The Leadership Stack Podcast

Sean: What makes negotiation so difficult? Because a lot of people shy away from it. They would rather not do it, then have to negotiate. What makes it easier for you? Bruno: There are two aspects of negotiation. So first of is the personal aspect of this negotiation process. So this means the relationship. This is probably the most important aspect of the negotiation process. So the personalized...

How did you start your financial journey? Jayson: Like most entrepreneurs, I started very excited and you know, a lot of upstarts start out that way, begin that way. You're very excited, full of ideas. And I was a ready fire aim guy, and it worked to a certain extent. But when you reach a certain level wherein it's more risky, let's say the size of your company's bigger, then you have to be more c...

Sean: What are the first few things you check into and you try to change when shifting an organization to become more compassionate? Bruno: First of all, we'll have to identify their needs because we cannot develop a long-term relationship without knowing if their needs are satisfied. Some entrepreneurs tend to focus only on economic needs, which are very important, good salary, like bonuses, a ho...

How do you track your progress? In growing the business, there are a lot of ways to track your milestones. It could be your monthly recurring revenue. So that's definitely one of the things that I track, how much revenue do we have every month coming in. Since we're a service business and our contracts are at least a year and we're paid every month by our clients, so if our monthly recurring reven...

Sean: I want to know, why do you say your mission is to help companies, not just become very profitable? Which is already great, but also become compassionate with their stakeholders. And the implicit here is I'm wondering, you're talking to directors, you're talking to C level executives and you tell them, you have to be compassionate. I can see some push back there. Maybe they're wondering like,...

Sean: I noticed you mentioned that from the first thinking you just said point A to point B, what am I going to eat? And that's thinking, creative thinking, you positioned problems along the way. And that's how we came upon the analogy for your creative thinking. I want to know, since we have leaders and entrepreneurs and managers tuning in. How can they use creative thinking in their day-to-day w...

Question from Gab. Hi Sean, I'm a young entrepreneur who put up a marketing startup where I have six other co-founding members. Wow. That's a lot of co-founding members. What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of being seven partners in a service industry business? Do you think it's going to be profitable in the long run? Well, Gab, congratulations. Usually when you start entreprene...

From Cedric Choa question is, at what age did you start investing? I don't really remember exactly what age. But I assume it's after I was able to make enough money that I had a little excess. I remember my first investment was not big if we’re talking about the stock market. It's really not big. It's like P5,000, something like that. I think it was when I was 22 or 23 years old. It wasn't big bec...

Sean: So Fredrick, this is the most interesting question that we usually touch base on during the beginning of the show. And that is. What is your startup journey? I mean, you started out this thing called the creativity school and you started your own publishing company. How did that happen? Where did you get the idea? Where did you get the inspiration funding, whatever it is that moved you from...

What are the differences between SEO and advertising? Well, SEO is inbound and advertising is outbound. What that means is, SEO is there are people who are already searching and they come to you. So it's inbound because you're not looking for them. You're not distracting them. You're not getting into their faces. They're just coming to you because they're looking for whatever it is you have. And t...

Sean: How do you craft or help to craft the vision for a team? How does the process look like? What would you say about having to guide them as a business mentor or a coach in crafting the vision? Is it necessary to have a vision, a coach or a mentor for a business person to be able to craft an effective vision? Jeff: What I would definitely say the vision itself is very necessary, but at the same...

Since you started your business at a very young age, how did you make your clients trust you? Does age discrimination still exist? I think so. When I was younger, I think that when they ask for my age and I do say that I'm in my twenties, that it does affect their decision. I do believe that. But then again, SEO is a very blue ocean before. Not a lot of people knew what it was and those who wanted...

Sean: The question is, should I ticket the stuff I need done? Cause I'm an urgency junkie. Usually when I need it done, I need it done. So I just go through, I go straight to the project managers and I Slack them, just takes my process engineer off. So what do you think about that? Jeff: Yeah, it's a problem. No, it's, it's really the idea of process. And this is really one of the keys because the...

Question from Jazz. They say, family business will ruin your family. What is your say on this? I think it depends on how you run the family business. Because early on, we were farmers and hunters. A lot of businesses before were family businesses and they had more time as a family. And we could see families now, there's divorced, left and right, and that's because the husband and the wife are work...

Sean: What does it take for an entrepreneur to say that's impossible, I'm stuck in the mud.?What do you do, Jeff? What do you say during those times? Jeff: Oh, it's the difference really is every company from a business perspective, everybody's going to constantly be hitting ceilings as they grow on the business side. And the reality is simply and a lot of times, it's just a matter. Honestly, I'm...

What are your top five investments? Top five investments? Well, I mentioned the agriculture investment. That for me, in my opinion, is one of the best investments that me and my wife has made. It's a private investment with a friend, so it's not available to the public, unfortunately, but it's a really good investment, really good returns. And the person I invested in is a good friend. A person of...

Sean: What are some of the biggest problems that entrepreneurs face after the startup stage? Jeff: You really got to focus on getting that customer in the door, but once you start hitting that growth phase and saying, Hey, okay, This is simply more than I can handle with my two or three people around me. We've got to go and grow this and scale this that's where, and really on up as long as you've...

What are the top techniques for SEO? How to drive organic traffic? All right. I always say SEO is a discipline. There's no magic to SEO. If Google sees that you are improving your search engine optimization for your blog or your website every single day, then you're going to get better and better rankings. But if you're not improving it, then you're going to remain stale or you're going to drop in...

Sean: What are the other character traits that you think should be they're in a leader or a CEO, founder, an entrepreneur, what are the best character traits for them to have? Jason: I think being humble, right? Because the challenge is when you're not humble, your ego takes over and that becomes a problem for everyone. Right? I think it's the ability to be vulnerable and tell people you don't hav...

Do you employ leverage? Oh, it's a finance question. When you're asking about leverage, so there's a lot of ways to look at it. There's the negotiation way. So do I use leverage when I negotiate in business? Or you can look at it from a finance standpoint, which is, do I use that or options or futures, or do I have any leverage from the brokerage platform that I'm using, meaning, I kind of borrow...

Sean: What do you think are the things that keep leaders and entrepreneurs from being their best self? What is keeping them from being successful? Jason: I would say that the first thing is self; lack of self-awareness because the problem tends to be is the more successful you are, the less people will tell you the truth and that you will listen to them. And that a lot of times your blind spots th...

When do you consider that it is a good debt? How do you manage it? It is a good debt, if you are going to use the debt for assets, money-making assets. So one of the investments that we have is in the agriculture business. And there is a certain loan that we call crop loan. When you have a crop loan from the government, you have a certain amount of interest, sometimes it's 6% and you pay it in two...

Sean: What did you notice about their company culture that made them win? Or those that made them lose and not succeed. Jason: I think the difference was, and it's funny, I was talking to one of my business partner in another business of mine about this today. And I think the differences is that a lot of people were focused on success and ego and money. And that's hard to build long-term success b...

How do you envision the digital roadmap in the Philippines? What do you think of small and big companies that lack digital presence? I think that a lot of companies right now are looking to go digital when they have the funds. Because right now a lot of them don't have the funds for it, or are not prepared to fund their digital because it's not really cheap. It's not cheap to build a website, do t...

Sean: From going into Silicon Valley and maybe you realize some things while you're there. I want to know how that led to you deciding, okay, I'm going to be a coach and I'm going to be an executive coach, and this is what I'm going to be doing. Jason: Yeah. I think it was over time. I realized the channel and it was. Is that it was really hard to find a culture and a team that I both loved and wa...