Curious Leadership with Dominic Monkhouse

Dominic’s aim for The Melting Pot is to enable other businesses to optimise their business performance, to help them scale up. And so this week’s guest, Bryony Thomas, marketing guru, author and developer of marketing methodology - Watertight Marketing, is the authority on how to grow your business through marketing. Having worked in marketing since 1997, Bryony has not only garnered a wealth of experience in the industry, but she’s written the book on it. “Nobody needs more marketing ideas, they need fewer on which to truly focus. And one of the things that Watertight really does is get people to prioritise and focus in on the one thing to be doing right now.” Having watched so many businesses waste money on marketing and finding that she was repeating herself constantly, Bryony decided to put her extensive marketing knowledge down on paper. And so it’s this book and the fundamentals of marketing that Dominic discusses with Bryony in this episode. So if you’re keen to stop wasting time and money on ineffectual marketing, stop what you’re doing and tune in. It will be the best decision you made today. On today’s podcast: What the Watertight Marketing methodology is Don’t think of marketing as something that can be finished The importance of language and ensuring everyone understands the meaning of what is being said Why a marketing funnel is the wrong analogy for successful marketing Marketing isn’t a checklist to be completed, it’s a mindset to be adopted Don’t measure micromovements The importance of measuring ratio over volume Forgotten customers How Bryony’s marketing transformation programme works How she turned the book into an apprenticeship programme Links: Book - Watertight Marketing Hollie Brooks - Audenza

If you’re wondering if your business could have a channel as a route to market, then you’ve come to the right place. Are you wondering if you could have 1, 10, even 100 sales people selling your product or service? Then you need to listen to Sandler trainer David Davies in this week’s episode of The Melting Pot. Perhaps you want your salespeople to be more effective, but you know that no one likes pushy salespeople, so where is the balance to be struck? “Having ‘salesperson’ on your business card does not make you a professional salesperson. And yet with all those millions and millions of pounds invested in sales, training, sales techniques and sales tactics, the results are the same today as they were when I started out.” David has been in sales for over 35 years. He’s now a Sandler trainer based in Reading, Berkshire and the vast majority of the time he’s been involved in tech. But that doesn’t mean that what he’s got to say isn’t relevant to your industry, because David’s approach to sales is applicable whatever your business. “The Sandler sales methodology is a B2C business as much as a B2B business. It’s as much for the individual as it is for the organisation.” On today’s podcast: The most successful organisation he’s been involved in Why David became a Sandler trainer How the Sandler approach is different Why David’s clients are predominantly tech businesses Selling is a mutual problem solving exercise The industry sin isn't commission Why PowerPoint is still relevant in sales How to work more effectively with partners Links: Making Channel Sales Work

Entrepreneurs are told time and again to embrace failure, to be proud of failure, to not be ashamed of failure. But failure is still something that is brushed under the carpet, something you shouldn’t be proud of. And so today’s guest, Ben Fletcher of Lead Bullets, is a breath of fresh air. Ben is a serial entrepreneur and the proud maker of multiple mistakes, many of which Dom talks to him about in this episode. Because at the heart of it, Ben’s mistakes are what drives him. In fact, when asked what he would go back and change in the past, knowing what he knows now, he replies: “I've learned so much from those mistakes, it'd be really hard to do anything that fundamentally changed the way my life worked out.” And it’s those mistakes that have carved out his current role - the one that sees him help entrepreneurs and CEOs of fast growth companies not make some of the mistakes that he himself made. It doesn't matter what the industry is, or the sector the business is involved in, a scaling business is a complex thing that trips people up time and again, and always in the same places. Dom and Ben talk about how to set objectives and why that's important; about hiring good people; about not being on the edge and losing innovation and most importantly, not spending time with your problem children. This is a really fantastic conversation, one that we enjoyed hugely, so happy listening. On today’s podcast: How Lead Bullets helps founders of businesses How Ben ended up with an events business, by trying to get out of events What they do differently to every other events company Define your mission if you want to achieve success Ben’s favourite mistakes The importance of hiring the right people Why raising money isn’t always the answer Links: fast growth icons velocity squared

Are you looking to innovate your business? To make it more agile? More effective? Then who better to receive advice from than the former Amazon executive who launched and scaled the Amazon Marketplace business, the guy who ran the enterprise services business at Amazon for 3 years? That’s right, today’s guest on The Melting Pot is none other than John Rossman, the highly sought after analyst who worked for Amazon.com in its early days and who has since been featured by The New York Times and CNBC amongst others. “I was an early person at Amazon, I was there from early 2002 through late 2005. I got to launch the Marketplace business. So that’s 58% of all units shipped and sold [on Amazon] are now on that Marketplace business.” Today, John works with companies and leaders showing them how to innovate and operate better within their space, by teaching them new tools, techniques, strategies and leadership principles to do just that. He’s also recently released a book called ‘Think Like Amazon - 50 ½ Ideas to Become a Digital Leader’. He talks at length with Dom about ideas in the book, as well as how operational excellence feeds into innovation, citing numerous examples of where Amazon have been successful. Seriously, this is the episode, as a business leader, you won’t want to miss out on. On today’s podcast: Why the best innovators are the clients in crisis Why digital transformation is about personal leadership How operational excellence feeds into innovation How Amazon launched Marketplace What didn’t go to plan with Amazon Marketplace Why John left Amazon The importance of writing simple clear communications Why his books aren’t about Amazon, they’re about the reader Links: Think Like Amazon - 50 ½ ideas to become a digital leader The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles of the World’s Most Disruptive Company The Amazon Way on IoT: 10 Principles for Every Leader from the World's Leading Internet of Things Strategies

If you’ve ever wondered if this is all there is, then you need to listen to this week’s podcast with Sue Hollis, the 60 year old who, having built the multi million dollar company TravelEdge, stepped down as CEO when she had a ‘midlife awakening’, and rode a motorbike around North America for 4 months. Sue is not just an inspirational leader and adventurepreneur, she’s an example to us all that when you think you’ve achieved all there is to achieve, you can still strike out in a new direction. Let her be your motivator and guide and empower you on your own journey. When Dom spoke to Sue it was 4am in Washington state and she was about to go and race superbikes around the Ridge in Seattle. That might be where she is now, but she started out in a very different place - as a corporate heavy hitter with British Airways and Qantas, before braving the wild world of entrepreneurship and starting her own business, TravelEdge. And it’s TravelEdge that Sue talks about today and how it led her to explore a different kind of life - the one she’s living currently. On today’s podcast: What drove Sue to step away from her highly successful career in the corporate world The highs and lows of her entrepreneurship journey Why she places such high impetus on values How to build a company culture through your hiring process Invest in your people and get the most out of them whilst they work for you Leadership can be knowing when to step aside as CEO Don’t work with organisations that don't fit your values Links: Riding Raw - the journey from empty to full www.zappos.com

This week’s guest on The Melting Pot is considered to be the world’s foremost expert on hiring, Dr. Brad Smart. Brad is the founder and CEO of Topgrading Inc, a company that, amongst many things, interviews candidates for hire or promotion to senior positions - the A players, the topgrade. Brad’s methodology is so successful, he is credited with tripling the successful hiring and promotion of high performers at companies such as General Electric, Honeywell, Barclays, and the American Heart Association. Since the 1970s, Brad has conducted close to 7,000 in-depth interviews with executives and has authored 7 books. Topgrading Inc doesn’t just interview candidates, it is also a software company whose platform is designed to integrate with any company’s applicant tracking software. On today’s podcast: Why Brad got started recruiting high performers The truth serum The secrets of topgrading Why HR can’t deliver A-players 40-50% of all resumes contain significant lies Why he replaced the job description with a scorecard Why he isn’t a fan of psychometric testing Links: Society of Human Resources Management https://www.topgrading.com/resources/topgrading-ebook/ Topgrading version 3 - Bradford D. Smart https://prescreensnapshot.com/

Today’s guest is Les McKeown, founder and CEO of Predictable Success. Les has over 25 years of global business experience, including starting 42 companies in his own right. After a long career advising individuals and organisations on growth and development, Les started his own training and development business. In 1999, Les relocated to the US, from where he writes, teaches and consults in high-performance organisational development. Les is also an internationally-renowned keynote speaker, with experience speaking to groups at Google, DO Lectures and numerous Fortune 500 companies. Les McKeown consults with C-level teams on how to lead their organisations to the state of peak performance he calls "Predictable Success”. And it’s predictable success that we talk with him about today. On today’s podcast:. What Predictable Success is Why Predictable Success is not limited to just for profit organisations, but every organisation The seven stages of a business life cycle The different styles of working including individuals, the visionaries, operators, processors and synergists Links: Predictable Success Do Lead Do Scale The Synergist

Today’s guest on The Melting Pot is Giles Palmer, founder and CEO of Brandwatch, a company devised to help organisations find and engage with online conversations that matter; a digital consumer intelligence company. Brandwatch exists to help brands primarily, but also agencies understand their modern consumers—who they are, how they behave, their preferences, what they're sharing and what they're saying—so that the company can make better decisions about what they make and how they bring that product to market. On today’s podcast: Why Brandwatch measures the impact of influencing, without being an influencer itself The different interpretations of fake news How big data allows companies to make better decisions Coffee trends come out of San Francisco Dealing with a gender pay gap The issues with merging two rival companies

Spencer Gallagher and Pete Hoole work with the next generation of independent Agencies to help them scale as co-founders of Cactus. In the past eight years they’ve worked with more than 1,000 Agencies globally, all the while collecting notes about what was and was not working. They recently converted those notes into a book, Agencynomics, an Amazon five-star rated best selling book and Audiobook, aimed to help all types of Agencies scale from Start-up to the first £3-5M in revenue by setting the record straight on what KPIs should really look like. In our conversation we talk about some of the myths around what makes an Agency successful, where you should really focus your energy, and the four cornerstones that anchor business success. While the focus is on Agency growth, many of the areas they’ve identified are ubiquitous to the business world. In this episode we talk about: Why work-life balance and a corporate culture of trust is essential to success How personal relationships and networks to grow your business What your eNPS score should look like, and how to grow it Where you should be channeling your energy and qualifying your leads What it means to take a client-centric approach in the way you structure your staff Links: http://www.cact.us/ Agencynomics

This week’s guest on The Melting Pot is Dean and founder of School of Communication Arts 2.0 (SCA), Marc Lewis. The SCA is currently the world's most eminent portfolio school as well as being a social enterprise, it is also about to become a charity. The school takes 36 students each year through a 12-month journey in Marc’s studio, with about six months of placements. One in three of these students receive a scholarship, some receive bursaries, others self-fund. The school has a network of about 1000 teacher/mentors who help write the curriculum and deliver the learning experience. In Marc’s own words, “the SCA 2.0 is kind of an apprenticeship model meets a university model meets a bit of a circus, a bit of a fun fair.” From earning $200,000 per month from sex lines, to creating Whore magazine, to founding South Africa’s first comedy club, to claiming the first video banner ads, which he sold to WPP for just under £20m, today’s guest Marc Lewis has not had a conventional career history. On today’s podcast: Why it’s called SCA 2.0 and what happened to 1.0 How he managed to buy his first Ferrari at age 21 off the back of sex Why Marc attributes his success to sheer dumb luck, not genius What he learned from his time running his dot.com businesses His firm belief in the practice of gratitude Why learning should be action in rehearsal The problem with traditional pedagogical teaching Why drugs dampen creativity Links: D&AD Gratitude garden