1. What have you found most challenging as a leader of a small or medium enterprise?

Deciding what to say no to. Not knowing how to say know costs the average manager 31 hours per month in lost productivity

2. How did you become a leader of an SME? Can you please briefly tell the story?

I've worked for myself for the past 20 years. I had enough of working for bosses who didn't make the best use of my capabilities and stifled ideas. My latest venture was started because I have a mission to make sales a force for good. I want to change the sales profession to put buyer safety at the heart of selling

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

I calendar block religiously. I have thinking time for planning and dealing with important, not urgent issues every day. I have time for execution, for content production as I believe it is our responsibility to deliver value on every touch. This kind of lead nurturing means that I am communicating to my total addressable market who volunteer themselves when THEY are ready for my help. I coach, I train, I am involved in recruiting EVERY day. I listen to an audiobook every night before I go to bed for at least 30 minutes and my car is always playing a podcast or an audiobook to keep my mind filled with useful stuff. I conduct 2-3 podcast interviews each week to feed the podcasts and to gain knowledge. It has also been my pipeline builder for my partner pipeline.
I usually walk the dog in the woods in the evening before supper.
Since the second lockdown. Each of us has an assigned day to cook and we sit down to dinner together each evening to catch up with one another's news.

4. What's the most recent significant leadership lesson you've learned?

I have learned to communicate the value of what we offer in under 3-7 minutes. That allows my prospects to decide the direction and momentum of our conversations. It allows me to stay focused on what we do especially well and bring in partners in areas we are not expert in.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

Just Listen by Mark Goulston is the number 1 recommendation I offer others. True, surgical listening is a skill few master and will never fail to deliver fantastic value to those who practice it and who receive it.

6. How do you build leadership capacity in an SME?

Find people whose strengths make your weaknesses irrelevant. Get your ego out of the way. I run motivational maps against my team to truly understand what drives them and I use them to help me coach, develop, reward and recognise them in a way they value

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader of an SME so far?

I interviewed the legend Bob Moesta, author of Demand Side Sales and he taught me that customers only RENT OUTCOMES. They never buy your product outright. They rent them only for as long as they deliver the outcomes they need in that moment/time. Happy clients leave us because we are no longer relevant to those outcomes. Unhappy clients stay because we are delivering those outcomes.
Our job is to be and stay relevant. To do this we must become our clients' partner. Not a supplier. Not a trusted advisor. But a trusted partner. That means we need to be ready to fight, disagree, have difficult conversations, do difficult work together and surrender OUR outcome in favour of their outcome. And we must be willing to say no when it is appropriate to do so. Ambiguity is the mother of all FUBARs, mismatched expectations and disappointment. Clarity is key and is vital to delivering BUYER SAFETY