Posts by Jaime Jay
072 Why Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos & many others turned to “The Coach” Bill Campbell
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Randy Komisar of Kleiner Perkins joins us today to celebrate the life and lessons of legendary Silicon Valley coach, late Bill Campbell. Guest Randy Komisar, along with colleague Paul Martino of Bullpen Capital, came together to capture Bill in a podcast. Bill was the coach to Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and countless Silicon Valley legends.
Depicting The Real Bill
Bill was featured in a book called Trillion Dollar Coach, prior to the release of Randy and Paul’s podcast. The content of the book were flattering, but the title was so off-putting. It sets the wrong tone for understanding what BIll is all about.
“Bill wasn’t a guy with a big theory. He’s not that guy who has rules like ‘10 rules to be successful.’ He was somebody who connected incredibly well with who you were and what you need and was able to get you there.” – Randy Komisar
Bill was associated with a trillion dollars worth of value creation. He was not a highfalutin guy who would’ve wanted to be in the cover of a book. They were able to capture the real Bill, more than what the book portrayed him to be, through this podcast.
Paying it Forward
Randy and Paul had the opportunity to learn and share their respect and admiration for Bill and they want to pay it forward, through the production of their podcast. They wish that the entrepreneurs for the generations to come would be able to do the same.
Entrepreneurs could get a lot of inspiration from Bill. Randy even cited that if it was not for Bill, he would have quit business a long time ago.
“Bill made business interesting for me and many people because he made it about people, not money.” – Randy Komisar
Learnings From The Late Bill Campbell
One important point from this discussion was the difference in doing what is right versus what is smart. Bill believes smart people are great at rationalizing. Most of these people, though, still tend to overthink a problem and justify doing the wrong things.
“The right thing and the smart thing aren’t necessarily the same. The right thing is worth doing, but the smart thing needs a lot of consideration. It may be smart because it allows you to do the wrong.” – Randy Komisar
This conversation with Randy Komisar is jam-packed with Bill Campbell’s wisdom in entrepreneurship, people management, Silicon Valley legacy.
To hear more about Why Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos & many others turned to “The Coach” Bill Campbell and more relevant information from Randy, download and listen to the episode.
BIO:
Links:
Straight Talk for Startups – Book
The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living – Book
Executives Launch Podcast To Pass On Lessons From Bill Campbell, Coach To Silicon Valley Stars
Executives Launch Podcast To Pass On Lessons From Bill Campbell, Coach To Silicon Valley Stars
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
071 How to design a company that people are lining up to work for
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Inspired by his conversation with Bob Evans at Cloud Wars Live, Christopher Lochhead talks about radical ideas involving employee happiness, growth, and satisfaction as key determinants in designing a company that people are lining up to work for.
Americans are Unhappy at Work
Christopher shares the alarming truth of today’s workforce: Americans are unhappy with their jobs. In fact, in episode 056, guest Jim Harter discussed the rapid decline in the rate of productivity at work. Thirty-four percent (34%) of the 37.2 million American respondents surveyed said that they were not engaged.
“If most employees say they are not engaged, and most managers say they are not engaged, then there’s something off with the typical work environment—what most people would call culture.” – Christopher Lochhead
Algebra of Happiness
In episode 052, Professor Scott Galloway related how happiness can be plotted as a graph.
A person’s happiness level starts relatively high until it slowly declines in a phase called “shit gets real stage.” Contributors to these low levels may include raising children, financial instability and crazy work life. After the dip, it goes up over time as a person reaches age 45 to 55.
Amazing Culture at CutCo
Listeners might remember from episode 044, Dan Casetta and his amazing culture at Cutco. Inexperienced high school graduates and working students make up his workforce. The company runs by its mantra, “changing lives while selling knives” and it has been successful with its recruitment, training, and inculturation.
The Takeaway
How do these ideas intersect? The vast majority of people felt disengaged at work. However, this is not the case at Cutco. Christopher acknowledges the industries today have a cultural, engagement problem.
“If part of creating jobs is creating an environment for them to become fully self-actualized, then most companies are dramatically failing.” – Christopher Lochhead
If companies would only infuse into their culture the mentality of personality development—where they teach employees life skills, career skills, sales skills, and relationship skills—then people would definitely be lining up to work for them.
Christopher poses two points to ponder. First, could we change the level of engagement? Second, can we actually, meaningfully increase the amount of happiness the people have during the core part of their career?
To hear more about Christopher’s take on designing a company that people are lining up to work for, download and listen to the episode. Got a question for Christopher? Email him at
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Link:
Book-It’s The Manager by Jim Harter
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. Link: Book – It’s The Manager by Jim Harter Episode 056 – Jim Harter Episode 052 – Professor Scott Galloway Episode 044 – Dan Casetta We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!”> Jim Harter –
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Professor Scott Galloway – Episode 052
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
070 Alternative Investing w/ Eric Satz
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Eric Satz, CEO of Alto IRA and retirement planning advocate, joins us in today’s episode. He is on a mission to enable everyone to invest their retirement money in alternative investments. He actively campaigns for drastic information dissemination among retirees to save them from potential poverty in the future.
Diversifying Investments
Regular listeners might remember the teachings of prior guests like David Osborne or Pat Hiban or Dorie Clark. These smart people recommend a diverse investment strategy that creates multiple income streams over time. Such a strategy will help investors achieve the amazing goal of having investments pay for all expenses.
Eric Satz also promulgates diversifying investments, especially for retirees. He acknowledges the importance of various platforms today, where resources can be easily uploaded and disseminated. Eric and his team from Alto IRA provide information on alternative investments such as private startups, growth companies, real estate, loans, and digital assets and currencies.
“The idea is to open up areas of investment that have the potential to generate higher returns, higher yield and greater levels of current income—so that we are all in a better position to retire.” – Eric Satz
Alarming Truths About Retirement
Eric started his mission with straightforward and entrepreneurial motivation. There is a huge market opportunity of 30 trillion US dollars, sitting in retirement savings. However, only 1% of this amount is invested in alternative assets, instead of around 10 or 20%.
“Investing is proactive, saving is passive. If we don’t change the way we invest, 25 million Americans—elderly Americans—basically will be living in poverty.” – Eric Satz
Eric wanted to fight the conventional wisdom of financial advisors. He considers America to be under a retirement crisis up until 2050. He promotes diversification in investing in businesses commonly considered by upper-middle-class and the elites, like real estate.
Save and Invest
Further, into this episode, Lochhead mentions the importance of having investments while saving on the side.
He further says that retirees should take the opportunity to invest aggressively because of the changing of public-market-private-market dynamics. With a projected 46% increase in capital gains annually, an avid saver can plot his or her retirement early.
To hear more about alternative investing and more relevant information from Eric, download and listen to the episode.
Bio:
Eric Satz, Founder/CEO Alto IRA
An entrepreneur and former investment banker, Eric worked for DLJ/Credit Suisse First Boston before co-founding Currenex, Plumgood Food, and Tennessee Community Ventures, a VC firm.
Eric served on the Board of the TVA from 2015-January 2019, and he teaches an entrepreneurship class to high school students.
A Miami native and diehard ‘Canes and Dolphins fan, Eric went to Amherst College.
After years in NYC and then San Francisco, he and his wife moved to Nashville, her hometown, to raise their kids.
When he’s not breathing life into startup companies, Eric loves to ski, play soccer, and practice yoga.
Links:
Alto Ira Raises Seed Round – Hypepotamus
Will Wall Street be able to earn the trust of younger investors
Book: Rescuing Retirement: A Plan to Guarantee Retirement Security for All Americans
We hope you enjoyed Eric Satz on this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
069 Trust w/ Christian Anschuetz & Bob Evans
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In this episode, former Marine and Entrepreneur Christian Anschuetz and Bob Evans, host of “Cloud Wars Live” podcast, joins us for a conversation about the connection between trust and happiness. They explore the dichotomy of why trust has never mattered more but remains so low in major institutions.
Trust is Collapsing
The conversation starts about personal definitions of trust and how trust and love coincide. The guests share anecdotes on their personal lives and ultimately, how trust adds to overall happiness in any relationship. Given the background of the guests, the discussion took a quick turn in discussing the trust issues of consumers to institutions.
“Whether it’s on a corporate level or a personal level, who we are, on a large part, is the promise or commitment that we make and whether or not we keep those promises or commitment.” – Christian Anscheutz
According to PR Firm Edleman, only 48% of people trust the government and 47% trust the media. Moreover, The Atlantic says, “Trust Is Collapsing in America.” Major corporations are not exempt from this discussion.
Breaking Promises
At a fundamental level, businesses are expected to have a set of commitments and promises around a product and service. These things make customers come back to the product/brand. However, we live at a time where a lot of major institutions have broken a lot of major promises to consumers, resulting in a massive takedown of trust.
“Trust is being eroded and trust is being created and both seem to be happening on a rocket speed today.” – Bob Evans
Christian and Bob observed that as big companies rise, failure in internal leadership, model setting, and problem recognition also results. It may be an advanced world now. However, these companies have no clue in keeping their customers’ trust.
Overriding Policies
Internally, policies guide management decisions, while externally, policies help the company lead in new markets. However, policies don’t square well most of the time, especially in terms of bridging the gap between the consumer and the company. No matter how much employees want to help consumers, their hands are tied because of certain company policies.
“How do companies fail to see this and how do they fail to act? It’s not a matter of doing stuff a little better or being more efficient. This is survival and death.” -Bob Evans
To further enhance personalization with consumers, Christian and Bob suggest that companies should explore Artificial Intelligence in customer service. AI can understand a consumer’s profile and history. It can contextualize an appropriate response without causing risks for the company.
To hear more about trust from Christian and Bob, download and listen to the episode.
Bios:
Chief Digital Officer, UL
Christian Anschuetz is the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) for UL (formerly known as Underwriters Laboratories) where he is responsible for identifying, prioritizing and embedding technology innovation and digital trends into the vision, strategy, and operating models required to sustain and accelerate the company’s growth. Before assuming the role of CDO, he served as UL’s global Chief Information Officer (CIO).
Before joining UL, Christian was the CIO for Publicis Groupe, the 3rd largest communication company in the world.
In addition to holding several other executive positions, Christian also founded a technology services boutique focused on providing cybersecurity services to firms as early as 1998.
Christian holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Stayer University. He is a proud veteran of the United States Marine Corps and the founder of the innovative nonprofit startup, Project RELO.
Bob Evans
Bob grew up outside of Pittsburg, with hard-working parents and his 6 siblings. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978 and entered the business world, flowing his passion for information technology and writing.
He rose to become the editor of Information Week, one of the top two publications in technology at the time. Later on, he became the SVP and Content Director for Information Week’s parent company TechWeb/CMP
After thirty years in the media business, he left to join the world of software vendors, after a quick stop at ERP vendor SAP, Bob was recruited by the world 5th richest person, a legendary category designer and entrepreneur –Larry Ellison the founder of Oracle.
At Oracle Bob served as SVP and Chief Communications Officer for Larry.
Today Bob runs his own strategic communications firm, is a prolific writer, a tech industry commentator, public speaker, and a legendary guy.
He hosts the widely popular Cloud Wars Live Podcast.
Links:
Christian Anscheutz – Linkedin
We hope you enjoyed Bob Evans and Christian Anscheutz on this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
057 Connected Strategy w/ Christian Terwiesch
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Professor Christian Terwiesch gets in touch with Lochhead for a remarkable conversation about connected opportunities in the customer journey. They dig into his new book, Connected Strategy, which looks into new forms of connectivity that can build legendary interactions with customers.
“What would it take that you blow this tradeoff away and you can have a higher efficiency, low fulfillment cost interaction with the customer and still delight the customer?” – Professor Christian Terwiesch
First Things First: Customer’s Perspective
In order for connected strategies to happen, business leaders should first think about the customer’s perspective. It is important to know the product and service that you want to provide them. And even more important is knowing the customer’s motivations for availing of your product.
For example, a shoe designer can spend tons of money on R&D and marketing to build relationships with retail stores. And even then, they could fail miserably at understanding their customers’ pain points. After all, the company that focuses on just the shoe itself will not be able to deliver quality customer journey.
“The customer’s pain points are not about just buying the shoe and having a great shoe. There’s a much bigger aspiration that this runner potentially has—feeling good, running their first marathon.” – Professor Christian Terwiesch
Connected Customer Journeys
A term that Professor Terwiesch is particularly fond of is “consumption shame”, called “customer journey” in his book. This reminds us that people do not wake up in the morning and say they want our product.
They first have to realize the need, which may be initially latent, for a product. From there, they can make the choice and finally buy the product. This journey, a form of engagement and experience, is made of weaved and repeated interactions.
“It’s weaving those disjoint experiences together, so that you and I—my firm and you—will have a relationship that goes much longer than one episode.” – Professor Christian Terwiesch
Recognize, Request, Respond, Repeat
Lochhead also shared his own experience after a recent purchase of podcasting equipment. A representative rang him up, asked some questions about his purchase, and then offered to help him directly should he have concerns. Christopher also received an email containing links to the shop’s FAQs page, which completely blew him away.
A company’s personal touch shows the embeddedness of the moment of purchase in a longer customer journey. There could also be a similar experience for other customers before they make the purchase. Four stages in the journey that could use such connected strategies are the moments when customers recognize, request, respond and repeat their interaction with the product.
To hear more about connected strategies from Professor Terwiesch and how you can utilize them, download and listen to the episode.
Bio:
Christian Terwiesch is a professor of Operations and Information Management at Wharton and co-directs Penn’s Mack Institute for Innovation Management.
With extensive experience in MBA teaching, online courses, and executive education.
Professor Terwiesch has authored several books, and published in many of today’s leading academic journals, from Management Science to The New England Journal of Medicine.
He also hosts the national Sirius XM radio show Work of Tomorrow. He holds a doctoral degree from INSEAD and a Diploma from the University of Mannheim.
Links:
OID, Wharton School – University of Pennsylvania Profile
Executive Education, Wharton School – University of Pennsylvania Profile
Speaker Booking Agency Profile
We hope you enjoyed Professor Christian Terwiesch on this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
026 Fuck Hustle w/ Christopher Lochhead
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Why is hustle utter bullshit? On today’s episode, Christopher talks about the number one piece of entrepreneurial advice that most of us hear today. A topic that he’s written a blog for, Christopher shares seven reasons why we need to fuck hustle.
No Shit, Sherlock
Most entrepreneurial porn stars would pontificate the mentality that we need to hustle all day and every day. But “hustle” isn’t the most important word ever or a badge or wristband to show off. This evangelization of the idea that hustling is the way to go is dangerous and it needs to stop.
For one, hustle is a “No shit, Sherlock.” We all know that if you want to be successful in business or any other domain, you will need to work hard. We all heard of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule, and success takes hard work.
“That’s why we respect people who achieve great things—because of the simple fact that they had to overcome stuff and do something that most people aren’t willing to do.” – Christopher Lochhead
You’re Not a Hamster
Second, hamsters can go round and round in a wheel all day long without going anywhere and be happy doing it. Some people confuse activity and results. And we need to ask ourselves an important question:
“Does the work I’m doing produce meaningful results produce value or am I just spinning my wheel?” – Christopher Lochhead
The most legendary people develop a sixth sense around things that are going to move the needle in the areas they care about. They evaluate whether the levers are going to move things forward. And they’re constantly figuring out what things they can use to leverage what they need to produce wanted results, as opposed to just spinning the wheel.
Work Smarter, Not Harder
Third, instead of hustling, entrepreneurs must preach working smarter. It’s pointless to work yourself into oblivion. It pays off to learn beyond what’s taught in school, and this includes horizontal income, which he talks about with Pat Hiban on a podcast episode.
“I like to say that horizontal income is money that can roll in while you’re laying down.” – Christopher Lochhead
To hear the four other reasons why we all need to stuff it and fuck hustle, download and listen to the episode.
Link:
Fuck Hustle: 7 Reasons Hustle is Bad Advice
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Fuck Hustle Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
022 Legendary Marriage w/ Lance and Brandy Salazar
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On today’s special episode, we hear from a legendary married couple, Lance and Brandy Salazar. They co-authored Hal Elrod’s newest book, The Miracle Morning for Couples: Creating a legendary connection one morning at a time. They tell us about co-designing your life with your partner, coming back from the brink of divorce, and much more.
An Empty Sort of Happiness
Lance and Brandy’s married life was a lovely adventure before they had their kids. No one ever prepares enough for a life with young ones and that was when the kick-in happened for them. They had to provide for their growing family and keep “feeding the beast”.
With their priorities skewed, their mental fortitude deteriorated. They were overwhelmed and their marriage was falling apart. And the ultimate wake-up call to fix things was Brandy asking Lance to move out.
“We had all the great things that society told us apparently would buy us happiness or bring us happiness. And we had everything we needed and more… But our marriage sucked.” – Lance and Brandy Salazar
Defining Their Values
All these things led to a decision to design the life they wanted. In the process, they found out that they hadn’t defined their values. And so they sat down and mapped out all the things that they needed to achieve their dream life, and this included their home environment.
“It wasn’t until that designing part really came to fruition that we identified the fact that weren’t in the right town for us.” – Brandy Salazar
Having realized the environment as an important life aspect, it became a catalyst to define more of their values.
Byproducts of Life Design
Lance and Brandy realized the benefits of operating from a place where they knew their values and the things that bring them fulfillment and freedom. Once they defined the center of their world, everything else fell into place. And among these is their happy, healthier marriage.
To hear more about how Lance and Brandy created the relationship of their dreams, download and listen to the episode.
Bio:
Lance and Brandy Salazar are on a mission to help couples reconnect with each other and stay deeply in love while raising their daughters. They created “Legendary Couples with Kids” because they know firsthand how challenging it is to keep your marriage a priority while juggling careers and being parents.
They now know that it is possible to be more in love than ever before. Their story is common, but their method is not.
Four short years ago, they were nearly divorced. Having kids abruptly deprioritized their marriage, and they lacked deep intimacy and connection. They were disconnected, frustrated, unhappy, and they knew they weren’t modeling the marriage they wanted for their girls.
At the point of calling it quits, they made one last effort to save their relationship. This time, they tried something new. They took the best and most effective tools used by successful business and health coaches with proven positive psychology methods and applied these concepts to their marriage.
They stayed consistent with their commitments and made their vision a reality within a few short months. After almost 14 years of marriage and almost being divorced, they were now experiencing a remarkable level of connection, intimacy, and fun in their relationship.
Their results were so effective that they applied the same method and principles to their family and brought their daughters along on this journey with them.
So, in 2017 they quit their 20-year careers, sold their ‘dream home’, began homeschooling their daughters and have dedicated their efforts to this mission; helping Couples with Kids everywhere create the most amazing and Legendary relationships possible!
Links:
We hope you enjoyed Lance and Brandy Salazar on this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
021 Q&A with Lochhead
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How do you know when to quit? Is there still a place for creative minds in the marketing industry? On today’s Q&A with Lochhead, Christopher answers these two questions sent by his listeners.
Category Leaders’ Share
Should you quit a company that’s starting to fail at the category king game? In writing Play Bigger, Christopher and his co-authors conducted a research project where they analyzed every venture-backed company found in Silicon Valley from 2000-2015. They tracked how these companies grew in value.
They looked into the data for an answer to an important question. What percentage of the market cap goes to the category leader? It turned out that the number was a whopping 76%.
Winner Takes All
In businesses today, there exists a winner takes all game. And you would want to be part of that company. It’s a bitter pill to swallow.
We learn so much by winning. There is also the halo effect that comes from being part of a legendary team, and these halos last forever. Christopher would know.
“The minute that you think your company can’t win the category king or queen game in your space, that’s when you need to start looking.” – Christopher Lochhead
When considering companies, you must also ask yourself these important questions: Can this company do product, company, and category design right? And can you make a contribution to that?
Creativity in Marketing
How about people who want to live off creative work in marketing? Is creativity still a fundamental asset in this landscape?
In business today, data and technicals are becoming increasingly important. Even so, creativity still comprises half the work in marketing, especially concerning new skills that companies require in new CMOs.
“Category design is now the number one skill that CEOs are looking for when they are recruiting new CMOs.” – Christopher Lochhead
To hear more about the role of creativity in the marketing landscape, download the listen to the episode.
Links:
Harvard Business Review Article – How Unicorns Grow
We hope you enjoyed this Q&A with Lochhead
020 Conversational Marketing, Category Design & More w/ David Cancel
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Why is it even more important now to focus on customers? Today, David Cancel joins his friend Christopher to talk about personal brands and authenticity. They also have an insightful discussion about designing a new category of conversational marketing.
Reputation Before Personal Brand
Everybody seems to be scrambling to become influencers these days. But too often, people fall for the false promises of contrived personal branding. They need to learn the distinction between a personal brand and reputation.
“A reputation starts with ‘carrying the water’, doing the work, producing the results… Becoming a person of substance that can be relied upon to produce results.” – Christopher Lochhead
With a reputation, people would turn to you and know you for your personal brand. But first, you need to have done something repeatedly you will be known for. And only then can you be authentic.
“You wanna learn from the athlete, you wanna learn from the entrepreneur, you wanna learn from whoever that has repeatedly done something—not that they did something one time.” – David Cancel
Big Changes, Infinite Supply
David built Drift with the idea that people have been taught to do certain things that no longer exist. He also had a career centered around the idea that companies have all the control over their offers.
But this setup has become obsolete with the infinite supply of everything in every category. In effect, the customer has a lot more options.
Designing a New Category
After reading Play Bigger, David realized the importance of category design in linking their company’s vision and desired results. They needed to drive back to people and customers. And so they designed a category around conversational marketing.
They aim to espouse the strategy of making customers feel special while delivering what they wanted.
“This is the larger change that we believe is gonna happen in the world, where the customer has control.” – David Cancel
To hear more about conversational marketing, chatbots, and category design from David, download and listen to the episode.
Bio:
David Cancel is a serial entrepreneur, podcast host (Seeking Wisdom) and angel investor/advisor. He created hypergrowth companies, products and product teams at companies such as Drift.com, HubSpot, Performable, Ghostery and Compete.
David has been featured by media outlets such as The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, Wired and Fast Company. David has also guest lectured on entrepreneurship at Harvard, Harvard Business School, MIT, MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Bentley and other Universities.
His popular blog DavidCancel.com has been read by 1M+ entrepreneurs, and his Twitter account @dcancel has 180k followers and is considered a “Must-Follow” account for entrepreneurs, executives, and product people.
Links:
Website – Seeking Wisdom Podcast
iTunes – Seeking Wisdom Podcast
Amazon – Conversational Marketing
We hope you enjoyed David Cancel on this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
