How To Beat Leadership Loneliness and Reach Your Goals

Starting the conversation:

Do you embrace the following three tips to be successful? In conversation with Jess Dewell, Dr. Yaniv Zaid, CEO and Speaker at Dr. Persuasion, shares real world examples about how to reach success by being mentally strong, selling the problem before the solution, and building a direct community of peers to avoid loneliness and reach your biggest goals.

Relentless learning — both from mistakes and acquiring new skills – is what separates the good from the great. The more effort you put into yourself, the stronger your ability to navigate unexpected situations well. We don’t live and work alone, and each connection we have is a choice. Collaborating and being willing to be vulnerable is a necessary part of human-to-human connection regardless if you are talking to one person or thousands of people.

In this program you will learn that fear fuels the path to success, competition can help us help each other, and your ability to identify and remove beliefs that hold you back will directly relate to the level of success you reach. Jess Dewell talks candidly with Dr. Yaniv Zaid, CEO and Speaker at Dr. Persuasion, about loneliness and driving toward constantly innovating yourself, your product, and your business.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Dr. Yaniv Zaid

What You Will Hear:

1:15 It takes a lot of “no” to get to “yes.”

• Continuously develop to become your best self.
• Improvement must be important to you.
• Be down to earth, know your priorities, and develop the skills necessary for them.

8:10 When we have something to say, it is important that others hear and understand.

• The principles of debate will improve your speaking skills and responses.
• Every time you practice with intention odds are you will improve.

10:14 How you can quickly find and fix gaps in your skills.

• Be yourself, control your ego, and bring awareness to what you put attention on.
• Analyze your mistakes.
• Failure precedes success (so if not failing, make moves to reach points of failure).

15:44 Fear fuels the path to success.

• Dr. Yaniv Zaid’s loneliness and what he did about it.
• As the leader, you are expected to have answers, even when you don’t. Learn what you do.
• Cultivate a strong network, and connect more with the peers working on similar projects in the same stage to learn from and support each other.

17:50 Three tips to grow: Set yourself up to succeed.

1. Become mentally strong. Believe in yourself. Be optimistic. Bring possibility into pessimistic environments.
2. Sell the problem before the solution. Focus on the client, where they are on the path to solving their problem, and listen.
3. Build community. Connect with people that know, like, and trust you — and reciprocate.

26:35 Dr. Yaniv Zaid shares where he’s struggled as a leader and how he navigated through.

• It could be war, literally. War, among other things, is outside of your control, so how you show up for yourself matters.
• Learn from mistakes. Talk openly about yourself, share gratitude without being a distraction.
• Understand your real competition.

30:20 Creatively we can be competitive and still help each other.

• It is hard work to learn, especially during times where results come with ease.
• Why do we do what we do? Our experiences will teach us about ourselves and how we can support others.
• Every expert is a beginner in something because they keep learning.

37:20 Remove beliefs to achieve more.

• We interrupt ourselves more than we realize.
• Know what your biggest priorities are so you stay focused on your goals as you navigate the unexpected.
• Challenge can be an asset. Create a mindshift to open creativity by changing your perspective.

45:00 It is BOLD to keep innovating to remain relevant as customer needs change.

Resources

• 21st Century Sales Bible
• Discovering Your WHY in Business
• Dr. Yaniv Zaid on LinkedIn

Transcript

Jess Dewell 00:00
Hey, I’ve met people who say they want something, but they’re actually not willing to do the work to get there.

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 00:05
You need to focus on the client and the client doesn’t care about your product. It just cares about these needs and problems.

Jess Dewell 00:10
I’m glad you’re here. Thanks for stopping by. At the Bold Business podcast, we are normalizing important conversations. Yes, there are tips. Yes, there are ways to solve problems. More importantly are going to be what do you need for yourself to be able to solve those problems and make the most of the education, the training and the programs that you are already using? This is a supplement to that. It can sit on top of it. Fuel your soul, fuel your mind, and most importantly, regardless of where you’re at on your journey, maybe you’re starting out, maybe you’re ready to scale, maybe you’re going through reinvention. The conversations we are having will help you at each of those stages. So hang around, see what’s going on and I look forward to seeing you engaging with our videos.

Announcer 01:02
You are listening to the Bold Business podcast where you will hear first-hand experiences about what it really takes to ensure market relevance and your company’s future.

Jess Dewell 01:14
This is a conversation between Dr. Yaniv Zaid and me. I have to tell you I learned a lot in this program. My two personal biggest takeaways are that I need to talk about myself more and that I can lean into my community in a different way that I haven’t fully been taking advantage of. So those were my two personal biggest takeaways. I can’t wait to hear in the comments what you might think you get to use right away. I will also give you a little bit of a teaser here. Dr. Yaniv Zaid is an economist and an attorney. He has a PhD in law and uses his knowledge and experience to to help others achieve their success in government departments, private firms and in public organizations. He has had 20 years of international success and it shows in this conversation you’re going to hear us talk about a lot of things and a lot of stories are shared and what you want to listen for is that how fear fuels the path to success and competition is a mindset and maybe shifting that and being creative about it in a way that as competitors we can help each other actually helps even more people. And oh, we have our own beliefs that are getting in our way and holding us back. And so some ways that we have fallen to that and been limited by our own thinking and also how we got through it and other ways you might try as well. So I’m super excited for you to listen into this conversation, hear what Yaniv is going to be sharing, and then I want you to share your thoughts, your comments, your experiences so that we can keep this conversation going. We do need to normalize getting better, being an expert with a beginner’s mind and making sure that we are saying what we want to say in a way that people can hear and take action on. Enjoy this conversation. Does persuasion and being able to communicate clearly and move people in a path together, does that come naturally to you, Yaniv?

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 03:19
Basically, yes. But I’ve developing these skills all of my life. People, I say that people always see the success. They don’t see the lab hours. And there are lots of lab hours, the hours. First of all, they know you here because every salesperson, every business person, business owner, they know the feeling that most of people tell them no. So you need to hear lots of no in order to get to the yes. So I heard lots of no in my life and I developed many tactics and I tried them all. And sometimes I failed, sometimes I succeeded. Yes, I have a basic skills of how to persuade people. But what when I teach people, I tell them, you don’t need to have basic skills, you just need to develop to be the best version of yourself so everyone can improve. So if, for example, you have a stage fright and people and you run away, then you can have the ability, if you manage to improve your public speaker speaking abilities, then you can come to a position that you present yourself good. Okay. Not maybe, let’s say a A plus, but B plus or A. Okay. And if you already have the skills, then you can be excellent in what you do. If you improve yourself, you won’t be perfect because no one is perfect. But you can improve yourself. So everyone can improve themselves. And what I teach in my lectures and workshops and books, everyone can learn and can improve no matter what their basic level is.

Jess Dewell 04:30
You just have to be willing.

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 04:32
Yeah, yeah, you need to. It needs to be important to you. And I always explain to people that no matter how good you are, if you want, if you don’t know how to market yourself, then you won’t get hired to jobs. If you are a good manager, but you don’t know how to, to move to action, your clients or your employees, they won’t do what you want. And if I have good product, but I don’t know how to market it, then it will stay on the shelves. So I need to have a good, a good product, a good service, and I need to have A great marketing and positioning as well.

Jess Dewell 04:59
You know what I found over the years and this is really true, I want to improve, right? So that’s why I was like, hey, I’ve met people who say they want something, but they’re actually not willing to do the work to get there. And the quicker we can get to that in ourselves, the quicker we can decide, is this something that I want to learn enough about to get started or is this something that I really have to figure out how to learn to trust and get to work with somebody else who can bring that skill here? Have you worked in successful partnerships where one person decided, nope, that’s not going to be my skill and surrounded themselves and brought somebody in that said, yep, here is this skill.

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 05:40
Now people dao managers will say, okay, I’m bad. For example, I’m not the technical person. So I want to surround myself with technical persons that will, that can help me. It’s important to supervise them, not just ignore things and say, okay, you do whatever you want. I am not over overseeing it. But yes, but what, what I recommend everyone for myself as well is to know what is your where is your relative advantage to focus on your skills and to take employees and partners that can help you with the things that you are not good at. But you need to be on it. You need to improve yourself. You need to, to supervise them and you need to show them that it’s important for you as well. Because if I just, for example, lots of business owners, they don’t like sales and marketing, so you just give it to someone else and say okay, you call my clients, okay, you do my campaign on Facebook. But at the end of the day, no one will market yourself like you, no one will sell you like you. So if you, if I take someone and he’s. You recognize that I’m not supervising him and I don’t care about marketing and sales, then he will do probably a lousy job. So in order for other people to do a good job, I need to be very precise in what I give them to do and also to supervise them.

Jess Dewell 06:51
That avoidance we delegate to avoid and I’m not sure about you, luckily I have never fallen into that trap because I always knew if it was going to get done in alignment with our long-term goals. I had to understand what was being done, what the priorities were, how we were going to measure. Because the result of whatever that work is part of my decision-making process as the person making the final decision, making the goal, making that vision and moving us forward as a team and helping remove all those obstacles.

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 07:24
Yeah. If it’s important enough for you, then you will learn it and then you will care about it. And again, part of our success is to do things that sometimes you don’t want to do. For example, I hate to send price quotes to clients. Okay. So most of the time, my employees or my VP in my company, he send a, on my behalf. Okay. But sometimes a client approach direct to me and I need to send him a price quote or to. To write some document down or something like that. So at the end of the day, for me as a speaker, I go on stage. But this is the success for me. There’s lots of lab hours, signing for this company, sales conversation, maybe meetings, preparation, lots of things that people don’t do or don’t see. And. And if it’s important for me to be on stage, to be great, then I will be willing to do all this stuff, technical things or boring things behind the scenes.

Jess Dewell 08:13
And we all have our own systems, so I actually experienced this with our podcast. This is an interesting. Just awareness of how it can get in the way. Last February, I talked to a person and we got together just like you and I did. Can we have a conversation? Is it going to be good? And I was like, can’t wait to have Yaniv on this show. This person was similar. And we get done, and they have an automated process, and we have an automated process, but they didn’t really talk to each other very well. And it was nine months later. They were like, where’s our conversation? And I’m like, I know everything got stuck. Even though their employees and my employees were doing their best, they couldn’t get it to work. And I had to be like, hey, here we are. This is. You want to do this? I will talk to you for a few minutes. Let’s figure this out. And we both learned something because now I can prioritize. Right. So what you were doing, signing the contracts, doing the work. Sometimes that has to happen for you. All it does is it puts us in the front line to test and make sure we like the way it’s working.

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 09:12
Yeah. And you need to be connected to the field to be, to be done. Done Earth and to. To. To do whatever, to know what your employees do and to do it if. If it’s necessary to do it yourself.

Jess Dewell 09:23
So let’s talk about improve because we’re both going to say the same thing about this. I can’t wait to hear your experience and, and your take on this. Our ability as an individual. To be able to communicate well means we have something we want to say and we want it to be heard. And so what was it through the nose that you were like, how do I find a yes and how do I move forward? Or was there something else you knew going in? This is trial and error. Or you decided this was going to be a grand experiment or maybe you didn’t even know any better. I’ve done that before, right? Some of my successes I didn’t know I couldn’t do it.

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 10:02
So first of all, I think every expert is a student and you need to improve yourself all your life. And always I always try to be the best version of myself and always try to learn new things and to learn from my stuff, et cetera. And when I started I was, I am now 47 years old. I started when I was 23 years old. I was a chairman of my debate society, my university. I am a lawyer and economist. I study law in economy and I started competing in, in debate championships in worldwide. I was very successful. I was number three in the world in 2003 and I was in a semifinal of European Championship 2002. And then I realized that I’m very good at it. And then nobody, almost nobody knows about, about the debate in Israel, for example, where, where I come from and most people, they focus on the only on the competitions. But if you take the principles of the debate, then you can upload it to your day to day life and to use it in order to get better, to improve your public speaking abilities and sales abilities abilities and marketing abilities. So I started developing lectures and I started lecturing. And then the first time I didn’t know what I was doing, I just knew I would like to do it very much. And obviously I got better from time to time. And I always tell my clients, I also work with authors that would like to publish the book and spread it worldwide. And the lecturers would like to build their lectures. So I always say your second lecture will probably be better than the first one and the 10th lecture will be better than the second one. You need to learn all the time and to be curious and to ask your crowd, what do I need? To improve your colleagues and to be open for improvement. And then you can be the best version of yourself all the time. And then when people see you again, we talked about the success in the lab hours, they don’t see the amount of times you didn’t do things like you should have been done. But eventually you learn from it and you got better for next time.

Jess Dewell 11:45
You’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast. I’m your host, Jess Dewell. This is your program for strategizing long term success while diving deep into what the right work is for your business.

Announcer 11:57
Right now you are listening to the Bold Business Podcast hosted by Jess Dewell, a nationally recognized strategic growth consultant. She works with business owners and executives to integrate just two elements that guide business through the ups and downs of growth. Number one, know what work is necessary. Number two, do all the work possible. Schedule a complimentary consultation to find out more at reddirection.com

Jess Dewell 12:32
To us, sometimes we get stuck in the mechanics of I’ve got to get the sales, I’ve got to figure out the funnel. And we forget about the importance of the message or what we’re trying to communicate. How have you found over your career and this constant improvement the quickest ways to identify where the disconnect is and bring them together?

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 12:57
First of all, I can say that the enemy of a is a plus. So if you wait for you to be excellent and you wait for all things will go as smooth as possible, then probably you do nothing. So sometimes you need just to do, to start doing things, whether if it’s speaking or whatever or developing a product or something like that. And then you can improve yourself through movement. And also I believe that today in market we recorded in 2024. So today people are looking for authenticity. Authenticity. So they would like to be, to, for you to be authentic. So today I say all the time that your clients, they have a fake radar or bucchi radar that if you do something it’s not relevant for them or it’s, it’s not you, then they will notice it. So it’s good to, to improve all the time to think to, to identify your client, your target audience, then to do a relevant services or products for, for this, for this kind of audience.

Jess Dewell 13:50
Have you ever had the experience in your authenticity being your true self that you actually were becoming something you didn’t know if you really wanted to be and had to step back and be and make an adjustment. Oh, there’s a better way to be me and still deliver what I want to deliver?

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 14:08
Yes, of course. First of all, when we talk about sales, sales, marketing, business owners, we’re entrepreneurs, managers, then we have ego and sometimes you need, you need to control your ego. And first of all, this, this ego brought us to where we are. But in order to get to the next step, especially again in 2024, 2025, you need to to become best version. Because today you have the, the mind, the mind and spirit. It’s also important, not just practical tips. And people would like personal attention. And people would like you to be athletic. And I can tell you that even if I do something like say wrong, I apologize immediately. And I would like to improve myself. And if I had a mistake, I analyze this mistake in front of my clients as well or my employees. Luckily for me, I don’t do many mistakes professionally. But if I do, I recognize it. In my first company, I lost $100 million of investors. Of money of investors. My second company, I closed it and I got divorced. And my third company is PayPal, something like that. Usually it’s a failure success. But mostly you won’t hear stories like in my first company, I burned $100 million of my investors. My second company, I closed it and today I’m homeless. And something like that. Usually it’s a failure success, not failure. But people enjoy hearing about also about behind the scenes stories and about failure stories. And the important thing is to be authentic. I always tell my clients, be Batman and not Superman. Now what is the difference? Batman and Superman, they are both superheroes and they both look like human being. But actually Superman is not human being. Came from another planet. If Superman will have a workshop, he will say how to fly. Okay. And I sit in the first row and I write everything. And he will explain to me exactly that. Go to the highest tower. Tower, Go to the roof, check the wind. And I will do whatever he says. I will still fall. But Batman, he will do a workshop how to fly. And I will sit in the first row and they will say, even if I was exactly like you, actually I had a worse life. Because the Joker killed my parents when I was young. And I fell into a cave. And I was afraid of. Of bats, afraid of darkness. But then I developed myself how to the ability to fly. Let me teach you. And then I can relate to him. I relate to them. I can say, okay, he’s like me, so I can. I’m willing to learn from him. So if you are. If you don’t want, try to be perfect, won’t try to be Superman. But talk about your failures and be willing to improve. Then your clients will be more connected to you. Your friends and family will be more connected to you. Because nobody’s perfect. And we all have our struggles and troubles. The important things is if life hits you, then you need to rise up again and continue your work.

Jess Dewell 16:33
What is one of the biggest fears that you faced that turned out to help you on your career path and in your successes?

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 16:42
I guess every speaker, I think what’s affected me the most is to be lonely. Because every speaker, I think every manager at some point or every business owner, owner, you, you feel lonely if you, even if you have partners, even if you have employees because at the end of your, the top of the pyramid and everyone comes for you for advice and everyone look up to you as an expert. And, and sometimes, and again you, sometimes you travel alone, lecture all over the world, and I have a best set of books all over the world, so I travel a lot. And then you are by yourself. And if you talk in front of audience, let’s say you talk to 400 people. At the end, it’s you in front of 400 people. And the, the people will always, the crowd will always be on the side of the crowd. If somebody, you have some debate with someone from the crowd, then everyone else would be on their side. I guess I taught myself how to, first of all, to survive myself with lots of love and friends and family and colleagues and mentors and everyone. And also to, to love my audience and the audience will love me back. So it’s not you against the audience, but it’s the you and your clients, you’re in the same boat, okay? You have the same mission. And you and your audience, you have the same mission to enjoy the show, to enjoy the lecture, for example. And you and your readers, you have the same, the same goal that they will take value from your books. So when you see that, you see creatively, not competitive, not in a competitive way, but a creative way, then you have a good life and then you are not feeling lonely.

Jess Dewell 17:57
My life partner, my spouse, he’s like me, another business owner. Even with both of us there, we both have that feeling sometimes. And it takes effort. It takes effort to go, oh, okay, I don’t want to feel that. What can I do about it? It takes effort to be a little open and say, hey, I need this extra, or to be able to show up differently and see what else happens if you don’t want to ask for it. We are hinting around some of those things a little bit earlier now. Have we talked about anything that’s in your latest book, Yaniv?

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 18:32
My latest book is that it’s called the 21st Century Sales Bible. You can see it behind me. And it’s now on bookstore in North America. And also it’s, it’s published so far to a post translated to 12 languages, and it’s also published In Russia, in China and Vietnam and India, in more countries. I’m very proud of this book. It’s 10 Commandments, 10 chapters on how to develop your sales abilities and the marketing abilities and public speaking abilities and how to build your brand and how to grow a community. It’s actually practical tools for every manager, for every business owner, for every entrepreneur, for every tech company or startup, and also for authors and lecturers and speakers who would like to promote themselves better. And I strongly recommend to, to learn about the book. And also I have a website with lots of content. It’s called Dr. Persuasion.com. it’s at www. R-P-R-S u-a s I-O-N.com so also you can check my website and you can, you have my email there and you can ask me any question you may have.

Jess Dewell 19:28
You called it the Sales Bible. Now I want to quote it correctly because I have the title written down somewhere, but it is not in front of me. So in this we’ve talked about, you were talking about giving tips and we’re talking about growing iteratively. So let’s just look at an individual, you or me, we have a desire to grow. We go out and we buy your book. What are three things that we’re going to find? Tips that we have to start with ourselves, hold up that mirror to be able to embrace all of the things that they’ll find in your book.

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 19:56
So, so first of all, how to be mentally strong. If you’re talking about sales and marketing, then I can teach you what to say and who to approach and what to write. But eventually, if you’re not mentally strong and you don’t believe in yourself and believe in your products and services, then you probably won’t make it or you won’t make it as much as you want. So I need to believe in myself that I’m an expert. I need to believe that my products and services, they are good for the clients and they provide value. And it’s very important to be optimistic, especially in the pessimistic environment because the world is full with no matter where you live, you have bad news. And I always say that when you hear the news at 8:00 or 9:00 pm Then they start every, every show in saying good evening and then they explain to you all the hour why it’s bad evening, they just tell you about the shitty things that happen today. And if you talk to, if you talk to people, they always, most of the environment are pessimistic. So, so you need to be very optimistic because in order to be entrepreneur, in order to, to believe in yourself, you need to be very optimistic that this book will succeed, this product will succeed. I am establishing a company, it will grow. I’m now doing a campaign, it will succeed. Otherwise you can’t, you can’t do it. This is number one, this is number one tip to be strong mentally and optimistic. Number two is I teach in the book how to sell the problem before the solution. It’s a very important tip because most business owners and managers, they focus on the solution, not the problem. They focus on the products and the services and the technical aspects of their products and services. And actually you need to focus on the client. And the client doesn’t care about your product. It’s. It just cares about his needs and problems. For example, if you take a regular bouquet of flowers and a bridal bouquet, a bouquet for the flowers for the wedding. So if I take regular bouquet of flowers, I can charge let’s say 100 for it. And if I take equal the same flowers, I call it a bridal bouquet, I can charge now 300 till $500. Everything that related to weddings, it’s cost three to five times more. So why people are willing to pay this amount? Because it’s not about the flowers. Because those, those are the same flowers. What is the difference? The need? Because if I buy flowers for the wedding, I’m not actually buying flowers. I’m buying the winning picture, the winning image of, of ten years from now. I will have photos for the wedding. I will sit with my husband. The bride and groom will sit with the kids 10 years from now and they will look at the photo album and they will say, oh, look how beautiful mommy was. And 30 years from now, they will sit with, with their grandkids and say, oh look how beautiful grandma there was. And, and the feeling of a million dollar feeling in that day that I’m queen for a day of the bride. So I’m not buying the flowers because of the flowers. I’m buying all the, the vibe of the flowers. This is why I’m willing to pay more. So you need to understand about your products and services. What, what is the value you create for your clients? What are their needs? What are the problems? And we talked earlier about fixing my problems, my personal problem. So if it hurts me, then I’m willing to fix it. The more the problem is, is bigger, the more I’m willing to pay for this product or service. If you sell to the clients their problems and Needs, they are more likely to buy from you. They will talk more about you. It’s viral marketing. They will talk about you, they will be good ambassadors for you, and they will be willing to pay you more to pay you more for the same product and service. Okay? And another tip you can learn from the book is how to grow your how to build a community and grow your community. When I say community, I’m talking about the contact information in your, in your mobile, I’m talking about your friends on Facebook and your YouTube, YouTube subscribers and I’m talking about your friends on LinkedIn and I’m talking about your neighbors and friends and family and colleagues and former clients and actual clients. It’s all, they’re all part of a big community and you need all the time to first of all that your active community now they, they will know what you do, what you actually do, what you sell. And then you need to all the time grow your community. And before what I teach in the book, the steps is before people are buying from you, you need, they need to have four steps. Step number one is they need to know you. Step number two is they need to like you. Step number three is they need to trust you. And only then they can buy from you or invest in you or vote for you or whatever. So it’s a no like trust model. Number one is they need to know you. They need to know you, that you are out there, that you exist, that you are actually relevant for the market. Because if I, I’m not relevant, let’s say I, I’m. People don’t know me enough and they’re looking for a speaker for their gig, for their workshop or something like that, then they not saying, I won’t take Dr. Persuasion, Dr. Aniv’s side because he’s too expensive or because he’s too far or something else. They don’t. I’m not in the game, so I need to be in the game. I need to be on the list that people will take me under consideration. So, so, so I need to be in as many platforms as possible. I need to do a lot of networking or also talk about networking in the book, I need to talk about myself. I need to show as many platforms as possible to be relevant on Facebook and YouTube and LinkedIn and podcast, etc. And I need to identify the target audience and to be relevant for this, this audience. This is step number number one. After I cross this step and people, they know me, they need to like me now. They didn’t buy me for me. Yet so how can they like me? They can like me even if they see for example my podcast or they see a movie with me or they see me, they see a lecture, they are in the audience to see a lecture. So they didn’t steal, they didn’t buy from me yet everything. But they see me and they say okay, I’m I related this guy, okay, I like this guy. Oh, he said something that, that I feel connected to it or something like that. So they can like you even though they haven’t met you yet and they didn’t buy from you yet. This is step number two and I obviously I explained about it in, in my book and step number three is they need to trust you. They need to trust you. Okay, so I know this guy. So I okay, he’s a nice guy. But how can I, how can I know for a fact that is the expert he says he claims he is and, and they how can I trust you without even buying from you yet? Because they didn’t try my product services on my consulting consultation yet or something like that. Because here is a great tool I explained my book, it’s called Social Proof. What is social proof is if I talk about myself and I will say I’m great at what I do and I’m a very professional. It doesn’t sound objective because it sounds subjective because I’m talking about myself. So obviously I’m going to speak highly of myself. But if I explain and I will show you some objective evidence. I will show testimonials of clients. I will tell you stories about former clients that they had about my achievements, about my ranking on Spotify, about the amount of client I had, about the, for example, my degrees, okay, my, my professional activities, my volunteer activity, stuff like that. Then you can trust me even though you don’t know me personally yet. Because I say okay, I don’t know you but if this and this client, they will already work for him, okay, then probably I can trust him. If this, if he’s a, if he has a PhD, I can trust him. If he has 11 bestseller books, then probably is good at what he does or something like that. So I will give you write to you and tell you in my marketing materials and in only I can tell you about my activities and about my social process, then you can trust me. So only when client they know you and then they like you, then they trust you, then they will buy from you. And all of this explaining my book for again for entrepreneurs and small medium businesses.

Jess Dewell 26:44
I’m your host, Jess Dewell. And we’re getting down to business on the Bold Business Podcast. This is where we’re tackling the challenges that matter, matter most to you with actionable and achievable advice to get real results that lead to your success focused on growth.

Announcer 27:03
Listen to more programs like this which support the challenges and opportunities you are working with right now. Search Bold Business Podcast for the key terms at reddirection dot com or your preferred podcast listening app.

Jess Dewell 27:17
What’s a time that you unexpectedly ended up in the middle of a struggle on your path to where you are today? And how did you navigate that?

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 27:26
First of all, I think every business owner, they have, we have struggles. I live in Israel, in Tel Aviv. We have a great economy, we have startup nation, but we have wars. And sometimes you have days that it’s not lots of attacks and missiles that Iran and other countries fired us or something like that. So you need to be, I say all the time. So if you’re entrepreneur in Israel, you need to be very mentally strong and you need to sometimes you plan things and then bad laughs and things are messing with this. The reality is messing with this. So you need to be very optimistically optimistic, mentally strong. But obviously along the way I did lots of mistakes. One of the mistakes I learned from it and I also teach it. I will tell you now is not talking, not talking about your competitors because sometimes the clients tell you you are A, but I also have propositions from B and C. So what are you good? How are you better than them? And then you start talking about bnc. It’s not good. You need to talk about yourself. You need to be the best version of yourself. You need to be proactive and talk only about yourself. And because if I start messing with other people’s businesses, then maybe, maybe the client won’t love them, but he also won’t love me. You need to be focusing on yourself. And once I, a few years ago I did a webinar, my webinar to my community and I had many hundreds of people signed for the webinar. And the same day apparently there was there was a semi final of a European championship in I think Champions League or something like in Europe. And also there was the final of play, American Idol or something like that. So I started the webinar.

Jess Dewell 28:49
You’re in stiff competition there.

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 28:51
So because I planned two months ahead and I didn’t recognize because maybe football I like, but American Idol I don’t watch. So I didn’t know about it. And then I realized I had the 400 people. In my webinar, I see the number 400 and then I started the webinar. You need to provide compliments to the audience. So I say, hello, everyone. I’m happy that you chose me and I’m very happy we’re going to have lots of value the next hour and it’s very good that you chose me and not semifinal of Champions League. When I say it, I look at the numbers and I say immediately It’s a decline. 100 people left. Just see 300. I still didn’t realize the mistake I did. So I said, and if you don’t like football, I’m happy that you’re here. And I’m not watching now the final of American Idol. Then I see another decline. That’s 100 people there. And then I said, oh my God, stop talking. And if just stop providing value or something like that. And this was a good lesson for me. Don’t talk about the competition because people do a rational decision that, okay, I prefer Yaniv other than American either. They just didn’t realize. I didn’t remember that there is the final today. So I’m now talking about my competition. I’ve explained to them about the competition. So I’m shooting myself in the leg. I’m hurting my, my own status. So just be focused about yourself. Sometimes it’s hard if you’re self-employed and you are in a competitive market and clients get price quotes. But again, decide who the target audience is, decide what is the pricing you would like to charge from the client, what are your products and then just be authentic and be loyal to yourself.

Jess Dewell 30:22
You bring up a really good point. So sometimes we think our competition like in my world, right, I’m a consultant. I provide a path. I am doing off sites and strategic planning work. My competition sometimes is it’s like I would say executive coaches, for example, or group programs in, in that realm of different things. But as you were talking, it’s who else gets that time? Who else are you competing time for? And I’m just thinking about if I’m going to, am I going to listen to a podcast or I’m going to read a book, am I going to spend time with my family or am I going to spend time learning? And that, that top how we prioritize our time is key. And when I heard you say that, I’m thinking, oh, I have done the same thing. I have accidentally reminded people of other priorities they have. And in that moment they’re like, that’s where I want to be. And off they go. We want to help them stay on, on their own task too, don’t we?

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 31:16
Yeah. The CEO of Netflix said in an interview that the biggest competition of Netflix is sleep. Because they would like you to stay awake and see another chapter, another episode, keep going and not just see 20 minutes and go to sleep. So the biggest. But by the way, I don’t see, I don’t use the term competitors. I use colleagues because we talked about loneliness of speakers and business owners. And I think the way to not be lonely is also surround yourself with colleagues, that you can help them, they can help you. You can refer to them, they can refer to you. So I suggest everyone that can listen to us that you need to think. You need to think creatively, not competitive, not in a competitive way, but a creative way and not use. Treat your colleagues as competitors. But also there’s people who do who are in the same business and you are struggling like you and also would like to succeed. And you can help them, they can help you. And then one plus one equals not two and not even three. One plus one can equals 11. So yeah, I like that. So it’s a synergy. So cooperate with others. What you and I do, we’re both consultants worldwide and obviously we can say, okay, no, we are enemies. We want to share information.

Jess Dewell 32:25
I don’t think anybody’s my enemy. Exactly with the air quote.

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 32:31
But no, we cooperate together. We share this information. I will share it to my community. They can know you and you will share it to your community. They can know we don’t know me. And 1 plus 1 equals 5 or 6 or 11. So this is the way.

Jess Dewell 32:43
I love that. And that’s such a good point because when people ask me about my competition, I’m like, what are your priorities? Because that’s really. Are you going to work on this or are you going to work on something else? I do believe in abundance and I do believe that there is enough work out there for everybody who wishes to be there. We’re just not necessarily good at. Which is why you are here today. We’re not necessarily good at communicating. We’re doing it in an order that is actually useful. Nor are we really willing to embrace the hard work to learn so that the easy or so that the results can come with ease is maybe how I want to say it. Would you say that similarly or differently?

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 33:25
Yeah, because I think part of the communication is, is to again to cooperate with others and to. To again to be the best version of yourself and to improve yourself all the time. I, I agree with what you said.

Jess Dewell 33:35
And you’re right though too, because your view, your experiences, my view, together we are better. And there will be people who. It’s not my forte and I am not going to pretend to be able to do something outside of my strengths. I will want to provide a resource. And if I’m not networking, if I don’t have somebody that I know trust and have an understanding of how they work, I can’t make a really good connection so that we can all grow together so that we are all successful. Because that’s ultimately what it’s about, is finding the right connection so that we can be as success successful as we want to be.

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 34:15
Yeah, another, yeah, again, another advantage of, of being together is, is the fact that, that you can grow your market because you can do market education. For example, you talked about consulting. So most people, they don’t take consulting. It’s not like 100% of business owners, they take consulting. And now there is a competition between you and I about red, oh, the red ocean theory that there is a limited number of businesses or clients, limited number of consultants. No, most people, most businesses, they don’t do consulting. And if they take consulting, it’s just when they have problem, the smart people, the smart businesses that they consulted before they open the business or when they start the business or before they do a campaign, not start a campaign without knowing what to do, fail. And then maybe if they have money left and energy left or time left, then they take consulting. So we need to educate our market. Why do you need to take consulting? So probably what we do now is another part of the market education because I’m sure that most of the, some of our listeners, entrepreneurs, managers, business owners, they never took consultants and paid the money. But so yeah, you can pay money to others, but you save lots of money with from them tips. And you save lots of energy, you save lots of time. So this is the alternative. So if people say, no, I don’t want to take this consulting, it’s too expensive, what is the alternative? The alternative is to make mistakes and to lose lots of money and lose lots of energy and maybe even close the business or failing a campaign that you spend lots of time and energy in just because you didn’t do the right things. So you need to take others not because they are smarter than you or bigger than you or younger than you or older than you because they already did things that you want to know or they already consulted to other companies, similar companies, and they have an experience that you still don’t have. So I said earlier that every expert is also a student. So we need to, to learn all the time. I take lots of money from my clients and I help them a lot and I provide value and always they, they have a positive ROI from for my consulting. But I also pay a lot of money for myself to become a better spouse, a better husband, a better parent, a better businessman, a better lecturer and speaker. I travel to conferences all over the world, so I also lecture, but also here stay to listen to former speakers or speakers after me and to learn from them. Okay. And, and I see here lots of podcasts also. Actually I love your podcast. I heard many chapters from your podcast and I loved it and I got lots of value from it. So highly recommend thank you to all of your chapters, not just this chapter to our listeners. But yeah, you listen, you, you learn all the time and you improve yourself all the time. And you need to cooperate in order to succeed. And I guess in 2024, 2025, this is the, the way to do business again because if you just keep your knowledge to yourself, you need, you don’t have friends, you don’t have colleagues. Not only that you are lonely, but you won’t succeed as much as you like.

Jess Dewell 36:53
Everything that holds us back is usually right here or right here in our heart too. Right? It could be our head or our heart that we’ve decided what the limit is going to be. And what if. Have you ever asked yourself that question? What if I let all those limits go? Do you have a question like that you use in yourself or question?

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 37:13
Julie I, I said that we, we interrupt ourselves actually we interrupt ourselves because everyone can be. They, you know, they can succeed massively. They can see succeed worldwide, they can succeed in all over the country. They can sell more, they can do more, they can earn more, they can have more profits, everything. Usually we are the biggest interruption for ourselves. So again we, we go, we started talking about the doing and the being and the, the to be mentally strong. So this is why it’s so important. Because if I wanted to rock myself, I can reach the higher level and.

Jess Dewell 37:41
What we allow to interrupt. I remember I, I remember the hardest part of my business journey was after I became a mother. Babies at home, all of these things. How do I recognize what do I want to do and what I thought I was going to be able to do and what I thought I was going to want to do versus the reality of the situation? And that was the first time I had this almost full stop. This isn’t what I thought it was going to be. Now what do I do? How do I move forward? And that was a big one for me. And I know if it wasn’t adding a whole other human into a family in any way, it could be all kinds of things. It could be combining two families, it could be aging parents, it could be an unexpected illness, it could be a change in our industry. Right There are all of these things and I’m a big believer in. I don’t like to think about the worst-case scenario like that. I am a big believer of going what is the most important thing to me. So no matter what shows up, if I hold those few most important things to me in front of me, I can find a way through. I can find. Do I need to call Yaniv and just get my head on straight? What can he tell me? Maybe he’s been there before. Do I. How do I want to spend my time right now? What must I put on pause for these few priorities in, in my whole life so that I can decide how to be here and show up to be able to be of service?

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 39:08
When I was a. It’s not just mothers, also fathers. When I I have now two kids 14 and 16 years old. And soon I will have number three, a child number three. And I remember when I was a father in the beginning of my business 16, 17 years ago. I was in a rising path and, and the spend many hours in my business and my. My time was occupied 247 and. And then I realized that I have a, a child and I’m a very loving father and a caring father. So I said to myself how can I squeeze here the child if we’re talking about time management? And then I called some. Some mentor that I had from a university and then she told me that he said. She said the child the your children is an asset for your business. It’s not a liability for your business. And once you switch this diagnosis, this sentence and you implement it, you realize yes, because my children are inspiration for me and my children provide me a lot of content for my books, for my posts and the children it’s very. I’m inspiration from them but they also. They drive me to. To earn more and to be more profitable and to manage my time better and stuff like that. So they be you become a best version of yourself as a parent and also as a businessman because business and private are connected especially if you’re one mature. So I I taught myself this. So sometimes all you need is to change your perspective, change your Perspective, it’s not a liability. It’s an asset or it’s an opportunity. Every crisis is an opportunity. So some illness or some war or some. Some Something that is happening in reality, they can result of election that you don’t like or something like that. Then you need to say, okay, what is the opportunity for me? Because I can sit and cry all day in my house and I won’t change everything outside, and still I will have the same problems and I maybe even worse my situation. But if I look at it, this crisis as an a. As an opportunity, then I can improve myself and improve the environment and also to be an inspiration for everyone else in. Around me.

Jess Dewell 40:59
I appreciate that immensely. And I know that perspective shift can be one of the most difficult things to do in the moment. And I will tell you that I think that. I think that when we really do show up, when we really do, when we really do say, okay, here’s what it is. This is my reality right now. It’s only from that place we can decide to do what you said. Because I love what you were saying, and I don’t think I do it enough. That’s actually an area where I’m constantly on the lookout because it is a blind spot of mine, thinking that the limitation that shows up or the challenge or the unexpected, whatever is okay. I have to just go over or around it and I forget to go, is it really there? Because maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s not. So part of this is talking about what we’re willing to do and what we’re willing to commit to. And there’s a lot of. There’s a lot of discipline. Keep showing up, keep learning. Experts are still beginners also. And this personal development which is do you call it? Would you call it iteration? I’m gonna try something and I’ll integrate what I learned. I’m gonna try something and I’ll integrate what I’ve learned. Ooh, this looks really exciting. Maybe I’ll check that out a little bit too. Is there anything else you would add about that?

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 42:17
Yeah, first of all, it’s. You need to improve on yourself. Sometimes even it’s resurrection. It’s. You fail and then you rise from the ashes and, and you start doing the things again, and they. Again, you need to be very mentally strong. I can tell you that. Again, you have reality. Sometimes you plan something and then you cancel it. You did the campaign, it failed. You would like to open a workshop. One buys and then another period, the same workshop. It’s full. And you need to open another one. So you just keep on trying and to identify all the time, be more accurate, who is your target audience, what are your products and services and how can you update yourself? And we talked about being creative also. I think it’s being innovative all the. Because the market is changing all the time. The economy changing, the clients are changing. You need to be ahead of your competitive competitors, ahead of your colleagues, ahead of your market and to be relevant. And sometimes you have good product and you could be relevant for 10, 20 years without changing anything. But sometimes you need to update your business model or you need to update your product and services in order to stay alive in the competitive market.

Jess Dewell 43:17
What’s really interesting about what you just said, that’s actually a business’s whole purpose is to figure out how to stay relevant over time. Yeah, that’s, that is, and it’s always a moving target. So if we forget and we go, oh, we figured it out, it’s going to pass us by and then we’re playing that catch up. Maybe that’s a big. Maybe it’s too late once that has passed us by. And so it’s really interesting. I’m really enjoying this conversation immensely and I’m going to ask you this. I want to know what makes it bold. I want to know what makes it bold about being intentional to innovate and remain relevant over time.

Dr. Yaniv Zaid 43:53
Most people, they are not entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs is just something like 10% of the population. So again, most people, they are also employees. They’re not self-employed. So we are a minority. So you need to be, I think by definition you need to be bold in order to be entrepreneurial. You need to be bold in order to be a business owner because you have something important for you and you say to yourself, it’s not just important for me, it’s important for everyone else. I wrote a book, I have an idea, not the book. Yes, this idea will become a book and people will buy it and it will be on bookstores and people will buy it all over the world. And I have something to say. Yes, my messages should be being heard all over the world. So we need to be very bold in making those decisions or to take a loan from the bank to open a shop or something like that. You need to be not only very optimistic and very wanted very much, but you need to be very bold. Because on a day, sometimes people don’t understand how difficult the lives of self employed are and the business owners, how much, how many struggles, how many loneliness. We discussed it. Even if you Have a spouse who is also self-employed but in a different area, then you don’t share the same language. So you need to be very bold in your decision making and you need again to improve yourself all the time. And there is a statistic, by the way, a very bad statistic by the way, that 90% of businesses, they don’t survive the first five years, 90% of businesses and in some countries, 50% of the businesses that don’t survive the first year. So again, it’s like the hunger game. Two people go to the road and one come back. So you need to be optimistic because if I think it’s like I would tell you go to the road to drive a car and there is a 50% chance that you will do an accident. So most people that don’t go on the road, they don’t get into the car. So you need to be very optimistic that I don’t care about statistic. It’s not going to happen to me because I have a good idea, I have a good book, I have a good lecture, I have a good product, I have a good service. So yeah, world, here I come. So it’s very boldly to think like this.

Jess Dewell 45:42
Every single time I have a conversation, I take away something that I want to share with 25 people. I know when you’re listening to this podcast, you’re also listening for that and will have something that you want to share in the comments. I would like for you to engage with us. What is that thing that you want to tell 25 people from this program? Here’s why it’s important. It’s important because yeah, there are going to be how-to’s. Yes, there are going to be steps. Yes, you’re going to be like, oh, I wish I wrote that down. I wish I wasn’t doing this and I could actually take action on that right now. But guess what? You’re not so engaged right now because that one thing you want to share with others will be the thing that you can figure out how to incorporate in your business, in your workflow, in your style tomorrow.

Announcer 46:32
Jess hosts the Bold Business Podcast to provide insights for building a resilient, profitable business by deeply understanding your growth strategy, ensuring market relevance and your company’s future. It is bold to deeply understand your growth strategy. With your host, Jess Dewell. Get more information about how to drive solutions and reset your growth mindset at reddirection dot com. Thank you for joining us and special thanks to our post-production team at the Scott Treatment.