference between delivering a mediocre presentation and delivering a presentation that helps you secure business long after you present
• Even if you’re serving on a panel with others, how can you best prepare?
• Set up a speaker's page either on an existing website or as an entire website dedicated to you as a speaker
• Should you speak for free or only accept engagements that pay you?
• What can you be doing with your presentation slides to help provide the necessary information for attendees to know about you
• When responding to questions from audience members, what can you say to let them know you're available to help?
• How can you promote an upcoming speaking engagement on social media without sounding obnoxious?
• What is the best way to get the most out of video footage that you record while presenting?
• How to find conferences to apply to participate in as a speaker

Resources:

My Speaker Page (for your reference)

The Rebel Speaker Podcast 

The Speaker Lab Podcast, episodes specifically about demo videos:

Ep. 56

Ep. 40 

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It’s simple. You can’t do all the things. As your business grows, the list of tasks you need to get through grows as well. Knowing when you need to reach out for help is crucial to your continued growth as a business owner.

In this episode, I’m joined by outsourcing queen, Dina Eisenberg, as she shares her tips on how to identify the tasks we shouldn’t be spending time on, cultivating our team (whether virtual or in-person), and covering the costs of outsourcing.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why your business requires you to be the thought leader and why you should delegate the administrative tasks to someone else
• What is the mindset needed to begin delegating? (because we all know it can be a huge mental roadblock to let go of control)
• How outsourcing allows you to solicit new ideas into the business
• As the business owner, you need to be at the creative thinking level and not at the “doing” level
• How to overcome excuses you tell yourself when considering outsourcing (ex: not having enough money, not having enough time to train someone else, etc.)
• The 3 steps to outsourcing: 1) Identify the tasks, 2) cultivating the team, and 3) covering the costs
• The 3 lies that entrepreneurs tell themselves to talk themselves out of outsourcing:
• Where to even start when identifying the tasks you should outsource
• How to select the team that’s going to help you
• Should you start with virtual assistants or in-person help?
• What is the connection between delegation and leadership?

Resources:

Upwork

Mailchimp

Freelancer

Fiverr

Contact Information:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/dinaeisenberg

www.outsourceeasier.com

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Business leaders have much to learn from how humans behave on social media. By applying certain principles that make social media work so well, like trustworthiness, openness, and courage, business owners can humanize their company and allow for it to grow just as successfully as social media has grown.

My guest today is accomplished speaker, author and consultant with deep expertise in workplace culture, generations, and growth - Jamie Notter. Jamie is the author of several books including the one discussed in this episode, Humanize: How People-Centric Organizations Succeed in a Social World. 

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• How social media is designed around human interaction, while organizational leadership is designed around machines
• The decentralized nature of social media, which disperses power throughout its users, is worth mimicking in your company
• 4 principles that make social media work and those which you should apply in your business
• Just like with social media, you don’t know how it works until you do it. This also applies to leadership and management
• Why you shouldn’t fear experimenting with how you run your business
• Engagement by your employees is a result. If your company is lacking engagement, then you need to ask yourself how lack of engagement is a result of your company culture
• The importance of telling your customers things (i.e. be open about what’s going on inside your company)
• What does generative mean and how do you apply this principle at work?
• Your company culture is concrete and tangible. It’s an expression of what’s valued.

Contact Information:

Jamie's company site: www.humanworkplaces.net

Jamie's personal website: www.jamienotter.com

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Is leadership an inside job? Why is it important for people to learn how to “be” before they can “do” and “have”? Can a business owner lead when he/she has no employees yet? These are all questions leaders must explore during their entrepreneurial journey. In this episode, we’re talking about how business owners can become conscious leaders when they’re still a company of one and as they grow. 

I’m joined by the host of the Conscious Leadership Weekly podcast and founder of the Institute for Conscious Leadership, Kymm Nelsen. For nearly 20 years, Kymm has been on a mission to inspire professionals toward holistic business practices. She is completing her doctorate in Social Psychology, with her dissertation research focused on the impact leader stress has on organizational success. 

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• What's so attractive about leadership?
• What is conscious leadership?
• Why conscious leadership begins with self-mastery and checking your ego
• How a huge part of conscious leadership is figuring out how you can co-create with others within your organization
• What opportunities exist that allow each person to lead their own lives
• The three main energies in life
• Why is it that wanting to “change the world” is such a popular catchphrase?
• Is it realistic to expect a new entrepreneur to take time to work on their leadership skills when they’re first starting their businesses?

Contact Information:

Conscious Leadership Weekly podcast

Institute for Conscious Leadership - www.iforcl.com 

Thanks for Checking Out the Show Notes and for Listening!

I really hope you enjoyed this episode. I would really appreciate it if you shared this show with a friend who could benefit from listening to this particular episode.

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Leaders sure do love company so be sure to get social with me: 

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Or email me at nicole[at]nicoleabboud[dot]com