Making Waves at C-Level: Business Tips for Executives, Leaders, and Entrepreneurs

Ernesto Verdugo helps baby boomers and Gen Xers think and earn like successful YouTubers.  

Ernesto is best defined as a Change Catalyst because his interventions create results in record times.

His speaking style quickly engages audiences and individuals to change and think differently. His presentations are thought provoking, entertaining, insightful and straight to the point. Participants on his events are always left with a strong urge to take action. He is a master in the art of anticipation. An avid trend hunter ready to identify new opportunities in the horizon for individuals and organizations.

Ernesto has been speaking and training since 1994 and has worked with tens of thousands of individuals from over 120 countries in 57 different countries. Simply, Google his name and you’ll find among the over 460,000 results, he is listed as the 247th most traveled human being in the universe. He works with a wide range of global organizations and provides them with a competitive edge based on his unique understanding of the world.

His intervention success is based in his belief that behavior is an outcome not an input. He understand that to bring an individuals into action you need to change their belief system. And that requires a very different approach. Ernesto’s methodology can quickly nudge old habits into new behaviors providing the spark needed to reset the mindset of your organization.

Ernesto Verdugo is the 247th most traveled person in the universe. He worked for Renaissance Cruises and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines before becoming a full-time speaker and trainer. He’s worked with people from over 120 nationalities in 57 countries. He is a Little League baseball coach a private pilot and a master juggler. He lives with his wife and two kids in the Woodlands, Texas.

https://thomsinger.com/podcast/ernesto-verdugo

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Episode 696 is a chat with Jay Baer, a marketing consultant and Hall of Fame Speaker. Jay knows customers and he is a Licensed Tequila Sommelier.

About Jay Baer

Jay Baer is the world’s most inspirational customer experience, customer service, and marketing keynote speaker. New York Times best-selling author of six books. A 7th-generation entrepreneur. The founder of five, multi-million dollar companies. Certified tequila sommelier. Lover of all things plaid.

Jay Baer, CSP, CPAE has spent 29 years in digital marketing and customer experience, consulting for more than 700 companies during that period, including 36 of the FORTUNE 500. He’s the founder of Convince & Convert, a consultancy that provides content marketing, social media, and customer experience advice and counsel to some of the world’s most important brands.

His newest book, Talk Triggers, is the complete guide to creating customers using strategic, operational differentiators that compel word of mouth. In the best companies, the customers do the marketing. Talk Triggers is the instruction manual for making businesses grow with customer conversation.

Hug Your Haters – Jay’s book on modern customer service and customer experience techniques – revolutionized the way business thinks about customer interactions, and was named one of the top 3 business books of 2016 by Strategy + Business.

His second book, Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help not Hype, was #3 on the New York Times business best seller list, and a runaway #1 Amazon best seller.

Jay’s Convince & Convert blog was named the world’s #1 content marketing blog by the Content Marketing Institute, and is visited by more than 250,000 marketers each month. Jay also hosts and produces the Social Pros podcast, and the Standing Ovation podcast, which features professional speakers exploring their on-stage stories.

He also has a Talk Triggers show about word of mouth, featured on Youtube and as a podcast.

A fixture in social media, Jay has been named a top influencer of CMOs, B2B marketers, small business owners, and digital marketers. He’s also one of the world’s top Global Gurus in customer service and customer experience.

Convince & Convert is the fifth multi-million dollar company Jay has started from scratch. Before his move into digital marketing in 1994 he was a brand marketer and a political consultant, with major roles in state, federal and presidential electoral campaigns.

Befitting his roots in Arizona, Jay is a certified tequila sommelier, and creates custom tequila education/live tasting programs for in-person and virtual events.

Jay lives in the idyllic college town of Bloomington, Indiana with his wife and travels from Indianapolis to speaking opportunities world-wide.

https://thomsinger.com/podcast/jay-baer

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This is the last episode of “Making Waves at C-Level” for 2021. What a two years it has been. Thom Singer shares how he got focused to set clear goals for the new year… and the three areas of focus he will have moving forward: Mind, Body, and Money.

In the last two years he had lost some of his mojo due to the closing of the in-person meeting business where he had worked for over a decade. His income went to zero for a while, and he had to get scrappy to survive. Now he has many areas of business that he is engaged in to earn money (instead of just being a speaker), but it also means for the first time in his life he needs more structure and systems in place to ensure things do not fall through the cracks.  

He shares the process he went through in this short episode that is available on on the podcast apps and on YouTube at https://youtube.com/c/thomsinger. (Please subscribe to his YouTube Channel).

Thanks for being a listener in 2021. Thom wants your feedback and guest ideas for the new year.  

http://thomsinger.com/Year-End-2022-Goal-Setting

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This episode of “Making Waves at C-Level” is one of two solo episodes with Thom Singer sharing his thought. In this “rant” he talks about what he learned the last two years in the pandemic.  

For many the business experiences during Covid have been very different. Some were hit hard, others simply worked from home and had little other disruptions. Thom is honest and open about the bumps in the road he faced, and now that things are better, he shares what he did to get from there to here.

Thanks for being part of this podcast. Thom wants all people who listen to this episode to reach out to him via social media or by email at Thom@ThomSinger.com

https://thomsinger.com/podcast/what-I-learned

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Competitive pricing strategy is key to not leaving money on the table. How to price your product or service is often a cost plus idea – with a focus on desired profit margins. But there are more indepth ways to do this right. The guest on this episode is Mark Stiving from Impact Pricing. He is the Chief Pricing Educator, and he helps companies win more business at higher prices (who doesn’t want that?).

In this conversation Mark shares his brilliance around value based pricing, how to price for products, services, and subscription based offerings. Mark helps his clients have a value based mindset and to re-think how the set their pricing strategies. 

You can learn more about Mark at Impact Pricing (www.ImpactPricing.com).

About Impact Pricing

The mission at Impact Pricing is to educate companies about value based pricing, which simply means charge what a customer is willing to pay. Once a company starts down that path, it’s quickly apparent that they require a much deeper understanding of value. By starting with the goal of charging for value, the focus shifts to how to create, communicate and capture value. Every company exists to create value for their market. Value based pricing spotlights how much value you truly create.

Education is their passion. Teaching you how to fish and feeding you for an entire career is one of the most fulfilling endeavors they have the honor of sharing. In late 2019, they launched Impact Pricing University as and online education platform for pricing professionals and company leaders to learn more about value and how to drive significant growth in their organization through pricing.  

Impact Pricing has a full catalog of courses focused on pricing and value. These courses and multi-day live training can be offered online as well as live.

Impact Pricing offers a unique way of coming along side companies to help them better understand their pricing. Their advisory services are for companies or individuals who would like to have a pricing expert looking over their shoulder while they make enormously impactful pricing decisions

https://thomsinger.com/podcast/impact-pricing

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Our guest, John Nepper, speaks to educators and administrators to create more connection. After 35 years as a band director he is now a joyful teacher in a world of human potential. 

About John Nepper

After 35 years as a professional music educator, and earning a black belt in Karate, you could say that John Nepper has a black belt as a professional educator. 

And while it’s true that he can break a patio block in half with his bare hands, what really matters is that John can break workplace culture, staff retention, and employee morale strategies into small, easy-to-digest, and implementable pieces that can be applied quickly to make positive changes. This means that administrators and principals keep the best and brightest staff members, keep them motivated to do well in their jobs, and experience less stress for themselves. 

Honored as Kenosha, WI Unified Schools Teacher of the Year, and a recipient of the Herb Kohl Educational Fellowship, John Nepper works with school district administrators and school principals to create a positive workplace culture that inspires people to work to their greatest potential and motivates them to stay with their schools, and organizations. 

The Trust and Connection Blueprint™ works for people in all areas of educational leadership at the local level and educational leadership associations.

When John is not presenting his programs, he is spending time with his grandchildren, building things in his backyard, and playing trombone any chance he gets.

Learn more about John Nepper and what people are saying about his programs at https://www.johnnepper.com. You can also find John on Facebook @JohnNepperSpeaks, and Linkedin at www.linkedin.com/in/john-nepper-b918346b

Get your free Trust and Connection Checklist at trustchecklist.com and discover how your leadership is landing with your staff. 

Questions about how the Trust and Connection Blueprint could be beneficial to you and your staff?  Schedule a call with John at trustandconnectioncall.as.me for some answers to those questions, or send an email to john@johnnepper.com

Great leadership is never created by accident but instead by positive intention. 

https://thomsinger.com/podcast/john-nepper

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About Bill Humbert

Bill Humbert is unusual in his field. He has over 40 years of Expert Recruitment experience spanning many industries. He has recruited and consulted with companies from start-ups as small as 11 professionals, including the Venture Capitalist, to major international corporations with tens of thousands of employees. His model is to work with One company at a time and charge a flat monthly fee. This enables him to recruit from C-Level to Laborer, and consult on recruitment process improvement.

During a recruiting contract with MCI Telecommunications in 1993, the recruitment advertising manager in Dallas called him “RecruiterGuy”. On this contract, MCI was transitioning Commercial Billing IT Development from Washington, D.C. to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Bill was informed that in the first 12 months of the contract from January 1, 1993 to December 31, 1993, the managers and he needed to hire and have a minimum of 120 IT professionals from Senior Manager to staff Programmers in their seats in Cedar Rapids (a town of only 3 IBM Mainframe shops). We recruited across the US that year. On December 31, 1993, we counted 143 IT Professionals at all levels in their cubes and offices. Over the next 8 months, we recruited an additional 83 IT Professionals to complete the contract. We moved 143 individuals and families to the Cedar Rapids area.

Bill is a Career Coach for Professionals. During the beginning of the Pandemic, he pivoted his focus to Career Coach. He coached 32 professionals from March 15, 2020 to December 31, 2020, to accept and start new positions.

He is a Professional Speaker and loves to entertain his audiences with his Talent Attraction and Career Search stories.

RecruiterGuy is a published author of 3 books. He has written 82 consecutive weeks of #TalentAttraction #Tuesday blogs and #JobSearch #Friday blogs, one LinkedIn post reached 23,000 views. He is a frequent Live TV guest and frequent podcast guest.

Website – RecruiterGuy.com

LinkedIn – www.LinkedIn.com/in/recruiterguy

Twitter – @RecruiterGuy81

https://thomsinger.com/podcast/bill-humbert

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On this episode of the “Making Waves at C-Level” podcast, Thom Singer talks with the author of “Weird Girl Adventures”, Shelley Brown.

Shelley is a speaker and and expert on belonging and well-being. In this conversation she shares her formulas on how to help people find their sense of belonging.

Thom adds to the chat that in 2022 it is the year of the weird. No longer does one have to look the same or wear the right clothes to be part of the team. Individuality rules in today’s world. 

About Shelley Brown

Shelley Brown was working in a cocktail bar soon after graduating college when she met the people who would change her life. They worked in hospitality at the Westin Hotel in Chicago, and they thought she’d be a good addition to their team. They were right.

She interviewed for and landed the job of concierge, or as she refers to it, “professional friend.” To Shelley, this was the perfect job for her considering her mantra was, “Who can I make friends with today?” Her job was to provide resources, build relationships, and make people happy enough to return to the hotel.

But Shelley was young and didn’t want to work every weekend, so she left her concierge job and eventually became a successful tech salesperson. Though she was very good at her job—she was among the top sales reps for three years—that wasn’t enough for the leaders. Her success in her job was measured by data, and soon KPIs became more important than Shelley’s ability to make friends. As her job became more and more transactional, her stress increased. She was devastated that her own personal magic was no longer valued.

When she set her sights on enterprise sales for Fortune 500 companies, the leaders said she was too wild, too artsy, too out-of-the-box, and too weird. Even though she could “sell like a badass,” she didn’t fit the role of what her team looked like, sounded like, or worked like.

Then a collapsed vertebrae forced Shelley, an ultra-marathon runner and group fitness instructor, to rethink who she was and why she did what she did. Her job wasn’t letting her be herself, that fired-up, compassionate, extroverted, cheerleader who never stopped being a “professional friend.”

She became a certified mindfulness teacher who “kum-by-rocks,” teaching self-awareness practices and processes so that leaders and talent can all get back to “human-ing.” Though she first believed that mindfulness is only for tea-drinking yogis, now she teaches how it’s fitness for your brain and an essential practice for how we show up.

She believes the key to success is to balance metrics with mindfulness and performance with a sense of belonging, because when we get to be ourselves, we can bring our best to work and to the world.

Shelley works with corporations and schools to teach actionable mindfulness processes that encourage people to embrace their W.E.I.R.D. and unite via individuality. An “edu-taining” speaker, Shelley is also the author of “Weird Girl Adventures from A to Z” (AlyBlue Media, 2021).

https://thomsinger.com/podcast/shelley-brown

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Kenneth Kinney is a marketing expert and speaker who has worked with dozens of large and small companies to help them grow through marketing. In a world with lots of conflicting advice on marketing, Kenneth takes a realistic view and helps companies have a consistent message.

He is also one of those people who chooses to go diving with real live sharks. 

About Kenneth Kinney

Kenneth “Shark” Kinney is a dynamic keynote speaker, author, experienced marketing consultant, and growth executive. He is passionate about lead generation and leveraging data in omni-channel strategies and is known for driving growth in Digital Marketing and Addressable TV.  

Recognized as one of the industry’s top Marketing, Customer Experience, and Technology Speakers, Kenneth brings deep level expertise in Lead Generation, Marketing, Customer Experience, and TV and Digital Advertising, Shark has served, worked with, and consulted for hundreds of small, medium, and large businesses and non-profit organizations.  He has led national campaigns working with brands including Acxiom, Citi, Chase, Target, GM, American Express, FedEx, Honda, Toyota, TD Ameritrade, Panera, TruGreen, and over 50 colleges and universities.  His speeches draw upon his experience and perspectives learned from working for Publishers, Brands, Agencies, Consulting Firms, and as a Solopreneur and Entrepreneur.

With an insatiable curiosity for learning and teaching, he is also the host of “A Shark’s Perspective” marketing podcast.  Shark has also been an on-air host and producer of multiple TV and Radio programs.

A lifelong ocean and shark conservationist, he has been freediving and scuba diving with sharks, literally, for decades and helps people have a much better understanding of and safer experiences with one of the most misunderstood animals in the world.

His new book, “We Care…ish”, helps brands and agencies to better understand how to practically communicate with customers and deliver greater customer experiences. 

At his core, he helps people uncover the power of finding different perspectives that help people make a better meaning in the world.

Https://thomsinger.com/podcast/kenneth-kinney

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If your association of company hosts an annual meeting for members or clients, you should consider hosting a podcast that is dedicated to promoting your event. Keep people engaged before, during, and after you meeting with a customized podcast that has 6, 12, or 52 episodes.

Thom Singer has been hosing podcasts for over 7 years, and is now working with associations and companies to create short run podcasts to help market the conference and keep people engaged long after they fly home.

There are four reasons to have special podcast that centers on your conference:

1. Promote the event before, during, and after the on-site meeting.

2. Repurpose content.

3. Interview key players; speakers, sponsors, industry VIPs, and attendees.

4. Keep the community engaged.

Having fresh content each week is a great way to reach out to people without just sending marketing and sales copy. Your podcast, when done right, will have in-depth interviews and information that cannot be round anywhere else. This will make people pay attention.

Thom is available to host (he has conducted over 1000 corporate level interviews) and produce you podcast. Email him today to set up an informational conversation about if creating a custom podcast is right for your event.  thom@thomsinger.com.

https://thomsinger.com/podcast/podcast-for-conferences

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