The first full year of Overpass’ weekly webinar series, The Evolved Sales Leader, has come to a close – and what an insightful year it’s been!
Starting out on this journey, Overpass’ goal was, and remains, to create a high-value show where founders, business, and sales leaders could gain actionable insights they could put into practice the very next week in order to see growth results within their companies.
Throughout the year, many brilliant business and sales leaders joined us to help make this goal a reality.
Listen in as we dive into the honorable moments and highlighted topics from 2022 with our host, Jonathan Fischer.
Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn for more engaging sales insights and discussions! Happy watching!
Special Thanks:
This show would not be possible without our incredible host, sales leader, and business mastermind, Jonathan Fischer, who dedicates his time every Friday afternoon to bring you the golden knowledge nuggets you crave. Jonathan – the Overpass team appreciates you!
Highlighted Guests:
When Bill set out to build his own company, he envisioned helping sales organizations accomplish their goals and objectives through process improvement, world-class sales training, and cutting-edge technology. In a little over a decade, he's done just that. Sales Excellence has become a world leader in sales methodology and training, helping hundreds of companies across six continents achieve breakthrough sales. How? By solving specific sales-related-problems through highly-customized training and technology solutions.
Jim Cathcart’s accolades are seemingly endless. He’s a world-renowned professional speaker, strategic advisor, motivational mentor, sales consultant, and author of 23 books including international best sellers: The Acorn Principle and Relationship Selling. In fact, it was his book Relationship Selling that earned him a spot in London’s Sales and Marketing Hall of Fame. With over 2.5 million views on his TEDx talk and a top five mention for Sales/Services Speakers five years in a row, it’s no surprise that esteemed clients like U.S. Bank, Pfizer, AT&T (plus millions of other businesses and individuals alike) have taken the opportunity to learn from Jim throughout the years. Now, you can add your name to the list.
Monika is co-creator and host of B2B social selling podcast "Straight to Business" & co-founder of Ready For Social, Thought Horizon's proprietary social selling/content distribution platform. She's used her expertise to help businesses, community organizations, NGOs, and not-for-profits profit by using social platforms more effectively. Listen to her second Evolved Sales Live episode, 'How to get the most of out Linkedin in 2023' here.
Simon Warman-Freed has 40 years of experience in sales and marketing covering a range of industries including enterprise technology, IT, and service sectors across both Enterprise and SMB markets. He currently leads new business development at Network Sunday and also runs IBG International, a boutique sales and marketing consultancy that helps companies of various sizes focus on accelerating their growth using a data-driven approach.
Todd Clouser is the Lead Brand Marketing Manager at Refine Labs, a group of revenue-focused demand marketers that guide teams on the fast track to results. His expertise lies in creating marketing initiatives from a buyer-centric perspective to create insightful marketing solutions for companies worldwide.
With nearly two decades of sales leadership experience for Fortune 500 companies, Ian Koniak helps B2B Account Executives perform to their full potential and crush their quotas by mastering the mindset, habits, and skills needed to perform at the highest level. He’s personally generated over 100 million dollars in sales and was named Top Director of Sales for Ricoh and Salesforce’s #1 account executive. After a near-death experience, Ian started a coaching business to serve others and help them achieve incredible success by mastering the mindset, habits, and skills needed to perform at the highest level. His mission is to share his learnings over 19 years in tech sales to help AE's perform their best. To hear his full story, visit www.iankoniak.com.
CEO and Co-Founder of Sendoso
Matt Wolach is the founder and CEO of multiple SaaS businesses, which he has successfully sold after producing 63% demo close rates with his companies generating more than 300 inbound leads per month. He’s grown his companies at a fast enough rate to win 5 straight Inc. 5000 words for the fastest growing company. Today, he spends his time running a few SaaS companies as well as helping other SaaS founders implement his proven process throughout their own companies.
John Livesay is a four-time author, sales coach, keynote speaker, and previously, Conde Nast’s salesperson of the year. After finding his niche in sales storytelling, John has helped many enterprise sales teams use the power of stories to win more sales. His goal? To help teams tug on heartstrings in order to get their potential clients to open their purse strings.
Check out the transcription of this webinar episode below!
Jonathan Fischer 0:00
hey it's time once again for evolved sales live. Welcome back, Jonathan Fisher, very happy to be your host on this special end of Year Holiday Season Episode of Evolve sales. And we want to do something a little bit different. We've been at this amazing on this amazing journey of the show here for about a year. And looking back over 2022, we realized that we've actually hit some of our very important goals. And then not maybe what you think our goal setting out was to create a very high value show where founders, business leaders, business development professionals, inside of b2b companies, especially working with tech and services, and venture funded, could have a home where they can come and get truly actionable insights that they could turn around and put to use the very next week in their businesses to see better results. That's the goal. And as our team here was looking back at some of the guests that we've had on the show, it's been tremendously gratifying to see just how much value there was. So we kind of got together took a look at the content that we've enjoyed over the last year. And it was kind of tough, we narrowed it down to a top five. But we we aim to top five, we couldn't quite do it, we actually discovered that there were some other really good folks too, whose content was so valuable. They ended up on the honorable mention list. So we could have gone with top 10. But instead, we're gonna go with the top five plus. So jumping right in, we've got some some snippets to share. We'll recap some of the insights of each of these guests. And hopefully, this will be a real fun way for your listening audience to kind of help help celebrate our first very successful years a show, and maybe walk away with a grab bag of insights you can take into New York New Year, planning for your company and your business and personal success. So taking a look at our list. We went through and we could not escape the great help that we got from Mr. Bill Stinnett. Bill is a very down to earth very practical teacher trainer, multiple bestselling author with proven methods. He's actually the founder of sales excellence, but he works with some of the world's most highly regarded companies, he helps them sharpen their sales with your hiring, training their skills development. His titles include things like your customer selling results, and his brand new hot off the presses book is the digital selling handbook. We're very, very proud to help him get some pre orders on that book, Bill's a great proven asset. And I would love to have you take a listen here to a little bit of what Bill had to share with us on the show Let's listen in
Bill Stinnett 2:50
really want to do is to create a dialogue and a conversation with clients. And so we need to be arming new people with what are the best practices in terms of the diagnostic questions that our very best salespeople are asking. So on this call we did earlier this afternoon. That's another topic that we discussed there. And what that team decided to do is they're going to collect for five or six good diagnostic questions, conversation starters, ways to get customers talking, and then just share that with the entire sales team so that we all have an additional
arrow in our quiver or additional tool in our tool belt to use so that we can start more conversations, it's really a matter of kind of collecting some of that, and then making sure that's available, there is no reason that a person should start at a company and work their six months before they learn how to create sales opportunities or how to generate something we should be teaching them on day one. These are the questions you ask in this situation. When you go call on a bank. Here are the four things you want to know when you call on a retailer. Here are the three things you're going to want to ask them about. We should make that just readily available day one, here are your assets.
Jonathan Fischer 4:01
Yeah, it was a great show all about brand new hires and really getting around your veterans and getting them to ramp up a lot faster. The average time from your new hire being productive is taking way too darn long. I've seen estimates that up to upwards of nine months. And we talked about how to get that to be close to nine days or nine weeks. So really great episode you should check it out on wherever you like to get your podcast episodes. Next up on our list of honorable mentions was Mr. Jim Cathcart. Jim is one of those old school trainers. I mean, the man is pretty impressive. He's been in the game for a long time and always at the top of the game. He's a leading professional speaker. He's the author also of multiple best selling books. His TEDx talk alone has garnered over two and a half million views. He's presented over 3300 speeches in every US state and around the world. Really impressive guys even been inducted into the International Sales and Marketing Hall of Fame. Love Jim. What I found with some of those insights is even though you may think of them as old school
are timeless. They're also frequently forgotten. And Jim is still at it and still sharing some insights. Look, if if it's timeless, that means it's going to work anytime that you might want to implement it. Let's take a quick look here and see what Jim had to say on the show.
Jim Cathcart 5:16
What about objections? Well, first off if they object to buying, it's already gone too far.
Well, no, there are ways to handle objections Excuse me.
Why call it an objection? Because if they say I object, you're already adversaries. Now.
Is everyone in every instance concerned about the price? Of course they are?
Do they object to the price? Not necessarily. So one at address it while it's only a concern, everyone's concerned about whether they can trust you and your company, and your product or your service. Everyone's concerned about whether the price is reasonable and whether they can afford it. Everyone's concerned about whether you'll follow through and your delivery will fulfill the hopes that they have.
Why not address all that, while they're just concerns? Make it part of your sales dialogue? So that the next stage is just making it easy to say yes.
Jonathan Fischer 6:22
Yeah, so elegant for how simply true, it really is. And we easily forget, one of the great things about our episode with Jim is that it really draws out how powerful language is not just in the way that we present our product offering in the marketplace, but also the way we ourselves think about what we're doing, like really that mind shift city mindset shift. It's easy for me to say that he was talking about there is a whole lot more about me as the speaker and I think of that as an objection like we're an opposition, or I think of it as a concern, somewhere where I can help them love that tons or insight from Jim, you remains a great asset to everybody out there, check out his episode on Spotify, Apple, where we'd like to get your podcast episodes.
Well, let's take a brief pause here and mentioned to you folks, those of you listening to me live, I'm still going to do a q&a at the end. I mean, one of the fantastic things about my role here, as host of the show, is I get an education. Every single time I meet one of these guests, I get to interact with them learn their story, and learn some of these key insights they have as subject matter experts. And maybe some of that is soaked in who knows. So if you've got some questions you want to hit me with at the end, maybe ask something about maybe from a personal angle, some of the guests we've had on the show, totally game for that. Feel free to begin to drop those into the chat here live and we'll spend as we customarily do a little time afterwards and interact on your questions.
So next up on our list of honorable mentions is Monica or Zika kenter, now, Monica is a really popular guest, we've had her on more than once, because she's just really good at giving a tactical edges based on daily testing in the real world of social selling. So she's a fantastic expert in the space. She's a highly regarded speaker podcaster and trainer in her own right. She is also the Business Development Officer for the company called ready for social, which is a proprietary social selling content distribution platform, in interacting with her what I feel like their company kind of does automation the right way, there's certainly some wrong ways to do that. And she has some really great things to say one of the things I love about having Monica on the show is I can kind of just cut her loose. And you know, every sentence just has some really good content to it, almost without fail, let's take a quick listen to Monica.
Monika Ruzicka Kenter 8:39
So that's one thing that decision makers also hate, right, if you approach them kind of in a friendly way, and then they accept your connection requests. And the next boom is this sales pitch. So
it's in my opinion, again, as I said, you can be transparent that you're trying to sell something, but at least then you know, really, if you even if you use automation software, really narrow down the audience to whom you send a certain type of messages. And you know, really be very specific and very targeted and address a specific pain point that you're helping them solve. And make it clear in your messaging that you are trying to help them what they can expect for you and what's in it for them to engage with you. And yeah, don't try to be on the one hand side. Don't try to make it look like a casual networking, and then hit them with your sales pitch as soon as they accept your request.
Jonathan Fischer 9:42
Yeah, tons of great what to do, what not to do type of insights like that for Monica, what a great guest. She's been on the show, and well deserved sloth on our list of honorable mentions. Moving on to the next entrant into our list here is Simon warm and fried. And Simon the thing about Simon is he's out
actually has an ability to make a frankly kind of mundane, seemingly topic and make it interesting and super valuable. And he's the founder and CEO of IBG. International, which is a boutique sales and marketing consultancy, which has a focus on helping businesses accelerate growth using a data driven approach. Now, it's funny about data because you talk about, you know, business data and data driven, sounds kind of sexy, but the fact is, it gets a little dry, when you take a look at numbers. And a lot of folks get the eyes gloss over, when you start to look at the data. The great thing about Simon, is, he's got a way to show you all right, well, here's this key insight, and it makes it really fascinating when you start to see what are some of the key insights you can gain by taking a closer look? And what kind of data should you be gathering? As a, say, a head of marketing? Or maybe you're the sales manager, any of the leadership within a company? What kind of data is valuable important to be gathering? And how do you glean insights from it? Let's take a quick listen to what Simon had to share with us on the show.
Simon Warman-Freed 10:56
Be very important, when you when you start thinking about your business, and you start thinking about growth, actually, what you can do for yourself in order to help that process. And that's have a data collection strategy, product data collection strategy, which is all around what data can you collect, when that's going to add value and help you and help your customers as well. So it's not just about you, you know, a one way scenario, it's gonna be a two way scenarios, it's gonna be a value to customers. But ultimately, that brings in that level of detail so that you get to be able to know your prospect know your customer, and be able to then engage with them.
Jonathan Fischer 11:38
Yeah, I mean, just like, just like that, and you can see how personable he is. It certainly helps your cause when your your topic would otherwise be a little dry. With Simon, it's not dry at all. Really fascinating guy to speak with and super helpful if you're trying to generate some quality insights for your company. Love to have him on. You're welcome back anytime, Simon.
Moving on to our next entrant, Mr. Todd Clauser. Not talking about another interesting guy. The phrase that comes to my mind with Tom is he's got a different take a different take on marketing specifically. And he really brings a content creators background of the conversation. He spent a decade doing things in video production, digital, social media, and all of that, before he became the lead brand marketing manager at refine labs. They're a really cool marketing research development firm, which helps companies innovate their revenue in revenue engine, modeled kind of the way you do product development, they've got a really innovative Look at that. The thing about Todd is he's very, I mean, it's a worn out phrase outside the box, but you know, it suits him. He's definitely outside the box. If you check him out on LinkedIn, which you definitely should He's He's a social media created really kind of a creative genius. A lot of stuff that he does, there is things that you not just anybody could get away with. But he's he's a great, a great model for you, if you're looking for a way to stand out on with his LinkedIn, Instagram, whatever the format is you want to use in terms of social.
On the show, he had a really valuable insight that he shared in terms of a disconnect that many marketing and sales teams have between each other inside of a lot of companies, and the nature of that disconnect, and his recommendations as to what should be done about that. Let's take a listen.
Todd Clouser 13:20
Marketing we have we have an MQL target. So you start getting towards the end of the month. And for the sake of round numbers, you you need to create 100 MQ ELLs, and you're only at 60. Now, you know, I'm going to start putting budget or doing things to just generate as many leads coming in as I possibly can because I'm not measured on if they close or not on the marketing team. I'm just measured on how many I can get to give to my SDR.
Jonathan Fischer 13:57
Yeah, talk about the power of language we're talking about, you know, marketing, market marketing, qualified leads MQLs doesn't have a lot of meeting and in many cases, if it's just a you know, it's just a contact to talk to. Really shifting that energy away from just driving leads to actually driving demand could be really transformational for marketing departments and even marketing companies out there today. What a great message Todd brings. Check them out on LinkedIn is place I start with Todd, he'll lead you down a rabbit trail for that you'll enjoy the ride for sure.
Well, the time has arrived. And by the way, before we get to the top five, of course, I've got to give a mention to our fantastic sponsor, we are powered proudly by overpass.com. And you know I've been around a minute myself have worked in helping businesses in different areas of marketing, brand management and scaling for growth myself. And in my career. I've seen a lot of solutions for growing sales teams quickly and I've never seen anything that comes close to overpass.com has been able to achieve if you are a hiring manager
I need to build a team of stars very quickly. And they're super good people. And it's going to be well within your budgetary constraints, you need to check them out, go to overpass.com, create your free account, you put the first post up, and the AR start starts sending you candidates that look fantastic. You can click and listen to voice samples. And then here comes a phone call from a super friendly, no cost executive assistant, essentially, that can also help connect you to really talented people, I mean days you can have everybody that you need on your team to go to that next level. So if you're looking for your New Year's plans, make sure you check out overpass.com Get that account created and just see how amazing that solution is for your business growth goals for the coming year.
All right, well, the time has arrived. Our top five beginning with five on our list is Mr. Tim Hughes. Now, Tim is literally been called the world's number one social selling influencer, according to LinkedIn, just a wee little feather in the cap right there. He's also a best selling author on the topic. He has his own a company called DLA Ignite, which is all about helping you to master your digital marketing space when it comes to LinkedIn and social. And he had some fantastic things to share with us on the show, as well, in terms of really getting your game. Starting from your profile itself, like most people are making the most rudimentary errors, even in terms of what your LinkedIn profile looks looks like. Let's take a listen to what Tim had to say about that.
Tim Hughes 16:34
If you google your name, and Google loves LinkedIn, because it's full of content, what will happen is the first thing unless you've got like a personal website, the first thing that you will see is your it will say it will have your photograph, it will have your name and it will have your summary title. Your job as a salesperson is to basically get someone to come and look at your LinkedIn profile go, Oh, that's interesting. If you're if your summary title is sales manager, I think there's 4 million of them on LinkedIn, there's certainly 6 million CEOs. And there's over 100,000 thought leaders for the people who think that this is about having a title, about a title that's going to get create curiosity in the person to come and look at your profile. So if you come and look at my profile on LinkedIn, most people say I've never seen anything like that. Now, if you've got the professional edition of LinkedIn, so not sales level and navigator, but the one that
tim hughes 17:30
the next level up from basics, which is what I have, as soon as someone comes and looks at your LinkedIn profile, you know, that you've looked at, they've looked at you. So you've got that ability to have a conversation. So anybody who Googles you, goes, That's interesting looks at your profile, they may not do anything, they may go away, you know that they've looked at your profile, you've got an opportunity to have a conversation. So 25% of the people look at my LinkedIn profile turn into business. Wow. 25%. So
yeah, yeah, so so so what you're doing is that the great thing about social is it places you in control. You know, we've always been told as a salesperson, we need to control the sales process. And social provides that.
Jonathan Fischer 18:17
The results really tell the story when it comes to what Tim is sharing there. I mean, imagine having one out of four people who even visit your profile, do a zoom call or a phone call with you. That's pretty powerful stuff. So Tim's book and his insights online are definitely way worth your time to go. And check out.
Number four on our list, we come to Ian cognac. Now Ian is to me, I think high energy is probably one of the first things I think of when it comes to E and he's super passionate about what he does. He's got a really cool personal story as well, kind of a story of having some success having some some issues in life. And he's a recovery success story. He's happy to share that with anyone that talks to him. And he works today as a renowned sales coach. He's a corporate trainer, and a keynote speaker. He's also the dean of the enterprise sales School of pavilion University. And he makes a really key point, if there's one area that you could focus on in terms of your game for this coming year. Ian really puts his finger right on it for you here. Let's take a listen.
Ian Koniak 19:19
I want to make, you know, a lot of money in sales and you want to get to that top level, you better get comfortable talking to executives. So whether it's a C suite, or whether it's an SVP or an EVP or a VP level, typically that's the level that I kind of bundled together when I say executives, right, so it's, it's it's everything. There's a recent stat that said that if you don't it came from Gong. If you're not engaged with executives or decision makers that are economic buyers and can pull the trigger. your likelihood of winning a deal is 80% lower than if you are an SMB and an enterprise
It's 233% Lower. And those stats came from analyzing literally 10s of 1000s of opportunities and all the data around that to see engagement with decision maker is by far the number one by a landslide indicator of whether a deal is closed. So it's everything in sales and especially for big, big deals.
Jonathan Fischer 20:19
And anything goes on to to back that up with inside out after insight that you could go and take action on to do just that. Let me add my challenge to his and say, Hey, take it on. A lot of sales professionals will start wherever they can get a phone conversation. But let's aim for the top, it may be a little tougher, but if you can increase your results 80 to 200%. Probably worth the extra effort. Hopefully, we'll have Ian back some time with a great voice. His is
we come to number three, Mr. Chris Ruda grew up, Chris is kind of a friend of the channel. He's been on more than once. And the thing I love about Chris is he's hands on down to earth, he's very generous in sharing his insights. And he's just kind of one of those leaders that is very focused on doing the right things the right way. And he's happy to share and talk about it. When you talk, when you talk to Chris, you don't your first impression is not ego, even though he's accomplished some really great things as the co founder of an award winning company, is called sin dosa. It's the world's leading platform that allows sales teams to automate and scale their gifting strategies and deliver better outcomes, basically. But he's not proud, he's happy to share and he's always dropping just golden gems every time we get him on the show. Let's take a quick listen, he definitely shared one key aspect of leadership that far too often does get forgotten inside of companies all across the country, let's listen in.
Kris Rudeegraap 21:49
As the founder, you kind of are the culture of the company. And so you have to be very apparent in what you do and what you don't do. And you're very much a public figure to that company all the time. And so I think you have to be like overly aware of that, and make sure that your actions are leading to the company culture that you want to build. I think that's important to
Jonathan Fischer 22:17
short, sweet and like a blow to the solar plexus. It's a great reminder, a lot of leaders forget this, but you are the culture of your company. So, you know, men and women all across the nation are thinking about ways to improve their companies. But you know, what, a lot of time to start with the man or the woman in the mirror and really thinking about Alright, what do I want to have happening in my company from that cultural standpoint, meaning, you know, what is the ethos like what almost the Moreland underpinning to a certain extent of what I want to have happening in my company, you know, is this truly a flat organization where there's respect across the board, I need to example that, you know, am I a, you know, take 100% of ownership, I need to example that, so there's, there's a really great, a really great, sort of obvious, but very easy to forget tidbit there about leadership, Chris had a lot more golden gems to share in his episode. And I will have him back again on the show in the coming year.
All right, coming up next, then is number two on our list, almost everybody to our number one slot, but number two is coming in strong, Matt Wallach. Matt is one of those guys that is just kind of easy to talk to, like you just sit have a beer with the guy. And he's just going to share things that are just really interesting and really helpful. And guess what, they're probably also very much tested in the real world and really tested measurable insights. That's kind of what what Matt brings. He's actually an executive trainer and thought leader by day, if you will, but he's actually sharing his high impact insights from his own experience in founding more than a dozen, a dozen successful venture funded SAS companies, one of his businesses has actually landed on the Inc 5000 list for the fastest growing five years in a row. Maybe he's got a thing to tell the rest of us that are in the space, right. So Matt talked about what it really takes to build a better pitch and lead let's take a listen to what Matt had to say to us on the show
Matt Wolach 24:12
that's around the faster you get to in the better so we put in get to them within 15 minutes, we saw an increase in our conversions. But actually the data recently that's come out is if you can get to them within five minutes if you can get to that lead within five minutes and respond to them. And by respond please don't just email them saying hey, we got this no call them if you can call them it's the best chance of success for your lead not just in connecting with them not just getting the call but actually converting it with them.
Jonathan Fischer 24:45
Yeah, so talk about tested and from the real world that he was sharing there about a statistic relating correlating the lead flow from your marketing to response from your sales, and they tested a six ways to Sunday and found that faster is definitely better.
better and not in a little intuitively would think that but it was exponentially better results, if you could have a way to call that lead in just minutes, instead of waiting, you know, past 15 minutes an hour, same day, or even worse. Beyond that timeframe, lots and lots of very much real world based insight that Matt shared on his episode. And we'd love to have Matt back anytime.
All right, it's time for the number one slot, the top most valuable, most allotted and appreciated episode of our whole year, which is a very high bar indeed, lots of great insight. And we thank all of our fantastic guests. But number one, there can only be one is Mr. John Lindesay. John came on the show, almost with a completely different angle and shared with us the power of story in winning the deal. And that's already sounds kind of different, right? How the story really get it done. And John, really, I think kind of makes the point in this clip that we have to share with you. Why story can actually have the power to do that. Let's listen in.
John Livesay 26:10
Here's the unspoken question everybody has, when they hear you pitch? Will this work for me? They might trust you and like you, but if they don't think it's gonna work for them, they're not going to buy it. And that's where storytelling comes in. Because when you know how to tell a story, that other people see themselves in so much that they say, oh, that's I want to go on that journey with you. That sounds like me.
Jonathan Fischer 26:39
Yeah, and John went on to differentiate between, say, like your case studies, or white paper type information, those approaches to sharing like customer success stories, you'll hear those talks about that we're not talking about just customer success stories, we're talking about literally sharing like, what what was the drama behind it? Like, what, what was your customer actually going through? Or what were you going through what you discovered the solution that you're now sharing with your prospect? What a fantastic voice, John is he's just a generous and important message, important message for our time. There are a lot of forces that worked, I think that can be depersonalizing. And I think what John Lindesay gave us in terms of the content on our show today, that he can't, that he was on with us, was a way to cut through all of that sort of
the digital aspect of it and really deeply humanize your appeal, which you still may be giving over a social media platform, you'd be maybe using a zoom call to convey your message. But if you can humanize it in a powerful way, you're going to have much, much better results exponentially better results. John's a great keynote speaker, he's a four time bestselling author, you should definitely go check them out. It's John Lindesay. Just like it sounds, it's on the screen there. And, John, we love you. You know, I say that I have a decidedly friendly relationship with John. I literally only just met him to be a guest on the show. But the reason I say that is because I decided that we were going to be friends, because he's just kind of one of those guys. So John, thanks so much for being on the show. And we hope to have you back soon. For sure. Well, we're also very grateful for all the listeners on our show. And what a year it's been, I want to share just a few statistics with you to kind of wrap up our first year together. We've had 37,942 unique event visits here on these LinkedIn lives. And we've had 9268 Viewers over the lifetime with over 1000 LIVE viewers, with over 40 subject matter experts as guests on our program. It's been a fantastic ride. And here's the good news. We're just getting started. We're going absolutely nowhere. We have a lot of plans to be leveling up the show in the coming years. So hope you guys are there listening are as excited as I am. Continue to tune in as you know, evolve. Sales is recorded every Friday afternoon, live so you can come bring your questions and get insights in real time. Make sure that you continue to come and invite your friends in the coming year.
Well, let's check it out. Let's see if we're gonna have a little bit of q&a here before we call it quits for this. This fine Friday afternoon. I should call it a frozen Friday afternoon. I'm here in the Midwest. It's a little bit cold today. But let's take a look here. So Michael, you're asking me a very personal question. Do I ever just flat disagree with any of the guests any particular instance? And thank you for your thanks. I've really really enjoyed it and what what a great seat I get to sit in here as the host. Michael to answer your question. Do I ever just flat disagree? Yeah, it definitely does happen. What's even more awkward is when the guest flatly disagrees with me. I do hesitate to give specific incidents instances I'm sure you can understand why I don't want to like call anybody out. They were kind enough to come and be a guest on our show. So I'm gonna disappoint you on this on that level of specificity but I will give you an example. I did recently have a guest come on.
We had, we always do some pregame I had a previous call, we talked about what we're going to be talking about. And we had a plan, I was super excited about this person sharing on topic. And when they got here, they questioned the whole premise and almost positioned it like I was off. Like, like the topic wasn't what they really wanted to talk about. It was. So it's just funny, it can get a little awkward. When that happens. I just smile our way through and continue to ask questions and hopefully try to present value to the listener the best that we can. So thanks for that question. Yeah, definitely. It's pretty funny.
You got a LinkedIn user, I'd like to comment I think it's it's pretty funny. Don't feed me crap marketing. I like it, right? There's a lot of stuff that's just stale and old and crap. Let's level it up, man. Let's make it interesting and helpful, right.
And
if I someone Okay, so Josh is asking me a question here. Thanks for that. If I could interview one guest, anyone in the business and leadership world? Who would it be? And why?
Well
I Okay, so,
please, there's a few names that are popping into my brain right now. And I'm ranking them, I'm trying to decide who would be tops, and I'm gonna have to say it's probably Simon Sinek. I really, really like Simon stuff. Simon Sinek is one of those guys that is able to just find that little extra layer a little deeper, even on stuff that you kind of already knew, maybe he kind of had already heard it.
And yet, he still manages to find a new level of value in that concept. And he's got some new stuff that he says as well brings a lot of value to the space of leadership.
I really resonate with his whole model of leadership, you know, like the leaders eat last book, which I would I would just say this kind of the servant leadership model, something that I've always been a big fan of for my whole adult life. So yeah, probably Simon Sinek would be it.
Obviously, there's a lots of people that could go on that list, but I'm gonna stick with just that one name. Thanks for that question, Joshua. Love it.
Yeah, and Michael dove is also identifying with what, what our old timer I mean, I love it. One of my favorite things is when somebody that's been in the game for a lot longer than men alive,
still has got it going on, right? They still they're still dropping gold nuggets, they still got energy, passion for what they're doing. Love, love. Love that. And that was Jim Cathcart to a tee. And that was, that was Jim's insight. Thanks for noticing that. Michael. I'm right there with your brother.
And yeah, sneak peek on the coming year? Well, I'll tell you what, I there's not a lot I can tell you that that wouldn't maybe put me in the position of spoiler I do. Thank you for the question.
But I definitely gonna have my team working on getting guests that maybe are getting, you know, getting toward or maybe at the level of Simon Sinek. So I would say that we're going to continue to level up the quality of the or the already good quality of the guests that we have some maybe begin to look for some names that you know, are at that at that next level up the wrong if you will.
See here.
Yeah, so see if I'm game for any more q&a asked me anything time looking through here
well, you're very, very kind, you put a big smile on my face. We have a LinkedIn user, just saying that I'm the equivalent of the guy from Inside the Actor's Studio. That's a cool show. And so that's high praise. I really, really appreciate you saying that. I'm always looking for ways to improve my own game. I will say back to what Mike was asking maybe one more Sneak Peek I can give you we've been redeveloping ways to even you know make make our already fast paced show maybe even that much more fast paced, you know, the way that we get the content delivered. We've we've been really working hard. We've gotten some expert advice, we're pretty convinced we've got a good a good lead on several key things we're going to do that I think we're going to make the the the way the content is delivered and the way you can take it and use it be even that much more onpoint. So we're definitely going to be leveling leveling up our game for the coming year.
All right, well, man, this is great. You never know we're here on a Friday right before Christmas. You never know how much of an audience you're gonna have. But here we still have a lot of faithful listeners. And I know a lot of you probably will be listening on replay over the coming week. And so I want to end where I began with my thanks to you as our wonderful faithful audience. Look for even better things in the year to come. We're very proud to be here with you and sharing these insights with you. I get to learn and present it to all of you as I'm having a ball. I hope you are too. And please accept the best wishes of our entire team here on the show and at overpass for a fantastic holiday season. I hope you make it a great one with yourself.
Often your loved ones make some memories to last thanks so much for being here everybody have a great rest of your weekend take care that's gonna do it for today
