Cris Cohen: Being a management consultant, how much of the work you have done over the last year has been related to helping companies with the environment created by the pandemic?
Ray McKenzie, Red Beach Advisors: Our thesis around consulting has always been strategy, operational efficiency, and digital transformation through technology. Covid hits in March and all of the practices that we have been sharing with companies accelerated. Now you are forced to inject some sort of digital transformation because you are no longer sitting next to each other and working. We are going to need to modernize your tools. Re-formatted to work better with mobile devices. Download this free PDF e-book interview with Daniel Gouldman of Ternio at https://smarturl.it/Gouldmanebook Cris Cohen: You had a really cool line in your latest blog post where you wrote, “Our perception of reality is an illusion.” Which I thought was really quite fascinating. And I'm wondering, how much of your work with your clients is about changing their perception? Bob Stapleton of Live Oak Executive Coaching & Human Resource Consulting: I would say, if it's not close to 100%, it's at least somewhere between 90% and 100%. Because ultimately, it kind of goes back to our conversation around "we are all the architects of our life." We are leaders, in the context of how we want to show up. How we show up is more often than not our perception of how we see ourselves, or how we see others, or how we see a situation. And, at the same time, there are other people's perceptions of us. The world is filled with creative, insightful people. But put those people in front of a blank text box and they cannot think of what to say.
Answer: Develop a workaround. That is what I do for my clients. My method… I interview them. I take them away from the text box and get them involved in a conversation about their work, their experiences. Suddenly their thoughts and ideas flow. After an hour, without realizing it, they have built up enough content to slay the blank text box monster every day for weeks to come. -- What content challenges are you facing right now? When I interview business clients, we may talk about their service or their product, but ultimately it is the humanity and the personality of the person that really sells it. It shines through. And that is what connects with the reader.
Photos are nice. Stats and specifications can be interesting. But a genuine human being talking about the product or service is way more compelling. - Cris Something slightly different. My new e-book is an interview with Daniel Gouldman, Founder and CEO of Ternio. You can download it for free as a pdf at http://bandstofans.fetchapp.com/permalink/fc6063
An enterprise blockchain company, Ternio's BlockCard allows customers to connect their cryptocurrencies to a Visa card and use them in the real world. We discussed: - The future of money / banking - The business pivot that led to Ternio’s success - How Gouldman went from homeless to business leader This might seem controversial, but I really think people can read paragraphs. I don’t think a few sentences grouped together in a rectangular format will make someone’s head explode. Apparently a lot of other people do though. Hence many sites are filled with what has been labeled “Broetry.” That is when every sentence gets its own paragraph for fear that something lengthier would scare readers off. If you are writing instructions for dismantling an explosive device, by all means, keep things as simple as possible. If you are trying to sell people that you are a mature businessperson and intellectually gifted, maybe a good start would be demonstrating that you can write a paragraph more complicated than “See Spot run.”
I interviewed Daniel Gouldman, founder of Ternio. Watch it.
Ternio is an enterprise blockchain company based out of Alpharetta, GA. Ternio's global banking platform - BlockCard - allows customers to frictionlessly use their cryptocurrencies in their account and connect it to a Visa card. We discussed: - The future of money / banking - The business pivot that led to Ternio’s success - From homeless to business leader - “Nothing can define you accept for yourself” - How his interest in geopolitics has helped with his work - Earning people’s trust - The danger of listening to influencers - How the adoption ramp for blockchain mirrors the adoption ramp for the internet - And more Advice I give to clients regarding the best use of their content…
Whether you are a business or a band, use your content to: • Attract genuine fans • Over-deliver to those genuine fans First of all, do not obsess on getting the viral video, overnight success, or a following in the billions. That is not in your control. Also, if you cannot survive without a billion fans / customers, something is very wrong. Next, create consistent, solid content that tells the story of who you are, what you do, what you know, what you have experienced, etc. If they are genuine fans, they will like this. Then use that content to guide those true fans to your website, blog, or newsletter… a property you own. Once they are there, give them something extra. Objections people have with this approach: 1. A lot of people will not click over to your property. That is okay. Those people would probably never spend money with you anyway. 2. Posts on social media that link to other places are pushed down by the algorithms. Again, that is okay. For one thing, even if you play by their rules, the social media sites will not show your content to all of your followers anyway. Organic reach for every site is in constant decline. They want you to pay money to reach all of those people, even the people who said they want to hear from you. They hold your followers for ransom. And if you are going to put money behind a post, you might as well link to your own property. - Cris The people behind a business are often the most interesting parts of a business. However, few companies take advantage of that when developing their content.
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March 2021
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