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Sketchy Ideas Episode 93 Show Notes

:10  Intro

• Producer panicking
• Sponsors
• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com/
• Spearity and the Idea Collective
• WASC leadership camp

5:00 How to avoid bad meetings

• Don’t get together just to get together
• Have intentions for said meeting
• Have a plan
  • Why are we meeting
  • What is the context
  • What needs to be discussed/decided
  • What is our next steps

13:30 One-pager

• Make an agenda
  • One page - NO MORE
  • Past 5 bullet points need to be prioritized

20:00 How to stay useful in meetings

• Create buffers for yourself
• Roberts’s rule of order
• Present meetings differently.

32:00 Wrap up

• Next week: find out

Send questions to info@Sketchyideasshow.com

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Sketchy Ideas Episode 92 Show Notes

:10 Intro

• Producer panicking
• Sponsors
• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com/
• Spearity and the Idea Collective

2:30 Retreat recap

• Idea collective
  • Savannah Bananas baseball game
• Connect with others weather business related or not
• Recognize the burn out and take the trip
• Goals made on trip
  • The future of Sketchy Ideas
  • Guest lists
  • Future topics

12:30 Glow

• Goals going in
• Low hanging fruit
• Overview/summary
• Work the plan

21:30 Words to work in

• Each week Brad and Michael will be given a word that they have to work in to the sho that week
• Value of a scoreboard

22:00 Planing

• Have a plan or you will make an excuse to not work
• Don't have meetings that are pointless

26:00 Brad is a doer - what are you?

• Don't let your schedule overload and overwhelm you
  • Make it productive with structure

32:00 Wrap up

• Next week: find out

Send questions to info@Sketchyideasshow.com

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Sketchy Ideas Episode 90 Show Notes

:10 Intro

• Sponsors
• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com/
• Spearity

2:30 New changes

• Episode 100 coming, 90th today
• At 100, we get ‘cool’

03:00 When the ship turns a 180

• When big things happen and they affect us little guys
• As a small business owner you should pay attention to the world - both big and small episodes
• Some people pay to much attention to noise
  • They fall down a rabbit hole
• If you choose to be a business owner you think are a leader
  • Not always because you need to pay attention to the things happening in the world

6:00 Twitter has been bought - Elon Musk

• What does this mean
• Be the rock for your tribe
  • Whatever that looks like and be the rational thinker
  • Don't go done the irrational thinker rabbit hole

10:00 Don't be afraid to say “I dont know”

• Things can feel like noise if it doesn't pertain to you.
• How to pay attention:
  • Prioritize time
  • Limit time
  • Open up
• Practice filtering the difference
• What is the motivation of the source

20:00 Show empathy and opportunity

• Clubhouse
• House
• Pay attention and learn new things
• Detox from scrolling
  • Not trolling and re-sharing things that are irrelevant
• Dont focus all on twitter or you will miss out on other things happening

25:00 Don't be do gunhoe

• You have to open the tunnel vision or you will be blindsided
• Build your own thoughts
• Don't get overwhelmed and stuck in the noise

32:00 Wrap up

Admin’s day, shout out to Nichole,Katelynn, Amanda

• Next week: Road trips and retreats. Fires. Let them burn for your mental state
• Send questions to info@Sketchyideasshow.com

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Sketchy Ideas Episode 89 Show Notes

:10 Intro

• Sponsors
• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com/
• Spearity

3:00 Sales Life

• Is it an epic adventure
• Real growing business and problems
• Sketchy Ideas Real people with real problems - Michael

08:00 Splintering your offering

• Offer stack
  • Physical goods
  • Complex items
    • Everything has values
• Michaels sales process
  • Phase contractings
  • Extra sketchy not etchy sketchy - Brad

13:00 When you find out your good, you say yes

• Find your niche
• Results that are measurable
• Take one item and break it down
  • Physical deliveries
  • Time
  • Result driven item/service

20:00 Grocery list

• Lay it all out as a grocery list
• Example from Beepods
• Don't leave money on the table, don't trade time for money
• “The complete system” you know it going to work

30:00 fake it to you make it

• Figuring it out as you go
• Brad offers an hour of his time at info@sketchyideasshow.com

36:00 Wrap up

• Next week: find out

Send questions to info@Sketchyideasshow.com

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Sketchy Ideas Episode 88 Show Notes

:10 Intro

• Meet Evan
• Sponsors
• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com/
• Spearity

2:00 calculating the true value of a project

• Lets build it as we go
• To much or to little value
  • Provide more value
• What are things worth to you..thats your value
• How do you even price

08:00 What did you drawl

• Its an iceberg
• Consultant vs contractor pricing

13:00 Ttwwadi

• Don't keep buying bandaids, just because
• Don't undervalue yourself
  • What would you pay yourself for doing X

18:00 Connect those dots

• You're being paid mostly for your brain rather than the work

20:00 Treasure

• The deeper you go, the more credible you are
  • The more they will pay you
• Happy wife, happy life
  • Multiplier effect
  • Find the different multiplier effect for yur clients

25:00 Layers of the iceberg

• Pain is the top
• Under the water is the root cause/need
• Bottom of iceberg is open to growth multiplier

30:00 Recap

• Out of the blue
• Call for guest
  • Who wants to be a guest

38:00 Wrap up

• Next week; Spilt offers

Send questions to info@Sketchyideasshow.com

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0:57- Introduction

1:24 Topic intro: Good VUCA

Each part of VUCA is a function of something else, therefore they can be addressed, maybe even prevented

2:40 VUCA 2.0

Vison Understanding Courage Adaptability “In the face of volatility, what do we need to be ready for?” -M Consistency

7:00 Brad takes a shot at VUCA 2.0 (V)

“Vision is the guiding north star” -B “If you don’t have a vision, you don’t have a direction. If you don’t have a direction, you probably have VUCA” -B

8:06 Law of leadership (U)

First understand, then be understood Understand first to get a baseline picture of what is going on “Take care of yourself, but not at the expense of other’s health or wellbeing” -B

10:57 (C)

A sign of courage is making a decision “People often fall into indecision because it’s safe” -B In the long run, indecisiveness does more harm than good Make a choice, stick to that path, learn from it “Courage shows the willingness to be wrong” -B “We’re not retreating, we’re advancing in another direction” -M Pause, reevaluate, make the best choice to move forward Most people think of a plan and only focus on the end goal, when there are plenty of steps along the way.

17:30 (A)

In the words of Eagle Scout Brad James: Improvise Adapt Overcome “The opposite of adaptability is rigidity” -M “There’s always room for improvement” -B

19:43 TTWWADI

That’s the way we’ve always done it If the answer to why something is being done in a particular way is TTWWADI, then we have a problem. TTWWADI is a red flag Dig deeper “60% of small businesses aren’t on the internet” -B Correction: 46% of U.S. small businesses still don’t have a website for their company 59% if you consider most major countries Positive note that there are plenty of business to help market The negative note is that these businesses are getting far less traffic What is stopping you from adapting and getting your business online? SALES is HARD “Change or die” -M In regards to businesses “We are living in a world that Darwin would be proud of” -B

28:10 COVID

Relationships are either going to get stronger or weaker at home during covid More time together Advertisers are spending more on dating apps since they are getting more traffic during the pandemic

29:15 Startups

Hope to get bought out because they never know if they’ll make it Technological advancement/acceleration

30:00 Moore’s Law

Advancement of technology and computing power “Now is a good time to sell your house as long as you don’t need to move into a different one” -M

33:10 Good VUCA

Mixture of a strategic plan Low-level skills A way to counteract the bad VUCA Have your playbook! How will you adjust and prepare If, then map

35:30 Ending remarks/closeout

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Sketchy Ideas Episode 87 Show Notes

:10 Intro

• Meet Evan
• Sponsors
• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com/
• Idea Collective

2:30 Last day of Quarter

• Counting down to episode 100

04:00 Assumptions

• Most people make assumptions
• Poor Ume
• Askew

07:00 Personal example

• Brad - In the event space especially, you often assume you will get the same work
  • That is your brain making an assumption on past events - before the dotted line is signed
• Michael - made assumptions about previous workplaces when making a scope of work

11:00 assumption vs intuition

• The assumption is without proof

14:00 TTwwadi

• That’s the way we have always done it
  • We don’t know anymore that’s why we do it
• Monkeys in the shower
  • Don’t climb the ladder

20:00 Challenging the norm

• A Square is a square and a rectangle is a rectangle
• Common sense is a myth
  • But not the easter bunny
• Don’t bang your head on a brick wall

25:00 Logic does exist

• You cant assume people know
  • You have to let people ask questions

38:00 Recap

30:00 Wrap up

• Next week; turn them into production action to move forward​​

Send questions to info@Sketchyideasshow.com

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Sketchy Ideas Episode 86 Show Notes

:10 Intro

• Meet Evan
• Sponsors
• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com/
• Idea Collective

4:00 What is Arrete

• Focus on banking
  • Keeping up with the Jones
    • Toys came one company growing up

08:00 Brad baby shower

• Baby shower at a bank
• Tech changing in the banking industry
  • Mobile deposit
    • Security reasons hold them back

12:00 Why - what is your why

• Felt like he could more
  • Not sure how because it wasn’t in his job description

16:00 Why Banking

• Highly regulated
• Seven pillars
  • Why - why are we doing this
    • Everyone - EVERYONE
  • Environment
    • Look at everything in context
  • Impact

24:00 Start of business

• Started in Covid
  • was focusing on mergers and acquisitions
  • Returned to banking just this year

30:00 Recap

• Big bigger

38:00 Wrap up

• Next week; turn them into production action to move forward​​
• Send questions to info@Sketchyideasshow.com

Information about Evan:

Website: https://areteglobalsolutions.com

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Sketchy Ideas Episode 85 Show Notes

:10 Intro

• Topic: Long pivot
• Sponsors
• United performing arts fund
  • www.upaf.org
• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com/
• Spearity
  • www.Spearity.com

02:30 Boy Scout

• Brad is an Eagle scout
• Being a boy scout is all about being prepared
• Not always good to fly by the seat of your pants

08:00 2 x 2 box

• Think like a futurist
  • Impact
  • Certainty
    • High
    • Low
      • Get Data
      • Start now
      • Done
      • Plan ahead

18:00 Task Triage

• Do later
• Do now
• Deconstruction
• Drop
• Delegate
  • New business go with what is certain first
  • Established business go with impact first
    • Buy the cheaper inventory

21:00 switch track strategy

• Dream case scenario
• Target
• Worst case scenario

30:00 Pricing

• Supply and demand
  • Make the sale

32:00 Wrap up

• Next week; turn them into production action to move forward​​
• Send questions to info@Sketchyideasshow.com

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Sketchy Ideas Episode 84 Show Notes

:10 Intro

• Topic: Long pivot
• Sponsors
• United performing arts fund
  • www.upaf.org
• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com/
• Spearity
  • www.Spearity.com

02:30 The Covid Pivot

• Chaos, Cronic, global effect
• Media
  • Everyone is more aware of the chaos
• The ripple effect
  • It will get to you one way or another
• Censorship
  • What you can control and what you cant
    • Remember last week?

09:00 Always a leg

• When something is impacted it is legged
  • Lumber?
  • Grocery items?
  • Supply chain
• The acceleration of the impact has increased
• Open to think about thinking about things
  • Can't look at just one perspective

13:00 OPEN

• What does open mean
  • O - Outcome orientated
  • P - perspective
  • E - embrace conflict
  • N - not invented here
• 5 behaviors model
  • Results
  • Avoidance of accountability
  • Lack of commitment
  • Fear of conflict
  • Trust

20:00 Follow the process

• Go back to OPEN

24:00 Your body only has so much energy

• If we change one thing we could put more effort into something else

32:00 Wrap up

• Next week; turn them into production action to move forward​​
• Send questions to info@Sketchyideasshow.com

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Sketchy Ideas Episode 83 Show Notes

:10 Intro

• Topic: Choice engineering
• Sponsors
• United performing arts fund
  • www.upaf.org
• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com/
• Spearity
  • www.Spearity.com

3:00 Recap from Last week and what are we doing this week

• How too many ideas once they have been captured
  • Capture first then prioritize
  • Uses a rubric
    • Vision
    • Goals
    • value

08:00 Narrow down

• So many different layers of a business you need to narrow down
  • Do any of your ideas hit the layers
    • Time
    • Talent
    • Money

13:00 rubric like an onion

• Does the vision aligned
• Is the goal serving
• Is it value creating

15:00 method 2

• Busy but not productive
• People just do stuff
  • No systems in place
• Stephen Covey
  • Circle of control
  • Circle influence
  • Circle of concern
  • Outside everything else
• If its an aspiration it is out of your control

29:00 Task triage

• New thing is called
  • Delegate
  • Do it now
  • Do it later
  • Drop it

32:00 Wrap up

• Next week; turn them into production action to move forward
• Send questions to info@Sketchyideasshow.com

Check out ep33 and 34 about delegation

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Sketchy Ideas Episode 82 Show Notes

:10 Intro

• Topic: Choice engineering
• Sponsors
• United performing arts fund
  • www.upaf.org
  • Link to watch event: https://fb.watch/bmhznoOvZR/
• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com/
• Spearity
  • www.Spearity.com

3:00 Hygiene

• Ideas hitting at all hours
  • Don't put it in your phone, put it in a notebook
• Just do it, just do it now
  • A con, you end up jumping around a lot.
    • A bunch of ideas and don't know how to prioritize
• Lots of starts left undone.

07:00 ignore it and……uh it doesnt come back

• They are prioritizing items but missing opportunities

10:00 Key words or headline

• Jot down key words
• Tell someone else
  • Delegate it
• Tell a why and how and get to the whats details

15:00 Note book

• Carry around a note book
• Use voice notes to at least capture it if no note book
• If you know you are a procrastinator
  • DO IT NOW
• If you are a squirrel
  • Capture it and do it later

20:00 If you are to big of a procrastinator and push for do it now

• You will have a new level of anxiety
  • To much at one time
• You have to do more then capture
• Focus
  • Scheduled structure time

25:00 Negative

• Lots of capture notebooks
• Kill it or feed it but don't let it starve

30:00 Wrap up

• Next week; turn them into production action to move forward
• Send questions to info@Sketchyideasshow.com

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Sketchy Ideas Episode 81 Show Notes

:10 Intro

• Topic: Choice engineering
• Sponsors
• United performing arts fund
  • www.upaf.org
• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com/
• Spearity
  • www.Spearity.com
• Welcoming Brad back

5:00 Brad do you story about choices

• Where Brad was last week
  • Crypto conference in Texas
  • Choice matrix
• Where do you start?
  • Is this doable?
    • Yes or no
• Smokey the Bear - fire fighting, problem solving,
  • Fire prevention..only you can prevent fires
• Must have a process
  • Michael at Spearity can help :)
• Eeny, meeny, miny, moe
• Usually yes or no

10: 00 choose the outcome to really what you want

• Card magic tricks
  • Its a perception of choice
• Placement of choices
  • Dropdown list
  • Featured item
  • appetizers

15:00 Parenting with love and logic

• Giving choices as the parent or choices
  • Never provide an option that you cant carry out
• Leaders have often known the shortest path

20:00 People don’t do complex things

• People dont want to work

22:00 Robert Frost

• He was right
  • I took the road less traveled
• Kid president

25:00 smoke and ears / snake oil salesman

30:00 Wrap-Up

• Micky and minie not built over night
  • Just like businesses
• Send questions to info@Sketchyideasshow.com

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Sketchy Ideas Episode 80 Show Notes

:10 Intro

• Topic: Decision Science, Engineering the choices to optimize the outcome
• Sponsors
• United performing arts fund
  • www.upaf.org
• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com
• Spearity
  • www.Spearity.com

Guest Host Sean Jones into

5:00 Making better decisions

• Sean spent most of his career in health care
• “Trust the Data”
• An error could be costly
  • A fraction of a penny worth 600 million a month
• Everyone is impacted

10: 00 Making large decisions

• Data sources and making decisions
• A fraction of a penny can make or break the deal
• What part of the data really matters?
• How do you value brand equity?
  • Losing money? But with brand equity it will pay off

15:00 Quick Trip

• Talet at quick trip
  • Convenience store that sells gas
• Pet store (Raw dog Barkery) is always located near grocery stores

16:00 Got right

• Popular product in store with good margin
  • Customers were buying product but nothing else in the store
• Buying off an end cap
  • Put your top sellers there and then move them
  • Put testers out on the end cap also to see potential
• Given them a 20% advantage when they removed their popular product
• Relying on YOUR data and not someone elses

23:00 intuition

• Episode:
• Context is King

24:00 Got wrong

• Data from everyone looked good
  • New anistis wanted to collect RAW data before
• Made decision on FDA data and covered the procerder
• This procedure was more effective at other sites then others
  • Came down to who was sitting with you while you were receiving the procedure
  • That kind of data was NOT in the data
  • Context matters

30:00 Wrap-Up

• Congratulations on the success see below for
• Meta data, context,
• Send questions to info@Sketchyideasshow.com

Raw dog Barkery information

PODCAST

https://exploringcatanddognutrition.com/

https://www.facebook.com/ExploringCatAndDogNutrition

BRANDS

https://rawdogbarkery.com/

https://www.facebook.com/rawdogbarkery

https://www.whatsinthebowl.com/

https://www.facebook.com/whatsinthebowl/

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Sketchy Ideas Episode 79 Show Notes

2:00 Intro

• Topic: Flowcharts and Decision trees and how to order a better martini
• Sponsors
• United performing arts fund
  • www.upaf.org
• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com
• Spearity
  • www.Spearity.com

6:00 Why flow charts

• Things don’t always go as planned
• Decisions need to be made and flow charts help
• A poorly decisioned one gives them a bad wrap
• Design matters
  • Design the simple ones first then get complicated
• Documentation matters and can be turned into a flow chart to easily be followed

8:20 Why don't flow charts work

• They get to complicated
• People think to much about how they look
• Underappreciated art form

10: 00 Make them fun again

• The happy path
  • Things go as planned
• Keep them simple
  • At first
• Keep it low level
  • 5 years old, 15 year old, collage student, adult
• Explain it fast

15:00 How often does it not go as planned

• Less than 20%
  • Dont worry about it
• What is the decision that needs to be made
  • Yes or no
• Think of it like a drop down box
  • You need an answer besides yes or no

16:00 Martini

• What is a martini
• The name of the drink is what is in the drink
• Types of dry martini
  • Means I want less dry vermouth
• Dirty martinis
  • Olives
  • What kind of olives
    • Blue cheese
    • Garlic

20:00 Garnishes and glasses

• Types of garnishes
  • Lemon
  • Onion
  • Olives
• Glass
  • Up
  • Down
• Shaken or stirred
  • Why?
• Type of alcohol
  • Gin
  • Vodka

25:00 You want better outcomes

• A flow charts/decision tree makes it easy for people to make decisions
• Multiply audicanace
  • User
  • Receiver
  • Inputer
• Your day sometimes has decision fatigue
  • Constantly making decisions
• Hangary
  • Its a real thing
• Find the trends

31:00 Wrap-Up

• Find the trends and best martini recipe next week
• Send questions to info@Sketchyideasshow.com

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:30 Intro

• Topic: The Guest List: A Series. Solidify The Connection
• Sponsors
• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com
• Spearity
  • www.Spearity.com
• Recap
  • We talked about ways to get noticed
  • How to build a guest list
  • Discussed a lot of marketing and sales last week
  • This week we are focusing on rapport building

4:00 How do we build rapport?

• If you are not a marketer that’s okay
• During rapport building stage, you still have to make it about the guest
• Read “how to read friends and influence people”
• There are things you can do to make sure people are getting back to you
  • You will fail and people will say no that’s okay
  • Don’t always make small talk
    • Need value
    • Need to make a business
    • Establish relationships

• 1 thing in building rapport is responding in a timely manner

• Always say “thank you for your time” not “sorry”
  • Most people will get back to you
  • Follow their cadence

8: 20 Follow traditional communication

• If they don’t like email and tell you that DON’T EMAIL THEM
• Most of these individuals have people managing their communication and will tell you to do so
• When you make the ask this is when you will get that response to get in touch with assistant
  • If they say no it doesn't always mean no
  • Could need to build more rapport
  • The “no” is a request for more information - M
    • Not me
    • Not now
    • Not that
• Rapport, rapport, rapport
• If you hear a no, learn why and you will improve

12: 00 “Thank you for your patience”

• Reframe
  • Don’t apologize
  • Say thank you
• This can change the nature of the whole conversation
• A lot of time coaching is spent on language
  • Verbal
  • Text
  • Email
  • Written word
• Language has to be very intentional
• Most communication we get now is not verbal
  • We lose all nonverbal communication this way
  • Most of the meaning of conversation is verbal so this is hard
  • People assume things about written text
  • The “voice in your head” is not what they are hearing through the screen

16:10 Break Through the Noise

• Messaging needs to be positive
• The positivity sticks out amidst all the noise
• Once you solidify the yes
  • You think “I did it!”
  • Then people get distracted
  • But you need to continue the rapport building
• Remember that your deal is not closed until money is in hand, they are on the show contract is closed

Full Show Notes Here

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:30 Intro

• Topic: The Guest List: A Series. Solidify The Connection
• Sponsors
• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com
• Spearity
  • www.Spearity.com

4:00 Solidifying the Guest Connection

• How do we get the guests on the show and get a response?
  • Basic message
  • Layer of influence
  • Benefits to guests
• So how do we get the messaging to these people?
  • If you get a request to be on a show they all look the same and go to spam
    • They are long
    • Spammy
    • Dense
  • People don’t like to read long emails

8: 10 How to get attention

• Your ask should be short and to the point initially
• You have to get noticed
  • When doing your research you have to understand who you are going after
  • Why you are going after them
  • How do they spend their time?
  • Understand the channel these people spend the most time on
    • If you ping on all channels you look like spam
    • Be intentional
    • “Hey I know you’re there”

12: 00 Messaging and Targeting Matter

• Having some idea of pattern interrupt is important
  • something unexpected
  • EX: A red car among a bunch of tan cars
  • The best ad → an obscure ad
• You need to know how to break the noise so you get attention
  • You could ship actual mail to people
  • Very attention getting
• Make it relevant to them
  • Need to show empathetic value
  • “What can we do for you”

16:00 Digital route / getting noticed / building rapport

• Videos need to be short, to the point
  • Make a small ask at the end
  • Follow up if they received/ saw it
• Building rapport is critical
  • Not just attention for attention
  • EX: how I met your mother reference
• Marketing is about getting noticed but you need a philosophy

20: 30 Following trends that are off brand

• Meta example during covid
• Don’t do something just because everyone else is
• Go against the grain if you are too late
• Brad suggests going perpendicular

24:00 Create Conflict

• If you are 83% in on a trend, don’t do it, you will be a late adopter
• Conflict is not a bad thing
  • Good if it creates a challenge
  • And has intention
• Perpendicular works because you can ride the timeline and watch
  • Pay attention to what is being said in depth
  • Where else it is relevant
  • Or you can challenge it

Full Show Notes Here

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:30 Intro

• Topic: The Guest List: A Series. The Team of 3 Expands
• Sponsors
• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com
• Spearity
  • www.Spearity.com

4:44 Building On The Guest List

• Brad is highly proficient at recruiting….and drawing
  • He has done a lot of recruiting - lots of wins and losses
  • Good, better, best
    • Great in practice
    • Good in theory
    • The best for you
  • EX: Putting on an event → you need an MC.

8: 30 Good, Better, Best Practices

• These apply across principles where you need a guest, not just on a podcast
• We are trying to influence a behavior in another person → influencing a guest to come on the show
• What is the first thing you would do when planning to get a guest
  • Step 1: Get in touch is the better method but the first step is cold call or cold email
    • Details and introduce yourself in the message
    • Can you come
    • The who, what, when, where, why, and how

12:00 Steps Continued…

• Brad’s example of Kids Triathlon
  • He recruited sponsors and it worked because they knew who he was
  • It was a community event
  • Understand the group you are asking
• Step 2: Leverage the network→ add a layer of influence
  • Understand who you are talking to
• Step 1 & 2 are about YOU because you are asking about something you need

16:00 Learning what would benefit the guests

• Step 3: Benefits to the Guest:
  • How do you leverage your message to benefit the guest
  • Work backwards
  • Lead with benefits leverage the network, and then you can get to details

20:10 Socratic questioning

• Your guest needs to know what they will get out of this
• If you frame the benefits right off the bat, you will save your guest/sponsor time
  • “The most scarce resource anyone has is time” - B
  • People are usually happy to give money but time is limited
• You need to link your why to their why → start your conversation there
• How do you figure out their “why?”
  • Ask yourself “why do you want them as your guest or speaker?”
  • EX: Maybe it's a new book → you can advertise their new book to a new audience

24:00 Goodwill and message

• How will YOU spread the message of your guest or sponsor
• Make it resonate with them that drives a response
  • Ex: write your email backwards
  • 5 paragraph essay → start with conclusion and write the rest afterwards
• Greatest skill in marketing is copywriting : attention grabbing

28: 00 EX: Board Decisions

• Board will print out powerpoint
  • Everyone will flip to the back

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:30 Intro

• Topic: The Guest List: Planning to bring you the best in 2022

4:00 Sponsors

• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com
• Spearity
  • www.Spearity.com
• This is year 3 of the show
  • Have you taken advantage of our guests and advice?
  • Be active about your goals. Take action
• We want to have guests every week in the coming quarter
• Takes a lot of effort to get people onto your show

8:00 Bringing on Experts

• We are a team of 3 and we do a lot with not a lot of resources
• “ I am sick of hearing my voice” -B this is why we need to bring on guests
• We bring a lot of value but we are looking to broaden perspectives
  • We have a lot of people in mind that can add value
  • If we get those people relaxed then it becomes more valuable because it is less of a pitch
• Accountability vs empathy
  • How do we capitalize on this?
  • Bring people we listen to ourselves on the show
• Accountability, empathy, transparency
  • Here are some things we like to talk about
  • What do we want to talk about more?

12:00 The Guest List

• A process must be repeatable and measurable
• We have maintained a discipline each week because there are some guests that need to see that you have the consistency and reputation under your belt
  • This is the value to doing a show every week
  • We are already into year 3
• Why are these guests on our list? Without naming names
  • We have read their books
  • Asking “who do I want to learn more from?”

16:00 Guest List Cont…

• Certain people we want to work with
  • Opportunities
  • Have more discussions
• They have got a following
  • Bring attention to our show
  • Driving traffic
• Engaging personality
• Easy to talk to
• Someone who is a good fit for our style

20:00 “What do YOU need out of this?”

• When you are talking about generating content, the best way to get the most out of this is to be selfish
• Accountability
  • We have two people
  • We show up for each other
• Whoever is coming on the show, we want them to be friendly face so they feel comfortable
  • Create a great guest experience
  • They will have more fun
  • Say nice things about the show and us

24:12 Transition period

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:30 Intro

• Topic: Year-End Reflections & Predictions: a Board-side Chat

4:00 Sponsors

• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com
• Spearity
  • www.Spearity.com
• Learned a lot this year
  • Lots of reflection
  • Look at what was great and negative
• This year has been especially challenging because of covid

8:10 Next year and moving forward

• Next year we want to spend time diving into data
• You need to be aware of the data
• We are truly a globalized economy now
  • Policy shifts are happening
  • Crypto
  • Space travel
• When you look at large media everyone has something to say that is backed by a larger agenda
  • But looking at what comes out of doing things like going to space
• Will be interesting to see what will happen with monetary values
  • How people are managing cash flow
  • How to manage personal money

12:10 Predictions for next year

• Age of paper checks are on their way out
  • Two years and that’s gone
• Delivery and food → pushback on uber eats, door dash, etc.
• If you can’t improve your own margins, you will be left behind
  • Caught in worker shortage
  • Delivery markets

16: 00 more positions than available workers

• staffing , driver shortage is at a peak
  • Need to figure out something different
  • Rallying cry
• Need to lay to rest some of our old ways
  • Hard to do
  • Things were great once but they are not coming back
• There has to be a shift in where people are going to find work
  • Lots of sexy jobs out there
  • But also been a rise in people where it doesn’t help people move forward
  • Skilled work is where a lot of shortages are and important to dissect why that is

20: 00 Robots

• Robots are going to need to become a part of daily life
  • It won’t get rid of jobs
  • Train people on how to prepare, manage, and maintain these machines
    • Just different work
• Law conservation of jobs
  • Can’t create or destroy
  • Just change their makeup
• Shift your need to not how many people do I need to how many specialists do I need
  • Micros are easier to fill
  • Challenges with this too
    • Ex: welder

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:30 Intro

• Topic: Crypto For Common Folk part 5

3:00 Sponsors

• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com
• Spearity
  • www.Spearity.com
• Recap of last week
  • Nft and value

6: 04 Active Learning with Michael, NFT version

• NFT is really about establishing ownership
• One of they key factors of blockchain and crypto is about combating fraud
• NFTs do not have a good face that is a good descriptor
• WHat are NFTs designed to do?
  • Security
  • Ownership
  • Authenticity

9: 05 How do we validate NFTs

• How do we authenticate them?
  • It has been applied to things for a long time but called something different
  • Now it is backed by blockchain
    • This is the chain of authenticity
    • It is the pink slip validating that you own something

12:00 Certified

• Applying the idea of owning something but with a digital artifact
• Increasing value by proving authenticity and certification

15: 10 This Isn’t New

• Don’t be scared of it it is just a different way of talking about it
• When you introduce levels of speed you inherently apply pressure on industries to either lose value or lose people
  • We lost people through the scaling of the internet
  • Everyone moved on

18:20 Protection Layer

• EX: Stealing a painting
• Security
• How does this apply to the metaverse?
  • EX: nike bought company that does digital fashion
  • This is them getting into the metaverse
• NFT concept
  • Apply to fashion world in general
    • In real world, digital and metaverse
    • buying a piece of clothing in the metaverse
      • Buying e commerce fashion in metaverse
      • The outfit pertains to everything in that iteration
      • The shopkeeper doesn’t have the inventory on hand

21: 27 Tshirt example from last week

• The shopkeeper doesn't have the inventory on hand in the store
• But you want to have access to brands
  • So you get an nft contract
  • Go into store and buy clothes from all different brands and when you buy, all those companies including the shopkeeper gets paid
  • Even shows up in the mail
• There are fashion apps now where you can stand and wear the glasses
  • You will get the outfit in the metaverse and in the real world

24: 00 Enforcement of Patent

• You could make a fake nike sweatshirt and you could do it in the real world and metaverse until that brand stops you
  • But you would need to set up a store
  • Get a code
  • Learn a whole new platform in order for it to work

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:30 Intro

• Topic: Crypto For Common Folk part 4

3:00 Sponsors

• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com
• Spearity
  • www.Spearity.com
• Recap of last week
  • Mining
  • Energy into dollars

6:00 Application

• Blockchain
  • NFTs
  • Logistics
    • EX: tshirts and supply chain
    • cotton→ loomed → cut → stitched → ship → send to shipper and into container → container to port → customs approved → next ship →

9: 00 Application continued

• Logistics ex:
  • Next ship → container is sealed someone picks it up
  • Each of those stages is a separate contract
• NFTs
  • The idea of blockchain helps with this because you can track from beginning to end automatically and not manually
  • Eliminates moving fees, people get paid faster
  • Smart contracts

12:00 Etherium

• Etherium is the platform of blockchain on which smart contracts are being built
  • There are other side platforms that solve part of the contracts
  • EX: you want you avatar to wear that white tshirt you built would be another NFT
• “How do I retain my value in a world where almost everything can be forged?” -14:07 B
  • We have been dealing with NFT’s since the age of licensing and video games

15:00 Video Games

• A new upgrade to a character or a truck/car or anything in a video game → NFT
• NFT: Non fungible token → it can be exchanged for something else
• NFTs have been around for a while we just call it something else

18:20 NFT’s Cont….

• Buying fine art is an example of this

21: Brads Drawing NFT Gif

• Sells all the clothing he puts on this drawing
• Can all be separate entities
• Someone else has to agree that something has value for it to be an NFT

24:05 Fungible vs Non fungible

• There is data behind each of these things
• Score of value to some extent
• EX: collectibles
  • They only have value because people believe they have value
  • In NFT very similar but the difference is there may be more than one version of the same piece out there
  • They are getting backed with other data → added value to an object
  • People want to own a piece of something not the whole thing

27:10 NFTs to ticket

• Gary Vee did this
• Similar to people who ping you to own certain things
  • Brad got pinged to own Scottish Land
  • Sentimental value over tangible value

30:00 Wrap-Up

• Send questions to info@Sketchyideasshow.com
• More crypto next episode

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:30 Intro

• Topic: Crypto For Common Folk part 3

3:29 Sponsors

• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com
• Spearity

www.Spearity.com

6:50 Mining and what does it mean for business owners

• Crypto mining and YOU → what does it all mean?
  • Important because it is growing
  • Will become a big topic

9: 00 Mining

• Mining is just a service platform
  • A bunch of computers that are running the same set of code and problems
  • A bunch of people want to get into mining
  • If you want to: start now
• Mining makes crazy returns -B
• When people are investing in mining the returns are so out of the norm that it almost doesn’t make sense

12:00 Example of return on mining

• EX: you pay 10,000 for this mining machine
  • Your gross revenue monthly will be over $1400
  • Most of these machines take a lot of power
  • Breakeven in 7 months and profit in 8
  • power
• Power when it comes to crypto
  • Need money to plug it in
  • around $300 monthly in power to plug these machines
  • Will run for 2-3 years

15:20 return on mining cont….

• Market can change and your profit could drop

18: 50 expenses

• After 21/2 years you will be making $700 a month profit and you are doing nothing
• The point of this is if you follow the numbers, this beats any business model
• “Turning electricity into cash” -B 2:20
• Negative: they take a lot of power to run which is why the power expense is high

21: 10 Power

• Realistically it is double the amount of power your house would use, but you are making $700 monthly profit
  • They need to maintain infrastructure that is not being used
  • They cannot use the power. Power isn’t where we need it.
  • Power is produced no matter what

24:00 Power storage

• Power storage is the problem
• Crypto is actually good for the environment because it is going where the future is going
• There is demand to upgrade → the power is being generated anyway, but crypto is actually using this power
• sims example run the power in the middle of the city

27:00 Access to People

• Crypto is doing good things for the world and for energy even if it is a huge power source
• “Nerds in basements”-M Michael explaining why crypto isn’t an MLM

30: 00 Crypto Models

• The idea and the return is almost unbelievable
  • There is nothing else that works this way
  • Because it is digital and other things require work ethic

33:10 Systems

• We are just getting good at this
• Important takeaway is to look at the idea and begin to understand it
• The more demand the more innovation happens -B 33:50
  • “Demand is the mother of innovation” - M

36: 00 Don’t get left behind

• Take advantage of the education right now
• Financial literacy is important or you will get lost in the dust

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:30 Intro

• Topic: Crypto For Common Folk part 2

4:00 Sponsors

• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com
• Spearity

www.Spearity.com

8:00 Recap of last week and Intro to Mining

• crypto=decentralized currency
  • Combats inflation
  • Access to build wealth
  • Not controlled by people
• It is “incorruptible”
• How to get crypto?
  • 1. You can buy some → it is a tradable asset
  • 1. Sell Stuff → good for small business owners. Can sell goods and services for crypto

12:00 How to get crypto Cont….

• Buying crypto is like any other monetary exchange
  • 1. Mining

16: What is Mining?

• Mining:
  • Think about how a credit card gets processed (electronically)
    • Goes from the store to a central exchange who talks to the bank
    • Central exchange gets a process fee, bank gets % interest
    • Central exchange runs data service
      • All owned by one central exchange
      • What mining does is takes the central exchange model and multiplies it from a single model to a model for every single person.
    • Gif of drawing 17:31

20:00 Central Entities

• We can buy that equipment the central exchange which is called mining
  • Blockchain runs this central entity and makes it run smooth
  • No hacking
  • Mining comes down to the fact that it can be
• “Rather than one entity owning a thousand servers, you have a thousand people owning a single server” -B 20:54
  • Benefits:
    • No central bank
    • Eliminated real bank
    • Eliminated people in institutions managing
  • These transactions are less than 1%
    • They used to give 3 1/2% to the central exchange and then to the bank
    • So as a business owner you want the 1%

24: 00 Next Steps after Blockchain

• Wallets → like apple pay
• Store (went from cash, check, credit card, now bitcoin)
• Everyone is wanting to collect that 3 ½% and the bank is realizing they aren’t getting that anymore

28:Innovation

• Whole bunch of businesses and some have success and swallow up other businesses
  • Same idea now there is a BIG BANK
  • The BIG BANK owns the little box in the store
• Mining is one of these innovations
• Since these servers are spread out it is decentralized
  • Stores rates don’t go up
  • Don’t have to charge more

32:00 Fed Reserve

• Fed is in charge of money
• Diff. from federal government
• Federal reserve is not in charge of US government
• Money is not evil or good, it is just a tool -B
  • Depends on how you use it
  • And who is using it

36:Wrap-Up

• Send questions to info@Sketchyideasshow.com
• More crypto next episode

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3:00 Intro to Crypto

• Think about your level of financial literacy now
• Crypto and the reasons
  • Before credit card everything was based on cash that flows through banks
  • We have needed to find out how to make money move faster
  • EX: Credit card swipers
• We are seeing more advancement now with crypto
• Crypto and blockchain are not the same thing

6:06 Crypto built on blockchain

• Blockchain has been around but not able to scale
  • It was created to make sure that data was safe in computers
  • Think about it in terms of a virus on a computer
• If you get hacked, you probably have a cloud backup
• Became cheaper and more efficient to run this way
• Double spending: send a check here and there, etc.

9:00 Fraudulent

• Centralization like sending to a bank was an improvement but it is slow
  • We want money to run quickly = crypto
  • Used to be days of turn around because of paper and mail
• Speed of money and protection against fraud are the two specific things crypto is solving for

12: 00 Dollar Bill Example

• Dollar bills used to be backed by gold and silver now its backed by government
  • We still perceive it as value
  • Because it is backed by government
• Currency constantly changes
  • All it is a tradable asset
  • Agreed upon
• People are saying crypto is liquid gold
  • Bitcoin has a limited finite amount
  • so it has a static value face

15:00 Gold vs bitcoin

• Only 21 million will be mined
• We don’t know how much gold can be mined
• It is important for people to understand because this is a global currency
• Blockchain eliminates the possibility to hack the entire database
  • A block is a set of data
  • It is then sealed and another block of data is linked into it
  • Hence the chain link of blocks
  • Every block has an encryption in open and close
• “You’re telling me block chain is a chain of blocks” -M 17:30 Gif

18:00 Redundancy

• We have copied that blockchain amongst hundreds of computers over the world
• Single cloud-computing
  • In order to hack blockchain
  • You need to hack the whole network all at once
• Also safer against inflation and nobody telling you the value of your money

21:10 socio economic standpoint

• Country run by dictator
  • They can decide whether your money is worth any value
• We are doing this from the internet handphone so you can build wealth outside of their country’s banking system
• You can now use this to send money instead of using Western Union

24:00 Exchange rate

• All relative value based on governmental currency
• Everything on the world is based on the petro dollar
  • Petrodollars are U.S. dollars paid to an oil-exporting country for the sale of the commodity
  • Backed more with oil then gold

27: 00 Crypto is not going away

• Fastest technology in human history
• Everyone wants more control of their money
• Seeing impacts of this everywhere

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:30 Intro

• Topic: Process Scaling Case Study

3: Sponsors

• Cream City Marketing
  • www.creamcitymarketing.com
• Spearity
  • www.Spearity.com
• Breaking down our own case study and what we have learned
• Learning to adjust to new plans and new ideas that seem simple but are more complex

6:00 “How Bad Can It Be?

• You think it will be easy because you do this every week → But what is actually involved
  • Behind the scenes can be more work to a job then you plan on
  • Ex: We had a new podcast that had new layouts, live chat, new graphics, etc.
• More things can also be connected then you may think
• Many interconnected aspects that rely on each other

9:19 What do do when it doesn’t go as planned

• There are moments where you say “this is bad”
• Can be teachable moments as to why we do tech rehearsals
• You have to be ready to make adjustments
• You may think you do these things every day
  • Does not make it easy
  • Does not make it fast

12:05 Very Complex

• You can forget how hard things are because you have been doing it for so long
  • Going back to the beginning, you can forget details
  • Forget how long it can take
• Easy does not equal fast
  • We know how but it may not be efficient
  • This is key to remember

15:00 Complications

• The word complications come from watches
• Each minute, second, and all the inner workings are called complications
• The concept of having a watch with hour, minute and second is simple but putting that all together with gears and having it work together is very complex

18:18 multiple levels of complication

• Lift and Shift
  • Shorthand for we have a process that we can just replace with the new project
  • But with this, you miss everything else you have to add
• Not as simple as lift and shift
• You have to get down to the lowest level to find out what is different between your projects

21:00 Think about what you can do differently next time

• Ask more questions
• Think of details
• Do a demo

24:30 WASC Overview

• Podcast for WASC that we are producing at 7:30 pm CT

27: 00 Wrap-Up

• Send questions to info@Sketchyideasshow.com
• Join us at our WASC show at 7:30 pm
  • Can look to linktree Ion IG: @wascleader
  • Streamed on twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Michael’s Linkedin

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:30 Intro

• Topic: Everyone Needs a Hero
• Sponsors
  • Cream City Marketing
  • Spearity

3: 45 Storytime

• Recap of last week’s episode- base roots of cinema, books, tv
• Hero’s Journey - use this in your business
• A whole new way to look at customer journey

6:00 Why do stories matter?

• There is a reason you remember your childhood stories
  • There is a moral and story to remember
  • Tapping into something fundamentally basic
  • “Every framework has a story to be told”- M
• 1st part: Status Quo - things are stasis (this is the start of your story)
  • Typically there is an ambition “a calling to an adventure”- B
  • Put your customer in the hero’s shoes → driving them to want to do something different, Called to go discover what the need is

9:00 2nd part- refusal of the call

• Internal dialogue that someone is having → could be an objection “I will figure it out”
• People are stubborn, you need to get them over this
• Third part: assistance or meet the mentor
  • In motion once you get past this point
  • Usually involves someone else or something else to get you there
  • Easiest thing to look at is a mentor being a spokesperson EX: Flo from progressive

12:30 Keys to Change

• Need to have a mentor to relate to, someone doing something you haven’t tried yet
• 4th Part : Road of trials, allies and enemies
  • People who will want you to be successful and people who won’t
  • This is the first opportunity after someone says “yes i want to work with you” or “I want to get out”

15:50 5th part: Ultimate Crisis

• EX: death and rebirth, the belly of the whale
  • Basically when things look like they are lost and everything will fail
  • A mental shift needs to happen when this happens

18:14 Mental Shift cont...

• Once you go through this mental shift, you are empowered
• You need to empower your customer/client to get over these things
• 6th part: Ultimate Boom
  • The ultimate victory
  • The big win in the movie
  • Need to stay with your customer up until this point

21:30 Journey Home: 8th part

• Returning with what you won
• Coming full circle
• As a customer, this is ultimately what they are looking for
• “If you get good at doing this you can take any product and turn it into something great” -B
• Part 9: Return Home

24:24 Part 10 Resurrection

• When someone goes through a transformation, someone may not recognize them
• The resurrection could be small → your client may not recognize it
• Part 11: The road back

27: 11 12th Part: Passing the Status Quo

• What do you do with the new perspective you have after coming full circle?
• You are telling everyone they also need to go on a new journey
• Allows you as a business to expand into new products, services, etc
• If you are a business owner you have to continuously come up with new ideas, services, products
• Be self reflective
• You are the mentor but you are offering a tool to help the customer get through it

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3:07 Why do people think collaboration is scary?

• Take the mask off of collaboration
• There are positive and negative experiences with collaboration

6:00 Brad’s Bad Collaboration Experience

• Someone comes with an idea
  • You believe in the idea
  • Your set of skills are helpful
  • But...you realize the person with the idea doesn’t have anything else to offer
• Need to work with individuals who have something more to offer than an idea
• If you can’t execute = no collaboration
• You can waste a lot of people’s time in the process
• “You make decisions to make things happen”- B

9:35 Need to have plans laid out

• Gif 10:20 of Brad walking into bad collaborations over and over
• Everyone has probably been ill prepared at some point in time
• Basic premise of collaboration
  • You have an idea
  • People execute the idea
  • Can fall apart

12:04 Walking Through Not Following A Plan

• You need to follow through
• Someone usually thinks they don’t need help because their plan is the best
• “I love the convenient placement of the brick wall” -M (Applied to Gif and bad collaboration)
• It is important to improvise, adapt, and overcome-B

15:11 Relate to Episode 65

• There is fighting, flighting, and freezing in almost all collaborative efforts
• We live in an instant gratification world where people want things to go right the first time
  • It never is like this
  • People will be disappointed
• Vision is also important in collaboration to be on the same page
• It is okay to not have a successful collaboration with the same people

18:01 Leadership has shifted from vision centric

• You need to be resilient enough to try again in a different way if collaboration doesn’t work
  • You may see things differently
  • Have different knowledge
• Even if the plan is perfect, someone may throw a wrench in the plan
  • Unpredictable
  • Out of our control
• Go in with a mindset of “Change is okay” so collaboration isn’t scary

21: 00 Check in and Adjust

• Need to make sure you are on track
• “Be ready when things don’t seem right” -B
  • “That is why that needs to be built in” -M
• “The only way you can achieve collaboration is by putting in the time and energy” -M

24:00 Collaborating is a long game

• Check in as you go in a collaboration
• Maintain alignment
• Having shared value is key
• You need to be ready to pivot
• “Great collaboration is communicative and generative”- M

27: 23 Implications of BlackBoxing

• This is when you are asking for orders not collaboration
  • There can be a reason for doing this
  • But not managing through collaboration
• 95% of the time blackboxing does not work for collaboration
• Can be used an intellectual property for some people

30:00 Need to Define What Collaboration Is

• Blackboxing should not be a practice because it is purely intrinsic in certain situations
• You need to feel that you are needed and have contribution in collaboration

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3:00 Sponsors

• Cream City Marketing
• Spearity
• Introduction to topic
  • Fear and other emotions

6:00 Fear and Other Emotions

• BOATS → recap of last episode
• Can’t change your emotional/ instinctual reaction when a threat comes your way
  • Either flight, fight, or freeze
  • What do you do?

9:01 Assigning Categories

• In different situations, they can trigger different emotions
• There are some things that you should not try to fight
• Freeze is dear in headlights
• Fight is good when you are bigger than the issue
• Flight → can be stuck and resort from a freeze
• “Fight is the winning strategy when the outcome is more important than the relationship”-M

12:15 In depth explanation

• When the relationship is more important- freeze is a good choice
• “Fear is a primary emotion”-M
• You can confuse a lot of different emotions with fear
  • Primary categories
    • Sadness
    • Anger
    • Joy
    • Love

15: 12 What do you do after you have your primary emotions

• You Can control primary emotion through management and train
• Lizard brain-your instinct running all the time regardless
• If you manage your brain by guiding yourself you can manage your lizard brain easily-B
• Important to think through rational things

18: 04 Learn to Manage your Lizard Brain

• This is all biochemical stuff that causes these emotions
• Your neurons will fire differently and they are not interconnected
  • If not interconnected=different paths
• EX of disney of personification: Inside Out

21: 30 Example of explaining the feel of embarrassment

• You feel shame
• The bad kind of anger/upset
• If you don’t understand how you will react then your reaction will become instinct
  • Applies to if you are a leader
  • Your team will follow that
  • Fight, flight and freeze and bad for being a leader → bad for momentum of team

24:16 Your brain is wired by stories that were put together

• If you mental and physical state is under control you can manage your brain
• There are times where flight and freeze are valid emotions

27: 30 Self Preservation

• If fight, flight and freeze are instinctual what is the second layer?
• Intentional action → You can choose both
  • Compromise and cooperate
  • Or collaborate
• If you decide that two things (fight and freeze) matter you are collaborating

30:40 Time and Effort to Achieve a better Outcome

• Address with intention preserves relationships
• When you are feelings emotions you are able to manage and choose your state
  • If you have resources
  • Can’t do this if you’re hangry

33:00 Wrap-up

• Send us topics
• Sketchy Soiree in November
  • Send questions to info@Sketchyideasshow.com

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30 Sponsors

• Cream City Marketing
• Spearity
• Introduction to topic
  • What happens when things don’t go right

3:30 Intro/ BOATS

• Recap of Brad’s sickness and some humor
• Always remember
  • Tea
  • Sleep
  • Chicken soup!
• Figure out what you need to do when you pivot
• Most people have been in a position where something did not go right
• BOATS get you through
  • Gets you through tough moments
  • Stressful
  • Feel like you can’t handle it

6:00 BOATS explained (focus on O) explained

• Tying up of loose ends
• How will OATS solve things
  • Imagine week before event
  • You have zero people coming to event and you are supposed to have hundreds
  • First thing you need to do is observe
    • Observe to understand where you are at
    • Be okay with it

9:00 BOATS (A, S, and T explained)

• A: Assess the situation
  • Where everything is at
  • What the problem is
  • What are the emotions
• Need a giant assessment of everything
• You will then understand the situation
• T: Triage
  • Multiple things are bound to go wrong
  • It is a ripple effect if one thing goes wrong
  • This is where you have to work with others to understand priorities
    • Look at resources available
    • What is the minimum requirement

12:00 BOATS (S Explained)

• You and everyone else need to strategize
  • There will be a hierarchy
  • You need to have a hierarchy and decision maker in times of chaos
• When you triage, you will understand who the higher authority is
  • This is the only part that will guide your strategy
  • Make sure quality of event is maintained
• And then you have trust

15:05 BOATS (T and B explained)

• You need to trust that what is going to happen is going to happen if you have already observed, assessed, triaged and strategize
• B: Breathe
  • If you go right into observation will be skewed if you do not breathe and relax
  • “You are living in a lizard brain rather than the rational mind that humans have access to” -B
• Get control and align your head and mind
• You will gain clarity
• People are interconnected so those emotions spread like wildfire-B

18:40 All you have to do is follow the strategy

• You cannot perpetuate the chaos-M
• Need to come from a place of calm
• Need to put the “B” in the front
• Need to be able to work smart and give clear direction to others

21:00 Heroic Journey

• There is always a breakthrough when you start having a clear mind
• Starts in the head...doesn’t start with strategy
• Growth and scale is done through others
  • Need to leverage the best of them
  • Not be the best of them

24:20 BOATS overview

• All you really need is BOATS when you are in chaos and a solution will form

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:30 Intro

• Sponsors
  • Cream City Marketing
  • Spearity
  • Introduction to topic
    • Planning events

3:15 Event Overview

• Michael=1 event a month on average
• Easiest way to gain experience for clients is events
  • Also a great way to drive client engagement
• Events are less about products and services and more about brand awareness/understandings
• Always good to put on events regardless is everything is organized
  • You are engaging with customers in a different way
  • Deepening the relationship
  • Share personality of your company

6:20 How events are different and better

• Disney and Iron man are great at putting on events
  • They sell experiences
  • They create motivators
  • Health, wealth, and relationships
• Everything is about relationships
• Books and movies are also an example
  • They create experiences
• Michael-”Sorry but I go to the movies for the popcorn” 8:25

9:24 Experiences

• If you are a service provider, experiences go a long way
• You are able to interact with your brand
• Make sure you think of the whole event and experience to make it a quality event
  • Think of it of a 5 paragraph essay
  • Can’t forget about the intro/outro of th event
  • Can’t only focus on the material during the event

12:00 Marketing of the Event

• The title of your event is your hook
• Probably already have the “meat and potatoes” the bulk of your event figured out.
• Need to focus on why people should want to come to your event.
• “Every event needs to be build on the rule of 3” -B
  • This goes for
  • Events,
  • Conferences
  • Exhibits
  • Etc.
• Make sure your goal of your event is clear
  • This needs to fit the title
  • Then your title needs to be based around marketing
• All of these things create an “ecosystem”

15:08 Transitions

• Don’t confuse transitions from your content
• The transition has unique value
  • Taking you from one place to another
  • It will not be a journey for audience if you do not have transitions
• If you do not know how the pieces of your event connect, then you will not have value in this event

18:00 Intro/Outro

• What goes into the intro/outro
  • Marketing
  • Anticipation
• It is the marketing after the sale-M
• How do you keep your audience excited about the event after the sale
• Digital
  • Recurring emails
  • Detailed emails with login info
  • Sharing on social media
  • This is all anticipation
• Outro
  • Lots of questions
  • Example: disney makes you walk through three gift shops before leaving
  • “Make sure you had dessert”-B

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:30 Intro

• Sponsors
  • Cream City Marketing
  • Spearity
  • Introduction to topic
    • Funnel hacking conference
    • Not about strategy or offer to grow your business

3: 30 overview of last week /intro to conference

• Great keynote from Natalie Bretl
  • Watch Episode 61
• Lots of valuable insight
  • Simple process to grow your business
  • You may be the thing holding the business back
• Conference
  • Hybrid event
  • Lots of digital and in person
  • Clickfunnel hacking live
    • Funnel building website
    • Email brad for more info on it
  • Biggest thing when you go to a MKT conference
    • Usually about tactics and strategies
    • But this event was not focused on those things

6:05 Not a typical event

• Story was 2nd importance
  • For most people in order to have a breakthrough
  • Need to have a “why” you are doing this
  • Motivation for a lot of people
  • Your story is the “why”
  • Story can also be a limiting belief
    • Cause you to hit a plateau
    • “Marry the story that unlocks unlimited life” -B
• Strategy is 3rd

9:10 Story

• Bringing back in rule of 5
• Who you spend the most time with has an impact of who you are
  • A lot of people spend time in places that cause constraints
    • EX: the news
    • Can cause fear i.e. restraint
• Take an inventory of where you are spending your time
  • Even if it is subconscious
  • Like the news in the background of doing work
  • These things are hitting your brain
• Understand what is being told to you and what you are doing and hearing all around you
• How are you spending your time?

12:00 Age and Beliefs

• At the age of 35 most of your beliefs are set in stone
• Takes that much more work to change your beliefs and reconfigure your brain
• M-”My time has passed but there is time for you” 12:42
• Importance of raising kids
  • If you heed this advice now you can set your kids up for success
  • “Sons there is still time for you”-M 13:26
• “Plateau is the result of our limits” B and M

15:00 Tony Robbins

• Natalie was at the conference too (Keynote speaker from Sketchy Soiree)
  • She is a clinically trained individual
  • Works with theories that have been tested and proved
  • She found a lot of similarities in what she teaches from what the conference was teaching
• The most important thing about being successful is the state of your being
• Your state controls how you train that story
  • “Your head and heart are often in misalignment” B

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:30 Intro

• Sponsors
  • Cream City Marketing
  • Spearity
• Introduction to Natalie Bretl: KeynoteSpeaker
  • “Humans Working With Humans”

3:49 A little bit about Natalie Bretl

• Innovation, development and progress are what Nataliei Bretl in interested in
• Curious about how the human brain works
• Always asking “why” and why people do what they do
• Taking her curiosity
  • Now is able to help humans understand how they interact and behave
  • “At the end of the day we are all humans working with humans”-N
  • Always interfacing with one another

6:00 What does this all mean for humans and business

• Lots of businesses are based on process
• Big aspect of this is interaction with humans
• How to be a more effective human being (Key things Natalie Will Discuss):
  • Humans are complex
  • Effectiveness and how that connects to reaching your goals
  • Reflecting for Growth
    • Can be a big process
    • There are steps you can take to reflect

9:34 How do we get to this big reflecting piece and use it as a tool

• Need to be able to be reflective
  • First step in order to apply other tools is be able to reflect
  • Understand the problem at hand

• 1 Observe

  • What are you choosing to pay attention to?
  • It is more than observing what is going on around you
  • Act of observing should be noticing internal events, external events.

12:02 Example of Observing

• Chicken Event
• Natalie got angry that someone didn’t like her chicken
  • She felt internal anger and was observing this
  • Her external events were her fighting with that person
• She noticed she should reflect why she was angry
• Focus on what you should pay attention to so you can problem solve later
• To be effective in interpersonal experiences you must observe

• 2 Describe

  • These often involve our own judgements
  • This doesn’t get us very far, when we are only inputting our own emotions and opinions
    • What is a fact?

15:00 How can we categorize thoughts, opinions and emotions

• We do not want these things to cloud our judgement
• Need to dissect the facts
  • What is the common end goal?
• All of these skills are very common
  • Need to put words to the action
  • Make it purposeful
• “One little phrase can take all of the edge off”-M
• People can get very defensive when they try to defend themselves

18:10 People take in information differently/How do we categorize

• Make it known “this is my opinion”
• All you can do is be effective as possible
• “Nobody else can control other people”-N
• Walk away knowing you did the best you could
• You are only 50% of the equation

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:30 Intro

• Sponsors
• Sketchy Soiree Pre-Party

3:00 Why Sketchy Soiree?

• Sometimes when you have a small business the people who are around you you can’t talk to
  • The challenge is they are very inaccessible
  • We have people who have been where you are working with small businesses
• We have specific deals for people who join the event
  • You can give feedback
  • You can come to the next event
  • You will leave with a plan and actions
  • Leave with experience
• 30 minute workshops and talks with speakers
  • We know as a small business you don’t have a lot of time
  • We hope it is refreshing
  • Lots of interaction

6:07 Growing and Scaling business

• Be able to network
  • Grow your business
• If you attend you can connect with two speakers of choice post event
• Affordable!
• “If it didn’t sound sketchy you wouldn't be interested let’s be honest ” -M
• We will teach you how to work with humans
• Natlie Betl
  • Speaker
  • Nonbusiness side of advice
  • How to be effective as humans

9:00 Who will be attending?

• First section will be breakouts
  • Focusing on details
  • How does client acquisition and sales help you grow?
• Erin Ylvisaker will do a whole branding workshop
  • She will help you understand as a small business owner where you can get the most money for your business
  • Most bang for your buck
• Michael’s workshop
  • Michael will show you how to keep searching and locking in clients

12:27 More on Speakers

• Jamie Miller from MTI
  • Building out marketing campaigns
  • Struggling leaving traditional marketing practices
• Brad James will be answering sales process questions
• Scott Tindle
• Wrap up of first part of Sketchy Soiree

15:50 Plans and Inspiration

• You will leave with a plan and actions
• There will be a lot of momentum and networking
• Lot’s of bonus activities
  • Lifetime access to recordings
  • All workshop materials
  • Even sessions you did not attend
  • Targeted consulting sessions post show

18:17 Accounting Talk

• Humorous moment
  • Twitch watcher
  • Couldn’t identify
  • Almost won the free ticket!
• Struggling with Scaling and measuring things besides sales and marketing
  • Jason Stansell
    • Fine point consulting
    • Take care of bookkeeping
    • Accounting
  • Jason will come in and help with finance
• It is okay to talk about things you don’t know, especially finance

21:29 Owning Struggles and Working with Humans

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:30 Intro

• Sponsors

3:14 recap and intro to planning

• Double down on planning
• Plans vs. planning
• The difference between one and the other is because we cannot plan for everything
• “Plans are great until the first shot is fired” - Eisnehower
  • You can’t predict the future
• “You tell me my fortune teller and astrologist can’t predict everything” -5:25 B

6:25

• Astrology talk about full moons and mercury in retrograde
• The future in uncertain
• So...what happens when things do not go as planned
• Plan is the outcome
• Planning is the system
  • The process
  • The framework
• If all you have is the outcome but not the system then that plan will become worthless-M

9:00 planning

• Plan for the worst
• Planning is not about doing it once it is a regular skill
  • Will become a regular exercise
• Things will change and you will need to adjust
• “I can adjust things on the fly all the time” -B
• Crisis Mode and Planning Regularly
• Can think of “now what” if you plan regularly and not be in a crisis
• Fight, flight, freeze reaction
  • Can get stuck in those modes or move forward
  • All if you have a plan

12:08 Online Courses and Frameworks

• When things don’t work, it is mainly because people are not following frameworks
  • Don’t want to
  • Don’t know how
• Apex event and Sketchy Soiree
  • More of this information
  • Go to websites for details
• Systematic planning is a must in every business
  • Talk to everyone
  • Make shifts
  • Check calendar
  • Check the systems in place
• Planning is an integrated system-M

15:08 Planning/ solo plans

• Solo or micro status
  • You cannot keep it all in your head if the business is bigger than this
  • Need planning
  • People have plans not a planning system
• Planning system on top of coaching and accountability
• Need to find triggers that hold you accountable
• Most people don't have discipline, you need to build it-B
• Planning can be a big gap for most people
• You can experience big success with planning discipline

18:15 People need help with planning

• You need help-m
• You need help-B Gif 18:20
  • “Emotionally, physically, spiritually”
• Michaels planning system
  • First thing you need is vision, mission, and values
  • Long range planning/goals
  • Anything beyond a year is aspiration
  • Annual goals
  • Quarterly goals
• Milestones (one week-month)
• plans/daily plans
• Need to put things in context and strategize

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:30 Intro

• Guest introduction Bjorn Berg and Lynn Corazzi
• Sponsors
• Expenses or investments into
• One of my favorite activities is playing games with several bottles of wine” 1:22-Lynn

3:00 overview of game

• Investment or expense
• Round one is one on one and gets a rationalization of why
• Move onto final round
  • Go through a quick list
  • Lightning round
• When growing and scaling your business you need to choose what you are doing with your money i.e expense or invest
• Onto game show

6:00 start of show

• Advertising- question goes to Bjorn
  • Expense or invest?
  • Answer: Investment
• Michael was going to put expense but Bjorn had a good reasoning
• 2nd question-lynn
  • Sales commission is an expense
• 3rd question-Lynn
  • Sales salary-expense
• 4th question-Bjorn
  • Replacing the roof
    • Expense

9:00 end of first round

• Lynn goes for a steal

12:00 Lightning round

• Training new hires
  • Investment
• Investment-(bjorn point)
• Recruiting quality talen
  • investment -(bjorn point)
• Continuous learning and development-
  • investment-(lynn and bjorn point)
• Weekly happy hour at the office
  • Expense (lynn and Bjorn point)
• Buying new computer for the office (Because you can)
  • Expense (Lynn point)
• Newest version of accounting software
  • Investment (point Bjornn and Lynn)
• Internal Office Swag
  • Lynn and Bjorn both say investment

15:00 Explaining of branding items (office swag)

• Small appreciation for what you are doing-Bjorns answer
• Lynn says a thank you to them
  • “Investing in your people”
  • “Companies do not invest in their employees enough
• Audibles
  • 5 points a piece
  • Attending conferences
    • Investment (Lynn and Bjorn)
  • Outside consultants and experts
    • Investment (Lynn and Bjorn)

18:00

• When is consulting an expense?
• When you don’t listen to the consultant and don’t take the advice or use what you pay for then it is an expense
• Are coaches an Investment or expense?
  • Investment (Point Bjorn and Lynn)
• If the money spent accomplishes the goal “You are looking at an investment”-M
  • If there is no positive ROI it is probably an expense -M

21:00 sketchy soiree and prizes/ wrap-up

• Brad loses audio then fixes it Michael finger points gif 21:42
• Both contestants get a vip package
• Sketchysoiree.com or sketchyevents.com
  • Bringing in guest speakers
• sketchyideas@ccmediagroup.co

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:30 Intro

3:00 roles people play

• “I can do it all on my own”-B Gif 3:23
  • Getting no sleep
  • No physical or mental health
• Opportunity for growth when open up
  • Entrepreneur journey
• “Everybody says they want to help”-M
• Nobody asks for help until they run into a problem
  • You are not designed to do it alone

6:13 looking at successful people

• They may appear to be accomplishing things alone because they are at the top but they are not
• “There are things that Brad are not great at”-M 6:45
• People who are at the top of their game surround themselves with the right support system
• Ask for help with things you aren’t great at yourself
• Rule of 5
  • You become the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with
  • Through interactions, your brain will form neuro pathways on where you want to go

9:50 surround yourself with people who push you

• Realize who you spend time with
• Can actively move into a different group
• Spend more time gaining positive energy
• “Act with intention” -m 11:12
• “Lean into discomfort”-B 11:25
• Everyone needs to have different experiences

12:00 Coaches, mentos, counselors and Accountability

• “If you are always comfortable you're not growing” M13:00
• Need to be evaluating your current 5
• Mentors advice based on their experience and knowledge
  • Most mentors give you their time for things other than money
  • They care about you
  • Anyone can be a mentor to you +

15:40 Mentors vs counselor

• Mentos do not really have a stake in your success as a business leader, financial or personal success
• Mentors will act as counselors
• “Counselors are the person you bitch to”-B 16:25
  • This is the person who will help you through mental things
• Good to set boundaries with these types of people
• Mentors can also be the books you read
• wisdom from experience -M

18:49 Experts and consultantsPeople who have great information on how to implement a job

• Core pieces of business
• They do not actively lay out a plan usually
• But they do have a theory and good information
• Consultants
  • Diagnose and lay out a plan for you
  • Some may get their hands dirty

21:24 introducing idea of CoachMost people do not have a coach but they do have mentors, counselors, experts and consultants

• “The goal is just survive not stress” -B 22:00
• We are inherently lazy so we go find these people who lead us to a coach
• We keep going back to these people

24:34 The Coach

• Most people who are successful have many coaches
• “The coach's job is to hold you accountable”- B 24:55
  • They hold you accountable to the plan and helping you pivot when things do not work out exactly

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:30 Intro

3:00 Sponsors and recap of data analysis

• If you are a sales rep then you will be tracking your sales activity
• Every step of your business has a point value
• Generate metrics around revenue
• Need to layer on value metrics in order to achieve conversions
• Value engines: customer value journey
• “Sales activity is not the same as revenue” -M

6:00 Know what is working /what is not in business (Adding value)

• “If I didn’t give you something valuable in that meeting why would you come back” -M
• Need to know what is working so it can lead to results
• 6:40 “At every step of the journey you need to be adding value to the customer”-B
• Customers needs need to always be on your mind and make it better

9:12 sales processes

• What is your key takeaway from a conversation
• Question to ask: “Which part of this conversation has been most helpful to you”
• Customers will WANT to come back
• Many conversations are not actually adding value -B
• There is unseen value in many things, including ads and a campaigns
  • It is a mental shift
  • Causes remembrance

12:20 value engine and repurposing

• “If you’re creating the content they have more chance connect with it since you are creating so much”
• Value engines are so important to small businesses
  • Value comes from the business
  • Adds on with processes
  • Accountability helps
• You need to know the metric you must add in order to move you to the next step

15:13 need to follow process

• Michael had a lot of sales activity but not a lot of revenue...had to go back and follow process
  • Had 5 contracts out in a week once he followed his sales process
  • All about the data
• How to find those metrics…
  • Need to look at successes and failures
  • There is always a trend-M
  • Requires having enough data to understand how it works

18:25 steps to analyze

• Need to ask what the desired outcome is from step to step
• Focus more on successes because they work
• If you give away everything all at once you will get more people who come to you knowing you will give them the answers

21:37 defying balance

• People do not notice it but it is happening
  • Hot dog and buns example
  • Mcdonalds french fry example
• The business knows that you will not not get a burger without fries, most of the time

23:28 accountability

• You won’t know if you process isn’t working if you are not accountable
• Accountability is built in when you build the engine
• “It should put you back on track”
• You can build accountability into the metrics but having a person is important

28:50 - Overview/End remarks

• Topics/concepts others have disagreed on, send them our way
• Look out for sketchy soiree
• sketchyideas@ccmediagroup.co

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4:14 Intro

• Opening remarks
• Recap of gut decisions

8:00 Into to vanity metrics

• They look like positive patterns
• “Most bad habits feel good, it might even look good at the time like cookies.” -B
• Constantly getting fed information and your gut check and vanity metrics become less valuable when that happens
• “There are ways to simplify and measure the value of your data”-B
• Vanity metrics allow you to begin tracking the wealth of that certain activity
  • Have to ask yourself are your vanity metrics converting to the data that you’re looking for.
  • 3 layers

12:00 Brad Gif

• “If you’re a sports fan like I am”
• Baseball example of getting data

15:03

• Giving example of having a 66 batting average, 2 out of three bats

15:14 Michael Gif

• “Let’s go one out of three that’s a realistic number” -B

16:00 Are your vanity metrics leading to value metrics

• Likes and loves are great but are they leading to activity
• “Are people taking action based on your content” -M
• Being an influencer has changed meaning.
  • Has everything to do with vanity and nothing to do with value
• “If you're awesome like michael he’s growing a huge following on social media you should all go follow him on instagram” -B
• “A lot of you who are doing sales are not evaluating the level of your activity in sales the right way” -B

20: 38 checkpoints and conversions

• If you are not fast enough to get to one point you will not be fast enough to get to the next
• It can be challenging to look at profit loss or cash flow
  • Easy to focus on initial activity
  • But you need to focus on conversions
  • Ask how much money is coming in and going out every week

22:49 importance of collecting data

• “Data is extremely important and it is almost more important right now in a world of gut check data” -B
• At the root of any business you have money coming in and money coming out, it is important to learn how to measure that.

24:00 collecting data

• “When in doubt collect more data” -M
• The delusion gap
  • Gap between your reality
  • You are going to make a decision based on how you perceive the world
  • “Good data reduces delusion gaps. It brings your perception closer to reality and wouldn’t you like to make a decision based on a better understanding of reality?” -M

26:14 Brad Gif

• “Are you saying my delusion gap is like the grand canyon” B

28:Vanity metrics

• They do not give you all the story
• “Vanity metrics will save the world” -B
• Just because it’s a sketchy idea does not mean it’s not worth exploring” -M

29:50 - Overview/End remarks

• Topics/concepts others have disagreed on, send them our way
• Look out for sketchy soiree
• sketchyideas@ccmediagroup.co

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: 30 Intro

• Opening remarks

2:00 Intro to Topic

• You are responsible for success of your organization
  • Trusting your gut has gotten you this far
• Trusting your gut can lead to wrong decisions
• Dive into decision making and understanding importance of what is going on when making those decisions

4:24 Jump into “gut feelings” and science behind topic

• “Trusting your gut can lead you astray”- B
• Gut and brain are connected in different ways
• Importance of digestive health
  • People who were working out still not healthy
  • Emotional and mental health
• Your gut has 500 million neurons and that is why you get butterflies and strong emotions
• GABA: helps control your feelings of fear and anxiety
• Getting back into shape is just as much nutrition as it is exercise

8:00 perspective on topic for business owners

• “Do a gut check on yourself to understand the importance of why gut decisions are good” - B
• A lot of people make gut decisions but not making solid ones because their gut is not healthy
• “Intuition comes from making pattern recognition”-M
  • Comes from patterns we recognize and make decision from

12:24 Common Sense

• “Common sense is a myth”-M
• Common sense is based on experience
• Intuition is based and calibrated on your experiences the same way mine is based and calibrated on mine and the more experiences I’ve had and the better I paid attention to those the better and more accurate my patterns is going to be.
• It is important to pay attention to patterns above subconscious
  • That is how we can improve our gut health
• Understanding that intuition is a compilation of historical data

16:34 Understanding why gut health is harder to understand now

• We are experiencing conditions and operating under new conditions
  • Because of pandemic
• No familiar experiences to this that we can draw from
• If we are self aware then we would notice this is a different condition

17:30 inbound info

• In the 90s only getting hundreds of ads
• 10,000 a day and that was from 2017 study
  • This is skewing pattern recognition
• Our gut decision is less effective because of all the noise and inbound info we are experiencing
• “Trust your gut if you calibrate it” -M

20:27 Age of internet

• Previous to the age of internet, gut decisions worked
• Now that there is internet we are loaded with trillions of ads skewing our gut decision and intuition
• How to calibrate gut:
  • Awareness of the problem
  • Be aware of the decisions you are trying to make and evaluate them. Articulate, stop and figure out why you got there
  • Check assumptions to see if it is really like the situation you thought of
    • Can stop if not working or proceed with decision making
  • Make a decision based on the objective of reality now that you’ve gathered facts

28:10

• Relate to scientific method and college self

30:29 - Overview/End remarks

• Sketchy Soiree
• Sketchyideashow.com to send interesting lines or comments

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0:56 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Will it Scale?

1:45 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

3:20 The logistics

• 1. Idea
• 1. Proof of concept
  2. Mix of: Feasible, Buyable, Desirable
  3. Is it something we can continue to make and make profit on?
• 1. Proof of Model
  2. Systems and processes are very important
  3. Supply chain
  4. Delegation

8:04 One size does not fit all

• A closet cereal entrepreneur acquiring multiple business
  • Learned that selling online and selling services can be very different
• All business are not created the same
• The 4 C’s are fundamental but there isn’t one way to achieve them
• “You can’t scale anything you’re doing without a process” -B

16:50 Q’s to ask about scalability

• Can I increase the size of my market?
• Do I have access to another market?
• Does it solve a problem?

21:55 Am I the first?

• “There’s another similar model out there that you can emulate to grow your business” -B
• You are not the first person to solve this problem
• There are very few “novel business models” out there
• Proof of concept does not equal proof of model
• The reason google works (the function) is because someone has had your problem before
• “Try googling it” -M

31:25 Sneak peek of Sketchy Soirée

• Business models identified by SPEARity
  • Franchise
  • Ecommerce
  • Retail/Restaurant
  • Catering
  • Real Estate/Insurance
  • Dentist
  • Law Firm
  • SAS and Software
  • Manufacturing
• Find the model that works for you
• Odds are you’ll fit into one of the models

34:12 Closing remarks

• Farewell to the Sketchy Ideas Producer, Brian
• The podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, & Anchor
• Check out SketchyIdeasshow.com
• If you have any sketchy ideas, email us at info@sketchyideasshow.com
• Just because it’s a sketchy idea, doesn’t mean it’s not worth exploring!

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00:40 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Looking back for the future (Reflection)

1:45 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

3:47 What is reflection?

• Looking back at what happened
• Looking back as the process for continuous improvement
• Reflection as a methodology or framework for taking the lessons of the past and applying them forward
• Get insight from everyone working on a project
• More insight = more data = more patterns
• “People besides you have good thoughts too” - M
• Why reflect?
  • To get better

5:48 Is it important?

• Reflection supports an overall idea
• Michael reflected his time teaching at summer camp
  • The goal is to develop the students there
  • While also developing the staff there
  • And actively trying to develop the curriculum
  • Meta-developing the development process

7:15 Is it time for you to reflect?

• Are you tired of making the same mistakes?
• “I just can’t figure that out”
• Do you keep doing it the same way and you see no significant improvement or changes?

9:55 How do you do it?

• Start with your feedback (See episode 51 on PINT-sized feedback)
• Tag your feedback (+-!?)
  • Your feedback needs to have a value
• Split your project into a timeline (days, modules, etc.)
• What was your end objective?
• “Your effort should have a goal” -M
• When you reflect, did you or didn’t you accomplish your goal?

15:05 Practical Standpoint

• Looking for trends
• More positives than negatives
• Are there a lot of questions?
• Are there new ideas?
• Does all of the feedback get you closer or farther away from your goal?

24:30 When to implement the new changes

• Capture how you did in the moment
• Let it sit emotionally a bit and come back fresh
• Need to be able to distance your emotion from the process in order to implement the changes needed

30:55 Closing remarks

• The podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, & Anchor
• Check out SketchyIdeasshow.com
• If you have any sketchy ideas, email us at info@sketchyideasshow.com
• Just because it’s a sketchy idea, doesn’t mean it’s not worth exploring!

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This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

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1:12 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Pint-Sized Feedback (https://www.wasc.org/Leadership-Camp)

2:00 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

4:25 Mini session overview

• Define the problem
• Design a solution
• Deliver and implement
• See if it performs/working
  • If not, go back to the top
• Michael is teaching this to high-schoolers at summer camp, so you can learn it too!
• Students typically learn this faster since they don't have preconceived notions about how it’s supposed to be
  • “Our friend TTWWADI is back” -M

6:45 Getting the pint-sized feedback

• Collecting feedback every day of summer camp
  • Before collecting feedback
    • Michael had to remember what worked and what didn’t 12 months prior at the last summer’s camp
  • After collecting feedback
    • Takes the cognitive load off his memory and it’s now documented and on the whiteboard on a sticky note
    • Iterative and significant improvements to the content
    • Leveraging the collective genius on 16 students
• Collecting near real-time feedback will allow you to update your course
  • Doesn’t need to be perfect the first time and will only get better as you continue

11:10 How willing to give feedback?

• Not a formal sheet
  • On a sticky note
• “It’s minimal scary” -M
• Not a weekly feedback sheet
  • Having to remember 5 days ago instead of in the moment
  • A lot can happen in 5 days, don’t wait until they forget everything
• Lower the bar and make it smaller
  • Able to give feedback at any time and add it to the whiteboard
  • Each student is given a pack of sticky notes and a sharpie
• Help us help you

13:00 How does this help?

• Allows students(delegates) to provide feedback that didn’t always feel natural to give previously
• “On a scale from 1-10, this has been an 11. A significant change” -Alex (staff at summer camp)
• Is there more feedback now?
  • Opens the door for feedback all day, every day
  • Need to be comfortable receiving feedback
  • Start each day with feedback
    • Add it to the wall and say one of them outloud - validating your ideas

16:25 What is this called?

• PINT +-!?
  • +P - Plusses
    • Things that are going well
    • What should we do again
    • Continue doing (Start-stop-continue)
    • Best part
  • -I - Issues
    • What went poorly
    • What can we change
    • What could be better
    • Stop doing (Start-stop-continue)
  • !N - New
    • New ideas
    • What could we add
    • We should try
    • Next time
    • Yes and’s
    • Start doing (Start-stop-continue)

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0:49 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: 50 Shades of Sketchy

2:00 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

3:15 Brad’s confusion

• Why go over everything we’ve done so far?
  • Michael wanted something special to commemorate 50 episodes
• There is a method to the madness!
• “We do plan ahead a little bit” -M

4:25 Brad and Michael both storm off set

• Stand by screen

5:06 Together at last

• Audio problems for 30 seconds
• Not necessarily a plan, but a method

5:55 Brad and Michael list off all of the episodes

• Smart Goals
• Agile Doing
• Debate between SMART/Agile
• Avatars 1
• Avatars 2
• Feedback
• Avatar Deep Dive
• VUCA
• VUCA 2.0
• Sales Process
• Sales Process Cont.
• Know Your Numbers
• Sales Mindset
• Navigating the 4 C's
• Rounding the Bases of Conflict
• Debating our Differences
• Performance Analysis
• COVID Classroom
• Transforming Your Brain with Cyrina Talbott
• Crazy Concepts
• The Care and Feeding of Your Launch
• Behind the Whiteboard
• New Year, Same Me?
• Personality Assessments
• CYA Choose Your Assessment
• Owning the Room with Consuela Munoz
• Why Your Content Sucks
• Framework of Frameworks
• Leading By Definition
• That's Not My Job
• Sausage Making with Brad and Michael
• Delegation
• Team of Delegators
• Skills Pay Bills
• Upgrading Your Team
• Upgrading Your Team P2
• First Impressions
• Your Employer Brand
• Humanizing Your Social Media
• Make Your Non Profit Profitable
• Real World Case With Katy Corey
• Where are we going? Back to the office
• Measuring Your Mindsets
• Applying Your Mindsets
• Planning to Fail
• Scheduling Your Priorities
• The App Made Me Do It
• Planning For Growth With Susie Moon

20:35 What’s the point?

• It looks like madness, but it all fits together
  • People/organizing how you get your work done
  • Marketing
  • Goals
  • Processes
  • Mindsets

28:00 Closing remarks

• The podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, & Anchor
• Check out SketchyIdeasshow.com
• If you have any sketchy ideas, email us at info@sketchyideasshow.com
• Just because it’s a sketchy idea, doesn’t mean it’s not worth exploring!

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This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

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0:28 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Planning for Growth with Susie Moon

1:25 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

3:00 Guest Introduction

• Susie Moon
• Worked in the corporate world for 25 years
• Founded her business in December 2019
• Was unsure of what kind of business she wanted to create
  • Knew she wanted to help people
  • Offer support
  • Get people to their numbers
• Started working with SPEARity in second half of 2020
  • Working with Michael as her coach
  • Using the SPEAR app she was able to set goals
  • “He helped me reach my goals, doubling my revenue in the second half of the year” -SM
• Support person for coaches, entrepreneurs
  • Focusing on the things that people were not very good at
• Set more goals in 2021
  • Still working with SPEARity, now with Darren
  • “My word of the year is build” -SM
• You can’t always do it by yourself
• “I was so burnt out, I was so overwhelmed, and I decided that I need people” -SM
• First half of 2021 she started building her team
• “I started building a team to do all the things for me, so I could focus on my sketchy ideas” -SM
  • She now has 10 part-time contractors
  • ~9 clients
• “I really like my clients and I want to stick with them, but I also want to grow” -SM
  • Finding a balance in the direction she wants to go in
  • SPEARity keeps her on track
• “I’m building the plane as I fly it -SM
• 10:23 GIF

11:02 Needing help when helping others

• She had a mindset shift before starting the business bc she was holding off on starting the business
  • Didn't think she was worthy of having her own business after working for other people in the corporate world for so long
• “Being an entrepreneur has been in my blood ever since I was little” -SM
• Take the leap and try
• Hanging out with people smarter than you makes you want to be them
  • Told herself she would never be the person to run a marathon
    • Has since completed 3 of them (in 16 months)14:30 Needing a coach
• It’s all about mindset
• Made her stop thinking small, and start thinking about the possibilities
• Someone to push her out of her comfort zone

15:47 How a coach changed her business

• It was uncomfortable at first
• You build rapport with that person
• Able to pick out those quarterly goals and seeing the steps you need to take to reach those goals
  • How much am I charging each person
  • How many clients do I need
  • How many prospects do I need to talk to each weekYou need to remove the emotional aspect from your business to see the perspective
  • Do you want to own this for the rest of your life or do you want to sell it at some point?

19:12 Removing your feelings

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1:18 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: The App Made Me Do It

2:05 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

3:30 Brad gives overview of last week

• Using a calendar to keep your priorities straight
• Hyping up Michael’s use of SPEARity’s software to help organize quarterly goals

7:00 Michael dives in

• Start on paper, add in software, reach success
• 4 C’s refresh
  • Customer acquisition
  • Cash Flow
  • Customer retention
  • Company growth
• Turn them into your goals

  • 1 being your spearhead (Customer acquisition)

  • SPEARity defines your spearhead as:
    • If I get this goal accomplished, nothing else really matters
    • If I don’t get this goal accomplished, nothing else really matters
  • “We can’t do all the things, it’s doing the most important things is how leaders win” -M

9:40 Michael gives SPEARity software demo

• Goals (90/7/1)
  • 90 days for the quarter
  • 7 days for the week
  • 1 day for the day
• The app is designed to help guide you in the next direction
• The dashboard shows
  • What are your goals for the quarter
  • What are your milestones for this week
  • What are your activities and tasks for the day
• “When I can identify that my daily activities are aligned with my weekly milestones and my quarterly goals, I am productive, not just busy” -M
• Busy does NOT equal productive
• Your calendar can be full and does not produce any value because you haven’t defined their alignment
• The tasks that put my spearhead at the top are of highest value
• “Planning and preparation are the 20, that produce the 80” -M
• Planning ahead is an investment in yourself

15:34 Planning out Brad’s goals

• Sales goal: close $250k on his own
• Daily tasks: Regular sales activity (1 hr/daily)
• Daily tasks: build out offer funnel (1/monthly)
• Goals can be connected using the software to show you your priorities

30:00 Unofficial 5th status

• The status of forgotten
  • I didn’t do it or I didn’t account for what happened with it

36:00 Closing remarks

• The podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, & Anchor
• Check out SketchyIdeasshow.com
• If you have any sketchy ideas, email us at info@sketchyideasshow.com
• Just because it’s a sketchy idea, doesn’t mean it’s not worth exploring!

Full Show Notes Here

This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

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0:52 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Scheduling Your Priorities

1:37 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

3:40 SPEARity Event promo

• SPEARity had their quarterly APEX event last week
  • Next one is in September

6:45 How SPEARity spearheads goals (refer to episodes 1-3 for SMART goals)

• 4 C’s
  • Customer Acquisition (Sales/Acquisition)
  • Cashflow
  • Customer Retention (Fulfillment)
  • Customer Growth
• Brad used these buckets to list out his smart goals for the next quarter

10:32 Brad’s calendar

• “I need to get better and more effective at scheduling my day” -B
• Started with personal growth goals
  • Wake up time (everyday)
  • Sleep time (everyday)
• By writing out each thing you need to do every morning and night, you’re building a cognitive memory and you’re able to use it as a measuring stick of success
• Build on more to the calendar
  • He uses bookends to start and close out his “work day”
    • Prep for the day
    • Close and plan for tomorrow
• Brad’s Day
  • Wake up time
  • Workout/eat/get ready
  • Prep for the day
  • ~~work~~
  • Close and plan for tomorrow
  • Eat/relax/etc.
  • Sleep time
• Without a daily schedule, you will forget day to day activities that you have to do
• “My prep time helps me recalibrate for the day” -B
• “If you don’t make the time for lunch, other people will take the time from you” -M (in regards to eating lunch)
• By scheduling things for the same time every day, your brain will get into a rhythm
• “The non-negotiables need to be blacked out not matter what” -B
  • BUT they are plans and may be booked over if needed, plans can change

22:40 Time blocks

• Schedule your work blocks in hour chunks, but only work for 50 min of it
  • Built in breaks will help you not burn out during the week
• Or work for 90 min and take a 15 min break
• Find what works for you and adjust as needed
• Either way, if you schedule out your week, it’s more likely to go well
• Planning out in blocks reminds you of things you HAVE to do

28:00 What goes on the calendar

• You don’t have to put everything on your calendar
• You see what can be delegated off and what is non-negotiable
• “Planning time is also deciding time” -M
  • Delegation episodes are 33-34
• Don’t try to fit it all in
  • Put in the important things and fill in as time is available
• Using a calendar is easy, sticking to it is the hard part
• The stuff before work and after work are more important than anything during the day
  • 80/20 rule
  • Planning and prep is in the 20%
  • Setting yourself up for success is the key to the success

36:00 Closing remarks

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00:10 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Planning to Fail

1:45 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

3:45 Recap of last two weeks

• Mindsets and lingo
• Speaking it into existence isn’t a real thing
• You need to understand what you’re trying to achieve and build implementation around it

4:20 Planning for next quarter

• Nearing the end of quarter 2, time to think about quarter 3
• To plan ahead, you need to look ahead and anticipate what is going to happen
• To get to your goal, you need a plan
• “A plan in a theory. A plan is a guess” -M
• “A plan is a map” -B
  • Like a map, you need to account for detours unless you plan ahead
  • Having processes in place allow you to be prepared and reach your final destination on time
• “No matter how good the plan is...sometimes the unexpected does occur” -M
• Great plans have failure built into them
• “Failure is inevitable” -M
  • There is no way for things to go exactly to plan
  • Plan is a theory
• There is no way to account for all things, good or bad, to happen along the way

10:30 Segmented Plans

• A good plan is segmented into smaller things
• A single plan can break the rest just falls off
• A segmented plan has built in check points to keep you on track and allows for you to find the next step without affecting the rest of your plan
• You can bridge it to the next step

12:24 How to segment your plan

• Look for big milestones
  • A milestone is a significant deliverable that leads you to the next part of your plan
• How to find the best milestones
  • If you’re measuring, you can use results as your milestones
  • Activity goals
  • Communication/checkpoints
  • Wherever there is a natural stopping point
• Milestones came from the roman empire
  • Golden stones one mile from the center of the city
• “Milestones are there to make sure you’re on the right track to your destination” -M
• It’s important to take the time to plan
• Planning gets you a minimum of 1:1 ROI, if not 2:1
• “There’s a time to plan and a time to just do” -B
  • Hedgehog plan (Previous episode)

18:15 Steps of planning

• Depends on the time you put into:
  • Formulating
  • Documenting
  • Training others to do it (if delegating)
• Checklists help you become more efficient
  • Visible milestones for your day
  • “Planning is pre-deciding” -M
  • Know what you’re going to do before you get there
• If you limit anxiety, your performance increases right away
• “The plan is NOT the result” -M
  • It's the goal.
  • All of the effort, not the results

28:00 Why plan?

• You need to plan so you understand the potential outcomes
• So you can adjust your plan
• Planning to fail works in your advantage most of the time

30:04 Closing remarks

• The podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, & Anchor
• Check out SketchyIdeasshow.com

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0:54 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Applying your mindsets

2:05 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

4:35 80/20 rule

• Brad’s explanation of the 80/20 rule:
  • In sales, ~20% of your customers take care of ~80% of your revenue
    • Your 20 favorite customer might not be taking care of that 80% of the revenue
  • In work, 20% of what you do takes care of 80% of where you’re trying to get to
• Michael’s explanation:
  • The Pareto Principle
    • 80% of results flow from 20% of your efforts
    • Doesn’t mean you only need to do 20% of the work
    • Sometimes 80% of your efforts only produce 20% of your results
  • A client’s 100% is probably your 90%
    • The only person that will notice that last 10% is you
    • The last 10%
      • Extra revisions
      • Extra little details
      • Perfectionist meets procrastinator
      • Focus on the big picture instead of the last little bit

12:15 Turning 80/20 into action

• Hotel example:
  • Rewards programs
    • 20% of their guests produce 80% of their revenue
    • Identifying those frequent travelers and keeping their loyalty
    • Free upgrades, drinks, etc. are an investment to keep loyalty
  • Guest satisfaction surveys
    • Small set of problems that produce a large portion of dissatisfaction
    • Theoretically, fix 5 main problems and it’ll increase satisfaction score by half
    • Need to track the problems as well as fix them, or you’ll keep having to fix the same problems

17:45 Sales example

• Figure out who is your most frequent buyer and what are they buying
• Your 80/20 might be 60/40
  • It’s still a trend where a few make up the most
• You need to find your main focus item, without forgetting about the rest

21:20 How to implement the 80/20 rule

• Start somewhere
  • Figure out something small and start tracking it
  • Gets you in the habit of tracking something
• Track your time (and activities)
  • Even if it’s just an estimate
  • Able to go back and see what was important
• In sales and marketing, you need to focus on what you’re doing and why you’re doing it
• “80/20 does work, if you apply it” -B
  • If you talk about it, it doesn’t work

25:55 What to do

• 1. Start counting
• 1. Look at the results
• 1. Find the pattern
• 1. Think, look, learn

26:45 Business Owner duties

• There's a few things that you as an owner are doing that are making a big difference
• Also a bunch of other things that don’t matter
• Most of the big difference things are thin

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1:08 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Measuring your mindsets

2:00 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

3:25 Where we broadcast

• Live each wednesday at 1:30 PM on:
  • Facebook
    • https://www.facebook.com/SketchyIdeas/
    • https://www.facebook.com/creamcitymarketing/
    • https://www.facebook.com/bjjamesco/
  • Youtube
    • https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCires_knhAHxLpUGXjcheQQ
  • Twitch
    • https://www.twitch.tv/bjjames23
  • LinkedIn
    • https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrampolla/
• Audio podcast available each thursday on:
  • Anchor
    • https://anchor.fm/sketchy-ideas-show
  • Apple Podcasts
    • https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sketchy-ideas/id1556484587
  • Breaker
    • https://www.breaker.audio/sketchy-ideas
  • Google Podcasts
    • https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy80MGM3NzRkOC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==
  • Radio Public
    • https://radiopublic.com/sketchy-ideas-6nA4mN
  • Spotify
    • https://open.spotify.com/show/3BeF36A3birITtUsELVVbi

5:31 Turning your mindset into actionable behavior

• “The OG of mindset is think and grow rich” -M
• The middle of mindset and results is behavior
  • What are you actively doing to achieve those results?
• Mindsets produce results IF your behavior aims for it
• Most theories don’t turn to application and produce results
  • All qualitative and not quantitative
• “If you’re reading a book and haven’t gotten through half of it, you probably haven't gotten to the tangible stuff” -B

10:10 The Growth Mindset book

• A book that explores growth mindset studies
• Written poorly
• Textbooks and handbooks are not meant to be read end-to-end

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0:29 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Where are we going? Return to the office

2:06 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

4:00 The world opening back up

• In the last week, Brad has had his first face-to-face meetings in quite some time
• Close to a time where in person meetups are no longer frowned upon
• Being in a room for a networking event
  • “It was weird for everybody” -B

6:33 How to handle the return to normalcy

• Brad’s story
  • Planned to have a meeting with a developer who he hasn't seen in 2+ years
  • Meet halfway, go to dinner, talk about work, have a few drinks
    • Restaurant was full
    • 1 hr meeting turned into 4 hr meeting
    • Awkward first connection (shake hand, elbow bump?)
      • It’s going to be awkward
• Be Chill
  • Going into a meeting knowing you’ve done it before
  • You know how to talk to people
  • Just be chill
• “I underthought the logistics, and I overthought the mental aspects” -B

10:50 Things forgotten

• Logistically
  • Travel time
    • More people are starting to work in the office/travel more so commute times will continue to rise again
    • Need extra time for driving, parking, walking
  • Add extra time to your calendar
    • Buffer time on both ends of the event + more time
• “This new normal will take 3-6 months” -B
• “The new normal is neither new nor normal” -M
• We will never be back to the old “normal”
  • Example is travel pre and post 9/11
  • Things have changed for the better and will continue to improve
• We are still in a transition, and we are all in different parts of the transition
  • “Everyone is figuring out what they are comfortable doing” -M

17:40 Know what you’re gonna do

• Decide if you’re going to shake hands, elbow bump, or just say hi
• Eliminates the awkward moment you meet
• Stick with it, people don’t want to make the first move
• Call/make reservations at restaurants
  • More people are dining out and will relieve stress on your side and the restaurant side
• Servers are on their game right now
  • Haven’t been busy in a long time
  • Looking to help as many people to get more/bigger tips
  • Don’t waste their time - ask for more time if you aren’t ready to order
    • Let them help others instead of waiting for you to decide
• “The small-talk is going to take a long time right now” -B
• The feeling of talking in person is way different than a Zoom meeting

24:22 The things you forgot

• You are reestablishing relationships
• Expectations and emotions are overlapped
• Prepare mentally for the anxiety and awkwardness
• Pro tip: don’t talk about politics right now (touchy subject for many)

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1:27 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Nonprofit real-world example with Katy Corey

2:14 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

4:09 Guest Introduction

• Katy Corey
• Director of Development for the United Performing Arts Fund (UPAF)
• “I think a healthy dose of skepticism is a good thing” -M

5:15 Katy’s thoughts on nonprofits running like a business

• Appreciated the focus on the 3 customers of a nonprofit (often overlooked)
  • Funder
  • Board/Leadership
  • Volunteer/Staff
• UPAF is focusing on rebuilding their governance structure
  • Making sure to care for volunteers, board, committees
  • True partnership on all levels
  • Building a better relationship with donors
    • “It's not so much a transaction as it is a relationship” -KC
    • Looking for the reason WHY people donate to the arts
      • Which will eventually lead to long term donors + profit

7:00 Katy’s background

• Served as a volunteer in the Peace Corps
• Wanted to have a purpose
• Worked with development initiatives along with volunteer support
• Some volunteers become some of the biggest funders
• Wasn't impressed with some organizations and lack of money transparency and what it was being used for
  • Nonprofits need to be transparent and not take advantage of donors
• Her way into UPAF
  • Started in marketing but wasn’t a good marketer
  • Wanted to get back to working with people (nonprofit world for her)
  • Joined UPAF in May 2019 as their Director of Development and Leadership
    • Works with Leadership Donors, Foundations, and planned initiatives

11:09 What does UPAF do?

• Been around for 5+ decades in south eastern WI
• Work to power and fund 14 committees - including theater, ballet
• Bringing in money to keep these organizations running
• Allocate funds yearly

13:33 How are funds allocated?

• Strong leadership board, financial committee, executive committee, and internal team studying the allocation process
• Groups need to submit applications annually
• Making sure groups are responsible with their funds each year
• UPAF has a 4 star charity navigator

15:24 Importance of Charity Navigator Score

• Recognises nonprofits for being responsible with how they allocate/use funds
• Adds a level of credibility and validation
• “The best nonprofits are mission driven, but they have process, methodology, and systems to back them up” -B
• “I can fall in love with any mission, but I want to know those dollars are being funneled the right way” -KC

Full Show Notes Here

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1:40 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Make Your Nonprofit Profitable

2:56 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

4:32 Why nonprofits?

• B and M have both worked with nonprofits in the past
• Many nonprofits aren’t able to reach all of their goals
  • They think there are constraints bc of the “nonprofit” status
• There is a difference between nonprofit as a business model and nonprofit as a tax status

9:50 The debate about nonprofits and their business model

• Typically have 3 customers/stakeholders:
  • Your board
  • Leadership staff/volunteers
  • Funders
• Nonprofits never say “I don’t need more funding”
• At the end of the day, your organization is a business
  • You have a mission to fulfill
  • Serve a community
  • People willing to give time, energy, funding, resources in exchange for results
• Stakeholders/partners are aligned to the mission of the nonprofit
• Can be heard about Nonprofits (not correct btw)
  • Shouldn’t
  • Make money (They need money to hit goals and create change)
  • Focus on revenue
  • Track results
  • Evaluate ROI
• Many nonprofits collapse because they don’t make money a priority
• “Money is the well of life -B
• Nonprofit is a tax structure, NOT a business model
  • It does not affect the business model, mindset, or mission
• Great marketing, not tied to results, will only pull on heartstrings
• Your marketing needs to produce sales
  • Casting your line but not catching any fish
  • “Marketing alone does not produce revenue, therefore does not produce resources that you can use to invest to produce value for the people you are serving” -M
  • If I have no fish in the boat, I can’t feed one man, let alone a whole army
  • If I can’t feed a man for a day, let alone a lifetime, if all I can do is show him how to cast his line

24:22 Tracking your data

• “why bad presentations happen to good causes” -mentioned by Michael
• When good causes like nonprofit go to pitch their cause and miss the mark and don't get their funding
• One key thing that is holding them back is their great story showing no numbers or results
• “Great story, where’s the numbers?” -M
• People want to see where the money they donate is going
• If you can show the good you did this year with their money, they are more likely to give more for the next year
• Show the value of their contribution

26:58 Simple breakdown of a nonprofit

• Somebody gives money
• Organization takes money
• Organization executes on mission they marketed
• Right now is harder than ever to find donors - think like a business
  • Look at where your nonprofit is and make a judgement call on priorities
  • Just like a business owner does
  • Look at your list of priorities
    • Under the mission (at the top) should be generating who the customers are to understand funding and data in the long run

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1:44 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Humanizing Your Social Media

2:27 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

4:00 Guest Introduction

• Laura Kaiser
  • Founder of Engage Social Media
  • Communications Director at Wisconsin Tech Council
• People often use social media as “show and tell media” instead of social media

5:15 diving into social media

• People don’t always differentiate paid and organic social media
  • You don’t always need to boost your posts, but instead put more time and effort into your posts
  • Tag the right people and companies with thought and not just for the sake of it
• Organic posts are natural and come from the heart and intentional
• For a podcast:
  • Tag the hosts
  • Tag the producer
  • Tag the company
  • Put the post on every platform the podcast is on + every platform you’re on with a link
• Making sure you’re in the right space with the right people
• “People can easily become fluent in social media if they want to” - Laura Kaiser

7:15 Give and Get on social media

• “You have to be willing to fill other people’s buckets” -Laura Kaiser
• Laura worked in banking for 20 years and her boss saw how her personal social channels were successful and asked her to take over the company social media
• The more you work with your voice on social, the more you understand how you come and how you want to come across to other people

9:18 Using Social media in the corporate world

• Companies that are hiring/recruiting need to focus on showing people what your mission, vision, company culture, member interaction with you looks like
• Member/employee spotlights give a chance for people to see the people behind the people
• Use more personal photos - not always using a corporate headshot

11:57 The steps to get more engagement

• Understand what your personality is and what you want it to come across as on social media
• People are on LinkedIn, but they don’t use it
• It’s important to nurture any platform that you’re on
  • If you’re not motivated enough to nurture every platform, it’s better to not be on all of them
  • Mark it on your calendar to check notifications/requests on LinkedIn each week and eventually it will become habit to check more often and not get behind
• Dig a little deeper
  • If you see other like people commenting on a post, maybe that’s a place you want to be in
  • Check out their profiles and do your research and maybe connect
• 3 step process:
  • Schedule time
  • Observe notifications
  • Dig deeper and connect with others
• Helps prioritize where your time should be spent
• Social media… the more you stay on top of it, the less you feel overwhelmed

16:05 Social media is like doing the dishes

• If you wash as you go, you’re caught up
• If you let the sink fill up, you spend a lot of time washing dishes
• If the dishwasher is full and you run out of dish soap and the sink is full of dishes too, then you’ve run out of dishes
• Just because you didn’t take the time to go to the store and buy dishwashing detergent

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2:10 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Your Employer Brand

3:00 Sponsors

• Shoutout to a fundraiser Michael is working with: Girls On The Run
  • Team SPEARity is raising funds to help empower girls
  • Donate here: spearity.com/giveback/michael
• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

5:57 Last week recap

• First impressions
• Hiring practices
• “Being comfortable is how you stagnant” -M
• “Being uncomfortable is how you change and grow” -M

6:50 Day one as a new employee

• Your first day will be one of three
  • Awesome
  • Awkward
  • Awful
• “Shoutout to Brad from one Brad to another Brad” -B
• What you say after a party in the car is really how you feel, even if you told everyone at the party something completely different
• The ability to answer the question, “How was your first day” to a friend or family member is what employers are hinging on.
• You used to have until the end of their first day to win an employee over
  • Now you have until their first bathroom break - bc of social media
• 75% of employees make the decision to stay/leave in the first 90 days
• Of those who made the decision to quit, had their mind made up in the first 45 days
• Your time to win them over is a critical time
• Employees have choices
  • “It’s a relationship” -M

11:58 Winning the Firsts

• Onboarding
  • Having a plan (clear documentation)
  • Clear expectations
  • Resources (people and stuff)
• Orientation is day 1
  • Onboarding is a process that begins before day 1 and ends never
  • Before orientation → Indefinite end
• Lower the bar
  • On day one people want to know where the bathroom is and where to get lunch
  • Don’t overwhelm people on their first day
  • Don’t overlook their basic questions
    • If you have a burning question that is not getting answered, it’s very hard to take in new information
    • Brain block
    • Answer those questions and “Get the barge out of the canal” -M (17:24)

17:30 Key Things

• Ask
  • What does the employee want to know
  • What do they expect
• 2 week black box
  • The dark period between signing and offer letter and the start date
  • A lot can happen in that time (on both sides)
  • Brad’s idea:
    • Create an email campaign after an offer letter is signed
    • Access to accounts
    • Stories from former employees to learn about company
    • Remarket back to people
    • “Nothing is ever going to be perfect” -B
    • Personalized video from supervisor
    • Onboarding/hiring is just like sales
  • You want to market yourself to attract the best talent
  • Employees can still get buyer’s remorse, it’s just different
• “Engagement has tangible, bottom line impact” -M
• Employees are more valuable than any customer

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0:53 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Hiring/~~Onboarding~~ (onboarding will be next week)

2:00 Sponsors

• Shoutout to a fundraiser Michael is working with: Girls On The Run
  • Team SPEARity is raising funds to help empower girls
  • Donate here: spearity.com/giveback/michael
• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

4:30 Throwdown begins

• Michael’s point
  • Large scale hiring is a waste of time, energy, and money
  • Mass hiring events lead to overhiring and having to let people go
  • The point: hurting people and wasting money and time
• Brad’s point
  • Hiring more people that all have talent can cause more competitiveness and ween out the lesser qualified people
  • Does it have negative effects? Yes, but so does hiring slowly
• Michael’s rebuttal
  • You still need to use resources to hire and onboard the extra employees in addition to the salary
  • The cost to hire someone is 125% of their salary over a year
• Brad’s rebuttal
  • The goal is to augment the speed of hiring to hit business goals in a specific time period to scale
  • You might need to churn and burn in the short term(Cattle call approach), but it’s better that than over the long run
  • Large companies have large pools of applicants and hire too much to help scale with the intent to not keep all of them
    • Examples: Google, Epic Systems

15:50 The biggest risk

• Hiring and then evaluating (not having your own data and having to use industry standards)
  • Investing more time and money to evaluate the employee to see if they’re a good fit
  • Need to use own data to improve hiring process to hire the right people for the position
  • You need a long term hiring strategy
    • “Don’t continue to use bad hiring practices” -M

18:43 When to use these caveats

• Hiring in bulk works in some instances for a business model
• When looking at it as an opportunity rather than an expense
• $4-5k a hire each year
• Using results of a role rather than a job description
• Sales is hard to hire for bc some sale people can sell in one arena but not in another
  • Same with recruiters
• Some critical roles will take time to find the right person
• Some candidates in your pool do not fit your exact standards and then you can hire more than what you need bc some will eventually fall out
  • You need to define hiring processes to limit the rate at which people fall out
• No role in a company will have perfect efficacy
• It takes 3-6 months to see if they are a good fit
  • 3 months in, they should be 70% productive based on the goal of the hire
• Need to make it clear to those you are hiring why you are hiring this way

24:40 Hiring for strategic added value

• This is when mass hiring doesn’t work
• For critical roles, you take your time and choose the best
• For input and output role, you can hire more than needed
• Don’t smash 2-3 roles together for one role
  • Hire several smaller roles

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0:42 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Upgrading Your Team Part 2

1:50 Sponsors

• Shoutout to a fundraiser Michael is working with: Girls On The Run
  • Team SPEARity is raising funds to help empower girls
  • Donate here: spearity.com/giveback/michael
• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

5:30 Diving into more ways to upgrade your team

• Learning agility
  • Critical for any role that will operate with ambiguity
  • Ability to understand
    • what I don’t know
    • What I need to learn
    • How I’m going to go learn it to address the situation it’s currently under
  • Point back to a previous episode to learn about VUCA
• “Unknown and ambiguous is kinda our thing” -M

9:45 Learnability

• Breaking down your processes and finding the competencies
• Get your processes down to the micro-level
• When a valuable team player leaves…
  • Break down their role and see what you can delegate to others and what you can potentially outsource
  • What are you going to miss about them?
    • What is something you can’t just hire for?
      • Example: Deep Communication
      • Ability to not only understand what you’re saying but making sure you understand what you’re saying
  • Don’t just replace the role that is leaving
    • Look at the opportunity to upgrade your talent
  • Upgrade your talent by splitting up your functions
  • Don’t replace what you’re losing, upgrade with the open spot
  • Sometimes people move on when they feel they are now “overqualified” for the role
  • “Don’t look at what you need now, look at what you need next” -M
• It’s not often that you get to replace a valuable role at your company
• “We’re not saying the traditional approaches don’t work” -B
• Different generations learn and teach differently
  • Traditional roles are going to shift
  • New sketchy ideas are going to come in
• People learn in different ways
  • Example: youtube, other people, google

18:13 Solving problems

• Just because you’ve learned something before, doesn’t mean you need to know the answer every time. You have a supercomputer in your pocket.
  • “If I have to solve something, the first thing I do is grab my supercomputer” -B
  • Search “how to do X”
• Your talent now has to be agile
• If your team doesn’t have the skills to operate in the current environment, you’re setting yourself up to struggle from the beginning
• How-to videos are a good thing!
• “We are now living in the application world of training, rather than the nuts and bolts” -B
• Great talent takes their knowledge with them unless you have an ongoing system in place to capture that knowledge as it’s created
• Make process documentation part of the company culture

24:50 Throwing people in the deep end

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1:36 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Upgrading Your Team

2:30 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

4:15 Diving in

• Upgrading your team → Talent development
• How we got here:
  • How to grow your business through things like process, delegating, leadership, responsibility vs. accountability
• Don’t send your employees to class
  • Traning is only the answer when one of these things is true
    • Can’t
      • Skills issue
    • Won’t
      • Motivation issue
    • Don’t know how
      • Training and development
• “Training isn’t always the answer” -M

7:08 Ways to develop your people

• Things we won’t be talking about
  • Classroom training
  • On the job training
  • Structured/Fixed
  • One time/checkbox
• Just like a VHS tape, training wears out and becomes outdated
• Buddy System
• Simulators (Will touch on this in a future episode)
• Throwing in the deep end
• Different ways to mentor/teach (Will touch on this in a future episode)
• Training shouldn’t be a beginning and end process
  • More of a mindset thing
  • Iterations of process will need iterations of training
• “You want to develop your internal people consistently” -B

12:25 Michael’s additions to the list

• Learnability
• Learning agility
• “We sketch about the sketchy ideas that we’re going to sketch about on the Sketchy Ideas show” -B
• Hire for less and reinvest
• “Less of a ‘go do this’ thing, but more of a ‘see if they work for you’ thing” -M

15:48 Talent Mindset

• You need to think about the talent of your team more than just the people on your team
• Old school mindset
  • Training those who you think will be there the longest
  • That thinking is flawed!
  • You are no more loyal to your employees than they are to you
• If your company is known for exporting good talent, what do you attract? TALENT
• Top talent wants to be taken care of and get better
• “Calculating how much money you’re spending in training is missing the point” -M

18:25 The Buddy System

• When you hire, you hire in two
  • Doesn’t have to be the same position
  • Part-time split or contract work
• When the training starts, they start to ask each other questions and become self-reliant on each other
• You can then challenge them by throwing them in the deep end together
• People in classrooms are more likely to ask classmates for help instead of asking a teacher - same concept here
• Starting together creates a learning bond
• Accelerates the ability to learn and become part of process
• One of the top engaging things in the workplace is having a friend at work
  • Helps people stay longer too
• If you can’t hire two people, a temp job may be a better route

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0:22 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Skills Pay Bills

0:52 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

2:22 Diving into the topic

• Want to make sure that your processes are aligned with the right skills and the right roles
• Michaels favorite red flag = TTWWADI (That’s The Way We’ve Always Done It)
  • TTWWADI is not a process
• TTWWADI’s are often the source of roles and job descriptions
  • Operating by default and not strategically
• “I’ve never liked using job descriptions, especially when there isn’t clarity in that position” -B
• Clarity of function within the process
• What is this person’s direct contribution to the success of the overall output

10:27 Notice of tech problem :)

• Never went live
• It was recorded, so no big deal
• Episodes since tech prob goes from 6 to 0 :(

12:20 How to get clarity in the function

• 1. Strategy
• 1. Process
• 1. Structure (order)
• 1. Metrics + Rewards
• 1. Competencies
• 1. People
• Easier to implement these changes for new businesses
• Small incremental changes to get the most clarity

16:40 Candle example

• Cut a big candle into equal-sized smaller candles
• Being able to see all of the candles burning at the same time lets you see how and where you need to make these iterative changes to make your process better

18:53 Metrics and Rewards

• Making sure you’re measuring the right things and reinforcing the right behaviors

19:30 Competencies & People

• When looking for something to get done, you normally look at who you have on your team
  • Unknowingly, this is a constraint (ttwwadi)
• If you’re able to dig into the process, you’ll be able to see where things can be systematized and automated
  • Cut your process into smaller chunks of a candle
  • Easier to outsource parts
• By defining processes down to the smallest possible logical component, you can get a more critical understanding of the crucial competencies for that process
  • Helps you understand what need or skill is needed

25:00 skills and competencies

• Split your process into different functions
• Different functions can fall under different roles
  • Do you need all of those functions, or can you find different options?
• When buying a drill bit, you’re actually buying the hole
  • The outcome you’re looking for
• Sell the OUTCOME, not the ITEM
  • Use this when defining roles as well

29:30 Closing remarks

• The podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, & Anchor
• Check out SketchyIdeasshow.com
• If you have any sketchy ideas, email us at info@sketchyideasshow.com
• Just because it’s a sketchy idea, doesn’t mean it’s not worth exploring!

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0:39 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Team of Delegators with Michelle Penczak

1:30 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

2:35 The origin of SquaredAway

• Michelle Penczak is today’s guest
  • Her background story:
    • 1. Can’t get hired
    • 1. Took a temp job
    • 1. Deployed husband
    • 1. Pregnant
    • 1. Employer goes bankrupt
    • 1. Crazy business partner
    • 1. Growing a human and a company
    • 1. Move base to Hawaii
    • 1. Woke up early (3 am Hawaii time to work with EST clients)
    • 1. Do it again…
  • Business origin story, “Failure + an idea that’s crazier than mine” -Michael
    • Sometimes it takes someone with a crazier idea than yours to get you out of your comfort zone
  • CEO and Cofounder of SquaredAway
    • 170 Assistants
    • All virtual
    • “Michelle was doing virtual before everyone was doing virtual” -B
      • “I was virtual before virtual was cool” -Michelle

10:25 Growing her team to meet demand

• They treat the client/assistant relationship as a partnership
  • Always 2 steps ahead
• The majority of the assistants are military spouses
• Internal collaboration constantly
  • “A professional, with a team of other professionals behind them” -Michael
  • Hire one or hire 170 for the price of one… smart investment ;)
• If an assistant needs to leave or take time off, a new assistant is up to speed and ready to jump in

15:55 How the delegates receive their information

• Most times, clients look for a PA if they are:
  • Overwhelmed
  • Frazzled
  • End of the road
  • “Help me please”
• Steps to get your life back on track:
  • Get on the call with your assistant
  • Pick weekly call times
  • BRAIN DUMP
    • Not typing it all out or giving it to them in any way besides the call or voice memo
    • “You don’t even have to hop on a call, send it in a voice memo” -Michelle
  • Everything is now handed off to the assistant
    • They are responsible for:
      • Tracking it
      • Organizing it
      • Helping you prioritize it in a living document that gets updated weekly during/after weekly brain dump calls
      • Counterintuitive to last weeks episode
  • B & M said to document and make it clear so you can delegate
  • At some point, you will get where you can’t/don’t know where to start and that’s where executive assistant come in
  • “Your job is to literally give it away to someone else to take care of it for you” -Michelle

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2:09 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: Delegating - how to make other people do your stuff

2:52 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

4:10 Overview of working smarter, not harder

• Finding a way to delegate work to others on your team, while making sure they are being done with high quality
• Following the next steps
  • What it means to be a great leader
  • Who’s responsible/accountable
  • Process Documentation
  • Delegation
• “Documenting your processes and having a plan is like delegating to your future self” -M
• Documenting processes means you are ready to delegate to someone else
• There are things that you can’t delegate
• Being busy doesn’t always mean you’re being productive
• You shouldn’t feel like you’re stuck running on a hamster wheel - take a hamster vacation
• “Without delegation, I was running myself ragged working 18-20 hours a day, sleeping 4 hours a day, not eating, not taking care of myself.” -B
  • Running a business means everything has to get done

9:08 When do I need to delegate?

• “It’s like planting a tree. The right answer is yesterday and the second-best answer is today.” -M
• Task Triage
  • Do it now NOW
    • Important and high priority
  • Do it later LATER
    • Important, but not urgent

Above line = YOU ------------------------------------- Below line =OTHERS

• Delegate it NOW
  • It needs to get done, but not by me
  • Urgent, but not important
• Dump it LATER
  • Not urgent, not important
• Deconstruct the task if you’re not clear where it falls on the task triage
  • Break the task into smaller parts and see where it fits in the triage
  • YOU don’t always need to do all 7 steps - only number 4 - delegate the rest
• “The magic of delegation and prioritization comes in when breaking it down” -M
• KISS rule
  • Keep
  • It
  • Simple
  • Stupid

13:45 Segmenting to the triage

• Use the 80/20 rule
  • Do it now = 20%
  • Do it later = 80%

20% Above line = YOU ------------------------------------- 80% Below line =OTHERS

• Start with email inbox management
  • An email is not a thing, it’s a container for a thing
  • 80% of your inbox are things that you don’t need to do
    • Delegate it
  • Start small and find what works for you
• Documenting your process isn’t meant to add more work to your load.
  • Back the truck up
  • This will allow you to delegate it out and lessen your workload

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0:34 Intro

• Intro/Opening remarks
• The topic is: How Sausage is Made (the process of process making)

1:35 Sponsors

• SPEARity (SPEARity.com)
• Cream City Marketing (creamcitymarketing.com)

2:19 Digging into the details

• Americanism concept: If you want to enjoy the sausage, don’t ask how it gets made
• “You lose your appreciation for laws and sausages if you learn how they are made” -M
  • " Laws... like, sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made" - John Godfrey Saxe 1869
• Most people don’t pay attention to their processes
  • As a business owner, you NEED to pay attention to them
• “Your business is made up of many processes, whether you think it or not” -B
• Processes can be delegated as chores for your kids at home
• The more you work on a process, the better you will get

5:18 Two main reasons to solidify your processes

• The ability to make things better
  • Process → Repeatable → Measurable → Can be improved
  • Your processes shouldn’t be different every time you do them…
    • Can have minimal changes, but shouldn’t be drastically different each time
  • “People have anxiety if they can’t find the consistency on how things get done” -B
  • Outcomes can have predictability if you follow a process
  • Chick-fil-a Story Processes to create scalability
    • Michael mentioned to the manager that they probably need to work very efficiently to hand the volume they were handling
    • He gets invited to the back
    • Everything was documented
    • Whiteboard above drive-thru window with guest times, number of guests, etc.
    • Monitors running live time stats
      • Twitter feed
    • Cookie station
      • Visual chart showing what a cookie looks like when it’s baked perfectly, when it’s underbaked, and when it’s overbaked
  • You don’t need a lot of money to document your processes
  • Your processes are essentially your playbook for winning
  • “Document things as you are doing them, especially as a solopreneur” -B
  • Creating a process is not difficult, most people just overthink it

19:15 Steps to create your process

• Step 1: Start with your end deliverable
  • Vision and expectations
• Step 2: Don’t overthink it
• Step 3: Write it down
  • Your documentation doesn’t need to be perfect the first time
  • This is your rough draft - it can be refined
• Step 4: Run the process
  • Run it in your head or the physical steps
  • Make notes as you run the process
• Step 5: Iterate the process
  • This step will be done multiple times
• Step 6: Measure the process
  • Where are places that I can measure the process
  • The more processes made = better quality
• Step 7: Train it and name it
  • Train others on your process - delegate it out
• Step 8: Apply technology

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3:35 Background of today’s topic

• The difference between responsibility and accountability
• In Lithuania, “accountability” and “responsibility” translate to be the same word
  • They are NOT the same thing
  • Some cultures also do not define the word “entrepreneurship”
• “There are 300 different words for ‘snow’ in Eskimo because it’s everywhere” -M
• “If your brain doesn’t have a word for it, then you have no framework for it” -M
  • No word for it means you’re starting from square one

7:20 Diving into the topic

• Responsibility vs Accountability
  • Responsibility: Duty to deal with (Deal with it)
    • Process/Action
  • Accountability: In charge of results (Results of it)
    • Outcomes/Goals
• Doesn’t always need to be two different people, but they need to operate as two different functions
• Definitions Matter
  • For your team and for yourself to measure the effectiveness of those who are responsible and those who are accountable

11:53 RASIC Model

• Responsibility
  • Which role is responsible for it (in charge of doing it)
  • Has to do it, but “accountable” takes the heat
• Accountability
  • Which role is accountable for it (in charge of results)
  • Making sure that “responsible” does it
• Supports
  • Who supports it (who helps)
  • Has work to do
• Inform
  • Who’s informed (all they need to know is what’s happening)
• Consulted
  • Who’s consulted (They don’t do the work but they might have some knowledge and can tap in if needed)
• “If you find yourself making the same decision over and over, it might be time to look into a framework like RASIC” -M
  • Volleyball example: If two teammates keep running to hit the same ball or if both teammates are watching the ball hit the ground
• “What have been the hiccups to getting the projects done consistently?” -B
• We need to start looking at the option of working remotely 40-60% of the week instead of coming to the office 80-100% of the week.
• “More role clarity is never a negative thing” -B
• “Clarity and seamlessness, I’m in” -M

25:00 Real-life example

• Sketchy Ideas Producer, Brian Oemig (also referred to as ‘Voice of God’)
  • Responsible and accountable for most of the SKE social media presence
  • Brad and Michael are mostly informed and only sometimes consulted
  • “But you always have my support” -B

26:00 Giphy

• If you want to use our gifs/stickers, search #SketchyIdeasShow or @SketchyIdeas on the Instagram/Tiktok/Slack gif function (or anywhere that uses the Giphy database)
• Tag us so we can reshare!
• “I think highly gifable is a compliment these days” -M

26:48 Back to the framework

• Don’t do this for your entire business right away
• Take a segment and work your way through
• When growing and scaling, you need clarity

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2:37 Diving into today’s topic - Brad’s attempt

• Attempt to define what leadership is
• “Defining leadership has a whole bunch of grey area” -B
• A spectrum w/ layers
• “It’s important to define leadership for yourself” -B
• The book that Brad references: “Leadership Challenge” by Kouzes and Posner
• Studying leadership helps you become more self-aware

4:57 Michael’s thrust into leadership

• Took on a role at a company
  • Supervisor (of everything)
  • Managing supervisor vs. Leading by example (coaching, mentorship, inspiring)
• People are internally motivated
  • “As a leader, you need to tap into someone’s internal motivation to align with the company to produce great outcomes” -M
• People often fall into the mindset where they separate how they want to be lead vs how they lead others
• “Great salespeople tend to make bad sales managers” -B
  • In sales, you lead customers
  • That doesn’t mean you’re good at leading salespeople
• Who is a leader to you?
  • Why do they come to mind?
• “We realize what great leaders are because we’ve experienced being lead by a great leader” -M
• We can define leadership in reflection more easily than theory

9:00 Step further

• It’s important to be able to grow as a leader
• Without leadership growth, the company doesn’t grow
• Ways to define leadership:
  • By experience - being led by a great leader
  • By outcomes - a great leader making your life better/successful
• As a business owner, you want great leaders to make better outcomes for your company
• Leadership is not the ONLY way to grow a business, but it is definitely not the easiest nor hardest way to do so
• Great leaders need to have self-awareness
  • Know yourself, the situation, and how to adapt the two together
• Leaders have a preferred style and a default style

16:44 Basics of defining leadership (Choosing to follow & more success & got what they need from you)

• “If you don’t have any followers, you’re not a leader” -M
• A great leader has followers that are choosing to be there
• You don’t choose to follow your manager, but you choose to follow a leader
  • It May look the same day to day, but you’ll notice the difference when pressure is applied or in high-stress situations

19:40 Future topic?

• Are social media influencers considered leaders?
• Followers are choosing to follow them and can push their “leader” to better successes

24:00 Servant Leadership

• Asking people if they need help
  • Car troubles - do you need a ride somewhere?

25:00 Styles of leadership

• You need to define what leadership looks like at your company
• Too many styles of leadership can cause problems
  • Not necessarily bad leaders, just different styles of leadership
• Results-driven
• “If everyone were robots, management would be awesome” -B
  • More consistency
  • No feelings/emotions
  • No work/life balance

32:12 Closing remarks

• Check out SketchyIdeasshow.com

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3:10 Diving into today’s topic

• CEOs and business owners are looking for processes or a way to package information on how to do things, without a way to do it
• They don’t know what they’re lacking, but they know they’re missing something
• They are looking for a framework or defined process
• “Frameworks are a simplified version of standard practice” -B
  • Or a solution
  • Or a way to teach others
• “Framework” is not just a marketing term

6:25 Michael draws it out

• If it’s a framework, then: (Is it a framework?)
  • Easy to share
  • Enables scale
  • Aim to a goal
  • Repeatable + measurable
  • Operates across contexts (can be a part of other frameworks)
  • Recognizable
  • Principled
• Frameworks have a beginning and end (or it’s a cycle)
  • Always having an end goal

9:05 Beepods example

• The hive and the equipment is one part of the framework
• Others include:
  • Education
  • Training
  • Support
  • Outreach
  • Data

11:30 Debating their views

• “Run your framework a few times, then measure it” -B
• “The scientific method is a framework of a framework” -M
• The goal of a framework is to be able to explain complex processes to help make it clear to others
• “If you’re a one-person show, you’ll struggle to grow” -B
  • That doesn’t mean it’s not helpful
  • Can cause a lot of strife when looking back at your time
• “Flowcharts are not frameworks” -M
• Frameworks are NOT:
  • Single-use
  • Exceptions
  • FLowcharts
  • SOP’s
  • Instructions (?)
• “A framework is a map of simple terms to get to the flag at the top of the mountain” -B

17:45 Remote frameworks

• Many frameworks were designed to work in a single room
• Due to COVID, those have needed to shift to accommodate remote working
• General frameworks build problem-solving

18:34 Bigger picture

• You’re probably using frameworks without even realizing it
• High-level pieces of a framework:
  • Gather information
    • Categorize
  • Organize by relationship
  • Define the function of the framework
  • Create the story
• “If you have to micro-manage, it’s not a framework” -M
  • The framework should explain itself

23:40 Frameworks can go wrong

• Frameworks started going bad when Powerpoint created SmartArt
  • 2007
• Bullet points started getting visual

25:45 Recap

• Don’t be concerned if it’s not perfect the first time
• Everything we’re creating lives in a digital place
• Build out your framework
  • Put it into words that are teachable to others
  • Helps simplify your methods
  • Helps simplify training
  • Helps save time

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3:08 Diving into content

• Brad has been working in the marketing field for around 15 years
• Helped produce a kid’s Triathalon training program
• The content was guided towards the parents letting their children join the training for this Triathalon with teen-aged kids
  • Local content marketing

5:15 Content Structuring

• Many people say, “my content isn’t doing what I thought it would be doing”
  • Probably because they aren’t structuring it properly
• Content growth has been exponential
  • The internet has been evolving
  • Content has become much more important throughout the years
  • Content doesn’t need to be perfect
• 63% of companies don’t have a content strategy
• Relevancy shifts on social media
• 4 C’s of content
  • Create
  • Captivate
  • Community
  • Convert

8:25 How content/social media has evolved

• SEO was frowned upon
• Mobile was thought of last
• Multiple platform content
• Magazines coming every quarter instead of monthly
• “Content is so critical to the mainstay of a business” -B

10:30 Content Measuring

• 62% of business don’t know how to measure their content
• “Content is just a math equation” -B

12:07 Three major areas

• Is it timely?
• Is it entertaining?
• Does it drive value to your company?

13:22 Diagram Brad likes to share with people

• Your business has layers (Main core - sole of footprint)
  • Storefront
  • Office
  • Website

15:45 Funnel content

• Using drivers to get customers into the funnel
• TOFU (Top of funnel content)
  • Just finding out about your business
  • Surface level
  • Gaining their interest (entertainment value)
    • 61% of google searches are on mobile devices
• MOFU (Middle of funnel content)
  • Beginning to learn more about your business
  • Understanding the framework and traffic to see if it works for them
• BOFU (Bottom of funnel content)

18:15 Beepods Example

• Internal client
• Beekeeping Company
• TOFU
  • Content showing how bees are cool
• MOFU
  • Get them to subscribe along the way to our email list
  • Get them interested in bees
  • Will it work for them?
• BOFU
  • We have solutions for you
  • Let us help you get started

19:15 How to build content

• There are 4.66 billion active daily internet users
• “There is a supercomputer in everybody’s pocket that has the answers to their burning questions” -B
• How do you make your content stand out?
  • No simple answer, but there is a process

23:30 How to get topics

• What is the goal of your company?
• You probably have a topic that fit the goal that you talk to your clients about
• Main goals of your topics
  • Does it add VALUE?
  • Will it be ENTERTAINING?

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2:07 Guest Introduction

• Consuela Munoz
  • CEO of Own Your Confidence
  • Founder of the C-School
    • Professional women owning the room
    • “If you own your strength, you’ll own your confidence, and then you can own the room.” -C
    • Also known as the ‘Confidence Queen Next Door’
      • She wears her crown, at the request of Michael
    • Brad and Michael can get their crowns over on Consuela’s Podcast
  • Story of the crown
    • She is more than a confidence coach, she’s a confidence queen
    • Women have earned the respect that comes with crowns for their daily activities of working and taking care of their family
    • Women are expected to act a certain way to make it far in their career
      • Sit “lady-like”
    • “With a crown, the queen is always respected” -C
• 7:25 Why did Consuela get into this field?
  • “Every woman should be excited to go to work every day” -C

10:22 The Strength Program

• Changes the way you look at the work you’re doing
• You don’t have to wait for someone to tell you what to do
• Pursue your passion
• Performance goals and life goals sometimes need to be separated

12:55 Switching their mindset

• Strengths are a starting assessment
• Strengths:
  • Identify
  • Learn/understand
  • Sell/apply them
  • Develop/Plan
• Identify the strengths and apply them to their growth and stop the weaknesses
• Use them in a more purposeful way
• Apply your strengths to help find your passion for work
• American Mindset:
  • If the team needs help, we volunteer to help
  • But shouldn’t we help only if it’s something we’re good at?

19:20 Digging a little deeper

• If you use your strengths as a tool, you should know how to use it along with the risks
• The best way to resolve a complaint is to bring a proposed change with you

26:26 Technical Issues

• “It wouldn’t be a Sketchy Ideas episode without a few technical issues” -B

27:00 We’re back

• If you see others struggling to do something that you excel at and you’re getting angry about it, you are on the verge of finding strengths about yourself

31:14 DOPE Test (Assessment based on birds...)

• Dove
• Owl
• Peacock
• Eagle
• Does your assessment pass the DOPE test?

38:00 Visit Consuela

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2:20 Intro to topic

• CYA = Choose Your Assessment
  • Personality assessments
  • Do they work
  • How can they benefit you?
• Virtual working will force people to dive deeper and work harder

4:11 How Michael helps his clients

• Important things to look for when choosing the right assessment
  • Context - current state and constraints
  • Goals - where do you want to be that’s different than right now
  • Readiness - are you ready to work with the results
• “Personality tests are often misused” -M
• “Different assessments give you different data” -M
• Preassess yourself to make sure you’re even ready to take an assessment
  • AKA are you in the right mindset
• “Assessments are useless if you don’t have an end goal in mind” -B
• “I ain’t talking about the roaring ’20s, I’m talking about the 2020s.” -B
  • In regards to the willingness to improve
• What is the need you have, and how are you measuring that need?
• “Begin with the end in mind.” -B
• Ding...DIng...Ding... Brad had a perfect metaphor
  • Going into the grocery store while hungry, buying a bunch of groceries, and getting home and realizing you can’t do much with what you have.
• Is the assessment dead?
  • Overused
  • Oversimplified
  • Does it still have the same impact it once had?
• “There is value to a well-chosen and well-applied assessment” -M

10:50 So what’s next?

• Growth Readiness assessment
  • If you’re a business owner or an HR leader this can be a good start

11:41 Why SPEARity uses growth readiness assessments?

• They looked at the patterns
  • Organizations have visions, missions, goals, plans, and strategies
    • They are not true (they’re theoretical because they are future-focused)
  • But what happened? The real data and results
• “You can trust your gut as long as you calibrate it” -M
  • Calibrate the future thinking ideas against the real behaviors to close the delusion gap
  • Often times, delusion is optimistic
  • Humans are terrible at estimating how long it will take to do something
    • The closer to the real result, the lesser the delusion gap
  • We always underestimate

14:05 Johari window

• Box from top left → top right → bottom left → to bottom right
  • Open, Blind, Hidden, Unknown
• About you (Michael)
  • Open: Brown hair, caucasian male
  • Blind: Things you know that I don’t
  • Hidden: Things I know that you don’t
  • Unknown: Things that haven’t been explored, no one knows

17:20 Moving on.. kinda

People are aspirational and great at goal setting and effort, but there’s often a gap in planning

19:40 Are you ready?

• Context: A business owner or HR leader
• Goal: Grow or scale

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5:50 Topic Intro: Personality Assessments

• Everyone has probably taken a personality test online
• Buzzfeed personality tests (Random tests that determine an end result based on your answers)
  • Which flower are you?
  • Which Disney princess would you be?

7:15 Most known personality tests

• Meyers Briggs
• Kolbe
• DISC
• Endotype

7:40 History of assessments

• “We as humans need to classify as many things as possible” -B
• Archeologists label bones instead of calling them thing 1 and thing 2
• “Things with a label are easier to sell” -B (because it’s tangible)

8:30 Value of labeling

• Nomenclature + Taxonomy = Categorization
• “Functionally, it makes it easier to know what we’re talking about” -M
• Classification has some GOOD things (GOOD Check, BAD, UGLY)
• “Classification creates the fight or flight response in your brain” -B
  • Dangerous things (animals, natural disasters, etc.)

10:15 Michael explains DISC

• “DISC is to personality assessments as ZOOM is to video conferencing” -M
• DISC is mostly used in the workplace
• “DISC assessments might not solve your problem, but might make you feel better for a while.” -M
• Theoretically, if we can better understand ourselves and understand the people we work with, that should solve all of our problems.
• Personality tests can be
  • A survival tool
  • A team builder
• DISC seems to be the assessment that people use as a crutch or a box.
• Using your personality test results as a way to justify or dismiss your actions can result in some BAD behaviors (GOOD Check, BAD Check, UGLY)

14:00 Conative vs Cognitive

• (Gear) Conative is how your mind works when it’s at work (How you work with the world)
• (Brain) Cognitive is how your mind works while at rest (How you understand the world)

15:00 Meyers Briggs

• One of the oldest personality assessments
• This works because it is based on tropes
  • Types of characters to create a team
  • Works together to create interesting dynamics
• Do people still use Meyers Briggs?
  • Yes, but most people nowadays compare themselves to a pop culture reference
    • AKA Harry Potter (Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, & Slytherin)
    • The four houses most likely correlate to the 4 personalities of the Meyers Briggs assessment whether JK Rowling meant it or not

18:48 Using personality tests as a crutch

• People think “Once people have been defined, they believe that’s what they are” -B
• People change

22:10 Context and environmental inputs

• Humans have two sets of needs: personal and interpersonal
  • If you arent around other people, your personal needs rule

22:50 Run through of Good & Bad

• Good = put in context
  • Being intentional about how they are applied and the frequency of them being reevaluated

30:00 Labeling

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Brad and Michael go through their ideas behind New Years Resolutions and why they may be best to skip this year!

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Today, Michael takes you behind the whiteboard and explains his setup and the tools you need to create a successful one yourself!

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Today's episode is a case study of the successful launch of Pet Rock in 1975!

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Today, Brad and Michael will explore some of the "crazy" (or "so-crazy-it-just-might-work") business ideas that they have run into!

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In today's episode, recorded live, Brad and Michael had guest Cyrina Talbott on to help translate her business model and how she can explain it to others.

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Even better than the real thing!

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Brad and Michael will be going over how companies build out their process and frameworks for training!

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Brad and Michael talk about how different generations are working/living differently.

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Brad and Michael walk through how to resolve conflicts.

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Brad and Michael walk you through what the 4 c's are!

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2:45 “What does it mean to sell?” -M

• You’ve gone through the biggest evolution of how sales works if you’ve been in sales for the last 30-40 years
• “Sales is rapport building and objection handling.” -B
• Closing is the rationalization of why someone needs to buy right now

4:30 We’re all salespeople

• Selling your ideas
• Selling a product
• Selling a survive

5:00 3 parts of the sales process

• 1. Marketing → Shifting of beliefs
  2. Shifting
• 1. Sales → Rapport building
  2. Handling
• 1. Closing → Rationalization why someone needs it now
  2. Rationalizing

6:30 Digging deeper

• “We are inherently lazy creatures” -B
• Most people are not willing to take action right away
• Push the consumer away from the status quo
• “Tomorrow looks like today, so you might as well do it now” -B

9:15 Why work hard?

• Everyone MIGHT need the product or service
• Your hard work is for a reason
  • More money
  • More power
  • More freedom
• Moral obligation to sell vs. Just trying to make a quick buck
  • Helping someone vs. selling only to make money
  • Good product or service vs selling snake oil… Dr. Michael

13:15 Mindset shifting

• “The internet has shifted the mindset of buyers and sellers” -B
• Product and service information can now be easily found online
• Comments and reviews can drastically shift mindsets and sway consumers away from your company

14:30 The intent of the sale

• Moral vs selfish
• “To sell is to serve” -B
• “Sales is so admirable because it’s one of the toughest jobs out there” -B
  • In terms of serving, not schooling obviously
• Imagine life without salespeople
  • No zoom
  • No phones/technology
  • No lightbulb
  • No cars
  • No wheel
  • No modified food
• “Someone had to convince others that fire was probably a decent thing to have” -B
• Ugg sold fire (Aka a caveman convinced others that fire was good)
• “The first egg salesperson was a master” -M
  • Had to convince others that the thing that came out of the bird was going to be eaten

19:00 The main takeaway

• The first salesperson probably didn’t exchange for currency, but instead a changed mindset
• They needed to be CONVINCED
• “We are still convincing people that the internet is a good thing!” -B
• Imagine a COVID world without the internet…

20:50 The run through

• If you’re selling something to someone who hasn’t already bought it yet…
  • You’ll need to respond to their objections and convince them
    • AND if it’s something that will fix their problem, you have a moral obligation to…

22:10 Human drive

• “We are always looking for something bigger or more” -B
• Human beings are driven by aspirations

26:00 Keep it simple

• “Label jars, not people” -M (Funny remark to Brad about ‘Keep it simple, stupid’)
• The sales mindset is the servant mindset

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• Sales part 3: Know Your Numbers
• 1. Make a process
• 1. Understand the data in your process
• 1. Know your numbers
• “When a client’s answer to ‘How much does your business need to make to stay afloat?’ is ‘I don’t know,’ I say ‘I get you.’ because I used to not know too.” -M
• “We want to help you prevent and stay away from dangerous financial cliffs.” -M

5:40

• Q & A
• If you need help finding the answer to a question about your business, email us at info@sketchyideasshow.com
• Salespeople are generally incentivized to sell one thing or a small category of things
• “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” -B
• “Most salespeople don’t think as a business owner does.” -B

7:45

• Salespeople
  • Relationship builders
  • The charismatic people
  • Negotiators
• “Don’t sell a thing, sell a solution” -M
• You have a moral obligation to sell your product or service to people if it solves a significant problem

9:24

• Quote from Chris Lytle (Author of “Accidental Salesperson”)
  • “Respond to the person, not the objection”
• You want to sell the answer
• Don’t focus on the features or benefits, focus on the solution to the problem

11:11

• Flipping the funnel
• “Don’t start from activity, start from outcomes” -M
• (Drawing of steps, from bottom to top)
  • $ = How to
  • $$ = Tool/Equipment to get the job done
  • $$$ = Done with you (Equipment + Training)
  • $$$$ = Done for you (Team to do it)
• Beepods Example
  • $ = How to implement bees in your school (curriculum)
  • $$ = Beekeeping Kit (Hive)
  • $$$ = Equipment + beekeeper training
  • $$$$ = Beekeeper comes to school to teach and take care of the hive

16:22

• 4 Step Process
  • 1. Instructions
  • 1. • Equipment
  • 1. • Training
  • 1. Team to do it for you

16:35

• Car dealership example
  • 1. Free gift card with test drive offer
  • 1. Leave the car instead of buying
  • 1. Buy the car
  • 1. Car + Warranty OR Chauffeur service

17:54

• McDonald’s Example
  • 1. Monopoly Game with purchase offer
• Multiple paths to success when your business has a sequence of layered offers
• Sales process #’s to close a sale
  • 400 calls could generate 20 good leads
  • Each lead could take 6-8 touches to get a meeting
  • Fact-finding meeting to find 3 qualified prospects
  • A proposal that 1 person hopefully accepts to close a sale
• “Sales is an ART and SCIENCE” -B
  • Need to learn timing, language, the offer, the solution, the right approach, etc.
• Sales takes practice
  • “Practice, practice, practice, because you need to refine it for yourself.” -B
• Once you start your sales process… “TRACK YOUR DATA” -M

28:40

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• 01:15: the same concept explained in different ways sometimes it makes different sense to different people
  • 02:01: Same ideas in different terms
• 02:22: initiation, qualification, negotiation, determination
• 02:48: Deming says, if you can't define what you're doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing
• 03:16: Contacts and leads. And there is a difference The contact is anybody whose contact information you have
  • 03:27: lead is someone who could actually be doing business with you
• 03:35: lead generation is another word for initiation
• 03:42: touches and meetings
  • 03:48: ideally one leads to the other. Touches are all of the different ways you could reach out to get to the meeting, email, phone, call, text message, LinkedIn connection, meeting somebody face-to-face bumping into them at a networking event.
• 04:11: “scheduling a meeting is good. Holding a meeting is better” -M
• 04:35: prospect and proposals
  • 04:44: Prospect is somebody who you've had a meeting with and we are now in the negotiation phase with that person
  • 04:51: prospect when things get real and they get a proposal when things get really real
• 05:02: sale and revenue
  • 05:20: sale doesn't convert to revenue right away Revenue is when it's in the bank Sale is when it's on paper
• 05:48: “He's my governor. He slows me down a little bit” -M about Brad
• 06:05:” I need to know where a potential revenue is in my sales process” -M
• 06:53: “my goal is to get to the next step” -M
• 07:11: it’s important to be accurate and objective about where an opportunity stands
• 07:22: a better view of your pipeline and know where you should be putting in your time and your attention and your energy
• 07:50: You need to know that there's a filter between each of these stages of the sales process
  • 08:04: So basically you can't go to the next one unless you go through the first one
• 08:19: “meetings don't just happen” -M
• 08:59: Every contact is not a lead
• 09:15: you need to classify your leads
• 09:25: A means target buyer person with money who has a problem, who will pay to make the pain go away
  • 09:49: A B is somebody who is not quite there.
    • 09:53: Maybe it's a good opportunity. It's maybe it's a partnership, but it's not actually the person who's going to be making the purchase
  • 10:17: C is just basically a contact
• 10:32: I need just send them a LinkedIn request because you never know who knows who and what might come back, but you don't want to spend a lot of time running down contacts that you think are leads
• 10:41: identity what makes a well-qualified lead
• 10:57: “look for what's common among the people that are doing business with you” -M
• 11:05: you will be able to identify the theme that identifies what's true for you, and that'll help you do a better job of classification

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0:57

• Topic intro: Scaling your sales team of 1
• Who are we talking to about this topic?
  • Entrepreneurs
  • Solopreneurs
  • Small business owners
  • Technologists
  • Innovators
• “There’s only so much you can do on your own.” -M
• Becoming more efficient instead if cloning yourself
• “Turn your sales cycle into an automated machine using funnels” -B

3:06

• Brad begins sketching the sales process
• “We don’t do fancy, we do sketchy” -M
• You need a sales process
• “You probably have a sales process, even if you haven’t documented it.” -B

4:30

• Sales process
• (Circular sales process 1-5 that repeats)
  • 1. Lead/referral
  • 1. Approach
    2. “How can I help you?”
    3. “What value can I bring?”
  • 1. Factfinder
  • 1. Proposal/solution
  • 1. Close/make the sale
• Run the wheel over and over again
• “If you run the activity, you will get closes” -B
• “Even bad salespeople find success using the sales wheel through sheer hustle and grind” -B

8:17

• How to go to the next step
• “Grind beats skill, given enough time” -M
• “Typically, there is a better way” -B
• If new to sales, building your sales process should be your number one priority
• You need a general understanding of how your sales process works
• “Without a sales process, you have no foundation” -M

13:35

• Growing vs. Scaling
• You, as one person, are only able to grow so much
  • Only have so many hours
  • Only have the resources at your disposal
• You’re able to grow and scale with repeatable processes
• Without a sales process, “you cannot scale, period.” -M
• “Without your foundation, your ability to scale is zero or approaching” -M

15:10

• Take your proposals and figure out how to sell them individually as your offer
  • First part of setting up your funnel
• Turn your sales process into a linear function instead of a cyclical one
• Getting your leads are the top of the funnel
• Same steps:
  • 1. Lead
  • 1. Approve
  • 1. Qualify them
  • 1. Offer
  • 1. Close
• “Funnels are simple if you reframe how you look at it” -B
• “If you’re missing a personal connection when using funnels, get out a camera” -B
• Use the fact finder as the center point to build out your offer
• “Without salespeople, your business probably doesn’t exist” -B
• Sales cycle → Sales Funnel → Automation
• The tough part of the sales process is asking people for their money
• Multiple funnels with different offers is how you clone yourself
• “Sales funnels don’t fix your problems overnight” -B
• 1. Marketing is the shifting of one’s beliefs
• 1. Sales is rapport building and objection handling
• 1. Closing is the rationalization on why someone needs to purchase right now
  2. 1 and 2 can be done by the funnel

28:25

• Manual first
  • Find repetitive steps
  • Find a way to automate them

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0:57- Introduction

1:24 Topic intro: Good VUCA

• Each part of VUCA is a function of something else, therefore they can be addressed, maybe even prevented

2:40 VUCA 2.0

• Vison
• Understanding
• Courage
• Adaptability
• “In the face of volatility, what do we need to be ready for?” -M
  • Consistency

7:00 Brad takes a shot at VUCA 2.0 (V)

• “Vision is the guiding north star” -B
• “If you don’t have a vision, you don’t have a direction. If you don’t have a direction, you probably have VUCA” -B

8:06 Law of leadership (U)

• First understand, then be understood
• Understand first to get a baseline picture of what is going on
• “Take care of yourself, but not at the expense of other’s health or wellbeing” -B

10:57 (C)

• A sign of courage is making a decision
• “People often fall into indecision because it’s safe” -B
• In the long run, indecisiveness does more harm than good
• Make a choice, stick to that path, learn from it
• “Courage shows the willingness to be wrong” -B
  • “We’re not retreating, we’re advancing in another direction” -M
• Pause, reevaluate, make the best choice to move forward
• Most people think of a plan and only focus on the end goal, when there are plenty of steps along the way.

17:30 (A)

• In the words of Eagle Scout Brad James:
  • Improvise
  • Adapt
  • Overcome
• “The opposite of adaptability is rigidity” -M
• “There’s always room for improvement” -B

19:43 TTWWADI

• That’s the way we’ve always done it
• If the answer to why something is being done in a particular way is TTWWADI, then we have a problem.
• TTWWADI is a red flag
  • Dig deeper
• “60% of small businesses aren’t on the internet” -B
  • Correction: 46% of U.S. small businesses still don’t have a website for their company
  • 59% if you consider most major countries
  • Positive note that there are plenty of business to help market
  • The negative note is that these businesses are getting far less traffic
• What is stopping you from adapting and getting your business online?
• SALES is HARD
• “Change or die” -M
  • In regards to businesses
• “We are living in a world that Darwin would be proud of” -B

28:10 COVID

• Relationships are either going to get stronger or weaker at home during covid
• More time together
• Advertisers are spending more on dating apps since they are getting more traffic during the pandemic

29:15 Startups

• Hope to get bought out because they never know if they’ll make it
• Technological advancement/acceleration

30:00 Moore’s Law

• Advancement of technology and computing power
• “Now is a good time to sell your house as long as you don’t need to move into a different one” -M

33:10 Good VUCA

• Mixture of a strategic plan
• Low-level skills
• A way to counteract the bad VUCA
• Have your playbook!
  • How will you adjust and prepare
  • If, then map

35:30 Ending remarks/closeout

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5:14

• Intro - opening remarks

6:00 - What is VUCA?

• Volatility
• Uncertainty
• Complexity
• Ambiguity
• “Definitely features of the current environment” - M
• VUCA (the concept) originated post cold war

7:45 V deep dive

• Volatile → Why?: Lacks stability
• Features of being volatile:
  • Unpredictable
  • Changes rapidly

8:47 U deep dive

• Uncertain → Why?: Lacks specificity
• Features of being uncertain:
  • Indefinite
  • Unknown
• “My sketches can be uncertain” -B
  • (USA sketch from a previous episode)

9:30 C deep dive

• Complex → Why?: Lacks simplicity
• Features if being complex:
  • Intricate
  • Complicated
• “Brad’s insecurity is next week’s topic” -B

10:20 A deep dive

• Ambiguous → Why?: Choice was not made
• Features of being ambiguous:
  • Multiple meanings
  • Unclear/inexact
• “Ahh, my favorite. Indecisive people” -B
• V:
  • Why is it happening? Lacks stability
  • How do we know? Unpredictable and changes rapidly
  • So what? Change is often for the worse
  • Example: Stock market/natural disasters
  • “You rarely describe something as volatile when it’s changing for the better” -M

13:14

• U:
  • Why is it happening? Lacks specificity
  • How do we know? Indefinite and unknown
  • So what? Cannot be relied on
  • Example: Car not starting/technology problems
  • “Think of something you can rely on and take away that reliability” -M

15:25

• C:
  • Why is it happening? Lacks simplicity
  • How do we know? Intricate and complicated
  • So what? Numerous connected parts/ more complex = more room for failure
  • Example: Less moving parts
  • In regards to finding a solution, “complexity vs. simplicity really depends on the situation” -B

18:35

• A:
  • Why is it happening? A choice was not made
  • How do we know? Multiple meanings and unclear/inexact
  • So what? Open to interpretation
  • “Without a hypothesis, how good is your gut feeling” -M

20:40 Sketches of each part

• V: waterfall
• U: bee flight pattern
• C: Amazon rain forest (large ecosystem)
• A: Chicken and egg

33:50 Michael puts it all together

• Experiencing volatility, seek stability
• Experiencing uncertainty, seek specificity
• Experiencing complexity, seek simplicity
• Experiencing ambiguity, make a choice
• “My sketches are VUCA” -B

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9:07 Current situations

• A lot of teams have been turned inside out
  • Due to COVID
• Policy adaptation
  • Work from home
  • Time off
  • Physical workplace

12:00 Deep dive into avatar making

• Characterize and personify to picture your customer
• Add a picture to your avatar to personify it

13:37(- end’ish) Building the avatar

• 1. Name: Heather
• 1. Descriptor: Helpful/Hopeful
• 1. Age: 35
• 1. Relationship: Yes
• 1. Kids: No
• 1. Location: Downtown NYC
• 1. Quote: “There’s no I in TEAM
• 1. Position/details
  2. CEO at a startup
  3. MBA
  4. Has some money
• 1. Goals
  2. Make a difference in the world
• 1. Wants
  2. Be a leader
  3. Work less/more efficiently
• 1. Values
  2. Family
  3. Planet
  4. Travel/experiences
  5. Financial stability
  6. Believes in the team without giving them the necessary resources
• 1. Sources
  2. HBR (Harvard Business Review)
  3. “The Pitch” business podcast
  4. WSJ podcast
  5. “Bootstrapped VC” podcast
  6. LinkedIn
  7. Ray Dalio
  8. Tim Ferriss
  9. “Principles” by Tim Ferriss
• 1. Painpoints
  2. Not having these in place
     • Team realignment
     • Knowing what they’re doing
     • Manager collecting data
• 1. Challenges
  2. Painpoints lead to
     • Low engagement
     • Low morale
     • Low productivity
     • Lesser results
  3. Time is overwhelming and intimidating
  4. Inefficiency
  5. Money in net
  6. Low trust
  7. Being the sole decision-maker

35:00

• We are in a time of COVID Calibration
  • Efficiency (down)
  • Productivity (down)
  • Engagement (down)
• “You’re prioritizing action because you’re in a reactive mode” -M
• You don’t know what you don’t know

42:56 POOP

• Poop is a military term
  • Propper Order Of Procedure
• “Business can be fun, you just have to make it fun” -B

44:56 Avatar Overview

• Hopeful Heather
• Lots of thoughts, values, and goals
• Influenced by her sources of information
• Feeling the challenges and pain points
• Because of her values
• Objections focused on basic resources and inability to make the investment because she doesn’t have full awareness of the impact even though she read about in HBR

50:00 Ish

• “I’m here to solve problems and for comedic relief” -B
• “People buy on emotion then rationalize it with logic” -B

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0:10 Intro

• Opening remarks

0:39 “Is it a forever gift, Michael, or just a little gift?”

• M explains that feedback is the “kind of gift that keeps on giving”

0:58 “Feedback is a gift [...] on both sides”

• M explains that both the giver and receiver can find value in feedback

1:23 M quote

• “What we want to make sure is that we think of [feedback] in terms of its value”

1:55 Michael asks Brad to think about the last time he gave a great gift

2:46 Giving - GIFTS acronym

• G - Goes with
• I - Intentional
• F - Functional
• T - Thoughtful
• S - Specific

4:45 M quote

• “There’s effort that goes into giving a great gift, and the same thing goes for feedback.”

6:28 Receiving - AAAA acronym

• AAAA
  • A - Appreciate (the giver and the gift)
  • A - Allow feedback in
  • A - Align/Accurate
  • A - Apply/Ask

10:17 M starts talking about self-awareness

• M quote: “Whenever you’re receiving feedback [...] give it time, because there’s a lot of value in it that cannot be achieved any other way.”
• M quote: “Greater self-awareness is one of the greatest gifts you can receive, and feedback is how you get it”

11:48 “It’s a sweater!” Three Amigos reference

• Promised a decal to the first one to know reference in the comments

12:30 Questions

13:30 Outro

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6:03 Beginning of Brad’s Spiel

• Like words being interchanged
  • Customer Avatars
  • Customer Archetypes
  • Customer Personas
  • Target Market
• “Features don’t help you get your point across, or cater your messaging or what you are trying to sell to an individual or a group of people.” -B

6:45 Pandora analogy

• There was these native tribespeople and we as earth people were trying to swoop in and leverage resources. What they did was create this persona that would be able to communicate directly to the native people. -B
• We are trying to classify and characterize who those people are. The native people of pandora are who we are trying to describe through this exercise. -B
• “So in order to communicate with the natives, we need to understand who the natives are.” -M
• Making avatars can help: sales team, marketing team, HR team, and even operations people.

8:31 First Thing

• Demographics
  • Name
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Marital Status
  • Occupation
  • Location
  • Kids?
  • Etc. (Income, Education)
• “This is who they are and what we can find out through some research.” -M
• Take stock of this information for all your first customers.
• “This whole process is a missed opportunity if you’re not doing it.” -B

13:00 Michael’s Break Down

• To communicate with the natives, you need to understand them. To understand them, you must analyze the data. If you don’t have the data you need to gather it.

13:24 Step 2 + 3

• Goals, Values, and Belief Systems
• Sources:
  • TV Shows, books, news, websites
• “For those of you who are watching this wonderful show, we are considered a source of information for you.” -B
• “You become the average of the five people you spend the most time with because the information that is consistently pushed into your brain becomes innate because the Myelin Sheath and therefore you begin to generate values and based on those values you develop goals and those goals help you with demographics.” -B
• Myelin Sheath - wrapped around your neurons is this material called myelin. The more you take your brain through a thought process or through that exercise the myelin sheath gets thicker and thicker and thicker. This is why repetition is important when you’re trying to practice something is so important because it reinforces the myelin sheath. Practice makes perfect.
• 17:47 Michael’s Break Down
• “Repetition creates reinforcement, reinforcement creates strength, the stronger the thing is the more fixed it becomes, and then it’s less likely to change and therefore is a valuable data point that I can target with my messaging.” -M
• 18:30 Step 4
• Challenges and Pain Points
• “We are trying to understand, based on our products or service, what pain points a customer may have.” -B
• Pain Points- can be as small as a mosquito bite because the itch doesn't go away. There are multiple solutions (before and after, long sleeve and anti-itch cream)
• “You might notice that I always wear a sweatshirt or a coat or have one with me. Even when it’s 100 degrees outside.The reason is, even if you don’t use it at a point in time, the individual you are with aka your significant other, who typically refuses to carry one {can wear it}, and now you look like the hero.”

21:52 Step 5

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6:05 Customer Avatars

• “Avatars are key to helping us grow our businesses” -M
• Like words being interchanged
  • Customer Avatars
  • Customer Archetypes
  • Customer Personas
  • Target Market

8:06 Targeting your market

• People are ingesting thousands of ads every day
• Your target market has a specific need
• Your target market determines how you advertise, how you sell, how you create offers and products, and how you build your brand

9:10 Dive into Avatars

• “You need to find the one thing you can build an offer around” -B
• The challenge
  • Offers are very dependent on who is going to buy them
• What pain point will your offer solve for the consumer?
• “The primary differentiator between startups and big companies in building avatars is their access to customer data.” -M

13:40 Why we buy

• “We don’t just buy things, to buy things” -B
• 3 core markets (Health, Wealth, Relationships)
  • Improves your health
  • Improves your wealth
  • Improves your relationships
  • (graphic ven diagram(ish))

15:15 Market examples

• What are you buying when it comes to Cheerios?
  • A low cholesterol cereal - heart on the box (health)
  • A parent eating breakfast with their child ad (relationship)
• “You can tie everything back to the three core markets; Health, Wealth, and Relationships.” -B

17:25 Tie back to the “3”

• Business owners are looking to create wealth
  • Increasing their health inherently increases their wealth because they’re able to have a clear mind.
  • A clear mind relieves stress and can help improve relationships with employees, clients, and customers
  • A better relationship increases workflow and productivity which can increase profits

20:00 Break it down

• “You can’t just go and be the real estate guy, you have to break it down.” -B
• “But, you can be the $5 million + on the California coast real estate guy.” -M

21:36 Funny quote

• “We lost Brad’s wide shot. I think he’s calling me fat” -B

22:14 Good quote

• “Technical difficulties, more like technical opportunities.” -M

26:20 Salespeople Mindset

• The typical salesperson
  • Everyone needs it. Everyone wants it. My target market is everyone.
  • … good luck
• The goal of going through the customer avatar exercise is to picture a person
• “Customer archetypes aren’t just a person’s demographics.” -B
  • Person
    • Demographics
    • Goals and aspirations
    • Behaviors/sources
    • Challenges
    • Objections

28:45 Avatars

• “We’re making the avatar our hero” -B
• Avatars (graphic of down arrows)
  • Combination of individuals and their needs
  • Marketing offers /= stuff
  • To find the route to their desires

32:00 Ads

• In terms of ad spending…
  • “The goal is to spend as little as possible and get the biggest bang for your buck.” -B
  • “Good ROI sounds like a great investment to me” -M

32:30 What avatars teach us

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2:40 Intro

• Opening remarks

3:00 Q1

• Can you alter your SMART goal before your deadline?
  • No, your goal was set before your effort began
• “Your best thinking happens before you start your goal” -M
• You don’t adjust the goal, you adjust the plans
• “What you learn along the way will help you set more realistic goals next time.” -M
• Evaluate your attempts, where did you fail and where did you succeed

6:40 Brad Gif

• “When the world throws a curveball, your plans may need to change.” -B
• Plan and adjust
• “You may not know what you’re good at along the way” -B
• “Just do, and move forward” -B

9:25 Debate Q1 together

• Rules, Conditions, Constraints, and Barriers → Can Change
• Success Measurement → Doesn’t Change
• “If I’m gonna take the time to set a goal, I should set a goal around things that really matter.” -M
• “If you’re not making money, you don’t have a business.” -M
• Business:
  • Your number 1 typical priority needs to be about financial stability
• Personal:
  • If my monthly expenses are exceeding my monthly income, my conditions may change drastically next month.
• If you’re missing a part of a SMART goal, should you try to just figure it out?
  • No, you’ll end up wasting time and effort. Build out your goal and simplify the process.

12:48 Q2

• How Agile doing works with a team
• “When working with a team, your communication needs to be at an ultimate high.” -B
• Group communication keeps the common goal in sight
• “With a clear vision, backed by good intent, you’re good to go” -B
• VISTAS
  • Vison
  • Intent
  • Strategy
  • Tactic
  • Accountability
  • Support

15:10 Michael debates Q2

• A good team goes through
  • Forming
  • Storming
  • Norming
  • Performing
• Before being able to approach a goal with agility.
  • Shared mission
  • Common vision
  • Aligned values
  • Clear expectations

22:15 Q3 SMART goals or Agile for traveling

• Both.
• Fixed and flexible variables
  • Transportation, housing, funds

25:06 Brad Map Meme

• “Understanding constraints lets you operate within them.” -M
• Agile Doing = Smaller, but more frequent amounts of work throughout the process
• SMART Goal = The work gets done before the process starts

34:30 - Overview/End remarks

• Topics/concepts others have disagreed on, send them our way
• sketchyideas@ccmediagroup.co

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3:04 - The Hedgehog Theory

• Hedgehog Theory
  • What we should do is at the root of: passion, the money it takes, and the ability to do the thing.
  • “What does planning equal most of the time in the long run? Analysis by paralysis.” (Brad)
  • SMART means procrastination because I think about EVERYTHING!”
  • Brad explains his thoughts for how to solve the problem. Can he go over the wall, under it, is there a ladder? Does he have help?

7:12 - VISTAS

• VISTAS
  • Vision
    • Can be vague, just something driven by INTENT
  • Intent
    • Functions as a motivator which is driven by relationships or support
  • Strategy
    • Instead of doing a SMART goal, just start doing because you don’t know the exact steps you need to do the thing.
  • Tactics
  • Accountability
  • Support
• “Thomas Edison didn’t have a plan to make a lightbulb, he just started making one.” (Brad)

8:37 - FTAGS

• FTAGS
  • Fast
  • Tangible
  • Active
  • Goals
• “You see something, you do it.” (Brad)
• “Pick a direction and go.” (Brad)
• Not every problem requires lots of thought and planning, you just have to start doing something.
• Trying = Exploring and through giving things a shot you discover what you like, what you are good at, and if you’re going in the direction that you want to go.
• Brad gives the example of himself and Michael starting Sketchy Ideas - they just did it.

12:25 - Michael questions Brad’s argument about the lack of a SMART goal for Sketchy Ideas

12:55 - Brad’s audio drops out, comes back in at 13:50

13:50 - Micahel asks Brad how the hedgehog is going to get over the wall

• Brad doesn’t know what’s on the other side of the 10ft wall, he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
• Through trying different methods to get past the wall, he discovers what he is good at and what he likes.
• Even when he discovers these things, he still might not want to make a SMART goal because of the time and procrastination involved.
• Exploration will help you find what you are good at, passionate about, and what you have the economic capacity to do. Economics can be time, money, or other resources.

16:12 - Michael points out biases in both Brad’s Hedgehog and VISTAS plans. He asks Brad to explain how those methods can lead to a specific achievement.

• Brad explains his realization of an outcome
  • Uses a student/teacher analogy
  • “I don't know what I’m good at, so I just do.” (Brad)
• Michael prepares his counter - knowing that they will have their real debate the next time.
• Brad says that the hedgehog model is not pre-planned, you just have to figure it out along the way.
• “If I just get in my car and start to drive without a destination in mind, will I ever get there?” (Michael)
• Michael argues that every decision is driven by a need. If you are going to a restaurant - you go because you are hungry. This is the “I” in VISTAS, the “Intent”
• Planning feels like doing something, instead of actually acting to do it.
• Analysis is a way to achieve risk-avoidance.
• Michael starts making a comparison/argument about whether or not the same people who analyze the study are the ones that made goals, or if it is the other percentage of people.

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Welcome to the first episode of Sketchy Ideas!

In today's episode, Brad and Michael explain what SMART Goals are and how to use them!

Main Topics:

• SMART Goals Intro
• Example of building a SMART goal
• When to use SMART goals
• Goal example (Driving to work)
• When SMART goals don’t work
• Can I make a business 3rd quarter goal right now?
• How do I get started with making a SMART goal?
• Last thing to know about SMART goals

Full Show Notes here

This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app