012 Joe Calloway––Disruption!

From Joe Callaway's blog. So the current hot business term is disruption. Everyone wants to be a disruptor, but unless you create value as you disrupt, you are doomed to fail. And that's what we're talking about today with renowned business speaker and author Joe Callaway on Walking the Walk.

Welcome to Walking the Walk, the program for people who want to become better leaders and leaders who want to become better people. Start walking the walk with your host, renowned leadership speaker and author of The Sensei Leader, Jim Bouchard.

Joe Callaway helps great companies get even better. His workshops and interactive keynote presentations help develop leaders, create more effective teams, and improve performance for successful businesses who know they can and should be doing more with the people and resources they already have. Joe's client list reads like an international who's who in business, ranging from companies like Procter Gamble and Coca-Cola to Cadillac and American Express. And Joe also works extensively with small to mid-sized businesses, franchisees, and a range of professional service organizations. And he's the author of 7 books on business performance, including Becoming a Category of One, Be the Best at What Matters Most, and Magnetic: The Art of Attracting Business. His latest book, and one of my favorites, Keep It Simple. But to me, Joe is a dear friend and one of my most trusted mentors. Today we're talking about his latest crusade to help you become a better leader and take your business to the next level through disruption. So, Joe, how do you disrupt and create value, as you said on your blog?

It is a challenging and scary process, Jim, because here's what you have to do. It actually goes against every survival instinct that an organization has. Because normally what companies do, and actually this is what I've been helping them do for a long, long, long time, is they say, okay, this is working, this product or this service, whatever, this is working really well. Let's make it better. Let's tweak it. Let's improve it so we can charge more, keep our best customers happy. And, and that would— then we can just ride into the sunset. But what's happening now more and more and more is people are there. There's a— they see some smoke in the distance and then all of a sudden their world is blown up and they go, what happened? And they look around and other companies are doing things that have taken the place of what customers in the marketplace once wanted. So disruption is really— and it's, Jim, it's not all that exotic. One good way to approach disruption is to say, what can we make easier? What can we make more accessible? I mean, look at Amazon, who totally disrupted buying stuff.

Sure.

And they did it They did it by making buying stuff easier. And so regardless of the business that you're in, whether you're a one-person business or a 50,000-person business, I think everybody is starting to think about what's going to disrupt my business and am I going to have it done to me or am I going to be the one to do it myself?

I'm glad you used Amazon as an example because sometimes You know, it is a buzzword. You're absolutely right, this whole disruption thing. And I don't know if everyone has a clear understanding of what it actually means. I think sometimes it's applied only in its most radical form. But, you know, Amazon's a great example. I mean, you know, Bezos started that basically in his house, right, or in his mother's house. And he didn't really reinvent the wheel. He improved the selling process. But then That by improving the process, right, then he went down some pretty radical roads. And as you said, he changed, he disrupted and changed the way we do business.

You know, you really hit on a core issue with disruption, which is the word process. So, so, so much of what drives a business is our process, the way we do what we do, the way we deliver, well, the way we develop and deliver our product or service. And oftentimes it takes really changing the process to make meaningful change. I'm getting a huge education about this right now. I'm doing some work and some projects in partnership in conjunction with a fabulous company that's based out of Nashville called the Disruption Lab. And their whole reason for being is to help corporate executives innovate and create exponential growth. And again, it's tough. There's one speaker on disruption, Jim, you'll like this. He said when you go into an organization and try to make, I mean, truly meaningful changes, there are antibodies that all gather and will attack you.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

To save the status quo. But the status quo, the status quo is not the place you want to be. You always want to be moving forward. You have to. It's just a reality.

Yeah. And we knew, you know, as we go along, we need to talk more about the Disruption Lab and some of the events you have coming up because that's what really instigated getting you back on this quickly. It was just fascinating. And I think a lot of people can benefit from these, from these events that you're sharing. But we're back to, you know, at the heart of what we talk about all the time here at The Sensei Leader, which is the mindset of the leaders that are installing or bringing forward this process or this change. And that's one of the greatest challenges we always face, isn't it? That inertia, that protection of the status quo, which can be lethal, right? But how do you get to the core? Obviously, when somebody leads a change, you don't have to change their mind. Their mindset is in the right direction. What's your advice for helping them build a constituency around that change?

I think it's largely, like I think so many things are, it's a culture issue. And you used a great word, which is mindset. And so I think a leader's responsibility is to help create a culture in which people are willing and empowered and authorized to look at new ideas and to think about, you know, how do we do things differently? And there's different ways you can do that. As a leader, you can say, okay, I want everybody, all of us to spend, you know, to devote a certain portion of our brain space and our thinking to how can we disrupt? Not, not how can we serve the customer we have today, but how can we serve the customer that we can and should have 5 years from now? That's one way to do it, and that's hard. Another way to do it that a lot of organizations favor is you literally start a whole new company within your company.

Oh, sure.

You know, it's like a skunkworks. It's like, okay, Jim, Your job, you guys go over there in the corner. Better yet, we're going to get you a separate building and you take your team and you go over there and you do stuff that's not going to make us any money right now. That's a hard thing to do.

That's what— that's what got Steve Jobs fired initially.

Yeah, exactly.

Rehired, by the way.

But it's interesting that though, is it's like the old saying about innovation, that innovative ideas are at first almost universally rejected. Truly innovative ideas are universally rejected as not practical and not useful until they become the way that everybody does it.

Right. I like what you're saying about empowering people and authorizing them. I think that's a key challenge that people have, not willing to give up power. Well, I don't like to say giving up because you really don't. When you share power, you don't give anything up. You expand it. But to share that power and share that authority, too many people rely though on this idea of enthusiasm, especially when it comes to a change. If I come up with a great idea, so I'm all jacked up about it and I'm running around with my hair on— well, I can't have my hair on fire, but you know the metaphor.

I get it.

You could do it.

A little bit.

Right. And you expect that people are going to just jump on the bandwagon, and that doesn't happen. Enthusiasm, passion, that's important, but it's not enough, right? So I'm with you lock, stock, and barrel. The idea of empowering people, give them the power, give them the authority to go out and do that. And we also have to give them the time and the resources, right? Otherwise, it's just a think tank.

Yeah, we do. And it always comes back to, you know me, Jim, I'm like a broken record. Ultimately, and at first sometimes we may not be able to see the value, but ultimately Ultimately, disruption had to be successful. Disruption or innovation or any idea or product or service has to create value. And the greater the perceived value by the market, whatever your market is, then the greater your chance of success. You know, there's a fabulous story. It's Quicken, Quicken Books, that has been so successful. What do they call it? QuickBooks, the one for businesses. They openly say that their competitors have lots more accounting features in their product. As a matter of fact, which we don't understand how to use. Exactly. Yes, you have hit it exactly. What the, what the head of Quicken said once was, we offer half the functionality at twice the price. But that's what people want. It's like, I don't, I don't want to understand accounting, right? I want to do my books and know that money is coming in and out of my company in the easiest, most efficient way possible. And so, yeah, it's not about more, more, more. It's about better. And better often means easier and simpler sometimes. And I'm Exhibit A. Sometimes we overthink things to death when the answer would be, how can I simplify this? That is often— interestingly enough, as exotic and complicated as disruption and intimidating as it sounds to some people, a lot of times it's, wait a minute, we've made this too complicated. As a matter of fact, one thing that Quicken says is they don't do focus groups with their customers saying, what do you want? What they do instead is they watch their customers use the product. And whenever they run across something where there's a speed bump, like this was a little difficult to use, they go back and simplify it and make it easier, which is a great way to continue disruptive innovation.

Yeah, it makes so much sense. And it's really cool that I can really offer an endorsement for you and your thinking, your services, because you helped us a lot with that. And, you know, I didn't realize it. And now that you're talking about disruption, it actually makes a lot of sense. And we're kind of disrupting by getting back to the to some of the basics. And I remember I was getting too entangled with process and technical sides of leadership, and you were one of the folks that was really trying to steer us back to the simplicity of working with the mindset, working with the ideas, which is where our strengths were. But that wasn't— when we started doing that, it wasn't unique, but it was kind of rare in our marketplace. So you might say that it was kind of disruptive, but it's proven itself. But the point to that is You mentioned value, and sometimes, and this is why our story is really important as an example, because it was scary. The value wasn't tested yet, right? So how important is it to have that mindset of risk, and how important is failure in this process, that a leader has to be able to accept some failure and trust that people are going to fail? That cliché, but fail forward, I think is a very useful idea.

I think it is. You know, I had a consultant— this was years ago, Jim, you'll appreciate this— another guy and I were trying to figure out how to partner on some work that we wanted to do together. And we couldn't. We were thinking so much about structure and process. And this friend, who's a great consultant, he said, let me tell you how to figure it out. I said, OK, tell me. He said, get a customer and go do a job.

There you go.

He said, go do a job, and you'll see all sorts of things that you'll do wrong, that you'll do right, but it will get you information.. And you have to be willing to put it out there, learn from that process. But then at some point, at some point, you know, you can't— it's funny, this whole thing, this whole fail fast thing is very useful, but you can't convert that into fail forever.

No, right. Or fail foolishly. Right.

Exactly. And at some point.

Yeah.

Yeah. At some point your product or service has to be market viable. And listen, there are— you talk about running around with your hair on fire. I've had ideas over the years that, number one, I thought was the greatest thing since the wheel.

I can't throw a rock.

Number two, and listen to this because this is really important. Number two, I ask all my colleagues and friends and customers, is this a good idea? I think it's fabulous. What do you think? And they all said, oh, it's beyond fabulous, Joe. Go full speed ahead. And so I did. And when it came time for somebody to give me a credit card or a check, crickets, right?

Yeah.

It turns out that in casual conversation, it was a fabulous idea. But in the marketplace of exchanging money.

Yeah.

It wasn't such a great idea.

No, they get smart in a hurry, don't they? And that leads us to another fundamental that leaders face every day, the importance of soliciting that dissenting voice, right? And it's not always that the idea is really bad either. And people support us emotionally, that's all understood. And I'm not saying that they're always doing it insincerely. There is usually sincerity behind it., but you're right, you have that idea and you're going forward and your friends and your family and supporters are all rallying behind you. When the, you know, when the wheel has to hit the road, then it changes a little bit. So it's important for us to solicit that dissenting voice along the way, right? And I would think it's critically important the longer you're projecting, right, this possible disruption in the future, because there are more variables and less certainty, right?

It really is. And one of the things you're making me think of, one of the things that they do so well at the Disruption Lab, and I'm learning so much and working with them, is— and Jim, I've been doing what I do for a long time. So I look at the world from this dug-in, established perspective, right? This suit of thinking, the way of thinking that I have that fits me very comfortably. And it's, it's kind of like you don't know what you don't know. And it's one thing to say you need to look at the world differently, Joe. If you're ever going to break out and truly accomplish more and be disruptive, you're going to have to look at the world differently. I don't know how to look at the world differently. This is the only way I know how to look at the world. And so one of the things that they do at the Disruption Lab is they help people learn how to look at their world differently. And that's not easy. That's a big shift. Listen, it's a big shift for me. I think we all get stuck in our our own bubbles. And that can be the biggest obstacle to, to really significant innovation and improvement. You know, I'm so used to just tweaking what I already do. Well, I can make this better and I can make that better instead of saying, yeah, but what do I need to do that is truly, maybe even fundamentally different? Although there's the trap of Well, all you have to be is different. No, that's not true.

Right, right.

Yes, it has to be different. But if it's not better, if it doesn't create value beyond what already exists, then who cares if it's different? That's just a novelty act. That's just buzzers and bells.

No, the differences are sometimes hidden or under the, under the surface. Again, you could use Amazon as an example, Walmart as an example, any, any numbers that they didn't fundamentally change our needs and desires at all. They, they answered them in a different way, almost invisibly, right? But what you're talking about, it's really interesting. You know, there's so many lessons that came out of the martial arts life that apply so directly to, to business and life. Of course, that's, that's a good thing. That's because that's how I make a living now. But it's— sure, we had this idea called black belt eyes that was taught to me one time, and it's exactly what you're talking about, that martial arts world can be extremely insular. As can a business world.

Yeah.

And, or a business organization. And sometimes we only see things through the black belt eyes and we have to consciously make an effort to step back and look at it through the eyes or the experience of somebody different, a beginner or somebody who hasn't tried the experience yet. And a lot of that that I've learned is it's about turning off the noise, right? Everything you just talked about, that's why it gave rise to this thought, that that world, especially if you're trying to accelerate this disruption process, can be very, very noisy, can't it? There's a lot of distractions. There's a lot of variables you're dealing with, a lot of information coming at you. So how do you get people to step back and just kind of turn off the noise and have some clarity in their thinking?

Well, in business, I think one of the ways to do it— there's a new theory, and again, I learned this through the Disruption Lab. I've heard of it, but I'm learning more about the practical use of it. There's a theory, a very practical theory that people use. This isn't in business. Business theories can be incredibly useful action tools. They're not something that you just study academically. And there's something called the Jobs Theory. And the idea is you've got to get beyond what product is my customer buying, what product or service does my customer want, and think in terms of, wait a minute, what job are they hiring me to do?

Oh, nice.

What job am I hiring Starbucks to do when I go in and get a grande flat white? And it would be, well, you wanted a cup of coffee. Well, maybe, but the job might be I've got 6 appointments today. I've got a 45-minute window. I want to go someplace and chill and holding a flat white cup of coffee in my hand in a Starbucks accomplishes that job. So if we— it can really shift the way we start to think and it can help clear out some of the noise. Because when you start to think in terms of what job are my customers hiring me to do for them, it can really open up your thinking to some really important fundamental questions. You know, I always go— it's like a magnet to me. I always go back to quality. I've talked with a lot of people and you have too, and we've both done it when they're starting a business and they get frustrated and say, but how can I convince people to hire me? How can I convince people to buy my product? And Steve Martin, the comedian, in his book, his autobiography, Born Standing Up, which I love. He said, boy, you talk about boiling it down. He said, be so good that they can't ignore you. Now, that's, that's hard. That takes a lot of work. That's not a silver bullet. But here's the deal, Jim. There's not any silver bullets. Jerry Seinfeld did a video called The Comedian, and this was after he left his TV show. And he talked this whole video, which I recommend that people watch all the time. The essence of it is it's about the work of sitting down in an empty room and writing great material. And that is just hard as hell. That is hard work. But it's the same in business as it is with these two epic comedians. Be so good that they can't ignore you and put your nose to the grindstone and do the work that will create quality.

You know, you recommended that video to me years ago when we first met, and I think I've watched it probably 5 or 6 times and learned something new every time from it. And you're absolutely right. Another thing that came out of that I remember too is— we're back to this idea that I think works so well with taking, you know, having the courage to disrupt— is that there's a part in the video where they asked him, you know, how do you know if this joke's going to go over? He says no. And that's why, right, even after that great television show and he was he was so successful, he didn't need to go back to comedy clubs.

Right, right.

But that's exactly what he did, didn't he? He went right back to his roots and he goes to these clubs and just does sets to test the material to see if people are going to respond to it. And that takes some courage. That takes some huevos.

Yeah. There's one— you may remember this— there's one scene in a club and he gets stuck doing a bit and he honestly—

he— I know the experience.

Yeah.

Oh my God. Me too. I've done it in front of 5,000 people. But he can't remember how the joke goes. And so he's on stage stage and he's floundering around and a woman in the back, good-naturedly, but she says, "Is this your first time doing comedy? Is this your first time in a club?" And he looks up and he says, "No, this is called writing comedy and sometimes it's really, really ugly." Oh yeah, yeah.

At least he was honest about it.

Well, and the thing is, he really touched on a truth. Yeah, it's hard to do what works. And you know, whether it's comedy or what you do or what I do or making alarm clocks, we tend to think our own jokes are really funny. But it doesn't matter. All that matters is whether the customer thinks the joke is funny. And so it's become a cliché to say, look at things through the customer's eyes. But it's a fundamental shift for me to go from looking at what I do and see what I tend to do is look at what I am already doing through the customer's eyes instead of wiping that slate clean and saying, wait a second, what are the customer's jobs? Forget what I do right now. What are the customer's jobs that they need to get done? Whether it's they're thirsty, they're lonesome, they're bored, they need to train their staff, whatever it is. What are those jobs? And how can I approach that job with new eyes that more reflect the way the customer is truly looking at it, not the way I look at it through the lens in terms of what I'm already doing. And I think that's an example of disruption.

Oh, I think that's critical. And again, everything you're saying points back to that value proposition. And when you talked about the Jobs Theory, right, it helps you focus instead of on me and what I'm doing, which can happen, especially when you're working really hard and you're refocusing on the needs. And you know, there's something else that I kind of learned to do it by accident. I have to be honest about this. You know me, and I'm not the kind of person that likes to solicit positive feedback. I'm just, you know, that's an issue that I'll be dealing with the rest of my life in therapy or something, right? But it has to do with, and I think many, many people like this. I've run into many leaders who are like this. We want to hear the criticism, and there's a lot of benefit in that. But somehow I also learned to ask, you know, what is it? And I asked this question specifically to people who who I can spend some time with after a presentation. What is it that you like about what I'm doing? What am I doing for you? And that gives you— oftentimes it's not what I thought it was.

Exactly.

Right? And that's where you can isolate value.

Well, listen, what you just touched on was this idea we talk about at the Disruption Lab. They tell you something. What you did for them wasn't what you thought thought you were doing for them. And that goes back to the idea of you were doing a job for them that you hadn't even thought of.

Right.

And yeah, it's so—

and it was much more important than I thought it was. Right. I thought something else would be important. And they said, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that gets crazy.

Juicy stuff. Hey, let me tell you, I've been doing research on truly remarkable innovation improvement, and I was reading about disruptive organizations, and I ran across Southern New New Hampshire University. They get— oh man, they're, they're a big deal. They're online. And this is no cheesy, just take your money, give you a degree. This is a legit, well-represented, possibly the best respected online college degree in the country. And they were looking at the admissions process and the president of the university, a guy named Paul LeBlanc, he said, we looked at our admissions process and his quote was, it looked like a schematic from a nuclear submarine. And so listen, they went from somebody goes online and says, I'm interested in financial aid, for example.

Yeah.

And they would get a boilerplate generic email back within 24 hours that said, we got your request, we'll send you something soon. 2 or 3 weeks later, they get a packet in the mail. Now what happens is If you go online and say, I need financial aid, you get a phone call from a college counselor within 10 minutes. And they spend typically up to an hour to an hour and a half because they talk about financial aid, but they also start talking about the whole college experience and what they're about. And what they've said is— and it's obvious, I mean, you can see it coming a mile away. Because they have meaningful engagement with that potential student, that potential customer, that their conversion rate, of course, has skyrocketed. But what they did was they disrupted the admissions process and it gave them— and but to do that, they had to change the culture and they had to create greater value through that process. And for me, every time I read or hear a story like that, and at the Disruption Lab, I think a big part of what we do is, is you present these stories, but then the next step is, okay, what's our version of that? What would that look like in our world? Because we don't do anything like that. But the principle can be imminently transferable. Well, it's like transferring the principles of martial arts to the principles of business leadership. It's exactly what you do, and it's incredibly effective.

And incredibly simple. You know, that's the thing. We don't have to build big bridges across these, right? There's no great divide. And what you just said, as you were telling that story, all I could think of is what a tremendously powerful disruption by doing what? By getting back to a basic form of human communication, which is you talking to me instead of me having to sift through a packet of 50 pages of application and back and forth in the mail for 7 or 8 weeks, 'cause yeah, you're right, that's—

I mean, this example of Southern New Hampshire University has been written up in Clayton Christensen's latest book. I mean, he's the guru. He's the Jedi Master of disruption. And when you boil it down, Jim, so, okay, what did SNHU do that was so radical? They started picking up the phone and making a call.

They started being human again.

Yeah. Which it's almost, it's almost so retro it makes your head spin.

You know, I want to share another one with you quick and look at this company, Sweetwater Music. I buy a lot of stuff from Sweetwater. And you know, there's this big push, buy local, buy local, and I do try to. We've got some good music stores around here, but I'll tell you what, Sweetwater did the same thing. Here's, here's their disruption, you know, in this world of online ordering. And Amazon does this very well too, but Sweetwater I think goes even one step further, and it's important. It doesn't matter if I buy a $2,000 mixing board or I buy a $6 cable, every time that order is placed, there is an automatic process. I get a confirmation email. Yeah, but within that day There's a salesperson calling me not to add to the order, not to upsell, not to upsell, no, just to check, say, hey, I got your order, it's going to be on its way to you this afternoon, probably go out at 4 o'clock. Is there anything else I can do for you? If you have any questions, you know, or you need some help using the equipment, just give us a call. And that human touch means so, so much.

Yeah, it really does. You know, this whole focus on the customer, that's one thing that it's not only remained constant, I think I think it's more important than it's ever been. And also this idea, I'll come back to it again. The market doesn't reward anybody for making anything more complicated, right? It just doesn't happen. And so we have to, we have to sometimes in disruption, we have to switch gears because we used to think, well, better means more. And you need to flip that.

Only in government.

There you go. We got to start flipping that over and say, no, wait a minute. What can I do? This— hey, I'm very excited. Now, you know, you know about— we're going to be— oh my gosh, I'm going to be swimming up to the last tip of the top of my head in learning about disruption and innovation. We're going in October to New York and spend a full day and then to Barcelona, which I have learned— who knew? It looks like everybody except me. Barcelona is kind of the center of the disruptive universe in business. And we're going to take about 20 executives and business people and really anybody on a trip to visit— golly, it's 25 or 30 companies, one day in New York and then 5 days in Barcelona. And we're just going to be immersed in— I mean, we're going to actually be meeting with people in those companies and they're going to say, here's what we're doing in healthcare. At a winery, at a pure tech company, at a bar restaurant where when you walk in, they print your utensils on a 3D printer and then, by golly, they print your food on a 3D printer.

Kid me. Oh, my God.

Well, you know, I mean, I'm from the South. I'm looking for biscuits, but—

but here's fruity. So that's going to be— it's going to be interesting to hear your review about that.

Well, here's what's great for me. Is I want to see what all these companies are doing that, number one, I can use to teach my clients, right? And number two, that I can say, all right, what is my little tiny one-person company? What is my version of what they're doing? What can I do that is a great practical value-creating impact on me? But it is going to be one bang-up trip. You ought to go, Jim. You and Alex need to pack up and go.

There you go.

Come on, buddy.

Sounds like fun. Well, let's check the dates.

October 9th. No, what is it?

What is it?

Yes. Or no, 13th through the 20th. October 13th. Hey, listen, seriously, if anybody wants to know about it, just you can email me from my website or joecalloway.com. I'd love to tell you all about it. It's fascinating.

There you go, because I was just going to ask you, I know we have to wrap things up, and this is a topic that we're going to have to revisit again in some future episodes, and I imagine a book coming out of it. And I'm not going to end this show without saying, you know, what's available right now. Keep It Simple is one of the most beautiful books that I've ever read. It holds a place of honor in my library here.

Thank you.

And I'm recommending it to you. I love all your books, but that one especially went all the way in. That's when I, I knew you were a black belt of some sort before, but that one, you, you really nailed it with that, right? And so people, people are listening, you have to, you have to have that book on you. And you know what I say on the shelf? Isn't that an awful thing to say? Make sure you read the damn thing, right? It's right. Too many people buy a book and they never read it. Cover it again multiple times.

Number of of unread books could on everybody's shelves, you know. And I hate to say I've got some unread ones on my shelf, but they could, they could fill a black hole in the universe.

Oh man, someone just the other day asked me, said, should I buy your book? And I said, only if you're going to read it. If not, don't waste your freaking money.

Here's the deal with Keep It Simple. They can read it in about 20 minutes. So come on.

Yeah. The first time. The first.

Yeah, the first time.

The second time through with the highlighter and the tabs takes a little longer. I can tell you from experience.

Listen, Amazon will fix them up with my book and anything else in the universe that they might want to buy.

There you go. Very good. Hey, Joe, thanks again for being with us as always. And for people listening to Walking the Walk, if you haven't heard us before, as I said at the beginning of the program, Joe's not only a dear friend, but One of my most trusted mentors, and it's a pleasure to share him with you. And we're going to do this on a very regular basis as long as he's willing.

Listen, anytime. I'll meet you here every day.

You—

I learn so much every time I talk to you. You're a good friend. And I tell you what, you've got one of the, one of the best podcasts out there, one of the best shows out there. You really do this well. And I appreciate from this side of the microphones I really appreciate it.

Well, I appreciate you saying that. We're trying to keep it simple, just like you're teaching, right?

There you go.

All right, Joe, thank you so much, and we'll talk again soon.

Take care, my friend.

Thanks for listening to Walking the Walk. Please share this episode. We encourage you to download and share the program with both experienced and aspiring leaders in your network. We also encourage you to suggest guests for for future episodes. Complete information at walkingthewalkpodcast.com. Jim Bouchard is in high demand presenting keynotes and workshops for conference, corporate, and community audiences all over the world. To book Jim for your next event, meeting, or retreat, visit thatblackbeltguy.com or call Alexandra Armstrong at 207-751-4317.