page title icon social media

Dan Gengiss Winning at Social Customer Care

200: Dan Gingiss: There’s really only one thing to do here

Dan Gingiss Show Notes Page

Before becoming a social media expert, Dan Gingiss decided to join a friend in taking the GMAT. On standardized tests he typically does better on the math side and struggles on the verbal side. But during the test Dan got stumped on a question that caused him to not complete the math portion of the exam. That left him with only one choice.

Dan Gingiss was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago, meaning he had to declare at birth whether he was going to root for the Cubs or the White Sox (Cubs all the way!). His parents are happily retired; his older brother spent decades as a newspaper reporter and now works for a Senator; and his younger sister is a PR executive.

Dan’s parents always pushed him to be successful but in a fair and nurturing way – “A’s, B’s, and C’s are your problem; D’s and F’s are our problem” was a favorite refrain of Dan’s dad. And he was also constantly encouraged to try new things, be it different types of international cuisine or school subjects meant only to broaden one’s thinking (like art history and music). This created an open-mindedness in Dan that has served him well in his career, as he is often referred to as an “idea man” and always enjoys considering new ideas from others.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Psychology and Communications, Dan naturally turned to marketing (Really, it was anything but natural. He had no idea what he wanted to do, but in hindsight, marketing is the perfect combination of psychology and communications). He worked as a product manager at The Danbury Mint, a direct-to-consumer collectibles company. His focus was on sports and automotive collectibles, and he quickly learned the ins and outs of direct mail, newspapers, and magazines.

He decided to apply to business school (more on that later) and at the Kellogg School of Management, he took his first marketing class and finally learned that what he had been doing for four years had names, frameworks, and structure behind it. Post-Kellogg he spent some time at a B2B financial services company, then nearly 10 years at Discover Card – where he played a key role in them winning their first-ever J.D. Power Award for Customer Satisfaction, one of Dan’s proudest achievements. After stints at Humana and McDonald’s, Dan decided once again to try something new and joined a marketing technology startup called Persado.

In Dan’s “spare time,” he has taken his love for customer experience to the stage in keynote speeches, to the airwaves with his Experience This! Podcast, and to the bookshelves with his book, Winning at Social Customer Care: How Top Brands Create Engaging Experiences on Social Media.

Dan still lives in Chicago with his two kids and one cat, and is hoping for another Cubs World Series Championship soon!

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @dgingiss to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow – Click to Tweet

“There’s no longer any such thing as an off-line customer experience.” – Click to Tweet 

“Companies have to be aware of everything going on in the customer experience, whether it’s online or off-line.” – Click to Tweet 

“The thing with digital and social together is that the only constant is change.” – Click to Tweet 

“Technology plays a roll but humans play the most important role.” – Click to Tweet 

“You don’t have to be in every channel, you just have to be where your customers need you.” – Click to Tweet 

“Social media transferred the power from the company to the consumer.” – Click to Tweet 

“It not that the customer’s always right, but we should always hear the customer.” – Click to Tweet 

“AI, machine learning and chatbots are becoming part of the experience, how do we maintain a human element in that?” – Click to Tweet 

“The best use-case for bots is helping agents.” – Click to Tweet 

“You can learn anything from anyone and in particular you can probably learn the most from the frontline.” – Click to Tweet 

“There’s usually a solution out there, you just have to look for it and you have to be open-minded.” – Click to Tweet 

“Everybody’s valuable, try to figure out the strengths of the team.” – Click to Tweet 

“One of the toughest advancements in a company is to become a manager of people.” – Click to Tweet 

Hump to Get Over

Before becoming a social media expert, Dan Gingiss decided to join a friend in taking the GMAT. On standardized tests he typically does better on the math side and struggles on the verbal side. But during the test Dan got stumped on a question that caused him to not complete the math portion of the exam. That left him with only one choice.

Advice for others

Lead people to open your career opportunities.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

Having the leadership to lead leaders.

Best Leadership Advice

You can learn from anyone. Everyone in the company plays an important role so stay open minded-

Secret to Success

A sense of humor and a laid-back attitude.

Best tools in business or life

People leadership.

Recommended Reading

Winning at Social Customer Care: How Top Brands Create Engaging Experiences on Social Media

Never Lose a Customer Again: Turn Any Sale into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days

Contacting Dan Gingiss

Website: https://www.winningatsocial.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/dgingiss

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dangingiss/

Resources and Show Mentions

Call Center Coach

How Leaders Can Best Lead Leaders

Show Transcript: 

Click to access edited transcript

200: Dan Gingiss: There’s really only one thing to do here

 

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

 

Call center coach develops and unites the next generation of call center leaders. Through our e-learning and community individuals gain knowledge and skills in the six core competencies that is the blueprint that develops high-performing call center leaders. Successful supervisors do not just happen so go to callcentercoach.com to learn more about enrollment and download your copy of the Supervisor Success Path e-book now.

 

Jim Rembach:   Okay Fast Leader legion today I’m excited because I have somebody on the on the show today who actually brings in some childhood memories for me and then also ideas about the future and what it can be. Dan Gingiss was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago meaning he had to declare at birth whether he was going to root for the Cubs or the White Sox and he says Cubs all the way and I’m a White Sox fan. His parents are happily retired. His older brothers spent decades as a newspaper reporter and now works for a senator and his younger sister is a PR executive. Dan’s parents always pushed him to be successful but in a fair and nurturing way. A’s B’s and C’s are your problem D’s and F’s are our problem was a favorite refrain from Dan’s dad and he was also constantly encouraged to try new things be at different types of international cuisine or school subjects meant only to broaden one’s thinking like art, history and music. This created an open-mindedness and Dan that has served him well in his career as he is often referred to as an idea man and always enjoys considering new ideas from others.

 

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in psychology and communications Dan naturally turned to marketing. Really it was anything but natural he had no idea what he wanted to do but in hindsight marketing is the perfect combination of psychology and communication. He worked as a product manager at the Danbury Mint a direct-to-consumer collectibles company. His focus was on sports and automotive electable and he quickly learned the ins and outs of direct mail newspapers and magazines. He decided to apply to business school at the Kellogg School of Management and he took his first marketing class and finally learned that what he had been doing for years had names, frameworks and structure behind it. 

 

Post Kellogg he spent some time at a b2b financial services company then nearly 10 years at Discover Card where he played a key role in them and then winning their first ever JD power award for customer satisfaction one of Dan’s proudest achievements. After stints at Humana and McDonald’s, Dan decided once again to try something new and joined a marketing technology startup called Persado. In Dan’s spare time he has taken his love of customer experience to the stage and keynote speeches to the air waves with his experience this podcast and to the bookshelves with his book winning at social customer care, How Top Brands Create Engaging Experiences on Social Media. Dan still lives in Chicago with his two kids and one cat and is hoping for another Cubs World Series championship soon. Back to the south side Dan, but Dan Gingiss are you ready to help us get over the hump?

 

Dan Gingiss:      I am thank you for that great intro and very excited to be here.

 

Jim Rembach:     I’m glad you’re here. Now I’ve given my Legion a little bit about you but could you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better?

 

Dan Gingiss:      Absolutely. My current passion is the connection between customer experience and social media. These are two of the things that I really love and I think they have a very circular relationship. What I mean by that is that there’s no longer any such thing as an offline customer experience. If you think about it we used to get on an airplane and sit down in our seats and mind our own business and now all sorts of stuff happens on an airplane that the world sees because somebody’s taking a video of it and sharing it live on Twitter. So what that means for companies is that we have to be aware of everything that’s going on in the customer experience whether it’s online or offline once the beginning of the experience the middle or the end and we have to be ready for that experience to come online and be shown front of the world. You have to ask yourself is this an experience that I want shown to the rest of the world? Is it one that I’m proud of and that will make my company look really good? Or is it something that I probably would not like shared? And then the flip side of that which is really what my book is about is how companies respond once those experiences are shared on social media because that moment becomes a key point back into the customer experience that’s why it’s circular. Is that when people come to social media and share complain maybe compliment ask questions what a company does next is really, really critical to how people think about them both the person that is posting and all the people that are their followers and friends that are sort of watching the conversation as it’s going on. 

 

Jim Rembach:      Okay, I appreciate you sharing that. And as you’re talking I really started thinking about even though you’re kind of talking about an entity the company the organization really what I’m hearing is a whole lot of personal touch points personal interaction points emotion transparency the whole lot of things were just kind of running through my head and then I started thinking about really the appearance or the perception of where we are with this whole social aspect of the marketplace in the business of society. It seems like, hey we’ve been doing this for a while, smartphones have been around for decade or more and the whole video capabilities and sharing capabilities and we even talked just a moment ago about how even on LinkedIn I’m seeing so much more video just within the past couple months I’ve ever seen and it’s just like, hey we’ve been doing this for a while. However, when we start thinking about the marketplace b2b b2c where do you kind of feel that we are as far as a maturation level is concerned? Are we at the beginning are we at the middle where do you think we are? 

 

Dan Gingiss:      Well the thing with digital and social together is that the only constant is change. It moves so fast that it’s almost impossible to become totally mature at it which is why I stopped anybody that refers to me or anybody else is the social media experts, I don’t believe that exists that you can’t be an expert because tomorrow your expertise is on a date. Just look at especially Facebook how often they’re changing their algorithm or they’re adding new ad units or they’re changing the experience in some way it’s always changing multiple times a year. So I think the technology certainly maturing what a lot of companies that I am seeing are finally starting to figure out is that technology plays a role but humans play the most important role. You mentioned those words, empathy and understanding and a human element that to me is the part that we cannot miss as this technology gets really good. Great example would be chat BOTS. Chat BOTS can have a very positive role particularly for questions to a call center or a contact center that are fairly common or frankly could be answered via Google. I worked at McDonald’s for a little while when people said how many calories are in a Big Mac? That’s a factual question that you don’t really need a human to answer so a BOTS great. But the bots can’t answer really complex questions about a credit card charge that you want to dispute because X Y & Z happened and this product didn’t show up and this person did this and whatever you get these issues that people have with your service that are just simply too complex to be talking to a computer not to mention that most people want to talk to a human. Even in social media the expectation is that it’s not the brand writing back to you it’s a person at the brand writing back to you. That’s why you see so many companies the agents sign either their name or their initials at the end of even a tweet because it’s to indicate to you I am a person I’m not a robot I’m not an ivory tower that is responding to you I’m a person. I think that to me is the piece that is maybe conflicting with this matter with this maturation because of course human capital is the most expensive. It’s a lot easier for us to just put technology and to do stuff that the humans were doing before but that alters the experience in a way that I don’t think is positive. 

 

Jim Rembach:      What you’re saying is something that even from me from a personal perspective I kind of see play out so if I’m looking for a particular product or service or something of that nature and I get the appearance that essentially they don’t want me to have a communication or connection with them via voice so it’s other words you fill out this form you can’t find any type of contact number you don’t see a whole lot of interaction and dialogue there’s not a lot of openness in regards to contact us and how to contact us and they really force you down a particular channel or you can’t make that human connection I abandon it. 

 

Dan Gingiss:      Yeah, a lot of people do. I get asked the question all the time what channel should I be in in social media? And the answer is what channels are your customers in. You don’t have to be in every channel you just have to be where your customers need you and when you look at it that way it’s a lot less overwhelming. The other thing that I always recommend to your point is these digital channels should not be treated differently from the way we’ve always treated a phone channel. You just pointed out some companies hide the phone number how about companies that let the phone ring off the hook? Or they put you on hold for two hours? These are the worst experiences that we have so why would we let a tweet go unanswered? It’s the same thing as letting the phone ring off the hook. Why would we not even respond to an email? Or not be there when somebody initiates a chat with us? It’s the same concept it’s just transferred into a digital state. I think that what’s happened is as these digital channels have come online they’ve ended up creating more and more silos in the contact center. The companies that are figuring it out are starting to put them back together again. So social media especially, you read about this in my book is that the social customer care team sometimes isn’t even located in the call center it’s so removed from the call center. But then how does that help them access customer files and FA cues and all of the great training that is put together for contact center employees if they don’t have access to that? How are they able to do an effective job as somebody on the phone? 

 

Jim Rembach:     That’s a really good point. I think from what I’ve seen is that a lot of that issue has come from a couple different perspectives and one of the major perspectives is that the technologies that have currently been in place to support all of these customer interactions have not been integrated to that particular level. So it’s been that, hey, this is my channel for this, this is my channel for that and so on and so forth. However w going to a lot of the industry events that I go to and a lot of the technology vendors that I actually analyze is that we’re seeing that change quite quickly they’re finally coming to the realization that the customer themselves is what I really need to be focusing in on supporting and not the channel and that the customer happens to be going through. It’s a very different shift from a mindset perspective as well as from a technology and programming perspective so going back to that whole change thing you were talking about I think the changes are even going to be more rapid like you were talking about like who’s going to be an expert at this? I think the whole channel management interaction management all of those things is really going to shift quite substantially within the next couple years and I think you might find that some of these companies who have been struggling with this digital transformation have been struggling with being able to provide an experience across multiple channels they’ll now be unable to do that. 

 

Dan Gingiss:      Yeah, you hit the nail on the head and I actually credit social media for this. What social media did was it transferred the power from the company to the consumer. For years and years and years the companies held all the cards. Even in marketing I love to say that—one of the things that made me fall in love with social media’s is the first marketing channel, and I’ve worked in almost every marketing channel there is, it’s the first one where people can talk back to you. You can’t talk back to a billboard can’t talk back to a TV commercial can’t talk back to a direct mail piece but all of a sudden somebody puts a Facebook ad in front of you and you are able to comment, post, complain, put a picture, respond in any way and that completely changed things because it shifted all of the power over to the consumer. And as we look at customer experience and all of the things that we’re trying to do it’s for that consumer and so I do think it’s a positive change. It took a big disrupter which turned out to be sort of a combination of Facebook and Twitter in order to do that but I do think now we’re headed in the right direction. It’s not that the customer’s always right that was the old mantra but it is that we always should hear the customer. The customer is our most valuable asset because without any customers or clients if you’re b2b you don’t have any business. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Yeah. And I think that’s the ultimate no finality right there. In a book you basically are laying out a roadmap for organizations to be able to do a significantly better job of serving customers via that social channel. You go as simplistic as just explaining what a customer experience is what that’s like and what the role is and oftentimes social media we don’t often hear about the whole social customer care component but there’s a lot of solutions that will help with the whole interaction management as well as the whole research and discovery component in that response piece. You even have some case studies in the book like with Delta Airlines and a couple others put together really well however for me I always like going to the back to the book because that’s kind of where it summarizes some things and I do that rather quickly when I go through and read a book. You talk about the future of social customer care and that the marketing of customer service and talking about what’s next. You even said yourself you don’t like people talking about being an expert in this because it’s changing so rapidly. However, I’m going to put you on the spot Dan, talking about the future where do you kind of see things heading?

 

Dan Gingiss:      Well, there’s no question again the technology is having a big impact and so AI and machine learning and chat BOTS are becoming part of the experience. And the question is going to be how do we maintain a human element in that? Let me tell you a quick story, I was asked to present to a company’s client council so I was invited to speak and they wanted me to talk about customer experience and particularly about social care and the coordinator asked me to bring a good example of a chat bot in Facebook messenger and I sort of laughed because I told him I thought that might be an oxymoron but I would do my best. I went to find one and I ended up landing on one, by the way one thing you should know about me is with both of the podcasts that I’ve done I like to highlight the positive so I like to highlight brands that do things well I don’t like to talk negatively about brands that are failing because there’s enough people out there doing that, so I’m going to keep the brand silent here but you probably figure it out. This was actually a company that Mark Zuckerberg held up at the F8 conference as being one of the leaders in chat bot technology within Facebook messenger, it was one of the first brands to be on Facebook messenger. So I said, well if Mark thinks it’s good and I might as well I might as well believe that and take a look. It’s a retailer and I basically went through the process of ordering and it’s basically hand-holding you through what is essentially a website experience it’s just asking you questions like, what sort of product do you want? How much do you want to spend? Etc. etc. well it asks me, when I would like the product delivered? And this was a gift for somebody and it gave me three dates and none of those dates were correct because actually I wanted the product delivered when I was giving the speech and the speech was two weeks out. And so I didn’t know what to do because the bot’s giving me three dates and none of them are right and I can’t see anything else so I type help. And it responds back and it says, oh, are you looking for customer service? I said yes I am. So far so good. Then the bot responds that it says well customer service is closed. I’m like, awesome, terrific. Right after that about five seconds later a live agent pops on and says, hi, I’m Samantha how can I help you? And I said, I thought customer service was closed, who are you? And in response to that response both Samantha and the bots start talking to me. The whole thing starts as a pretty decent experience holding my hand through an ordering process and then completely devolves into chaos simply because of one step which was that date that I couldn’t figure out and now all of a sudden I’ve got an experience that’s laughable that I can talk about on stage. The challenge is that there’s a lot at stake here and there’s a lot of pieces to the experience. In this particular case it was about, how does the bot hand off to the human in a seamless way? Obviously the bots should have known that customer service was open once I said I wanted customer service it should have said, sure let me introduce you to Samantha the bot shuts up Samantha helps me and we move about our way and that’s got to be totally seamless. This was not seamless and I’m afraid as I look at more and more examples that’s the norm so far we’re having a very difficult time. What if the agent wants to send it back to the bot and how does that work etc. etc. that I think is we’re a long way from figuring out how that experience is really nice. 

 

Jim Rembach:     I think you bring up a really interesting point is that there’s a lot of different capabilities of chat bot technologies and different generations of chat bot technologies and the majority of them right now are very much rules based and driven. In other words if the customer says this, this is my response, and I go to access this information for a customer service hours and it’s more like a hard-coded scenario. Now, they may lay over some natural language processing and some other things on that and try to make it a better and more realistic experience but for many them they’re falling back to that coding and if it’s not coded well if the tool does not have the ability to do some of that sensitivity transfer capabilities like, hey, if I get a confusion of a particular point don’t make it difficult on the customer immediately go out, there’s a whole lot of different technologies out there and I think that’s where we are right now. We’re going to see a whole lot of consolidation all kinds of uplift with the different AI technologies and some of the companies that are going to have some of the better tools are going to win with that whole chat bot experience. It’s not it’s not as simple as it seems when we start talking about AI also when you’re referring to the uniqueness of a company’s particular products like, hey, we have branded products that  have these names and maybe refer to a couple different things. I feel the pain that you were talking about in that customer experience and I think we’re going to see more and more of that it’s going to be more and more prevalent for sure. 

 

Dan Gingiss:      Even if you roll it back just a little bit further the whole reason why companies are focused on this may be the wrong reason. A lot of companies are looking at it as a cost savings measure if we can get the humans out of the way it’s going to cost us less to service people. To me that’s exactly the wrong way to look at it. What bots should be able to do they should be able to take away some cost for the questions that are easily answerable but I think the best use case for bots actually is helping agents be smarter. Imagine an agent that’s sitting next to IBM’s Watson that’s got the answer to every question or Google is got the answer to every question in the world plus everything that’s ever happened on that customers account and it’s right there it doesn’t have to be searched it doesn’t have to be scanned that could make agents much stronger at being human and doing the things that we need them to do that the machines can’t do. 

 

Jim Rembach:     That is actually the best case right now especially when you started talking about the whole complexity issue that is the best way to be able to support a customer interaction by deploying in that fashion. Okay, so what we’re talking about here the whole disruption being disrupted being a disruptor rapid change all of those things it’s just riddled with a whole lot of anxiety and emotion. And one of the things that we look at on the show to help keep us focused hopefully and grounded and pointed in the right direction are quotes, is there a quote or two that you like that you can share? 

 

Dan Gingiss:      Well Jim, I’m not sure you’re going to like this one because I’m actually going to provide a quote from the World Series champion, Chicago Cubs manager Joe Madden, who I believe is going to eventually retire from baseball and become a business consultant because most of his quotes about baseball are amazingly applicative to business. And my favorite one of his is only three words I was hoping I might set the record on your show for the shortest quote his quote is, Do simple better.  And what he’s talking about in baseball of course is running hard to first base on every hit—the simple six four three double play should always be made not dropping the ball out of your glove. It’s when you do the simple things right then there creates some space to make mistakes on the more complicated things. But I take do simple better and I look at it from a customer experience perspective and it is almost always the answer to the question whatever the question is it is do it more simply and it’s going to be a better customer experience. So that’s one that I come back to all the time and I love sharing examples of doing simple better. One that I just experienced that I loved, I was in this restaurant that had two different parts there was a pizza side of the restaurant like a more Italian side and so two different seating areas and they were separated by these two swinging doors back and forth doors. And I’m watching this because there’s tons of people going back and forth between these doors there’s customers, there’s waiters with big trays of food and what is astounding to me is no one’s running into each other I’m like, why is this working so well? I go up and I look at the doors and normally when you come to any sort of door you see one of two words you see push or pull and you also know that most people screw that up or many people do they’re two very similar words they both start with PU—you’re pulling this door like why doesn’t worry because it says push these two doors did not say push and pull one of them said yes and the other one said no. And it was so simple that no one had to think, they actually didn’t even have to break strive in which door to go through and not one person messed it up. I thought that was a great example of do simple better because what’s simpler than yes and no. And yet the first time I’ve ever seen doors labeled yes and no because millions and millions and millions of doors are still labeled push and pull. 

 

Jim Rembach:     I think that’s a great example. I do have to get props the only issue that I have with Joe Madden is that he’s on the wrong side of town. 

 

Dan Gingiss:      Fair enough. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Okay, so he talked about that whole childhood memory thing and I got to bring it up. Growing up in the South Side of Chicago, Gingiss Formal wear was the place where everybody went and got their tuxedos and I have three brothers, my older brothers are six and seven years older than me and I remember getting fitted at Gingiss Formal wear, what’s the relationship? 

 

Dan Gingiss:      So you are actually—all the interviews I’ve done you’re the first person to ask me that, so thank you for that. So Gingiss formal wear was a formal wear rental and retail shop at its peak it had about I think it’s about 250 stores throughout the US. It was actually founded by my grandfather and then run by my dad who was the president from 1971 to the late 80s. I was always a very popular kid around prom time in high school I don’t know why, maybe not as much with the girls as I want to do but the guy certainly wanted to get to know me, but, yeah it was really interesting to sort of watch this family business now it was sold before I was old enough to be in the workforce. Certainly a lot of the things that I have learned about business and still use today are things that I learned from watching my dad. 

 

Jim Rembach:     I know when you start talking about having that influence as far as from your dad, when you start thinking about the executive level, which is where he was, and that actual frontline level how much do you remember or recall your dad being able to really give you an understanding of the frontline instead of the executive view? 

 

Dan Gingiss:      I’m glad you asked that because that’s one of the key things that’s probably the best leadership advice I’ve ever received which is you can learn anything from anyone and in particular you can probably learn the most from the frontline. So two things that my dad did, one that remember because I saw him do and then one that he’s told me about. The one that I remember is he walked into his office every single morning and he walked by every person’s desk and said good morning. Even as the company grew even if it took him 15 minutes when he walked in the door he made the rounds every morning to go say good morning to people. He knew everybody’s name they knew his name and I think that was a really great personal touch. But the story that he tells me that always sticks out is that there was a plant on the west side of Chicago where they cleaned all of the garments, because there’s a rental business, and so it was out of the downtown area, and he would go visit the plants and obviously he talked to the plant management and what-have-you but he always made sure to go down to the floor and talk to the guys operating the press machines and all these things. 

 

What he tells me is he remembers this one guy that’s operating this machine and he’s sweating like crazy and he starts talking to him and the guy tells him that the air conditioners broken. And my dad says, really how long’s the air conditioner broken? And he said, it’s been broken for months and the manager of the place didn’t want to tell his management because he knew it would be an expense and all that sort of stuff. And my dad said, I would have never known that the air conditioner was broken or that my employees were uncomfortable because of it had I not talked to this guy because management wasn’t going to tell me that and I thought that was really,  really important that I’ve always tried to make sure whether it’s a secretary or somebody who’s just a junior entry level person I’ve always taken a lot of time especially discover to mentor folks right out of college and people who are just starting off in their career and sometimes need advice even on what to wear to work w simple questions like that nobody tells you. And so I’ve always really tried to value—when I have younger people work for me I always make sure they know that I think their opinions just as important as anybody else’s opinion. I’ve found many people are shy about sharing their opinion. One of the things that I learned that I thought was super important is about understanding the people all the way down to the customer-facing level.

 

Jim Rembach:     I think that’s a great story. I love the part that you even shared about your own personal experience and making sure that you’re expanding yourself meaning that w you’re giving that coaching and that mentoring to the next generation and that’s something that I think we all have to focus in on continually doing. Even if we’re an emerging leader we’re a new leader there’s still—even yet a younger generation out there that could learn from you.

 

Dan Gingiss:      There always will be.

 

Jim Rembach:     Always. Alright, so when we start talking about this whole transition—talking about to the university, going to McDonald’s working—all these different things and even where you are today Dan Gingiss:      I’m sure there’s humps that you personally have had to get over that taught you a lot, can you share one of those stories with us so that we can learn? 

Yeah, so I was thinking about what story to share here and I wanted to pick one again that I’ve never shared on an interview because I thought it’d be interesting and hopefully people can learn something from it. So you mentioned in my intro that I went to business school that wasn’t really on my to-do list either. I was really enjoying my job at the Danbury Mint I was learning a lot I love the people I love the products and it was just fun. But there was a young woman in my apartment building who I actually went to college with and we became good friends in the apartment building and she decided to take the

GMAT. And so I said, alright well I’ll take the GMAT with you good idea, sometimes you just need a little nudge and so she’s the nudge, and I’m studying for the GMAT and for whatever reason and it’s always been a little strange to me because I’ve always enjoyed writing and spelling and grammar and all this but in standardized tests I always do better on the math side, not sure why, so I’m taking these practice tests on the GMAT and I’m crushing the math side like near-perfect scores on the math and I just have like ooover confidence on the math side and the verbal side I’m struggling and I just like I hate the reading comprehension stuff and reading these boring passages falling asleep and then not being able to answer the questions and all it is just a struggle and a struggle. And so my total score ends up pretty good very good but it’s miss weighted because it’s just so heavy math and then the verbal kind of picks up the rear. 

 

One of the things they tell you before you take the GMAT, I think this is true the LSAT and other standardized test is that there’s often test questions that don’t count they’re sort of testing for future versions of the test to see how people answer and how hard they are and whatever. So I go in on the day of the GMAT and the math side is first, I’m going in there with all this confidence, about halfway through I hit a question and the thing is just driving me crazy and it’s multiple choice so I’m sitting there calculating I cannot come up with even one of the answers in the multiple choice and I’m sitting but not only that I like I never lost my confidence I was like I’m come crushing this question. The question took me at least a half an hour and I don’t know to this day whether I got the question right I’m pretty confident that it was a test question that didn’t count because I’ve never seen this format before. Well, PS I didn’t actually finish the math section on the GMAT. And so we take the break and I’m like this is disaster this is like that was the section I was supposed to ace and now it’s the hardest section I’m dead I’m not going to business school this is over. 

 

And I just sort of sat there and—you know you mentioned the word bootstrapping it was like I just sort of sat down and I was like, well there’s really only one thing to do here I got to crush the verbal section I’ve never done it before her and it’s my Achilles heel but I got to just pick myself back up and I got to go do this. And I ended up having my best verbal score I’ve ever had and my total score while not as high as I would have liked it to be and not as high as my practice tests was high enough to get into Kellogg. And what I learned from that is that there’s usually a solution out there you just have to look for it and you have to be open-minded. And again you in my intro you mentioned that I’m often referred to as the idea man, I love throwing ideas up against the wall a lot of them don’t stick a lot of them are crazy and outlandish but I believe that that spurs on a different way of thinking that sometimes it’s just the nugget that you need to lead to that great idea. And I lean back on the GMAT story just because it was one of those scenarios where I was sitting there for a few minutes thinking I’m just doomed there’s no answer I’m finished and ultimately there was an answer it was that I had to dig a little bit deeper and I had to just spend a little bit more time paying a little bit more attention to those passages that were boring and read them and get them done. I think the fact that I was able to do it convinced me that this concept of always looking for a solution even when one doesn’t seem to exist is the right strategy.

 

Jim Rembach:     Well thanks for sharing that story and I’m glad you were able to regroup so darn quickly. I think that in itself is maybe a little bit hard wiring that came from the Gingis lineage somewhere. 

 

Dan Gingiss:      Maybe you’ll see. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Hopefully you’re passing that on to your kids. Exactly. Okay, so when I look at—the book, when I talk about your consultative work your speaking   you’re doing a lot of different things but if you talk about one goal, what would it?

 

Dan Gingiss:      Ironically the goal I would say is to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Because I do a lot of things on the side that are separate from my job but there are things that I’m interested in and passionate about I don’t know whether eventually I make a career out of that or not but one of the things I’ve also learned is you should follow your passion. Because when you’re doing things that are fun that you’re passionate about you do a good job with them and they make you happy. And that all said I was never one of those people to like write down a five or ten year plan for my career I don’t know why it just never felt comfortable to me, and so I still don’t have one. I think that my goal is to really figure out like, okay, I’m sort of in the middle of my career right now I’ve been working for twenty years and although early retirement definitely sounds great I’m not sure that it’s happening so that goal really is like, what do I want to do where I can show up to work every day and have fun and be passionate and love what I do? It’s like—I forget what the quote is, but basically, do what you love and love what you do, it is basically what I think and that’s my goal. 

 

Jim Rembach:     And the Fast Leader legion wishes you the very best. Alright, here we go Fast Leader legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Dan, the Hump Day Hoedown is a part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So, I’m going to ask you several questions but your job is to give us a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Dan Gingiss, are you ready to hoedown? 

 

Dan Gingiss:      I am ready. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Okay, what do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

 

Dan Gingiss:      I’m going to give you this link to include in your show notes there’s a great article recently called How Leaders Can Best Lead Leaders and it felt like it was talking to me in terms of the things that I want from a leader being empowered focusing on what leaders are good at believing in them to lead etc. I think the thing that would make me an even better leader is having the leadership to lead leaders both as myself but also the people above me. Finding the right people above me to help lead the leader that is Dan. 

 

Jim Rembach:     You had mentioned it before but I’ll ask again, what is the best leadership advice you’ve ever received?

 

Dan Gingiss:      I think the best leadership advice is that you can learn from anyone and everyone in the company plays a role an important role, whether they’re at the bottom of the org chart or all the way up at CEO and so make sure that you stay open-minded to learn from everyone. 

 

Jim Rembach:     What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

 

Dan Gingiss:      I think a sense of humor and a laid-back attitude especially at work. When work gets stressful it’s no fun and I always try to create a fun atmosphere for my teams and be laid-back enough to allow people to do their thing but also hold them accountable for accomplishments. 

 

Jim Rembach:     What is one of your best tools that helps lead you in business or life?

 

Dan Gingiss:      I would say people leadership. I consider it one of my strengths and I think if you talk to people that have worked for me at every job that I’ve had they would say that I was a one of the bosses they really liked. And again it’s about understanding that everybody’s different on a team everybody has different skills everybody likes to work differently but that everybody’s valuable and figuring out how to really take advantage of the strengths of the team. 

 

Jim Rembach:     What would be one book that you’d recommend to our legion it could be from any genre, of course we’re going to put a link to Social Customer Care on your show notes page as well. 

 

Yeah, I’d actually like to throw out my podcast partners new book, Joey Coleman wrote a book called, Never Lose a Customer Again, and as we’ve been talking about my passion for customer experience I think that this book does a great, great job of identifying some of the key reasons why customers or clients leave companies usually very early on in the relationship and how to stop that from happening. So I think it’s very practical guide good read and Joey’s just a great guy.

 

Jim Rembach:     Okay, Fast Leader legion you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/Dan Gingiss. Okay, Dan, this is my last hump day hump day hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity go back to the age 25 and you can take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything you can only choose one. What skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

 

Dan Gingiss:      Very quickly before I answer that question. I once went to bartending school and I just wanted to do it for fun but when I went to go get my first bartending job I ran into a problem which was that bartending jobs were really only available for people who had been bartenders before which begs the question of, well then how do you ever become a bartender? So the thing that I would take back is people leadership skills. Because that’s a very similar thing one of the toughest advancements in a company is to become a manager of people because usually they’re looking for people who have managed people and so how do you ever get to be a manager if you haven’t managed people? And so I was lucky enough to manage people on my very first job but I didn’t really know what I was doing I sort of went with what seemed right and I think now with 20 years of experience I would take that back and be an even better people leader.

 

Jim Rembach:     Dan it was not her to spend time with you today, can you please share with the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you?

 

Dan Gingiss:      Absolutely. I am very active on Twitter @DGingiss that’s you can also hit me on LinkedIn, my website is winning @social.com and definitely come listen to us on the Experience This Show, we have a great time it’s a super fun show and I promise you’ll learn something to be able to bring back to your business.

 

Dan Gingiss thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

 

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today for recaps, links, from every show special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

 

END OF AUDIO 

 

 

124: Mark Babbitt: I had to expose my feelings

Mark Babbitt Show Notes

Mark Babbitt was always the man behind the curtain. He was the engineer in back that figured out how to get stuff done. But then his role changed. He had to blog and be vulnerable. He had to take a stand. As the guy who would vomit before public speaking. Mark had to get over the hump fast.

Mark was born in the Eugene area of Oregon. His parents, who have been married for nearly 60 years now, raised him, his older sister and younger brother, in a series or lumber towns throughout Oregon and Northern California.

Mark has always had an entrepreneurial spirit – his parents will tell you he’s been an entrepreneur since the age of 8 – he’s been blessed to have a diverse career path. He joined the US Air Force at 17. He spent 8+ in Silicon Valley leveraging his skills as an engineer in the semi-conductor industry.

He returned to his entrepreneurial roots by running an advertising agency for high-tech companies from 1990 to 1999. He then dove head first into the start-up world in 2000, and – after four start-ups and a fifth on the way – he hasn’t looked back.

Throughout, his one constant has always been coaching and mentoring. He’s coached football, basketball and baseball at every level – from t-ball and rec league to high school and national programs. Coaching and working with our future leaders keeps him grounded, no matter where life seems to take him.

When people think about Mark, he hopes they see one thing more than any other: a mentor. He wants to be known for making a difference, one young life at a time.

His tombstone will read simply: “Kids and dogs loved him.”

Mark currently serves as CEO and Founder of YouTern – a site that enables college students, recent graduates and young professionals to find their first or next internship or job.

He’s also President of Switch+Shift, a leadership community dedicated to helping leaders embrace the Social Age while leaving Industrial Age “best practices” behind.

He serves as CMO of ForwardHeroes.org, a community that helps U.S. military veterans and their families’ transition successfully into civilian careers.

Mark contributes to Huffington Post, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Monster, and many other publications. He the co-authored A World Gone Social: How Companies Must Adapt to Survive – an Top 10 Amazon best-seller in six business categories.

He’s also been listed by Inc.com as a “Top 100 Leadership Speaker.” His speaking engagements have taken him all over the world, from Hong Kong to Europe and to 48 out of our 50 United States.

Mark currently lives in the mountains of Colorado between Denver and Colorado Springs. He and his wife Deb have raised 5 children, ages 29 to 9. They have two grand-daughters, ages 8 and 1. And they have two more grandkids on the way!

They also share their home with two other children: a chocolate lab named Cinder and a lab-retriever mix named Cash.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @MarkSBabbitt and get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“A blue unicorn is a social leader; one who listens first and talks second.” -Mark Babbitt Click to Tweet

“Boomer, white males are our biggest barriers to success.” -Mark Babbitt Click to Tweet 

“Find somebody you love and teach them everything you know.” -Mark Babbitt Click to Tweet 

“Invest in your succession plan.” -Mark Babbitt Click to Tweet 

“Invest in the person you trust and have affection for.” -Mark Babbitt Click to Tweet 

“Change is the direct result of insurmountable market pressure.” -Mark Babbitt Click to Tweet 

“Social media is an amplifier of what we’re already doing.” -Mark Babbitt Click to Tweet 

“We’re not giving up, we’re not quitting, what’s the pivot?” -Mark Babbitt Click to Tweet 

“Fall down 7 times, get up 8.” -Mark Babbitt Click to Tweet 

“We have to surround ourselves with people that want better.” -Mark Babbitt Click to Tweet 

“Whatever you are, you’ve got to own it.” -Mark Babbitt Click to Tweet 

“You can’t be the next anybody else.” -Mark Babbitt Click to Tweet 

“Whatever your value proposition is, you have to own it, bottle it, and sell it.” -Mark Babbitt Click to Tweet 

“You’ve got to be what you are and sell what you are.” -Mark Babbitt Click to Tweet 

“If you’re going to amplify something, amplify integrity and trust.” -Mark Babbitt Click to Tweet 

“Active listening is expected in the social world.” -Mark Babbitt Click to Tweet 

“Active listening is the most in demand soft skill now.” -Mark Babbitt Click to Tweet 

Hump to Get Over

Mark Babbitt was always the man behind the curtain. He was the engineer in back that figured out how to get stuff done. But then his role changed. He had to blog and be vulnerable. He had to take a stand. As the guy who would vomit before public speaking. Mark had to get over the hump fast.

Advice for others

Embrace your uniqueness and amplify it on social media.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

I suck at delegating. I need to get way better at that.

Best Leadership Advice Received

Be yourself, be unique.

Secret to Success

I’m a workaholic, I work forever.

Best tools that helps in Business or Life

Social media.

Recommended Reading

A World Gone Social: How Companies Must Adapt to Survive (Agency/Distributed)

In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies

Contacting Mark

Email: mark [at] youturn.com

Website: http://www.youtern.com/

Website: http://switchandshift.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marksbabbitt/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkSBabbitt

Resources and Show Mentions

54 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies List: Emotional Intelligence has proven to be the right kind of intelligence to have if you want to move onward and upward faster. Get your free list today.

 

Show Transcript: 

Click to access edited transcript

124: Mark Babbitt: I had to expose my feelings

Intro Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

 

Need a powerful and entertaining way to ignite your next conference, retreat or team-building session? My keynote don’t include magic but they do have the power to help your attendees take a leap forward by putting emotional intelligence into their employee engagement, customer engagement and customer centric leadership practices. So bring the infotainment creativity the Fast Leader show to your next event and I’ll your attendees get over the hump now. Go to beyondmorale.com/speaking to learn more. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay Fast Leader Legion, today I’m excited because we have someone on the show who really gives us some really important information in today’s world that will make a big impact to no matter where you’re headed. Mark Babbitt was born in the Eugene area of Oregon. His parents who have been married for nearly 60 years now raised him, his older sister, and younger brother in a series of lumber towns throughout Oregon and Northern California. Mark has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. His parents will tell you that he’s even been an entrepreneur since the age of 8. He has been blessed to have a diverse career path. He joined the US Air Force at 17. He spent eight years in Silicon Valley leveraging his skills as an engineer in the semiconductor industry. He returned to his entrepreneurial roots by running an advertising agency for high-tech companies from 1990 to 1999 and he then go headfirst into the startup world in 2000.

 

After four startups and now on his fifth he hasn’t looked back. Throughout his one constant he’s always been coaching and mentoring. He’s coached football, basketball, baseball at every level from t-ball, reck league, to high school sports and national programs. Coaching and working with our future Leaders keeps him grounded no matter where life seems to take him. When people think about Mark, he hopes they see one thing more than any other, he’s a mentor. He wants to be known for making a difference one young life at a time. His tombstone will read simply, “Kids and Dogs loved him.” Mark currently serves as CEO and founder of YouTern a site that enables college students, recent graduates, and young professionals to find their first and next internship or job.

 

He’s also the president of Switch shift a leadership, a leadership community dedicated to helping leaders embrace the social age while living in the Industrial Age best practices behind. 

 

He serves as the CMO of forwardheroes.org, a community that helps the US military veterans and their families’ transition successfully into civilian careers. Mark contributes to Huffington Post, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Monster and many other publications. He’s the co-author of A World Gone Social – How Companies Must Adapt to Survive a top ten Amazon bestseller and six business categories. He’s also been listed by Inc. as a top 100 leadership speaker. Mark currently lives in the mountains of Colorado between Denver and Colorado Springs. He and his wife Deb have raised five children ages 29 and 9 and they have two granddaughters ages 8 and 1 and they have two more grandkids on the way. They also share their home with two other children a chocolate lab named Cinder and a lab-retriever named Cash. Mark Babbit, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

 

Mark Babbit:  After that long bio I’d better be. 

 

Jim Rembach:   You’ve got to deliver now man. 

 

Mark Babbit:  No pressure.

 

Now given our Legion a little bit about you but can you tell what your current passion is so that we get to know even better. 

 

Mark Babbit:  The current passion remains helping others and giving back. When you’ve had a couple of nice successful startups it isn’t about the money anymore and so I’m in a great position to serve as a mentor and a coach and not have to charge money for it and it’s a 

 

Jim Rembach:   That is a great place to be and I think we can all appreciate getting through there at some point. I always say that I keep applying for that retired job but they’re not hiring me.

 

Mark Babbit:  Who’s in control of that Jim? You or them? 

 

Jim Rembach:   That’s a great point. I was a sharing off mic and I actually shared with a couple folks reading through–and I believe me that’s a lot to absorb—but a World Gone Social and all of the content that you guys have in here, I think your share is like , 39,000 words I mean it’s—

 

Mark Babbit:  Yeah, 93,000 words.

 

Jim Rembach:   93,000, I’m sorry. And, words it’s just so much to cover but there was one thing that kind of stood out for me and you even sign the book that you sent to me, and I really appreciate that. But you said ”Jim thanks for being a blue unicorn.” What is that?

 

Mark Babbit:  A blue unicorn, Jim, is that leader who has left everything he or she knows behind about Industrial Age leadership. They’ve forgotten that they were trained to be loud and decisive and autocratic and they have all the answers. A blue unicorn is a social leader one who listens first talks second, one who collects all the wisdom in the room before making a decision, one who mentors others and—sure he believes an accountability in its results-driven but it’s supportive accountability and it’s team-based results it’s just it’s just a much different way to lead in in today’s economy and I dare to say that we’re being forced into in a lot of ways. Let’s go back and really kind of point and get a little bit more specific on what you talked about the Industrial Age styles and things like that. Taylor-ism is a particular method of management that really started with the Industrial Age and Frederick Taylor really dictated a lot of the management styles and practices that many of our boomers were developed in and mentored and apprenticed under and there’s a lot of carryover effect in that. So, when you start talking about Taylor-ism and being able to help organizations make that conversion where you find in the most challenged? 

 

Jim Rembach:   Old white guys, right. I mean seriously boomer white males are our biggest barrier to success because of everything you just said. In business school, undergraduate work, up through their mentors, through their peers, through their parents, usually their fathers back then, they learned one way to lead and that was the general pattern style. Again I have to have all the answers, I have to be the loudest, I have to give the reason people reason to take the hill and I’m going to tell them what that reason is, I’m not going to ask them their reason I’m going to control the messaging, I’m going to tell them what’s best for them and if they don’t like it I’ll just go find somebody else to replace them. We were just cogs in the machine under Taylor-ism and that’s changed so much now Jim.

 

Mark Babbit:  Even when you start talking about senior level positions and I don’t care what size of organization or and it’s of all types. Whether it’s Fortune, whether it’s even mid-market or even some of your smaller businesses there’s still a lot of that old Taylor-ism mentality that’s running those. And there’s a statistic that I keep coming across and sharing with folks is that even in the US when you start thinking about small businesses there’s literally millions of businesses that now will become available either for purchase or acquisition or merger because of these old white guys just retired and there’s no one to pass it down to. How do we get those folks to create and have a different legacy for their organizations so that those businesses do continue?

 

Jim Rembach:   That’s a great question Jim and I’ll tell you the answer. The answer is probably simple than people might imagine. Find somebody you love and teach them everything you know. Invest in your succession plan. Invest in the person who you trust and have enough affection for that you will give up control to them. But that’s the hard part, Jim, that last part and it’s not just small businesses, corporate America too. Again those are white guys they don’t want to give up control, they don’t want to let go. This is their life, this is how they measure themselves this is what they are and it’s hard to give all that up. But man, the people who are doing it are just doing amazing work and their legacy turns overnight. Their legacy goes from—“He’s a good businessmen, got a little grumpy when he got old but sad to see him go to I love that guy, he taught me everything I know, I’m the person I am today because of her.” What a difference that makes in your life and the people who follow you.

 

Mark Babbit:   And that is true. Now, I am somebody who—I’m an X’ers, right? And even when you look at the numbers in regards to boomers – X’ers – Millennial’s, there’s just like this huge void of people. 

 

Jim Rembach:   You’re in the minority man. You are. 

 

Mark Babbit:   Tremendous minority. And so even when you start thinking about transitioning and turning over leadership it’s difficult. But I’m also one of those people that man when change needs to occur I kind of hold on to it and I just try to drive it as much as I can and it sometimes hasn’t served me well because I get impatient with it. But I’m sitting in a position, say, I’m in we’re in an organization I have that old white guy who’s a top of me who’s really just doing that Taylor-ism thing to me, I can’t stand it anymore but I know that in a couple years he won’t be around. How can I survive?

 

Jim Rembach:   Well, managing up is a big part of this Jim, that’s so hard. It’s exhausting. Now here’s where the social age can be our friend though because has changed so much in the last decade. That that old white guys sitting up on top of you is probably dying for new information. He’s looking around he’s saying, “Boy, we’re not as competitive as we used to be our numbers aren’t as big as they once were. That new company that’s always on that on that damn Facebook all the time with those kids, they doing good and I’m not. The first line in our book is change is the direct result of insurmountable market pressure. And that old white guy at one point he’s going to look at you and go. Man, what are we doing wrong? What are we doing well? I want to hear that too. What am I doing wrong right now? What are we doing wrong? And that’s where an eXer or a millennial or a Gen Z can walk up and go. You know what? Man, we’d be great if we mind reviews on Yelp? And we answer people on TripAdvisor and we got on social media and turn our customers into brand ambassadors? We’d start getting ahead. So, all of these digital native skills all of these things that might come more natural on a digital or social level to the eXers and Millennials those are white guys they’re just dying to know that. And, “Yeah, they’re going to be a little slow to pick up on it but once they do, wow! It’s their shudder. 

 

Mark Babbit:  And those are some really important points. And as you were talking I started thinking about something that would really be an asset or part of the toolkit for that person who wants to be able to initiate those changes. For it to be less threatening to that old white guy it’s really important to talk about  the legacy that got you to where you are because that’s what that old guy wants to hold on to. We are this and this is who we are and this is what got us here and being able to preserve that. In the area of appreciative inquiry they talk about finding your power core and not getting too far away from your identity and who you are because often that’s not a path that can be supported by the organization because it’s just too far left or too far right but it’s holding on to that power core. How do you convey or help folks to be able to find that power core and use it as part of that influence?

 

Jim Rembach:   Well, here’s the differentiator for that. You do have to stay within your core business and you do have to stick with what got you there or that white guys going to—no, no, too much too soon, I can’t do this. So here are the key words Social digital is an amplifier of what we’re already doing. It doesn’t change what we’re doing it lets the world know what we do really well. So, if we build a really good product or if we provide exceptional service we’re going to get others to talk about us on digital and social media and amplify what we’re already doing. We’re going to gain more customers by using a digital blow horn and when you explain it like that, that old white guy goes—okay, you know what, as long as I don’t have to push the buttons, I’m good with this. 

 

And Jim, I was in this position when we launched YouTern we were going to be a BB service bureau to University Career Centers and we were going to help the career centers help their students. Six weeks before we launched the recession had hit every career center on the planet was having layoffs and budget cutbacks they had no money to pay but we’d already invested a million dollars in our startup, it’s self-funded and we had no place to go. So, six weeks before we launched, I’d looked at my team and said, “Now what? What’s the pivot? We’re not giving up we’re not quitting what’s the pivot? Monday morning one of my young guys came in and said, “Mark, we got this, we’re going to go blog and we’re going to jump on social media and we’re going to be so damn good at what we do that everybody starts talking about us we won’t have to advertise. We won’t have to generate revenue through traditional means, all word-of-mouth. We dubbed that to testimonial economy where you do become so good, at not just what you do but amplifying what you do that other people become your change champions, other people become your brand ambassadors. And that’s how we built three communities now. It’s an amazing transition that’s so far distance from the Industrial Age. It’s kind of earth-shattering and it blew me away. I look at young Joe—you are crazy that’s a dumbest thing I have ever heard in my life. It wasn’t dumb it was huge. It turned out he was brilliant and he save our company and helped launched two more.

 

Mark Babbit:  Kudos to you for letting him move forward and that blog. 

 

Jim Rembach:   It took months, Jim. It took months to get this old white guy on social media. But once I on I was hooked. What we’re talking about here is definitely filled with tons of emotion and need for focus.  One of the ways that we look at that for the show is through the quotes that guests share with us. Is there a quote or two that you can share with us that will help? 

 

Mark Babbit:  There is. I was in the military and I and I was stationed in Okinawa and there was a sign in Japanese above my bed while I was there. For a long time it just bothered me that I didn’t know what that was. After several weeks I finally asked the guy at BQ what that meant. He said, in English it basically means, “Fall down seven times, get up eight” and I was, I don’t know 18 at that time and I thought that is just brilliant, so simple and so brilliant, so, that’s kind of been my thing ever since. And then through all my trials and tribulations, several start-ups some successes some fails some great aspects of my career some not-so-great a very stressful divorce at one point when I became a single dad with full custody of four kids I develop my own mantra. It started on social media and then eventually went to my life and it goes like this Jim, “No trolls, drama queens or divas, no takers, no fakers, no assholes” and that’s the mantra I live by now. If somebody’s not contributing positively to my life and those people I care about I’m not going to spend much time with them. We have to surround ourselves with people who wants better and that’s my goal.

 

Jim Rembach:   I appreciate your sharing that. A lot of people would probably say, that’s not very compassionate when you say there’s some people need to be cut out, but that’s reality.

 

Mark Babbit:  Oh, especially in the social age because we get inundated with the self-promoters and the spammers and the askhole. Askholes is that person who keeps asking and asking and asking something of you but never gives back, that’s an emotional, financial, physical drain. And we’re just bombarded by those people all the time now so we have to be very careful we have to be very choosy about who we spend time with and who we invests time with.

 

Jim Rembach:   And all of that means that we have humps that we have to get over in order to be able to move forward faster. Is there time where you can share a story when you’ve had to get over the hump?

 

Mark Babbit:   Well, I think the pivot that I already talked about was certainly a big one but I think for me learning how to be the guy out in front was a big deal. When we launched YouTern I have in my corporate world and even in my advertising agency I was always the man behind the curtain. I didn’t have to be on front I didn’t do interviews I didn’t have to public speaking I was the engineer who sat in the back and figure out how to get stuff done and that was my role. And also with YouTern I have to blog, I have to write I had to be vulnerable I had to expose my feelings I had to take a stand and that’s a different way to think for those of us. Especially an introvert like I am, not an easy thing to get over, especially public speaking I was the guy who would literally throw up before I had to go on stage. To sort of conquer that and to break through some of those fears and those barriers to success it’s been a fulfilling journey but it hasn’t been easy.

 

Jim Rembach:   So when you started thinking about being able to move from the back stage to the front stage, if you were to give people a particular piece of advice in order to help them do that flip, what would it be?

 

Mark Babbit:  Own it. Whatever it is whatever you are, you got to own it. Everybody wants to be the next Gary Vee, everybody wants—you know, long time ago everybody wanted to be the next Stephen Covey, right? No, you can’t be the next anybody else. Whatever it is you do, whatever your value proposition is you got to own it bottle it and sell it. And if you’re a little quirky, if you’re a little different, if you don’t do everything perfectly according to Toastmasters or the best journalists on the planet then then so be it, but you got to what you are and you have to sell what you are. 

 

Jim Rembach:   I think that’s a really important point that you bring up because I was just having this conversation with another guest for different episode and we were talking about the uniqueness and the difference, and I said, well, that’s actually what you want to embrace, you don’t want to fall in line with everybody else because then you just look like everybody else. So, that quirkiness and those types of things is what you do need—talking about using your word “amplify”.

 

Mark Babbit:   Right, that’s it exactly. What do you want to amplify? Do you want to amplify that you have a unique message and a unique style and passion for what you do? Or do you want to amplify that you’re a me too play and that you’ll sacrifice your integrity to make a buck or that just spam a you know what out of everybody just to help your conversion numbers. You’re going to amplify something, amplify integrity, amplify trust, amplify empathy, and amplify something good. 

 

Jim Rembach:   Exactly. When you start thinking about YouTern, the book, speaking, coaching because actually we had a particular time that we were supposed to meet earlier and you had a client who requested you, kids, dogs, wife, got all these things going on what’s one of your goals?

 

Mark Babbit:  My goal remains the same. My goal is if I can get up every day without the alarm and I know that I help somebody or a group of people meet their goals, I’m good—that and catching three pound trout once in a while, I’m good. I meant to point my life—I live on five acres in the woods up in Colorado with those dogs with the kids with three grandkids and one on the way, it changed a week ago Jim since we’ve sent that bio to you.

 

Jim Rembach:   Awesome. 

 

Mark Babbit:  As long as they come visit once a while I’m good. So, my goals remain the same. That doesn’t mean I don’t have personal things I’m working on, I still want to be a better speaker, I want to finish my second book which I’m working on right now. I want to have a unique voice, I want to want to make my presence known but mostly I want to I want to conquer the biggest fear that I have and that is someday I won’t be relevant, I won’t matter anymore and that’s everything I do is to that goal. If I ever woke up and I had just stopped being relevant that would probably be like my worst nightmare. 

 

Jim Rembach:   And the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor: 

The number one thing that contributes to customer loyalty is emotions. So, move onward and upward faster by gaining significantly deeper insight and understanding of your customer journey and personas with emotional intelligence. With your empathy mapping workshop you’ll learn how to evoke and influence the right customer emotions that generate improved customer loyalty and reduce your cost to operate. Get over your emotional hump now by going to Empathymapping.com to learn more.

Alright, here we go Fast Leader Legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Mark, the Hump Day Hoedown is that part of our show where you give us good insights fast. I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet read the responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Mark Babbit are you ready hoedown? 

 

Mark Babbit:  I am ready. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Alright. What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

 

Mark Babbit:  I suck at delegating. I need to get way better at them. 

 

Jim Rembach:   What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

 

Mark Babbit:  Get right back to what we are, be yourself, be unique.

 

Jim Rembach:   What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

 

Mark Babbit:  I’m a workaholic. I work forever but I love what I do so it doesn’t feel like work.

 

Jim Rembach:   What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

 

Mark Babbit:  Now it’s social media. I know it sounds crazy for an old white guy to say that but I couldn’t live without that.

 

Jim Rembach: Okay, Mark. What would be one book that you’d recommend to our listeners it could be from any genre. Of course well put a link to you—

 

Mark Babbit:  The first business book I ever read still the most impactful Jim that’s, In Search of Excellence.

 

Jim Rembach:   Okay, Fast Leader listeners you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/markbabbit. Well also have a link to Mark’s book, The World Gone Social-How Companies Must Adapts to Survive, he wrote with Ted Coine. Okay Mark, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age 25 and you’ve been given the knowledge and skills that you have now and you can take them back with you. But you can’t take everything back you can only choose just one, what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

 

Mark Babbit:  I would take back—no, I would delete arrogance. As a young engineer I thought I knew everything. As a 25-year-old, Oh! My god I thought I was just on top of the world and I didn’t listen I was terrible. I was just terrible that’s the one thing I would change. Active listening is a skill that comes with age perhaps but the more we talk about it—I think more people will know that it’s expected of them now in the social world we can’t talk and listen at the same time and you can’t listen just to figure out what you’re going to say next. Active listening is probably the most in-demand soft skill in the world now and I didn’t have that at 25. And man, if I could change that I sure would.

 

Jim Rembach:  Mark, it was an honor to spend time with you today can you please share with the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you? 

 

Mark Babbit:  I still answer my own emails and my own Twitter stuff. At social media—mark@youtern.com and you can find me on Twitter, marksbabbitt.

 

Jim Rembach:   Mark Babbitt thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. 

 

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers, and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.

 

END OF AUDIO

 

 

105: Charles Vogl: I would cry at night from exhaustion and stress

Charles Vogl Show Notes

Charles Vogl served in the US Peace Corps in Northern Zambia. In a place very foreign to him than what he knew in Southern California. Charles lived in a mud hut with a grass roof and a mud floor. And he learned a cherished lesson of how the bravery of others can change people’s lives.

Charles was born and raised in Orange County, California with a younger brother and sister. They spent a lot of time in Honolulu, Hawaii visiting his mother’s family.

A commitment to making a difference has always been a crucial part of Charles’ life. In his early 20s, he volunteered full time at a homeless shelter in Santa Ana, California, before entering the United States Peace Corps and relocating to northern Zambia. There, he witnessed inspirational community in the face of extreme poverty, as those with very little shared with those who had even less.

Charles then moved to New York City to become a filmmaker, producing documentaries including the 2006 documentary film, “New Year Baby,” which chronicled the lives of Cambodian genocide survivors becoming Americans and won numerous honors including Amnesty International’s prestigious “Movies That Matter” award. At the same time, he also volunteered as a secret labor organizer, working to empower abused workers in the restaurant industry.

Charles received his B.S. from the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California and a Master of Divinity at Yale University. A regular guest lecturer at several Yale departments, his first book The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging was recently published by Berrett-Koehler. Building on the concept that community and belonging can be developed through time-tested ideas and rituals, The Art of Community is a guide to creating and fostering meaningful communities that benefit individuals and humanity as a whole.

An author and executive consultant, Charles Vogl helps leaders in technology, finance, media, government, and social good organizations become more effective in creating meaningful change. Using principles drawn from more than 3000 years of community and spiritual tradition, he teaches others how to inspire powerful connections in critical relationships, in order to produce the kind of change that impacts generations.

Charles includes surviving a plane crash, a spitting cobra attack, and acute malaria (all in one year) among his life-changing experiences.

Charles currently lives in Oakland, California, with his wife Socheata.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @charlesvogl to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“Personal networks decreased by two-thirds in the last two generations.” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet

“A community is people together that care about the welfare of one another.” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

“I’m not convinced the thousand people in your social network care about your welfare.” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

“Who are your 3am friends that you can call and they’ll take action?” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

“Who are the people in your life who know that you’re their 3am friend?” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

“When we’re vulnerable is often when we most need help.” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

“When people are vulnerable with us we’re most inspired to offer support.” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

“It’s hard to support institutions that are not sharing your values.” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

“There are ancient concepts that we can use to build relationships.” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

“Typically we come together in communities because of shared values.” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

“The authentic brands are messaging around values.” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

“Just saying a group is a community doesn’t make it so.” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

“To know who is inside your community you have to have some boundaries.” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

“I don’t really care about the values on your website.” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

“The stories that people tell help to reveal their real values.” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

“In healthy communities they’re providing every member a way to grow.” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

“It’s the relationships with the people I know that really matter.” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

“Every conversation matters even if it doesn’t look like it’s changing the world while it happens.” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

“Success in the marketplace involves creating a place where people know they belong.” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

“Americans are seemingly desperate to connect more.” -Charles Vogl Click to Tweet 

Hump to Get Over

Charles Vogl served in the US Peace Corps in Northern Zambia. In a place very foreign to him than what he knew in Southern California. Charles lived in a mud hut with a grass roof and a mud floor. And he learned a cherished lesson of how the bravery of others can change people’s lives.

Advice for others

Put yourself where the action is happening. Show up where I need to be.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

I’m afraid of reaching out to people that are uninterested in me, making phone calls that people don’t want, of sharing myself in a way that people record me and have evidence of my silliness for years to come. And when I finally get over that I’m not that big a deal and that what I’m out to do is bigger than my ego I’ll definitely be more effective.

Best Leadership Advice Received

To put my body where the action is happening. Emails don’t count. Phone calls don’t count. Letters don’t count. To actually show up where I need to be.

Secret to Success

I remind myself throughout the day to not strive. If my vision is bold enough and my actions are consistent enough success as I’ve defined it will come.

Best tools that helps in Business or Life

Acknowledging the people around me that make a profound difference for me – support me and hold me up. And making sure I’m communicating how important they are to me in my life.

Recommended Reading

The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

The Trusted Advisor

Contacting Charles

Website: http://www.charlesvogl.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesvogl

Twitter: https://twitter.com/charlesvogl

Resources and Show Mentions

54 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies List: Emotional Intelligence has proven to be the right kind of intelligence to have if you want to move onward and upward faster. Get your free list today.

 

Show Transcript: 

Click to access edited transcript

105: Charles Vogl: I would cry at night from exhaustion and stress

 

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we uncover the leadership like hat that help you to experience, break out performance faster and rocket to success. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

Need a powerful and entertaining way to ignite your next conference, retreat or team-building session? My keynote don’t include magic but they do have the power to help your attendees take a leap forward by putting emotional intelligence into their employee engagement, customer engagement and customer centric leadership practices. So bring the infotainment creativity the Fast Leader show to your next event and I’ll help your attendees get over the hump now. Go to beyondmorale.com/speaking to learn more.

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, Fast Leader legion, today I’m excited because the person I have on the show has the opportunity to share with us things that can impact the employee experience, the customer experience and your leadership skills and help you move forward faster. Charles Vogl was born and raised in Orange County, California with a younger brother and sister but spend a lot of time in Honolulu, Hawaii visiting his mother’s family. A commitment to making a difference has always been a crucial part of Charles’s life. In his early 20’s he volunteered full-time at a homeless shelter in Santa Ana, California before entering the United States Peace Corps and relocating to Northern Zambia. There he witnessed inspirational community in the face of extreme poverty as those with very little shared with those who had even less.  Charles then move to New York City to become a filmmaker producing documentaries including the 2006 documentary film New Year Baby which chronicled the lives of Cambodian genocide survivors as they became Americans. It won numerous awards including Amnesty International’s Prestige–Movies That Matter at the same time he also volunteered as a secret labor organizer working to empower abuse workers in the restaurant industry. 

 

Charles received his BS from Annenberg School at the University of Southern California and a Master of Divinity at Yale University. A regular guest lecturer at several Yale departments, his first book the Art of Community Seven Principles for Belonging was recently published by Berrett-Koehler building on the concept that community and belonging can be developed through time-tested ideas and rituals. The art of community is a guide to creating and fostering meaningful communities that benefit individuals and humanity as a whole. An author, an executive consultant, Charles Vogl helps leaders in technology, finance, media, government and social good organizations to become more effective in creating meaningful change.

 

Using principles drawn from more than 3000 years of community and spiritual tradition he teaches others how to inspire powerful connections and critical relationships in order to produce the kind of change that impacts generations. Charles includes surviving a plane crash, a spitting cobra attack and acute malaria all in one year among his life’s challenging experiences. Charles currently lives in Oakland, California with his wife Socheata. Charles Vogl, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

 

Charles Vogl:    I’m the one to be here, let’s take on the hump. 

 

Jim Rembach:    I appreciate it. Now I’ve given our legion a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better.

 

Charles Vogl:    My current passion is helping American who may be living in the most lonely generation in American history possibly create the connection to make life rich. And I’ve been shocked to find out how many of us, you, have felt or seemed lonely and are really unaware how investors sell or create this niche around us that make our life rich and give it meaning. 

 

Jim Rembach:    I had the opportunity to actually see you speak and I found a couple of statistics that you presented to be quite shocking. One of them had to do with—that our personal networks have decreased by a third in the last two generations. Yet when we think about social, social media, social platforms all of that you would not get that perception. How was that such a false perception in regards to social connectivity versus reality?

 

Charles Vogl:    I’m glad you brought that up. It’s important to distinguish people that we can find information about and people who are in our community. And for the purposes of my work, I define community as people together who care about the welfare of one another. And for those of us who have over 1,000 friends in the social networks, I’m not convinced that all thousands of those people care day-to-day about my welfare and certainly I’m not taking time to care about their welfare every day or even every week. And so while there may be people we can connect with but hard to say that they are really in the community. One the short hand that I use in the book just to help us understand who our personal community might be are the people who I call create and friend, the term coined by one of my friend while I was in grad school and he was referring to the friends that we can call at 3 a.m. and we’re confident that they will pick up and that when they pick up they’ll take action if that’s what they needed to do. And so one of the questions I ask the leader they work with is, who are your 3 a.m. friends that you can call? But even more importantly who are the people in your life who know that you’re their 3 a.m. friend? And if in fact they call you at 3 a. m. you’ll be glad that they did and you’ll take action when the phone drop. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Now that’s a very interesting more than just concept that you bring up. I had a discussion with one of my daughters’ friend’s parents and she was talking about something that you were just referring to in regards to church friends and school friends for her daughter. And she was saying how when you think about those conversations that are so intimate and so close to you that most people don’t have those conversations that are young with their school friends they will have them with their church friends. We start talking about the community component we have a situation in our society where less and less people are going to church and kids participating in church. Is that part of what’s contributing to this whole societal shift and having smaller communities and networks?

 

Charles Vogl:    It’s part of it. We know that Americans are leaving churches and synagogues as they did it in 1970, still 8 out of 10 Americans as I understand it, still clinging identification with the institution but they’re not attending as they did a generation ago. And churches and synagogue and other institution around faith are really great place to meet people who share value and then as you mentioned have conversations consistent with that and to build a relationships that allow us to (6:39 inaudible) vulnerabilities. And when we’re vulnerable it’s often mostly we help or want help and there are really vulnerable with us it’s often we’re most inspired to open (6:49 inaudible) so, definitely institutions like churches are one of the reason. But Americans are leaving churches often for a really good reason and what I mean by that is the churches are not representing the values of their generation or their time. And it’s hard to say that someone continued to support institution or (7:09 inaudible) but not sharing their values. What we’re seeing though is we’re not seeing other institution providing a vatable in someone’s life. And it is not important that any institution does that but what we can acknowledge is there was relationship are being formed in that way. And so one of the things that I talk about is there are concepts, ancient concepts that we can use in our life be that in our family, at school, in a patrician or even just among friends such that we can build those relationship using those concepts outside of the same institution that’s creating structure. 

 

Jim Rembach:    I think for me when I had the opportunity to learn more and more about The Art of Community and The Seven Principles for Belonging is that I started seeing connections with work. I started seeing connections with how the marketplace or let’s just say people within our society look to brands for some of that intimacy and closeness and emotional connection that maybe again we didn’t couple of decades ago and now whole customer experience is taking on a whole different meaning than it has in the past. So when you start thinking about being able to leverage what the work that you’ve done, how can that company really do that wherefore their employees and that really affect their culture?

 

Charles Vogl:    Yeah, this is the fascinating area. So for the purposes of my work, I define a community as a group of people who care about one another’s welfare and typically come together in our community because there’s some shared values. We may not all share all of the same value but there are some values that we share. And you can imagine, it’ll be very hard to see people and care about if there is no value. And I think one of the reasons you’re bringing up the brand issue, why people turn to the brand, maybe for some kind of envy or perception they’re part of a bigger is, the business get brand, hopefully authentic brand are really messaging around value. There may be perception that if you meet other people or could just pinning that brand they’re sharing their value. I can’t say how much people who are promoting that brand or buying from that brand are going to help you out in your life when you are in crises but maybe that could be a start a shared value. As far as your workplace goes and one things I tell leaders if you’re going to work with me is that if the community is a group of people who care about one another’s welfare. If you have a team or building a team and you want everyone in that team to care about the success and failures of other people on that team you’re building community if you know or felt. And the way some managers handle that they just declare we’re community and then that’s the end of it and I think we all know that kind of silly. And just saying a group is a community doesn’t make it so. And that’s why I’ve written a book that share some concept like boundary concept and a rain concept and a ritual concept so that if someone who want to get group of people who share some values and make them into a community that really cares about the welfare of one another there’s some leverage they can pull to get there. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Also I think something that stood out to me that was quite interesting especially when you start talking about the workplace and it could even be connected with brands. You started talking about the—everything or nothing conundrum, what is that? 

 

Charles Vogl:    We’ve talked with leaders on building community one of the concepts I see that is really important is to have a boundary. And I say it’s important because if we look at communities over several thousand years that have faced existential threat. So, you see communities in India, obviously the Jewish tribes when we look at communities that are faced existential threat and they’ve been able to stay together often for over a thousand year it’s very clear whose inside and outside so that we know that if someone’s under threat we know when are we going to extend our resources go save that person or not and I often get pushed back they feel boundaries are bad anytime you’re excluding anybody it’s bad. And one of the things that I point out that if you want to build a strong community there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you don’t know who’s in your community it’s very hard to invest in creating stronger relationships within that community because you don’t know who’s on the inside. And to know who’s on the inside there needs to be some kind of boundary. 

 

We can put that around let’s that we go along with the statement that the boundaries are bad and communities should have no boundary. We’ll if I go around the world then I start meeting people and you have no boundary in your community I can’t tell the difference between no community and people in your community because everybody I talk to should be or is in fact in your community and communities are bounded by values. One of the questions I can ask these leaders, is there anybody in the world who doesn’t share the values that someone needs to have to be in your community? Anybody. And the answer is there’s one person, well then there is some boundary even if it’s a very large one. And the way that we prevent ourselves from being jerk to keep people out of our community is once we figure out what are the value to be in our community. 

 

So, in my book I write about a dinner community that we had in Connecticut and graduate school? If someone didn’t value meeting strangers, sharing an uninterrupted meal for four hours sharing about themselves they shouldn’t be in our community. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to spend their evening dancing or karaoke, that’s just not what we do that. So, if we make sure that there’s an access point through the boundary for people who are valued as we are valued, then we can think of the boundary less about keeping people out. People don’t have dinner over long hours with stranger but how do we keep the inside safe and once we know that there’s a boundary there for people to be safe now we can make the decisions consistent with we led in and how we led and how we don’t. And will help the commuter constantly letting people in or inviting in and if that’s how you stay relevant in the world.

 

Jim Rembach:    I think you also shared the word but you also within your book shared a lot about this whole piece associated with values. And I’ve talked with previous guests about our inability to be able to identify our values because we just don’t go through that discovery process, it’s not something that just kind of comes to us as some type of divine or a happenstance or piece of luck, we have to intentionally go through to be able to identify our values so that we can seek out those communities because otherwise we don’t even know where we belong if we find one.

 

Charles Vogl:    Right. 

 

Jim Rembach:    So when you start thinking about that whole values piece, how has that that impacted the ability for people to help and find their own community?

 

Charles Vogl:    Well, I think it’s great that you’re pointing out and it’s not always so clear cut. And what I tell leader is I don’t really care what values are on your website. I was one speaking with the executive director of a fairly famous stone profiteering in United State with a famous brand and he was telling me the values of their organization, not to reveal their organization here, when he was done I asked him, how are those values any different than that of US core, integrity, bravery and he pause over lunch and then said, “I guess there’s no difference of those values. There is nothing wrong with those value and having values that overlap with US Marine Corps but it clearly didn’t actually define what drew people for that nonprofit. Which is to say they hadn’t really figured that out and that means they get to start that journey. One of the things that I look for and figure out what are the real value is not simply what’s on the website. What are the stories that people are telling? One of the question I ask is, who do you protect? And how do you protect them? And to those stories, those are how the real values are revealed. And when we’re seeking out of community my guess is we’re going to be inspired by the communities that tell the stories of their existence, of their purpose, of how they’ve changed that resonate with us. Those stories have inside them the value that we’re seeking to grow in ourselves. One of the most important things about how the communities is they’re providing every member a way to grow in a way that we want to be. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Now finding communities being lonely all of those things are wrapped up in emotions and can be very impactful. One of the one things that we look at on the show are quotes to help bring out emotion for us. Is there a quote or two that kind of stands out that you can share?

 

Charles Vogl:    Oh! My goodness. But one of my favorite quote of (16:35 inaudible) is by a monk named Thomas Merton. And in a letter that he wrote which is now publish, he wrote: “In the end it is the reality of personal relationship that’s say everything.” And the reason I like about that is it reminds me that when big things are happening that scare me, violent, oppression, poverty, and I feel powerless or my work seemed to be ineffective, at the end of the day it’s the relationship with the people that I know and the conversation that I’m having with them that really matter and reminds me that every conversation matter even if it doesn’t look like it’s changing the world while it’s happening. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Now thanks for sharing that. I had the opportunity to watch you speak and read as much of the book as I can since I received it and does having this interview, and you definitely got very personal and vulnerable and a lot of the things were associated with humps that you had to get over throughout your life. Is there a story that you can share with us that really tells us about a time where you got over the hump and it made a difference for you?

 

Charles Vogl:    Oh! My goodness there’s so many. Since we talked about the book I will share—in the book I grind a little bit of how I served in US Peace Corp in northern Zambia. And I’ll tell you I was dropped off in a village in northern Zambia where there are about 150 families. I lived in a mud house with grass roof and a mud floor. And I was speaking a language I didn’t know, food I was unfamiliar with in a place as foreign to me as possible, the bush of northern Zambia from what I knew of southern California. And I was still exhausted and I got really sick and I would cry at night from the exhaustion and the stress a young man kind of in an adventure. And there was a family that live next door to me, the Mwango family and, I remember I think it was the first day, they sent Alex their teenage son over to my home with a fresh Obuasi which is a paste made out of a cassava root and some dried fish cause they wanted to make sure that I was fed that day and how they express in physically showing up and send me gift that I was welcome there. 

 

And they’re a reminder to me, not only the Mwango’s but the whole of the (18:08 inaudible)village, that I get to look like them, act like them they could tell why I didn’t eat like them and yet they went out of their way to welcome me at much as they knew how. And they’re an example to me that we can be brave with our invitation. Now I might have forgot to be totally jerk, I might have forgot with someone who’s trying to take advantage of them, I could have been somebody who is spying on them, the US government probably knew, and they might have discovered those things but maybe ** but nonetheless, they were brave with their invitation and their bravery changed my life. And now I’ve written a book about community and as you said in my introduction, witnessing how the book cared for one another in northern Zambia with no health care, hauling water from the river a kilometer away changed my life. 

 

And it really was very touching when you started talking about and there’s a lot more detail associated even with the Peace Corps members that you are with and how all that community did or didn’t happen and I definitely recommend people picking up the book. But if you were to say of all the things that you have going, and I know being on the book tour and doing a lot of speaking engagements, continuing your work, what are some of your goals?

 

Right now one of the goals that we have is to reach out to both faith leaders across country that are really working to find a way to make faith institutions in their country speak to a generation right now is not (20:39 inaudible) battle. And I think we can acknowledge they’re not excited about it because it’s not exciting to them. To find a way to generally make an institution where American’s believe they belong when their own faith experiences and longing are consistent with coming together. Like doing in a place that shares their value, inconcinnity and participation. 

And one of our other goals is to reach out the C level executive, the company’s across the country, and understand that their success in the marketplace and customers and their success in building team for the company to work involved creating a place where people know they belong. And they know they belong there because there are values there that are represented in our importance for belonging. And they can use the contents in the book that have been used for used for well over a thousand years, the ritualism that says in a way the storytelling and create that place. And since we know that Americans are, as you read in the book, seemingly desperate to connect more. To have that community that they know they can turn to, to train here to build that not just make himself up willy-nilly or an ivory but turning to long standing reason to do that is a very exciting adventure form.

 

Jim Rembach:    And the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor. 

 

The number one thing that contributes to customer loyalty as emotions. So move onward and upward faster by getting significantly deeper insight and understanding of your customer journey and personas with emotional intelligence. With your empathy mapping workshop you learn how to evoke and influence the right customer emotions that generate improved customer loyalty and reduce your cost to operate. Get over your emotional hump now by going to empathymapping.com learn more. 

 

Alright, here we go Fast Leader Legion, it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Charles the Charles Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So, I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Charles Vogl, are you ready to hoedown?

 

Charles Vogl:    I’m ready to hoedown. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Alright. What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

 

Charles Vogl:    Oh, my goodness, I’m afraid of thing, I’m afraid of reaching out to people who are ** me, I’m afraid of making phone call ** I’m afraid of sharing myself in a way that people laugh at me and then record it digitally and we’ll be there for my showing that for years…. And when I finally get over that I’m not big deal and that what I’m about to do are bigger than my ego, I’ll definitely ** 

 

Jim Rembach:    What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

 

Charles Vogl:    To put my body where the action is happening. Email don’t count, phone calls don’t count, letters don’t count, to actually show up where I need to be making a difference and I’m looking at it. 

 

Jim Rembach:    What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

 

Charles Vogl:    I think one of the secret of my success right now is I remind myself throughout the day and during my quiet time every morning and meditation and prayer to not strive. That if my vision is bold enough, if my actions are consistent enough success will come but I don’t need to worry about that success I was going to take the action consistent for ** a different ** in the world. 

 

Jim Rembach:    What do you feel is one of you tools that helps you lead in business or life?

 

Charles Vogl:    One of the most important tools I have is acknowledging the people around me by that making profound for me it’s important to hold me up and making sure that that I’m communicating how important they are to my life. Not as some threat but as a person who’s aware that nothing I do is for my own success alone but because of the community work. 

 

Jim Rembach:    What would be one book, and it could be from any genre, that you recommend to our listeners? And of course we’re going to put a link to The Art of Community on your show notes page.

 

Charles Vogl:    One of my favorite books is a Trusted Advisor by Maister. Because in all relationships, if they’re powerful relationship there will be a time where if we’re good friend we’ll say something someone doesn’t what to keep. And that book gave me tool that I needed that when I have that conversation I could be more effective in telling someone I care about something they may not be ready to hear from someone. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, Fast Leader Legion, you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going too fastleader.net/Charles Vogl. Okay, Charles this is my las hump day hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to back to the age of 25. And you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything back you can only choose one. So, what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why? 

 

Charles Vogl:    I think I would tell myself that the title don’t matter. Their vision counts and inviting other people to join that sounds way more than the title, accolade or word that they’re looking for when they’re 25.

 

Jim Rembach:    Charles it was an honor to spend time with you today can you please share the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you? 

 

Charles Vogl:    Yeah. There’s my website, charlesvogl.com and on that website we have a quiz that leader can take to get a sense of how much they’re aware of the tools to build community whatever community they’re leading and there’s a preview of the book, several chapters available for free to download right away. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Charles Vogl, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader Legion honors you and  thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

 

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links, from every show, special offers, and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.

 

END OF AUDIO 

 

 

104: Al Hopper: I was beat physically and mentally

Al Hopper Show Notes

Al Hopper was getting beat physically and mentally. His entire team was down in the dirt. That’s when Al learned about the power and magic of words. When you need to rally the troops and things are going the way you don’t want them to, what do you do?

Al was born in St. Petersburg, Florida. Born as an Army Brat in an enlisted family, Al mostly grew up in Europe and Georgia.

When Al’s family moved he had to learn to adapt to new places and people. Learning how to move between social groups eventually became second nature. His wife, who he met in high school in Germany, still doesn’t understand how Al can walk into a room full of strangers and walk out with new best friends.

After high school, Al went straight to college, like you’re supposed to. Only, he found out he wasn’t ready to be left on his own with his family stationed half the world away. So Al decided to do what he knew best. He went into the Army.

After serving four years in the Army, Al worked at a small business selling and installing pool tables in Augusta, Georgia. Then Al and his wife decided to move to San Antonio, Texas, where he tried selling cars. It didn’t take too long for him to figure out that wasn’t a good fit for my personality.

Al then joined Citibank’s contact center’s inbound personal banking team where he piloted several initiatives before moving to help start a fraud prevention unit. From there Al progressed on to Citibank’s live chat and messaging team and then their social media team. While there Al became a cohost of the weekly #custserv Twitter chat with Marsha Collier, Roy Atkinson, and Greg Ortbach.

In the spring of 2015 Al finished his MBA at American Military University. Through his networking, he met Shaun Williams and became a cofounder of Social Path Solutions in May 2015.

Al is currently Chief Operating Officer of SocialPath Solutions. A digital agency with a focus on social media engagement. There Al is able to leverage his career in Customer service, education in business and marketing, and passion for social media to build a business he’s extremely proud of. Al is grateful to always be learning about himself, his team, their clients, and their customers.

Al still resides in San Antonio, Texas and is happily married to his high school sweetheart, Ursula. They started dating in 1996 and got married in 2001. They have 2 daughters, Ilyana and Anneliese, who are 13 and 10.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @AlHopper_ and get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“The ultimate goal is to build customer service for customers.” -Al Hopper Click to Tweet

“Customer service is marketing.” -Al Hopper Click to Tweet 

“The better you treat your customers the more they’ll want stuff from you.” -Al Hopper Click to Tweet 

“Businesses haven’t been prepared to use social media as a customer care channel.” -Al Hopper Click to Tweet

“Leadership in places now don’t understand how to use social media.” -Al Hopper Click to Tweet 

“Leadership in most companies forget that people are running the brand.” -Al Hopper Click to Tweet 

“People in customer service are most loyal; they feel the closest to the brand and customer at the same time.” -Al Hopper Click to Tweet 

“Too many executives don’t start in customer care.” -Al Hopper Click to Tweet 

“Sometimes you just have to shut up and do it.” -Al Hopper Click to Tweet 

“Have a plan, get punched in the mouth, refocus, get another plan and keep moving.” -Al Hopper Click to Tweet 

“Just remember, everyone in the room is a person.” -Al Hopper Click to Tweet 

“When things start getting rough, remind people that everyone’s insight is important.” -Al Hopper Click to Tweet 

“Just do what you got to do because that’s the mission at hand.” -Al Hopper Click to Tweet 

“There’s no way I could ever know everything, but my team can.” -Al Hopper Click to Tweet 

Hump to Get Over

Al Hopper was getting beat physically and mentally. His entire team was down in the dirt. That’s when Al learned about the power and magic of words. When you need to rally the troops and things are going the way you don’t want them to, what do you do?

Advice for others

Create a plan, move forward with that plan and don’t be afraid of making mistakes with that plan.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

Confidence in making the right decision and then knowing if it is the wrong decisions that I can recover from it.

Best Leadership Advice Received

Shut up and soldier because it’s the mission at hand.

Secret to Success

I surround myself with the best people possible. I don’t know everything, but my team can.

Best tools that helps in Business or Life

Being able to talk to people as a person.

Recommended Reading

Starship Troopers

Contacting Al

Website: http://socialpathsolutions.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thealhopper

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlHopper_

Resources and Show Mentions

54 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies List: Emotional Intelligence has proven to be the right kind of intelligence to have if you want to move onward and upward faster. Get your free list today.

Show Transcript: 

Click to access edited transcript

104: Al Hopper: I was beat physically and mentally

 

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we uncover the leadership like hat that help you to experience, break out performance faster and rocket to success. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

Need a powerful and entertaining way to ignite your next conference, retreat or team-building session? My keynote don’t include magic but they do have the power to help your attendees take a leap forward by putting emotional intelligence into their employee engagement, customer engagement and customer centric leadership practices. So bring the infotainment creativity the Fast Leader show to your next event and I’ll help your attendees get over the hump now. Go to beyondmorale.com/speaking to learn more.

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, Fast Leader Legion, today I’m excited about the guest that I have on the show today because he’s one of those folks that just always seems jolly. Al Hopper was born in St. Petersburg, Florida born as an Army brat in an unlisted family. Al mostly grew up in Europe and Georgia. When Al’s family had to move he had to learn and adapt to new places and people learning how to move between social groups eventually became second nature. His wife who we met in high school in Germany still doesn’t understand how Al can walk into a room full of strangers and walk out with new best friends. 

 

After high school, Al went straight to college like he’s supposed to only he found out that he wasn’t ready to be left on his own with his family station half a world away, so Al decided to do what he knew best, he went into the army. After serving four years in the arming Al worked at a small business selling and installing pool table in Augusta, Georgia then Al and his wife decided to move to San Antonio Texas where he tray selling cars didn’t take too long for him to figure out that wasn’t a good fit for his personality. Al then join Citibank contact centers inbound baking team where he piloted several initiatives before moving to help start a fraud protection unit.

 

After there, Al progressed on to Citibank’s live chat messaging team and then their social media team. While there Al became a co-host of the weekly #custserv Twitter chat with Marsha Collier, Roy Atkinson and Greg Ortbach. In the spring of 2015, Al finishes his MBA at American Military University. Through his networking he met Shawn Williams and became a co-founder of Social Path Solutions in May 2015. Al is currently Chief Operating Officer of SocialPath Solutions, a digital agency with a focus on social media engagement. There Al is able to leverage his career in customer service, education and business and marketing and a passion for social media to build a business he’s extremely proud of. Al is grateful to always be learning about himself, his team, their clients and their customers. Al still resides in San Antonio, Texas and is happily married to his high school sweetheart, Ursula. They have two daughters, Ilyana and Anneliese, who are 13 and 10. Al Hopper, are you ready to help us get over the hump? 

 

 Al Hopper:    I’m ready let’s do this. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Al, I’m glad to have you today. I’ve given our listeners a little bit about you, but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better? 

 

Al Hopper:    Sure. So, my passion really is customer service and to social media being able to bring the two worlds together. One of the things I’ve really been enjoying over the last couple of years is meeting up and tweeting up with a lot of other people in the industry at different conferences and just in general. I just have conversations to see how we can do better for customers, that’s the ultimate goal, is to build customer service for customers.

 

Jim Rembach:    You’re right it is but there’s also different approaches that people take and you seem like one of those folks that come from a place of abundance, where did that come from?

 

Al Hopper:    I’ve just always been a servant leader and I think that that’s really kind of driven my need and want to really help customers get what they want, actually that really helps businesses get what they want to. Because as you can help your customer’s grow and get more results from your products, your business is going to grow. And so, the new toy, the new (3:46 inaudible)is customer service is marketing, and I really kind of believe that, the better you treat your customers the more they’re going to want stuff from you. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Now, we had talked off mic, and you had mentioned how starting SocialPath Solutions, of course it was a natural fit because it had your backgrounds and things in place, you have mentioned to that it has been amazing just in a short period of time how much need there is for what I call social customer care and that is there’s this whole new different channel out there and definitely multitudes of different platforms when you start thinking about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snap chat, we could go on and on but companies really just had a hard time consuming, understanding and navigating all of that, where do you think most of it there or I should say, where is the biggest point of pain that you’re helping solve?

 

Al Hopper:    It’s really just having a plan on how to respond. For years social media has been the realm of marketing and PR and brand protection and if someone says something bad about your brand if you can’t bury it then you just kind of ignore it. But that’s not the way it’s really evolving, customers are reaching out on social media sometimes it’s because they just can’t get what they want from the phones and they feel it’s something that they need to be asked, lay it out to the public. But as new generation comes on people are now digital natives, kids were born with phones in their hands and so the fastest thing that they can do is to type text something whether it’s text a tweet, text on Facebook any other apps that are out there and it’s an on demand service. 

 

I can tell you that I have a problem right now in the middle my problem and then I have to wait for you Mr. business to respond back to me and so businesses haven’t been prepared to be able to use social media as a social customer care channel, as a main channel, it’s always been an escalation channel and where really trying to help change that mindset.

 

Jim Rembach:    You bring up some really interesting points about all of this. I was just reading some statistics associated with SnapChat and its explosive growth for the past 12 months and the age groups that are primarily part of SnapChat and how—they’re really consumers. And when you start looking at most businesses that are being run these are their kids and sometimes their grandkids and they don’t have that real social connection and understanding of their world. So, when you sit down with a particular client, where do you see the biggest barriers are for you to be able to do your work?

 

Al Hopper:    Just like you said it’s just the leadership in place, and now just don’t understand what social media is and they don’t understand how to use it. They don’t use it personally and since they don’t use it personally they have no clue how to use it for their own business.

 

Jim Rembach:    So, if you were to give organizations out there that are struggling with this whole social service/customer service thing, what’s one piece of advice that you would give them in order to help them move forward?

 

Al Hopper:    Create a plan. Move forward with that plan and don’t be afraid of making mistakes with that plan. 

 

Jim Rembach:    So, if you talk about the mistakes that cause people to fall down and maybe not a move forward as quickly as they want to, where do you see those common pitfalls?

 

Al Hopper:    It comes from wanting to be perfect. And I think leadership in most companies they look at it as the brand cannot make a mistake, the brand is perfect, and the brand is spotless. They forget that there are people running the brand and people are not perfect people make mistakes. And at the same time I think it comes to the idea that social media’s been run by marketing and marketers are typically more compensated than customer service, don’t ask me why it’s just the way it’s always been. And there’s a seeming lack of trust with handing over the keys to the castle to the lowest paid organization in the company. 

 

It doesn’t make any sense to me your letting these people talk on behalf of your company on the phone or chat or e-mail but you don’t want to let them do the same thing on social media because it’s in the public’s view, so were phone calls. How many times have you heard now people recording phone calls of cable companies and then playing them back and they go viral? If you would actually take more care of the people that are your brand, then they’re going to be the ones that are the most loyal, no one wants to work in customer service because it’s the lowest paid for any company but they’re the most loyal because they’re the one that feel the closest to brand and the customer at the same time. 

 

Jim Rembach:    You bring up an interesting point ‘cause you started getting into the characteristics of people who are in customer care. And I have found through the course of my 20+ years of being in it that they are some of the most passionate and caring people that you’d ever meet. And I have found and spoke to many executives in organizations who will say things like, “I just don’t understand those people over.” 

 

Al Hopper:    Yeah, and I think it’s because too many executives don’t start there and I think that’s really the problem.  I love seeing stories of startups where everyone does everything at the beginning and as the company grows the executives and the leadership, they sometimes forget where they were and they have to go back. The smaller companies don’t have this problem because, like mine—myself and my co-founders we take shifts doing the job that everyone does and so were very close and intimately link to what our front-line team does. As you get a larger organization and it becomes divisions and different levels of the pyramid, the farther up the pyramid you get the farther away you get from the day-to-day part of the job and you forget about it. And then if you think how, sometimes a revolving door of executives at the very top of these large organizations, they didn’t even start with the company they were brought into be the executive of the company they have no clue where the company’s then. And I think that’s where you’re seeing that kind of conversation where, I don’t know how people can answer the phone three hours a day I don’t want to take a single phone call, they’re not just not trained to do it  it’s not part of your lifestyle.

 

Jim Rembach:    That’s a good point. We’ve also talked off mic about this whole connection with the company and being able to provide services in regards to interacting with customers and knowing what the product and building some of that intimacy with your clients that oftentimes I think as you just mentioned executives don’t have. And you talked about a process that you have, can you kind of quickly walk us through what that is?

 

Al Hopper:    Sure. We’ve developed something we call the path to social because we do social customer service and were really helping our client companies on their journey through social media. They may have started social media and kind of send out messages and they’ve engage with the marketing company but now their customers are starting to talk back to them and marketing companies aren’t ready to deal with that, that’s not what they do. And so companies are starting to feel the pain there and what we do is we just kind of have that conversation with them, we learn about their company culture, we learn about their client and customer culture, and then we help define how you would respond in a clear way. It’s not about being robotic it’s about having a goal.

 

So, let’s say we start working with a financial organization that has ATM’s. One of the common things would be, “Hey, bank X, the ATM on Fifth Street isn’t working.” Well, if bank X doesn’t have a plan on how to respond to that then they just ignore it and just pretend it never happened. So now you got a customer that’s asking for help, might be a pretty simple solution could be as simple as, “Thanks for letting us know, we’ll restart the machine” or “Yeah, we know about that one, can you go to this other over here a block away.” You have to create that plan and really understand what the pain is they’re trying to solve and have a protocol for responding. 

 

Jim Rembach:    And that’s a great point. There’s a very simple explanation on something that people probably connect with. When you start thinking about the whole tradition of social media being on the marketing side, a marketing person would have access to any of that information.

 

Al Hopper:    Right, absolutely. 

 

Jim Rembach:    When we’re talking about social media, when we’re talking about just customer care in general, customer experience it could be loaded with a lot of passion. And one of the things that we love on the show is to talk about favorite quotes of folks, because they can do just that and they can provide that passion. Is there a quote or two that you can share?

 

Al Hopper:    Sure. One of my favorite quotes of all time is, Soldier, shut up and soldier. I first read it in Starship Troopers written by Robert Highline in 1954. One of my favorite books I read it quarterly. My dad used it on me one time when he was getting ready to retire and I was starting my career. We’re talking about some of the things that lower enlisted soldiers have to do that just aren’t really fun, it’s not really what you signed up to do. He just said, sometimes you’ve got to shut up and do it, it’s a job you’re getting paid and it’s not glorious. So I looked at that and I’ve used that through my customer service journey over the years. Sometimes it’s really just not fun to sit on the phone for eight hours a day listening to people yelling and screaming and calling you names personally for something you have no control over that your brand can’t fix and sometimes you just suck it up buttercup and do it. 

 

Jim Rembach:    I love that quote, and you’re right. Sometimes we just have a little bit stiffer neck and buckle down and just keep going on and focus on to the next thing and do the best that you can, and it’s a good quote for resilience and perseverance, and thanks for sharing it. And I also, looking at your bio and I’ve had the opportunity to also interview several folks who come from a military family background and they just always have a very unique perspective about different cultures and the what you’re talking about getting used to and connecting to folks rather quickly because you had to otherwise you are always alone. But there’s humps that we have to go through in that process. And when you start talking about going to the university and realizing that, “I’m not ready for that” those are humps. So is there a story that you can share that will help us all?

 

Al Hopper:   Yeah, that’s a great question and I’ve had so many humps in my career. I think the biggest one was really early on when I was still in high school. I was a captain of a football team largely because we only had 40 kids on the team and we were a small school and we’re in Germany so it wasn’t like trying to play football in Texas otherwise I don’t think I would’ve been riding the bench rather than being captain of the team. But we are faced with having to play, some of us had to play both ways play offense and defense some of us even had to play special teams so we would not come up field for 60 minutes. We were getting beaten really bad by this really big school and it was just one of those moments where you see in the movies, we had our huddle in between plays and it was just like everyone’s down in the dirt and we’re getting beaten physically, we’re getting beaten mentally and it was just one of those (16:14 inaudible) moments where you just have to step up and say some magic words and I don’t even recall what of those magic words were but it was like all of a sudden everyone just took a jolt and do something and we are ready to go again. And I’ve always kept that as something special that I’ve been able to do is really rally the troops on anything that I’m doing, whether it’s a phone team, a social media team, my new team at SociaPath Solutions. When things get rough and things start going the way that we didn’t think it was going to go I’ve always really been able to just kind of rally everyone together re-focus them and really just kind of go back to the basics, why are we here? What are we doing? Alright now let’s do that. Another leadership quote, “Everyone has a plan until they get punch in the mouth.” And that’s really been kind of my leadership style and just being able to do that, just have a plan, get punch in the mouth, re-focus and get another plan and keep moving. 

 

Jim Rembach:    You know I think that’s a really interesting thing and thanks for sharing that. I had a conversation yesterday with a potential client and one of the folks that’s on my team and it started going sideways and so there was a whole lot of “we could’s” that  started coming in to the conversation. When you have creative folks that are having communications with one another and talking about a way forward you could spend an entire week talking about what if scenarios and for me I let it go on for a little while and then when I found my opportunity to reel it back in and today I got a note from one of those folks saying, thank you.

 

Al Hopper:    Yeah, you’re right. You get passionate, people in the room and they’re saying either the same things in different ways and they’re just skipping off each other or they’ve come to just an in pass they just can’t get pass whatever it is they’re talking about and it sometimes takes a cooler mind to say, “Okay, guys let’s just put it on the table for now let’s re-focus what do we really having this meeting for and let’s do that. 

 

Jim Rembach:    You know, I think for me, in my younger years, I would just cut it off. However I’ve learned that what I had to do is show my appreciation for the conversation and the information that we had shared at that point and then also showed and told them that it was valuable because it helped us really understand on what we needed to do next. So, I try to be really careful of appreciating their contribution, their efforts and even the time that I could’ve easily said, “Hey, we’re just wasting time here let’s move on” and that’s what I did when I didn’t know any better in my younger years but I made sure that I address them personally before we pitted in or redirect it. What is one particular thing or tip or tactic that you use that you could share with our listeners? 

 

Al Hopper:    Actually, you just said exactly what I was going to suggest. Just remember that everyone in the room is a person they have feelings, they have desires, they have their own set of expertise and when things start getting rough and head start getting banged together you do have to step back and remind everyone that everyone’s insight is important because not everyone sees everything the same way. We had a very similar meeting recently where we’re trying to refocus and try to understand the change that the firm wants to make and one of our employees very passionate about something just kept going and kept going and kept going and he had a great point of what he was trying to present but it was one of those things where the meeting just couldn’t keep going forward we’re going to lose all the momentum we had at that point. So, just like you said make sure that you recognize everyone as a person. And make sure that you recognize them, yes you have a great point, yes were going to listen to you, write it down, share with us later, right this moment it’s not the right time. And it just solved so many problems in this meeting, we were able to move forward and after the meeting I was able to huddle up with my team mates and he said exactly that, thank you for recognizing that I have a problem or I have a solution to a problem. And your right, we couldn’t keep going the way we are going because we are just turning into a shouting match. And so absolutely the best advice I could suggest is treat everyone as a person and remember that everyone has an idea that may or may not be the right one but they’re going to be passionate about their ideas just recognize that passion. 

 

Jim Rembach:    So you and I had the opportunity to talk off mic about some of the things that you’re working on. I haven’t had the opportunity because the timing to dump in or jump in to the cus-serve Twitter chat, but Marsha’s going to be on the show, Roy’s been on the show and being on the same communities that you have been for quite a while we just haven’t connected, so I’m really glad you’re here, but I know you have a lot of things going on and if you could just kind of give me an idea of what would be one of your biggest goals. 

 

Al Hopper:    Wow, biggest goals. The biggest goal of course is to of course to continue growing the business and try to understand where that’s going to go because that’s affecting not only myself but right now 20 different families internally and that’s not counting all of the businesses and their families and all the customers when it’s just an exponential growth pattern of how many people that we are affecting via this little project we call SocialPath Solutions. So, right now that’s really the biggest thing on my horizon. I think right up there with that is being able to spend more time with my family. My oldest daughter Iliana, she is the orchestra and also participating in Cyber Patriot, which is a really cool programs that has been started to teach young kids cyber defense skills and try to see if that’s a career path that they want to take, she’s really taken to that. 

 

I really want to try to get involved with their team and her school, it’s amazing she’s been doing it since sixth grade and they do things like anti-hacking maneuvers in Windows 7 and Linux and all these things, I’m blown away. When I was in college I made a small living programming websites but that was 20 years ago and it’s so different now and the things that she’s learning. We grow the business large enough and strong enough that I can step back and spend some more time with the kids. 

 

Jim Rembach:    And the Fast Leader legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor.

 

The number one thing that contributes to customer loyalty is emotions. So, move onward and upward faster by getting significantly deeper insight and understanding of your customer journey and personas with emotional intelligence. With your empathy mapping workshop you learn how to evoke and influence the right customer emotions that generate improve customer loyalty and reduce your cost operant. Get over your emotional hump now by going to empathymapping.com to learn more.  

 

Jim Rembach:    Alright here we go Fast Leader legion, it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Al the Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast.  So, I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to move us onward and upward faster now. Al Hopper are you ready to hoedown? 

 

Al Hopper:    Let’s do it. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Alright. What do you think is holding you back from being even better today? 

 

Al Hopper:    Confidence. Confidence in making the right decision and then that if it is the wrong decision that is not going to be something I can’t recover from. 

 

Jim Rembach:    What is the best leadership advice you had ever received?

 

Al Hopper:    We kind of talk about it earlier. Soldier shut up and soldier. Just do what you’re going to do because that’s the mission at hand. 

 

Jim Rembach:    What is one of secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

 

Al Hopper:    I surround myself with the best people possible. I don’t know everything, there’s no way I can know everything but my team can.

 

Jim Rembach:    What you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

 

Al Hopper:    Just being able to talk to people as a person and not forgetting that that’s what is behind business and behind customer service, people.

 

Jim Rembach:    What would be one book, and it could be from any genre, that you’d recommend to our legion? 

 

Al Hopper:    I definitely would have to say, Starship Troopers.

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, Fast Leader listeners you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/Al Hopper. Okay, Al this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you have been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything back you can only choose one, what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

 

Al Hopper:    I’m going to take the cheap way out of this one and I’m not going to take back with me the winning lottery numbers for when I was 26. 

 

Jim Rembach:    That is a cheap way. So, what would that do for you Al? 

 

Al Hopper:    I would be able to hopefully give me the money to be able to all projects I want to do so I wouldn’t have to worry about bootstrapping in your company. I would be able to put my family in the place where they wouldn’t have to worry about wanting for money. And I think that through having that luxury I would be able to accomplish so much more than what I’ve been able to accomplish so far. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Well, I hope that you can still get lottery number. I have to share that you kind of also queued  that we’re going to have on the future episode the author of the book called The Lottery Curse so we’ll see how that turns out. 

 

Al Hopper:    I’m listening for that one. 

 

Jim Rembach:    There you go. It was an honor to spend time with you today, can you please share with the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you? 

 

Al Hopper:    Sure. The best way to reach out to me is on Twitter, @alhopper_, please do not forget the underscore because you’ll end up tweeting with someone who doesn’t tweet back and it’s not my fault. And also you can reach out to me on LinkedIn, just Al Hopper. And we also have our website socialpathsolutions.com, we have live chat there as well. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Al Hopper, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

 

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

 

END OF AUDIO