In this podcast episode, Kristin Zhivago, an esteemed leader in the realm of marketing and business, articulates a fundamental principle for effective leadership: "Forget power, think love." This axiom serves as the cornerstone for understanding the importance of empathy in business interactions. Kristin expounds upon the necessity for leaders to prioritize the needs of their customers and employees over their own ambitions, thereby fostering a culture of care and genuine connection. She emphasizes that successful marketing hinges not on assumptions, but on authentic conversations with clients to ascertain their desires and concerns. By implementing these strategies, organizations can enhance their revenue and cultivate a more engaged workforce, ultimately leading to a more sustainable business model.

In this enlightening episode of the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast, we engage in a profound discourse with the esteemed Kristen Zhivago, who imparts invaluable insights on the essence of leadership and the pivotal role of empathy in marketing. The salient point she elucidates is the imperative to prioritize love over power in business interactions, positing that genuine care for customers and employees is paramount to fostering lasting relationships and driving revenue. Throughout the conversation, we explore the concept of understanding the true desires and concerns of clients, emphasizing that leaders must eschew assumptions in favor of direct engagement and inquiry. Kristen draws from her extensive experience as a revenue coach and agency founder, advocating for a compassionate approach that not only enhances customer satisfaction but also enriches organizational culture. This episode serves as a clarion call for leaders to cultivate a mindset that values empathy, thereby transforming their businesses into thriving ecosystems of collaboration and trust.

In a thought-provoking exchange, Jaclyn Strominger welcomes Kristin Zhivago to the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast, where they explore the nuanced interplay between effective leadership and innovative marketing strategies. Kristin, an authoritative voice in the realm of digital marketing and revenue generation, posits that the crux of successful leadership lies not in the exertion of power, but in the cultivation of love and empathy towards both customers and employees. She articulates a fundamental shift away from self-serving leadership styles that alienate key stakeholders, advocating instead for a model that prioritizes understanding and addressing the needs of others as a pathway to organizational success.

The dialogue provides a roadmap for leaders seeking to enhance their marketing efficacy through customer engagement. Kristin stresses the importance of moving beyond assumptions and actively seeking the voices of customers through direct interviews. This method reveals authentic insights that can significantly diverge from the internal perceptions held by companies, thus enabling a more accurate alignment of products and services with market expectations. By engaging in meaningful conversations with customers, organizations can gain critical information that informs their marketing strategies, fostering a deeper connection with their audience and enhancing overall business viability.

Furthermore, the conversation delves into the implications of artificial intelligence for the future of marketing. Kristin shares her vision of integrating AI into business practices, recognizing its potential to streamline operations and enhance customer interactions. However, she underscores the necessity of maintaining a human-centric approach in leveraging technology, ensuring that the core values of empathy and understanding remain at the forefront of business operations. This synthesis of advanced technology and human insight encapsulates the evolving landscape of leadership and marketing, positioning organizations to thrive amidst the complexities of the modern marketplace.

Takeaways:

• Successful leadership hinges on prioritizing empathy and love over the pursuit of power, which can alienate customers.
• To enhance business success, leaders must engage in meaningful conversations with their customers, rather than relying on assumptions.
• Understanding the customer's mindset is crucial, as it informs effective marketing strategies and product development.
• A great leader fosters a supportive team environment by recognizing individual contributions and mitigating negative influences.
• The key to retaining employees lies in fairness, honesty, and responsiveness from leadership, which fosters loyalty and trust.
• Utilizing AI effectively requires a deep understanding of one's business needs to tailor its implementation for optimal results.

Links referenced in this episode:

• Zhivagopartners.com
• amazon.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Zhivago Partners

Well, hello, everybody. I am Jaclyn Strominger, your host of the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast.

And I'm super excited to welcome to our podcast Kristin Zhivago. Oh, my God. I cannot, I'm gonna say, I don't mean to butcher the last name, but we were just talking about this before.

My Boston accent does not like certain words or syllables together or vowels and letters, any case.

But you guys, let me tell you, if you're talking about business, and we're talking about some amazing things that are, that are happening today with marketing and leadership, Kristen is the person that you want to know. So I'm so excited to have her on the show. You have had an amazing career.

So, again, welcome to the show. Welcome.

Thank you very much. Glad to be here.

Oh, yeah. So I'm so glad to have you. So, you know, I always love to share. Leadership is, it's not something that's super easy.

And so I always like to ask if you could share. I mean, you've, you've had a great career.

People who are listening, one thing that they should do and know that they could say, okay, today I'm going to listen to this and I'm going to walk away with one huge thing that I need to know about being a leader and also about marketing.

Okay, it's hard to cover both, but not really. I would say forget power, think love. Everybody's talking about power right now. And I honestly, it's.

If you're trying to be the baddest ass in the, in the market, you're going to alienate your customers, not just your competitors, and other, you're going to alienate your customers. You're not going to be empathetic. You're not going to care what they think. You'll just be in it for yourself.

Your employees will know that you're in it for yourself. It's just, and I'll just say, I define love. I'm writing a new book about that. I define love as just taking care of people. It's that simple.

You, you, you take care of them. You try to give them what they need and want and, you know, you do your best. That's. That's it.

Well, I, I would say that sounds easier Said than done in some ways. So when you're talking about it from the business world, I mean, I love what you're talking about because I think it's do. I think it's so true.

If you take care of your customers, you take care of your people. So. Right, right. And that, you know, but that doesn't always happen. So if you could give somebody almost like the playbook, like start with.

Start with A to get you to the game of really selling compassionately to your customers, what's the A?

So basically, I know you mentioned the two agencies, but I've spent decades as a revenue coach, which was an industry I made up myself. I'm. There were no other revenue coaches.

I've seen a few since then, but for decades, that's what I called myself, because I knew CEOs didn't care if it was sales or marketing that got them the revenue. They just wanted the revenue. So, yeah, show me the money. Yeah.

And it was about keeping the company viable, making enough money to take home and take care of your people and keep the business alive. So A is realizing it's not about me, the business owner. It's about them, the customer, and secondarily, your employees and partners.

You have to take care of them. So you have to get over yourself. You have to stop trying to be the smartest guy in the room. And everything's about me versus them.

And it's really about understanding what those important audiences, those people, your customers, your employees and your partners, what they care about. And if you guess, everybody guesses. It's a mistake. You can suck the revenue right out of your company if you guess. So that then applies to marketing.

One of the things that I do when I start working with any client and have for years is after they tell me their side of the story, the clients say, here's what's important to our customers. It's a list, blah, blah, blah. And then I go out and I interview. It only takes about five to seven people.

I interview their customers, people who have been happy and who bought. And then I basically say, I come back and say, okay, here's what they think is important, and their list is different.

At the very least, if there are things in common, they won't be at the top. If anything, the company thinks the most important is usually the thing that was the hardest for them to do.

The customer doesn't care about that they want. They. They have very specific desires, concerns, and questions. And those are the things you have to absolutely know and not be guessing.

And then when they come to your site or they interact with your new AI agent, which you're starting to create for clients, they know immediately that you get them and you care about them and you've worked on things that will work for them and that they know, people know immediately.

You learn that when you're two months old and your Aunt Hattie or whoever her name is comes to you and goes, oh, you're so cute and it hurts your cheek and you're like, that doesn't feel like a caring gesture. Okay?

Right, right.

But we learn right away who really does care about us and who's faking it. And most companies fake it.

Right? Right.

Well, you know, it's actually really interesting that you say that, because I think that's something, you know, I think back to, like, even when I was in college, you know, and, and doing some marketing classes. And one of the biggest. One of the first things that we even did was in the marketplace, go interview people, see what people want. Right.

You know, before you start with Product X, go ask, like, get some feedback. Right. And I almost feel like, look, that's missing these days. Like, people don't.

Absolutely.

Some don't seem to be asking.

Okay, so listeners, if you're, you know, as a leader in your organization and you want to be unstoppable, start asking people the questions of what do you really want? Right. And. And like, take the surveys. You know, I remember.

Yeah. It's not surveys, though.

You have to have a conversation and you have to talk to people who've already bought from you because they know your company better than you think they do.

You're going to be shocked at how well they know your company, and they're going to come back with a branding statement, which is, they're real good at this, but they're not so good at that.

So then you learn what you should be promoting and how they talk about it and how they search for it and all that stuff and what they say about you when you're not in the room, which you never hear otherwise. The people who've already bought from you will spend time with you telling you this stuff. When they're buying from you, they're playing poker.

They're not going to tell you anything about what they're thinking. But after they've bought, they've got a vested interest in your company because they've invested in you. Now they want you to stick around.

And so they'll tell you how they bought, why they bought, how they searched for you, what else they looked at. Why they turned it down. Why, why, why, why, why?

That then becomes the language and the concepts that you take out to the market and you stop throwing spaghetti on the wall. People think they can get this from AI Personas, but AI is just scraping the web and, and looking what everyone else is doing. Your company is unique.

Right, Right. And it's very true. It's not, it's something that you do. You have to have the conversations with people.

And I, you know, I would even, you know, I, I do say that even if you're starting a company, you have to ask people. If you're starting a company for X, Y or Z, go and talk to people. You probably have a competitor.

Find out who some of those people are, but ask the questions. What do they, what do they love? What do they not? What do they not love? What would they wish for if they could wave their magic watt?

And I think that's the same thing that you need to do, obviously, with your current customers. What would you want? Like, how could we be better?

Exactly.

You know, I have the questions that I typically ask after interviewing thousands upon thousands of people are in my book, in chapter three, I spell out the method. I'm not holding back anything.

So you can do this yourself or you can hire someone like me to go and interview them, and within a few weeks, you'll have your whole strategy worked out.

So when you think about and you do this and the things that you've done, I mean, because most people, you know, part of leadership is obviously the revenue part. What have you seen once they've implemented and gone out and asked the right questions and, and done this? What has been their growth?

Well, my dream with every client, my hope. It's more than a hope.

My expectation, and we don't stop until this happens, is they go from this to that, and then they have other problems like how do we finance our growth and I can't hire people fast enough and things like that. But we, we do eliminate the revenue problem because we're coming right back to where now this is. Companies that have a decent product.

And, you know, usually I pick up clients that have a product that is competitive and there are things that are desirable about it that are sellable, that people want. So you have to have that.

And of course, the way you get that in the first place in the product development or service development phase is you ask these questions the same way you're talking about, what are you looking for? What's important to you about something like this? What's driven you crazy? About things like this. What trends do you see in these types of things?

That's where you get this. I call this the mindset. When they set out to buy, that's the nugget we're looking for. What was their mindset when they set out to buy?

And again, it's their desires, their concerns and their questions.

Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's quite interesting to find out what that information is when people, you know, because it's going to help in so many different aspects.

So if you're finding out what their mindset is and what they were looking for, because it's going to help from the marketing side and also on the keywords and the whole s, all the SEO and the things that you put into play to make those things happen. So, so tell me, you know, what do you see right now?

I mean you've, you started as, you know, revenue coach, you've had agencies, you know, has there been one truly like game changing insight that has helped you be the leader that you are in your own business?

I think it's the get over yourself part because I didn't get to where I was by sitting back and eating bonbons and watching soap operas. I've been working hard all my life and, and part of that was ambition.

And I'm actually much happier with myself and my ability as manager because when I was a revenue coach, I would go in and turn around marketing and sales departments. So we'd go from that to that.

And I was pretty competitive back then and I don't think I was as good of a manager as I am now, where I don't have to be the smartest guy in the room. I've hired. I have 20 people on my team at the moment and they really do come back and, and come up with ideas that I wouldn't have thought of.

And I give them full credit. I have this little gold star that I zip into Slack.

Whenever they come up with a great idea and they know I'm not competing with them, they know I'm not going to be judgmental.

If they come up with something that can't work, I'll just say, well, we couldn't do that because of this, but maybe there's a germ of a good idea in there. So you really do have to get over yourself.

And that's especially true with your customers too because way too convenient and comfortable to guess and to assume intelligently. Yes, of course, you know, you know your business, you know the marketplace and so on.

But you really don't know the mindset of the customer when they set out to buy. And that's the thing. And it's way more important than Personas. Personas are like stalking somebody.

I mean, if you'd stalked somebody for two weeks and said, here are all their desires and their questions, and I mean, not so much about. These are their characteristics, these are their behaviors. And just because you shop at this store doesn't mean you wouldn't shop at that store.

It also doesn't uncover the mindset when you set out to buy. I mean, just somebody watching you all day would not answer those questions about a specific product. So it's kind of like mind reading. You.

You get into the mind of the customer and then you can repeat that information back out to the marketplace to people who have similar needs and desires and concerns and questions.

Yeah, so that's. Yeah, no, that's. It's.

It's great lesson to learn to know about, that you are definitely not the smartest person in the room and that you need to rely on your team.

And that does a whole lot for the team environment as a leader, because it helps elevate people and make people feel heard and wanted and appreciated more than anything, which is, I think, really, really important for today.

I need to bring up one other thing, if I could, just to answer that question. One of the things I'm doing in the book is defining what makes a great leader and also what makes people quit.

There are three things in my experience, working with thousands of working people that. And I was a headhunter before I opened my own agency. So I heard all the stories about why they left companies and so on.

And the, the number one reason why people leave companies is because the boss was unfair. And it wouldn't even have to be unfair to them personally. It would be just they did something that hurt somebody else. It was unethical.

It was okay on one side, but, you know, know it hurt other people or it hurts some. Their coworker or something. And they decide at that moment they're not going to stay at that company because it's unfair.

And they'll just start looking and, you know, two months later they'll leave because they found the right job. The next thing is honesty.

If you try to hide, you know, the CYA stuff where you're trying to make yourself look good and not admit to a mistake, or you're trying to hide something from them because you don't think they could handle it, or there's a lot of sort of white Lies, I guess, little lies that happen in especially large companies. And it's not nice, and people know it and they leave because of it. And the last thing is responsiveness.

So when a boss gives somebody a job and then they ghost the person and they disappear and they don't answer, they don't provide the answers the person needs. The person has to stop working, go to something else, and wait for the boss to come back and get back to them.

And I know how difficult it is to be responsive because I'm on slack all day, and all day I have questions. So you have to carve out the quiet time.

I do it in the early mornings where you can work on things that you have to get done, but at the same time during the business day, as a general rule, you are getting back to them either that same day or the very next day. And then they can just keep working and things work out. But they can get so frustrated.

Your most productive people can get really frustrated if you're not responsive.

No, I think that's very true. I actually, I think, you know, I think one of the, you know, in wrapped up in all of that is when people. People never leave companies just for money.

They leave because they don't feel appreciated or heard or valued. And that's all sort of wrapped up into those key parts, which is really important.

Exactly. And you're right about the money. Yeah.

I mean, you know, I think about, you know, I did. I was actually a recruiter for a little bit, too.

And one of the biggest things that, you know, that we shared, you know, we share in that common values is that ground is, you know, I would sit there and people would sit there, tell me all the great things that they could do, but they just. Their leader or the people that were in their company didn't know anything about them. Right. Or about any of their abilities.

So I always, you know, part of it, too. It's like, you know, I loved what you said, which is like, stop guessing. Right. Stop guessing.

But stop guessing about your company, but stop guessing about the people, too. If you can do anything right now, stop the guessing and start asking the questions and learning.

Yeah. When I did the marketing turnarounds, one disadvantage of those assignments was I had to work with the staff that was already there.

The company I have now, I've built every single person into the team, and I know who they are.

And so the first thing I would do first, I'd interview customers before I even started because I knew I'd be bombarded with 300 emails every day and, you know, be hard to do. Then I would sit down with every single person individually in the department, and I would ask them, what's your happiest place?

What do you enjoy doing the most and what do you hate to do?

And then I'd restructure the department so that everybody was spending time doing what they loved to do most, and maybe 10% of the time, 15 at the most. The stuff they could, they just didn't like because they just had to do it as part of the job and it couldn't be delegated.

But that made for a very happy department. The other thing I did was figure out who the jerk was.

There's usually 1 in 10 jerk quotient in large companies, and these were really big companies I was working for. And I would fire the jerk, and then everybody would say, oh, good, she figured out who the jerk was.

And now we can get to work and help each other, and we won't be discouraged anymore. So they knew then that I wouldn't tolerate jerks.

Right. But it's so important, you know, it's. It. I. I do a lot of analogies to basketball teams because my son plays basketball or it doesn't really matter.

The team. And my. My daughter was a skier. She still skis. She was a ski team. But it's amazing how one person can be the. For lack of better word, the cancer of.

Of a company, a team, and whatnot. And so. Or the jerk that can bring the whole team down. And it's. And we.

And I think one of the biggest things I would say is, like, if you can figure out who those people are first and foremost before you bring them in and know who they are based on key values that you align with you as a. As the leader of the company and the people that you want to bring in, it helps to hopefully cut that stuff out. Right?

Yeah, it's poison in the well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We want to get rid of that.

You're right. It drags everybody down.

Yeah. It's horrid.

Oh, yeah.

My son's basketball team has been dealing with it, so it's top of mind for me right now.

Understood.

Yeah. So I'm. You know, I'm. Chris, I'm really curious. So what is your biggest goal right now?

My biggest goal right now is to so thoroughly and professionally incorporate AI into our company, not only for the services that we currently provide, but also for new services that we can provide. And we're thinking of doing some things for small businesses that. Because they don't have time to deal with AI. They don't know what to do with it.

And we've partnered with a company that has developed a really sophisticated marketing platform based on the founder of the company has like 30 years of research, market AB testing, research and philosophies that he's developed. And it's really good stuff. And we're starting to build all those tools.

Oh, I've been in tech since the digital Volt meter, which was one of the first digital things that even ever came out and that was before PCs and all of that. So I've seen the whole.

I've been on the point of the spear in the tech business the whole time that it's sort of been in the consciousness of the general populace. And AI is the biggest tsunami I've ever seen. It's completely taking over. It's smart as a whip. It's also mistakes all over the place right now still.

But there are ways to use it to refine what you're doing.

Not in the way I was talking about with thinking they know what the customer wants because that's sort of too broad brush and doesn't give you that specific information. But there's a lot of other things that are very, very good and we are working with those and on those and just working like crazy.

Just bringing it all in and making it available to clients.

No, I like that. It's very true. I think AI is very interesting right now.

I feel like it's one of the biggest things that I always share with people is that if you want it to work for you, you have to make sure it gets to know you and you have to be able. But you need to know who you are or what you need to know those business parameters first before you can feed it in to then get out.

Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right.

You know, so.

Yeah, go ahead.

No, I was gonna say what. What do you think having or bringing the AI or bringing AI in and doing this is going to do both for you and your clients besides revenue?

Well, there's certainly.

AI is pretty good at research and I tend to use perplexity just because it does its sites, its sources more rigorously than chat GPT does, even though it's been trying to get better at it.

And honestly, search engine optimization is completely on its head because now when you go to Google, you always get that AI thing at the beginning and you don't even scroll any further. If it was a something that could be answered in that kind of format, you know you're not shopping for something specific.

You're looking for an answer to a bigger question, but you can use it to say, who are the best in this environment, so on. So the research part of AI, I think, is usable by anybody now. And.

And I think the graphic tools are going to put a lot of graphic designers out of business, if it hasn't already. Because you can get. If you use the right prompts, you can get some absolutely beautiful art. It doesn't cost you anything. It takes three seconds.

If you don't like it, you do another one.

I've been using that for a long time now, and as somebody who's been using graphic illustrators, designers and so on for decades, it's a total revolution. The writing's still catching up. I use it more as a. We use it more where I've written something or one of us writers have, and.

And then we sort of feed it in and say, make it shorter or make it this way or whatever, and then we see what we can learn from it. Yeah, we don't necessarily take it verbatim because sometimes it comes out really homogenized and sort of corporate talk which people don't read.

So we're using it carefully. Yeah, I think it's. I do think it's going to be very. It is very useful for people. So.

All right, so here's my. So what's your favorite graphic tool? Chat, or, you know, for AI, there's.

Something called Image X, I think now, but I've been using Copilot, which is based on Dolly D A L L E, Microsoft's Copilot, which. One of the biggest problems it had at the beginning is it had a lot of trouble with appendages, fingers and legs. And you can have a bunch.

You say, make a bunch of people sitting, you know, in a room, and then that's.

Everything above the conference table is fine, but underneath there's two legs or three legs or one leg on, or there's six fingers or, you know, three fingers or whatever. That's been the hard part about that, is when it comes up with a perfect illustration and somebody has one leg.

That's very discouraging because it won't give you the. If you say, well, please, everything was perfect, but I just want two legs on that person, and then it might come back with three.

It's getting a little better. But that's.

No, I've. I've. I've used some of that, too. And it's like. It's really funny where, you know, images Are kind of with the hands or hands and feet.

Sometimes even noses are off or something like that. Or people. Like, I've had a picture where people are shaking hands and then I looked at their hands and I'm like, she kind of looks kind of webby or.

Like, yeah, yeah, the fingers are tough.

Yeah, fingers are tough. But, yeah. And sometimes I think when they, you ask it to put words on it too, sometimes it gives you.

Oh, they don't do that. It's just gibberish. It's like, yeah, illustrations of letters.

Yeah, that's what I need.

But that's changing by, I mean, this next week, it could be something else, right?

It could be something else. So, you know, Kristen, I, I could talk to you forever. I, you know, I think this is like, so fascinating.

I mean, like, it's, you know, there's so many things that are happening, you know, obviously with, in the world of marketing and agencies and also what you were sharing, you know, key people, you know, being revenue generators. Because it all, it's actually all tied together. And I know you've got a, you've got one book and you're working on another one.

So please share with everybody. Where can people connect with you and tap into your expertise even more?

Okay, all the, first of all you have to do is just type Kristen Zhivago into Google and it goes on and on and on. Because I've done a lot of content over the years. My book is roadmap to revenue, how to sell the way your customers want to buy. And that's on Amazon.

It's Kindle. Yeah, Kindle, Audible and hardcover.

It's actually best in hardcover because I, I dissect the buying, the types of buying processes in the world based on how much scrutiny people apply to the purchase. And it just works better in a print environment. But the rest of it's useful as well.

The thing it does is it gets you out of your buyer, your seller hat gets you into the customers life and mine. And then I write a blog@Zhivagopartners.com which is our main site.

Fantastic.

Okay, so listeners, you definitely want to connect with Kristen, get her book, get her expertise, and really just, you know, again, connect with her on LinkedIn and all the socials and really just start subscribing to her blog and again, get the book. And I really appreciate you being a guest. I am Jaclyn Strominger, the host of Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast.

If you have enjoyed this, please hit subscribe.

Please share it with your friends and colleagues as well, because our goal is to make amazing leaders out there who actually help elevate their people and their companies because then we will hopefully have a better leadership based world. So again, I'm Jaclyn Stomageer with Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast and thank you guys for listening.

Thank you.