Transforming Prospecting Through Authentic Conversations: A Leadership Journey with Adam Packard

Ever wondered how authentic conversations can transform the way you prospect? Join us on a journey with Adam Packard, the charismatic CEO of Ninja Prospecting. Adam’s compelling story of entrepreneurship, shaped by the influence of his father and his own personal experiences, will leave you inspired. He offers a fresh approach to prospecting, emphasizing that genuine conversations and a spam-free strategy are the keys to success. Regardless of your industry, you’ll learn to lead by example and apply these powerful prospecting principles.

Don't you just love when a business exceeds your expectations? Adam believes that the secret to Ninja Prospecting's success lies in underpromising and overdelivering. And it doesn't stop there. He also reveals how his background as a PGA Class A golf pro has shaped his unique leadership style. As we navigate the intricate maze of LinkedIn, listen in for Adam's words of wisdom on staying ahead of the game. 

Join us as we explore the tumultuous emotional landscape of entrepreneurship. Filled with highs and lows, this thrilling ride requires a balanced mindset. Adam shares his proven strategies for managing emotions, with a focus on controlling what is directly in your hands and letting go of the rest. Remember, it's okay to disconnect and take a breather; in fact, it's necessary! Get ready to hear Adam's advice to his past self and how he turned the business from a sole responsibility into a shared experience. 

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Chapters

• 0:02 Leadership and Prospecting Strategies
• 13:51 Managing Expectations and Personal Growth
• 23:49 Emotions and Self-Care in Business
• 37:20 Principles and Opportunities for Leadership Growth

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Speaker 2: 0:16

Hey, it's William and welcome to today's episode of the Catalytic Leadership Podcast. Each week, we tackle a topic related to the field of leadership. My goal is to ensure that you have actionable steps you can take from each episode to grow in your own leadership. Growth doesn't just happen. My goal is to help you become intentional about it. Each week, we spotlight leaders from a variety of fields, organizations and locations. My goal is for you to see that leaders can be catalytic, no matter where they are or what they lead. I draw inspiration from the stories and journeys of these leaders and I hear from many of you that you do too.

Speaker 2: 0:57

Let's jump in to today's interview. I'm so excited today to have Adam Packard on the podcast. Adam is the CEO of Ninja Prospecting, where they build themselves as the opposite of every LinkedIn marketing company Good, old-fashioned hard work, 100% done for you. In a world of spam and mass messaging. They take you step-by-step to creating and executing the ideal strategy to fill your pipeline with ideal prospects. Adam, I'm so glad you're here. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Thanks for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me Appreciate it. I would love for you to share some of your story with our listeners, adam, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Speaker 3: 1:44

Oh, man Goes back a long ways. I would say it probably started with my dad was an entrepreneur growing up. He started a copier business, grew it to 100 employees and really showed me being a business owner is probably the direction I need to go. He was also a Dale Carnegie instructor One thing that he didn't force my brother and I, but he highly encouraged us to go through that course. I did that when I was probably 20. That got me into the whole personal development field.

Speaker 3: 2:21

My brother started working for a motivational speaker. Again, I had the chance to hang with a lot of the greats Jim Rones and Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy. That's where my whole leadership and learning from some of these greats started and started the business with my dad and my brother and did pretty well together. We had to lead a team. I really think leadership is leading by example. I'm showing people the path. Don't ask someone to do something that you're not doing yourself. In fact, I remember an interesting story back when we were in our company that we built together. We had a group of about 30 of our team members with us and we brought in a motivational speaker. I looked at him and I said, man, I wish more of our leaders were here. He looked at me and said your leaders are here.

Speaker 1: 3:16

I was like that's good.

Speaker 3: 3:19

I was like, oh, that just stung, that was really good. Then I got out of the business that we were in and started a corporate position and realized that really wasn't for me. I got laid off probably six, seven years ago and that's where I started to figure out what's next for me. I had a friend that needed some help generating some opportunities for his new business. I found myself on LinkedIn trying to help them do that. We got pretty good at it.

Speaker 3: 3:50

Hence Ninja prospecting was born, where we thought we were going to be different in this space, but come to find out there are thousands of people that do something similar in this regard, but we pride ourselves in being different and having a different approach and doing everything manually and making it feel more custom and one-on-one. It's been an interesting journey, for sure. You look back over all the different things that you do in your past and you're like this helped me do this and this position helped me get here. It's all stuffing. You don't realize it until you're past that moment, but when you look back at the trajectory of the career, it's definitely been building blocks for what we've created here.

Speaker 2: 4:30

There's no such thing as a wasted experience. Is there yeah?

Speaker 3: 4:33

no, 100%. Yeah, always learn. So you can either use it as a learning experience or you can look at it as something that's going to deter you. So, yeah, even the you know God doesn't give you challenges to you know, just crouch down. You've got to rise above and see how you level up.

Speaker 2: 4:49

That's so true, so true. Yeah, you know it's interesting. You say there are thousands of people in the space, in the prospecting space on LinkedIn. I think that's true because I believe they are all in my inbox. At least that's how it feels Like every week.

Speaker 3: 5:07

They're in my inbox too, which is even funnier if they would actually look at my profile and realize they were kind of competition, but not really, because your approach is really just garbage.

Speaker 2: 5:16

So yeah, so what makes Ninja prospecting different? Like, what's the differentiator for you guys?

Speaker 3: 5:25

You know it's a great question and people ask me that all the time. The hardest part is cutting through the noise on LinkedIn and sending someone a message to get their attention. Yeah, I think that's the big thing is, if you look at what most companies do when it comes to prospecting and starting conversations from cold strangers, you have to just look at it almost like you're, you know, networking in a room full of people striking up a conversation. How would you naturally start a conversation with someone? So we pride ourselves in being anti-link, anti-spam. The only goal that we have for what we do is to create new conversations, create engagement, create curiosity, be permission-based, ask the right question and just have fun with it.

Speaker 3: 6:10

I mean, if you look at the messaging that we do to strike up conversations, I get a lot of replies back saying, hey, that was a great message, it was a really unique approach and I love your ideas here. I don't need any help in this space, but I'll hang on to your info. To me, that's a win and we get a lot of that for our clients too. So really just trying to humanize the approach. Like I said, there's too much spam, there's too many bots, there's too many automation tools out there where you just get plugged into a system and a template and just a mass message.

Speaker 3: 6:41

So we take a different approach where we try to customize everything based on who you're trying to reach and what's unique about your offer and what makes you different, and try to make something that is almost an extension of your brand, versus us coming in and just being a service provider. So we come in more as a growth partner where we make money when you do. That's our plan. That's how I think it should be. If we're good at what we do, we put our money where our mouth is and say, hey, we can help you do this if you need more conversations and more opportunities, but you have to convert them on the other end, and that's how we both make money.

Speaker 2: 7:16

That is unique because so many of the prospecting companies they want money upfront. They want, hey, you've got to give us this amount of money to get started and then we're not going to be responsible for your results.

Speaker 3: 7:29

Yeah. Well, there's a couple things to that. So I do believe that both parties have to have some skin in the game, Otherwise, otherwise, we could be taken advantage of and people are just using us for generating opportunities and not compensating us at all. So I think there has to be some kind of a partnership where you have some skin in the game. I have some skin in the game, but it is based on results and if, for some reason, we don't generate those results, then we're not waiting three months and then pinging you and saying, hey, you're up for renewal and you're like well, you didn't talk to me in three months and we didn't get any results. So we say, on top of it, we have regular communication.

Speaker 3: 8:04

So any marketing is testing and tweaking. I mean, you know that going in. It's not like you're going to run a Facebook ad and six months later check the stats. You're probably checking it daily to see if it's getting the results and you're making slight tweaks and adjustments. The same thing with LinkedIn. You have to adjust it constantly just to kind of make sure it's fine tuned and really feels and flows the right way.

Speaker 2: 8:25

So when you're, when you're talking about social media I mean there's so many different places why zero in on LinkedIn?

Speaker 3: 8:33

Honestly. We started there because when my friend asked me for help, I did some research as to who his audience was and the only place I could find them easily was on LinkedIn. I think it's a more professional platform. Although there is a lot of spam and garbage, the average net worth and income of each user on LinkedIn is higher than any other platform. Just the search parameters when you use Sales Navigator, I can find exactly who I'm looking for. If I want to connect with the CEO of a Fortune 500 company that also went to Penn State, I can do that and make a connection, whereas I can't find them on Facebook. I load Facebook Messenger. I just get so much spam and garbage there that it just feels like a pitch fest, whereas I use LinkedIn more as a speed networking.

Speaker 3: 9:18

Build relationships. Yes, there might be some opportunities for us now, but also keep the door open for potential opportunities in the future. That's what you should do on LinkedIn is approach people the right way. You don't burn through relationship capital because you approach them poorly and ask them to marry you on the first date. That's something we talked about that before. It's like don't connect in pitch, don't connect and send me your link to a calendar for a discovery session. Ask me a question Most of these companies that reach out that say I can fill your calendar with 10 or 20 appointments a week. They don't even know what your business is. That's shocking to me. But again, they hope they throw enough messages out there that something sticks and they generate some business.

Speaker 3: 10:03

But our approach is a little bit different. I like to have conversations with people. First find out who you are, what you're doing, who you're trying to help seeing if we can help you get more of those people in your pipeline. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't.

Speaker 3: 10:17

I've turned away half the people that I talked to, probably just to say, hey, what you have is not quite dialed in enough to make it work for what we do. Going to send them back to the drawing board. I send them all of our onboarding stuff, even just to say, hey, here is what you need to really dial this in if you want to market yourself better. The approaches are different. If I'm talking to someone that is targeting C-suite executives and business owners, it's a totally different approach than targeting a middle manager at a company that's such an important piece that most people just gloss over but who you're reaching out to. Well, I'm going to tell you if you're reaching out to founders of startups, they're probably getting 50 messages a day from people pitching them services, left and right. You better have something that's unique, special, different, whether it's in your offer or in your approach to them, to get them interested, to spark that conversation.

Speaker 2: 11:12

You said something there that's interesting and sure listeners caught on this. You turned down half the people who want to work with you.

Speaker 3: 11:22

Yeah, in the beginning, when I started this, it was anybody that had a credit card and a LinkedIn account.

Speaker 1: 11:29

You do what you can in the beginning.

Speaker 3: 11:31

And I was signing up people for a year-long agreement, and I'm looking back at that. You talk about stepping stones and learning from things, realizing nobody that meets me cold off of a LinkedIn message is going to want to sign up for a year out of the gate. So we moved to smaller programs and now even just do month to month. But yeah, you definitely learned as you go and realized that there are some things that we probably could have done better. But yeah, I look for three things when it comes to people that I can help. Number one is your audience on LinkedIn and is it dialed in where it's more than just business owners or salespeople. They say the riches are in the niches. I do believe that. I think, in order to make a cold message relevant, you have to be specific to the audience. So that's the key. First thing is they have to have a unique audience that they're trying to reach. Second thing is what's unique, special, different about you? I mean, we work with a lot of people in the coaching space and, sadly, I talk to a lot of coaches and their offer is I help business owners with leadership development and great, but I'm going to throw up in my mouth a little bit because that's not good enough. I can't market that it's going to be white noise on LinkedIn.

Speaker 3: 12:46

So, almost looking at whether it's your background or who you serve or something in your offer or your approach or your strategy or your tactics, what is it that you do that's different, special, unique, and what type of result can you help people get From there?

Speaker 3: 13:00

I can work backwards and kind of figure out the best way to approach it, and that's the second part. And the third part is you have to be able to convert people. Sadly, there's a lot of people that think that leads are their problem, when, in fact, I fill them with leads and they realize I don't have a system to manage this. I don't know how often to follow up. I don't know what to say when I follow up. I don't know how to convert on a sales call. So that's the hardest part of our business is we're really good at getting the conversation started and handing it off. Sadly, there are a lot of people on the other end that don't have the system, structure, tools in place to be able to manage the pipeline and know what to do with it in order to make the cash register ring.

Speaker 2: 13:40

That's really good and I love that you've dialed in your expectations, because I think so often that's a big hole in a lot of business relationships. Frustration comes from missed expectations, right Well, if the expectations aren't clearly delineated from the get go, you increase the likelihood of frustration and disappointment by a factor of 10.

Speaker 3: 14:03

Yeah, that's a great point and I talked to. This is something I bring up on. Every call is usually expectations of clients are here, service providers are here and no one's ever going to be happy. Clients are expecting oh, I'm going to bring in five 10 clients a month from this. I am not your golden ticket holy grail. We are one source of helping you generate new conversations. If you're out there building a business, you need to have 10, 15 ways that you generate conversations. Linkedin should definitely be one of them.

Speaker 3: 14:35

But, yeah, the expectations is a big one for us. We're more in the under promise, over deliver, so we give a guarantee of a certain number of leads over a certain timeframe, but it's really low balling because I know what our average clients bring in. But I'd rather be the guy that under promises and over delivers versus the guy that comes in and says, oh, I can fill your calendar. No, our average clients bring in one to two clients a month. That's it. That's not huge numbers, but if you're not bringing in any right now on LinkedIn, that's kind of what we do.

Speaker 3: 15:03

Our best clients bring in four to seven, and I do have clients that don't bring in any, and that's the challenge that I have is I can't help them with the follow up in the conversion part. They come to me saying I need more opportunities. I give them the opportunities and they can't take them and run with them. But yeah, expectations, keeping those aligned and in check so that we're both on the same page is really important, but then also the way that we structure it, it's more, like I said, more of a growth partner. So I'm trying to move away from that charge $1,000 a month and be a service provider and be more of a. I'm going to help you as much as I can to convert the ones that I give you, because then we both make money.

Speaker 2: 15:46

Yeah, no, I think that's brilliant. You know, when I was reading about your background, I ran across something that really intrigued me you are a PGA Class, a golf group.

Speaker 1: 15:59

That's interesting.

Speaker 2: 16:00

Yeah, that's not something that I expected to find. I mean, look at Penn State, looking at all these things that you have done sales and whatnot You're a golf pro.

Speaker 3: 16:11

I am a golf pro.

Speaker 2: 16:12

Yeah, I'm curious has there been things that you've learned in that part of your life previously that have carried over and have helped you as a business owner and as a leader of teams now?

Speaker 3: 16:25

That's a good question. I mean, you look at, I always tell people I got into golf just because I had no idea what I was going to do out of college and I was good at golf. So I got into golf as a profession and I tell people it was a fun experience when I was in my early 20s. I get to work at some great golf courses and meet some awesome people. But I always tell people you work long hours, you don't make any money and you don't get to play any golf, so I kind of get away from the golf industry.

Speaker 3: 16:53

I think you know, if I look at how golf applies to business and leadership, I think you look at more of golf when you're out there, you know playing it by yourself. You're the only one that can call a penalty on yourself or you're keeping your own score. So there's little nuances in the game of how you react to a bad shot or a good shot, how you react to your competitor hitting a good shot or a bad shot. I think there's a lot of things that you can learn from people watching them on the golf course. Are they throwing clubs, are they swearing, are they yelling, are they frustrated or are they kind of cool and common, collected, and that's more of my style. I think that kind of comes through in my leadership style and then even on the conversations I have with people is I'm not forcing it, I don't get too high or too low emotionally, I keep pretty even keel and I think that translates well in business.

Speaker 2: 17:47

Again, no wasted experience, right? Everything that happens in your life you can learn from and benefits you, or it's something you can use to teach and benefit other people. I love that. I'm curious how do you stay on top of your game? Like you know, you've got to constantly be learning and growing. Like you know, your business Ninja Prospecting is going to need you to lead at a higher level 12 months, 24 months you know, five years from now than you are today. It's going to need you to be a better leader. It's going to need you to be a better entrepreneur. How do you level up?

Speaker 3: 18:25

I believe in having you know people that have gone before me and know things that I don't know and learning from them. So I have multiple coaches myself that help me in certain areas operations, mindset but yeah, you're right, I'm always learning and growing. I'm a personal development junkie. I've read every book you can imagine. Applying it's another thing, but I've read all the books. But that's good.

Speaker 3: 18:49

In this space, you have to constantly evolve. I think you know what worked five years ago on LinkedIn doesn't work today, and so if you're not staying on top of things and realizing that shifts need to be made I mean five years ago you could spam 100, 150 connections a day, not be very good at it and still get results. When LinkedIn put the limitations on what we can do, we've got to be a lot more efficient and effective. So I think you know constantly evolving and seeing what's next. Now we're coming out with a whole new platform and software that we're building that will be kind of everything that you need on LinkedIn, created for you, which is going to be really cool. But yeah, I think you know what I do personally.

Speaker 3: 19:32

I'm a morning person, so you know 415, I'm up in the morning, I get a couple hours of work in, where you know I'll do my reading and I'll do some visualizing, meditating, journaling, kind of setting the tone for the day and kind of just starting my day out the right way.

Speaker 3: 19:47

I found that when I sleep in and I'm, you know, kind of rushing around in the morning, the day never really goes that well. So kind of giving myself a little bit of space and time just to sit back and reflect and think I think that's one piece that's missing for a lot of entrepreneurs and leaders is just taking that time to just be, still be in silence, you know, silent your mind, turn off your devices and don't check your email, you know, every three seconds. But it's a challenge. I mean, you know there's a lot of demands coming from every direction, whether it's clients or my team, so I've got to manage that and still have time for myself. But that's why I like to get up a couple hours early and make sure I have time before that little guy and mom wake up, so I can kind of focus on me for a little bit.

Speaker 2: 20:36

That sounds incredibly healthy. I love the balance that you have there. I love the rhythm that you have there. I think I love most the intentionality of what you built. That didn't just happen, yeah it's.

Speaker 3: 20:49

It's taken a lot of work, a lot of trial and error, a lot of you know getting a lot of nose. You have to have thick skin in this business. I'll tell you, I get. I get some nasty responses and I get some responses that make my day, and it's it's. You have to look at it and say you know, at the end of the day I'm trying to make a meaningful connection with another human to see if I can add value and be a resource. That's it. If I can help, great. If not, you know, hopefully I left a better taste in your mouth of what a lead gen guy could be or what a marketing guy could be. So that's our approach.

Speaker 2: 21:22

You know it's easy for somebody to look at you and so many other successful entrepreneurs and say, oh wow, you know his journey has just been up into the right. I mean it's just there's been nothing but nothing but green, blue skies and green pastures for this guy.

Speaker 3: 21:39

He's not dealing with the same challenges that I deal with. He's not dealing with.

Speaker 2: 21:43

You know difficult team members and difficult clients and etc. Etc. Because you know we look at we look at the highlight reel, right? We look at what's online and it's so easy to think that my guess is that you have had some challenges as an entrepreneur.

Speaker 1: 23:35

It's part of it.

Speaker 3: 23:36

It's an everyday. There's always challenges. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 23:40

What are some of the things that you have struggled through as you have built into this life?

Speaker 3: 23:46

Oh man, that's a great question. I think, looking back, there are stretches where it's easy to be in a good mood when things are going well. It's not so easy to be in a good mood when things are struggling or you have a big pipeline of people that say they're coming on board and they don't. How do you manage those emotions where you don't come off as desperate? I think managing my emotions is the hardest part of this business because it relies a lot on me just staying with it and focusing more on the activity Whenever I get in these funks. If you look at the success curve, I mean it's not a straight line, it's up and down. The key is how do you manage your emotions when you're up? How do you manage them when you're down? It's easy to be in a good mood when things are up. It's hard to be in a good mood when things are down. But if you can keep an even keel and then just focus on the things that you can control. If I look at my calendar, what can I do to stay positive? Well, I can add more value to my clients. I can reach out and offer support. I can have more conversations. I can focus on the activities that move the needle and maybe detach a little bit from the results and people coming on board.

Speaker 3: 25:06

Because there are those stretches and those waves where you're like, gosh, everything was going great. Now, all of a sudden, what's going on? Do I need to change something? Is something wrong? Whereas nothing's wrong. You just need to focus on hey, just keep doing the right work. You're doing good work, you're attracting the right people. Keep focus on your vision and your belief and maybe focus a little bit more on other people and worry less about yourself and get out of your own way a little bit. That's what I do. When I get in those funks they come. There are stretches where I'll have a few weeks and I'll just be completely frustrated. But the following week, all of a sudden, I bring on three, four new clients and I'm like, oh, this is the greatest business in the world. Right, it's a management of emotions, being in this role and helping to move the business forward. But that's a great question.

Speaker 2: 25:56

I love that. I think that's something that a whole lot of people struggle with emotional regulation and learning how to manage those peaks and valleys. That's not easy, no.

Speaker 3: 26:10

It's likely the mindset coach helps me quite a bit Kind of telling, creating my own story, creating my own vision, focusing on that. Even this morning I was making some notes and I'm like I need to. I do my thing in the morning, but I think there are stretches in the middle of the day or even towards the end of the day where I need to take a break, sit down 15 minutes, close my eyes not take an app but just internalize focus, regain my composure and then get back to it. I think there needs to be more of that. Take some time for yourself, like yesterday I worked for four or five hours straight and decided to just get up and go for a walk and just get outside and get some sunshine. I think we need more of that as an entrepreneur to take time for yourself and, whether it's taking your wife on a date or taking your son to lunch, anything that takes you out of it for a little bit, to reprioritize and realize why you're doing it.

Speaker 2: 27:09

I love the walk. I think that's so useful. I do the same thing when I get stuck on a problem. I'm trying to create something, write something, and I just get stuck and I can't seem to get break through it. I'll do the same thing I'll go for a walk. I had a friend of mine, mark Batterson, tell me this years ago. He said sometimes what you need is a change of place and a change of pace. When you have a change of place and a change of pace, it can bring you a change in perspective. I go for that 15, 20 minute walk and I come back and it's so funny how often there's the answer. It's right there. It was not there when I left because I was stuck. I needed a change of place and a change of pace.

Speaker 3: 27:50

We went camping a few weeks ago and it was on a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Monday is obviously my craziest day. We get up there and of course there's a cell phone tower right next to the campground. We're up in the middle of the mountains in Arizona, 7,000 feet. We drive in and I have zero service. It says SOS on my phone.

Speaker 3: 28:10

We are unintentionally disconnecting here for a few days. It gave me a chance to not focus on all the messages coming through and all the stuff on social media. I just think and this is where we decided to go more of the growth partner route to focus on more of a win-win scenario. I think anytime you can unplug completely, unplug, the world's not going to come to an end. The fires will be there when you get back. You can put them out then. But you need that time for yourself to just completely detach from everything. You unlock some creativity. When we were kids growing up, we didn't have phones, we didn't have all the gadgets and stuff my parents would say go outside and play. We don't do that really with kids these days, but I think being outside, being disconnected, just allows your creativity to come through a little bit more, and that's definitely the case.

Speaker 2: 29:11

If you were to go back six or seven years when you started Ninja, and you could go back and tell yourself one thing based on what you know now, what would you tell?

Speaker 3: 29:22

yourself Buy Bitcoin would be one.

Speaker 3: 29:35

Oh, that's great. I would say find more team members faster that can help you fulfill and take some of the work off of your plate. That's probably been the biggest challenge is trying to do it all myself, not leveraging other people, treating it more as a business than as a job. Look at myself more as a shareholder versus the guy that has to do everything. I have found some great team members, so I'm not doing everything myself. I still am pretty involved in the business from a creative aspect because I enjoy it.

Speaker 3: 30:11

I would have come into it more as a how do I build this where I can take myself out of it at some point if I want to, if I want to have that option and find more team members faster. That's smart. I like that. I think sometimes we have just the big ego that, oh, no one can do it as good as I can. I need to be doing all these little things. I'm like you know what, if I can find someone that can do an 80% as good as what I think is good, then it would freeze up a couple hours in my day, but I should do that all day long. So that would be what I would probably go back and start over. I would probably prioritize that.

Speaker 2: 30:53

I love that. I have a sticky note on the left monitor here at my desk and I see it every day and there's a question on it. Is this the absolute best use of my time right now?

Speaker 3: 31:04

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 31:05

And so often I find myself looking at that and thinking, no, somebody else can do this. And I use the same 80% rule. If somebody else can do this 80% as good as I can, then I'd have to let them do it and empower them.

Speaker 3: 31:16

Yeah, yeah, hard to do in the beginning. I do think it's important, though, in the beginning, to, until you can offload that onto someone else, you have to know how to do it yourself. Yeah, because otherwise how can you teach someone else to do it? So I think it was important to understand every aspect of what we do and how to do it and practice what we preach and the business. It's important to do it yourself first, but, yeah, bringing on those right team members, it's a breath of fresh air when I wake up and I know, okay, this is being handled, that's being handled, I can focus more on clients, I can focus more on the creative stuff and don't have to worry so much on the other details.

Speaker 2: 31:53

Doing what only you can do. Right, that's good. You referenced earlier that you read a lot and that you've read many, many, many books. Is there one that stands out that you would recommend to the leaders who are listening?

Speaker 3: 32:09

Yeah, there are many. It depends on what area. I know we talked about this before. There's so many different. Are you talking mindset? Are we talking business? Right now, I'll tell you.

Speaker 3: 32:17

I go back to a few books that I try to reread every year or two. One of my favorite authors is Joseph Murphy A Power of your Subconscious Mind. I think that's a powerful book even though it was written so long ago, and the examples are funny with the numbers. But I think the mindset part is such an important piece that people gloss over and they focus more on the day-to-day or the business or the operations. I think you can get the mindset piece, which is a constant challenge. You're always learning, you're always growing Anything. Joseph Murphy, wayne Dyer I'm a big Wayne Dyer fan.

Speaker 3: 32:53

I actually get to meet him a couple times. The Power of Intention is another great one by Wayne Dyer. Of course, everybody's going to save the classics thinking, grow Rich and how to win friends and influence people, and seven habits, and all those which are all great For me. I think my favorite books are always the ones that are more of the mindset ones, the belief ones that help you expand the magic of thinking big. I'm a big Ogbandino fan too. I read all of his, but I love his stories. I mean God, just the way that he can weave a message into a story and keep you engaged and tell a powerful lesson. Those are some of my favorites.

Speaker 2: 33:35

I love that too. Ogbandino is one of my favorites.

Speaker 3: 33:38

Yeah, the choice is my favorite one and he's on the purple one, oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 33:42

Absolutely that classic and awesome. Yeah, yeah, typically, people are going to walk away from an episode like this out of with one big idea. If you could define what that one big idea was going to be, what would you want people to walk away with?

Speaker 3: 33:58

I mean our specialty and I think my gift is turning cold strangers into warm friends. I think if you looked at networking and call it Legion, call it outbound cold conversations starting. If you looked at it as just a way to spark a conversation and meet someone new and add value to them, not only could you have an opportunity with them, but it also opens the door to a conversation with anybody in their network and keeps that pipeline full. I think too many people approach prospecting from an angle of I just need to be direct and sell my product, whereas if you took a different approach almost like joining a networking group you don't join a networking group to sell the other members in the group. You join a networking group to get to know the other members in the group. Perhaps there's a chance that they could use your service, but you want to be introduced to their network. So I think if you use LinkedIn or any social tool as a way to build and nurture relationships, you open yourself up to building a much bigger pipeline over time.

Speaker 3: 35:06

The challenge is we live in an instant gratification society where I need it now and I need it done yesterday, when in fact the best approach might actually be to slow down in order to speed up. So that would be my advice is look at it as a way to build and nurture relationships, have fun with it, get creative. Don't attach to what someone says to one of your messages that you send to someone, and be consistent. That's I mean talk about. One of the key factors of our success has been we are consistently doing it every single day. There's no break. So finding a partner that can help you do that.

Speaker 2: 35:49

I know folks are going to want to stay connected to you and continue to learn from you and potentially explore what Ninja could do for them. What's the best way for people to find out more information about that?

Speaker 3: 35:59

I'm on LinkedIn 24 seven, so you can always find me there. Ninja prospectingcom is our website. I don't have an email newsletter yet. It's coming soon. So if someone wanted to keep in touch that way but honestly connect with me on LinkedIn, shoot me a message there or come check out what we do on our website and if you'd like to have a conversation and explore, there's no hard sell on our end. I like to meet people and see what we can do to add value and, like I said, get into conversation and see how we might be able to help. So yeah, linkedin is probably the best spot to find me or our website.

Speaker 2: 36:33

Adam, this has been so helpful, so practical and so much insights you've dropped here. Thank you so much for your generosity today.

Speaker 3: 36:39

Thank you for the opportunity. I always, always enjoy sharing and meeting new people. So, yeah, I appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 36:44

Thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Speaker 2: 37:21

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Speaker 1: 38:06

Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalyticleadershipnet.