Hi, there. My name is Avil Beckford, and I started the One Problem podcast. We know that there are tons of problems in the world, but why overwhelm ourselves? Let's tackle them one problem at a time. You know that most of my guests I have some prior relationship with, and that's the case with our guest, Jacqui Lyles. I met her on LinkedIn. Now, she's a very fascinating person. She inspires sales team to increase their revenues. She's a TEDx speaker and author and a lot more. But you'll learn more about her. So, over to you, Jackie.
Jackie Lyles
Thank you. Thank you, Avil. The one problem I'm going to talk about today is finding new opportunities. And I'll go into the solution. So there's really three things you want to focus on in finding new opportunities. The first is to be curious. And what I mean by being curious is, everything you see, everything you do, imagine how it could be done differently.
I got this idea from a philosophy professor, Dr. James McDermott. And he was a specialist on William James, who's the father of modern psychology. And McDermott would say, drive to this class differently. Walk a different path, smell a different fragrance. Do something different every time. Rearrange your furniture.
And I thought about my life. And at the time, you know, I was in college. I was 19. It was easy to rearrange my furniture. I had very little. And in my world, I could try a lot of different things. And the one thing that he did not talk about, which I found very effective in my consulting practice and in my business, is to talk to new people. We work with Fortune 100 companies and many entrepreneurs. And what we found is that they talk to the same people.
Jackie Lyles: How to Find New Opportunities
They go back to the same clients. They surround themselves – they're insular with the same people that gave them the same information ten years ago. And what happens is you literally run out of ideas.
Jackie Lyles
This came from a guy I worked with, Jim Norman. He was one of my mentors. He was the brother-in-law of Zig Ziglar, and he was a character. And Jim was just a larger-than-life person. He was a very successful developer. He mentored entrepreneurs and helped them think about things differently. And he said that people just run out of the same conversation.
Have you read or watched?
- Jackie Maclean, Energy Innovator and Clinical Hypnotherapist
- Leslie Nydick, The Conflict Strategist, How to Lead Inclusive Conversations
- Holly Jackson, TEDx Speaker, Holistic Leader
- Kes Morton, President and CEO, Pisces Research Project Management
- Kerry Wekelo, COO of Actualized Consulting
- Dr Pauline Crawford, The Conversation Game Changer
- Syya Yasotornrat, Podcast Strategist and Producer
- Becky Wolfe, Works with Burned Out Teams
- Dena Lefkowitz, Business and Career Coach for Lawyers
- Lisa Rangel, Executive Resume Writer
- Lucia Kanter St. Amour, VP United Nations Women (San Francisco)
- Traci Lamb, TV Show Host For The First/Only Caregiver Show in Mass Media
- Jane Lehman, Legal Shield – Affordable Access to Lawyers
- Gena Cox, Organizational Psychologist, Executive Coach, Speaker and Author
- Carla Leon, Chief Executive Officer, Just Like Family Home Care Canada
- Lillian Davenport, Leadership and Career Strategist
They just replay it again and again and again. So solving this situation of finding new opportunities, you want to be curious, talk to new people. And then the third thing is to ask questions of new people. And when I think about the new people, I always think about business champions, people who could influence 300 people. Someone who could decide, someone who is always developing themselves and learning. Someone who's probably reading a lot of books that you talk about. That person, they're going to be asking. You ask questions of that person and you will learn things.
And there are five questions that I always ask, and I found this to be very helpful.
- What are your responsibilities you're focusing on right now?
- What's your biggest challenge?
- Imagine working together on that big challenge, what would it look like to you?
- How will you measure it?
- And what would it do for you personally when that challenge would go away?
What people tell me, like one guy I worked with, Jay Manning. He said, I'm telling you things I've never said out loud. He was an executive with Stewart & Stevenson, and then they were acquired by GE. And the big example is people think about the same situation the same way. So when you ask questions of new people, you're going to hear things you've never heard before.
Jackie Lyles
You may even yourself say things you've never said. And that will open up new opportunities. And I'll give you some examples of how this works. One is with an energy services company. We have been working with them. They had significant turnover. And I brought in a person who was very famous for doing management training. So we came in and we talked to the energy services company. And what we found is they never considered someone outside of their industry to look at how to solve this problem.
And what happened is they immediately engaged this person. They bought $5 million of management training. But what it changed is the lives of the people out in the field, because the managers became more aware of what they were doing to get people to leave. And they didn't know that. So they changed their behavior. Another example is with a very small company. I know some of your listeners have small companies, so I want to talk about a small company and how you can take it in a big way.
And for this example, this was an author that had a small practice. He was a psychologist, and he'd written a book. And his book was on teams. He asked me to get his book out there. And so what we did is we found Chambers of Commerce. So many groups that wanted to look differently at the situation. They never considered bringing in a psychologist to talk about teaming.
Jackie Lyles
They'd always brought in business people or entrepreneurs. So this was very different. And for him, he got to launch his consulting business because he would go out and speak, and immediately people would hire him.
We partnered with independent bookstores. He never worked with independent bookstores. So he became a New York Times bestseller out of that work. After six months of work. He was number four on the New York Times bestseller list for 14 weeks. That was very rewarding for us. And just to let you know that just asking these questions can change things.
They're in my book, Own Your Value and you can get it on Amazon. So that's the situation. That's how the one problem I see is finding new opportunities. Be curious, talk to new people and ask questions of new people. So back to you, Avil.
Avil Beckford
Thank you so much. You've given me a lot of food to think about because I always say to people, try something different. Don't go to the same places. Like try different foods and stuff. But you have taken it a little deeper. So thank you so much for that.
Jackie Lyles
You're welcome. Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you and your audience.
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