Being a Visionary - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode # 014

Growing a business is hard, but it does not have to be. Once a week, we take a break from the hustle and bustle in business to talk about innovations and what's new in the C-suite. This is the Fractional C-Suite Retreat, and I'm Joseph Frost. Pull up a seat at the fire, grab a drink, smoke a cigar, and just join me as we relax, learn, and get inspired. This retreat is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow with better marketing strategy. I'm excited for today's guest. She is a startup expert, has over 30 years in the industry, is inventor of the Visnostics and the RTH formula, which I'm excited to learn more about, is speaker, VP of sales, and best-selling author, inventor of Visnostics at DynaExec LLC. Welcome, Kimberly Slavik. How are you?

I'm great. How are you, Joseph?

Oh, I am terrific. I'm so glad to have you on the show.

It's so good to be here. I appreciate your time.

I know we talked about some different things, a lot of different things. I'm excited to get into it today. But the first question I want to start with, it's the one I start all the shows with, is just a simple kind of open-ended question around what are some of the opportunities that you see at the C-suite level that maybe some C-suite members don't see themselves?

Great. I love that question. So first of all, your viewers are right now trying to figure out why is this podcast better than all the others that are out there? Is this a good investment of my time? So I want, I want to reassure them that by the time this podcast is over, they will have some secrets on how they can increase the revenue immediately. So it is absolutely going to be worth their time. And I came up with 4 different topics that we could talk— I don't know if we have time in this one podcast, you may have to do another one. But, you know, talking a little bit about what's going on with gig economics and the World Economic Forum, because it dramatically impacts the C-suite of offerings. And then, you know, talking about the power of bringing sales and marketing together instead of treating them as two separate entities, I'm telling you, it will impact a culture within a company when those two teams are working as one and are in sync. And then, you know, from an outsider's perspective, you know, bringing a third party into your team is one of the most powerful things you can do. And I'd like to talk more about why that's, you know, why that is the case and the economic impact it can immediately have on your, on your revenue stream. And then one of my favorite topics on bringing a third party or C-level in for some coaching is the impact they can have on your win rate with our RP, RFPs, RFIs, whatever you want to call them, RFQs, increasing the win rate to 80% can increase your revenue immediately. And then I know, no matter how far we get today, I want to conclude if possible, to talk exactly about what you were mentioning about the VizNostic RTH formula, because that, that one little nugget should help. I mean, I don't care if you're a salesperson or C-level on this podcast, you should dramatically increase your income by understanding that formula.

Awesome. Well, shoot, let's— I think we can get all those things in, but at least to some level. Then we may come back and explore more later. Let's start with the gig economics. I think that's a very interesting topic. We're hearing about the great resignation and all the different things going on. The gig economy has been around for a while, mostly on the freelance kind of lower level, but now it's, now it's approaching the C-suite. So what are, what are some of your thoughts on that?

Well, in 2007, I was part of the transformation team working directly with Mark Hurd, who was the CEO of HP at the time, and he had a summit where he called all of his, his reports into a meeting to talk not about corporate America, but about corporate global. And that was a new term for most of us at the time, 2007. And he told us then that the objective from a global perspective was to reduce the number of employees and to increase the number of contractors. And he gave us all the business reasons for it. You know, lawsuits, less federal regulation, the money that's saved on the benefits, not having to lay off people when the economy slows because you only contract people as they're needed. And so, I mean, it made total business sense. And he talked about how much money HP itself would make by having more contractors. And we left that meeting with the marching orders. I ran a $900 million P&L. For a specific division of the business. And at that time, I had 55% of our sales were from our direct sales force. That meant 45% was the VARs, the value-added resellers. And he challenged us to change those, to swap those numbers in the next quarter, to go from 45 to 55 with our contract laborers and then reduce our direct sales team to 45% of the revenues. And we did hit those objectives, but I mean, that was back in 2007.

Now, how did you, how did you do that in one quarter?

Because we had, well, you know, there's a lot of federal regulations about collusion. And when we would have leads come in, we were, we were often, you know, there's channel conflict that occurs. And all of that channel conflict is just natural, organic stuff that happens in a, in a model that you have direct and indirect sales force. So we just modified some of our decision-making where those deals went more to the indirect, but we compensated our direct team as well. So it was a win-win for everyone. So it was a pretty easy thing to do. It was more changing the mindset on our priorities within our team without alienating people and, you know, causing conflict.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's fascinating. So that was back in 2007. Now here we are 2022. And those still sound like the words, fresh words that people are starting to say 15 years later, for the first time in some organizations, and he was thinking about it way back then.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, in today's world, there's so much disinformation, there's so many conspiracies out there. And I mean, even I've been sucked into them. But they're the one place you can go to see the most powerful people on the planet talking, the most influential people on the global economy is at the World Economic Forum, which was happening in January in Davos, Switzerland. This year it's been postponed till the summer, they said, because of, you know, the COVID And last year they did everything remote, but it was live streamed on YouTube. And what's amazing is you can go back and see the replays where Klaus Schwab, who's the president and the founder of the World Economic Forum, WEF, you you know, he's interviewing the most powerful people, the president of China, the president of France, and they talk about what the plan is from a global perspective. And one of the things, you know, Klaus Schwab actually wrote a book, it's called COVID-19: The Great Reset. It just came out, you know, this last year. And in Chapter 2, Section 1.3, he has a whole section on the gig economics. And how government's going to get more involved with gig economics because it's going to increase. And, you know, for him, the book's not very big, it's real small, but for him to even have a whole section on it speaks volumes of the direction that companies are going to be going with contract labor. So I think the C-suite, the C-level fractional leadership, is going to explode, and it's an exciting time to already have that experience under your belt to be able to go out there and execute, because I think demand's going to rise significantly.

Yeah, and on that subject, you had a pretty interesting pathway to become a fractional revenue sales and marketing leader. Can you share that a little bit? I think that was interesting, at least to me.

Yeah, it was a painful learning experience. One of my books is called Memoirs of an Angry Sales Pro: Sales Leadership Must Change. And the average sales leader a few years ago lasted 18 months. And today it's less than a year. And companies are intentionally hiring people to be a sales leader, and sales leaders are getting the poop running down the hill, the poop running up the hill, and they're coming sideways at you too. And so they're basically a punching bag and the, the person that's going to be blamed for everything. And I was hired by a company with, I mean, unbelievable enticements— all these stocks, unbelievable benefits. I mean, the best insurance you could possibly have. And I mean, it would double my salary, vacate unlimited vacation. I mean, it was a sweet package, and I'd be crazy not to take it. And they were well-funded. It was a startup. So of course, I left a, you know, Fortune 50 company and a very stable, wonderful position for this. And I became friends with one of the executives there that ended up telling me that you know, don't tell anyone I told you, but they never intended on keeping you. They just didn't want to pay for a fractional leader in the sales and marketing. They wanted to just suck your brain and all your knowledge in your corporate America because this was a startup. And you know, how could they leverage it? And they're going to have you doing a lot of dirty work, a lot. When I say dirty work, I mean like setting up Salesforce and, and doing some training and just all kinds of stuff. I mean, I was working more hours than I've ever worked in my life. And but he said they weren't going to keep me after 3 months, they were going to, you know, they would have everything set up and they were going to just go ahead and let me go. And so I couldn't believe what they just did to my career. I couldn't believe that I got sucked into it. And I thought, well, it was just a bad company. But it happened to me again. It happened to me a second time where a company hired me, great and great package again, and they never had any intention on keeping me. So I said, you know, instead of letting these people run my resume, I'm going to just put them under DynaExec and start my own company as a fractional employee. And after that, I started getting like 1-year contracts. It was almost like a real job. But yeah, that's how I got into this to begin with. And it's actually wonderful. I mean, I, when I was at HP, and I'm sorry for any HP people if this offends you, but it's really a true story. There were so many lifetimers there. And HP was very proud of the fact that they had very little turnover. But the problem is, if you did want to leave, you had a hard time leaving because there wasn't— you didn't have a vast amount of experience. You knew HP and that's all you knew. And the reason that that's really important, right out of college, I went to work at General Dynamics in the marketing, the global marketing department. And I met this really young guy, he was like 35 years old and a VP. And all the other VPs were like, I don't know, to me at the time, I was in my 20s, They were— look like they were 100 years old. They looked like they should be retired. And he told me, he went to an Ivy League school. When they hired him, they gave him this paper that said, here's your track, in 20 years you'll be a VP. And he said, how do you know? You don't know me. I'm an overachiever. I'm going to be there way before. They're like, no, no, no, that's not how we work. Here's, here's the process and what you're going to learn, and 20 years you'll be a VP. That's the way we do things. So he sucked as much information as he could, and he left. He became my mentor, by the way. That's how I know these insider things. So he left and went to a competitor, stayed there a year, went to another competitor, stayed there a year, went to another competitor, stayed there a year. So now he had 3 defense contractor experience, and General Dynamics hired him back as a VP because now he had value, you know, that diversity. And that in itself is why I think fractional leadership cannot be beat. You know, my whole career was focused in on technology, and I got pigeonholed. The people that wanted to hire me were other technology companies, but now I'm doing all kinds— fashion, I've done artists, I've helped, um, food service is a huge business for me. All these different, different industries that would have never hired me because I didn't have their industry knowledge. And, you know, I've sucked it up like a sponge, and I feel like I'm more valuable today than I've ever been. Not just because of the diverse companies I worked with, but the diverse industries I've worked with.

Yeah, I— we see that all the time. We do have a CMO, by the way, who worked at HP for a while many, many years ago, but I'm sure he will not be offended by your story because he went out on his own and we found him years later. But yeah, that— the, the ability to work with multiple clients in different industries and apply very fundamental strategies, but then have the ability to be custom and unique and, and different and take from one client something that worked to another, with them outside one industry to another. You can't teach that. People just actually have to have those experiences to be effective and have that value that they can bring. And fractional is one of the fastest ways to get that value, or you could go work for 3 companies in 3 years and get it that way as well.

Yep, exactly.

Well, yeah, I think the gig economy has hit the C-suite hard, and the Great Resignation is really the great opportunity. I think it's the biggest opportunity that organizations have today is taking advantage of that fractional leader, whether it be complementing an existing leader or taking the hat off one leader and putting it on another, because before they may not have had the desire to spend to hire full-time for that position. Now you can, you can spend a fraction of it and get that access to that leadership that will allow you to continue to grow and scale. So the other topic you had here, I think, is near and dear to my heart as a fractional CMO. We have a core value at your CMO that is marketing drives sales. And we really feel that the purpose of marketing is to drive sales. And so all of our engagements, or many of our engagements, are start with how do we align the two? Because oftentimes, as you mentioned, they are not aligned initially. So talk a little about your efforts and your, you know, some of the opportunities that you see C-suites may be missing out on by not having alignment of their sales and marketing.

Oh, it's huge. And it's normal. It's, it's more normal than it's not. I would say 90% of the companies I worked for, sales and marketing had some kind of a conflict going on. Or a disconnect, if not a conflict, a disconnect. So when I would go as a salesperson and I got all my marketing training, all my sales training, I would sift through things and immediately I started calling clients. And, and I put the marketing stuff aside and I would ask clients, you know, what, how is your life improved? Tell me stories of how your life has improved with, with what this company has done for you. And I mean, the stories that I was told was mind-blowing. It was nothing like I was trained on how to sell. And one story in particular, I really want to share this because it's a powerful story. And it— you are who you are because of where you were when. This one really impacted me personally and professionally. Um, I'll even tell you the name of the company since it doesn't exist anymore. Here in Dallas, uh, there is a huge company called EDS, or there was. HP bottom. And EDS was— I was with a very small startup, and we had seeded the account with some software. It was $150,000 worth of software, which was nothing. And but the, the last thing you want when you're selling corporate software, enterprise software, is that it becomes shelfware. And so I really put a strong focus on let's get some training. You know, we were taught that this was disaster recovery software. That's what our training was. And so we were in this big auditorium. I mean, there was in the back of the, in the back of the building or the, the auditorium I was teaching in, there were all these monitors. There was Singapore and, and Europe and, you know, all, all over the world was involved in this. And each one of the attendees in the class had a monitor and they were accessing the software live. And this lady starts flipping out in the middle of class going, you're teaching this wrong. This is not disaster recovery software. This is application management software. And I mean, it went right over my head. It's probably going over everyone's head here listening to the podcast. The point was she saw a different way to use the software than we did, and they were about to lose a $2 billion government contract because this particular application kept crashing and nobody knew why. But our software, because it was associating all the hidden files with applications that you could restore it in a disaster. It was identifying this file that their virus software was identifying as, you know, unknown, so it was dangerous, that was destroying it, was destroying these hidden files which brought down the application. So now that my software was an application management tool, I went from $150,000 that week to $14 million worth of software sold.

Holy cow.

Yeah, it was a huge impact. I mean, my quota was like $2 million, so it blew away my number for the whole year just by understanding how clients could benefit from what I was selling. And, and that's a big, that's a big mistake I see companies make all the time, is they create something or invent something because this is the way they think it's going to be used, but the clients are really who's going to teach you how to sell it. Now here's what— here's back to your original question: why does that have anything to do with sales and marketing? Sales sees this. I went back to our company and told marketing, we've got to remarket this. And they were like, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. That's not what this was intended. I couldn't believe that. And even our C level people didn't want to, didn't want to muddy the water. I mean it. I still to this day am perplexed by that. But in my workshops, the one thing that we do is we get, we get customers on the phone, you know, I've got sales and marketing in the room together, and we have this discussion with customers to find out how their life has improved. And it's shocking how little sales has actually gone back and asked the clients after the sale, right? Because they're off to the next deal, and, and compensation drives behavior, so they have to get on to the next sale. Marketing doesn't necessarily talk to clients because that's out of their realm. And so these great nuggets and great stories are often unknown.

And you do that in workshops with your clients?

Absolutely.

Yeah, that's interesting. Like, how does that work? Because, well, the reason I asked is we, we do a lot of buyer interviews for our clients. So we'll— the CMLs will go in and interview a handful of clients. And with those interviews, what we're really trying to understand is the trigger points and the, the journey and the decision criteria. You're looking for something different, which is the, um, how their life has changed, which is also really valuable. I'm just curious, how do you, how do you logistically run those, those workshops?

Well, everything about what I do is based on neuroscience and how your brain chemistry works. So for example, people hate questions. So if we were to send a survey out to clients and say, hey, fill this out, this survey, they're gonna more likely than not blow it off. But if you call them and you don't ask a question, but you say, tell me how your life has improved, you're now triggering a positive visualization of how their life is, and their brain gets flooded with positive chemistry, and they can't help themselves. They will start telling you all kinds of stories about how their life— and they, and they, they don't even know it because it's like Pavlov's dog. You know, when he rang the bell and gave the dog meat, the dog would salivate. They'll start relating you as, oh my gosh, I felt so good when I talked to them. Next time you try and call them, they're going to take your call. They don't know why, they just know they like talking to you. So getting people to think positive— now, it's what— it's not what you say, it's how you say it. If I've seen people blow it by saying one word wrong, they'll call and say, tell me your experience after you've been with our company. Well, that could be a negative visualization you triggered. So you want to guide the thought process to something positive by saying that word specifically. Tell us how your life has improved. So you're forcing a positive visualization. So there is an art to these interviews, and that's one of the things that I teach people, sales and marketing. And then they practice and rehearse this stuff together, and they start doing it themselves in the workshop, and they see for themselves and build their own, their own testimony on how powerful it is And customers love it, sales and marketing love it, and then they end up, you know, who gets to call the client? Because everyone, like, you know, everyone likes the experience.

Do you make those calls during the workshop, or is it done afterwards, like, as homework? Oh, you do?

No, I do. And that's the power of it, is when people see that's impromptu, it hasn't been rehearsed, it's not canned, and it works every single time. It's crazy.

Yeah. Is there a certain number of calls that you think is necessary for a company gain insights that are meaningful?

I think it's— I think that answer varies based on industry. So can you give me a specific example?

I know that— well, so the reason I ask is with the buyer's interview process, and it's Adele Rivera came up with this, her book Buyer Personas, and it's a great book and a simple framework for doing these buyer interviews. And her research and practice has shown that you just need 5 to 10 conversations with buyers to glean some real meaningful insights. It's not that you need— you don't need to do 100 of these. You need to do 5 to 10 with people that represent your target audience. And it's a simple conversation, very similar probably to what you're suggesting, but it's a limited number of responses. And I found that to be very— that's a bite-sized nugget for some organization to undertake versus Well, you have to have focus groups. We need to do 10 of them around the country and 10 in a room and 20, and that's, that's an enormous undertaking. So with your experience, I was just curious if there was a, you know, a range of responses that you need to find some meaningful outcome.

I love this question. In my very first sales training I ever had in my entire career was by a guy named Jim Cecil, and it was called How to Have a Love Affair with your customer. And he talked about this ladder of relationship ladder, and he said you have to have 5 contacts with somebody to have a, a relationship. But he said when you look at a funnel and you're trying to fill up all the suspects and turn the suspects into prospects and then deals, who has time to have those kind of conversations, right? So the objective is how do you get up the ladder as fast as you can with as least number of contacts as possible. And the way that you do that is by leveraging existing relationships, someone that's already up at the ladder, that already has credibility. It might be another salesperson that sold millions and millions of dollars, and they just, you know, bring you to an introductory lunch. All of a sudden you have credibility because this person's introducing you. Or it's something like in these workshops, the person that is the account rep or the person that has the best relationship with the client is the one that actually makes the call and introduces me to that client. And that gives me instant, you know, bonding with the, with the client, and they're more receptive than if I just cold-called them and they don't know who I am or what's going on and what's my agenda, right?

Right.

So that's, that's this one of the secrets that I use in the workshops is leveraging other relationships to minimize the contacts you have to have in order to establish your own relationship with your contact.

Yeah, and then I guess how many of those, once the relationship's been established, how many of those conversations usually does it take before you bring some meaningful insights back to marketing, back to the team, and say, oh, based on these number of conversations, we really should be doing this this way, or we really should be thinking about this a different way? How— what's the— is there a magic number? Is there a range that you found to be Norm. The norm, really. Just one sometimes is enough.

That's the goal, is one.

Wow.

If it's done correctly— it's not what you say, it's how you say it— if you trigger the right brain chemistry, if you have the right person do the introductions with the right relationship, it's incredible what information you will get out of that person. That's why I like doing them live in the workshop to demonstrate how effective it is.

That's great. So it's a really, uh, so it's a really meaningful exercise to get people wrapping around how to do this. Uh, that's great. I mean, I want to come to one of your workshops, so let me know when your next one is.

I'd love that. I'd love that.

Be terrific. Um, so talk a little bit about outsiders and how we mentioned a little bit before how those diverse backgrounds of an outsider can come in and and make a big impact, but also diverse or outsiders can come in and challenge ways of thinking, how we've done it, introduce new ideas and workshops and concepts. And as fractional professionals, we are by definition an outsider. What's your take on that? How do you ease a C-suite's fear of really getting an outsider inside their business?

That is such a good question. It's using some of the techniques that I already talked about. And in having them describe what— first you start off with, describe to me what's going well. So you're getting the positive brain chemistry going. So the follow-up question to that would not be, so now tell me what's broken, because now you're creating negative and cortisol release by bringing up something negative. So you reword that to say, now tell me things that you envision could be better. And it keeps the positive brain chemistry going. So then they'll start fantasizing about nirvana, you know, what's going to be their perfect world, and they'll start describing it to you. And then you say, if we made that the objectives in the workshop, we can do this for you. And, and they're very receptive to that. Why would they not do that? But back to your original thing about the exterior, the one thing that is really fascinating to me is being an outsider, you have so much more credibility than if you're one of them. When I was— I'm gonna just, you know, not just— I'm not just picking on one company. I've been with several Fortune 50 companies. So one of the Fortune 50 companies I was with, I, you know, I had an executive level position, and I was presenting all of these great things that they could do to make the business more effective, to generate sales to speed up the lead process. You know, our— the lead cycle was taking a year before they got a lead to the sales force. All of these things that I had a plan on how we could do it, and they're like, yeah, whatever, you know, whatever. Now they're paying me $15,000 a day to do exactly what I was doing back then for a lot less money. And it's because, you know, being an outsider, you're not a political threat. You're not a, a person that has an agenda. You know, I've been in meetings where we uncovered some really bad things the CEO would have wanted to know about, and the consensus was, we'll all get fired, you know, if he finds out. So, you know, let's not, let's not repeat this to anybody. And that's not the way a company is going to grow or thrive. But when you're an employee, your number one priority is to get promoted and to keep your job. And those two things causes a lot of politics. Whereas an outsider, we don't have anything to lose. We're going to be honest with you. We're going to tell you exactly what's going on because we want to help you be better and fix it. That's powerful and it's needed.

Yeah, I hear nothing to lose. I hear that many times, that one of the values of bringing in a fractional professional on your team is that they have other clients. They're not all their eggs are in your basket and therefore they're gonna be more straight with you. They're gonna give you real talk and real feedback. And if you don't like it, you know, that's okay. They've got another client they can go and build around, but it takes a special CEO or special owner to want that kind of feedback and to be able to trust that it's, still the right thing to do. There's a lot of second-guessing, not as much, but I see it still today where we are brought in on an engagement, our CMOs are accepted into the team, but still the owner or the CEO is not giving the full reins and they're less effective that way. They could be a lot more effective if they just truly trusted and let go.

Well, I've my experience is that C-levels really care about the ROI. So when I tell them stories where people have paid $15,000 a day for me for 2 days, $30,000, and they've won $187 million contract they didn't think they were going to win, that's a pretty huge ROI. You usually get people's attention when you can talk about results. And, you know, that's the RTH formula, is not talking about who I am or what my education or my background is, but because really nobody cares until you start telling them the value that you can bring and how you're going to make their life better. Then all of a sudden, they're curious and they want to know your background and your resume.

Sounds like we both have dogs going on.

No, I can't believe that just happened.

So tell me about the RTH formula. That's a very interesting—

those are your dogs, right?

Yeah, mine's going now. I just have one, but Now, I don't know if it was another one, but I'll put it on mute while you talk about the RTH formula.

Okay. So I— now it's towards the end, so I'll go ahead and say this. I've sold over $2 billion of complex IT stuff, which I knew nothing about. I'm not technical, even though that's what my career has been about. But what I did do was I've really learned to establish relationships, true relationships with my clients, and they taught me the real stuff that mattered, not the bits and bytes and all the components and the, you know, technical drawings that they try and shove down your throat, but the real outcomes. Like, you had a, you had a podcast really called Results Versus Outcomes. A lady named Deborah— I don't know how to say her last name— Corvella. Yeah, yeah, it was a really good podcast. So anyone that hasn't heard that, they should go back and listen to it. Results Versus Outcomes. In my, my workshop, we talk about results and then we deal— we dive down. Is that the real result? Is that the real result? And we keep going down until we do what she said, which is come up with the real outcomes. So in, in my career, all I knew is that my company would give me a deck and they talked about their logos and their stock price and their year-over-year growth and their board of directors And I watched people literally fall asleep during my presentations. And it didn't take me long to realize, you know, as a good corporate citizen, I had to have those slides, but I moved them to the back. And I would start off right out of the gate talking about what they cared about. Like, I would go around the room during introductions and say, tell me the one thing that you could get out of today. Again, not a question, a statement. Tell me what you can get out of today that would make this a valuable investment of your time. And so I would, on a whiteboard, write down all of these responses so I could make sure I knew what they needed to hear. And that's what we would focus on. No one ever said, I need to see the architectural drawing of your solution. Nobody ever did that. They really wanted to hear success stories and results and, you know, how is their life going to be better? So I would create my own marketing material based on the feedback that I got and what my clients wanted, or I would rearrange my slides. And typically a deck would have maybe one slide that had the data the clients really wanted, and it was either buried or at the very end, and I moved all of that to the front. So once I got their attention and they knew this was about them and not about me, the whole world changed. The whole dynamic in the meeting changed. It became very interactive. And I didn't know it was brain chemistry at the time. It wasn't until I started working with a lot of neuroscientists that I understood there is science behind this. And so I decided— I actually took a sabbatical. I was working with a company, an oil company, and leading their sales organization. I just decided to resign. I went to our lake house, isolated myself, and I put out a book. I created a tool that I wanted as a sales leader that would help me with the bottom 80% of the people, not the top 10% or top 20%. Those people are going to be good no matter what. It's the bottom 80%. There's really not a lot of tools there to help. And I made it fun and cartoons and, you know, made it for them, not their boss, which is what most books are about for sales. And as I was going through this analysis, I started realizing there is a formula for what I was doing with those moving those decks around. People don't care about your toolbox. They don't care about how you do anything. They want to know what is— how their life is going to be better with you in it and in what timeline they can expect to see those outcomes or results. So if I said I can give you a million, I can save you $1 million if you would just bring me in for 2 days, I can guarantee an additional million dollars in revenue. Well, people want to know, well, wait a minute, is that over 10 years or is that like, you know, you even asked earlier about a timeline, right? How quickly are you going to see these results? So the result first and then the timeline they're going to get the result and then all of the toolbox on the how you're going to do it. Goes towards the end of it. Simon Sinek wrote a book and it's called, you know, Start with Why. And that's really basically what RTH is, is you're starting with why. Why do they care? They care about the result and how quickly they're going to get the result. That toolbox is the how, and way too many people talk about the how at the beginning of the presentation instead of developing curiosity where people actually retain it by putting it at the end. So nobody remembers letters, so RTH is never going to be remembered So I want everyone to close their eyes. Anyone listening to this right now, close your eyes, and I want you to envision a giant green dollar sign and then a red clock and a toolbox. The giant green dollar sign represents results. The clock is the timeline in which they're going to get the results, and the toolbox is how you're going to do it.

What color was it? I've got very little focus, so what color was the toolbox?

Whatever color you want it to be. Mine's red.

Yes, so green dollars, uh, red clock, and what color toolbox?

Whatever color you want it to be.

I want a yellow toolbox.

You can have a yellow toolbox then.

Perfect.

But you will always remember the RTH formula now if you can remember those three, because we're visual people. We translate words into visuals. So letters are translated into words that are translated in it. So why not just do that translation for your audience?

Yeah. So how do people apply this then? Is it in presentations, obviously, as you shared. Are there other ways that organizations, C-suite members, can apply the RTH formula to their world?

We didn't even rehearse this, and you're doing so good asking that question. My favorite thing, and I do this in the workshops, is I tell people, bring me your prospecting letters, bring me your whatever it is that you try and open doors with, your scripts, whatever it is. I don't care what it is, just bring it. And then I have people search Circle all of the references to themselves. My name is, my company does, I would like to. Nobody cares. So you will be shocked at how much time you talk about yourself. And then go with a green highlighter and highlight references to them, whether it's their name or you or whatever, about what they're going to get. And then really highlight results. And you will be shocked where the results are. They're either at the bottom in the middle, or not even there. And today, especially if you're doing any kind of correspondence, your subject line's never been more important. And I just cannot believe how terrible— 90% of the emails I get, you know, because I've got CEO on my title, CEO of DynaExec, I get the worst correspondence. 90% are just trash. And I have over 100,000 unread emails because I have like, I don't know, 15 different email accounts. That I, I have to manage. So if they start out with, my name is, I work for, my company does, I would like to, I don't even read beyond that because why do I care? I didn't ask for them to waste my time deleting that email. I'm angry, I'm annoyed, it's releasing the wrong chemistry. But if you say, companies like you will save $1 million over the next quarter, then people want to keep reading. What, who is this person? What are they doing? How are they going to do this? And very few people do that.

Yeah, now I'm going to have to go back and reread all of our sequencing emails and do that exercise. In fact, actually, I will ask my team to do that exercise because that would be really beneficial for them to, to walk through that and see how many times. Hopefully, hopefully we're, you know, better than average, but I wouldn't be surprised if, if the results are shocking even to us.

It really is shocking, but we're wired to talk about ourselves. And I have to pick on the Gen Zs and the millennials. These guys grew up with social media. This is a narcissistic world today. Oh yeah, they're the ones that their eyes get open the biggest because they're stunned at how they're communicating. They don't even realize they're doing it, but they're also the easiest to change and the most eager to change, which is awesome.

Yeah. Wow, you, you shared a lot there. I think we could come back, uh, over and over again and hit on many of these topics. Even deeper. But I want to spend some time talking about you and what you like to do outside of work. What are some of the— your own personal passions or joys that you do outside of work?

Well, I never thought I would be a writer. But putting those thoughts and getting organized, organizing my thoughts was surprisingly therapeutic. And I never wrote a book, never wasn't even on my radar until 2019. And I've written 7 books since then. And I really enjoy it. I feel like it's a legacy that when I die, I can still be improving people's lives. So that's a huge turn-on to me to think that way. As far as my husband and I are concerned, we're empty nesters. And we just sold our— you know, you spend your whole life getting cars and RVs and big stuff and big houses and we spent the last year liquidating everything. And we're now living in our lake house. And just going out on the deck where our house is built over the water, just the nature and the quiet and the peace and the water sounds. I cannot tell you how awesome it is. So I guess I'm old.

You don't seem old at all. But somebody who's written 7 books and lives in a lake house might be in the old category, generally, marketing-wise. But no, I don't think you're old at all. How many children? Empty nester from, from how many?

If I don't count my husband, I have one. He's 30 now. He's living in Kansas City, Missouri with his soon-to-be fiancée.

Very nice. I lived in Kansas City for 5 years. I love that city. It's a nice place.

My son really loves it.

Yeah, lots of good barbecue if he's a barbecue fan.

You've been over all over the place. You did it in Tulsa, Nebraska, and where else have you lived?

So I grew up in Nebraska for the most part. I lived in Houston, Texas for one year when I was 4. That's like my earliest memory was, uh, was Houston, Texas, uh, but that didn't last long. Grew up in Nebraska. My counselor at high school said, Joe, you're a good, you're good at math and you're good at engineering. You should go into chemical engineering. So I said, sure. Well, I looked up how much they made and I said, okay, sounds good. So I went to Tulsa.

Compensation drives behavior.

Yep. So I went to Tulsa for engineering school and then I spent a year in engineering and hated it. So then I got a sales job in Kansas City. So that's why I spent 5 years there, and then I moved back to Omaha. So that was kind of my extent of my moves and whys. Met my wife in Tulsa though, which was, which was great. Had our first 2 kids in Kansas and then our second 2 kids back in Nebraska.

Ah, and how was Cabo last week?

Cabo was great last week. It was a really refreshing time, get a good, good getaway. We have remote workforce in Mexico and the Philippines While I was in Cabo, we had— back to the gig economy, we're spread out, employees and clients everywhere, but two of my employees came to visit me in Cabo and so I extended my stay for a couple of days. I can't tell you how amazing that was, just having the opportunity to interact with somebody who I've seen on Zoom for over a year, almost two years, and we have a strong relationship because of that. But in person, it was just totally different, and they loved it, and I loved it, and it has now kind of— it's ignited in us a desire to do it more often, knowing that we do have people spread around. We still can make time to do some planning together, find some spots here, there throughout the year, and opportunities. So we're gonna hopefully do more of that coming up.

I think we're all starving for human interaction right now.

Yes. Yeah. And it's, I guess when we started working with remote professionals from day one with URCML, like our first hires were all over the country, but they were within the US. It wasn't until a couple of years later that we branched out of the US. So I'd never really envisioned seeing my Mexican workforce in person or my Philippine workforce in person. But the realities are, why not? I mean, we can travel. You can get on a flight for the same amount of money you go to New York and get into Cabo, or even the Philippines for that matter. So why not? So then we're going to be in the Philippines in, um, in a few months to make sure we can do that as well.

Was it Manila?

Um, New Clark is the area. Yeah, outside of Manila.

It's a neat little area. The people there are so nice. Yeah, the more you travel—

I'm sorry, the more you travel, the more you know we're all really the same people. We all love our families and, you know, love each other and want to do good. There's people on the fringes that give all of us a bad name from time to time, but most of us are really similar.

Yeah, I love that you ended that way. That's a wonderful, wonderful statement and observation of life.

Yeah. Well, let's end it then. I really appreciate your time today and your insights. And I'm going to go back and kind of relook at these because there's a lot of gems in here that I want to make sure to share over and over again and have you back for a second go because there's just a lot here and you're very successful. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us.

Well, thank you for having me. Maybe next time we can talk about RFPs. I could do a whole session on RFPs.

Yeah, let's do that. I'll take you up on that offer. And then for our viewers that want to maybe reach out to you directly to find out more about RFPs or anything else, what's the best way for someone to connect with you? We'll have details in the show, show notes, but what would be the best way for them to do that?

I'd like them to email me at podcast@dynaexec.com. I didn't realize they do this, but I like to combine two words into a new word. So DynaExec stands for Dynamic Executives. So dynaexec.com. But as far as a website, if they want to check out some stuff and some success stories and learn more about what I'm doing, um, Visnostics, which is another two words put together, Visnostics, Visualization Diagnostics, visnostics, plural, dot com. It's a brand new web page that I really haven't even launched yet, so they can get a sneak peek and give me some feedback if they'd like.

Great. Well, we'll have that information in the show notes, and I'm sure you'll have some people reaching out to you.

All right, well, thank you, Joseph. It's so good to meet you, and I have a feeling we're going to be doing something together someday.

Oh, I, I have no doubt. And that's a wrap. There's another successful episode of the Fractional C-Suite Retreat. See our show notes and more episodes at fractionalcsuitretreat.com. This podcast is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow Save time and money with better marketing strategy and fractional execution. Visit them at yourcmo.com. Yourcmo.com. Spelled wrong on purpose.