The Thoughtful Entrepreneur

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks to the author of Sell It Like a Mango: A New Seller’s Guide to Closing More Deals, Donald Kelly.Josh asks Donald about his overall work and what it is that he does and how he helps people. Donald explains that essentially they help B2B companies to improve their sales. From individual sales reps that they train, from brand new sellars to seasoned sellers. Through training programs or going through coaching, or sales mastermind. Donald shares how they provide a lot of content through podcasts, blogs, and education. Donald expresses that the goal of The Sales Evangelist is to be the number one sales education organization in the world and help their sellers improve their skills.Josh shares how he has personally been through and experienced Donald’s ​​program and how knowledgeable Donald is at what he does. Josh asks more about his book, Sell It Like a Mango: A New Seller’s Guide to Closing More Deals, asking why does the world need this book today? Donald shares the reason why is that no matter what you sell, there will always be others that are also selling that same thing. He emphasized that what makes him and his book different is his experience. Where he grew up in Jamaica, he grew up selling mangos and others did as well. Donald shares how when he first began he wasn’t selling any mangos. Donald realized that with the same product, same place, same type of people, it requires the seller to be different. It wasn’t the product, it wasn't the customer, it was him. Donald asked himself, “what makes one seller stand out from the other?” He shares that it comes back down to what an individual does to separate themselves from the rest of the competition. Emphasizing to look for the unique things as the premise of the book.Josh asks Donald how do we do that? How do we stand out? Donald explains that one of the biggest things people miss is the importance of servicing the emotional needs that people have.Donald expresses an impactful way to stand out from competitors is by mastering discovery. “How can I help this person to be able to identify and recognize the problem?” Discovery phase is often glossed over. Donald shares that when asking a question, master listening through the discovery process and then the closing becomes easy. Josh and Donald discuss thoughtful discovery and how just asking the question allows for that open discovery.Want to learn more? Check out The Sales Evangelist’s website at https://thesalesevangelist.com/Check out The Sales Evangelist on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldckelly/Check out Donald Kelly on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldckelly/Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time!More from UpMyInfluence:⭐ We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE.🎉 Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here.🚀 What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here.

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks with the CEO of The Mather Group, Josh Greene. The Mather Group is an organization focused on three things: SEO (search engine optimization), paid media, and Wikipedia. Josh Elderedge and Josh Greene discuss Wikipedia and how they help big companies understand what Wikipedia is or isn't, what expectations should be, and what to do with the material currently out there. Josh Elderedge expresses that nearly anyone can contribute to Wikipedia and the intricacies that can come with a collaborative platform. Josh and Josh discuss the process of pages being deleted on Wikipedia and how that happens. Josh Greene shares how it’s not enough to just publish a page, it’s also how relevant that page stays. He discusses the process where a page will be nominated for deletion, from there it is a week to ten days of debate over whether the page is relevant. Josh Greene shares that often the page is deleted. Josh Eldredge asks Josh Greene about notability tests and at what point Wikipedia would consider notability enough to warrant a page. Josh Greene shares how Wikipedia has tons of documentation and how it is very good at their rules and regulations. Josh Greene expresses for new pages the big hurdle of notability is that there needs to be a number of mainstream profiles of someone without quoting that person. Josh Eldredege asks Josh Greene about his work in reputation management and the weight that wikipedia has in google's eyes. Josh Eldredge focuses on reputation issues and how that situation is mitigated or dealt with. Josh Greene expresses how every situation is a little bit different. He explains how sometimes there may be a situation where it now takes up 8 of 10 Google results and how that may not paint a fair picture of what’s going on. Josh Greene discusses clients and how often they hear from people that are either currently in a crisis or just got out of a crisis. He shares how generally it's easier to maintain when doing so in advance but that often people wait until the situation is exasperated before looking to address it. Josh and Josh discuss online presence and how keeping it up to date gives you a solid base. When being a bigger company, a lot of your profiles will be highly visible. Josh Greene shares how when the online presence is stronger, it’s less likely for a negative story to take a headline as there’s additional information to filter through. Want to learn more? Check out The Mather Group’s website at https://themathergroupllc.com/ Check out The Mather Group on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/themathergroup/ Check out Josh Greene on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshgreene1/ Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time! More from UpMyInfluence: ⭐ We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE. 🎉 Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here. 🚀 What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here.

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge, speaks with the CEO of Trainual, Chris Ronzio. Josh and Chris discuss the mission of Trainual which is a business playbook training manual for businesses. Chris talks about history, vision, values, asking why, co-workers, and the rules that are established within businesses. Josh asks Chris if in a perfect world, what would the on boarding process look like? Chris discusses the importance of the formal signing of an offer and the importance of announcing a new member within a company. He discusses the impact of setting up new employees with technology so they have the tools necessary to perform. He also shares the importance of providing space as a new employee is learning their new bearings. Josh asks Chris about the friction that comes when considering adaptations within processes. Chris talks about the different reasons to come into a system like Trainual. First, is to make sure everything is centralized. Next, Chris discusses accountability. Lastly, is the search or ease of finding things when reaching for company resources. Josh asks Chris how Trainual takes something like a manual which is usually perceived as boring and elevates it. Chris discusses how interactive Trainual is versatile, it can include embedded videos, gifts, questions, slides, Spotify playlists. He emphasizes that anything that enriches the culture of your company can be uploaded to the system and the tools are there so it doesn’t have to be boring. Chris talks about one of Trainual’s favorite trademarks, “get your business out of your brain.” He shares how we often feel like the burden of running a company is on our shoulders and how we get stuck in our heads. Chris explains that the transformation doesn’t have to be all at once and the importance of empowering other people within a company. Josh asks what sort of agencies Trainual works with and how these agencies would use Trainual. Chris shares that Trainual is a very horizontal tool. How any business that has people as a component of delivering the product or service being offered can benefit from this system. He discusses how when you have people, then you care a lot about consistency, and to have consistency it’s important to document the company's best practices. They then discuss the value of documenting and collaborating practices within a company and how a process people group can impact that consistency. Chris talks about his book, The Business Playbook, that breaks down how to do this to disconnect from the day to day so that companies are free to grow their business. Want to learn more? Check out Trainual’s website at https://trainual.com Check out Trainual on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/trainual/ Check out Chris Ronzio on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisronzio/Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time!More from UpMyInfluence:⭐ We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE.🎉 Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here.🚀 What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here.

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks with the Lead Innovator and Co-Founder of Respona, Farzad Rashidi.Respona is a platform that helps businesses create partnerships with publications in their sector to gain editorial backlinks to their website. It also helps with gaining organic traffic from Google. A tool that is heavily focused on helps clients identify targets, gives the clients contact information for the target, and outreach for the clients. Farzad explains that there is a lot of malpractice in the space of building backlinks. This malpractice happens because individuals are trying to figure out what works with creating these backlinks. Respona has around 2,000 users that use Respona in very different ways. Farzad explains that they used Respona to recruit affiliate partners through a strategy such as competitor backlink analysis. They would pull the top performing affiliates and use the software to find the main person from those affiliate companies to get into contact. It further helps to create a pitch to give to these companies and possibly create a relationship. There is a program called Respona Guru that is an established relationship with freelancers or agencies and clients can hire these individuals to delegate the process to them. Farzad explains that you can use Respona to find the right podcast to go on for your business. You can use a keyword search or search a specific person's name relevant to your business sector to find a podcast that could be willing to accept guests, the relevancy in your space, and makes the pitching process easier for the client. Farzad explains that he wanted to keep pricing simple for Respona. The cost is starting from $99 a month that is billed monthly and can be canceled at any time. It comes with a free onboarding session and 30 day guarantee. The session includes a meeting with their success team to go over the clients priorities to tour the software and provide a personalized campaign. Farzad explains that Google used page rank to determine popularity. This is a process of the higher the page rank, the higher the amount of quality backlinks are used in regard to that website. Respona spend 20% of their resources on content creation and the other 80% of resources on promotion and outreach to receive backing from other relevant publications. Farzad says there are not many companies that focus on the outreach side of business and it makes it a unique software company. Farzad explains that he wrote about his success with his parent company Visme in his free ebook Marketing Strategies We Used to Bootstrap Visme to over 4 Million users. There is a Respona outreach strategy hub on the website to help ease potential clients into the space and get them comfortable before fully signing up for the software. Want to learn more? Check out the Respona website at https://respona.com/.Check out Respona on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/respona/.Check out  Farzad Rashidi on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/farzadrashidi/.Check out  Farzad Rashidi on Twitter at https://twitter.com/The_Farzad.Check out Farzad Rashidi’s free ebook Marketing Strategies We Used to Bootstrap Visme to over 4 Million users at https://www.visme.co/marketing-strategy/.Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time!More from UpMyInfluence:️  We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE. Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here. What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here.

1265 - Your Brain's Personal Secretary with Selfluence's Blaine Oelkers

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks with the founding partner of LOCAL, Neil Bedwell. Josh and Neil discuss LOCAL and its impact of working with top global brands. Josh shares how LOCAL provides a very unique value. Neil expresses how lucky LOCAL has been in being able to help brands navigate change. LOCAL is a group of marketers that are now focusing on employees. He describes them as a change marketing company instead of a change management company. Neil shares the statistic that two thirds of adults are unhappy at work. That means that two thirds of people are unhappy in the thing they spend half their waking adult lives doing. Neil emphasizes how that’s a huge problem. Neil discusses the origin of what a company actually is. A company is a collection of people. He shares that the word company is derived from a Latin word describing the communion around bread. He expresses that companies don’t employ people, they are people, and how in recent years organizations have forgotten that.  Organizations think more about profit than people, more about the bottom line than the heartbeat of the organization. Neil discusses marketing versus management techniques. Neil describes marketing as the orientation of everything you do around your audience. He believes you must also have that same orientation around employees. Sharing that for employees to want to stay with you, they must feel like the organization is also oriented around them. Josh shares how wonderful it is as an organization to have heart centered values and making them a part of how everything within the organization operates. They discuss the importance of having company values and the impact those values have when they’re felt by the employees every day, not just heard. Neil describes this as the value gap many organizations are recognizing today. Employees know the organization's values but they aren’t feeling it in their day to day work. Josh and Neil discuss company purpose and how many companies today focus on doing good or creating positive impact on the world and the importance of employees feeling aligned with that purpose driven impact. Josh and Neil talk about the pathway of creating lasting change within an organization. Neil discusses a three part process of change. The first is belief, second is adoption, and the third is opportunity. Neil shares that LOCAL’s goal is to work with any leader driving change within a complex culture. Want to learn more? Check out LOCAL’s website at https://www.localindustries.com/ Check out LOCAL on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/local-industries/ Check out Neil Bedwell on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilrbedwell/ Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time!More from UpMyInfluence:⭐ We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE.🎉 Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here.🚀 What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here.

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks with the founder and CEO of Matter Logic, Katie Burkhart. Josh and Katie discuss what it is that Matter Logic does. Katie explains that in its simplest form it is a different way of thinking about and running a business in the day to day. Matter Logic questions “What’s the point,” asking the key element questions from why your business exists to why am I scheduling meetings today and who in the company needs to be sitting in it. Josh asks Katie why do organizations need to do this work and they discuss the importance of focusing on the why in many aspects of life and business. Katie discusses how what’s important to us in life changes and how on a business or organization level what doesn’t change is the impact of purpose. She shares to help establish purpose, Matter Logic encourages people to think about purpose as lasting a hundred years or more. Katie expresses how purpose is why we exist, why we do the things we do day after day over the long term. She explains purpose as our ultimate value and the shift many businesses are establishing. Money isn’t the goal, money is actually the resource that’s going to enable a company to fulfill its purpose. Josh and Katie discuss the “great pause,” and “great resignation,” that the current work market has been experiencing. Katie shares how she considers it to be the great reprioritization where people are asking what really matters to them. She shares the importance of an entity  having a really good reason for bringing people together and understanding what value is really being delivered. Katie circles back to the importance of being able to ask the “what's the point” questions so that everything being done is enabling for delivering that value. Josh asks Katie about the involved process that goes into doing this work. Katie discusses her 5 steps with clients. The first is shifting thinking by asking what does it mean to be purpose driven? Step two is getting clarity on value. The next step focuses on core strategy. After that, focusing on getting people on the same page. The last step includes asking “how do we stay focused.” Katie explains it as a constant focus of staying aligned. Josh and Katie discuss the evaluation process and the significance that fresh perspective can have on an organization when considering value and purpose. Want to learn more? Check out Matter Logic website at https://www.matterlogic.co/Check out Matter Logic on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/matterlogic/ Check out Katie Burkhart on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/katharineburkhart/ Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time!More from UpMyInfluence:⭐ We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE.🎉 Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here.🚀 What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here.

1262 -Hire for Your Company's Culture with Hire Better's Kurt Wilkin

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks with the co-founder of Sidekick, Bonny Van Rest.Sidekick is a group of strategy consultants that offer an entrepreneurial approach to solving business problems, maximizing impact, creating business integrators with action oriented purpose drive and first hand experience of growing, leading, and owning businesses. Bonny shares with Josh what she’s seen in the market and how a lot of great business ideas go to waste. Oftentimes the visionary entrepreneur minds that come up with ideas often do not  have the profile, personality, capacity, or time to scale the idea.Sidekick offers a good but simple strategy including purpose, passion, people, and profit to make an idea a reality and a thriving business. Bonny shares how often when we think of entrepreneurial minds we associate them with business founders, however a lot of these entrepreneurial minds also live within larger organizations too. She calls them “intrepreneruials,” innovators from within the system. These personalities are often the first to spot an opportunity but they have a department to run and an entire organization to convince of an idea so they often struggle to bring these ideas to fruition.  Bonny shares that’s where Sidekick can offer the hands on approach or bench strength to help translate the entrepreneurial passion into actions. This is done through the facilitation of strategic and annual planning, developing a go to market strategy, or helping tackle a current business challenge.Josh asks Bonny what Sidekick provides that leaders or organizations are not able to do by themselves. Bonny shares how Sidekick works alongside you to help set up simple and straightforward tools and processes. She explains the different profiles of people and the gap between the visionaries and executer level thinkers. Josh asks about the Sidekick team and what does that engagement look like, how does that process work. Bonny discusses her 4P assessment which is part of Sidekick’s framework. It includes a true discovery phase where the different backgrounds and expertise can collaborate together. She discusses the facilitation of workshops and how that facilitation process is what she considers one of Sidekick’s superpowers. She also emphasizes Sidekick’s objective of making sure that the solutions that they provide are sustainable. Bonny shares that the goal is to work with you not necessarily for you and the philosophy of teaching a man to fish and how that ideology has impacted Sidekick’s practices.Want to learn more? Check out Sidekick’s website at https://www.sidekickconsulting.ca/Check out Sidekick on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/sidekick-consulting-ca/Check out Bonny Van Rest on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bonnyvr/Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time!More from UpMyInfluence:⭐We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE.🎉Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here.🚀What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here.

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks with the CEO of Next Level Benefits, Lauren Winans.Next Level Benefits is a Human Resources consulting firm. Josh asks Lauren about the origin of Next Level Benefits and she shares how she started the business to fill in the gap of looking for experts that could be available for short term projects. Next Level Benefits is staffed with former corporate HR experts and professionals. Clients are able to have access to HR expertise when needed with support for short term projects, filling in for open positions, and handling consulting and advisory opportunities.Next Level Benefits has expanded from just employee benefits to all aspects of HR. Lauren shares that their clients are all sizes and all industries, she considers Next Level Benefits to be an extension of an existing HR team or a substitute for a company without a large HR presence currently established within.Josh and Lauren discuss the benefits of strategic approaches when managing people. She discusses the decades and depths of expertise of the HR consultants on her team and how they are able to fill in the needs gap and support the human resources side of business. Josh asks Lauren about the team that makes up Next Level Benefits. Lauren shares that their team consists of former corporate HR executives, leaders, managers, and experts within the space. Lauren shares that a majority of team members come from fortune 500 organizations with those types of experiences and backgrounds and how some have worked for non profit organizations. Next Level Benefit’s team experience comes from a versatile array of big brands and companies and brings value being able to leverage those experiences.Josh asks at what size company would HR consulting be beneficial. Lauren expresses that when it comes to employee benefits regardless of the size of the company, it is worth making sure companies are building the right packages so that you can attract and retain talent. She shares how it is critically important to be paying people competitively and offering competitive benefits or people will leave your organization and go elsewhere.Josh asks Lauren what leaders may not realize about the world of benefits today. Lauren shares how from a benefits perspective, employees expect a level of standard from their employers. She discusses health care and the ROI that benefits provide and the impact benefits can have on turn over.Want to learn more? Check out Next Level Benefits website at https://www.nlbenefits.com/Check out Next Level Benefits on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/nlbenefits/Check out Lauren Winans on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurencwinans/Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time!More from UpMyInfluence:⭐ We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE.🎉 Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here.🚀 What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here.