Overview
On this episode of Business Insanity Talk radio, we first talk about how people, more so than the technology, are critical to the success of NASA space missions. NASA’s former Director of Mission Operations gives us incredible insight into what went wrong in the Challenger and Columbia tragedies and the steps NASA takes to prevent it from happening again. Then, traditionally we think of leaders as those who step forward, but my next guest believes that effective leaders actually step back…and show their vulnerability. Plus, selling sex was the first profitable ecommerce business on the Internet. We have a guest on who has been called “The Perfect Entrepreneur For The Digital Sex Era” and we’ll find out why. Also, we’ll take the mystery out of search engine optimization and show you how to get your website ranking in Google search results. Finally, subscription boxes are all the rage these days. We’ll explore what goes into having a successful subscription box business.
Listen
Segment 1: Paul Sean Hill was NASA’s Director of Mission Operations from 2007 through 2014. He was responsible for all aspects of human spaceflight mission planning, training, and Mission Control. In this role, Paul led a critical leadership transformation, dramatically reduced costs, and increased capability, all while still conducting highly successful missions in space.
1:30 – Has space exploration gotten any easier?
3:00 – Rocket science isn’t the hard part. People are the hard part.
4:30 – How do you create long term, highly reliable team performance?
6:30 – How did NASA recover from the very public Challenger tragedy?
7:45 – What changes were made internally at NASA after the Challenger and Columbia tragedies?
9:00 – How do you balance raising concerns and making decisions?
Segment 2: Barry Kaplan is an expert in organizational development and leadership of people and teams.
15:15 – Most people see vulnerability as a weakness. Why is it an asset?
16:15 – The risk and opportunity of being vulnerable.
17:00 – The height of a team’s performance is directly related to the depth of connection among its members.
18:15 – Why is it important to open up about your personal life at work?
19:30 – Won’t someone use your vulnerability against you?
22:30 – Why is it important to check in personally before getting into a business conversation?
Segment 3: Brian Sloan graduated from law school in 2005 but chose not to practice law. He moved to Beijing, China where he lived for 10 years while building his current company: a leading manufacturer, wholesaler, and online retailer of his own brands of sex toys. His company runs 20 e-commerce websites selling their products in 12 countries, sells on Amazon and Groupon, plus sells to thousands of brick and mortar stores and distributors worldwide.
31:15 – Why sell sex toys?
32:00 – How Brian brought sex toys online.
34:15 – How did you go from B2C online to B2B offline?
Segment 4: Damon Burton founded SEO National in the Salt Lake City area in 2007 to manage industry leading SEO campaigns and online reputation, after nearly a decade launching internet marketing agencies.
40:30 – What is SEO and why is it important?
41:30 – What you should do to give your business the best chance of showing up on the first page of Google.
42:30 – Does keyword stuffing content work?
43:15 – How do you figure out what the right keywords are for your business?
44:45 – What WordPress add-ons are best for SEO?
Segment 5: Stefan Pretty is a Scottish Entrepreneur and passionate bootstrapper. He has bootstrapped over 5 businesses and side projects since he was 18, with his current business being Subbly, the all-in-one subscription box platform.
49:30 – What are the different types of subscription box business models?
51:00 – Why have curated boxes become so popular?
52:30 – Subbly helps you start your subscription box business.
