Kerry Siggins Podcast

Overcome Rejection to Launch a Successful Business w/ Julie Broad

Guest: Julie Broad is the founder of the self-publishing service firm Book Launchers and Amazon's Overall #1 Best Selling Author. Julie knows what it takes to be a successful self-published author. Through Book Launchers and her popular YouTube channel, BookLaunchers.TV, she helps subject matter experts write, publish, and promote nonfiction books that will boost their business.
Julie's titles include More than Cashflow, which topped Amazon, and The New Brand You, winner of the Beverly Hills Book Award for Best Sales book. Her latest book, Self-Publish & Succeed, captures her leading tactics to write, publish and market a nonfiction book. Her advice for authors and investors has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur.com, Yahoo! Business, CTV, the Toronto Sun, Medium.com and many local and national TV shows.
Episode in a Tweet: If you feel compelled to make an impact with your unique and special message, you have the potential for a book inside you!
Background: Julie Broad is on a mission to help you get your story on paper. She believes that a book is the best way to share your experience, become a thought leader and make an impact. During this episode, Julie and I talk about the effort it takes to author and publish a book and how she helps people become published authors through her company, Book Launchers. We talk about the writing process and the different ways you can go about publishing the book that's inside you.
We also discuss how she started Book Launchers, which stemmed from her failure to get a book deal that she was expecting. After experiencing severe disappointment, she picked herself up, started a company and self-published a bestselling book – all on her own via the self-publishing process.
I appreciate Julie's willingness to share her successes and failures and how she approaches running her company. At the end of the episode, she gives this great advice: "When you go through challenging times, just remember that the challenge will give you a gift that you'll be very grateful for. It will create momentum or innovation or something else great in the future. Don't be afraid of the challenge."
How to find Julie:
www.booklaunchers.com/7steps
www.booklaunchers.tv
julie@booklaunchers.com
www.linkedin.com/in/juliebroad/

How to Be a More Persuasive Leader

Persuasion is an essential skill for any leader. You must be able to share a compelling vision and inspire people to change. All without them feeling coerced or manipulated.
In this week’s episode of Reflect Forward: Advice From a CEO, I discuss how to become a more persuasive leader with these five tips, plus some bonus advice!
1. Use positive language: positive language is more inclusive and inspiring than negative language.
2. Know what you are talking about: credibility matters, and if you want to persuade people to see something your way or make a change, you better know what you are asking them to do.
3. Listen carefully: the power of persuasion isn’t only about convincing. It’s about listening, too. People are more likely to be persuaded when they feel seen and heard.
4. Ask questions: when you ask questions, you gain a deeper understanding of peoples’ perceptions, concerns and resistance, which you can then address.
5. Be willing to compromise: give and always take matters when
getting people on board with a new idea or change.
Bonus tip: always follow up with people when persuading them to make changes or get on board with your idea. People often need time to process and might have questions or new feelings of resistance after sleeping on it.
Question of the Week
This week’s question comes from LinkedIn. “Kerry, what is one thing you are doing to ensure StoneAge’s success in facing all the global uncertainty?”
My answer: being agile and responsive. Listen in the find out why.

Helping Women Founders Scale Their Companies w/ Eleanor Beaton

Guest: Eleanor Beaton is the founder of SafiMedia, an education & coaching company for women entrepreneurs. Everyone at SafiMedia is committed to advancing global gender equity through women's entrepreneurship. They are on a mission to double the number of women entrepreneurs who scale past $1M in revenue by 2030.
As the host of the Power + Presence + Position podcast, Eleanor has reached millions of women worldwide, helping them unlock their leadership and entrepreneurial potential. Her work has been published or quoted in publications including The Globe & Mail, The Atlantic, CBC, Chatelaine and more. She has spoken on women's leadership, entrepreneurship and gender equity at conferences throughout North America, Latin America and Europe.
Episode in a Tweet: Economically empowered women entrepreneurs are vital in driving gender equity globally and boosting the economy for everyone.
Background: Many women entrepreneurs struggle to scale their service businesses because they are stuck trading dollars for hours. That's where Eleanor Beaton comes in. She works with over-worked consultants, coaches and service providers and helps them develop into confident CEOs who generate massive revenue, reach and impact. She helps female founders build lucrative businesses that grow through their ASSETS rather than their HUSTLE so they can scale past $1M in annual revenues, reach millions of people with their message, and cut their working hours by 20% or more.
During the show, Eleanor and I discuss her mission to double the number of women founders who SUSTAINABLE scale past $1M in annual revenue by 2030. She explains her Jewel Business Model -- a growth model I espouse and support my clients to create. It's a 30-30-30 model of growth: 30% top-line revenue growth, 30% profit and 30% open, unscheduled time for the founder. Eleanor and I discuss how to fix the broken parts of capitalism and why the health of the global economy depends on developing more female entrepreneurs who are building sustainable businesses.
We also chat about overidentification with parts of ourselves and how doing so has held us back from living a holistic life. We discuss how we've worked through our overidentification issues to embrace all of ourselves fully.
This is an engaging interview that everyone, no matter their gender, will walk away from feeling inspired and joyful. Enjoy!
How to Find Eleanor:
www.eleanorbeaton.com
https://safi-media.com/10khourchecklist
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eleanorbeaton/
https://www.instagram.com/eleanorbeaton/

How to Stop the Endless Worry Cycle

We all experience the worry cycle. According to a Psychology Today article, “at least one in four Americans – about 65 million of us—will meet the criteria for an anxiety disorder at some point in our lifetime. Even those individuals whose lives are going well may occasionally worry excessively.” In our best moments, worry can take us down a spiral of fear where our minds play out dramas that leave us feeling powerless, vulnerable, and afraid. In our worst moments, worry can be paralyzing and health-diminishing. Excessive worrying can lead to poor decision-making and deter us from taking life-improving risks.
The crazy-making part of the worry cycle is that 99.9% of the time, the things we fret about never happen. Worry is a timewaster, an energy suck, a diminisher of life quality. Engaging in it rarely changes anything. Unfortunately, it’s hard to stop worrying. Good news, though; there are ways to get out of your brain-spinning story of fear and worry.
During this week’s episode of Reflect Forward, I share tips on breaking the endless worry cycle.
1. Get some exercise
Moving your body is guaranteed to make you feel better. It not only provides a distraction, but exercise also causes your body to release endorphins which are “feel good” hormones that increase happiness, focus, and energy.
2. Challenge the Worry Cycle with Tough Questions
Put your worry into perspective by journaling about it. Write down what you are worried about and why.
3. Power Pose
Amy Cuddy’s powerful TED Talk on Power Posing outlines the benefits of using dominant body postures to gain confidence and reduce anxiety. While there are Power Posing naysayers, I have found doing them to be incredibly helpful when I am anxious, especially when speaking in front of people.
4. Talk it Out
Talking about your worry allows you to process it while gaining perspective and insight. Ask a confidant to listen and offer advice (if appropriate). If that doesn’t work, a therapist can be a good listener and provide you with worry-management tools.
5. Get Some Sleep
Sleep deprivation has been proven to increase anxiety and depression, compounding the “what if” problem. To better handle what life so throws at you, get 7-8 hours of sleep each night. Of course, excessive worrying can cause insomnia, creating a cycle that’s hard to break.
A small amount of worry is healthy but letting it take over your life can lead to major health issues. The good news is that most of what you worry about will never come to be. For those things that do…trust yourself and your capacity to handle whatever life throws at you. You can cope with, survive, and move beyond whatever happens. Believe in yourself and you will be pleasantly surprised.
Question of the Week
My question of the week comes from one of my employees. “Kerry, I know you love to ask questions. What is your favorite question to ask?” Hands down: what do you think? That’s my favorite question.
Tune in to find out why.
Thanks for listening, and please like, share, rate, write a review, or subscribe to my podcast. It always helps with the algorithms.
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How Leaders Inspire and Motivate Gen Zers w/ Dr. Santor Nishizaki

Guest: Dr. Santor Nishizaki is the founder and CEO of Mulholland Consulting Group, whose mission is to help organizations increase generational awareness and create a happier workplace. His work on Millennials and Gen Z in the workplace has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today, the Boston Globe, Yahoo Finance, MSN.com, CNN.com, SHRM Blog, College Recruiter, and elsewhere. He also serves as a Ph.D. professor of Global Leadership and Change at Pepperdine University and several universities in Southern California, where he has instructed hundreds of Gen Zers in leadership, diversity in the workplace, marketing, management, and entrepreneurship. His experience in the corporate world includes project management for Walt Disney Imagineering and supply chain management at a NASA center.
Episode in a Tweet: Working with Gen Z will allow you to keep the competitive advantage in shaping the future of “work” for the newest set of top talent in the twenty-first century.
Background: Generation Z has arrived in the working world and is here with their own workplace expectations. If employers intend to recruit top talent, they must be ready to meet the unique challenges this vibrant generation will bring to the workforce. And this is what Santor Nishizake and I talk about during this week’s episode of Refeclt Forward.
I met Santor through our publisher, Amplify Publishing, and we immediately hit it off. I appreciate his thoughtful research on what Gen Zers want from the workplace. During our conversation, Santor tells us how leaders can motivate and inspire this altruistic and socially motivated generation.
Santor believes that remarkable and innovative results will occur by leading each person based on their strengths and empowering your team to use them. As more Millennials move into leadership roles and Gen Z’ers enter the workplace, the emphasis on altruism and doing good in the world will continue to make it a better place than when we got here. I am confident you’ll learn much from this interview, and I hope you enjoy it!
How to find Santor:
https://workingwithgenzbook.com/
https://drsantor.com/podcast/
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/zillennial-leader-podcast/id1626338104

How To Cultivate an Ownership Mindset within Your Team

As I've developed the StoneAge employee-owned culture and grown our company, I've learned that the best kind of culture is one where employees share an ownership mindset. And that's what we will talk about during this week's episode of Reflect Forward: Advice From a CEO
When you build a culture of ownership, you will drive results. Why? Because when people know that they have a say in their daily work and the company's direction, they feel more empowered to do great work and be more invested in your organization's success.
Here are five ways to cultivate an ownership mindset
1. Exhibit the Ownership Mindset Yourself
Leaders can't expect their employees to show up with an ownership mindset if they themselves aren't. You must own all your actions, decisions, mistakes, attitude, and behaviors.
2. Teach People How to Give and Receive Feedback
Cultures that exhibit ownership thinking are also cultures of feedback. Teach people how to give direct, helpful feedback. Model feedback skills by asking for it from people on your team, and when you get tough feedback, handle it with grace and gratitude.
3. Share Financial Performance
If you want employees to act like owners, you must treat them like owners. And as a business owner, you need to possess financial acumen. So share your company or departmental performance.
4. Give Autonomy
If you create a culture where people are paid what they are worth and help them direct their lives and work, you'll inspire ownership thinking.
5. Teach People How to Resolve Conflict
Model what conflict resolution looks like by leaning into uncomfortable conversations and helping your team members navigate issues and look for positive outcomes.
If you teach your employees the ownership mindset, you'll see great engagement and improved performance. You can make progress today by implementing a few of these practices.

How Hiring a Life Coach Can Skyrocket Growth w/ Barbara Gormally

Guest: Barbara Gormally is a professional life coach based in Durango, CO. After a long career in HR and Training and Development, Barbara attended several coaching schools to retool her line of work. She created Studio Me Unlimited x9, LLC and has worked in the field of life coaching for 18 years to support self-mastery exploration by individuals or workplace organizations. Several personal experiences led Barbara to understand that an authentic and vibrant relationship with yourself first will allow for more grounded experiences during the ease and chaos of life and work. The profound yet practical self-development architecture that guided Barbara is The Enneagram, which she uses as the foundational tool in her coaching practice.
For individuals or businesses, the long career Barbara had in related fields under the large umbrella of Training and Development allows her to bring depth and breadth to her coaching clients, thus their opportunity to receive sustainable coaching results. Barbara values human capacity and enjoys her role as a catalyst for self-development so that people can employ their exquisite human capacity. Wise and vibrant humanness is her vocation and passion.
Episode in a Tweet: Combine the use of the Enneagram with executive coaching in your business to maximize results and help employees gain self-awareness, self-confidence, and tools to handle stress.
Background: I’ve known Barbara for well over a decade now. She was the first coach I hired to help me understand myself better, including diving into my addiction and learning how to overcome my triggers and how to show up as the best version of myself. She has been pivotal in my leadership journey, both early on as a CEO and today, helping many of my employees develop self—awareness and practical communication skills.
In this episode of Reflect Forward, Barbara and I talk about the power of life coaching in business and why the Enneagram is such an impactful tool. She shares how her coaching method can help people unlock their potential through deep self-exploration. We talk about StoneAge has implemented her style of coaching into our strategy and the results we’ve seen from it.
At the end of the interview, Barbara shares this gem: “Leaders should never forget that their employees are dealing with some sort of grief and trauma on a daily basis. When they can acknowledge this and work with it, they have a better chance of moving forward.” I love this, and it’s so true. Leading from a place of compassion and understanding that life is messy and people need support will help you build a strong team and strong culture. And individuals will be seen and heard – something we all want and need. Enjoy!
How to find or contact Barbara
bg2connect@gobrainstorm.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbara-gormally-ma-cdcp-7994b011/

How To Master Doing Hard Things

How do you get good at doing hard things? How do you master doing hard things? We as leaders always have to do hard things. We have tough decisions to make.
We have difficult conversations. To have, we have to set a vision, a bold vision of where our teams or companies are going, and that isn’t easy. And as I like to say, the only way to get good at doing hard things is to do hard things, and you can do it even if it means taking a little bit of a risk, getting a little bit vulnerable, failing, even that is how we get good at doing hard things.
And the better we get at doing hard things, the more resilient we’ll be and the more successful we’ll find because most people don’t take risks. They don’t put themselves out there to do big things, make a big impact, or see what’s possible. And so they’ll never live up to their full potential as leaders because they’re too busy playing it safe. They want to make sure that everything is just smooth sailing. If you want to be an impactful leader who changes the lives of your employees, customer, industry, and world, then you have to make bold moves. You must learn how to do hard things.
You’ve got to be resilient, not just bounce back, but bounce forward. Life punches all of us in the face. And the way that we respond to it is what sets us apart, and it’s what allows us to either learn precious lessons or help us make the changes we need in our lives, our teams, and our companies.
Or we can say, “Ooh, I will never do that again.” And become risk-averse. But, we only have one life to live, and in this day in age when everything is so crazy, let’s just go for it.
Let’s make a significant impact, a positive impact. Let’s bring people together and do bold things. Let’s be great leaders, which means taking some risks.
1. Have a vision and a bold vision. You have to know where you want to go.
2. Be willing to expand your competency zone.
3. Get comfortable with being transparent and being a little bit vulnerable.
4. Step into the discomfort of having challenging conversations or making tough decisions.
5. Own your mistakes and be willing to admit when you are wrong.
The world needs you to show up as your whole self, your bold self, your authentic self, your leadership self, and you must get good at doing hard things. You’ve got to get more comfortable with doing hard things. And the only way to do it is just to jump in there and do it.
Question of the Week
My question of the week came from somebody on LinkedIn saying, “Kerry, how do you delegate? I’ve tried delegating, failed at it, and feel like I try to control things too much. How do you delegate properly?
Great question. Listen in to find out.

How to Achieve Fully Authentic Success featuring Frankie Russo

Guest: Frankie Russo is all about fully achieving not just success but authentic success. According to Frankie, sometimes, we have to shatter something in order to rebuild it. And he knows a thing or two about shattering – his business and himself.
Frankie has developed a portfolio of companies across multiple industries through his Russo Capital firm, including technology, advertising, marketing, automotive, music, agriculture, publishing, and finance. The beneficiaries of his investments have offices in the United States and India and serve 128 US markets. Frankie and his team have led two of his companies to become some of America’s fastest-growing, privately-owned organizations for eight years. The Art of WHY (2016), Frankie’s first book, was on Amazon’s best-seller list in the self-help category and has been readapted and expanded into the rules-defying Breaking WHY. Frankie’s highest calling is his family, and he happily lives with his wife and six children in Louisiana.
Episode in A Tweet: Pursuing our true WHY and purpose never ends. Unless we continue to break it down and rebuild what leads us to a meaningful life, we will miss the beautiful journey of finding our WHY.
Background: I met Frankie at a 3 Ring Circus event (now called Impact Eleven) in Bonita Springs, FL, and we immediately connected. Sharing substance abuse issues, we share similar stories of self-destruction – all in the name of chasing success. In this episode, we discuss the importance of asking yourself hard questions such as “why am I here?” and performing deep exploration to figure out your purpose in life. Frankie shares how finding your why is not a ladder, and there is no pinnacle. Instead, it’s circular and ongoing – it’s about the journey, right?
In his new book "Breaking Why," Frankie breaks down the steps needed to achieve a more substantive version of ourselves in both our personal lives and in the realm of business and entrepreneurship. By exploring the role emotions can play in hindering AND empowering us, Frankie ultimately argues that pursuing a singular, self-driven “I” is the ultimate misinterpretation of success. A champion of authenticity and a proponent of harnessing “strategic emotions,” Frankie aims to debunk the common conception that emotions are an aversion to having a successful life. Using the tools and hacks in Breaking WHY people from all walks of life will realize that it can be just as essential to break the rules as it is to make and follow them.
This is a real, raw and funny interview. I know you’ll love Frankie as much as I do.
How to find Frankie:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankie-russo-30ab531a/
www.frankie-russo.com
https://www.instagram.com/frankierusso/
https://www.instagram.com/theschoolofwhy/

Five Ways To Motivate Employees In Uncertainty

How do you inspire your team in the face of uncertainty and at risk of burnout? We will talk about that in today’s episode of Reflect Forward: Advice From a CEO.
People are feeling overwhelmed. There’s so much noise and conflict in the world. Managing inflation, workloads, childcare, and other life’s demands – on top of the conflict of political polarization and war – sometimes it’s just too much to take. Your employees are at risk of burnout. But as a leader, not only do you have to manage these tense times yourself, but you also must keep your team motivated and moving forward. You have to support them tough these touch times to encourage their well-being.
That’s why I share my five tips on leading through uncertainty to keep your team motivated and reduce the chance that they will experience frequent burnout.
Manage yourself: No matter how turbulent you feel on the inside, you must remind cool, calm and collected. Remember, you set the tone, and your team will be stressed out if you are stressed out. Why? Because they model and mimic you. To be this, you must prioritize self-care. You can’t take care of others if you aren’t taking care of yourself.
Make courageous decisions: Your team needs you to make brave decisions. That means you must step into the discomfort of making difficult decisions. Your team and company require you to be decisive, especially when making tough and unpopular decisions. I get it, it’s not easy, but it must be done. My best advice is to show the vulnerability that making tough decisions requires. You may not be sure of the outcome or if you are making the right decision, but you must make them. Don’t be afraid of failure; instead, embrace the learning that failure might bring.
Listen, listen, listen: Everybody wants to be seen and heard. It’s part of why people leave their jobs; they don’t feel seen, heard, and valued. Many leaders would rather hunker down and get things done, but when times are stressful, the best thing you can do is sit down and listen. Dialogue matters.
Be transparent: All your employees want to work for a transparent leader. Why? No one likes to be left in the dark or to have partial or no information shared with them. Lack of transparency creates more fear and uncertainty because people tell themselves stories in the absence of information. So be transparent, tell the truth, and share as much information as possible. And okay with saying, I don’t know. No one has all the answers.
Build connections: Help your employees feel connected and like they are part of something bigger than themselves. Everyone wants to feel part of a team and that they belong. Ask them questions and create opportunities for them to connect with their peers.
Question of the Week
How do you have difficult conversations where people walk away feeling positive?
You can have difficult conversations, and you can have people feel motivated and inspired and walk away feeling positive. How do you do it? Here’s a straightforward trick: In addition to listening and engaging in the conversations and being open-minded, I turn negative language into positive language. You can say the same thing using positive language.
For example
“Your communication style is hindering your performance. You need to stop interrupting and listen more carefully to what’s being said.” This statement is relatively negative.
Try this instead
“I’d like to talk about improving your communication style so you can be more successful. I’ve witnessed you interrupting, leaving people feeling like they aren’t being heard. I’d like to see you develop some tools that will help you be a better listener.”
Listen in for more tips on how to turn negative language into positive.