Greg Ballard has held many unique titles in his professional career and has seen many ups and downs in his life. During these transitions he discovered his passion for mentoring and leadership development. As the CEO and founder of Five C Consulting, Greg works with CEOs to small business owners to improve their mindset, business habits and overall approach in order to improve productivity, communication, strategic decision making and many other challenges leaders face. With Greg’s help, clients are more prepared and better equipped to deliver difficult feedback, navigate politics and influence their peers. Greg helps to pave the way for personal development with his clients as well. He serves and supports his clients by offering the right tools and insight to set them on a clear path and helps them understand how to maintain their progress.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
When business started difficulties overcame:
“I had to figure out what the business was, I had to figure where I added value and I had to figure what people would accept as value that I could offer. Because I could go out and say hey, I can do X and I could really do X very well. But if I had no way to demonstrate that I could do something then it made it very difficult for someone to buy in to that. And so, there was a couple of iterations early on”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
- The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success Book by Darren Hardy
Also mentioned:
- This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See Book by Seth Godin
- Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High Book by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, Stephen R. Covey
Favourite Quote:
“It doesn’t matter how this looks to other people, it matters how it looks to you. If this is something you wanna do and if this is something you gotta do, then you do it. Fighters fight.” Rocky Balboa
Recommended Online Resources:
LinkedIn Sales Navigator – Social Signals and Intent Data | LinkedIn Sales Solutions – Sales Navigator, Social Selling, LinkedIn for sales – Find leads and close deals with LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“take the value you bring into the market very seriously but don’t take yourself too seriously. Have fun with this process, really be open to understanding what people need on the ground and be weary of the solution that you have created in your mind. Make sure that you test them and make sure that you can validate them with your market”…[Listen for More]
More About Greg Ballard:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“We’re on the brink of adventure, children. Don’t spoil it with questions.” Mary Poppins
Other Quotes From the Chat with Greg Ballard:
- “I love the way Seth Godin puts it. It’s the lot and the key it’s the lock and the key. If you are familiar with his book ‘This Is Marketing’, he talks about this. The lock and the key… A lot of times entrepreneurs what they want to do is they get an idea in their mind and then they go into their workshop if you will just figure it workshop and they begin to design a key. And that could be a product or a service, whatever it is, it’s just representative. And then they make this key and then they spend all of their time and they want to get it just right. And they polish it and they make the best possible key they can think of. And then go out and they say hey I have a key to sell and they don’t know where to sell it because they never spent any time trying to figure out what lock it will open. And so, the thinking would be go out and discover the lock. What are the problems that people and businesses have? What are their struggles? What can they not get past? And then say hey I would like to design a key for this lock. Here is my first version what do you think? And that process is going to shortcut your entrepreneurial journey quite a bit”
- “You have to be tenacious; you have to stick with your goal. A couple of things I will add onto that is your ability to visualise. You need to be able to visualise the future you want to create. You need to have a cohort, a mastermind, someone or a community, maybe it’s one or two people or maybe you can get up to five other people that… Maybe they are not running the same race that you are but they are running their own race with a similar mentality. And you can think with them, process with them and share with them”
- “you need to identify your milestones, goals or objectives and then thing slice them into achievable things that you can accomplish within a couple of weeks or maybe a month. And then measure against those”
- “you make incremental investments over time and they all compound over time”
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