Episode 148: Winning at Business and Life with Joshua Stike

This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast, where business leaders share their insights. It is 6 questions in 7 minutes because successful business leaders are busy and rarely have more time to spare. So let's get to it. Question number 1: In a few sentences, please tell me who you are and and what you do.

My name is Joshua Steik. I'm the chief marketing officer here at ReminderMedia. So we publish marketing materials for service-based sales professionals, basically to help them get more referrals and really nurture and show thanks to their clients.

Joshua, it's great to have you on the show. Question number 2: What's the best thing about working in your industry?

So I would take this more from the creative marketing sort of industry and just say I love making things. So I always have, whether it's building a Lego set or it's building an ad campaign through email or display advertising that will get people excited. I've always enjoyed working on and making products for our clients that they find value in, and ultimately their clients from receiving it love it. And then that triggers the reciprocity effect, which is what brings the referrals back to them.

Oh, I love it. It's, it's like a perfect circle that you're describing. Question number 3. I have a fictitious precious book with all the answers for business, what chapter would you think most companies should read?

So I think every company should read the chapter titled Take Action. And action is really one of our core values here, even from the standpoint of so many businesses and professionals get stuck in this paralysis by analysis, and they don't just do. They focus on building the perfect system, building the perfect plan. But the reality is the perfect system is the one that you're going to use. So we kind of have the motto of stop talking and start doing. Yeah.

And that analysis by paralysis, the— I've seen it in so many occasions where it just creates all this amazing stress because they overthink everything. And, and I mean, that's what you're talking about too.

Yeah. It's the perfectionist. And I know I'm a perfectionist, so I actually have to fight against that because perfect is basically the enemy of good., you know, and if you spend all of your time trying to make something perfect, you're not going to get it done. There's actually a really cool— and I don't want to go too long because I know we're on a time limit— but there's a really cool study that a professor did where he gave a photography class, two sets of students. One's goal, they would be graded purely on quantity, and the other students would be graded purely on quality, and they only had to submit one photo. And the ones that ended up producing the best photos were the quantity group because they kept taking photos and getting better and better through the process And the quality group never even submitted a photo.

Interesting. I love that. I didn't know about that study, but I'll have to look for that one. Question number 4. I have— other than the generic work harder, have a great attitude and care for customers, what advice or insight would you give to other business leaders?

Yeah. So I would say, especially to business, business managers and senior leadership, just kind of rising up. Is that it's better to get it right than to be right. And that's something that I had to learn really early on because I was kind of thrown into management at a really young age. I was the first employee here about 17 years ago. We started in a garage and finding your value and thinking that that value is in having all the answers is such a temptation that I think a lot of younger leaders go through versus using your resources on your team or using the resources and other groups within your organization who might know more. So I don't have to have the perfect answer for what the right marketing campaign is. My sales team might, or my client success team might, because they're the ones working directly with the client. And the reason that's been on my brain lately is because I read the book Dare to Lead by Brené Brown, and she talks about the concept of armored leadership versus brave leadership. And armored leaders are all about being a knower and being right, and brave leaders are all about being a learner and getting it right.

And if I'm understanding you correctly, being one of those, the good leaders, is one that you just have to you, you know, check your ego at the door? Because obviously if you have to be the one that knows, you know, that typically is very ego-based.

Well, it's really, it takes a lot of vulnerability because you have to be able to admit that I don't have all the answers, but I can use my team and really ask the right questions and continue to dig and be very, very curious. And again, this isn't to prolong the process of making the decision, And it's not about getting consensus. It's about getting additional input and being willing to say, you know, I'm okay being wrong about this. Mm-hmm.

And then that builds even more credibility for the leader, I would assume. Am I right?

I think that you get a lot of trust from your team members, and I think that you get a lot of buy-in on the ultimate solution. If you're just handing out tasks and saying, here's how we're going to do it. People kind of turn into just brainless operators versus creative thinkers and problem solvers.

Very insightful. Thank you. Question number 5: What other business leader like yourself would you like to acknowledge and invite to be on my podcast?

So I would recommend Kim Angeli. She is not only a sales beast, but she is, uh, the owner and founder of Grateful Box, and she has this whole concept of growing revenue. She actually teaches a course on this Growing Revenue Through Gratitude. And so all of her products and all of her teachings really fall right in line with that. And I would love to hear how she would answer some of these questions.

Oh, I love it. I'll reach out to her. Thank you for that referral. And our final question, question number 6: Please tell me about your first job.

So I already mentioned my first career job was here at ReminderMedia. So I'll go back to my first job as a 14-year-old. I worked on a trash truck. So we would actually drive around. It was a box truck. I wasn't allowed to ride the compactor. I don't know if I was even allowed to be working. I'm not 100% I'm sure. But we would drive around to all the places that the compactor couldn't get to. We would throw all the trash bags into the box truck. We'd go back to the shop and then unload those into the compactor. And eventually that morphed into more responsibility. And not to get too dirty here, but we would actually go pick up porta-pots and we would have to clean out the porta-pots, load them up, and then take them back to the shop. And I power washed. And the reason why I bring that up is because it really taught me early on work ethic and getting to then be in a position where I was at the beginning of an organization and helping it grow and growing up with the organization. The work ethic and the whatever-it-takes mentality has always been something that I kind of attribute back to those earlier jobs.

Great story. I love that. So Joshua, thank you so much for being on the show. How can people find you?

So you can connect with me on LinkedIn if you search Joshua Steick. I think there's only another one Joshua Steick, so I'm pretty easy to find there. And then of course you can always follow along with us on Instagram. Instagram for our podcast is the best place to get in touch with me. That's @StatePaidPodcast.

Perfect. This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast. For more insights and ideas, please go to LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or iTunes and search for the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Thanks for listening.