Manage 2 Win

How would you respond to a disappointed boss that yelled at you after a significant failure? Many leaders would look for another place to work.  Tim Lupinacci made a different decision 30 years ago.  He became a self-professed “leadership junkie” to improve his leadership skills.  On this podcast, Tim discusses some of his best habits and ways to achieve significant things through others.  Today, Tim is CEO and Chair at Baker Donelson, where he leads over 1,300 individuals in 22 offices across the Southeastern US.  The firm is one of the nation’s top 100 law firms, and it has a strong HR practice for other leaders.  Of particular interest to us, is that Tim recently launched a non-profit called “Everybody Leads.”  It’s focused on empowering individuals in underserved communities with basic leadership skills and confidence to better lead themselves, lead others, and lead in the community. Whether you’re a new leader or seasoned veteran, Tim has a perspective you can gain from.  Join this discussion to

Would you like insights from a top sales leader?  This is not a Microsoft-endorsed podcast, but our guest Helen Fanucci is a highly successful Microsoft sales executive who wants to share her best practices with you. Most sales managers think, “My team better make quota, or I’ll lose my job.”  It’s pretty simple.  However, Helen’s sales leadership approach is to shift your focus intentionally and pragmatically from traditional deals and dollars to the ambitions, success, and well-being of each member of your team.  This means the sales professionals on your team are your first, middle, and last selling priority every day for sales management.  They are your number one customer! Part of the reason for this change is the hybrid work revolution that began back in 2020.  Sales management is even more important in our innovation economy, yet simultaneously the most challenging. Why?  Because the workforce power structure has been flipped upside down, putting every top seller in a position to write their own

“Your thoughts do not define who you are,” our guest, Matt Tenney of The Mindfulness Edge, advises us.  What does that mean? Matt appealed to us as a guest because his agent communicated he had leadership lessons from a prison and a monastery.  That sounded intriguing.  Matt does have a four-step leadership system that can help many leaders. But it’s what he learned in prison that I found most useful. Matt also explained how he starts every workday with 20-25 minutes of mindfulness, exercise, time with his family, and then blocks off his calendar until 11:00am.  Only urgent needs from clients get his morning time.  Makes you wonder…  What’s Matt doing until 11am each workday?  Coffee and hot tubs? No. Matt sets aside every workday morning for “asset building.”  WOW!  Love it. What would happen if you did not look at email or answer texts/IM, etc. until 11am, and you invested that time into asset building? Listen to this podcast to learn more. Are you wondering what Matt shared about his time in prison?  You s

The most important relationships to live out your company values are with your employees.  Can you state your company values from memory?  If not, why not?  Are you living them out daily?  How do you know? Aaron Burnett lives out his company’s values every day.  As a result, people describe Aaron as “trustworthy,” “astute,” “imaginative,” and “scary smart.”  These are rarely adjectives used to describe marketing agency leaders after they have been in the industry for decades.  But Aaron walks his talk. Wheelhouse Digital Marketing Group is recognized by INC Magazine as one of the best places to work in the United States, and by both Seattle Magazine and the Puget Sound Business Journal as one of the best workplaces in Washington State.  The seeds of Wheelhouse were sown over 25 years ago on the banks of the Bohorok River in Sumatra.  You can read that story here.  However, if you want inspiration and ideas of how to supercharge your company culture, then join this podcast to hear what Aaron has to say.  This

Jerome Deroy was hired, but did not connect with the company’s culture.  When he did, he found it lacking direction.  Do any of your employees have the same feelings about your firm? Honest, engaging storytelling that touches people’s hearts changes relationships, professional and personal.  How well do you explain things to others? Did you know the human brain is hard-wired for story?  Scientific studies show us that we remember stories more than data, statistics, and numbers.  Yet most people in business try to convince others rather than use a story. Jerome and his Narativ team seek to change that.  They help companies activate behavioral change from the inside out.  Their methods of listening and storytelling can transform anyone’s communication. In this podcast, Jerome shares aspects of the rigorous and precise Narativ method that gets to the emotional heart of a story to better communicate your company’s value, a point your want to make, or the way a partnership can be a huge win-win for those involved.

Here’s your chance to learn from a “Brain Geek.”  Wendy Swire wants to teach us how to rewire our brains to create laser-focused results as we move from “Saboteur” to “Sage Brain” thinking. Everyone knows the health benefits of having disciplined, positive habits or routines.  For instance, physical fitness, spiritual prayer – worship – meditation,  time with loved ones… but what about mental fitness? Science has now proven we can train our cognitive muscles to avoid, block, or more quickly recover from negative attacks within our brain.  Everyone has them.  We are actually wired to be negative as part of our survival instincts.  However, we are NOT wired to endure the constant onslaught of manipulative media and/or wounded people that pester us with negative messages thousands of times daily.  (If we allow them to…) Learn more about yourself on this podcast, and visit our Manage 2 Win page on Wendy’s site to take a free 5-minute assessment.  Join this conversation to get glimpse on how you can be stronger, e

You lost your job.  You decide to love on people.  You choose coffee.  You have a loan commitment from a bank and sign a lease to open your first coffee shop.  Then you lose the loan.  What now? For Morne Van Staden, newly married and with a child on the way, the decision was to continue the journey.  Go all in.  Total financial and operational transparency with his lovely bride, Nicole.  Solid advice from a limited number of mentors.  Keep the faith, and their eyes on the road ahead. So, what happened? Nine years later, Journey Coffee has five locations.  A pastor volunteers to train soft skills to new employees.  Lots of community and caring is happening.  Unlike other food service outfits, Journey Coffee has no trouble hiring.  They serve about 900 people daily.  Their motto is, YOU MATTER. Journey Coffee’s vision is, “We endeavor to restore and rejuvenate genuine human community  where all people can feel welcome, valued and loved.” Does your America, home country, business, or neighborhood look like that

Spending money on marketing can be like flushing cash down the toilet.  Mac Attram has a different approach:  Focus on joint ventures to build on the success of others. But how do you choose the right company for your joint venture?  How do you structure the agreement?  Joint ventures can be easy to sign, but might be agonizingly slow to launch.  What happens when a joint venture goes sour – how do you get out? These topics and more are discussed in this podcast.  Mac shares his system to grow your company 200% or more in 6-12 months.  He introduces how joint ventures can leverage six cornerstones of your company:   Marketing, Sales, Team, Systems, Finance & Mindset.  Joint ventures often enable you to grow all these 6 areas simultaneously. Mac Attram is the Founder & CEO of MindSpace Coaching, where he helps businesses grow more rapidly using his proven systems.  One of his favorite techniques is joint ventures, which is the main reason he is a multi-millionaire today.  Join this podcast to be introd

Carey Smith grew Big Ass Fans from zero to $300 million over 18 years without outside investors.  He shares key parts of his story on this podcast. It’s interesting to note that when he sold Big Ass Fans for $500 million, the company’s stock appreciation rights program paid out $50 million to more than 100 loyal employees who shared Carey’s work ethic with 15 becoming overnight millionaires. Every year, American entrepreneurs start more than 500,000 companies, but only 200 will ever reach $100 million in revenue.  Even many that succeed will later fail. One valuable tip from Carey is that he personally called each new customer to hear first-hand what they liked about their Big Ass Fan, and more importantly, learn what they thought could be improved.  Why did he do that? Because Carey believes in a “fail-fast” approach to drive revenue quickly.  He learned a valuable lesson that you can usually tell within a short time if an idea’s going to work.  If it doesn't, then make the conscious decision to fail fast. 

When people don’t get your story right, they often buy from someone else.  Therefore, effectively communicating the value of your company’s services is crucial to your company’s profitability and growth. David Saltzman is a marketing guru who joins us to candidly share common mistakes too many leaders make in explaining what their company does, and what to do instead.  Most leaders describe themselves and their people as heroes.  However, this is less effective than being a guide to someone’s desired destination.  David’s company, The Saltzman Group, helps leaders craft stories that sell customers, employees, communities… he wants us to stop talking and start communicating.  David and David, our host, discuss ways you can create clarity that cuts through and gets noticed.  There are some great tips here! Our guest, David Saltzman, is a 20-year nationally-published monthly columnist, a certified StoryBrand consultant, and hosts the award-winning ShiftShapers Podcast.  His company, The Saltzman Group, also serv

Rarely do we get to speak with people who are saving lives.  Every day.  Navid Alipour and his team are some of these people.  Why?  His life was changed when his wife faced cancer. Join this discussion for hope.  David talks with Navid about two companies he cofounded, not just funded, CureMetrix and CureMatch.  The AI technology behind these ventures was developed by some of today’s greatest minds to improve disease detection and cancer survival rates across the globe. Cancer is a vicious demon that consumes an estimated 1,670 lives a day in America.  It continues to be the second most common cause of death in the US, after heart disease.  A total of 1.9 million new cancer cases and 609,360 deaths from cancer are estimated to have occurred in 2022 (American Cancer Society). Navid shares candidly how he and his teams pursue these solutions.  Some are awaiting the U.S. government’s full blessing, but are available to people worldwide today.  The stories are touching.  The hope is real. Although a primary focu

Brendan Dell gets paid to position his clients to connect with top technology brands, including Expedia, ADP, HP, YC and 99 Start Ups portfolio companies.  Brandon’s claim is to help people with their “$1B Pitch.” Brendan’s course, $1B Pitch, examines the 8 elements of $1B pitches.  His podcast Billion Dollar Tech reaches founders, executives, VCs, and PE investors globally. In this podcast, Brendan provides high level insights into his work, and book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging.  Join this conversation if you’d like an introduction to Brendan’s $1B Pitch. Spotify  Apple Podcast  Google Podcast  Manage2Win   ------- This Manage 2 Win Podcast episode is brought to you by Habitly.  I (David) review Habitly best practices regularly, and teach these essential people skills to clients weekly.  This advice has changed my life, and made millions for our clients. I started developing Habitly content in 2004.  Habitly’s powerful best practices have now been taught to thousands of people worldwi

Would you like your employees to be better engaged, loving what they do, and being their best more of the time? Orrin Klopper, the CEO of Netsurit, has a solution for you: Support their dreams!  His company has implemented a Dream Programme based on Matthew Kelly’s book, The Dream Manager.  This program and three acquisitions have catapulted Netsurit to $35 million in sales and 300 employees. Orrin attended 9 schools as a kid.  Only got expelled from 3.  So, 6 out of 9 is not a bad result…  More recently, his company did an acquisition of a company in NYC, and in his words, “…we made every mistake possible.”  Yet, he learned.  Orrin is an overcomer.  For instance, he has a master’s diploma in Entrepreneurship from the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management. Now Orrin grows his company through acquisitions and has an incredibly strong company culture that adapts through different growth phases through an actionable framework.  Their Dream Programme helps too. Orrin is a passionate Microsoft Partner and is committed

You have a company that is profitable, but you need funds to hire a superstar, acquire another company, or launch a marketing program...  Where do you get the money? You have funding options when you’re a software company with recurring revenue.  One of them is John Gallagher, the CEO of Element SaaS Finance.  He leads a boutique growth finance company that invests in and lends to SaaS and recurring revenue companies. John talks with David about the challenges of growing a company.  Leaders get stuck doing everything, which causes growth initiatives to get set aside.  This podcast discusses the importance of strategy and how to work effectively with outside investors, whether they are on your board or not.  John discusses what he learned from working with Mazars Ireland, and Ireland Investments, one of Ireland's most prominent family investment offices.  He also has served as a SaaS CFO consultant to some of the fastest-growing software companies in Europe. John has been responsible for growing his company

Have you posted a YouTube video that has 1.4 million views?  Peter Anderton has (here).  It’s on his two rules of great leadership.  The popularity of this post demands us to consider it. David interviews Peter about leadership, well beyond his TED talk, "Great Leadership Comes Down to Only Two Rules."  Do you have leaders complaining about their people?  How do you get your team pulling together and heading fully focused in the right direction so amazing things happen? Peter suggests we build beliefs about people, products, systems, situations…  These beliefs, often based on assumptions, can lead us to make disastrous decisions.  We lack clarity on truth, but feel we have complete understanding.  Oops.  Wrong approach. Peter Anderton is the Founder of Internal Alignment, where he helps leaders build processes so they can 10x their companies from inside out.  He and his team have worked with hundreds of companies, including giants like Jaguar Land Rover, 3M, Atkins, HSBC Holdings, Michels & Taylor, and Hu

Some consultants and leaders use diversity to divide.  Dr. Lauren Tucker believes another approach is more effective:  Focus on inclusion.    Dr. Tucker is the Founder and CEO of Do What Matters.  She is an entrepreneur who works with other entrepreneurs.  She talks candidly with David about how traditional diversity efforts often hurt the very people they are intended to help, and good intentions have not led to sustainable impact.   Dr. Tucker believes inclusion means all your employees feel invested in the mission of your company and success of the work.  One challenge is to achieve a win-win where diversity is a solution, not a problem to be fixed.  But if you want to go for inclusion, how do you build on your company’s strengths with a strategy that reduces cultural resistance to change, and enables you to achieve sustainable inclusion and representation goals faster?  It's not easy, but it is doable.  Part of the problem is the toxic media and political environment today that seeks to divide people by

As a CEO, Melissa Widner has led two companies to successful acquisitions that provided over a 10X return to investors.  Do you need money to grow your company, without giving up equity?  David talks with Melissa about funding your company’s growth and the challenges financial folks see in entrepreneurs.  Every startup leaders have a different journey, but there are key similarities that separate high-growth visionaries from those who get stuck.  Money for growth can be a tipping point. Melissa has a deep understanding of the entrepreneur's journey and the importance of growth capital.  If you’re looking for alternative methods to finance your next big move, then join this conversation! Melissa Widner is the CEO of Lighter Capital, the pioneer and leading provider of revenue-based financing to SAAS companies.  Previously, she was the Managing Director of NAB Ventures, the venture capital arm of National Australia Bank, where she invested in and served as a director for several global fintech companies, includ

Today’s guest, Sam Citro Alexander, is an admitted Food Lover and Nutrition Nerd who’s bitewell team is on a mission to make healthy eating easy, convenient, and accessible for all. Sam and her team says they tried about 1,000 different food and nutrition apps, but concluded none helped people eat well.  Instead, most healthy eating platforms focus on cooking and preparation although the average American only cooks 1 meal a day. Food is part of the fuel for your employee performance.  Companies have varying degrees of support for employees on mental health, physical health, emotional health… but most Americans fail to consider how their diet affects their personal and professional lives. Bitewell is an app that captures how we really eat.  Our snacks, the food we order out, our iced lattes, what we cook…  Why track it?  Because this enables us to consider making small changes to WHAT we eat and tracking how it affects us. Join this conversation to hear how Samantha Citro Alexander decided to leave her excitin

Brad Harris is a rare Ph.D. leader who can articulate how fantastic leaders succeed in plain English.  He shares the power of failure, how to learn from it, and then to thrive. Brad and David have a very insightful discussion about how top leaders organize their time.  What is their tipping point to maintain their strategic focus?  How do they learn from mistakes?  To be candid, David came away from this discussion inspired to change part of his weekly schedule to achieve more than he has than in the past. What if you could get that ONE idea that helps you break into new territory?  Brad gives you many opportunities in this conversation to break through that glass ceiling that’s holding you down.  Don’t miss this conversation! Brad is the Professor in the Department of Management and Human Resources at HEC Paris.  Brad has received multiple teaching awards and was named a top “40 under 40 Business School Professor” by Poets and Quants.   He has co-authored two books, Scaling for Success: People Priorities fo

As America’s mainline colleges and universities continue their 50+ year descent into political indoctrination and teaching anything but career skills, leaders are wondering what they’re getting when hiring recent graduates. Today’s podcast is with Dr. John Jackson, the President of William Jessup University, the 3rd fastest growing institution of its type in the nation.  Prior to Jessup, John has been an entrepreneur, a journey he wrote about in one of his many books, Pastorpreneur. David and John have a candid conversation about the state of education in America today, and how that is affecting our economy.  The situation is not all bad, but it has never been so dire.  What’s a leader to do?  Listen in and hear some great insights. John has served as the executive director of Thriving Churches International.  He is the founding pastor of LifePoint Church in Minden, Nevada, and was the executive minister of the American Baptist Churches of the Pacific Southwest (now Transformation Ministries) where he served