Growing a Leadership Development Firm | Vaughn Sigmon | 502

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Von Sigmund. Von is the co-founder of Results Driven Leadership. He's a leadership development expert, a podcaster, and an author. He's worked with hundreds of businesses helping them deploy his programs and advice. Uh, he's a former executive at CarMax, and CarMax is, is obviously a pretty well-respected company in the auto industry and was considered a Fortune 100 Best Places to Work. So without further ado, welcome. Thanks for coming on board today, Vaughn.

It's a pleasure to be here, Peter. Thanks for inviting me.

So tell me a little bit— I'm going to go in a little bit of a different direction for, for a couple moments. So you're in a leadership position at CarMax, Right?

Right.

Hot company, hot industry, kind of revolutionary, et cetera, et cetera. And then you've transitioned into sort of the leadership development space. So we work with a lot of folks that do that, that transition from, you know, whether it's a CEO or a leadership position, founder, whatever. What was underneath that? What was calling you to say, wow, this is really, I don't want to be helping people buy and sell cars, but I really want to help leaders develop themselves?

Yeah, good question. And so there is a progression with every company as it, as it grows, metamorphoses, and changes. And I knew the day was going to come at CarMax, as it does with most major organizations, especially in retail, which is primarily my background. When I joined CarMax, they had 12 locations, right? By the time I retired from CarMax, they had close to 200 locations. One of the things I often said about my love for CarMax is they allowed me to be an entrepreneur in a very highly corporate environment. Sure, we were making it up, we were building it and, and creating the business for those first 10 years I was with them. But I also knew there was a point of saturation that we went from creating to pure execution, running it.

Yep.

By a checklist. And that bores the snot out of me. And so when that moment came, I suffered through it for about a year and I said, enough. This is boring. I don't like doing it.

I'm at it.

Right.

But you— but— and then I said, I'm going to go create my own thing.

So that's— so that's a Vaughn thing where you're a growth guy, not a manage it and make the 217th unit look like the 200th. And I get that, that's sort of the difference between leadership management or the fat whatever, but you could have easily taken another role in another high-growth company in retail, yet you chose to launch your own sort of leadership development organization. So that's kind of what I'm— why that as opposed to what you've been in for so long?

After 40 years of having a boss, Peter, I was done having bosses. I had a lot of good ones. Yeah, but, uh, I, at the ripe old age of 56, was done with working for a big corporation and having a boss. I wanted to be my own boss. I wanted to do only what I wanted to do around my passion, which is what I do. And it was escaping that whole concept of the corporate hierarchy.

So oftentimes When people go out on their own, that's one of the reasons they say, I want to be my own boss. But the reality is now you've got lots of bosses, your employees, your customers, right? It's not like the best of both worlds is you automatically get a paycheck every 2 weeks and you don't have to worry about anything and you don't have a boss. You have different responsibilities. And I think there's a difference in being a practitioner of leadership development and an entrepreneur in that space, which is incredibly crowded, right? Right? There's, once you start getting into the, the weeds there, you're like, wow, everybody's in the leadership development business. So what are the things that you've done from a sales, marketing, branding, differentiation perspective to get the clients? Because that's kind of the hard part.

Well, it, it is the very hardest part that nobody tells you about, right? It's all these concepts of having your own business are beautiful until you have to have somebody buy it. And so, as you know, I'm very much a learn-by-mistake or learn-by-experience person, which I think many people are. I have a very high risk tolerance, and I taught myself. I took a lot of courses. I followed other and copied other people who were building their business, and I found a way to go get clients, which is always a multiple-step marketing process. You have to be doing a lot, a lot of things and you're gonna get a little from a lot of things, which—

So let's unpack that a little bit because I think all too often, and I, and I'm not diminishing or discounting the value of high quality thought leadership, high quality intellectual property, but where most folks in your space struggle most is not coming up with ideas, methods, frameworks, methodologies, the, you know, they don't have to fake the passion, But it's like, okay, how do I develop my brand? How do I find clients? How do I consistently keep revenue consistent so it doesn't look like the EKG of a coronary patient? Stay there for a little bit with me. Like, what was your learning curve there and what's, what's worked for you and what hasn't?

So through some trial and error, uh, identified the elements of marketing that work for me. LinkedIn, uh, making LinkedIn connections, having conversations, marketing to CEOs on LinkedIn. Creating a podcast, creating a blog, being consistent with all of those. That's that right there, Peter, is the hardest thing for most people. It was for me, and I've been speaking with many others. It's just being consistent with it, working the process until the process works, because there's no instant gratification in any of this. It takes time. It takes sticking with it. It's eating a lot of lot of dirt until it starts flowing. And so it was, it was finding LinkedIn, learning how to utilize a podcast and a blog, a newsletter. Well, let's break those down, you know, etc., etc., etc. Get in front of the right people so that they would get to know me. They're going to buy me. They're not going to buy my leadership concepts. They're going to believe that I can bring to them the solutions they're looking for. It's them understanding me.

Yeah. So let's individually, if we could unpack a couple of those tactics. So when we talk about LinkedIn, and I think you broke this down nicely, well, step one, you have to make connections. Well, in order to make connections, you have to have real, a real clarity, a real definition around to whom, right? Who are the buyers? Who are the avatars? Shockingly to me, a lot of people aren't, you know, I say, who's the buyer? I get all sorts of stuff. And if you can't be specific and articulate that well, LinkedIn's just got lots and lots and lots of people. So how did you sort of hone in on the buyer persona or the avatar for you?

It was really painful to go through, Peter.

Oh, that doesn't sound like fun.

Okay.

Very painful. So, you know, and I spent money on it. I hired two coaches, one a branding coach and one a LinkedIn coach, someone who was an expert on LinkedIn. So I worked with my branding coach. Liz, Liz helped me go through the painful process of identifying and narrowing down who your target market, target customer is. And that was a lot of questions. It was multiple meetings. It was a lot of frustration on my part because I wanted to be everything to everybody. I didn't want to leave a single dime on the table. And Liz forced me into the area that I ended up being very focused on. Certain size companies, certain industries or companies, right? Certain needs within those companies and be able to define that and turn that into words that are attractive to people. Then I hired John, who was my LinkedIn coach. You know, Liz was about $10,000. John was about $15,000. But he gave me the tools and materials I needed and the mindset. He gave me the—

the— stay there a minute. So Liz, Liz's value prop to you is this is the who. And now John, I think you're sitting there, Moises, is the what. Okay. Now on LinkedIn, here's the mechanics of how to create a campaign, how many touchpoints, how to send it out, how to follow it up. And you know what I find almost comical is people dismiss the whole process. Oh, I don't, you know, LinkedIn's not for me. It's not for me. It's not for me. There's 800 million buyers on LinkedIn, right? And I think it's all about getting over yourself, getting out of your comfort zone, and then supporting yourself with the right systems and processes and methodologies. Nobody wants to be that guy or gal, Mr. or Ms. Spammy on LinkedIn. And I think the reason some of us get a little cringey when it comes to LinkedIn is because there are a lot of sloppy, lazy marketers that, you know, and you probably, I'm sure you get these as well, Von, every day. Ah, hey, we can be your app developer. I don't develop apps. We could be your whatever, whatever. I don't, you know, we could be your solar roof panel people, whatever. But if you're smart and you're focused and your message is on point, LinkedIn is a gold mine. So I'm assuming your, your ultimate objective with LinkedIn is to get a potential prospect to get on a phone call and just have a conversation, right?

That's, that, that's the advancement of the, the, the, the sale, right? It's deal stages. Yep. And you gotta create interest. You gotta awareness. You gotta create interest. You gotta have to have a, connection and engage with them. It's the classic funnel.

Yep.

And it's just doing, figuring out how many touchpoints you have to make in order to get there. And understanding too, not everybody needs you. You're gonna get ignored a lot. But I found out, you know, and I'm a big data guy, if I send out 2,500 LinkedIn messages, for every 2,500 messages, I'll get a client. Okay.

Right? And you just do the math backwards and say, just do the math.

So when I need a client, it's 2,500 messages.

Okay. So now if you stay there, you've got a clear sense of your customer acquisition cost. So 2,500 costs X, X equals a number that you're comfortable spending to acquire a client for the first engagement, cuz then you don't have to spend that money again for engagement 2, 3, and 4. Cool. I love it. Thank you for the LinkedIn piece. If you're enjoying this episode of Thought Leadership Leverage, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. I wanna, I wanna pivot now to podcasting, cuz most people I shouldn't say most, many people like to be a guest on a podcast or even a host on a podcast, but they don't necessarily have a very clear or well-thought-through business strategy. So to me, let's take the guesting piece, reasons to be a guest on a podcast. Again, it's gotta be the right podcast based on your avatars, right? It's, you can elevate the brand. You're creating content and assets that can be repurposed 7 ways till Sunday, right? Like all the content that you do. And somebody else, i.e., the podcast host, has done the hard work, which is they've got an audience that you're going to borrow for a few moments and engage with for a few moments. And the hope is that some subset of those people reach out. And I think the hard thing about podcasting as a guest is that it's hard to get the exact number. Oh, I did 10 podcasts last month and nothing happened. You know, you really have to commit to doing X number a month for a specific period of time. And then there's a compounding effect of all of a sudden you get a lead from a podcast you did a year and a half ago that's not even on your mind. So is that, is that aligned with your experience?

Yeah, it was, it was again a big learning curve. And it's one thing to do a podcast, it's another thing to be able to utilize that in a marketing approach that actually works. And one, it's back to that consistency. You have to put the content out there every week. You have to be consistent with the content along with your keywords, your tags to make sure that people are going to find you in, in the searches to listen to you. Then you have to deliver content that is engaging and valuable to where they continue to grow as an audience participant. And within each podcast, you need to make an offer. That's the one I missed out on for the first couple of years is giving them something to engage further with me, to take them further down the funnel, is that, hey, I'll give you a free DiSC assessment. This is a valuable tool. I try to work that into almost every one of my podcasts because I am a true believer in the value of that. Here's a free DiSC, here's a free download, here's a free this, here's a free that to get them engaged now, which, Peter Winick, I hope I'm not giving away too many secrets to the audience, but It's now I've got their email, right? If I've got their email, now I can talk to them directly in a different format through a newsletter, through webinars. I can take them through other parts of my marketing concept.

I find that— so I love that. I find that as a pod— you know, when people are listening to podcasts, unlike if I'm on LinkedIn and I want to learn more, click here next. If I'm on, you know, anywhere else, if I'm in front of my device and I want to learn more, sign up for news. Like it's really conducive to that. I think one of the issues with podcasts is the use case is usually the car, right? So people, you know, and people don't remember a lot, like you're driving this, that, you know, email Vaughn at blah, blah, blah, or the gym where you're on the treadmill sweating like a pig is that you're not exactly going to stop. So how do you break through that? I mean, is it in the show? Like where, I just find that's just part of the— I don't know, whatever the rhythm of a podcast is. Wait, how are people actually listening to this? They're not sitting there with a pen and paper taking notes typically. Yeah.

And you've got to make it easy for them to go to those show notes. You have to tell them at the top of the show notes there's a link to your free this, and it has to be at the very top because you get about 4 sentences.

Yeah.

Where they get in to read more. And so I put it at the very top. So it's very— and 90% of everybody listens is on a portable device, an iPhone or other device. And they can, from right in the show notes at the very top, click on that link, enter their email and get whatever they're asking for. So it's part of the design. You have to make it easy and you have to talk about it in your podcast to bring attention to it.

And do you have metrics that you use to gauge, you know, podcasts that have been a good use of your time versus not? Because there's not— I mean, the cost is, yes, there's a cost to reach out, pitch a podcast, get, you know, host or whatever, your time, etc. How do you consistently evaluate, like, these were the good ones and these were the not so good ones?

That's, again, being a data guy, you know, all my podcasts My podcast hosting is Libsyn. Libsyn has a very good data platform. And if I go through and I look at all my most downloaded podcasts in two ways, one, which one got the fastest download in the least number of days and which one consistently gets downloaded? What are the key elements that those have in common? And it's always in the title and the title's leadership. It's difficult people. It's how to, it's, you know, there's certain words that capture people's attention in that title that brings them to listening to the podcast.

Well, and I think, I think that's a critical concept because people think, not all, but many, that, wow, that was a great interview. And the point is, yes, maybe that what interview A was better than interview B, but nobody knows that unless they listened and they're not gonna listen unless that headline is catchy. And this is where we're all working for the algorithm or we're all working for the hashtag. You have to master these things because you could give the greatest interview that you ever gave, but if you put the wrong title, it's going to get 5% of maybe one that was mediocre that was tagged properly. And listen, life may not be fair. That's just the facts, right?

100% right. So you, again, you have to— well, I'll put it this way. Many people in marketing will tell you, whether it's an email or podcast or blog, whatever it is, that the most important element is the subject line.

Right.

And you, you have to be able to design subject lines or titles that are designed in a way to capture people. And there are all kinds of tools out there, including AI. That will do that for you. But you need to know what your key elements of words— leadership, difficult, etc., etc.— that you've got to build in there, that your AI or your headline generator will be able to create for you that is catchy enough to capture someone's attention.

And you also have to control the integrity of the brand because there are things when you do the research that say, oh, if you did the 7 Secrets to, you know, better lovemaking or whatever. You're like, okay, yeah, maybe that's gonna get me to the top, but that's not on point with my brand, so I'm not doing that. Right? So there's always a trade-off of, ooh, this would get more downloads, but you know, you don't want to be clickbait. You don't want to, you know, you have to be, you have to be proud and it has to be aligned with the integrity of your brand or you can do some damage there.

Absolutely. And it's, it's almost like going back to the exercise of your avatar. For a prospective client, you have to have an avatar for a prospective listener. And yes, what are the topics they're interested in? And more importantly, how am I helping them? It's not about helping me. How am I helping them? Because that's where the value comes from.

Yep.

And so that's where the content comes in. But if I lose people because I'm putting some BS in my, in my title, and then they listen and say, that's not what fawns about. That's not what I wanted to listen to. They'll never listen to me again, and I lost a huge opportunity, right? Yeah. And so, yes, 100% do I agree with you on brand integrity. You've got to deliver on whatever that title says.

Yep, exactly. So this has been phenomenal. I appreciate your willingness to sort of double-click and go deep on the mechanics, because I think that's what folks need to do. And I think, you know, you're Great example of it's not why you even get in the business to master marketing, but you're not going to stay in the business unless you figure out how to work in your pieces.

And there's one other element I want to make sure I get through because I say this a lot, and anybody, if they're listening to start a business or want to grow their business, there is a statistic in sales that I think is critical for everybody to know because this has to work on your patience. 80% of your sales come after the 6th+ outreach.

Yeah. Oh, 1000%. And, and here's— I— yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because a lot of people say, I tried LinkedIn. Well, tell me what you did. They made a connection and they sent one message, Dear Vaughn, would you like to have a call with me? And nothing happened. So therefore they concluded LinkedIn is garbage. And it's like, yeah, I mean, there's various reports that say it's 5, 6, 10, 12 So now those touchpoints don't mean don't be the person, you know, hitting me up 3 times a day, but it's also multi-integration, right? So it could be a combination of your newsletter, seeing you on a podcast, seeing you, and you know when you've talked to someone that's been exposed to a lot of your work, because when you're speaking to them on a call, at least this has been my experience, they're quoting you back to you. You know they're fluent in what you're about. You know they're of the same mindset. You know that, you know, they're already sort of on third base. As opposed to someone that's coming in cold, you have to spend a lot of time educating them, which slows down the sales process.

And so, and at the end of the day, between LinkedIn, podcasts, newsletters, it's about, you know, 25%, 25%, 25%, 25%. Let's not, let's not ever leave out client satisfaction because—

100%. Yeah.

Yeah. Because those, that's another marketing tool. Yeah. Because you want to get referrals from, from your current clients, which I do a great job with. And, uh, or my clients do a great job for me, I should say. But it's all those elements and it, you've gotta move 'em from a cold call to a warm call to, and how do I do that? And that's the consistency of the messaging, the value of the messaging over a long period of time. Back to my 2,500 messages, that's to about 150 prospects. That's a lot of messages going to 150 prospects., but I do it over months and months and months.

Yeah.

And if I can't turn it on and turn it off, it's gotta always be going on. Gotta be on. Yeah. Right. And that builds a consistently growing business.

Well, this, this has been great. I appreciate your time. I appreciate your willingness to share some of the, what's going on under the hood there. And I encourage folks to sort of process that and figure out how they could develop and implement a similar process that works for them. Thank you, Vaughn.

Appreciate it.

Peter, it was a pleasure.

To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.