• How to Create Your Servant Leadership Origin Story with Adrienne Wilkerson
    2026/01/13
    If you practice servant leadership people want to get to know you through your origin story. Sharing it will help you boost your brand and enhance your marketing. I discuss how to create and develop your origin story in this episode with my guest, Adrienne Wilkerson. As Co-Founder and CEO of Beacon Media + Marketing, Adrienne is driven by a passion for developing people and fostering a culture where innovation thrives. In her early 20s, she realized she would make a much better boss than an employee, which led her to found her own company in 2001. Today, she is a visionary leader who’s company has earned it a spot on the Inc. 5000 list of Fastest-Growing Private Companies for three consecutive years. The Origin of Adrienne’s Servant Leadership Origin Story One of Adrienne’s favorite things when she gets to talk to founders, CEOs, business owners, there’s almost always a powerful story behind why they’re doing what they’re doing. Why did they start their own business? Why does this matter? That “why”, that story, has really created them as leaders and created them in the business space. That’s why Adrienne believes that’s why that origin story is so important. It’s a powerful connection piece. Entrepreneurship is a lot of Adrienne’s origin story. Her father is an entrepreneur and a business owner, so was my grandmother. Adrienne has a lot of entrepreneurs in her family and hence she had a lot of excellent examples of entrepreneurship in her life. Her grandmother together with a partner started the very first art gallery in Anchorage, Alaska way back in the day. She was just an entrepreneurial person. Adrienne’s father started one of the first counseling and medical clinic combinations with the idea of taking care of the whole person and the medical and the counseling working together. It was a beautiful vision and there was a reason behind that. Those origin stories and what both of them accomplished spoke to Adrienne as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, and as a leader. Growing Up Entrepreneurial Adrienne’s father is a therapist that started his own therapy clinic. So she was raised by a therapist. There was a lot of times where she would have to tell her dad, “I need you to be my dad and not my therapist right now”. And he’d be like, “okay. Right, right. Thank you”. Then we would laugh and switch gears. He passed on his insights into people and his understanding of what drives people and how people work and tick and interact with each other. It was that experience and that knowledge that he had through school, through working with a lot of leaders. He passed a lot of that on to Adrienne organically. He was a natural teacher. Even with the circumstances that Adrienne would grow up in, such as dealing with personal conflict at school, at college, and just even in relationships, he would just walk her through a lot of resolutions. He would tell her you must ask these questions and you understand what’s really going on in each situation. He told Adrienne if you’re going to lead, there’s a guiding relationship there. She remembers coming back from high school one day from class very frustrated because she was the year book editor in chief and we were co just coming off a big deadline and she did all the work. She was venting that her team didn’t do this and that. Adrienne had to take over for that them and had to do this person’s job and that person’s job. She wondered why can’t they just do their jobs? Her father’s feedback was: You met your deadline. You got across the finish line. How much of your team came across the finish line with you? Or did you just plow through and make it happen and leave the rest of them in the dust? Leadership Lessons Learned That was one of those moments, one of the lessons that hit Adrienne upside the head and shifted the course of how she viewed leadership. Adrienne learned it’s not just enough as a leader to accomplish a goal. You have to try your best to guide your team to come with you. Now granted, not everybody will choose to walk across that finish line with you. If they don’t choose to, that, that’s their choice. As long as you as a leader are doing everything that you can to create that kind of environment where people want to grow with, want to accomplish the goal with you, and it’s not really leading. If you do everybody’s job and cross that finish line by yourself, it was a great hike, but that’s not leading. There are things like that, stories like that, that Adrienne’s father wove in those lessons that he wove into her life that have really shaped how she chooses to lead now. Adrienne definitely doesn’t nail it on the head every time. That’s part of the process of learning and growing. Creating and Leveraging Your Origin Story As a business owner or a CEO, there are stories that make up your origin story. Those are powerful because they are what connect with people and make ...
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    25 分
  • How Entrepreneurs Can Build a Circle of Trust with Jonathan Hung
    2026/01/07
    Creating a circle of trust can create explosive business growth. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Jonathan Hung. Jonathan is a successful VC and entrepreneur. He has evolved from his role as a prolific angel investor with over 150+ pre-seed and pre-IPO investments under his belt to becoming the Managing Partner for Entrepreneur Ventures. Jonathan believes that everyone thinks entrepreneurship is all about fundraising. That’s one aspect of building a business. Jonathan is dedicating his upcoming book to his father. He was a great entrepreneur who came to this country with nothing and along with Jonathan’s mom they built an amazing company. Entrepreneurship is about building trusted relationships from business partners to advisors and mentors. The Importance of Being Real Jonathan’s perspective on life is that you’re going to meet a lot of fakes. A lot of people who try to sell you an idea by telling you it’s all going to be roses, but really, will they be helpful in the long run, right? You must find people that you could trust to work with you. You can easily like somebody, but can you actually trust them? That’s why the subtitle of Jonathan’s upcoming book is “Why trust drives venture capital success.” Jonthan built his career based on people that he trusted, and who have trusted him. That’s how he’s built success. How to Build Trust It’s the simplest things. It’s not just saying “I’m going to write you a check.” It’s about both parties being be very communicative. That means doing things like giving regular updates. Having great communication is the most important rule. It also means asking for help. If you don’t ask, it’s always no. The number one rule in sales that you ask. That you keep going, you don’t take discouragement. You know, it sucks sometimes, right? Getting turned down and you might have to hear a thousand no’s before you get to that one yes. But when you get to that yes, it was all worth it. It was all worth it. For Jonthan building trust is showing up. It’s doing the hard work. It’s not about just executing, it’s also about showing people how you did it because some people think it’s just how like the ends justify the means. For Jonathan it’s about growing as a human being. It’s about finding those people you can trust because you can count on them. Neither of you over promise and under deliver. Jonathan is a big believer that you don’t over promise and then under deliver. He’s always about under promising and over delivering because he’s had people in his past who he’s invested in give that gave him crazy numbers. He would think, “How are you going to do that? How are you going to 10x your business in a year?” Sometimes that makes no sense. Jonathan also loves people who give him a plan. It’s all about the execution. It’s how you go through with something. That’s how you build trust, in his opinion. We also dive into topics such as: The definition and examples of a circle of trust.How you can start to intentionally build a circle of trust.The types of people that should be in your circle of trust.Why nobody that’s successful has done it by themselves.How to approach the right people to bring them into your circle of trust.Why you should practice being a “giver”.How to maintain a circle of trust over time once you’ve built yours.The role vulnerability plays in building your circle of trust.Jonathan’s philosophy of “living your life in quarters” and how to embrace it.The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to build a successful circle of trust. …and other golden nuggets of advice! You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” About My Guest Jonathan Hung is a seasoned venture capitalist and entrepreneur with a proven track record in governance, strategic growth, and financial expertise. He led his family’s textile business across the U.S. and Asia before transitioning into venture capital, where he has invested in more than 250 companies and 50 funds. Today, Jonathan is the Managing Partner of Entrepreneur Ventures, a fund he co-founded with Entrepreneur Media, deploying capital into innovative startups and helping founders build profitable businesses. He also manages his family office fund, J Heart Ventures. His success in raising millions for venture funds, combined with cross-border operational expertise, positions him as a leader in capital growth and value creation. Learn more about Jonathan! Website / Portfolio LinkedIn Want to learn more about entrepreneurship? Check out “How to Create a Millionaire Mindset”!
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    26 分
  • How to Write Copy That Positions You as a Thought Leader with Kristen Sweeney
    2025/12/16
    Today we’re discussing how to write copy that positions you as a thought leader. There are subtle nuances that separate the average copy from the excellent copy. I discuss strategies to become an excellent copy write and therefore an excellent thought leader with my guest, Kristen Sweeney. Kristen is a content strategist who has helped over 100 organizations communicate more clearly, especially when the subject matter is complex or highly technical. She’s the founder of Every Little Word, a boutique content and communications agency that believes great ideas—and the people who power them—deserve a bigger voice. Her team builds expert-led content programs in industries like life sciences, higher education, and B2B services. Getting Started with Copy Writing Kristen did not come up as a professionally trained marketer, but she considers herself as someone who’s always been a writer. And for many years, freelance writing was one of her many side jobs that she worked while she was an actor in New York City and while she was a yoga teacher in New York City and Boston. Over the course of those years, freelance writing, she started to learn more and more about marketing. What happened for her was that classic situation where you hand over something to a client and then you see that the website copy never got launched or the asset was never created or they’re not using something. Something fell short somewhere. She started to ask questions such as what does it take to actually put these ideas and this information out into the world in a way that’s going to make impact? That led her to learning more about the disciplines of marketing and communications. In 2019, her first daughter was born. Long story short, like for so many people, that was a pivot point that changed everything. She started taking her writing and content work seriously and the rest is history. It’s certainly been a range of ups and downs, but she’s been running her business and team for over five years with over 15 years of experience in the copy writing field in general. The Origin of Great Copy Writing Kristen believes it starts with good ideas. Her company’s mission is to share great ideas with the world. The way they do that is through their approach to creating content and copy. To her, it’s all about the thinking that goes into the perspectives and the opinions and the ideas that people and companies can share. It should be something of substance. She believes content for a lot of people and companies has become more like “containers”. It’s a container to try to get somebody to click through. It’s a container to try to get someone to stay on the page longer. It’s a container to be able to track them, cookie them and start tracking them. Kristin’s of the mindset that the great ideas and the substance, the content of content is what we’re really after. Some Characteristics of a Great Idea That’s Worthy of Creating Content Around Kristen has a whole big piece on her company website about thought leadership. Great ideas in general tend to come from a place of someone who’s taken the time to really develop a unique perspective. That most often comes from their life experiences. It can come from their belief systems and their values. It can come from understanding their space or their industry and taking the time to think deeply about it. In general, Kristen believes it also comes from a high degree of caring. Her team has had situations in the past where they’ve tried to partner with someone as a thought leader. What happened was they were there to do their job day in and day out and they weren’t really invested in sharing their knowledge publicly. It takes a lot to be that kind of collaborator and that’s why that caring piece is really important When it comes to writing copy to be a thought leader, where does that process start? Kristen likes to think of a thought leader as someone who leads with their thoughts. That might sound obvious, but what she means by that is a lot of people define thought leadership by the external markers such as they have a huge following. The ideas come first. You could be a thought leader alone in your room all day long. The problem is you need to have the right platform to share those ideas and spread them and help them grow and get your message out there. When we think about thought leadership, again, the kernel of it is making sure that you are developing and forming your own perspectives and opinions. And then ultimately that you’re finding the right messages that align with whoever it is you are trying to reach. Many companies, when they think about thought leadership, they’re trying to reach customers. Other times you’re trying to reach peers. Think about folks who sell to their peers, such as a marketer who sells their courses to other marketers. They want to be seen as a thought leader among their peers who also happen to be their customers. Know ...
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    22 分
  • How to Manifest Great Things in Your Life with Francois Lupien
    2025/11/12
    If you want great things to happen in your life you have the opportunity and power to manifest them. You just need the right strategies. I discuss some of them in this episode with my guest, Francois Lupien. Francois Lupien is a dynamic executive coach, mentor and speaker whose experience includes successfully working with Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey (7 Habits of Highly Effective People) and as a consultant with Bob Proctor (Movie: The Secret). Achieving excellence in everything he puts his mind to, Francois has been a Tae Kwon Do Gold Medal Canadian champion, a Top Real Estate agent for 11 years with Remax, and a serial entrepreneur with multiple successful 6-figure businesses. Francois is here to serve and help you thrive! The Beginnings of Manifestation for Francois Manifesting greatness started with when Francois was six years old. His mom had, when she was young, roller skates, not roller blades, four wheels, two in the front, two in the back. It was an adjustable thing. And she decided to put them on little cowboy boots of for Francois. She told him to go for it. Well, he tried this thing and he fell and it hurt like crazy. He came back home and was not happy. Francois’ mom looked at him and asked “What’s the matter?” He told her it hurts, and he didn’t want to try skating any more. She goes, hmm, come with me. Francois remembers, as if it was yesterday, his mom having an adjustment key. She took those roller skates, put them on her feet, And started demonstrating how she would roller skate on the street with Francois sitting on the sidewalk. Then she came back to him and she knelt in front of him. She said with a smile “You can do anything you want in life if you really want it. Are you ready?” He said “Yes”. And then as he started skating, she said, “You got this.” Then she went back into the house as Francois skated all around. She unknowingly created a manifesting monster. A week later Francois attached a rope to one of his friend’s bikes and he was water skiing down the street, so to speak, with his roller skates. From then, it’s just been on and on with his self-belief journey. His mom always told him “Whatever you want in life, you go for it, you can make it happen.” How can greatness be created? Francois would say by someone believing in you first, then, as a result of that, you end up believing in yourself. How to Find That Someone to Believe in You Francois was blessed that it was his family that believed in him first. Yet for anybody else, search, dig, knock on as many proverbial doors and ask for help. A wise man once said “Knock and it shall be opened and ask and it shall be answered”. You just need to ask and the good news is there’s so many people in this world right now that you can easily get access to. Once you find someone try to get an understanding of what that person is doing that you want to do. And yes, many people may “look good on paper” and yet they don’t deliver. Be sure to do your due diligence but don’t be afraid to talk to more people. Francois has a belief that everybody is good in some way, even if it’s deep down. The quote “Be kind always” applies here. If you encounter someone having a bad day or they’re not feeling well, yes, there’s something broken inside of them for now. So don’t be the one that kicks them while they’re down. Be the one that uplifts other people. And as you do that, one of Francois’ great mentors, Bob Proctor always said, leave everyone with the impression of increase. Make everybody feel better after they met with you than before they met you. So, in a nutshell, you must look for it. You need to find out what type of person they are. You must be able to figure out who’s who, what’s what, and dig, ask deep questions. And if there’s an opportunity for a connection, well, go for it! The important thing is to remember you can’t do it alone. You and I cannot do it alone. That’s for sure. We need others. Francois always says, if I look at you, I see you this way. But when you look at me, you see all of this, which I do not. Some people will see things in you that you don’t see in yourself. Their perspective on you can enable you to refocus and make things happen in a new, better way. It’s the same thing for each and every one of us. There’s things that we don’t see and we don’t know that others can help us discover. How to Build Relationships When You Find Those Special People Francois believes you do that by having conversations, number one, and asking the real (and sometimes tough) questions. You need to go deep and not be superficial. If someone looks good on paper, that’s fine, but go deeper. You need to go deeper and discover what is the essence of your conversations and your relationship as a whole? Is it just fluff or is there some substance to it? Once you do that, you’ll have that thing called “a gut feeling”. If it feels good in your gut, go...
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    28 分
  • Story Selling: How to Know What Stories to Tell to Sell with Sylvain “Sly” Haché
    2025/11/05
    Effective storytelling is an essential component to successful sales results. In this episode I dive into the components of “story selling” from the stage with my guest, Sylvain “Sly” Haché. Sly is an ex-chronic stutterer who has created a new public speaking system that turns regular people into ‘‘naturals’‘—without scripts, stress or memorization. Clients include international keynote speakers, TV hosts and national trainers. His methods have helped people from 18 to 81 years old get over stage fright and his systems have replaced yearly incomes with 20-minute talks and produced multiple 6-figure days from the stage. The Beginning of Sly’s Story Selling Journey Everybody knows you must tell stories if you want to sell something, especially from the stage. Sly’s first experiences on stage weren’t the best to say the least. One time he had a panic attack on stage and because of that panic attack he made no sales. And at the time he was still a part-time stutterer. Picture this. He started out as a chronic stutterer, meaning he was somebody that couldn’t easily form cohesive sentences. On top of that Sly was starting to learn English. He went from being a chronic stutterer in French (his native tongue) to now teaching international keynote speakers, TV hosts, and national trainers while speaking English. Getting Into Story Selling from the Stage The story selling part comes from the fact that if you don’t have the proper conversational frame straight from the beginning of when you open your mouth on stage, it’s nearly impossible to get people to take the action you want them to take by the end of your presentation. The only reason people do something is because they feel like doing it. The reason they don’t do something is because they don’t feel like doing it. So, the question becomes, how can you make people feel like doing the thing you want them to do? And how can you get them to do it when you ask them to do it so that your conversion rates go up, your buy-in goes up, and your sales go up? One of the best ways is to be a professionally trained conversational hypnotist. But it takes a long time and it’s a difficult process. How do you get similar results without being a professionally trained conversational hypnotist so that you can do it without scripts, without stress and without memorization? The best way is to tell stories. So, when people hear that, they think, well, that’s easy enough. I just have to tell a story. So let me tell the story about how I discovered whatever the solution is to my audiences problems. And they start telling stories that, frankly, their audiences don’t care about. You can’t be making up stories just to say what you want the audience to hear, because otherwise it’s inauthentic. How do you tell your story in a way that people care about your story? And so it makes them take the action that want them to so that they end up doing what you want them to do? Buy, vote, click, download, swipe, stop polluting the ocean, whatever you want them to do by the end of your story. With any story you’re telling, you need to be mindful of this: What the purpose of each part of your story is so that you can chunk your information based on when the audience is ready to move on to the next section of taking some kind of action. Where Do Stories Start? You start to build stories by meeting your audience where they are. It might sound simple, but you can’t know where they are before you actually know for sure. If you don’t know where they are, you must ask them. When Sly is story selling he shares stories about him this system to have six figure days selling from the stage. He gets his audience to ask themselves “How do I have a six figure days” What he doesn’t do is immediately “go in for the kill” by just saying “Do you want to work with me? here’s what you have to do. Let’s do it. You ready?” That doesn’t work. Then you need to know what their pain points are. What’s the bottleneck in their lives? What are they bumping up against? In Sly’s case: Out of all the problems his audience could be having that prevents them from having six-figure days, which ones are they struggling with the most? How long have they been struggling with this? What’s the consequences of that struggle? Ideally you want to send a pre-event questionnaire. You can do an email campaign. You can do what Sly teaches his clients to do, get answers to their audience’s key questions. Even if you have ideas beforehand, double down at the event. During your presentation you want to take live questions from the audience. Then share how what they tell you fits in one of the pillars of your service offerings, one of the steps of your process, or one of the things you help people with. Then you offer to share your secrets to solve their problems. This means that the answers to the questions the audience asks you fit into one of those boxes, ...
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    34 分
  • How to Create a Millionaire Mindset with Cole Vandee
    2025/10/01
    A seven-figure income doesn’t start with a business plan; it starts with a mindset. I discuss how to create a millionaire mindset in this episode with my guest, Cole Vandee. Cole is a strategic marketing mind behind more than 300 million dollars in found revenue generated for clients ranging from celebrity coaches to DTC brands in the pet industry. With his unique perspective to bridge the gap between what’s working now and what the future marketplace will demand, Cole has catapulted several brands to 9 figures and beyond. The Early Pathway to Cole’s Millionaire Mindset While Cole’s life isn’t exactly the normal rags to riches story, he grew up in the American Midwest on the border of Illinois and Iowa on the Mississippi River in a small farm town. Success in his town, or even the rest of the country for that matter, wasn’t anything like what we see on the Internet today. Success in his hometown was more along the lines of having a sixty-thousand-dollar home. You work at a factory making 18 bucks an hour. You drive a pickup truck. And that was considered wealthy for the most part where Cole grew up. There were a few outliers that owned local businesses and were doing better than most, but nothing like we see today with YouTubers, TikTokers, and internet celebrities. Cole had a burning desire because he believed more was available for him in this life, but he didn’t know exactly what that meant or what it felt like. He chose to go into sales because it provided a virtually unlimited paycheck because of commissions. If Cole worked really hard and got really good at what he did, he could make as much money as he wanted. That seemed to be the path to follow at the time. You have to start somewhere, right? The Beginning of the Path to Success Cole took on a few random sales jobs. He sold auto parts for a while and then moved on to selling Cutco knives door-to-door. Then he got into car sales but didn’t love the industry. He knew he was there to learn how to sell cars, take care of customers, and then move on to do something better. Cole was bridging the gap between not having a resume and having a resume to be able to get a job he actually wanted. Rather than continuing to add to his resume, Cole quickly moved on to owning his own businesses. He started many different companies. A lot of them failed. Reflecting, Cole says that most of his companies have failed at this point. He’s only had a handful of things that have actually worked; but those few made all the difference. To date he’s been a part of many companies that scaled up from zero to millions of dollars, millions of dollars to tens of millions of dollars and tens of millions of dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars. What Most People Don’t See or Know About When it Comes to Creating A Millionaire Mindset Cole believes the most important thing is to understand that your favorite, more mature business gurus out there that are very successful today got to their first million dollars without the internet. They weren’t doing it with paid ads. They weren’t relying on funnels. They weren’t relying on marketing efforts. They weren’t relying on Instagram views or anything else like that. They were picking up the phone and talking to human beings and making money with them and then moving on to the next human beings and making money with them and so on. The Starting Point of YOUR Millionaire Mindset When Cole reflects and compares himself to other people that have gone on to build multimillion dollar organizations (and some that have gone on to billions), it’s the same mindset across the board. It’s an audacious belief that you’re going to make it work. When you look at it as an investment on paper, starting a business is the worst possible thing you could ever do. Almost every single business that starts will fail. Of the ones that do succeed, most of those will fail within the next 12 months. Of those that make it that far, most of those will fail in the following 12 months. So, when you look at it on paper, if you were to go to the casino and you put down a thousand bucks and you had a 0.0002% chance of making that thousand dollars back, let alone a profit, would you put your money down? Most people would say, “Why would I ever do that?” But when you run the numbers on new businesses, that’s what the odds are. On the surface it doesn’t make any sense. There must be a little bit of a delusion to believe “I’m going to make this work.” Even though you don’t know how, you don’t have experience, you don’t necessarily even have a roadmap. No one’s really encouraging you. You must have some very intense beliefs that you’re going to make it work. You Need to Do Something You’re Passionate About Steve Jobs mentioned in quite a few interviews that if you’re going to go into business, you better be passionate about it. You’re going to have days where you think the entire world is against ...
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    28 分
  • How to Use Public Speaking to Grow Your Business with Leisa Reid
    2025/09/17
    Public speaking is an excellent way to grow your business as an entrepreneur. You just need the right strategies and ways to get started. We discuss some of them in this episode with my guest Lisa Reid. As the Founder of Get Speaking Gigs Now, Leisa trains entrepreneurs who want to use public speaking as a soul-fulfilling business growth strategy. Clients who work closely with her “Get Their Talk Ready to Rock” and build their speaking skills and confidence through the Speaker’s Training Academy. Leisa has booked and delivered over 600 speaking engagements, and she teaches her clients all of the strategies she uses to get booked, stay booked and monetize their talks. In this episode, she will share the #1 secret she uses to get speaking gigs along with other golden nuggets of advice! Why and How Lisa Got Started in Public Speaking For Lisa, public speaking is near and dear to her heart because she has always wanted to be a teacher. Even as a kid she remembers teaching her friends gymnastics amongst other things. It wasn’t so much that she needed to be the center of attention or to have the spotlight on her. It was just that when she knew that she could help other people understand something quicker, easier, better; she had to do it. It was very fulfilling. Now she’s basically a teacher disguised as a speaker. She knows that because she works with entrepreneurs all the time, there’s quite a few of us who have that same type of drive for teaching. When we get the opportunity to teach, we get a natural high, a shot of dopamine. Something amazing happens when you give the gift of teaching to an audience whether it’s virtual in person. You know that what you’re offering is going to help them solve problems or help make something easier for them. That’s a very fulfilling way to market your business! Leisa believes that people don’t get into business to do the sales and marketing themselves. They are suddenly surprised how big of a part of their responsibility is sales and marketing. She loves teaching speaking because it’s one of the easiest and most fulfilling ways to do effective sales and marketing for them to market their businesses. Many entrepreneurs welcome that opportunity. Why Speaking Should Be a Big Part of Your Sales and Marketing as an Entrepreneur Public speaking is especially important if you have something that many people haven’t heard of; such as your own philosophy or framework about how to do something. Then there are people who have problems that you can help with, but they don’t know it yet. They may need more information than they can get by reading a synopsis of what you do on your website. Speaking always allows you to educate people and it allows you to educate more than one person at a time. With many live and virtual presentations, you can even record them and have evergreen marketing and branding content for future prospects. That means there are a lot of ways that you can duplicate your efforts while attracting your ideal clients and potential referral partners. That’s a great reason to get speaking coach. When you find someone that you want it’s because you can relate to their story. You like their personality. You like their humor. You like how fast (or slow) they talk. They resonate with you because it seems like they’re genuine. That’s the kind of person that you should work with. The Starting Point of Public Speaking as a Sales and Marketing Tool In Leisa’s world the starting point of working with her is when you’re ready to get your talk “ready to rock”. That means you need to decide what your talk is going to be about, what your title is going to be, what your learning points are, your description of the talk, and what your call to action will be. That’s what she means when she says, “Get your talk ready to rock.” When you say that you’re a speaker and update your LinkedIn profile to include “speaker” you’re claiming that title. That means when you’re at a networking event and someone asks what you do and you tell them you’re a speaker they’re immediately going to ask, “What do you speak about?” You don’t want to be hesitant or say something like, “I speak about quite a few things.” You want to be focused with a niche to explain. You need at least one talk to share. Having that talk in your pocket will give you confidence and assuredness in the speaking world. It’s like planting a proverbial flag in the ground. If your talk is ready to rock, you’re going to be madly in love with your talk. You won’t be able to wait to share with everyone. That’s the kind of energy you want to start conversations with. Where to Go to Practice When You’re Getting Started in Public Speaking You can find lots of different places but it’s kind of like getting exercise, you can work out at home, especially if you’re just getting started. That’s what Leisa still does when writing a new talk. It gives...
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    24 分
  • How to Share Your Leadership Story and Leave a Legacy with Shelley Goldstein
    2025/09/10
    The epitome of leadership is the ability to share your leadership story and leave a legacy. I discuss how to do that with my guest, Shelley Goldstein. Shelley Goldstein is a leadership development coach specializing in communications affectionately known by clients as “The Coach Whisperer”. The moniker stems from her intuitive ability to pinpoint untapped potential in leaders and cultivate it into speaking mastery with remarkable ease and speed. As the architect of Remarkable Speaking, Shelley has created a proprietary framework that has evolved into a global leadership development platform. Rooted in 30-plus years of experience in leadership, entrepreneurship, marketing, and design, her expertise allows her to creatively integrate time-saving drills, persuasive storytelling, and behavioral psychology, driving significant real-world impact. Your Leadership Story Your leadership story begins with the origins of why and how we do things. It can go back to your youth when you’re joining a music program or getting involved in sports. It’s a study of behaviors involved with those activities. It’s those stories that build one on top of the other that become your legacy, who you are today, and why you lead the way you do when situations call or leadership. Shelley’s Leadership Story: Back to the Beginning Shelley says her story goes back to when she was eight or nine years old and her and a group her friends put together a neighborhood newspaper. The three of them were about the same age. They included hosted a beauty pageant and had articles and recipes that they got from their neighbors. Being able to organize that at such a young age and publish it month after month had a profound impact on leadership in Shelley’s adult life. Looking back, she learned a lot about leadership skills and taking the initiative at a very young age. Some of the things she carries forward with her today is the idea of sharing that responsibility and delegating to other people. Whether she was aware of it or not, it just naturally happened. And Shelley believes that’s what helps her be a better leader today; that sharing of ideas and giving people autonomy to create some of the most innovative, creative ideas of their childhoods. Leadership Showing Up Shelley remembers her earlier career as a costume designer. She had the responsibility of creating a look, making sure the costumes could be perceived from the audience. That meant meaning when that curtain goes up, she can’t be up there with the assistants hemming and sewing. It was showtime. Shelley believes that whole idea of “it’s showtime” was an early leadership development experience in her adult life. She realized that she can’t do everything. She had to prioritize and realized you can’t sweat the small stuff. To lead through that and make sure her team understood that the work that they were doing as individuals contributed to their combined success; and that bigger vision of what things need to happen. The Beginning of Leadership in Your Adult Life It’s so hard to say where it actually begins. If you have an idea, let’s start with the incubating. You have a great idea. How you strategize that, how you move forward with that, that’s an innate leadership skill. I’m going to have a marketing strategy. I’m going to have a sales strategy. I’m going to develop my brand this way. Those are all leadership skills because you’re making important decisions. Those stories of how you eventually do that, that becomes the legacy. That becomes your competitive advantage and unique story to only you. The stories are so important because that’s where the money flows. Money is how people respond to the stories. That’s what people buy into. That’s the journey. The Structure of a Great Leadership Story A great leadership story is the journey, the mistakes, the decisions you made when you were building your business. You know what? I’m going to go with my marketing strategy and hire this team and go forward with them. And let’s say it’s a bomb. Nothing happened. Six months, you spent thousands of dollars. That’s a learning moment. So, what did you do to compensate for that, to switch gears and become the success you are today? It’s the little things that we think are so unimportant. For example, Shelley coached a young guy who was a very successful entrepreneur. He made well over a hundred million dollars in his twenties. He was a college dropout, and he created a watch company. He built his company and sold the organization for hundreds of millions of dollars. After the company’s sale, he came to Shelley and said, “I have nothing to talk about. The company sold and that was my identity. I don’t know what to talk about and how to show up now. Who am I? I’m nothing without that organization.” What they unpacked together was the fact that that journey, whether it’s in the past or it’s current, is part of that story, is ...
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