The HyperLeverage Podcast: Recent Episodes
Joel Goobich
Leverage is the invisible force that makes things happen. On the HyperLeverage Podcast I'll take you on a journey of discovery as I take deep dives into the concept and application of leverage in our daily lives, careers and businesses. We'll learn from real life examples of how others have proactively, intentionally and systematically exploited their assets, resources and opportunities to achieve phenomenal success.
On this episode I focus on what gets so little attention – the concept of business exits. How do business owners actually get off the ‘train’ they’ve built. After all at some point people reach their business destination – whatever it might be.
A lot of emphasis is placed on the activities around starting a company. It gets all the buzz and attention in the business community, media and professional circles.
Entrepreneurship has a special place in the hearts and minds of Americans. We are the country of boundless opportunities where someone could turn an idea into a thriving business, often through sheer will of character.
The need for a good exit strategy and execution of a business exit plan is something that most business owners do not pay as much heed to. Often it’s looked as and ‘end of the road’ event with nothing on the horizon. A major reason that many business owners fail to plan for an exit
There are a myriad of ways to leverage a business exit.
This episode will focus on an existing, yet highly leveragable way for business owners to exit their businesses. The ESOP – Selling your business back to it’s employees
I’ve asked my fellow business exit planning colleague Bob Scarlata to join me to talk about this.
A picture is worth a thousand words. But it can't compete with the human voice for the richness of emotion, intonation and the ability to create a real connection with others.
The skill of speaking should therefore be high on the list of important skills that every executive and professional should have. Especially those that strive for leadership positions. Being able to communicate with confidence and understand how to use their voice is critical for success.
Alas, public speaking is one of the most feared activities that most people have. Standing in front of people to talk about something that one knows like the back of their hands is a major stress inducing experience for most.
As we transition away from written communication to audio and visual (Video) learning to leverage our voice is a must.
On this episode I discuss this topic with Dr. Reesa Woolf, an accomplished public speaking coach to executives. As author of the best selling book - Executive Speaking in a Weekend - she gives insight into the tools she uses to help professionals find their voice.
People are the foundation of almost every business or organization. They are the workforce, the vendors, the partners, suppliers, client and customers. Without people businesses would not exist. They are the only integral part of any business equation that is common to all organizations.
Understanding the human – people – side of a business is mandatory for success. It’s why I designated People as one of the 4 P’s of Hyperleverage.
Now workforce and even the word ‘employee” has some negative connotation. It sounds like the desks filled with drones or minions of no name automatons.
People who feel that their organization looks at them in this way tend to respond in kind. Their talents go unleveraged. Leadership will have a difficult if not impossible task of achieving the results they should or could.
Today finding and hiring the right talent requires a HyperLeverage mindset. A desire to proactively leverage the talent that can build strong teams and establish the foundation for growth.
There are reasons why companies like Netflix, REI and Southwest have become such icons of success. It’s that “P” word - People
This episode focuses on one of the 4 P’s of HyperLeverage – Leveraging People to attain exceptional results. Host Joel Goobich has an in-depth conversation with leadership talent expert, Claire Chandler, about mission centric leadership and how to leverage it with your employee talent pool.
We celebrate the business founder who becomes a successful CEO - especially those high profile individuals who have successfully transitioned from the role of founder to CEO and built companies that dominate the world of business. The five leading companies of the internet era - FAANG - as they are referred to Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google have or had founders that became successful CEO’s.
Hard to argue that Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg or Reed Hastings have not handled the transition well.
Are they the exception to the rule? Or are they just the most recognized because they succeeded at such vast scale that all other founder/CEO’s became lost in the long grass?
The skills and the personality traits required to make the transition from founder to successful CEO are not inherent in everyone. And it’s actually rare to have a founder be able to leverage that first-mover advantage to a successful role as a CEO. It takes some special sauce. A bit of pepper, a touch of salt, a pinch of Tabasco.
And of course, it takes some luck. But it mostly takes an ability to HyperLeverage. To proactively look for ways to leverage what they already had and bend these advantages to their benefit.
That is the topic that this episode will focus on. – How a Founder becomes a successful CEO
Topics Covered in This Episode:
- Why isn’t it a slam dunk that a founder can or should become the CEO of their company.
- What does it take to transform from a founder to a successful CEO?
- Why do some founders flounder and some flourish?
- When should a founder absolutely NOT become the CEO?
- What are the core traits of a successful CEO? Is this an innate skill set or can it be learned (beforehand)?
- What do most founders leverage in their journey to being successful CEO’s
Small business owners are in a fight for their lives. They face a wave of risks including globalization and the growth of huge online behemoth competitors.
Yet they also have advantages that didn't exist before that level the playing field.
This episode focuses on what small business owners can do to become more empowered. How they can leverage their time, resources, and opportunities to thrive.
In this episode titled “Empowering Authorpreneurs“ I speak with Kathy Meis, the founder, and CEO of Bublish, about the resources that authors can leverage to write, publish, distribute and market their writings.
The past 20 years or so has seen the world of publishing get completely disrupted, torn apart, and changed forever. Retail books stores have become an endangered species, eBooks have usurped much of the printed book publishing business and to add insult to injury, leisure reading in the United States has continued to decline.
That may seem like doom and gloom for authors. But in fact, it opened up an avenue of publishing and control that had heretofore been absent. For decades large publishing houses controlled the world of books. Like Gods from on high, they determined winners and losers, with no regard for what the market actually might want.
Into this fray came the market for self-published books through the creation of cost-efficient methods of print-on-demand and perhaps most importantly, a distribution mechanism, Amazon, that leveled the playing field.
A new concept was created, the independent author.
Along came a wave of resources that makes it easier for authors to publish and distribute their work. And they had the power of social media to market them.
The Authorpreneur was born.
Vikram Rajan and his partners at VideoSocials have created a solution for video marketing that emulates the core lessons of Toastmasters organization and what they do to promote public speaking skills. They understood that video is a 'business language" that is should be leveraged by businesses small and large. And they recognized that the biggest roadblock to the adoption of video marketing for many professionals, such as lawyers, accountants, financial advisors and other solopreneurs is not the technology, but how unprepared and uncomfortable we are on camera.
The technology is at everyone's fingertips these days. Mobile phones have turned all of us into potential movie producers, directors and actors. The technology is so simple – just scroll to your phone camera app. Click on the red record button and Voila – high-resolution video photography. So there really is no excuse or roadblocks anymore in terms of technology for creating and using videos to support and market a business. In fact, there are more and more technology solutions available for both editing and hosting videos.
In this episode I had a conversation with Vik about leveraging video and video marketing in a way that lowers the barriers and provides a simple on-ramp for professionals to take advantage of this powerful visual medium.
Links & Topics Covered in This Episode:
- Why social videos used for business should have captions. VideoSocials software does this for you. (Zubtitle.com is a great resource that can be used as well)
- How a VideoSocials meeting works and how professionals can leverage the input from others to improve their on-screen performance
- The power of personalized videos
- Where the future is pointing to in regards to video marketing for professionals
- How to leverage the technology at your fingertips to make videos
- Best practices for making short video professional testimonials
We are used to a multitude of avenues to create and convey content. In writing, by voice and of course visually.
In recent years Videos and Podcasts have exploded as marketing vehicles of content. They lend themselves to great story telling. The human voice and the visuals of the human face can evoke tremendous emotional responses.
There is just so much good content being produced in these mediums. You would think that they would be leveraged to repurpose the stories in written form as well. Not just as short stand alone blog posts, but as a cohesive compendium of stories.
On today’s episode titled From Podcast to Book – Leveraging Content I have a conversation with David Bain, the author of book, Marketing Now and how he did exactly that – leveraged the content from his podcasts to a book. We’ll talk about the six steps he used to go from starting a podcast to publishing a book.
In this episode titled Repurposing Content - From Podcast to Book I have a conversation with David Bain, the author of book, Marketing Now and how he intentionally planned and systematically leveraged the content of his podcast episodes to a book. We’ll talk about the six steps he used to go from starting a podcast to writing a book using the interviews he conducted for his podcast series.
In recent years Podcasts have exploded as marketing vehicles of content. They lend themselves to great storytelling. The human voice can evoke tremendous emotional responses. A good podcast is like a good book, the story draws people in, engages them and as any good marketer knows, the longer you can keep their attention, the more opportunity to convey the message you want to get out.
We talk about the importance of repurposing content by repackaging it for a different audience.
David's Six Step Process for repurposing content from his podcasts and videos.
- Create quality content that people want to listen to
- Do at least 20 podcast episodes - this will help you get better at interviewing and build relationships.
- Move into video. Repurpose the audio portion for your podcast
- Begin to Live Stream Video. Use software like restream.io to stream to up to 30 platforms at once
- Combine a Live Stream session together into a "Virtual Summit" Free Download - How to Launch a Virtual Summit
- Get podcast transcripts from Virtual Summit and write the book
This is only one plan of action to repurpose the content of a podcast into a book. David and I discussed other avenues in the podcast episode itself.
Links & Topics Covered in This Episode:
- The Six Steps to go from starting a podcast to writing a book
- How to graduate to live podcasting and live video
- Why planning in advance makes it easier to leverage and repurpose the content of a podcast
- How to edit and decide what podcast content is good 'book material'.
It’s often been said that it’s not what you know but who you know. As social beings we have a natural desire to surround ourselves with others that share our likes, have had similar experiences, and with whom we have common tastes. This builds trust. We feel we can count on them when needed. We are easily and often influenced by these individuals.
The truth is that this is not something that was just discovered yesterday. It’s how commerce has transpired since the dawn of organized societies. Most business is done between people that know each other. Most businesses actually grew through ‘word of mouth’ and shared relationships. It's still the main avenue of growth for many organizations. But it is not generally done efficiently.
Enter Social Media and with it a new way to effectively leverage people and their relationships. It's called Influencer Marketing. We can now take advantage of the influence that others have to sway us in one way or another.
In this episode I have a conversation with Shane Barker, accomplished digital marketing and influencer marketing expert about this topic. We talk about the growth of influencer marketing and how it can be leveraged for business and professional purposes.
Links & Topics Covered in This Episode:
- What is Influencer Marketing
- How to Vet an Influencer for optimum results
- What ROI can a business get from using Influencer Marketing
- What to expect from your initial influencer marketing campaigns
- Is Influencer Marketing here to stay?
A significant method to achieve HyperLeverage is through the use of technology. But just using technology does not by itself represent leverage. At least not leverage to the highest degree. What I call HyperLeverage.
And why? - because more often than not, we are not utilizing the technology to its fullest capacity or we have not implemented a systematic and intentional approach to utilizing the technology for a specific objective and measured it's effectiveness.
On this episode I have a conversation with the head of a company that actually HyperLeveraged an existing technology, one not developed specifically for their industry. It's the story of how a company, Greneker, changed the way that store mannequins - what were often referred to as 'dummies' where developed, modeled and produced. Their story is a story of how they leveraged an existing technology, 3D printing, and adapted it to meet their specific needs. In a short time Greneker embraced 3D printing to replace the decades old and time consuming system of using clay armature sculpture to create mannequins. And it transformed their business.
I have a conversation with Greneker President, Steve Beckman, on how this came to be and the ramifications of leveraging 3D Printing to bend the business curve to his advantage.
Links & Topics Covered in This Episode:
- Why Greneker had to find a new technology to leverage
- How the use of 3D printing employed the 4P's of HyperLeverage
- What Greneker did to leverage 3D printing
- What were the tangible and intangible results HyperLeveraging 3D technology
- The future use of technology to make mannequins smart and no long dumb
- More information on Greneker's use of 3D printing - http://bit.ly/2IwHf3R
On this episode of the HyperLeverage podcast we’re going to dive into the concept of size, specifically Height and ask the question. Does Height matter? Can it be leveraged? Can it be Hyperleveraged?
No doubt that there is a preconceived notion that size matters in almost all things we encounter.
In this episode, host Joel Goobich, explores taking conscious advantage of height and connects it to the concept of Hyperleverage and the systematic exploitation of leverage opportunities.
On this episode I look at the power of location and how it can be proactively and intentionally leveraged to gain advantages. I tell the story of Greg Maddux the Hall of Fame pitcher and his secret weapon - his ability to determine exactly where the next pitch should go. Maddux was a the epitome of the person who uses HyperLeverage to gain exceptional results. He leveraged this advanced scouting of opposing pitchers to plan just the right pitches, the preferred sequence of pitches and optimum target location for each batter he thought he would face. And then he did the ultimate HyperLeverage move - he executed his plan flawlessly.
The story of Greg Maddux is the story of how to leverage location. Whether it's in the game of baseball or the game of business or the game of life. How and when we take advantage of the opportunities that location provides can be the difference between success, failure or exceptional results.
This podcast episode breaks down this concept using real life examples to illustrate the point.
Play-Doh is the universal modeling compound enjoyed by millions of children around the world. The story of it's invention and how it came to be the 'take it to the bank' revenue generator for Hasbro Toys is an interesting tale of Leverage and HyperLeverage.
On this episode, I tell the history of Play-Doh from it's beginnings as a wallpaper cleaning putty created by the Kutol Products company in Cincinnati Ohio to it's present day status as one of the most popular children's toys of all time.
Along the way I use the story of Play-Doh to point out the lessons of leverage and HyperLeverage.
HyperLeverage is leverage on steroids. It means systematically identifying and acting upon leverage opportunities to drive maximum growth.
The HyperLeverage Advantage and way of getting impactful results has five basic paths.
This episode will detail these paths and difference between simply having leverage and the advantage of proactively using leverage.
The HyperLeverage Podcast focuses on the concept of Leverage in all facets of life. Business, Careers and beyond. Leverage plays a major role in how things work. In how we succeed. And if we can understood the concept better, we will be able to proactively affect our outcomes. That's a process called HyperLeverage. - Essentially Leverage on Steroids.
The goal of each podcast episode will be to focus on a single aspect of leverage. Provide examples and deliver an actionable lesson. Each podcast will have an accompanying website show notes page for additional links and information as well as thought exercises.
This first introductory episode lays the groundwork for all episodes to come.
- Definition of Leverage
- Description of HyperLeverage
- Explanation of the importance of proactive leverage
- Description of episodes to come
The podcasts will be a combination of storytelling, analysis and discussions with others who will share how they used leverage in their lives and careers.
Glad you can join me on this journey.