The Leadership Stack Podcast

One of the ways that a lot of entrepreneurs, especially startups, validate their ideas is through the lean startup model by Eric Ries. Are you familiar with this model? Were you able to practice this for any of your businesses? Unfortunately, Adam and his brother weren’t knowledgeable enough at the time to do so. Right now though, he is a very big believer in the model. He believes that companies should follow that model. For Adam, one of the things that he’s learned through experiences is the importance of running one as lean as possible. When they started their businesses, they did everything the wrong way. For starters, they started by pushing 10 ideas at once. That is not the way to do it. If you’re an entrepreneur, you shouldn’t do that. People ask Adam all the time how he was able to build three businesses. His best advice on the matter is for people not to follow in his footsteps. Rather they should take their best ideas and focus on it. You advised people awhile ago to focus on just one idea and the rest will follow through. Your third business, Velo Solutions, is an offshoot or a product of the first two ideas. It validates and reinforces your advice. Is this what happened with Velo Solutions? This is what happened to Velo Solutions. And even with that happening, Adam is still a believer in less is more when it comes to business ideas, especially for early-stage businesses. People should just focus on one idea. You should pick your best idea. Don’t get distracted and pull yourself in a hundred different directions. Have confidence in yourself and your best idea, but don’t start off thinking that you can successfully scale all these different businesses at once because that is difficult. What do you guys do with Velo Solution? With Velo Solutions, Adam and his team work with businesses and nonprofits of different sizes. They build generally sophisticated technology solutions for their clients. They create complex systems that the run of the mill development team generally isn’t capable of doing. Oftentimes they come in when the incumbent team has been displaced or if the current client realizes that they need to take the next one or two leaps up. They tend to create creative and strategic work. An example of their work would be the creation of a new revenue stream for clients that can be connected to their original businesses. They try to marry their technical expertise with whatever it is their client is trying to create in their business. With everything that is happening in your life, are you still the ones that go to clients to ask them what they need? Adam is not the one that talks to clients. For him, it’s important to know your own strengths and weaknesses as well as the limitations of your time. He is not the one who is talking with clients or who goes over the roles and responsibilities. It is delegated to the right people.  As a leader, Adam believes that it is important to understand who you are and what you’re good at and what you’re not good at. He thinks it’s important to bring people around you who are much, much better than you in all the areas in which you need talent. For Velo Solutions, they need incredibly good software developers. That’s not Adam because he’s not a programmer. What he does have is his strong knowledge around recruitment that when paired with his brother’s strong technical expertise, lets them source the absolute best developers that they can find. They’ve been able to bring in the best and brightest to their team.  As a leader, you must understand that not only can’t you do everything by yourself, you shouldn’t do everything by yourself. You are not going to be successful if you’re doing everything on your own.  Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)

Today’s guest is Adam Mendler. He is an entrepreneur, a public speaker, a coach, and a consultant. He is the CEO of the Veloz group. When you started the Veloz group, what was the first product or service that you guys went into? The first business that Adam was able to get off the ground is currently their biggest business-- Beverly Hills Chairs. When they first started, they had a lot of ideas for a lot of businesses and they started to push them. They spent their first year and a half trying to turn these ideas into companies. The time came when they couldn’t do it much longer because they’ve burned through their savings. That was when they started to focus on the two businesses that were closest to being monetizable.  What made your two winners stand out? What makes them special? In the United States, the largest office furniture company is called Herman It’s a billion-dollar company that is famous for its signature chair, the Herman Miller Aeron Chair. These cost $1,200 a chair. It’s the most popular chair ever made. Even with such a high price, companies really want that chair. What Adam did was, they came in and identified that they could build a business that caters to the customers who want that chair but don’t want to pay as much money. That led to them selling refurbished Herman Miller chairs and refurbished Steelcase chairs from other top brands.  Adam learned in business school that he should not create demand, rather he should address it. With his business ideas, he would be addressing this demand that already exists while also doing so in a differentiated way. That same $1,200 chair, he sells for just five to $600. That’s 50% of the original cost. How did you port that idea to custom tobacco? You mentioned that they’re pretty much similar. Are you saying that there’s this demand for custom tobacco, too? With Customized Tobacco, Adam got their market wrong. Their market for Beverly Hills Chairs was small to medium-sized businesses that don’t want to pay full retail. People that were looking for something that could help them save money. Foor Briarmont&Co., they initially built the business thinking that their core customers were hardcore cigar smokers. Those that love nothing more than to hang out at the cigar shop or their porch, or with buddies and just having a smoke. They couldn’t be any more wrong. The hardcore cigar smoker did not like what they were offering at all because they were very loyal to their brands. That’s not what Adam was providing. He was offering the experience of creating your brand and creating your custom cigar. Most cigar smokers don’t care about that. Instead, the business resonated strongly with gift-givers and event planners.   Adam’s old design for his tobacco website was catered to their initial target audience. It had a more old school feel to it. It would make users feel like they visited a cigar shop. Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)

What’s the difference between the 150 people in your first business and the 25 people working with you right now? How do you lead them? In his last business, Bryan took pride in the fact that he will never ask someone to do something that he hasn’t done himself. He built that business from the ground up. All of the services that they executed, the sales work, the way they answered the phone, the accounting, and everything else, he had done before he delegated it. In his recent company, however, he’s a decent front end programmer, but he’s not an expert. He had to delegate his work because he was simply not knowledgeable about it. It’s harder because he has to trust the feedback that you’re getting. Bryan’s role right now is to inspire his team and to help them gain better knowledge, character, and leadership. Do you have leadership programs running in your company right now? Bryan and his team try to identify who wants to be a leader because a lot of those engineers don’t want to be. Of the 25 current team members, they are trying to keep it down to five direct reports per manager.  Fortunately, the team is still small enough where he is still able to keep his hands on a lot of it. Right now he’s able to stay with his team leads and build a personal relationship with every single person on the team. 25 is a good size for a team, but they’re still growing. Bryan believes that they will outgrow it and they just have to deal with it when it comes. A lot of businesses have been stumped by this pandemic and a lot of economies have slowed down to a halt. How about you? How’s your business doing? What’s your projection for this year despite this pandemic? Bryan explained that right now, they’re in a $15 million runway. They’ve been doubling every year for the past five years before the pandemic came in. Thanks to his experience of surviving the 2008 recession in the U.S., Bryan was already braced for this kind of scenario to happen. Heresy for half of their sales to evaporate. Luckily for them, they’ve held stable and they’re still growing. Bryan mentioned that it’s not exactly because they’re doing great but rather because grass doesn’t stop growing and people would let the grass grow above their heads.  People don’t want to deal with a landscaper in their front yard so the concept of Green pal just makes sense for them. Bryan braced his team and told them that they just have to figure out how they’re going to get through this together. He promised his team that when they get through this five years from now, they would be bragging about it. They’ll get their business through COVID and it will feel good. Not a lot of people will be able to say that during the time of a global pandemic, they were growing their business and thriving. What is something that you want to tell the people who are in a rut right now that will help them get through this? Hopefully, entrepreneurs and business owners have a good culture in place along with sensible trust between their team. If you can honestly say that yes, their situation sucks but your culture is good, then lean back on that. Bring everyone together as a family and believe that you will get through it together. Yes, it’s going to make some sacrifices, and as the leader, you have to try and figure out a way to not take a paycheck. Do whatever it is that you have to do to lead through the crisis. There might be some situations where it’s just too dire. If that’s the case, be real with your team. Don’t sugarcoat it. Don’t be a salesman. They will respect the candor and they’ll be able to tell quickly if you’re being real or not.  Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)

It’s hard selling your first company. A lot of entrepreneurs have their identity intertwined with their first startup. In the Philippines, when you say Sean Si, people would think SEO Hacker. My next question is what your advice will be to people who are wondering whether they should bootstrap and start a self-funded business or take a loan from the bank, from friends and family? Bryan’s business was debt-free when they were acquired. That’s why they were able to sell. That said, some businesses need you to take on debt or have someone invest in you to get them going. That’s a bad bet for most business owners. It’s a beautiful thing when it works, but that only happens about 5 to 10% of the time. That’s a very small percentage. I, myself, would encourage people to do a bootstrap so that you get to sleep well at night without worrying about your debt. Low and low works well for most businesses. There are exceptions wherein you have to take big risks to win a lot of times. However, sometimes, you’ll just be driving off a cliff without leaving any skidmarks. Another thing that Bryan mentioned was that people should Leverage, Not Leap. If you know your business inside out, it’s easy to find great opportunities. If you know your numbers and you know that you can go get a thousand more customers for a hundred dollars each. All you have to do is borrow a couple of hundred grand that you know you can pay back in six months, then it might make sense to do that. When you bootstrap, the worst thing that can happen is that you default to nothing. You won’t dig your own grave because you can only go to zero, no less. Just six months after your exit from Peachtree, you started a tech-centric company in the same industry. What pumped you up to do this? Bryan always had this quote on his mind by George Patton: “If you’re not gaining ground, You’re losing ground.” Bryan just had to get back into the ring because he came to realize that it was his vehicle for personal growth. He would never be who he is today if his business did not for him to become that. Be it the type of leader or the type of manager that he has become. So many of the skills and lessons that Bryan picked up along the way were because his business required it from him. He missed that while he was on vacation. When he decided on what to start next, he thought of GreenPal. It’s basically the Uber for lawn mowing. If someone needs their grass cut, they jump on Greenpal, they get quotas, and they hire the guy that they want to come and cut their lawn. All of which is paid through the app. This idea hasn’t changed much from 2012 to 2020. The vision has always been the same. That it should be easy to get this one simple household chore done by pushing a button. When Airbnb and Uber were gaining traction, a lot of people had the same idea. What made you succeed? Bryan and Green Pal built a marketplace from the bottom up. It’s a place where homeowners can get multiple quotes from service providers in their town and then hire the services that they want to work with through their app. There, they can also pay, schedule, and rate them. This is the difference between Bryan and the other people that try Uber for X business model. Bryan built a marketplace whereas some of the others just want to build a better version of a specific company. Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)

For today’s episode, our guest is Bryan Clayton. He is a serial entrepreneur that has just recently exited from his first company.  One of the two companies that you founded is named Peachtree. When did it start and how young were you when you started the company? Peachtree was a landscaping business. It was a company that would mow people’s yards, plant trees, shrubs, mulch-- things like that. Bryan was 17 years old when he started the business. Over 15 years, he grew that company from just being himself, to over 150 people. In 2013, he sold the company to one of the landscaping business in the United States. When did that idea get into your head? When did you think to turn that into a business? He realized that with the money that he was making, he might as well just keep doing this grass cutting thing instead of entering the job market. Bryan’s dad never really thought that he would capitalize on this. His dad was proud that he put Bryan on to run his own landscaping business. He was one of the biggest influences in Bryan’s life. His father taught him how to be a leader as he grew their company from 10 to 150 people. Bryan had to learn and apply how it is to be a good leader and manager. His father would be the one to point out things that he was doing wrong. When did you realize that you had to hire more people? Bryan realized soon in his business that he was leaving money on the table. He can’t get it all, especially when he’s starting a business alone. He did the marketing, the labor, the invoicing, he used to do everything. Understanding that alone, he can’t get to all the work that’s coming his way, was enough to make him realize that by hiring someone, they can do so much more. This sounds a lot easier than it is. In many ways, going from zero employees to one employee is as hard as going from 10 to 20. That’s because you’re doubling your business and you don’t have the resources. It’s a leap of faith. How did you hire during the time that you were expanding from 1 to 10 employees? What was your hiring process? What did it look like? Nobody is going to do it exactly like what you want. Bryan’s business started with his name under all of the roles mentioned. But as he started to hire people, he was able to scratch his name off that and put somebody else there. He created a document that would be handed to that person so that they would know what is expected of them and the roles and goals of their position. How were you able to lead 150 people? Most of the people that worked for Bryan were older than him. That’s because this was when he was in his twenties. That experience wasn’t without any challenges. What worked for Bryan was to invest in the culture of the business. He made his business run like a family and less like a big company. Why they did that, however, was simply because it would make their clients hold on to them. When the company wins, everybody wins. One of the most fun things that they’re able to do was that every quarter, they would identify a project that one of their people wanted to do. If it’s approved, then they’ll provide an interest-free loan to their employees. Soon they were able to help fund the construction of multiple things such as a supermarket, a new car, a new home, even tuition fees! They’d talk about the progress, and if the projects did well, and it was a lot of fun for the company. When the 2008 financial crisis hit the United States, it wiped out a lot of Bryan’s competitors. They were able to survive through it because of their strong culture. Culture is going to be one of the strongest points that will make teams thrive. Particularly in this time of a pandemic. Champions are not made in the ring. They’re made during training, in the locker room, while preparing for a fight in the ring. This is what Bryan did. He had a great culture and he communicated it every day to his team. Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)

Sam mentioned earlier the quote that goes along the lines of “you miss a hundred percent of the shots that you don’t take. That leaves us to just take the shot and learn from it. Learn from the missed shot and recalibrate. Sam had his own share of failures as well. He had his own startup projects that didn’t succeed such as a platform for photographers. He didn’t succeed in several of them, but it was still fine because those failures taught him a lot.  He learned a lot of things about how he should build his next startup. He would have missed out on all that education if he didn’t fail at the others first. For him, entrepreneurs and startups should build their own projects or their Minimum viable product as much as they want. If it doesn’t succeed, then you will be learning from it. It is something you learn that is more valuable than any university education. The lessons you take from it last a lifetime. The same goes for entrepreneurship. It is a journey. It is not just a destination. Entrepreneurship is like an infinite game. One thing that I always tell my team in SEO Hacker. We are composed mainly of 20 to 30-year-olds with me being the oldest guy in the team. I always tell them that this company is your university. I am the one paying for their tuition fee, I sponsor them. They are my scholars. I allow them to make mistakes except for two kinds: Repeated and Fatal mistakes. Fatal mistakes are when you lose a client. Repeated mistakes lead to Fatal mistakes when you keep doing it over and over again.  The same goes for entrepreneurship. We entrepreneurs are in our own university, we are our own sponsors, and the more times we fail, the more times we should learn. What advice can you give someone who is afraid to fail? One of the reasons why people fear failure so much is not because you have to repeat something, as is the case for college students, but rather they are worried about their own insecurities and what people would say.  Entrepreneurship, by nature, is accepting the risk and moving ahead regardless. One of the things that Sam mentioned is to introspect yourself. Why is it that you are afraid to fail? Is it because you care too much about what people are going to say about you and how they’re going to perceive you? Or will you choose not to care about what they say? What advice can you give to people who are currently doing nothing amid this COVID-19 Lockdown? Sam has two points of interest in mind. He highly recommends that people look into these two things: What they are good at and what they’re passionate about. When these two things align, they will create extraordinary results. Whether it’s coding, design, or whatever, as long as you have that innate ability for something, then you should go ahead and learn it. How do you know what your passion is? How do you know what you’re passionate about? Sam never had to think about his passion before. He says that that is one of the signs. Maybe you don’t have to think about it because it’s something that you do without looking at the time. You don’t even think about getting up for a meal or setting a reminder for it because you get so engrossed in that activity.  What is something that you are working on and where can we find you? You can find Sam Kamani via LinkedIn. He is also currently working on his FinTech gaming product and building an esport product for trading and investments which is supposed to be coming soon.  He lives in New Zealand. He is from India and he has been rejected 500 times but is now a serial entrepreneur, an author, a speaker. Talk about resilience. Talk about getting up. Talk about learning from failures. Well, we did learn today from Sam and we are better for it. Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)

You said failure made you learn a lot about what works and what doesn’t. What’s your advice to people who are afraid to fail? Sam definitely experienced a lot of failures. It’s like this famous basketball quote that says “you miss all the shots that you don’t take.” That’s the difference.  We have faced failure but we just move on and learn and grow from it. For example, Sam has been in New Zealand for nearly 18 years. Over the course of that 18 years, he has applied for hundreds of jobs and he never got accepted to a single one.  Everyone of Sam’s businesses and opportunities, he found through people.  He learned that it’s not about what you know, but who you know, that works. It doesn’t matter how technologically advanced civil society gets. At the end of the day, people work with people.  Sam says that we need to work with people. We need to build relationships. We need to engage with people and provide value to them. Even bringing a smile to their face can be considered. Sam used to do a lot of offline networking. Now he does it more online which is exactly how fate has brought us together. Whenever he has an idea to start up a business or do something of the sort, he would still leverage his connections. He mentioned how he applied to almost 500 jobs, each with a unique cover letter and a unique CV, but he never still could get a job.  And so he said, If you don’t get any job, start your own thing! Can you tell us the story of how you got into the Pharma company and the esports company? Among the 500 rejections, Sam only got two yeses that led to two exits. These were not advertised at all in job hunting sites. He got into the first one when a mutual acquaintance introduced him to this Pharma company. Sam was doing consulting on the side, growing his brand and business passively. When he was introduced to the Pharma company, he offered to work there for a month and if they liked what he was doing to their business, if he was able to show some growth, then they should give him a part of their company so that it’s in his benefit to keep growing it as well. That’s exactly what happened. Sam produced phenomenal results which gave him more and more stakeholder time in the company. The company became very reliant on him. After he exited that company, he was essentially unemployable because most of the companies that he applied for said that he owned a business so he won’t last long. The second company was one that Sam chose himself. He looked for the company and tried to contact the CEO through LinkedIn, Facebook, and email, but sadly, anonymous letters don’t usually receive any replies. It was when he was able to meet the person physically, during an event that he was able to talk to him sincerely. He pitched himself and offered to work for two weeks for free so that it would purely be the results that will do all the talking. Once again, he was able to provide them with great value. They also became reliant on Sam and overtime, he managed to gain a small stake in it, especially since he was assigned to become the Chief Operating Officer. It’s very similar to my own story. I was virtually unemployable with 28 failing units right out of college. I couldn’t get accepted so I had to start my own business as well. Sam showed guts right there and that’s what a lot of people today need. You have to have the guts-- the grit to keep doing what you’re doing. Another thing that Sam wanted to add was that people should give up on worrying about what other people would say. Even with the potential negativity that your work gets, there will still be 10 other people that will find it useful. Do it for them. Remember that when you do something significant, you will encounter opposition and there won’t be any opposition when you don’t do anything significant. Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)

Our guest for today is Mr. Sam Kamani. He is the CEO and co-founder of Product Done. Product Done builds software for really early-stage startups for entrepreneurs and founders. A lot of the founders who come to them are non-tech founders and they have amazing ideas such as an SAS product or a mobile app. We just have them bring their ideas to life. How much do you charge for, let's say a simple software as a service product or for a company who wants to digitalize their inventory ERP? For software, it goes anywhere from USD5,000 to USD30,000 maximum. That being said, we have even helped some entrepreneurs build small concepts and clickable prototypes that they can present to their investors for funding. We have all sorts of stages and all sorts of budgets. Tell us about these two exits. What are your first and second companies? Please let us know. The first company Sam joined in 2007 dealt with herbal supplements and nutraceuticals. These were very similar to pharmaceutical products. At the time, everything was done offline. Their processes used catalogs, call centers, and other offline channels. Sam, with his expertise in eCommerce, digital marketing, and growth hacking, managed to help the company grow nearly 500% in a span of a few years. This allowed him to buy in the company. The next exit was with an esport company. Sam was once again head of growth. His stint in the position managed to improve the company from having 60,000 monthly users to 300,00 monthly users in only eight months. This achievement and his other contributions led to him becoming the chief operating officer or the COO of the company. This exit was acquired towards the middle of 2018. What led to your decision to join an esports company after being so successful with a nutraceutical company? With esports, Sam and his team were able to do some very interesting things. The best part was that people from all around the world can tune in on streaming platforms such as Twitch, Youtube, and Facebook. It’s very easy to go from 1000 users to 2 million. it won’t take that long when compared to physical pharmaceuticals which might take years and years to achieve the same thing. The feeling of scaling was what brought Sam back into tech. When you exited the pharmaceutical industry, was it just you, or did all of the shareholders exit as well? There was only one shareholder besides Sam at the time and they both exited. It is vital to have an agreement with your co-founder or the person you're running your business with. You should have the same vision in pretty much everything you do. Otherwise, it will be hard for you to get anywhere. Now, Sam’s previous co-founder has already written 12 books, six of which are fiction. She is very satisfied with her life right now because she’s doing what she always wanted to do. You also have a book of your own. Did your previous co-founder inspire you to write it? Sam’s previous co-founder is probably in her early seventies now, but she has never stopped learning. She has this amazing discipline. Because of this, he wanted to share all the stories that he has accumulated within the years, particularly how to grow and scale your startup. Sam’s book is called the 30-Day Startup What do you want people to learn from your book? Sam likens it to driving a car without power steering. It is very hard to turn a car that is not moving. But it’s easy to turn a car that is. The book encourages people to go out and build something. Stop waiting and start building fast.  The main advantage that startups have is their speed and agility that is lacking in large corporations. Be it alone or with a co-founder, you should go out there and build something. Start promoting and get real feedback. Sam’s book has been heavily influenced by Eric Rice. Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)

How do you build your relationships and write connections and how do you pursue those people when it comes to mentoring? Building relationships should not be an artificial thing. It should be natural and casual, because millennials, especially the younger generation today, the centennials, can detect if you're fake about something if you're not authentic.  I handpick the mentors that I want to learn from. And I am very specific in the things that I want to learn. I just send them a message through Facebook Messenger or any available communication channel that they allow. Which is usually email and I tell them “Hey can I invite you for lunch or dinner on me, someplace near you and all I'm asking is for advice.”  When they agree, I also put value on the table for them. It could be in the form of helping them build a website, or contributing to their digital marketing process as of now. It's not complicated. Just ask.  How are you going to receive what it is you want to learn if you don’t ask?  Is there any specific person of influence whom you can say made an impact on what you have achieved both in business and your personal life? I would say Pastor Dennis Sy right off the bat. He has mentored me for seven years. 13 to 19 years of age. He helped me with my morality, with my faith, with how I look at other people and how I look at myself.  Pastor Joby Suriano helped me in one of my darkest times when I was 19, without whom I would still be in a very different place, I probably could not climb up that heap of failure that I was in, during that time. Other people who have influenced me in business. Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey influenced me to be a better entrepreneur, to be secure about how I do things, and how to lead our people and build a culture. These are people who are not who I'm not personally acquainted with but have influenced me in how I think and do things. Can you share with us verses in the Bible that serve as your guide in doing your business as a whole? I have this verse painted on the wall of my dining area at home, and that is: “Keep lies far from me. Give me neither poverty nor riches, but only my daily bread.” That entire set of verses is dear to my heart, because when I read that it's about contentment in the Lord because the writer was telling the people that you have to be contented with what you have, not too much and not too little, but not just for the sake of contentment, but for the sake of my relationship with God. Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)

Today’s guest is none-other than Ms. Jazz Rivera. She will be the one asking questions to me about leadership, entrepreneurship, and management. What if I don't have the capital to start a business? The thing is, a lot of people will tell you you have to have money to make money. I don't completely agree with that because I did have money, but all I had was PHP1300, which you probably have on you right now or sometime this week. It's easy for you to spend that. You don't need capital. What you need is knowledge and wisdom. You get that through investing in yourself, by reading books, listening to podcasts, going to seminars, conferences, getting mentors.  How many times did you fail and what were those failures? What did you learn from those experiences? When I started a business, I failed so many times by starting up. One of my failures was hiring. I hired some people who were not good, yet I trusted them. I've hired a lot of wrong people and the wrong people will make for the wrong team. The wrong team will make for the wrong company. The people that I hired initially, I failed in the interview process because of my strength and weakness as an entrepreneur is that I trust them too much. I learned from my failures, when you look back and people look at me now and tell me, oh, you're so high up the mountain, you're standing at the summit of your success. This mountain is a mountain of failures and a lot of people get buried under it and just quit. But I was able to pick myself up and climb on top of it until I got to the summit. And still more failures are coming down on me. I have to have that discipline of just picking myself up and climbing up again. What are your principles? What is the structure that you use to get people to work for you? Other principles that I have would be mastery. You have to have 10,000 hours of practice. That's really how to go about it. 10000 hours is usually five years. For SEO Hacker, I went overdrive. I went for 80 hour work weeks and I would always consciously and deliberately improve myself in terms of my craft in SEO, writing, and conversion optimization.  This is a culmination of deliberate practice.  That's something that I want my team to also be able to do. And with all of these principles, we wrap them up into our core values. So we have Grit, Unity, Respect for Work, becoming a Challenger. You challenge the status quo. You challenge yourself. Challenge other people; having Clarity when you communicate with each other and with the clients; and being able to always try new things in the spirit of having a positive outcome, Experimentation.  We have six core values that are the pinnacle of all of these principles that I have. What is your personal brand? How do you think people see you? I have been working at my brand for a long time already since I had the seansi.org website. At the start, it looked really bad. It looked like all of my stuff was there because I intended for it to be an online resume. When I was starting as a public speaker, a lot of my inquiries for talks would ask me for a résumé, which is weird now because no one does it now.  But if you look at seansi.org now, it is nothing like a resume for me. It is about who I am and how I do it. I am best known for SEO Hacker because it is a business that I started up. A lot of who I am still tied up with. And, you know, for me to be able to build that, it took a lot of years and consistency. The thing about branding is you have to be consistent. If not, then it's a hodgepodge of different things.  What can people identify with when they see you or when they hear your name?  Mine is “digital”, “entrepreneurship”, and “author”. These couple of things, it's not going to reach ten items. It's just a couple of items that they can associate me with.  Support the show (https://tribe.leadershipstack.com/)